2020 presidential election
Pelosi, Mnuchin Cite Progress In Stimulus Talks, While ... Just Kidding
Not that we've grown jaded or anything.
October 16, 2020 09:25 AM
Could there still be a new stimmy bill before the election? The Washington Post reports House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had a very nice 90-minute call Thursday, and that both said they made "progress," so that's maybe a tiny bit encouraging, at least until you remember that Mitch McConnell controls what comes up in the Senate and has no interest in actually helping anyone hurt by the pandemic's economic fallout. All McConnell wants is 20 bucks in spending (for fresh leafy lettuce in his habitat) and corporate immunity from liability.
Still, this sounds nice:
Pelosi and Mnuchin have been discussing a new spending deal between $1.8 trillion and $2.2 trillion, though President Trump has said he would support even more.
[...] They both cited progress in resolving one of Pelosi's top demands, for a national strategic testing plan to better detect the coronavirus. Mnuchin told her that the White House would accept the Democrats' proposal with some "minor" modifications, according to Pelosi's spokesman -- confirming comments Mnuchin himself had made earlier in the day.
Much of the rest of the piece is about McConnell's rejection of anything more than his preferred option, a $500 billion package that would have the precious liability shield in it, and his rejection of Donald Trump's weird "Go big or go home!" call to spend more than even Pelosi was calling for. And then Trump went to his bizarre "town hall" and blamed Pelosi for the lack of progress.
<p>McConnell at least noticed that the White House and Pelosi were talking again, if only to say he'd completely ignore both, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/10/15/trump-stimulus-economy-congress/" target="_blank">explaining </a>to a reporter, "You're correct we're in discussions with the secretary of the Treasury and the speaker about a higher amount. [...] That's not what I'm going to put on the floor."</p><p>The <em>Post </em>points out that Trump started the day Thursday with a call to Fox Business in which he said Mnuchin should go for a deal much bigger than the $1.8 trillion the White House had offered in negotiations with Pelosi, complaining, "I've told him. So far, he hasn't come home with the bacon." Then he brushed off the very real opposition to a new stimulus package from Senate Republicans, saying they're "very willing to do it," but blaming Pelosi for not wanting a deal, explaining, "She's got a lot of mental problems."</p><p>So you know he's definitely negotiating in good faith.</p><blockquote>"Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to give anything. She thinks it helps her with the election. … We're not holding it up. She's holding it up," Trump said.<br><br>Trump added that Pelosi is "asking for all sorts of goodies — she wants to bail out badly run Democrat states and cities. ... She wants money for things you could — your pride couldn't let it happen."</blockquote><p>Trump said essentially the same at the NBC News town hall that most people didn't watch, <a href="https://www.masslive.com/politics/2020/10/trump-town-hall-president-donald-trump-tells-nancy-pelosi-hes-ready-to-sign-a-big-beautiful-covid-stimulus.html" target="_blank">insisting </a>the only roadblock to a yooge beautiful stimulus package was Pelosi: </p><blockquote>She doesn't want to do it because she thinks it's bad for her election [...] The fact is, she's wrong. She's in our way. She doesn't appreciate our people or, at all, our workers. We are ready to sign and pass a stimulus. I want it to be big. I want it to be bold.</blockquote><p>Yep, Nancy Pelosi, who <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/democratic-economic-stimulus-package-full-of-nice-things-mitch-doesnt-want-you-to-have" target="_blank">passed a big bold stimulus package</a> in the House in goddamn MAY, then passed a<a href="https://www.wonkette.com/september-jobs-report-shows-everything-perfectly-fine" target="_blank"> pared down version</a> of the same package in September, just isn't interested in getting a stimulus passed, because of her mental problems. Trump insisted again at the town hall that of course if he asked Senate Republicans to support a stimulus, "They're going to be very happy [...] They'll agree to it." He even may have believed it.</p><p>Pelosi, for her part, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/10/15/trump-stimulus-economy-congress/" target="_blank">told</a> House Democrats in a conference call Thursday that while Democrats have "maximum leverage" in negotiations now, the White House proposal isn't acceptable yet, and that she won't agree to something Trump can't yet sell to the Senate. </p><blockquote>"The president's even said this morning that he wants more. He said the night before that, 'Go big or go home,'" Pelosi told her members.<br><br>"So, this is not the time to say, 'Okay, let's fold.' This is what we have been building up to."</blockquote><p>Again, remember that all of this is being blocked by Mitch McConnell, whose only real priority is <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/republicans-covid-19-liability-shield-is-so-much-worse-than-you-thought" target="_blank">protecting corporations from being sued</a> for letting employees and customers be exposed to the coronavirus. Anything else in an eventual package is of little interest to him. That too is almost certainly Nancy Pelosi's fault. </p><p>And let's not forget the very real likelihood that Republicans, particularly McConnell, don't expect Trump to be reelected, so they may just want to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/14/how-republicans-will-try-destroy-biden-presidency/" target="_blank">make sure Joe Biden starts his presidency with a recession</a> on his hands. </p><p>Fortunately, the <em>Post </em><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/10/15/trump-stimulus-economy-congress/" target="_blank">notes</a>, Donald Trump also has some brilliant thoughts on how to pay for a stimulus, should a deal ever be reached (not likely!). See if this sounds just the slightest bit familiar:</p><blockquote>Defending his call for higher spending, Trump repeatedly asserted without evidence or explanation that China would pay for the nearly $2 trillion stimulus package. "I'd like to see more money — because it comes back," he said on Fox Business Network. "We're going to take it from China. I'll tell you right now: It's coming out of China." <br><br>Asked how he would get China to pay for the stimulus package, Trump asserted: "Well, there's lots of ways. Okay? There's a lot of ways. And I'll figure all of them out. I already have them figured out."</blockquote><p>It's true! He keeps his list of ways China will pay for an American coronavirus relief bill right next to his new healthcare plan, which, as you may have heard, is cheaper and better than Obamacare and will be ready in two weeks. </p><p>[<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/10/15/trump-stimulus-economy-congress/" target="_blank">WaPo </a>/ <a href="https://www.masslive.com/politics/2020/10/trump-town-hall-president-donald-trump-tells-nancy-pelosi-hes-ready-to-sign-a-big-beautiful-covid-stimulus.html" target="_blank">MassLive</a> / <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/14/how-republicans-will-try-destroy-biden-presidency/" target="_blank">WaPo</a>]</p><p>Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by donations from readers. Please help support us if you can. <a href="https://wonkettebazaar.com/products/longsleeve-nancy-pelosi-white-shirt-mens-and-womens" target="_blank">Nancy Pelosi wants you to,</a> we're pretty sure. </p><p></p><p><a href="https://amzn.to/33mKzZe" target="_blank">Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons</a>.</p><p></p><p></p><form name="donation" method="post" class="donation-form"><p class="subheadline">How often would you like to donate?</p><div class="form-row row--plan"><label class="plan-type__label"><input type="radio" name="plan_type" value="once" class="plan-type" required="" checked> Just once
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Class War
Weep, Weep (Don't Weep) For The Poor (Not Poor) White Supremacists (Definitely White Supremacists)!
In which Walker Bragman's rural poverty domestic terrorism chic is buried as it deserves.
October 15, 2020 12:17 PM
Last week, America was blessed with a tantalizing glimpse of the future. Black Twitter, farm Twitter, real estate Twitter, blue-check policy wonks, and trailer park Twitter came together as one. What for? To deep-fry Walker Bragman, whom I had never heard of before last week, for his ignorant assertion that white supremacist terrorism is caused by "economic circumstances."
Unfortunately for poverty tastemakers like Bragman, who once complained that Uber brings gross icky poors who sleep in their cars into his nice clean Hamptons, rural Americans use Twitter. They were quick to point out that building private armies to overthrow the government is a rich and middle-class man's game. Accordingly, this isn't the broken-down shack that Walker, East End Ranger thinks it is. It's messy because it was just raided by the FBI. The home is new, in good repair (as seen on its Zillow page), and owned, not rented. It's got a private dumpster. Those are costly: a de facto class marker in rural areas without trash service. Nearby residents complained Joseph Morrison brought large groups to use the whole neighborhood as their personal shooting range. In other words, the first people these men terrorized were their own neighbors — the very rural residents Bragman claims to speak for.
<p>Explaining away domestic terrorism as symptom of poverty is false, it's condescending, and it's weaponized rich white men's nonsense. It's the other way around. White supremacy <em>causes poverty</em>. Real live rural activists know this from experience. We build on work like unionizing the Tar Heel plant, the world's largest slaughterhouse, where traditional race-blind labor organizing failed again and again. That's because the plant's white leadership purposefully sowed racial hostility in its workforce, pitting local Black workers against immigrant Latino labor. Only when labor organizers laid their usual race-blind tactics aside and tackled racism <em>first</em> were they able to unionize the plant.<br></p><p>Unlike Bragman, who handles rural poverty at a discreet kid-glove distance, rural activists like me can't escape how white supremacy drives poverty. I live 20 minutes from the Tar Heel plant in Bladen County. Yes, <em>that</em> Bladen County, home of the infamous <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/north-carolina-ninth-district-fraud-mccready-bishop/597412/" target="_blank">NC-09 election fraud</a> scandal. Ballot fraud targeted poor rural meat plant workers, who are disproportionately Black and brown. Now Tar Heel workers get to try and live through a pandemic in a workplace that's one of the main hotspots for COVID-19 in our whole state. If terrorism were really about poverty, Bladen County, North Carolina's soggy trailer parks full of broke, sick Black and brown meat workers would be ground zero.<br><br>I used to do food safety checks for farms in rural southern Michigan. These weren't government inspections. Farmers ordered and paid for them. Even so, one client skipped a lot of basic public health measures, like storing tools indoors where rats can't get to them. He thought we were a diploma-mill. He became so enraged that I actually did my job and docked points that, afterwards, he tailed me down the road and tried to run me off it. I saw his truck coming up in the rear-view mirror and gunned it. Like last week's arrestees, he preferred femicide to meeting basic responsibilities to public health. He peeled off when we hit the town limit, too chicken for vehicular homicide in front of witnesses, I guess.<br><br>Just last month, another farmer in southern Michigan got in the news for <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/michigan-farmer-racist-attack-video-1531000" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">yelling the N-word at a Mexican farmworker</a> on camera. (For those keeping score at home, yes. He 1. yelled racial slurs at staff and 2. can't keep his slurs straight.) Neither man behaved this way because they're poor or powerless. In fact, both own a lot of property. Both already have a lot of control over other people. They use violence to <em>stay</em> in control. That's what drove last week's arrestees too. Rural desperation is real — and it's not what drove these men to plot a coup. That's just basic thirst to dominate.<br><br>This is what the rural poor are up against. The rural upper class, from meat plants all the way down to the petty bourgeoisie, rules by violence both public and intimate. It's almost always white men dominating those they deem inferior: women, men of color, and laborers. There's an <a href="https://twitter.com/MegRaeB" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">entire wing</a> of farm twitter dedicated to ending this behavior. We live here and we know exactly where rural poverty comes from: white male violence. That's why the loudest voices shouting "Poverty causes white supremacy" aren't working people in rural areas. They're well-heeled racists who desperately need to sell white supremacy as the (white) people's choice.<br><br>But as we saw last week, most people already know this. That's brought Americans from all different walks of life together to bond over one poverty-splaining buffoon from the Hamptons. And that's a common bond that we can build on.</p><p>Wonkette is ad-free and funded ONLY by YOU. Help us pay the writers, please, if you are able! </p><p></p><form name="donation" method="post" class="donation-form"><p class="subheadline">How often would you like to donate?</p><div class="form-row row--plan"><label class="plan-type__label"><input type="radio" name="plan_type" value="once" class="plan-type" required="" checked> Just once
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coronavirus
President Flopsweat WANT STIMMY NOW!
Or at least he wants it until his next dose of steroids.
October 09, 2020 01:14 PM
You might recall that on Tuesday, Donald Trump declared there would be no more talks on an economic stimulus package until "immediately after I win" the election, at which time he would save the coronavirus-ravaged economy with a great new package, possibly harnessing the millions of flying pigs to haul ice from the recently frozen-over Hell. But he somehow didn't figure his announcement would cause a huge drop in the stock market, so since then, Trump has rooted around for something he could call a win.
First, he floated a number of stand-alone stimulus proposals, like maybe a new bailout for airlines and a new round of $1,200 stimmy checks to Americans, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, as she has from the start of the crisis, nothing doing. The whole damn country needs help, so we're not going to do any à la carte deals, because only Family Dinner Special #3 will sustain a hurting America. We can talk about some of the menu choices, but we need a full meal. No way was she about to let Trump fill up on bread sticks. And for godssake, Donald, stop leering at the server, she's not interested, you pig.
<p>By Thursday night, CNN <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/politics/stimulus-negotiations-latest-trump-reversal/index.html" target="_blank">reports</a>, Trump had come around, and was again interested in a comprehensive deal, though it's not yet clear exactly what chief negotiator Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been talking to Pelosi about. Pelosi's deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, said Thursday Mnuchin had told Pelosi that Trump was again looking for a big package, but Pelosi herself <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/politics/stimulus-negotiations-latest-trump-reversal/index.html" target="_blank">also said</a> a different White House official had said that wasn't the case. In other words, typical Trump administration message coordination. </p><p>Axios <a href="https://www.axios.com/trump-mccarthy-wants-stimulus-deal-b872e5b8-243a-44f2-adfb-998b87fd1816.html?utm_campaign=organic&utm_medium=socialshare&utm_source=twitter" target="_blank">reported </a>yesterday that Tuesday's stock market tumble came as a complete surprise to the Dumbass-in-Chief, who started backtracking almost immediately because the market has to love him, it just HAS TO:</p><blockquote>Within a day of tweeting that he was calling off bipartisan talks for a coronavirus stimulus deal, President Trump phoned House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and indicated he was worried by the stock market reaction and wanted a "big deal" with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, per two sources familiar with the call.</blockquote><p>And where are things now? They're in a definite state of Who The Fuck Knows, but maybe headed toward some kind of compromise. Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1314593632733847552" target="_blank">tweeted </a>that negotiations are going great, or maybe he just has gas: </p><div id="fde65" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="975d49c18b9915d8276735912e021cde"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1314593632733847552" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Covid Relief Negotiations are moving along. Go Big!</div> — Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump)<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/statuses/1314593632733847552">1602258520.0</a></blockquote></div><p>And White House officials <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-09/trump-has-approved-a-revised-stimulus-plan-kudlow-says?srnd=premium" target="_blank">told </a>Bloomberg News this morning that Team Trump has settled on a $1.8 trillion stimulus package. That's short of the $2.2 trillion package the <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/september-jobs-report-shows-everything-perfectly-fine" target="_blank">House passed recently, </a>but it's closer than the two sides have gotten so far; no word on what's in the White House proposal. Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-09/trump-has-approved-a-revised-stimulus-plan-kudlow-says?srnd=premium" target="_blank">said </a>on Fox Business that Mnuchin would discuss the proposal with Pelosi this afternoon; he said the package Trump agreed to "will be relatively broad-based but I can't go through details." It's probably all breadsticks, plus a can of expired clams and <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/republicans-covid-19-liability-shield-is-so-much-worse-than-you-thought" target="_blank">blanket lawsuit immunity for businesses</a> that infected employees.</p><p>Pelosi <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-09/trump-has-approved-a-revised-stimulus-plan-kudlow-says?srnd=premium" target="_blank">confirmed </a>on MSNBC she had set aside time to talk with Mnuchin, but that "The devil and the angels are in the details. [...] So part of it is about money. And part of it is about policy."</p><p>As for getting anything through the Senate at this point, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/politics/stimulus-negotiations-latest-trump-reversal/index.html" target="_blank">said </a>Thursday, "We do agree that another rescue package is needed, [but] we have vast differences about how much we should spend." After Trump said negotiations were kaput until the election, McConnell had told him it was just as well, since many Republican senators might not agree to anything, because they are evil buttholes just like he is. </p><p>And so, with unemployment still at historic levels and the coronavirus still killing hundreds of Americans, the Great Game continues. There may be a deal that actually provides some help to Americans between now and (<em>but let's not get overconfident</em>) a possible Biden-Harris administration in a bit over three months. For now, we're not even sure Trump will sit down at the table long enough to order. </p><p>God DAMN it, Donald! Stop slapping the sides of the fish tank! We can't take you anywhere. <br></p><p>[<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/politics/stimulus-negotiations-latest-trump-reversal/index.html" target="_blank">CNN </a>/ <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-kills-stimulus-talks-tweets-no-deal-until-after-i-n1242312" target="_blank">NBC News</a> / <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-09/trump-has-approved-a-revised-stimulus-plan-kudlow-says?srnd=premium" target="_blank">Bloomberg </a>/ Wonkette photoshoop based on a <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonnyc/2248418981" target="_blank">photo </a>by David Goehring, Creative Commons <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" target="_blank">license 2.0</a>] </p><p>Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. We can take all the madness the world has to give, but we won't last a day without you. Or your money. </p><p></p><p><a href="https://amzn.to/33mKzZe" target="_blank">Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons</a>.</p><p></p><p></p><form name="donation" method="post" class="donation-form"><p class="subheadline">How often would you like to donate?</p><div class="form-row row--plan"><label class="plan-type__label"><input type="radio" name="plan_type" value="once" class="plan-type" required="" checked> Just once
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2020 presidential election
Joe Biden Gave One Hell Of A Gettysburg Speech
Our better angels have had the crap knocked out of them.
October 07, 2020 09:20 AM
Joe Biden got his Abraham Lincoln on in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, yesterday, in a speech calling for Americans to come together and stop being a house divided, because if we keep going the way we've been going, we may not have fourscore years left as a nation. Something along those lines. It was actually a very good speech — and just the fact that it developed a coherent, well-crafted argument, as speeches are supposed to do, was a refreshing change from the freeform political cacophony of the past four years.
Biden made the most of the location, near the Civil War battlefield, to emphasize not just America's current political division, but also the awful death toll from the coronavirus pandemic, returning to his campaign's theme that the 2020 election is "a battle for the soul of the nation," and reminding us that America came out of the Civil War a different nation, one that keeps trying, too often clumsily and half-heartedly, to live up to its founding principles of equality for all. While he was at it, Biden managed to call for a less polarized politics without falling into the trap of pretending both sides of the political divide are equally extreme. Biden never mentioned Trump in the 22-minute speech, but very clearly called for an end to Trumpism.
In what could be seen as a sane person's riposte to Donald Trump's 2016 "What the hell have you got to lose?" Biden said, "You don't have to agree with me on everything, or even on most things, to see that what we're experiencing today is neither good nor normal."
Here, enjoy a hell of a good speech and maybe refuel your hope engine a bit.
<p>The setting, and the theme of the speech, worked remarkably well together. In contrast to Donald Trump's dark talk of "American carnage," Biden spoke at the site of actual carnage, and called for us to come together to fight the real carnage of the pandemic, not through demonizing other Americans, but by being a nation, damn it. And he invoked the Civil War, and Lincoln's speech at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg, to argue that America can't go on if we're at war with each other. But again, this wasn't a David Brooksish call for everyone to get along; it was a call to address the injustices at the root of our modern divisions — some of which go back beyond the Civil War: </p><blockquote>Today, once again, we are a house divided, but that my friends can no longer be. We're facing too many crises. We have too much work to do. We have too bright a future to have it shipwrecked on the shoals of anger and hate, and division.<br><br>As we stand here today, a century and a half later after Gettysburg, we should consider again what can happen when equal justice is denied, when anger and violence and division are left unchecked.</blockquote><p>Biden vowed that while he's "running as a proud Democrat," he intends to "govern as an American president," not just the president of those who voted for him. He didn't directly invoke Barack Obama, but the DNA of Obama's 2004 Democratic National Convention speech was definitely there. </p><p>In contrast to that unifying vision, Biden said again he'd been convinced to run after Charlottesville, which conjured up a nightmare America that no one should tolerate, and he didn't have to name Trump for listeners to know who he was talking about. </p><blockquote> It was hate on the march, in the open, in America. Hate never goes away, it only hides. And when it's given oxygen, when it's given an opportunity to spread, when it's treated as normal and acceptable behavior, we've opened a door in this country that we must move quickly to close.</blockquote><p>Then Biden turned to the summer's protests against police violence and systemic racism, and said that calls for justice have to be heard, not suppressed, and he built on a point he made during the verbal carnage of last week's debate: "I believe in law and order," he said, "<strong></strong>But I also believe injustice is real. [...] I do not believe we have to choose between law and order, and racial justice in America. We can have both."</p><p>In one of the speech's most powerful moments, Biden spoke of George Floyd's six-year-old daughter, who told him when they met, "Daddy changed the world." And he quoted former LA Clippers basketball coach Doc Rivers, who summed up a horrible truth:</p><blockquote>"We're the ones getting killed. We're the ones getting shot. We've been hung. It's amazing how we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back."</blockquote><p>Biden added, "I think about that. I think about what it takes for a Black person to love America. That is a deep love for this country that has for far too long never been recognized." And we won't have healing without actually addressing those inequities, he said. It was a nice change from tweets that simply shout "LAW AND ORDER!"</p><p>He called for a science-based approach to the pandemic, noting that the virus doesn't notice the politics of who it's attacking, and transitioned from that to a call for economic justice, again invoking Lincoln, who </p><blockquote>said that the country had to give people, and I quote, "An open field and a fair chance. An open field and a fair chance." That's what we're going to do in the America we're going to build together. <br><br>We fought a civil war that would secure a union that would seek to fulfill the promise of equality for all. And by fits and starts, our better angels have prevailed, just enough, just enough against our worst impulses to make a new and better nation. And those better angels can prevail again, now. They must prevail again, now.</blockquote><p>I found that the most moving part of the speech, that vision of our better angels having to really struggle to do right in spite of ourselves. It's a far more realistic vision of the fight for justice than the claim that the Founders declared America a land of liberty and justice for all, God smiled, and it was so. We don't need fairy tales of an America that was once great and just needs a few hard slaps (and children in cages) to make it great again. Again, Biden was echoing Obama's theme that America is a work in progress, a nation that's still working (and often stumbling) to form a more perfect union. </p><p>Like I say, it was a damn good speech. </p><p>[<a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/joe-biden-gettysburg-campaign-speech-transcript-october-6" target="_blank">Speech transcript at Rev</a> / <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/us/politics/joe-biden-gettysburg-covid.html" target="_blank">NYT</a>]</p><p>Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. 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