Folly and fakery have always been with us... but it has never before been as dangerous as it is now, never in history have we been able to afford it less. - Isaac Asimov
Every damn thing you do in this life, you pay for. - Edith Piaf
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - Orwell
No amount of belief makes something a fact. - James Randi
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1...735201283?s=19GOP senator blocks bill to prevent private debt collectors from seizing stimulus checks https://t.co/Rw6tsCCewI https://t.co/ujeqPk1OsY
You should read the article. Holy Bleep it's a legislative shitshow.Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) on Thursday blocked legislation that would prevent private debt collectors from being able to seize stimulus checks sent out under the latest coronavirus relief bill.
Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) attempted to pass legislation to shield the payments from being garnished by private debt collectors.
Basically cause of Senate rules they could not get language in then I guess cause of reconciliation rule Toomey could block it.
So yeah people debt collectors can garnish the checks. Oh this couldn't happen in the December bill, so it's a shitshow.
Democrats are the best! I will never ever question a Democrat again. I LOVE the Democrats!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...disqualifying/
Nice video compilation of Republican members of Congress dismissing Trump's tweets and saying they don't matter, or that they don't look at social media, and then clutching their pearls over tweets dug up from years ago about Biden nominees.
Reminder: Mean political tweets haven't been, and probably shouldn't be a disqualifying factor for a political appointee. If they weren't for Trump and his lackies, they shouldn't be for Biden and his lackies.
Just another reminder that while Democrats have their problems, Republicans still remain "the problem".
Becerra is confirmed. Collins was the only GOP that voted for him. Not all that surprised, Maine is a Democrat trifecta state.
There are two underlying reasons for conservative hostility to Becerra. The first and most obvious is that he’s a devil-figure to the anti-abortion movement, mostly because as Attorney General he was willing to prosecute anti-abortion activists (including those who conducted the famous “sting” interviews with Planned Parenthood staff without disclosing they were taping and editing the content for publication) who violated the law in their zealotry. But, in truth, any HHS nominee in a Democratic administration will be attacked for supporting judicially established reproductive rights that anti-abortion activists typically regard as genocidal. It is part of the bargain Republican pols have struck with the Christian Right to regard its bitterest enemies as their own; hence the heat towards Becerra for standard liberal views on the subject.
Perhaps an equally important factor in the GOP antipathy toward Becerra is that he was the great courtroom sparring partner of the Trump administration on a broad range of issues. When Trump and his appointees demonized the Golden State as a rogue jurisdiction run by business-hating hippies and threatened regulatory or legislative punishment, Becerra didn’t go into a defensive crouch. He aggressively went to court to fight the administration’s “regulations and rollbacks involving climate change, immigration, consumer rights and more,” as California reporter Byrhonda Lyons observed in January as Trump left office:
California filed 110 lawsuits against the Trump administration. The attorney general’s office won 23 and lost five. Six are on hold, and 76 are pending. So far, that’s an 82%-18% win-loss rate over the Trump policies that state officials contested.
So when Republican senators denounced Becerra as “radical,” they mostly meant he was radically good at his job. He’ll need to be similarly effective at HHS, given its vast jurisdiction during the final stages of the battle against COVID-19 and Biden’s efforts to reverse the damage to health-care coverage Republicans have caused in Washington and the states.
Becerra’s confirmation leaves just three Cabinet posts unfilled: secretary of Labor (former Boston mayor Marty Walsh is the nominee), director of the Office of Science and Technology (Biden has nominated pioneering geneticist Eric Lander), and director of the Office of Management and Budget. Withdrawn OMB nominee Neera Tanden represents the only casualty Biden has suffered in Cabinet confirmations, and he hasn’t named a replacement yet. Becerra’s Senate vote was the closest so far. But the fact that, in addition to Collins, all those moderate Democrats voted for the “radical” Becerra is a good sign.
Wot! Not bad at all. Where was Trump with his cabinet posting 100 days in?
Last edited by Rasulis; 2021-03-18 at 09:29 PM.
GOP Sen. Pat Toomey on blocking bill to prevent private debt collectors from seizing stimulus checks: "I don't think it's unreasonable to ask people to pay their bills."
Again MAJOR Asshole move. I posted b4 but it has some shit Senate rule shit also. Also Toomey retiring so he is definitely doing this to get some BIG money from the debt collection people.
Democrats are the best! I will never ever question a Democrat again. I LOVE the Democrats!
Biden on track to pass 100 million vaccinations, with time to spare The administration will hit its goal well before 100 days, marking an early victory for Biden's pandemic response.
President Joe Biden is on track to surpass his goal of administering 100 million Covid-19 shots as soon as Thursday, notching the milestone about six weeks before the 100-day deadline he set for his new administration.
Over 97 million shots had been administered since Biden took office, as the country is now providing almost 2.5 million doses per day.
Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks on the state of vaccinations Thursday afternoon.
The milestone, on Biden's 58th day in office, marks an early victory for the president, who campaigned on taking control of a pandemic response that the Trump administration had largely pushed off onto states.
Last edited by Shadowferal; 2021-03-19 at 12:50 AM.
I'm sure there were a few here who claimed that there was no way he could do it, and here it i happening way way ahead of schedule.
No doubt they'll now claim that it was all Trump's doing now, and Biden is just claiming the credit for it. (Not that Biden would claim credit for it, as it really isn't his style.)
Biden up and cancels a billion dollars of student loans.
Good. I want every last molecule of DeVos out of federal education forever.In the ongoing debate over student loan cancellation, at least some borrowers will get student loan forgiveness. In a major announcement, the U.S. Department of Education will enact student loan cancellation for 72,000 student loan borrowers who previously had some student loans cancelled, but now will get full student loan cancellation. The Biden administration says the previous formula to cancel student loans in cases of fraud or school closure that was used in the Trump administration — which often created partial student loan forgiveness — was unfair to student loan borrowers.
Under a federal law known as the borrower defense to repayment, borrowers could get federal student loan cancellation if they attended a school that engaged in deceptive or illegal practices or closed suddenly. In 2016, the Obama administration issued new rules to protect student borrowers and get student loan relief. These rules existed as a form of consumer protection because absent these rules, student loan borrowers would still have to pay off student loans even if they didn’t find gainful employment after attending schools such as ITT Technical Institute or Corinthian Colleges.
I somewhat doubted it would get done not because of any lack of commitment or ambition on the part of the Biden administration, but because of simple logistics of production and distribution within that time frame.
Happy to see my doubts were unfounded. It's almost like Biden is listening to scientists and has people who know what the fuck they're doing formulating these estimates.
“Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
Words to live by.
Calling it. Biden putting sanctions on Russia is going to cause ten thousand times more outtrage from 'anti-war' online commentorz than Trump shredding the Iran deal and exploding one of their senior officials did.
There's a lot of Venn overlap with "Dirtbag Left" Stars FLirting with the Far Right. Or Can Wealthy Elites Buy populism?.
All of them express a lot of support for Putin.
- They love authoritarian Daddies'. They imagine these figures will wave a wand and wipe out their enemies, or their student debt.
- Their policies are dumb and unpopular, they basically need Putin to prop up their political campaigns.
- It's a natural alliance for bigotry and misogamy.
Unpopular truths that make MMOC uncomfortable.