Senate High Fives Itself On Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. But What’s Next? | Talking Points Memo

Right now I think that is the prime motivator for them. The death threats people get who dare to stick a toe out of the Trump-Qstream are hair raising.

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Yes. I didn’t mean to make light of it. Most politicians are just regular people without fancy security. They have nice houses in rich neighborhoods but their family is no more prepared to deal with a violent attack than yours or mine.

It must be terrifying. And that goes double for the state and county public health officials dealing with this shit.

I can’t accept that the first amendment means there is nothing we can do to protect people. I’m not sure what the answer is, but “be brave” just isn’t going to cut it.

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Yeah I’m with you. It has taken me awhile to come around to it, but I agree. Free speech cannot mean anything goes with no responsibility for it. This is what happens and it’s not acceptable to a healthy society or a healthy democracy.

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He’s only talking about the Senate races. He, obviously, was cheated in the most heinous way possible.

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I believe that’s just what they did.

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“No deal is better than a bad deal,” the rant/statement continued. “Fight for America, not for special interests and Radical Democrats. RINOs are ruining America, right alongside Communist Democrats.”

Unhinged retiree in Florida shakes fist, yells at clouds.

McConnell said he was “happy” to vote to advance the bipartisan infrastructure bill forward toward what he wanted to see a “robust” floor process. He also bashed Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill as a “reckless taxing and spending spree.”

Sure he is. This is his happy face.

mcconnell

Or maybe that’s his swallowed-a-marble face. It’s hard to tell.

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Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) took to Twitter to argue why he believes the pay-fors in the bipartisan infrastructure bill “don’t quite cut the mustard.”

COimmigrant took to the TPM comment board to argue the “tax cuts pay for themselves” in the 2017 GOP unnecessary aid to the wealthy bill “didn’t quite cut the mustard.”

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“My goal remains to pass both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a budget resolution this work period,” Schumer said.

I really feel like Schumer is tiptoeing his way to telling America that he will not cancel recess – or do anything to make Senators even mildly uncomfortable – to pass the For The People Act. His statement defines the finish-line in terms of just infrastructure – all of which will be irrelevant if democracy is ended. Those tax credits to families, and any other bottom-up stimulus measures, will all get vacuumed up by America’s rapacious creditor class. It’s almost money laundering.

“A Republic, if we can keep it.” I would not have guessed our leaders would be willing to do so little for that purpose.

Bad faith of course but TPM appears to agree when it editorializes that “Braun isn’t wrong in calling out the need for pay-fors.” He is quite wrong and the Democrats are wrong to give this kind of fiscal bullshit credence.

For starters we are still near negative real interest rates and the cost of borrowing is virtually zero but even if that were not true, it would still be a weak argument in a nation that controls its own currency and additionally has allowed its tax structure to become regressive.

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Mike Braun: “Infrastructure investment is great when it’s paid for.”

Also Mike Brain: “We don’t accept IRS compliance enforcement as a pay-for.”

Also also Mike Braun: “This bipartisan infrastructure package’s pay-fors are either completely phony or don’t quite cut the mustard.”

This food is terrible and the portions are too small…

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Senator Foghorn Leghumper from SC on “hard-hitting amendments”…“I move to strike any infrastructure that contributes to these states” <hands out list of blue states>

Something is woefully wrong when the only remedy is a wrongful death action.

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How about this?

If you have to keep explicitly telling people that you’re doing something in good faith … maybe it’s because you aren’t.

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It has been a slow process for me as well. Usually we analyze the first amendment from the perspective of protecting the ability of the holders of unpopular ideas to speak in the public square - and there are a lot of attempts at censorship that are best analyzed this way. But there are also times when speech is used to drive someone else out of the public square- and this is where I think traditional first amendment analysis falls over. Usually the speakers are an unpopular minority (e.g. the KKK; antivaxxers) and they target a group or person who is socially vulnerable. I think we don’t put enough weight on the impact that speech has on the targets. It is a very slippery slope, but there are some pretty big drawbacks to the status quo.

Lord. Can Lindsey Graham BE anymore dickish?

She’s kind of got that Michele Bachmann thing going.

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Nicely stated. Words can be very harmful. We neglect the impact of discriminatory and violent language at our peril.

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First, it’s Jackson.
Second, I admire his love for his wife and country.

He is a supremely complicated man, and the more you know about him, the more nuanced your beliefs about him become.
You obviously know very little about him.

Quite right. Silly slip. Two Andrews, two Johnsons, one Jackson. At least I didn’t call him Lyndon Baines Jackson.

I don’t bother much with nuance when an unrepentant monster exists in the being of a person. I guess he would have lain down his life for his wife, and for his country as long as that country was a racist hell. I wonder what good there is in him. Sure, I know little about him, but what I do know is not wrong, and is monstrous. Usual line: even AH was nice to his dogs (or so the story goes).

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