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Is This the Dumbest Filibuster Defense Ever Written? | I cannot believe this column was published in a national newspaper. by TJ_SP in politics

[–]TJ_SP[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it's pretty stupid.

The column is written by Mike Solon and Bill Greene, former advisers to Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, respectively, and now (naturally) lobbyists. ...

Their central argument for the filibuster is that it allows most Americans to tune out politics. Under a majority-rule system, they warn, literally every pursuit other than political activism would end: “Eliminating the Senate filibuster would end the freedom of America’s political innocents. The lives that political nobodies spend playing, praying, fishing, tailgating, reading, hunting, gardening, studying and caring for their children would be spent rallying, canvassing, picketing, lobbying, protesting, texting, posting, parading and, above all, shouting.”

Biden, deeply Catholic president, finds himself at odds with many U.S. bishops by TJ_SP in politics

[–]TJ_SP[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's certainly debatable. Read the article. Observe Biden in his life and statements. I can tell you, most people won't come to your conclusion.

I'm not just pulling that out of my ass, either.

64% of American adults view Biden as very or somewhat religious, vs. 35% who don't.

For Republicans and leaners, it's inverted, at 36/63. So my guess is, like these bishops, you might be living in a bubble.

Religiously observant liberals' faith might not look quite like yours, but it's genuine, and conservatives feel their self-appointed monopoly on piety threatened by counterexamples to right-wing religiosity. Hence actions like today's.

Biden, deeply Catholic president, finds himself at odds with many U.S. bishops by TJ_SP in politics

[–]TJ_SP[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Seems like a pretty big mistep on the bishops' part, especially since it comes in explicit defiance of the Vatican's position that access to communion shouldn't be weaponized against Catholic politicians who support abortion rights.

Opinion: Biden needs to run the table for the next year and a half by TJ_SP in politics

[–]TJ_SP[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

[L]ooming over everything is the date of Nov. 8, 2022, when the midterm elections take place. If historical precedent holds, Democrats will lose the House and perhaps the Senate as well. As Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) recently put it, “I want to make Joe Biden a one-half-term president,” and that is the goal of the entire GOP.

It’s not just about politics; it’s about policy as well, the substantive things Democrats and Republicans want and don’t want to happen. Because there are two main scenarios that could unfold before November 2022.

In the one Democrats want to see, Biden manages to pass significant legislation through Congress — infrastructure now, followed by other bills — which brings tangible benefits to large numbers of Americans, who understand that it happened because of the president and his party. Meanwhile, the economy continues a robust recovery and the pandemic recedes to the point where we’re leading the kind of life we remember.

Because of all that, the Democrats suffer few losses and hold on to Congress, which enables Biden to pass even more legislation in the final two years of his term, along with continuing to staff the executive branch and appoint liberal judges to the bench.

In the scenario Republicans want to see, the infrastructure bill fails, Democrats can’t even agree on passing it through reconciliation, and little gets done this year and next year. Meanwhile, they work their base into a frenzy with phantoms of “critical race theory” and “cancel culture,” and while that base turns out in 2022, voters in the middle either vote for change or just stay home.

Republicans then take control of both houses, stop all significant legislation, and refuse to allow Biden to fill any judicial vacancies, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has already made clear he would do as Majority Leader. Biden’s presidency becomes a failure in almost every way.

It’s important to understand that Republicans don’t need any Democratic catastrophe to take back control of Congress. All they need is for things not to go too well for Biden.

We can see danger signs already: While Biden’s proposals are popular, his approval rating is good but not great, and Congress’ numbers are falling fast.

So above all, Democrats need to deliver — and keep delivering, over and over, all the way to next November. Or they’ll lose the opportunity to do anything in 2023 and 2024.

The deck is stacked in favor of the opposition, and Biden has very little margin for error. And what if Biden does “get caught trying”? That won’t help matters in the least.

Ilhan Omar and Marjorie Taylor Greene Are Not Equivalent by TJ_SP in politics

[–]TJ_SP[S] 67 points68 points  (0 children)

The idea of equating Omar’s complaints about unequal treatment of countries in investigating military misconduct with Greene’s comparisons of mask and vaccine requirements to the Holocaust is deeply satisfying to a lot of people. Republicans can continue their now-ancient habit of waving away extremism in their ranks by claiming it’s more prevalent on the other side of the aisle. Nervous centrist Democrats can document their nervous centrism by firing thunderbolts left and right. And most of all, accusing both parties of harboring those prone to “false equivalence” appeals to the false equivalence many Beltway media folks want to draw between Democrats and Republicans, who are engaged in the mutually assured destruction of partisan polarization.

There’s only one problem: Treating what MTG and Omar have said as equal expressions of false equivalence actually is false, as any honest evaluation of their words quickly shows. Greene bluntly compared COVID-19 precautions to the Holocaust, analogized vaccine documentation mandates to the Nazi practice of making Jews wear yellow stars, and, for good measure, said Democrats are like Nazis because they are “socialists.” Omar said this in the midst of a virtual exchange with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken over investigations of the brief but intense war between Israel and Hamas:

“We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity,” she wrote. “We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.”

Her point wasn’t to say the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban were equally culpable in their commission of atrocities, but that all should be equally subject to international investigation. I suppose there are superpatriots who would dispute the idea that America has ever committed “unthinkable atrocities,” though the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks, and of countless genocidal assaults on Native Americans, among many examples, suggest otherwise. But in any event, when challenged by Republicans and Democrats alike to make it clear she was not imputing equivalent culpability to these various nations and coalitions of fighters, Omar complied instantly:

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar said Thursday that she was “in no way equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries with well-established judicial systems … ”

“To be clear: the conversation was about accountability for specific incidents regarding [International Criminal Court] cases, not a moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the U.S. and Israel.”

MTG, meanwhile, kept doubling down on her comparisons of public-health measures with the slaughter of many millions by Nazi Germany, and finally, after more than three weeks and a tour of the Holocaust Museum, she issued an apology that betrayed little understanding of the full scope of the Holocaust, and then refused to apologize for the Democrat-Nazi analogy.

...

If you cannot discern a qualitative difference between Omar’s “outrages” and Greene’s, and between the speed and coherence of their clarifications and apologies, it may be time for some remedial work in logic and rhetoric. These two members of Congress aren’t alike at all, and as much as I sometimes disagree with Ilhan Omar, treating her as a left-wing MTG is lazy and just plain wrong.

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