US Politics

Raoul said:
The media generally ignore progressives since there are so few of them in congress. A vast majority of the noise appears to be coming from lefty youtube channels, so there's a pretty good chance there will at some point be a rift among competing progressive pundits/factions since they are all attempting to influence the likes of AOC to act as they want her to.
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I'm actually seeing a lot of news pitting both sides against each other in mainstream news. From where I am anyways. It seems like a lot of it stemmed from post election claims from centrist democrats blaming progressives for their reduced majority. Of course, progressives hit back by claiming more than 100 progressive democrats ran in this round of elections. Almost all of them won. The losses were mostly from centrist democrats. And it's been ongoing ever since.
 
tombombadil said:
I'm actually seeing a lot of news pitting both sides against each other in mainstream news. From where I am anyways. It seems like a lot of it stemmed from post election claims from centrist democrats blaming progressives for their reduced majority. Of course, progressives hit back by claiming more than 100 progressive democrats ran in this round of elections. Almost all of them won. The losses were mostly from centrist democrats. And it's been ongoing ever since.
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I'd say they're both right in a way, in that the Dems being split into more than one faction while the Rs are completely all in with Trump, obviously favors the Rs, which is how it played out in both the House and Senate races last month. The Trump cult turned out for their guy, which had a positive knock on effect on R congressional candidates, and frankly, had Dems not turned out in record numbers to specifically get rid of Trump, he would've won pretty convincingly imo.
 
Raoul said:
I'd say they're both right in a way, in that the Dems being split into more than one faction while the Rs are completely all in with Trump, obviously favors the Rs, which is how it played out in both the House and Senate races last month. The Trump cult turned out for their guy, which had a positive knock on effect on R congressional candidates, and frankly, had Dems not turned out in record numbers to specifically get rid of Trump, he would've won pretty convincingly imo.
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My major concern now is how this will affect the senate run offs in Georgia. Scumbag mitch keeping control of the senate would effectively mean another 4 years of no legislation from democrats and only legislation from republicans going through. Which would be disastrous, seeing how they've already rigged so much of the country already.
 
tombombadil said:
My major concern now is how this will affect the senate run offs in Georgia. Scumbag mitch keeping control of the senate would effectively mean another 4 years of no legislation from democrats and only legislation from republicans going through. Which would be disastrous, seeing how they've already rigged so much of the country already.
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Potentially zero pieces of legislation will make it into law as Biden / Harris will undoubtedly veto threat vast majority of R-generated legislation & there won’t be enough votes to override the vetos.

But you are spot on regarding if coke turtle maintains control & will stifle D-sponsored legislation.
 
calodo2003 said:
Potentially zero pieces of legislation will make it into law as Biden / Harris will undoubtedly veto threat vast majority of R-generated legislation & there won’t be enough votes to override the vetos.

But you are spot on regarding if coke turtle maintains control & will stifle D-sponsored legislation.
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If the R's get even one GA seat then we can expect 2 years of absolutely nothing getting done. I would be shocked if McTurtle lets a single judicial appointment even come to a vote. I also would guess there is a huge delay in cabinet confirmations as well. If the R's take the house in 2022 I would expect Biden to be impeached by March 2023 (only half joking). Hell, even if the D's win both GA seats they are not going to get much done as DINO's like Manchin will not support anything useful.
 
WI_Red said:
If the R's get even one GA seat then we can expect 2 years of absolutely nothing getting done. I would be shocked if McTurtle lets a single judicial appointment even come to a vote. I also would guess there is a huge delay in cabinet confirmations as well. If the R's take the house in 2022 I would expect Biden to be impeached by March 2023 (only half joking). Hell, even if the D's win both GA seats they are not going to get much done as DINO's like Manchin will not support anything useful.
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Also agree. It’s not going to be a bed of roses if we do get both seats in GA, but potentially exponentially more shit will get done in the Senate with Harris breaking ties.

It’s going to be an abortion no matter what, not even close to what we need.
 
tombombadil said:
My major concern now is how this will affect the senate run offs in Georgia. Scumbag mitch keeping control of the senate would effectively mean another 4 years of no legislation from democrats and only legislation from republicans going through. Which would be disastrous, seeing how they've already rigged so much of the country already.
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Well GA is traditionally an R state (although it has been trending blue lately) so the R candidates will always start with the advantage. At this stage its all about which side animates their people to vote - both early and on the 6th. Personally, I think Warnock has a legit chance to beat Loeffler, but Purdue may have a slight edge over Ossoff. With the future of the country hanging in the balance in terms of passing legislation for the first two years under Biden, both sides are going to pour insane amounts of money into the races.
 
Raoul said:
Well GA is traditionally an R state (although it has been trending blue lately) so the R candidates will always start with the advantage. At this stage its all about which side animates their people to vote - both early and on the 6th. Personally, I think Warnock has a legit chance to beat Loeffler, but Purdue may have a slight edge over Ossoff. With the future of the country hanging in the balance in terms of passing legislation for the first two years under Biden, both sides are going to pour insane amounts of money into the races.
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Just heard that 90K more voters have requested ballots for this election than the general. Just can’t see this increase coming from voters on the right.

Warnock should easily beat Loeffler, but if new voter turnout is more Dem, that could bode well for Ossoff catching Purdue.
 
calodo2003 said:
Also agree. It’s not going to be a bed of roses if we do get both seats in GA, but potentially exponentially more shit will get done in the Senate with Harris breaking ties.

It’s going to be an abortion no matter what, not even close to what we need.
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Nothing will get done either way. What things do you see happening with 50/50 down party lines that Manchin, Sinema, Hickenlooper, Kaine, Menendez and those other psychos are going to be a reliable vote on?
 
calodo2003 said:
Just heard that 90K more voters have requested ballots for this election than the general. Just can’t see this increase coming from voters on the right.

Warnock should easily beat Loeffler, but if new voter turnout is more Dem, that could bode well for Ossoff catching Purdue.
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That's good news. I just don't get a particularly confident feeling with Ossoff - he's already lost a congressional race v Karen Handel in 2017 and comes across as a bit of a generic platitude machine who parrots the usual identity politics talking points, with minimal policy substance behind them.
 
Eboue said:
Nothing will get done either way. What things do you see happening with 50/50 down party lines that Manchin, Sinema, Hickenlooper, Kaine, Menendez and those other psychos are going to be a reliable vote on?
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Perhaps nothing colossally substantial, you could be right, but there will be plenty that will get done. It’s not as though a similar number of legislation passed in a D controlled Senate will occur as it did in the past four years. It’s not zero sum.
 
Raoul said:
That's good news. I just don't get a particularly confident feeling with Ossoff - he's already lost a congressional race v Karen Handel in 2017 and comes across as a bit of a generic platitude machine who parrots the usual identity politics talking points, with minimal policy substance behind them.
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Purdue is an older version of that.

It is Georgia, it’s not too sophisticated.
 
calodo2003 said:
Potentially zero pieces of legislation will make it into law as Biden / Harris will undoubtedly veto threat vast majority of R-generated legislation & there won’t be enough votes to override the vetos.

But you are spot on regarding if coke turtle maintains control & will stifle D-sponsored legislation.
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I agree, Biden/Harris will block some. But considering how Biden is a pro business centrist and how many legislation from republicans are pro business legislation bought and paid for by bribes, I think definitely some legislation will go through.
 
Eboue said:
Nothing will get done either way. What things do you see happening with 50/50 down party lines that Manchin, Sinema, Hickenlooper, Kaine, Menendez and those other psychos are going to be a reliable vote on?
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China must be looking on in awe. They have the long game in mind and not even they could dream that the US would do so much damage to itself in such a short time.
 
calodo2003 said:
Great to see that the mental deficients have more people waiting in the wings...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/virgi...se-is-next-level-maga?source=articles&via=rss
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Amanda Chase - another lost cause.
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MrMarcello said:
It's more about the text Pitt's character said there. I couldn't find where he said "nutjob" think it was. Democracy has been in the box for a long time now.
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Oh, for sure. Just remember though, this is 2020 so there is a 20% chance that posting that meme will pull Kevin Spacey's character into existence. :nervous:
 
Drifter said:


So everyone is mean't to be grateful now to this cnut.
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$1800 USD to people in an entire year. Most Australia's received over $1000 per fortnight since March and there was plenty of room for improvement, yet we're also dealing with a conservative government.
 
WPMUFC said:
$1800 USD to people in an entire year. Most Australia's received over $1000 per fortnight since March and there was plenty of room for improvement, yet we're also dealing with a conservative government.
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In Canada it was $2000 CAD per month for 6 months I think.
 
In America, half the country will bitch and moan that poor people, immigrants, minorities, etc. get free money while, "I bust my ass."

Ignorance. Honestly think a significant portion would be happy to go broke as long as other segments of society get nothing.
 


Look who suddenly believes in Science :rolleyes:

Could probably do these with half the GOP..
 
$600 Is Not Enough, And It Won’t Get Easier

Dems refused to seize a rare opportunity to outmaneuver McConnell - now the final COVID relief bill skimps on benefits, provides tax breaks to the rich, and notches a big win for austerity extremism.

Congressional leaders announced an agreement on a new $900 billion stimulus bill that will deliver a boost in unemployment benefits and provide $600 checks to some families. Democratic leaders are depicting this as a big win and are promising that these kinds of emergency spending bills will become “much easier” in a new Congress under Joe Biden. Both of those arguments are ridiculous.

Here’s the truth: Democrats had a rare opportunity to win on a wildly popular proposal for much bigger survival checks, but they chose to lose. Here’s some more truth: one-time means-tested checks of $600 is not a big victory, and not even the bare minimum that should be considered acceptable during an economic meltdown that has been punctuated by mass starvation and intensifying poverty.

Though the legislative language of the final package has not yet been released, it appears the meager checks come in a bill that will give new tax benefits to corporate executives to write off their meals and provide other tax breaks to businesses that used the Paycheck Protection Program — which will be a windfall for the wealthy. Will the bill change the law to similarly exempt emergency unemployment benefits from tax levies? We don’t yet know, but there’s no indication it will.

According to a bill summary circulating on Capitol Hill, the legislation provides a mere $286 billion for the survival checks and unemployment benefits, and an additional $51 billion for food aid and rental assistance. That’s not nothing, but it’s obviously inadequate. For comparison, only three years ago, Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut that enriched the wealthiest one percent of households.

Much of the blame for this debacle certainly goes to Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, who seems absolutely determined to starve the country. But much of it also goes to Democratic leaders who had one of the easiest political opportunities to forge a bipartisan coalition or a much bigger lifeline to Americans — and then decided to squander it.

Let’s remember: Back in March, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton proposed giving low- and middle-income Americans between $1,000 and $4,000 of aid per month. More recently, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley joined with Sen. Bernie Sanders to push for $1,200 checks.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump reportedly told allies he wanted at least $1,200 and up to $2,000 — and he made a general demand for more money public in a Fox News interview last week.

“Right now, I want to see checks – for more money than they're talking about – going to people," he said. "I'm pushing it very hard, and to be honest with you, if the Democrats really wanted to do the deal, they'd do the deal."

He tweeted on Sunday that Congress should give people “more money in direct payments.”

You can try to argue that the words of a handful of maverick Republicans and Trump cannot be fully trusted — maybe that’s true, but it’s moot. The point here is that there was a huge opportunity for Democrats to triangulate a group of Republican senators and a Republican president against McConnell — and Democrats refused to do it.

Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer followed Sen. Joe Manchin, Mark Warner and other Democratic corporatists into budget negotiations that kept producing smaller and smaller stimulus proposals, and now they are trying to portray a meager $600 one-time payment as some sort of enormous victory.

“Democrats should not take a victory lap on this bill,” tweeted Adam Jentleson, who was an adviser to former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “It provides less than a third of the aid economists say is necessary and McConnell is getting all the credit — after blocking aid for months. Instead we should explain why this bill is inadequate and how Dems will deliver more.”

A summary from Democrats about the relief package says that party lawmakers secured $25 billion as they "fought to establish the first-ever emergency federal rental assistance program to be distributed by state and local governments. These funds will be targeted to families impacted by COVID that are struggling to make the rent and may have past due rent compounding on itself. These families will be able to utilize this assistance for past due rent, future rent payments, as well as to pay utility and energy bills and prevent shutoffs."

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told the Washington Post earlier this month that there will be as much as $70 billion in unpaid rental and utility debt by January.

Pelosi insisted at a press conference on Sunday that when it comes to future spending bills, “We’re going to have a much easier time than we've had with the Republican Senate and a Republican President.”

But if Democrats don’t win the Georgia Senate races and gain control of the upper chamber, that assertion makes no sense.

Democrats had a Republican president and at least some Republican lawmakers on record supporting bigger stimulus checks. That dynamic offers the best chance to actually pass something big — but it is likely to instantly change once Biden is sworn in.

Indeed, history tells us that once Democrats are in the White House, Republicans will suddenly pretend they are deficit hawks in order to try to block their opponents from spending money on basic necessities and then blame them for economic pain and suffering. That means it will almost certainly become far harder to pass emergency relief bills through Congress when Republicans have an even bigger incentive to try to starve the country for their own political gain.

Democrats are trying to put their best spin on the legislation, insisting that halting Republican Sen. Pat Toomey’s sinister attempt to shut down still-underutilized Federal Reserve programs is an enormous win. The legislative language hasn’t yet been released and Toomey is actually claiming victory on that, so it’s not even yet clear it is a win. But even if the provisions were taken out, that’s not much to brag about.

Yeah, sure, it’s probably better that those programs survived, so that there’s still a chance for them to be reformed to actually help human beings and not just enrich BlackRock and other Wall Street firms. But it’s not clear those programs are going to actually deliver on their original promise to help people -- and the fact that Democrats mustered far more enthusiasm to protect these programs than they did to provide $1,200 checks to starving people says everything about who party leaders think they actually work for.

Taken together, when you account for the comparatively small-but-good things in this bill, on net it is not a victory for ordinary people — it is a victory for an austerity ideology that somehow still reigns supreme in Washington, even among Democratic leaders, and even amid an economic emergency.

If this ideology is not confronted and defeated soon, there will be even more financial pain and suffering — and no amount of Biden platitudes appealing to the soul of the nation will stop the political and economic nightmare that will follow.
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https://www.dailyposter.com/p/600-is-not-enough-and-it-wont-get
 
berbatrick said:
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Really interesting article.

I wonder how much was simply down to Trump running as the president(Thus giving him more legitimacy)or if this a deeper ideological commitment to right wing nationalist neoliberalism.

Also immigrates from ''communist'' countries really just the worst people on the planet.
 
Utdfrom2002 said:
:lol: How the hell do you even get that into a stimulus package bill
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You either are not American or are lucky enough to not know how the sausage is made. Either way, welcome to pork legislation, or in this case, rancid, plague infested pork.
 
WI_Red said:
You either are not American or are lucky enough to not know how the sausage is made. Either way, welcome to pork legislation, or in this case, rancid, plague infested pork.
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I remember a time when the majority of the people wanted to be American but not so sure about that after the last 4 years.

Also, I have seen it many times but it's incredible they try to pass random unrelated things among the 800 - 900 paged bills.
 
Utdfrom2002 said:
I remember a time when the majority of the people wanted to be American but not so sure about that after the last 4 years.

Also, I have seen it many times but it's incredible they try to pass random unrelated things among the 800 - 900 paged bills.
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I might be wrong, but it's really difficult to pass a normal law for a specific thing, so the only chance to do a favour for your donors or to deny people their rights is to sneak in a proposal in a thousand pages of a massive, frankenstein budget-type bill.
 
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