Red Mosquito

Careful B, that post has bigoted undertonés.

I got the feelin'.

Pt 2 of our continuing series: In This House We Believe, Science is Real*

Bi_3 wrote:Pt 2 of our continuing series: In This House We Believe, Science is Real*

He's got a real cheek bagging on the document when he agreed to be at the photoshoot.

ABNorman wrote:

Bi_3 wrote:Pt 2 of our continuing series: In This House We Believe, Science is Real*

He's got a real cheek bagging on the document when he agreed to be at the photoshoot.

This response is not contextualized nor grounded in community experience

B wrote:

E.H. Ruddock wrote:She's an idiot

Who among us has not felt the spirit?

I usually stand back when the spirit comes, but that's just me.

Not just person, but birthing person, right?

Bi_3 wrote:

I almost made it two minutes before I couldn’t handle that anymore. STFU bitch.

Green Habit wrote:Not just person, but birthing person, right?

A little different... altering the what was said in the past to pretend your side's heroes as endorsing current messaging is straight out of 1984. We've always been at war with Eastasia. That an organization that was founded on defending speech rights would do this is quite the sign o' the times.


But it shows something a little darker as well... that no one, not even RBG (possibly the most influential feminist of the last 30 years), is pure enough for today's progressives.

Bi_3 wrote:

Green Habit wrote:Not just person, but birthing person, right?

A little different... altering the what was said in the past to pretend your side's heroes as endorsing current messaging is straight out of 1984. We've always been at war with Eastasia. That an organization that was founded on defending speech rights would do this is quite the sign o' the times.


But it shows something a little darker as well... that no one, not even RBG (possibly the most influential feminist of the last 30 years), is pure enough for today's progressives.

Changing her quote from "woman" to "person" also gives fuel to people who want the father's permission to be a prerequisite to abortion. Now the decision whether or not to bear a child is central to MY life, and my girlfriend can't make that decision for me without my permission!

Next up to go, the word “moderate”


https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5743 ... m-moderate

The word moderate is also taboo among many activists who consider it effectively a catch-all for Democrats who may not ascribe to a uniform left-wing ideology filled with purity tests. Sanders, a democratic socialist, does not use the term.

Lol. Nailed it

Worth noting that Joe Biden, these days, would not be considered moderate in his approach. A pretty sizable majority of the party is for the Biden agenda, and there seems to be 2-3 “moderates” standing in the way. It’s not hard to see why the term might acquire a negative connotation on the left. I think it’s interesting that the progressives are playing hardball in order to get Biden’s agenda passed, while the people Biden tries hard to appeal to just stand in the way.

Rob wrote:Worth noting that Joe Biden, these days, would not be considered moderate in his approach. A pretty sizable majority of the party is for the Biden agenda, and there seems to be 2-3 “moderates” standing in the way. It’s not hard to see why the term might acquire a negative connotation on the left. I think it’s interesting that the progressives are playing hardball in order to get Biden’s agenda passed, while the people Biden tries hard to appeal to just stand in the way.

Politics

Bammer wrote:

Rob wrote:Worth noting that Joe Biden, these days, would not be considered moderate in his approach. A pretty sizable majority of the party is for the Biden agenda, and there seems to be 2-3 “moderates” standing in the way. It’s not hard to see why the term might acquire a negative connotation on the left. I think it’s interesting that the progressives are playing hardball in order to get Biden’s agenda passed, while the people Biden tries hard to appeal to just stand in the way.

Politics

But the BIF is politics actually working so, maybe? The Proggle Caucus is blocking the $1T+ BIF (Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill) in order to get the $4T+ 'Reconciliation' bill passed. The BIF has already passed the Senate. It was crafted by an actual bipartisan team including Sinema, Manchin, Romney, Collins, and others to deliver what is most important their constitutes in a manner that is not destructive to a US economy experiencing serious inflation. Here on the details on it from left-leaning Vox and Biden himself:

Vox:
https://www.vox.com/22598883/infrastruc ... en-manchin

Biden press conference:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... -jobs-act/

The Reconciliation bill is largest and most expensive piece of legislation in our nation's history. It would transform how the social safety functions in the US, in many ways that are not particularly popular outside of the blue check crew. The idea that we cannot remove lead pipes from schools and multifamily housing, fix our bridges, construct the much needed EV charging network, restart superfund, invest billions in water management in the west, and finally add new multistage transmission lines (the single biggest obstacle to net-zero carbon power) because we have some implied universal moral need to spend another $4T on other things like free community college is... to me... fucking ridiculous.

This is probably the one chance to do something big in Biden's presidency, to actually help people and the country in a broadly popular way before we spiral into the 2022 elections... and those closer we get to those, the less likely red team support for the BIF will remain meaning we lose everything. God willing, Pelosi puts the BIF up for a vote this week and we get it. If the majority still wants what is in the Recon bill, break into smaller bills and pass those later.

But the BIF is politics actually working so, maybe? The Proggle Caucus is blocking the $1T+ BIF (Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill) in order to get the $4T+ 'Reconciliation' bill passed.

OK, so off topic ...

1. I will never be able to absorb enough media to keep up with the acronyms and jargon that you and Burt throw around. I mean, Jesus Christ, do you do anything with your day other than watch alternative conservative news sources and think up ways to exclude the uninitiated?

2. It is traditionally expected that one explains the acronym in parenthesis after the first use of the acronym, and not the second use.

3. Why the fuck does BIF stand for Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill?

B wrote:

But the BIF is politics actually working so, maybe? The Proggle Caucus is blocking the $1T+ BIF (Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill) in order to get the $4T+ 'Reconciliation' bill passed.

OK, so off topic ...

1. I will never be able to absorb enough media to keep up with the acronyms and jargon that you and Burt throw around. I mean, Jesus Christ, do you do anything with your day other than watch alternative conservative news sources and think up ways to exclude the uninitiated?

2. It is traditionally expected that one explains the acronym in parenthesis after the first use of the acronym, and not the second use.

3. Why the fuck does BIF stand for Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill?

Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... ture-deal/


I follow it because everyone who lives in my area here west of DC is in someway effected by this stuff. Government shutdowns are largely invisible to most of the country, they are huge events here, and what gets funded influences how and where many of us live and work. Think of like an old Rust-belt company town... but for Western Civilization.

I forgot you live in the DC area. That explains so, so much.

Bi_3 wrote:The Reconciliation bill is largest and most expensive piece of legislation in our nation's history.

COVID relief bill: $2 trillion in a single year
TARP bailout: $1 trillion in a single year
Jobs and Taxes Act: $2 trillion over a ten year period
This bill: $3.5 trillion over a ten year period

The thing is, this is Washington negotiations time, which means everybody is playing poker and a lot of the bluffing happens in interviews/public messaging. But once you accept that nobody in a poker game can be all that direct (or honest about what they were up to) until it's over, the stalemate itself becomes fairly clear:

Manchin simply doesn't have any motivation to pass anything except his own bill...and even that mostly appeals to him in terms of campaigning. That's just how he's always been.

Sinema, I suspect, isn't going to run for re-election. I don't know what her mindset was going in, but as of now she seems to mostly view the Senate as a stepping stone to financial gain. A lot of the places that hire former moderate Senators (for lobbying, or consultancies, or whatever) do not care for social spending. Passing the bill might damage her future plans.

Which, by the way, is why the NYT is reporting this morning that the White House can't get her to talk about the specifics of what she would like to see changed or removed from the bill:

Mr. Biden, White House officials and Democrats have beseeched the two senators to publicly issue a price tag and key provisions of the legislation that they could accept. But there is little indication that Ms. Sinema has been willing to offer that, even privately to the administration.

Progressives, meanwhile, know from experience that the Manchin approach is to refuse to get into specifics on anybody else's proposals or ambitions until his own bill is passed, because then he has eliminated any potential leverage they might have. He holds all the cards and can obliterate at will. He's played this game before, and rather openly, so it would be naïve of them to pretend otherwise. It's a bit like letting your older brother convince you that if you clean his room for him today, he'll help clean yours all next week....even though he's made the same offer the last five weeks standing, and has reneged on it every time. If he won't come to the table, then tying their success to his own is the only play they've got.

Republicans, can only gain from the intensity of the pressure each side is under....which is why McConnell admitted that the debt ceiling absolutely must be raised (“Let me make it perfectly clear. The country must never default. The debt ceiling will need to be raised”), and then began doing everything he could to prevent it from happening.

It would transform how the social safety functions in the US, in many ways that are not particularly popular outside of the blue check crew.

Well, about half of the reconciliation bill was originally proposed as the Families Plan, which...




Beyond that, there's allowing Medicare to negotiate prices....


...as well as increased funding for Army Corps of Engineers flood control and mitigation projects, $60 billion to upgrade power transmission lines, and funding to improve power grid cybersecurity.

None of that seems to be "blue check only" content, and it makes up the majority of the bill.

If you want to argue that the *totality* of the bill is the issue, that's fine. But that's what negotiations are for. And nobody opposed to the scope of the bill is currently making an attempt to do that. They're just trying to get their own legislation passed in a vacuum, so that no one has any leverage over them when they shut it down. Why anybody would think that the proponents of this bill should play along with that is beyond me.