And that says everything Betraying Ukraine is her issue. It’s all she’s been talking about and she told her boy MyKevin that there was no way she would ever vote for a bill that contained funding to support it. And as I write this, the only continuing resolution MyKevin believes may pass with all GOP votes is one that keeps everything going except her pet issue — abandoning the Ukrainian people: Just hours before a government shutdown, the House planned to vote on a measure to keep the government open for 45 days at current spending levels, adding money for U.S. disaster relief but none of the billions of dollars for Ukraine that the White House has sought, Rules Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the bill would pass the House or what its fate in the Senate would be. The government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. Sunday if a deal is not reached. She is evil. And she is very powerful in the Republican Party right now. She’s no gadfly like Michele Bachman. She’s the real thing. I don’t know if this will pass.
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And they love him more than ever Tom Sullivan already did a great post on the Trump speech in California yesterday and I can’t think of anything to add. But I do think you should see some more of what he said. It’s truly unbelievable: Trump’s charisma rests in this: He invites every one of us to liberate the worst version of ourselves from the shackles of decency and convention; to let the id trample our ethics. Gleefully. It’s an intoxicating and irresistible opportunity for tens of millions of Americans. https://t.co/zw3zqizJ9F — Terry Moran 🇺🇸 (@TerryMoran) September 30, 2023 Cheers from the audience that has been having a full blown hissy fit over the assault on decorum in the Senate if men don’t wear suits.
Manufacturing culture war test cases A Washington Post investigation pulled back the curtain on a legal advocacy group’s decades-long efforts to sherpa conservative culture war test cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled in June that Colorado’s public accommodations law could not force web designer Lorie Smith to design wedding web sites for gay couples because it violates her religious beliefs. The 6-3 decision was not about discrimination, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote. No. Coercing Smith to create a message with which she disagrees violates her First Amendment rights. Smith, SCOTUSblog reminds us, is “a devout Christian who owns a website- and graphic-design business [who] wanted to expand her business to include wedding websites – but only for heterosexual couples, and she wanted to post a message on her own website to make that clear.” Here’s what stood out as weird. Smith cited a request from a man named “Stewart” as the basis for her lawsuit.
Interesting times just got more interesting Minutes ago (Associated Press): U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a centrist Democrat who was elected to the Senate in 1992 in the “Year of the Woman” and broke gender barriers throughout her long career in local and national politics, has died. She was 90. Three people familiar with the situation confirmed her death to The Associated Press on Friday. Feinstein, the oldest sitting U.S. senator, was a passionate advocate for liberal priorities important to her state — including environmental protection, reproductive rights and gun control — but was also known as a pragmatic lawmaker who reached out to Republicans and sought middle ground. She was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969 and became its first female president in 1978, the same year Mayor George Moscone was gunned down alongside Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall by Dan White, a disgruntled former supervisor. Feinstein found Milk’s body. Feinstein had been in declining health for some time and had obvious memory issues.
They made this mess for themselves and they can’t get out of it. It’s over for 2024. But they somehow believe it will all right itself for 2028. They are as delusional as always. The remaindered class of the Republican presidential field was in survival mode last night in Simi Valley, where seven candidates took the stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to make their case, however weakly, against Donald Trump. They were visibly feral from the start, thirsty for airtime, stomping all over each other for a breakout moment, or a fight, whichever presented itself first. […] Privately, however, the Republican professional class is more cynical than ever following last night’s debate. Here are the four things that everyone is thinking, but not yet saying out loud. Donors Are Already Giving Up Trump’s rivals know that to make it to Iowa, they need to quickly convince donors sitting on the sidelines (or those disillusioned by former Golden Boy DeSantis) that their anemic campaigns deserve an infusion of fresh capital. A strong showing at the debate can do that. Alas, despite being so cash starved, no candidate substantially rose above the pack.
That was the day Senator Dianne Feinstein first came to national attention and she never left it. She became mayor and then ran for the senate in the 1992 “year of the woman” becoming one of the most powerful women in American government. Dianne Feinstein now has a complicated legacy with many people loathing her for being old and refusing to step down. And she had a centrist viewpoint that often drove progressives crazy. But she was great on guns and really tried to do something about the carnage. And I’ll always be grateful for what she did on the great stain of American torture. Her Senate investigation was serious, so much so that the CIA actually infiltrated it. And she defied President Obama to release the summary of the torture report that exposed the grotesque practices this country perpetrated in the War on Terror. RIP.
It was worse than we expected The House Republicans have been promising that the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden was going to be filled with fireworks from the word go. We would see evidence of bribery and extortion and payoffs from foreign companies in the tens of millions of dollars, the “Biden Crime Family” would finally be exposed as the international gangsters they are Donald Trump would be exonerated. Or something. They held their first hearing yesterday and all those fireworks blew up in their faces. Keep in mind that they decided to hold this preposterous hearing two days before the government is set to shut down because a tiny rump faction of extremists in their party is demanding that they get everything they ever wanted or they’ll hold their breath until they turn blue. Nobody knows exactly what that is other than to torture Speaker Kevin McCarthy and make America miserable again. It’s been reported that they have no plans to table their “inquiry” when the government is shut down even though their staff won’t be paid and all regular business is usually curtailed until an agreement is reached. Not this time.
I realize that people only want to talk about what a terrible loser Joe Biden is, and I hate to burst their bubble, but it’s not actually true: New PPP polls in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin- where wins for Joe Biden next year would be enough to get him to 270 electoral votes- find him leading Donald Trump by 3 or 4 points in each of them. Biden is up 48-44 in both Michigan and Wisconsin, and 48-45 in Pennsylvania. Most recent coverage of the race has focused on Biden’s struggles, and it’s true that he’s not terribly popular with favorability ratings of 42/51, 40/49, and 41/51 in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin respectively. But elections are a choice and not a referendum. And Biden is popular in these key swing states compared to his likely opponent of Donald Trump and his likely foil of Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans. Trump’s net favorability rating is -23 in Michigan at 35/58, 14 points worse than Biden’s. It’s -20 at 35/55 in Wisconsin, 10 points worse than Biden’s. And it’s -16 at 38/54 in Pennsylvania, 7 points worse than Biden’s.
The NY Times: “I’d shut down the government if they can’t make an appropriate deal, absolutely,” Mr. Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Mr. Trump’s view of how shutdowns work was shaped by his own experience as president, when the longest government shutdown in history took place from December 2018 to January 2019. He incurred the public blame for it, as he publicly embraced the idea of a shutdown while holding contentious talks about a budget agreement with two Democratic leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and the House speaker at the time, Nancy Pelosi of California. “I’ll be the one to shut it down,” Mr. Trump told the leaders in a contentious Oval Office meeting in December 2018 shortly before the shutdown. “I will take the mantle. And I will shut it down for border security.” There is no reason to believe that Mr. Biden would be granted outsize blame, if any at all, for a shutdown that a group of Republican holdouts in Congress are encouraging. Mr. McCarthy has privately noted what Mr. Trump said publicly at the time in 2018, according to a person with knowledge of Mr.
I’m excited to say that you can now follow my WordPress account on the fediverse! This is really exciting news; the ActivityPub plugin on WordPress is starting to roll out to WP users. To follow me in Mastodon or another fediverse service, use my account on this blog, @evanprodromou@evanp.me . Connecting these two parts of … Continue reading This blog is now on the Fediverse!