Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[johnu]

I think the point is that Democrats *do* want Republicans’ input — they want to get them back on record as favoring cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as their preferred approach to fiscal policy issues.

 

Every time a Repugnant rails against socialism and wants to avoid spending any money on anybody but themselves they are doing exactly that. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are the 3 largest socialist programs in America. Repugs want to cut and privatize Social Security, reduce Medicare, and eliminate Medicaid because they are "socialist" programs.

[pilowsky]

Every time a Repugnant rails against socialism and wants to avoid spending any money on anybody but themselves they are doing exactly that. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are the 3 largest socialist programs in America. Repugs want to cut and privatize Social Security, reduce Medicare, and eliminate Medicaid because they are "socialist" programs.

 

Socialism - looking after other people.

No wonder they hate it.

Death, disease and disaster - all Gods will

If you don't survive you don't have the "Right Stuff".

[johnu]

Socialism - looking after other people.

No wonder they hate it.

Death, disease and disaster - all Gods will

If you don't survive you don't have the "Right Stuff".

 

Excuse me, you are wrong. If you don't survive, it's because you do have the "(Ultra) Right (fringe) Stuff"

 

Texas Lt. Governor Will Death Panel Your Nana To Save The Economy

 

Sorry to Granny and the other 28 million Americans age 65 and older, but if it’s you or the economy, lots of Republicans are going with the GDP. Last night, Texas’s Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick captured the gestalt, telling Fox’s Tucker Carlson that he’s “all in” only grandparents sacrificing themselves to preserve the American economy for the “grandchildren, that [] we all care about and [] we love more than anything.”

 

Dan Patrick thanks everybody Covid death in advance for preserving the American economy.

[pilowsky]

I like where you're coming from, but it's a reference to the Tom Wolfe book - "The Right Stuff" where the test pilots died, not because the plane was in any way inadequate, but because they just didn't have what it takes to survive at the "edge of the envelope".

This appears to reflect the attitude of many on the Stupid wing of both political parties.

"What about me?

It's not fair,

I've had enough

I want my share"

Could be the anthem for the loony fringe.

[kenberg]

I looked up the cited Dye article about the Texas Lt. Gov.. It gets weird.

 

“My message is that let’s get back to work. Let’s get back to living.” Patrick continued. “Let’s be smart about it. And those of us who are 70 plus, we’ll take care of ourselves, but don’t sacrifice the country. Don’t do that. Don’t ruin this great America.”

 

REALLY? Exactly how will “those of us who are 70 plus … take care of ourselves?” Because a fatality rate of 2 percent in the 330 million person population means 6.6 million American dead. And while we’re all bloody sick of being trapped in the house homeschooling our kids, the non-sociopathic portion of the country isn’t ready to watch our parents drown in their own lung secretions in exchange for getting back to “normal.”

 

 

The problem I have with this (and I am definitely 70 plus) is that it is way off the mark. When the vaccine first was being made available I thought parents with young children should have priority over me. at seemed right, I could stay isolated for a while longer while we vaccinated people who were really in a tough spot. When they prioritized by age then I got my shot. I went with the priorities that were chosen, but I could not have objected if they re-thought it and put someone else first. This was not because I put low value on my life, it was because I thought others had more immediate need and I could wait a bit in reasonable comfort.

 

But this jerk seems to be saying something very different. More like "Pandemic? Big deal. Ignore it. Live as usual." That's just stupid. Or effing crazy as Dye put it.

 

We don't ignore floods or fires, or at least we shouldn't. We don't ignore the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the Twin Towers. And we should not ignore the current crisis. I am not put out because he ignores old people, I just think his approach is nuts. And perhaps worst of all, this sort of craziness makes it harder to rationally discuss the plusses and minuses of various approaches. Exactly what we should do is not clear. I will soon go back to using a mask when shopping. I was shopping yesterday w/o one, and I was very happy when it seemed reasonable to do that, but things are changing again and I'll be masking again. I mean now. The virus is a serious problem, it did seem as if vaccinated people could shop w/o masks if the area was not too crowded, but now Delta has changed that again. Some might think I could wait a bit, others might wonder what took me so long, but someone who thinks we should just ignore the virus and go on as we always have, they are crazy. And they certainly are not saving the country.

 

 

[y66]

From Hungarian nationalism is not the answer

 

This overall sense of despair has an incredible odor of giving up after trying nothing.

 

Like, maybe conservative populism would have better prospects in the United States if its leader weren’t a louche, corrupt fraud who rambles nonsense all the time? I mean, we’re talking about a guy who got up on a podium and suggested we could cure Covid by shining ultraviolet light into people’s lungs.

 

I often hear progressives look at the Trump shitshow in total belief and despair as to how anyone could vote for that clown. I don’t find it puzzling at all; the basic ideas of “cops and troops are good, we should have less immigration and wave little flags a lot instead of obsessing over racism” just have a lot of appeal.

 

But the populist right looked at a sample of two, saw that Trump narrowly won in 2016 while Romney narrowly lost in 2012, and concluded that Trump was a political genius. The fact that Trump then lost in 2020 hasn’t caused them to revisit this at all. But recall that Romney wasn’t just running on the little flags; he also vowed to privatize Medicare. You could just drop that without also having a leader who can’t deliver a coherent answer to any policy question because he’s too busy spending weekends lining his own pockets with public funds.

 

Then when Trump was president, right in the middle of this supposedly apocalyptical cultural battle, what do Republicans do? They try to kick millions of people off their health insurance. Then they follow it up with a toxically unpopular tax cut for multinational corporations. Maybe before you decide that Portuguese fascism is the answer to conservatism’s problems, you should just try to do basic politics in a halfway competent way?

[pilowsky]

Trump lost in 2016 AND 2020: by a lot.

[y66]

Heather Cox Richardson's brief summary of the history of voting rights in the U.S.

[y66]

Remember, this incontrovertible fact means Larry Hogan’s career in Republican politics has reached a dead end, whereas Ron DeSantis is the GOP’s favored non-Trump presidential candidate.

Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) compares his state to Florida:

 

“Because we’re so vaccinated … they’ve got 10,000 people in the hospital, we have 300.”

[kenberg]

I voted for Larry Hogan. He seems sane. That might be a low bar, but not everyone can measure up to it these days.

[barmar]

The problem I have with this (and I am definitely 70 plus) is that it is way off the mark. When the vaccine first was being made available I thought parents with young children should have priority over me. at seemed right, I could stay isolated for a while longer while we vaccinated people who were really in a tough spot. When they prioritized by age then I got my shot. I went with the priorities that were chosen, but I could not have objected if they re-thought it and put someone else first. This was not because I put low value on my life, it was because I thought others had more immediate need and I could wait a bit in reasonable comfort.

The reason people like you were prioritized is not that you needed to get out of lockdown sooner, but because the consequences of you catching COVID-19 would be more severe. Young people tended to have relatively mild symptoms and recover, old people ended up in the ICU and morgue. We needed to relieve this stress on hospitals.

 

So you didn't "deserve" it more. Protecting people like you was best for the whole system.

[Winstonm]

This is getting amusing - oh, the irony!

 

 

A Florida radio host who railed against Dr. Fauci and vaccines has died from COVID-19

 

 

I read the news today, oh, boy,

about a man who'd really made the grade

and though the news was very sad

I just had to laugh,

when I read that paragraph

 

He blew his mind out sans a mask

and didn't know 'til he had breathed his last

that he didn't need to die

all he had to do was take a little poke

and stop his lies

 

I'm really glad he's gone.

[kenberg]

The reason people like you were prioritized is not that you needed to get out of lockdown sooner, but because the consequences of you catching COVID-19 would be more severe. Young people tended to have relatively mild symptoms and recover, old people ended up in the ICU and morgue. We needed to relieve this stress on hospitals.

 

So you didn't "deserve" it more. Protecting people like you was best for the whole system.

 

Yes, I accepted that as the reason. It's a matter of large-scale statistics. Because of the careful way that Becky and I were doing things I think the chances of us getting covid were very low, making it unlikely we would be causing hospitals any problem. Of course I could be wrong, and not everyone of my age finds matters as easy. We were not in need of personal care in our lives, we were not needed to help with the grandchildren and so on. But case by case is not practical so it made sense to just put all of us that were over 75 in the same basket. And once the priorities were set, then that's what I went with. I wanted the vaccine, they said I was prioritized, so I got the vaccine. This did not stop me from thinking that a single parent, or for that matter married parents, were often in a tougher spot than I was.

 

But these are details. Exactly how to prioriize might or might not be clear. The problem cases are these nut jobs such as that Lt. Gov. in Texas

 

And we have a local nutjob. Apparently, there is to be a statewide gathering of county representatives soon. Several from each county are to go, and wearing masks at meetings is recommended. So one of the guys from our county has decided, because of the mask recommendation, not to go. I was thinking of writing to him with the following:

 

I see a physical therapy group for some problems with my knee. They require that I wear a mask. Now if I thought the PT was useless, I would not go whether a mask was required or not. I think the PT is useful, so I will go whether they require a mask or not. This statewide meeting might or might not be useful, I have no opinion about that, but deciding on attendance based on whether or not a mask is recommended is petulant and irresponsible.

 

This guy makes a misbehaving 8-year-old appear cooperative and mature by comparison. He is not from my voting district but good grief, people actually voted for him?

 

I really cannot understand what makes these people tick. The ones that think the vaccine will magnetize them are nuts. If a person is clearly nuts no further explanation is required. But there are others who, at first glance, seem sane. I don't get it.

[Winstonm]

I really cannot understand what makes these people tick. The ones that think the vaccine will magnetize them are nuts. If a person is clearly nuts no further explanation is required. But there are others who, at first glance, seem sane. I don't get it.

 

I have narrowed it down to immaturity. Basically, spoiled brats.

 

I have a solution. For anyone who claims self-reliance and freedom as an absolute right, let's drop them off in the middle of the African Savanna - Naked and Afraid like the television show - and let them find out if they are indeed totally self-reliant and at the top of the food chain.

[johnu]

Trump ‘Imagines’ How People Would Squawk Had COVID-19 ‘Attack’ Erupted On His Watch

 

“Could you imagine if I were president right now and we had this massive attack from the coronavirus?” he asked. “If that were me, they would say, ‘What a horrible thing, what a horrible job.’ And I don’t ever hear that.”

 

Well, you can't argue with that kind of logic :rolleyes:

[Winstonm]

Trump ‘Imagines’ How People Would Squawk Had COVID-19 ‘Attack’ Erupted On His Watch

 

Ever the victim/hero. Del should create Victim Man 👨

 

Well, you can't argue with that kind of logic :rolleyes:

[y66]

Judge asks why Capitol rioters are paying just $1.5 million for attack, while U.S. taxpayers will pay more than $500 million

[y66]

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-9-2021

 

It appears the Senate is on track to pass the bipartisan $1 trillion “hard” infrastructure package as early as Tuesday morning.

 

As soon as it passes, Democrats will turn to the $3.5 trillion bill, a sweeping measure that would modernize the nation’s approach to infrastructure by including human infrastructure as well as the older “hard” projects. It establishes universal pre-kindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds, cuts taxes for families with children, makes community college tuition free for two years, and invests in public universities.

 

It invests in housing, invests in job training, strengthens supply chains, provides green cards to immigrant workers, and protects the borders with new technologies. It expands the Affordable Care Act, invests in home and community-based health care, and reduces the cost of prescription drugs.

 

It also invests significantly in measures to combat climate change. Focusing on clean electricity, it cuts emissions through tax incentives, polluter fees, and home electrification projects, and replaces federal vehicles with electric ones.

 

The bill calls for funding these measures with higher taxes on corporations.

 

The measure will move forward as a budget resolution that simply says how much money the government expects to need next year, and from 2023 to 2031. Once it passes, the various committees will hammer out exactly how much money should go where, and Congress will then hammer that into some form of an agreement.

 

Once a measure is finalized, the Senate will try to pass the bill through the process of budget reconciliation, which cannot be filibustered, meaning that it can pass with a simple majority.

 

If, indeed, President Joe Biden manages to pass both a bipartisan bill that pleases some Republicans and the reconciliation bill that pleases progressive Democrats, it will be an astonishing accomplishment.

 

One thing that is not in the larger bill is an increase to the debt limit, which will be imperative before October. Raising the debt limit is necessary because Congress has already appropriated money that the Treasury does not have, so it will have to borrow to meet existing obligations.

 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has threatened that neither he nor any other Republican will lift the debt limit and that Democrats must do it alone. But Democrats are not willing to raise it themselves, when it was the Republicans who ran up the debt during Trump’s term, adding $7 trillion to the debt while they slashed corporate taxes. ″The vast majority of the debt subject to the debt limit was accrued before the administration taking office,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress on Monday. “This is a shared responsibility, and I urge Congress to come together on a bipartisan basis as it has in the past to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

 

The large infrastructure package will reshape American society to invest in ordinary Americans and to get the nation on track to face a future that does not center around fossil fuels. That such an investment is on the table right now seems like good timing, since today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations released the most thorough report on climate ever compiled, and the conclusions are a “code red for humanity,” according to United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres. The report is based on more than 14,000 studies and is endorsed by 195 governments.

 

It warns that we have waited too long to reduce our use of fossil fuels, guaranteeing that the globe will continue to warm for at least the next 30 years even if we address climate change immediately. This will mean more extreme weather: fires—like the Dixie fire currently raging in Northern California, which is the largest in the state’s history—floods, disease, extinctions, and social conflict. If we address the issue, though, there is still a window in which we could mitigate changes that are even more dire.

 

The Republicans object to the larger infrastructure bill because it uses the government to invest in the economy, which will cost tax dollars. For forty years, Republicans have called for turning the economy over to private interests and for tax cuts to free up capital for investment, which they argued would make the economy grow. But those policies have sparked discontent as they concentrated wealth upward and ran up huge deficits and debt.

 

Now, as Democrats want to go back to the sort of system that created our booming post–World War II economy by stopping the concentration of wealth upward and investing in infrastructure, Republicans are complaining that the cost will hobble the nation. They are threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, although as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pointed out, Congress assumed the vast majority of the debt that requires a higher limit before President Joe Biden took office.

 

Meanwhile, Republican policies are not looking very good right now, as Republican governors have stood staunchly against combatting Covid-19 with either masks or vaccines. The virus is now surging again in the U.S., which currently has 17% of the world’s new infections despite having the best vaccine supply. The spike is especially obvious among children, who make up 20% of the nation's new cases, apparently becoming infected in homes where adults are not vaccinated. On ABC, Dr. Mark Kline, Physician In Chief at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, said: “We are hospitalizing record numbers of children. Half of the children in our hospital today are under two years of age, and most of the others are between 5 and 10 years of age.”

 

Cases continue to rise in Florida and Texas, where governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott have prohibited mask mandates. In Florida, journalist Katherine G. Hobbs reports: “Volusia County and Advent Health Orlando are finalizing the purchase of fleets of refrigerated mobile morgues amid Florida's COVID surge.” In Texas, Abbott today called on Texas hospitals to postpone elective procedures in order to clear more beds for Covid patients. The state’s health department is trying to find more health care workers to come to the state to help out.

 

Nonetheless, DeSantis and Abbott refuse to modify their ban on mask mandates, clearly seeing a strong stand on this issue as a political statement that they believe will win them Republican voters. But as infections and deaths, especially among children, rise, the wisdom of this move is not clear.

 

Private companies, courts, and schools are all challenging the governors’ edict. A federal judge has overruled Florida’s prohibition on private companies from asking about vaccine status, a rule challenged by cruise ship lines, who would have faced millions of dollars in fines, although vaccine requirements are standard in other ports they visit. DeSantis says he will appeal.

 

In Arkansas, where only 37% of the state’s population is vaccinated, two challenges to the state’s ban on mask mandates led a judge on Friday to block the ban temporarily. One of the challenges was brought by a school where more than 900 students and staff are quarantining because of a coronavirus outbreak. In Texas, Austin, Houston, and Dallas Independent School Districts are instituting mask mandates in defiance of Abbott’s executive order.

 

In Florida, the Miami-Dade school system is the fourth largest school district in the nation. When Superintendent Alberto Carvalho made it clear that he will follow the guidance of public health experts and doctors, DeSantis threatened to withhold the salaries of any superintendents or school board members who defy his executive order prohibiting mask mandates.

 

Carvalho issued a statement saying “At no point shall I allow my decision to be influenced by a threat to my paycheck; a small price to pay considering the gravity of this issue and the potential impact to the health and well-being of our students and dedicated employees.”

[y66]

The Democrats’ clever-but-convoluted two-bill scheme for passing a large part of their agenda still has plenty of obstacles ahead, but it’s going so well right now that Republicans are complaining about how unified their opponents have become. At this rate, no one is going to know what Will Rogers was talking about when he said (famously), “I am not a member of any organized political party, I am a Democrat.”

 

With the final Senate passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill scheduled for Tuesday, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should be pretty happy. It appears that Republican support for the bipartisan bill has held, and there’s been no public sign of Democratic opposition to either that bill or the second, larger one that they’ll try to pass using the reconciliation procedure. The next step is to pass a budget resolution, and the Senate is planning to move to that on Tuesday and pass it later this week.

 

After that? The budget resolution only lays out the broad outlines of what the second bill will look like. The next step is to fill in the details, which is the work of the various Senate committees that don’t necessarily need to abide by the intentions of the budget committee (which was responsible for writing the resolution). Nor will the real fights necessarily take place at the committee level. We can expect at least one serious round of negotiations between committee approval and Senate floor action, with Schumer accommodating all 50 Democrats — since all of their votes are needed for passage.

 

And that’s before the House gets involved. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that the House won’t vote on the bipartisan bill until the Senate delivers the reconciliation bill, and so far that too seems to be on track. Jonathan Chait argues that the House Progressive Caucus has plenty of leverage here, and he’s correct, but the truth is that both the most and least liberal Democrats have leverage over each other. It appears that it will play out this way: President Joe Biden along with House and Senate leadership will make the opening bid and try to set the basic outlines of the reconciliation bill; the moderate liberals such as Senator Joe Manchin can negotiate that offer down to something they can live with; and the most liberal group in the House will have the clout to make sure that the bill actually passes.

 

What’s less clear is what, if anything, Manchin wants beyond the big thing that he’s getting, the bipartisan bill. It’s true that the most liberal group doesn’t care much about that proposal, which gives them leverage to force the reconciliation bill through. But the plan being contemplated right now gives them more — perhaps far more — than they’d need to make the two-bill strategy worthwhile. That could give the more moderate group the ability to trim the reconciliation bill quite a bit — and that, in turn, means the various wings of the party could still fail to reach a compromise. And of course, given the tiny margins Democrats hold in both chambers, it wouldn’t take a large faction to derail things. One stubborn senator, or fewer than half a dozen representatives, will do.

 

Still, there are no obvious dealbreaker provisions so far, it seems like Democrats in both chambers want to make this work and the two-bill plan provides incentives for everyone to stay on board. And while the size of the bill may make some moderate liberals nervous, it also means that there are a lot of Democrats with something they really want in one bill or the other.

[y66]

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-10-2021

 

The shocking revelations from former acting attorney general Jeffrey A. Rosen about former president Trump’s direct efforts to use the Department of Justice to overturn the 2020 election, along with the horrors of spiking Covid among the unvaccinated, drove out of the news cycle a revelatory piece of news.

 

Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor released the jobs report for August 2021. It was stronger than economists had predicted, and even stronger than the administration had hoped.

 

In July, employers added 943,000 jobs, and unemployment fell to 5.4%. Average hourly wages increased, as well. They are 4% higher than they were a year ago.

 

Harvard Professor Jason Furman, former chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, tweeted: “I have yet to find a blemish in this jobs report. I've never before seen such a wonderful set of economic data.” He noted the report showed “Job gains in most sectors... Big decline in unemployment rate, even bigger for Black & Hispanic/Latino… Red[uctio]n in long-term unemp[loyment]... Solid (nominal) wage gains.”

 

“Still a long way to go,” he wrote. “[W]e're about 7.5 million jobs short of where we should have been right now absent the pandemic. But we've made a lot of progress.”

 

Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist at Barclays, told New York Times reporter Nelson D. Schwartz: “It’s an unambiguously positive report…. Labor market conditions are strong. Unemployment benefits, infection risks and child care constraints are not preventing robust hiring.”

 

The jobs report is an important political marker because it appears to validate the Democrats’ approach to the economy, the system the president calls the “Biden Plan.” That plan started in January, as soon as Biden took office, using the federal government to combat the coronavirus pandemic as aggressively as the administration could and, at the same time, using federal support to restart the economy.

 

In March 2021, the Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package. In addition to strengthening healthcare systems to combat the coronavirus, it provides economic relief primarily to low- and middle-income Americans by extending unemployment benefits and the child tax credit; funding schools, housing, and local governments; providing help for small businesses; and so on.

 

Polls indicated that the measure was enormously popular. A Morning Consult poll from February showed that 3 out of 4 voters liked it, and local governments and state governors, including a number of Republicans, backed the bill.

 

But every single Republican lawmaker in the House of Representatives voted against the measure, saying it was too expensive and that it was unnecessary.

 

Since 1980, Republican lawmakers have opposed government intervention to stimulate the economy, insisting that private investment is more efficient. Rather than use the government as presidents of both parties from Franklin Delano Roosevelt through Jimmy Carter did to keep the playing field level and promote growth, modern-day Republicans have argued that the government should simply cut taxes in order to free up capital for wealthier Americans to invest. This, they said, would create enough growth to make up for lost tax revenues.

 

President Ronald Reagan began this trend with major tax cuts in 1981 and 1986. President George H.W. Bush promised not to raise taxes—remember “Read my lips: No new taxes”—but found he had to increase revenues to address the skyrocketing deficits the Reagan cuts created. When he did agree to higher taxes, his own party leaders turned against him. Then President George W. Bush cut taxes again in 2001 and 2003, despite the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in 2017, Republicans under President Donald Trump cut taxes still further.

 

In 2017, Trump claimed the cut would be “rocket fuel for the economy.” Then–Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin echoed almost 40 years of Republican ideology when he said: "The tax plan will pay for itself with economic growth." And then–Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said: "After eight straight years of slow growth and underperformance, America is ready to take off.” (In fact, while Trump’s tax cuts meant tax revenues dropped 31%, they yielded only 2.9% growth, the exact same as the economy enjoyed in 2015, before the cuts.)

 

Laws like the American Rescue Plan should, in the Republicans’ view, destroy the economy. But Friday’s booming jobs report, along with the reality that the Biden administration has created an average of 832,000 new jobs per month, knocks a serious hole in that argument.

 

It may be that the pendulum is swinging away from the Republican conviction that tax cuts and private investment are the only key to economic growth.

 

Today, the Senate passed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill by a vote of 69 to 30. The bill repairs roads and bridges, invests in transit and railroads, replaces lead pipes, and provides broadband across the country, among other things. In the next ten years, it is expected to create nearly 3 million jobs.

 

Nineteen Republicans voted in favor of the bill. There were many reasons to do so. The measure is popular with voters, and Republicans were embarrassed by their unanimous opposition to the American Rescue Plan. Indicating a willingness to work with Democrats might also undercut the Republicans’ image as obstructionists and help to protect the filibuster (a factor I’m guessing was behind McConnell’s yes vote).

 

But that Republicans felt they needed to abandon their position and vote yes for any reason is a big deal. "For the Republicans who supported this bill, you showed a lot of courage,” Biden told them. “And I want to personally thank you for that."

 

The bill now goes to the House, which will take it up after the Senate passes a $3.5 trillion infrastructure measure through the reconciliation process, which Democrats can do with a simple majority and without Republican support. The larger package addresses climate change, child care, elder care, housing, and so on. Moody Analytics, which provides economic research and modeling, says that, if it is combined with the bipartisan bill, it will add close to 2 million jobs a year over the next ten years.

 

Yet, Republicans say it is a “reckless tax and spending spree.”

 

In contrast, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said: “My largest concern is not: What are the risks if we make these big investments? It is: What is the cost if we don’t?”

[Winstonm]

The Democrats need to learn that showmanship is critical to public perceptions. Remember how Trump continually hailed the greatest ever economy?

 

If Biden does not feel comfortable with self promotion like that then he should have a spokesperson who is basically a promoter.

[Winstonm]

Where's Kurt Russell when you need him?

Texas’s Republican House speaker, Rep. Dan Phelan, signed arrest warrants Tuesday night for 52 House Democrats who fled the state last month in protest of GOP plans for restrictive new voting rights legislation.

 

[kenberg]

Being that this is a Trump thread is mostly populated by USAians and mostly non-Trumpians But still, there is the occasional Republican poster.

 

Hear is a WaPo article.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-delta-masks-vaccines/2021/08/11/639c6862-fa0c-11eb-9c0e-97e29906a970_story.html

 

 

Here is part of it:

DeSantis, too, has made opposition to covid-19 rules a key part of his political branding. This summer, his political team started selling “Don’t Fauci My Florida” beer koozies and T-shirts as he said that the state had chosen “freedom” over the pandemic precautions advocated by White House chief medical adviser Anthony S. Fauci.

I am not trying to convert anyone to be a Biden supporter. But I have a question.

Is it really possible to support something like this? More than a few Republicans and more than a few conservatives have disowned these guys. We need the support of more Republicans and more conservatives. I don't expect wild enthusiasm for Biden, but I would like to see a further disowning of anti-vaxxing and anti-masking lunacy.

We have a crisis. Lot's of stuff needs doing, but rejecting lunacy seems like a start.

[Winstonm]

Being that this is a Trump thread is mostly populated by USAians and mostly non-Trumpians But still, there is the occasional Republican poster.

 

Hear is a WaPo article.

https://www.washingt...a970_story.html

 

 

Here is part of it:

[/font][/color][/size]

I am not trying to convert anyone to be a Biden supporter. But I have a question.

Is it really possible to support something like this? More than a few Republicans and more than a few conservatives have disowned these guys. We need the support of more Republicans and more conservatives. I don't expect wild enthusiasm for Biden, but I would like to see a further disowning of anti-vaxxing and anti-masking lunacy.

We have a crisis. Lot's of stuff needs doing, but rejecting lunacy seems like a start.

 

These people need to be talked off their ledge but they are 100% convinced that the building behind them is on fire.

 

I read an interesting piece yesterday that came to the conclusion that the "My Pillow" guy is actually a mark, the victim of a scam. Basically, what it said was that if you waive a bunch of detailed information that requires expert understanding to interpret and say - decide for yourself because here is the proof - then people who are looking for a reason not to accept reality will buy into your claims.

[pilowsky]

These people need to be talked off their ledge but they are 100% convinced that the building behind them is on fire.

 

I read an interesting piece yesterday that came to the conclusion that the "My Pillow" guy is actually a mark, the victim of a scam. Basically, what it said was that if you waive a bunch of detailed information that requires expert understanding to interpret and say - decide for yourself because here is the proof - then people who are looking for a reason not to accept reality will buy into your claims.

The mypillow guy is psychotic. His brain has been addled by years of crack addiction.

He gets by because he has a lot of money, which seems to be enough to make people think he is talking sense.

If he wasn't a wealthy Manchester salesman his concerned relatives would have sought professional help for him years ago.

The trouble with the MPG is that his money allows him to get the oxygen of the media to fan the flames of his madness.

It is a fact that many people are unaware of, that you cannot 'talk' people out of a delusion.

They do not wake up one morning and say "Oh bother Tigger, I've been a bit silly".

It's not like he's a Beginner at Bridge who can acquire and synthesise new information and realise that things he is saying or doing are pants and then change.

He's as silly as a wheel, a sandwich short of a picnic, as mad as a hat and has a kangaroo running around in the top paddock.

Tragically, the media from all sides of the political spectrum enjoy giving him airtime because (A) he pays for it and (B) people enjoy listening to it (I know I do).

We have the same kind of people in high office in Australia: they think they know what they are doing, they're convinced of it and nothing you say or do will affect any change - and that's just the Prime Minister.

PM Morrison when told that a staff member was accused of rape only thought that it was something that ought to be investigated when - after discussing it with his wife - "Mr Morrison said the announcement of a review into workplace culture at Parliament House was prompted by a discussion with his wife, and after considering how he, as a father, would want his daughters to be treated." - oh! I have daughters?

What bugs me is when people that aren't crazy start conversations along the lines of "Well the reason he's saying that is ...(insert clever rationalisation here).

Those people are also wrong. People like the MPG have a fixed genuine unshakeable delusion that they know what's right. They've already jumped off the ledge. You can talk to them on the way down but in the end, when they hit the ground we all suffer.

In Australia, our Fox news is called Skynews (still run by Rupert). I recently saw a video clip where the interviewee (referred to as "Professor Cox") explains that his principal experience is that he doesn't have any.

You can watch the whole thing here: http://bit.ly/CoxFairfax

When you believe that a lack of knowledge, training and professionalism is a qualification to manage a PLC you can believe anything - that's how Trump became President.

People are brought up to believe that if they try really hard they can do anything. It simply isn't true. They can't - there's always someone better - usually a lot of them.