DL Open Thread Monday May 24th 2021
I was sitting down to write this Open Thread and I just couldn’t. The news is too depressing. Biden seems to be folding his hand on the Infrastructure Bill. Carper is being Carper, giving Republicans cover for their ongoing malfeasance.
Republican nuts are being Republican nuts. And we are quickly approaching the moment when Republicans nuts are pushing us to the point when political sectarian violence is going to be inevitable. It is all too much.
So I had an Aperol Spritz and clicked over to the Arden Concert Gild.
I’m not ready to call out Biden for folding his hand. It was always a very weak hand with the wobbly Dem majorities. Biden knows any Dem plan won’t get a single Republican vote, Been true since Bill Clinton’s 1993 economic plan.
I don’t think Biden is negotiating with Republicans at all – he is actually negotiating with churlish Dems. It was always going to come down to getting 51 votes in the Senate or not.
I give Biden credit for laying down a big opening bid, as opposed to the Obama strategy of opening with the compromise bid and then working down from that. And I also give him credit for keeping the intra-party negotiation behind-the-scenes while pretending to negotiate with Republicans for benefit of the press.
That’s an optimistic take. The whole vibe feels like ‘retreat’ to me.
Just remembered Bill Clinton’s 1993 plan including tax increases was passed with no Republican votes and the 51st vote being Vice President Al Gore. Republicans and CEOs filled the airwaves with predictions of economic disaster. But soon they were all too busy counting their money to complain.
You would think that they’d learn from experience, but all they’ve learned is that if good things happen when a Democrat is president, the Democrat, not the Republicans in Congress, will get the credit.
If the choice is between doing well and having Democrats take the credit or doing poorly and blaming it on Democrats, well, the history of the last 40 years will tell you which option they choose every time.
This is war, and as noted by others it goes back to Clinton and the hated Newt Gingrich. Like others I feel we’re on our merry way towards an ever hotter Civil War Round Two, and I too expect more riots and perhaps more direct attacks on the government . It will not be like 1861 other then that the combatants are mostly the same. Suspect the 2022 election will be yet another flashpoint and opening day for the latest Voter Suppression Games from the Republicans.
@jason: What Biden is doing is all part of the negotiating process. Very few people enjoy watching the sausage being made.
The survival of the species depends on stripping rich people of their power over us, and the first step in doing that is electing people who understand that The Economy is a false god worshipped just as much by Democrats as Republicans, and Democrats are just as likely to fawn over plutocrats.
The economy thrives when people have money to spend — even if you give it to them for nothing. The economy is not having money, it’s spending money. When people spend money, even free money, it flows upwards, just like all money does in capitalism.
Unfortunately, most Democrats are just as brainwashed about the benefits of capitalist greed as Republicans are. Chris Coons and Tom Carper are as full of shit about it as any Republican, and will therefore be no help in ending plutocracy.
Remember inflation? You know, the decline in a currency’s buying power because of rising prices? House Republicans are being instructed to stoke fears about it to derail Biden’s economic plan.
The thing about inflation is that, despite (or perhaps because of) their education, economists don’t understand a damn thing about it. It’s supposedly caused when there’s too much money in circulation, but funny thing — this country has been increasing the amount of money in circulation for decades now, and inflation has hovered at about 2% a year for 30 years, because wages haven’t truly increased for 40 years.
he inflation of the ’70s was caused, pure and simple, by the oil embargoes that roughly quadrupled the price of that raw material, not money supply, not over-employment. But economists have these nice equations that, though they have shown through experience to be worthless, they cling to them because they’re math, and therefore — science! What are they going to believe, their equations or their lying eyes?
You know where the effects of inflation have been most noticeable? Luxury goods for the rich, because that’s where all this “extra” money has gone, and they don’t have anything else to spend it on.
For 400 years, the Romans tried to predict the future by disemboweling goats and reading signs in their entrails. I think their track record was at least as good as the consensus of economists.
Nicely said Alby the GREAT. The Republican Study Group always play their card of “FEAR”. Frankly, I don’t see all this shit the political writers are talking about. What I do see is Trump being indicted and all these fear mongers scrambling for cover. GOP poll numbers will drop and the TEA PARTY incumbents will go off the rails with gamma radiated Horse manure. Mean while, the Dems clean house everywhere it’s dirty. The Biden money for parents with kids is going to hit the pocket books and there is no turning back to these Grand OLD Parasites. The only plan they have is FEAR.
BtW, our outdoor concert tom’w night with Molly Tuttle has long since sold out…
Can one stand outside and listen?
I’d invite you over, however our dog is now officially a dangerous dog, with his own insurance policy no less…not to mention the gates we put up at our front and back doors.
He’s fantastic with his peeps, but he’s skitterish around others.
Home from Rhode Island. Read Carl Hiaasen’s “Squeeze Me” on the train.
Hard to imagine anybody but the RWNJ trolls not loving this book.
A rare ‘laugh-out-loud’ book that I laughed out loud to. Enjoyed in direct proportion to how much you hated The Former Guy.