It’s a start…
How’s this for the next step:
“Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the third-ranking House Republican, called Tuesday for Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) to “find another line of work,” as Democrats remained divided over how harshly to punish the longtime lawmaker for openly questioning whether the term “white supremacist” is offensive.”
It’s somewhat ironic that King is being repudiated by Republicans for basically saying out loud what many of them, or at least their base, privately thinks. I guess he committed the cardinal sin of being too honest in an interview.
Thoughts and prayers for Steve King…
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It’s more like it’s a “That’s what I thought you’d say, you dumb fucking horse” moment. It so perfectly encapsulates what people think about Trump, and is so pointedly in-character for the idiotic, exaggerated character of who he is, that you can’t help but laugh.
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This is a very very clever tactic by Nancy Pelosi:
"Pelosi focused most of her attention on security. She pointed out that in September 2018, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen designated State of the Union addresses as “national special security events” (NSSEs) that need “the full resources of the Federal Government to be brought to bear” for the sake of safety and security.
“The extraordinary demands presented by NSSEs require weeks of detailed planning with dozens of agencies working together to prepare for the safety of all participants,” Pelosi wrote.
She also noted that the Secret Service, the lead federal agency responsible for coordinating and implementing security for NSSEs, and the Department of Homeland Security haven’t been funded for 26 days. Nine federal departments have been affected by the shutdown, including Homeland Security, Justice, and State."
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Wow, A+ hardball right there.
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It really is.
This is why I never understood all the people who were against her being Speaker of the House again. I get that she’s old and that younger Democrats need a chance to gain leadership experience, but she is, without a doubt, the most skilled political leader in the US right now, in either party, and I would not want anyone else representing the Democrats in negotiations with Trump or the Republicans.
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Agreed, especially given all the rookie mistakes a lot of the younger Democrats seem to be making. I’m looking at you, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but admittedly mostly because she’s grabbed the most headlines for making rookie mistakes. I’m sure if I dig deeply enough, I’ll find more examples, but she’s just the current “hot target” in the news, probably because she’s an outspoken, uber-progressive woman of color.
Now to give AOC credit where it’s due, she’s smart, her heart is in the right place, and she also came out pretty early in favor of Pelosi as speaker. She just lacks experience in the political machinery of Congress and given time to earn that experience, she’ll do just fine. At least, I’m pulling for her to do fine.
The Democratic party has a really bad habit of throwing away good people if they’re not obscenely successful, especially women in particular.
There’s a real sense of “Let everyone have their turn.” and “This person has put time and money into the organization, they should go next.”
That’s why Bernie, really rankles some Democrats a lot, he’s made a point of being “Separate” from the party. So when he want to run for President the rest of the party is “Excuse me?”.
Someone with extreme amounts of Charisma and Talent can upend the process. 2008 would have been Hillary if Obama hadn’t come onto the scene the way he did.
While I agree with your overall point, I’m not clear what your point about Bernie Sanders is.
With Bernie, I think what rankled Democrats the most was that for his entire time in Congress, about 40 years, he hasn’t been a Democrat, but as soon as he wants to run for president, he wants to run in the Democratic Primary? And then he basically spent his entire campaign bashing Democrats?
I have nothing against Bernie Sanders personally, and even agree with most of his policy proposals, but if Bernie Sanders wants to run for president, he should either join the Democratic Party officially, or run as an Independent Third Party candidate. But he won’t do either of those things.
He won’t join the Democratic Party because then he wouldn’t be “cool” and an “outsider” anymore. And he won’t run as an independent because if he did, he’d have literally no chance of becoming president.
Bernie Sanders wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to be able to criticize the Democrats and point out all the ways they’re terrible, but rely on their party infrastructure and primaries to spread his political message.
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I really don’t see this as a problem. Shanghaiing the Democratic party machinery -seizing the means of political production- was the best way to get that message out there or having a chance at the White House, because as you said an independent candidate has no chance going it alone in the face of two hugely powerful organizations. Even though it didn’t get him the nomination his actions during the primary had a huge role in pushing the Democratic party further left.
The party (any political party, really) is about getting people elected and facilitating getting people elected. The second part is fundraising and helping people run for office. Bernie doesn’t do any of the second part, so he has no “sweat equity” in the organization.
At the end of the day Bernie’s got to Bernie, but if he expects a national organization to throw him a party because he want to run for President he’s dreaming.
At the end of the day, the party is going to throw their weight behind whoever contributed most to the party. (Again, not simply money but that does enter into it.)
If someone is coming in and “seizing that means of production” don’t expect a parade.
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I agree, but at the same time, there are plenty of ways to push the Democratic Party further left while being a part of it. Elizabeth Warren is the perfect example of this.
Additionally, post-2016, Bernie should have joined the Democrats. He didn’t. He won’t. But if he does decide to run for president again, he’ll run in the Democratic Primaries. While in 2016, he pushed the Democrats left, by the time 2020 rolls around, Bernie Sanders will have been largely rendered irrelevant.
And I’m not going to even get into whether Bernie’s critiques of Hillary and the Democrats in general turned off so many potential voters that Trump won. I don’t want to have that argument.
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Not just that - his habit of entering Vermont Primaries as a Dem, clearing the field, and then going independent again immediately before he runs against whoever the republicans drag out is well known(And widely despised) by the party.
Looking at his polling, he might as well, it won’t change his chances.
Not really, though? Ideological positions within the party remained relatively stable, and most fresh up-and-comers who got in in the intervening period between 2016 and now have been supported by mainstream dems and HFV, most of the candidates backed by Bernie(and the factions/PACs aligned with him, like Justice dems) crashed and burned pretty miserably.
In reality, most of the “Bernie moved the dems to the left!” examples I’ve seen tend to be cases of people either grossly misunderstanding things, or people just flat-out making up or absurdly cherry-picking the positions that they’ve supposedly moved left from.
And frankly, he was actually to the right of many dems(and certainly Clinton) on a number of issues like race relations, women’s issues, and gun control, because he had a bad habit of dismissing those issues as being unimportant Identity politics or distractions, rather than extremely important class politics.
Though it is interesting to note that according to vote trackers like ProgressivePunch, he only barely makes it into the top 10 of most progressive Dems, pulling in at #9 behind Sherrod Brown, with the pack being led by at least five people he’ll potentially have to contend with in the Primaries, all five of which are regularly dismissed as filthy Neoliberal scum by his supporters.
And if he wins, he’ll pull his same old bullshit again, quit the party to go independent, and essentially try to force the dems to support him by being the only realistic non-republican candidate in the race. It’s one of the many reasons that a lot of Vermont residents - and also some of their newspapers - are all but begging him not to run for president.
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I was more talking about the party as in voters. He made people realize that yes there are viable candidates in the left of the party and yes you can and should vote for them.
Red Meat to lions here, but after having read Red Notice I’m a bit defensive of any and everything any government does to prevent oligarchs from spending their money abroad (or really anyone covered by Magnitsky stuff)
Why do people like him again?
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The ABC (the Australian one) has a podcast called Russia, If You’re Listening that does a fantastic job of breaking down the whole Trump-Russia thing (it’s the first place I’d heard of the Magnitsky Act).
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I’ll rate it. And Matt Bevan is a pretty top-shelf dude, too.
Here’s something else interesting for you - He skipped the vote to go to a meeting with women from his campaign staff who have been speaking out about the sexual harassment and assault that they were subject to during the campaign, and for which there was absolutely no consequences.
A meeting which was tossed together in about two days, by sanders and his staff, without input from the victims. Which was a one-off one-day meeting - which is already useless, it would be literally the most efficient issue resolution meeting in the history of mankind if they managed to actually uncover all the issues that they needed to address in a single day, let alone solved them. It was a theater show put on so he and his campaign could say they did it and the issue is “solved”, not to actually solve it.
Oh, and of course, Sanders, who used it as an excuse to blow off the vote? From what’s being reported, he showed up for an hour, did more talking than listening, and was off again. None of the victims involved report any satisfaction with the process or outcome.
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He really does break it down into easily digestible pieces.
I’m overall very happy with ABC podcasts (even though they force me to illegally download their app). Hack talks about a lot of things that can be applied to my classes (when they’re not on summer holidays); Background Briefing makes me sad about every thing ever. Dr. Karl is always ace; even when questions are repetitive.
The ABC makes me wish the US had a competent broadcaster.
That’s a surprise, I catch the ones I listen to through regular old Beyondpod, and I used to get them straight through Itunes. At the very least, you should be able to plug an RSS feed from their respective websites straight in to your podcatcher - now there’s a term I’ve not used for a while - and it should be good as gold.
Also, If you want more Dr Karl, but less repetitive on the questions, he is on like three other podcasts - Great Moments in Science(recorded from ABC Radio), Shirtloads of science(one of his own, with roaming correspondents), and Sleek Geeks with Adam Spencer.
But still, ABC are absolute gold. I grew up on kids shows made by and broadcast by the ABC, I’ve listened to Triple J most of my life, I’ve watched ABC news(in fact, from primary school all the way through high school, Behind the News was one of my favorite shows), I watch ABC comedy, and now, I occasionally work for them. ABC, as a content producer, has been a major part of my life at practically every stage of it.
The trick is threefold - First, government funding. Second, a ban on all advertising(with a handful of exceptions - they can advertise other ABC and Radio National shows, podcasts and so on, and they can advertise things being for sale in ABC stores - which literally just carry stuff from the ABC or licensed by the ABC - but that’s strictly controlled.) And finally, an extremely strict editorial independence and accuracy charter. If the government want them to say or do anything, they have to either change the charter(extremely difficult), or change the law(also extremely difficult, since even the right-wing public are very attached to our national broadcaster.)
Fun facts, the nickname for the ABC is “Aunty.”
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