Happy Monday gang. Hope you all had a super weekend. I baked and baked and baked… I made Buckeyes (though I guess that doesn’t count as ‘baking’ per se), gougères, and pigs in blankets. Yummy!
Why doesn’t he just put an (R) after his name?
The White House’s extraordinary, furious statement about Joe Manchin
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/12/19/white-house-statement-joe-manchin/
Here we go…
Health officials warn omicron variant will cause record-high coronavirus cases, hospitalizations in U.S.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/12/19/fauci-warns-omicron-variant-will-cause-record-high-coronavirus-hospitalizations-deaths-us/
Oh well.
State senator dies a month after telling a local radio station he was sick with Covid-19 while in El Salvador
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/18/politics/washington-state-senator/index.html
ba dum tss
Have a great day!
Joe Manchin is a Republican in all the ways that matter. The only reason why he doesn’t make it official is because he has almost absolute power to drive the democrats’ agenda which means they all have to suck up to him. If he put an R next to his name he would be just another bozo on the bus.
It’s being said that behind the scenes he was saying he just didn’t trust poor people to use those benefits.
The heart of Republicanism is ultimately just that, and it’s based on feeding resentment, combined with a sense of hopelessness in everything but the possibility of punishing those unknown others.
The heart of the intelligentsia liberals — not most liberals, but the out of touch influencers — is agreeing with the GOP.
I think there are some different explanations for why both elites are so willfully ignorant of how most Americans live, but there is also a lot of overlap, and they’ve made a common cause, based in large part on issues of class identity, in deciding it’s mainstream liberals who are the problem.
Bribes. Manchin is looking for cash (not necessarily literal cash though I’m sure that’s on the table). He’s a shitty negotiator though. You don’t close the door. He’s gonna piss off enough Dems that they’ll do it through reconciliation, and he gets nothing.
Wouldn’t that mean they’d have to get at least one Republican vote, plus Sinema?
That’s why this is going exactly nowhere. Chances are that Sinema would jump on board with Joe if they tried that move, at which point they would need two Republicans. Neither scenario is possible. This bill has always been dead–it’s just that nobody has the guts to say so.
…it is, in a literal sense, insane to me that there isn’t a way to make intransigence in the senate about this legislation a political albatross…& by that I mean where the GOP is concerned
…that they can’t make actively blocking aid to his own constituents a burden too great for manchin (or sinema for that matter) to be able to continue carrying water for whatever interests have him in their pocket is a dismal indictment of the whole idea of the dem coalition
Yes. I keep hoping they could convince a Republican to switch. I mean, Republicans are self-serving greedy assholes and if they played it right, they could yank Manchin out of the driver’s seat and twist the grift for themselves. But that’s not going to happen.
In short, Butcher’s right.
That Washington State Senator, Doug Ericksen, was a piece of work. From his wiki page:
In April 2019, Ericksen registered as a foreign lobbyist for the Cambodian government; his consulting company co-owned with former state representative Jay Rodne will be paid $500,000 a year to arrange official visits between the countries and business leaders.[32][34] They are the only registered Cambodian agents besides a major lobbying firm in Washington, DC.[35] The move was criticized by Republican U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho who sought to sanction Cambodia’s “brutal dictatorship.”
In February 2021, Ericksen missed legislative votes to act as a monitor for the 2021 Salvadoran legislative election, which strengthened the position of El Salvador’s authoritarian president’s party.[36] He praised the country’s “large military and police presence” at polling places as “reassuring”.[37]
I’m not really sure why any legislator at any level is allowed to register as a lobbyist for a foreign government, and the Cambodia connection—it seems like he went into a niche market with that one. Then monitoring a Salvadoran election, which I’m sure he did not do pro bono. What did either country want from an obscure (I’m guessing) state senator from Washington State? Were they gulled into believing they were dealing with someone in Washington, DC?
In other Covid news, Sen. Elizabeth Warren now has a breakthrough infection but says she is doing fine.
That registration came after Mueller charged Manafort and his deputy for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Around that time Michael Flynn filed his paperwork as an agent of Turkey connected to his scheme to kidnap from Pennsylvania an opponent of the Turkish leader.
Paul Manafort and his buddy Roger Stone launched a lobbying firm in the 80s that specialized in repping dirtbag dictators. In part the rise of competing firms which siphoned off Manafort’s business led to his huge money problems and his entanglements with dirty Russians and Trump.
His desperate final texts for help made me shudder. All that money and political connections couldn’t save him in the end.
Fuck that piece of shit. I hope he died in agony. It’s people like him that are the reason why this country has more covid deaths than any other on the planet.
He also took a cabinet position in the Trump administration but refused to give up his seat (he knew it wouldn’t last long but I’m sure wanted to get some grifting under his belt before Trump was gone). The dude was just an awful person that everyone in the liberal part of his district hated and all the Trumpers loved. If you want to read some fun thread go to this Reddit post or look up any in Bellingham about him…
That Reddit thread is vicious; I love it.
Forgot to do “Stonks”
Sprots!
https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiSGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm1sYi5jb20vbmV3cy9pY2hpcm8tc3V6dWtpLXBpdGNoZXMtdG8taGlnaC1zY2hvb2wtZ2lybHMtdGVhbdIBUWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm1sYi5jb20vYW1wL25ld3MvaWNoaXJvLXN1enVraS1waXRjaGVzLXRvLWhpZ2gtc2Nob29sLWdpcmxzLXRlYW0uaHRtbA?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen