A thread for Democrats Only
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UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Biden Has Already Fired Three of Trump’s Worst Appointees
Biden will not have trouble replacing these holdovers. (Republicans cannot filibuster nominees to the executive branch.)
First, Biden terminated Michael Pack, who was confirmed to head the U.S. Agency for Global Media in June. Pack sought to transform the agency, which oversees the international broadcaster Voice of America, into a propaganda outlet for Trump—despite a statutory mandate that prohibits such political interference. He purged the staff of VOA and its sister networks, replaced them with Trump loyalists, demanded pro-Trump coverage, and unconstitutionally punished remaining journalists who did actual reporting on the administration. In a perverse move, he refused to renew visas for foreign reporters who covered their home countries, subjecting them to retribution by authoritarian regimes. Pack also illegally fired the board of the Open Technology Fund, which promotes international internet freedom, and replaced them with Republican activists.
Following whistleblower complaints, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel found a “substantial likelihood” that Pack had violated federal law and engaged in “gross mismanagement.” He was eight months into his three-year term when Biden demanded his resignation shortly after taking the oath of office. In his resignation letter, Pack complained that his termination “will long be viewed as a partisan act” without any apparent sense of irony.
Second, Biden sacked Kathleen Kraninger, who was confirmed as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2018. Kraninger, who had no previous experience in consumer protection, immediately tried to undermine the agency’s role as a watchdog for the financial sector. She scrapped a landmark rule that restricted predatory payday lending, pressuring staff to downplay the resulting harm to consumers. And she refused to enforce a federal law that protected military personnel against a broad range of predatory lending. Her decision yanked federal support from military families who were defrauded by lenders. In the midst of the pandemic, Kraninger also approved a rule that allows debt collectors to harass Americans with limitless texts and emails demanding repayment.
Through the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress gave the CFPB’s director significant independence by barring the president from firing her over political disagreements. In 2020, though, the Supreme Court found this protection unconstitutional. Kraninger supported that decision, which paved the way for her termination on Wednesday. Had the court upheld the agency’s independence, Kraninger could have remained in office through the end of 2023.
More at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-has-already-fired-three-
of-trumps-worst-appointees/ar-BB1cW6yi or
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/biden-michael-pack-kathlee
n-kraninger-peter-robb.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Tea Party Morphed Into the Cult of Trump. What Will It Become Next?
By Kevin Drum
Ten years ago I wrote a short essay for the magazine about the tea party phenomenon. The gist was that it was nothing new: every time Democrats come into power, some sort of conspiracy-minded right-wing movement blossoms. It happened with FDR, it happened with JFK, it happened with Bill Clinton, and at the time it was happening with Barack Obama. I happened to reread this piece a couple of days ago and I was startled at how relevant it still sounded. Here’s an excerpt, right after I noted that each movement was larger than its predecessor:
Beyond sheer numbers, though, right-wing extremist groups are also becoming more effective. The Liberty League withered after it failed to make even a dent in FDR’s 1936 reelection campaign. The Birchers improved on that record, winning lots of local campaigns and eventually helping Barry Goldwater win the Republican presidential nomination in 1964, before collapsing under the weight of Robert Welch’s increasingly bizarre rants. The ’90s activists were more successful yet, helping Gingrich take over Congress in 1994, impeaching a president in 1998, and eventually sending George W. Bush to the White House.
And the tea partiers? Their history hasn’t been written yet, but they have, for all practical purposes, already trumped every previous generation of activists by successfully taking over the Republican Party almost entirely. And this is, at last, something that really is new: The Liberty League was rejected by the GOP almost from the start, the Birchers were all but spent as a political force after the 1964 election debacle, and even during the ’90s there were still moderate factions in the GOP. But today, there’s virtually no one left in the party leadership who doesn’t at least claim to adhere to tea party principles. Recent polls by both Gallup and the Mellman Group (PDF) find that the views of self-identified tea party supporters are nearly identical to the views of self-identified Republicans across the board. Gallup’s analysis may go a little too far in saying that the tea party movement is “more a rebranding of core Republicanism than a new or distinct entity on the American political scene,” but not by much.
Reading this now, the cult of Donald Trump and his iron hold over the Republican Party seem almost inevitable. All he had to do was take over the machinery that had been steadily developing for more than half a century.
So what happens now? It was bad luck that this machinery happened to fall into the hands of a maniac like Trump, but it’s always going to fall into the hands of someone. Who will control it next? And by what new name will we hear about it?
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2021/01/the-tea-party-morphed-i
nto-the-cult-of-trump-what-will-it-become-next/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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After the inauguration, Mitt Romney expressed opposition to a new economic relief package, declaring: “We just passed a $900 billion-plus package. Let’s give that some time to be able to influence the economy.”
Now, Romney has earned the presumption that, unlike other Republicans opposing relief, he’s honestly trying to do the right thing. But that’s an utterly clueless remark, indicating that he doesn’t understand what Biden’s proposed package is all about.
While coronavirus relief legislation is often called “stimulus,” that’s not what Biden is trying to do. The economy in 2021 isn’t like the economy in 2009, depressed because there isn’t enough demand; we haven’t fully recovered because we’re still on partial lockdown, with some activities curtailed by the risk of infection.
The goal of policy in this situation isn’t to pump up spending, getting people to eat out and travel. It is, instead, to help people, businesses and local governments get through the difficult period until widespread vaccination lets us go back to business as usual.
And we know, as certainly as we know anything in economics, that the economy will be depressed at least into the summer and probably beyond. The last package didn’t provide remotely enough aid to get us through those months. Asking whether that package boosted the economy therefore completely misses the point; it’s obvious that America needs another round of disaster relief.
So how is it that Romney, who definitely isn’t a stupid man, doesn’t understand the most basic aspects of pandemic economics? My guess, as I already suggested, is that in the years since he was governor of Massachusetts he has shut himself into the conservative intellectual bubble, and he no longer listens to sensible economic analysis, or knows what it sounds like.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/opinion/biden-republicans-stimulus.
html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Minimum Wage Around the World
The United States currently has the lowest minimum wage by a big margin. If raised to $15, it would be among the highest.
According to the OECD, here is the minimum wage in most of the developed countries of the world:
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2021/01/raw-data-the-minimum-wa
ge-around-the-world/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Our Political System Is Unfair. Liberals Need to Just Deal With It As It Is Without Hope of Changing It.
The American voters chose to give the Democrats the White House, but denied them a mandate. Democrats somehow squeaked out wins in both Georgia Senate races, but the Senate will pivot on Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Not only does Joe Manchin take much of the liberal wish list off the table, he also makes deep structural reform of federal institutions impossible. There will be no new voting rights act in honor of the late Representative John Lewis, no statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and no Supreme Court packing. For that matter, the filibuster will not be eliminated, which would have been the essential predicate for all of those other changes as well as expansive climate or health care legislation. Anything that Democrats want to do that requires a party-line vote is forlorn.
In response to this disappointment, a number of left-of-center commentators have concluded that “democracy lost” in 2020. Our constitutional order, they argue, is rotten and an obstacle to majority rule. The Electoral College and the overrepresentation of small, mostly conservative states in the Senate is an outrage. As Ezra Klein has argued, our constitution “forces Democrats to win voters ranging from the far left to the center right, but Republicans can win with only right-of-center votes.” As a consequence, liberals can’t have nice things.
The argument is logical, but it is also a strategic dead end. The United States is and in almost any plausible scenario will continue to be a federal republic. We are constituted as a nation of states, not as a single unitary community, a fact that is hard-wired into our constitutional structure. Liberals may not like this, just as a man standing outside in a rainstorm does not like the fact he is getting soaked. But instead of cursing the rain, it makes a lot more sense for him to find an umbrella.
Liberals need to adjust their political strategy and ideological ambitions to the country and political system we actually have, and make the most of it, rather than cursing that which they cannot change.
Teles goes on to argue that Democrats should organize across the country, that they should deal with regional inequities, and recognize that some liberal slogans like “defund the police” do not travel well. He concludes:
The Democratic Party has a future within the constitution the country has. The question for the next decade is, will we withdraw into pointless dreams of sweeping constitutional change or make our peace with our country and its constitution, seeking allies in unlikely places and squeezing out what progress we can get by organizing everywhere, even when the odds of success seem slim.
More at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/opinion/democrats-constitution.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Did Trump Have a ‘Diet Coke’ Button in the Oval Office?
With a push of a button, former President Donald Trump could summon a Diet Coke to the Oval Office.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-diet-coke-button-oval/?utm_cam
paign=Snopes%20Debunker%20-%20Friday%2C%20January%2022%2C%202021%20-%20Did%20Trump%20Have%20a%20%E2%80%98Diet%20Coke%E2%80%99%20Button%20in%20the%20Oval%20Office%3F%20%28YhCqtQ%29&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Snopes%20Debunker%20-%20Friday%20Edition
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Joe Biden has only one shot to stop Trumpism returning in 2024
Donald Trump threatened as much in his last public statement as president, uttering the chilling words: “We will be back in some form.”
Given that Trump left the White House with his support among Republicans still at 82%, there is only one surefire way to ensure that never happens. Sixty-seven US senators – including 17 Republicans – will have to vote to convict Trump in his upcoming impeachment trial for inciting an insurrection on Capitol Hill on 6 January. If they do that, then Senate Democrats can vote by simple majority to ban Trump from ever holding public office again. (Think of it as Anne Archer shooting a resurrected Glenn Close at the end of Fatal Attraction.)
Still, this might be to take the threat of Trump’s return too narrowly, too literally even. What were Trump’s words? “In some form.” The monster might resurface in a new guise in 2024. In traditional Hollywood style, that would mean a sequel starring Son of Trump – or even Daughter – or it could mean someone from outside that desperate clan. This is, surely, the greater fear. That US nativist populism will find a new messenger, one free of the personal defects and grossness of Trump, one who has the quality that Trump lacked: the self-discipline to be a competent authoritarian. So often Trump’s autocratic impulses were thwarted not by the system but by his own ineptitude and the ineffectiveness of his second-rate team. What if next time the US – and the world – is not so lucky?
To repel that as-yet-faceless threat will require deeper work than a simple vote in the Senate. A first task is to dispel the question of legitimacy that hangs over Biden’s presidency in the minds of the one in three Americans who believe Trump’s big lie that he, not Biden, won the 2020 election.
If Biden can make good on his promise to vaccinate 100 million Americans in 100 days, that in itself will be transformative. People’s lives will have changed in a direct and profound way, thanks in part to having Biden at the helm. In the process, he would have gone a long way to restoring Americans’ faith in the ability of government to do good. That is critical given that Trumpism was predicated on an insistence that democratic government is always feeble and useless, that it takes a strongman to get things done.
The debate has been long and acrimonious over whether Trump supporters were drawn to him by “economic anxiety” or plain old racism, spiced with misogyny. But what if the answer contains elements of both? What if bigotry flourishes in unwatered earth? Biden’s $1.9tn rescue plan and an agenda of economic renewal may not win back the left-behind and eradicate Trumpism at a stroke – but it can’t hurt.
Time, though, is desperately short. There is a curious cycle in US politics. In 1992, 2008 and 2020, Democratic presidents were elected alongside Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, granting them the muscle to implement their programmes. But for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama landslide reverses came within two years, depriving them of either one or both chambers of Congress thereafter. In other words, over a 12- or 16-year period Democrats usually get a squeezed two years to get things done. Biden’s majorities are much thinner than his predecessors’, and the clock is already ticking.
The new president cannot allow himself to get bogged down in delay, tripped up by McConnell’s familiar tricks in the Senate. But that will take more than guile. The system that gives a rural, white Republican minority de facto veto power over the rest of the country – and note that the Democrats’ 50 senators represent a total of 41 million more voters than the Republican 50 – itself has to change. The wish list is long, from tackling voter suppression and gerrymandered districts to campaign-finance reform and abolition of a filibuster rule that demands 60 votes to get something through a 100-member body.
Tackling all that will go against Joe Biden’s instincts. He is a creature of the Senate,
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I have been browsing many articles over the past few days that ponder the question of whether Joe Biden will be able to get his legislative agenda through Congress. They are all nuanced and carefully written, which means they are all wrong. Here is the answer:
No. Republicans in the Senate will block just about everything and Democrats don’t have the votes to end the filibuster.
I don’t know how much clearer Republicans need to be about this. They are not going to vote to impeach Donald Trump.** They are not going to pass a huge coronavirus bill. They are not going to raise the minimum wage to $15. They are going to do exactly what they did in 2009: oppose everything.
Nor is there anything really unusual about this. Historically, Democratic presidents can pass significant legislation only if they come to office with big majorities in Congress. Obama had that for a little while. LBJ had it for a couple of years. FDR had it for his entire first term. Ditto for Woodrow Wilson. Bill Clinton didn’t have it and he struggled. Obama got little done after 2010. And Biden has both the thinnest possible majority and a Republican Party more opposed to passing Democratic legislation than any we’ve ever seen.
So that’s that. Biden might be able to pass a few things via reconciliation. He might be able to swing a few modest deals in the annual appropriations bill. But that’s it.
Any other questions?
**I’m almost inclined to weasel on this since we don’t know what further outrages we will discover over the next few weeks about Trump’s actions to overturn the election results. But no. I suspect we could have video evidence of Trump trying to personally deliver a bag of cash to the Georgia attorney general and that still wouldn’t garner 17 Republican votes for conviction in the Senate.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2021/01/behold-my-daring-predic
tion-for-2021/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Opinion
Democrats, Here’s How to Lose in 2022. And Deserve It.
You don’t get re-elected for things voters don’t know that you did.
Ezra Klein
Opinion Columnist
Jan. 21, 2021
President Biden takes office with a ticking clock. The Democrats’ margin in the House and Senate couldn’t be thinner, and midterms typically raze the governing party. That gives Democrats two years to govern. Two years to prove that the American political system can work. Two years to show Trumpism was an experiment that need not be repeated.
Two years.
This is the responsibility the Democratic majority must bear: If they fail or falter, they will open the door for Trumpism or something like it to return, and there is every reason to believe it will be far worse next time. To stop it, Democrats need to reimagine their role. They cannot merely defend the political system. They must rebuild it.
(Ya' hear that Nancy*? NOBODY will be served by your partican failed attempt to impeach Trump and - what - remove him from office? YOUR political games are an obstacle to democrats* regaining relevance and approval.)
“This is a fight not just for the future of the Democratic Party or good policy,” Senator Bernie Sanders told me. “It is literally a fight to restore faith in small-d democratic government.”
Among the many tributaries flowing into Trumpism, one in particular has gone dangerously overlooked. In their book “Presidents, Populism and the Crisis of Democracy,” the political scientists William Howell and Terry Moe write that “populists don’t just feed on socioeconomic discontent. They feed on ineffective government — and their great appeal is that they claim to replace it with a government that is effective through their own autocratic power.”
Donald Trump was this kind of populist. Democrats mocked his “I alone can fix it” message for its braggadocio and feared its authoritarianism, but they did not take seriously the deep soil in which it was rooted: The American system of governance is leaving too many Americans to despair and misery, too many problems unsolved, too many people disillusioned. It is captured by corporations and paralyzed by archaic rules. It is failing, and too many Democrats treat its failures as regrettable inevitabilities rather than a true crisis.
But now Democrats have another chance. To avoid the mistakes of the past, three principles should guide their efforts. First, they need to help people fast and visibly. Second, they need to take politics seriously, recognizing that defeat in 2022 will result in catastrophe. The Trumpist Republican Party needs to be politically discredited through repeated losses; it cannot simply be allowed to ride back to primacy on the coattails of Democratic failure. And, finally, they need to do more than talk about the importance of democracy. They need to deepen American democracy.
The good news is that Democrats have learned many of these lessons, at least in theory. The $1.9 trillion rescue plan Biden proposed is packed with ideas that would make an undeniable difference in people’s lives, from $1,400 checks to paid leave to the construction of a national coronavirus testing infrastructure that will allow some semblance of normal life to resume.
And congressional Democrats have united behind sweeping legislation to expand American democracy. The “For the People Act,” which House Democrats passed in 2019 and Senate Democrats have said will be their first bill in the new session*, would do more to protect and expand the right to vote than any legislation passed since the Great Society, and it would go a long way toward building a fairer and more transparent campaign financing systNOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
A Psaki press briefing:
I no wut youre thinking - wherez the outrajus liez?
I want to hear blatantly false claimz about the inogyration crowd size!
I NEED to see reporterz squirming in their seats after a bazarr denial uv undeniable facts!
How can I satisfy my craving for bad lojik wen all Psaki duz iz calmly speak the truth????
THERE IZ NO CONFLICT HERE! ITS BORING! The Biden administration duz not know Jack Squat about putting on a show!
If this goez on, thouzandz uv comedienz will be out uv work if they cant find another sourse for derision! Think wut that will do to the unemployment stats!
I coud go on, but I uzed up my daily alotment uv exclamation points. Dont want to get another ticket.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
The real solution: https://fundrazr.com/71jIY1?ref=ab_f9ZUS0
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