The Biden Administration (No Lago)

[MGuy]

I'm legit surprised that Biden went straight into using so many executive orders.

Totally surprised that Biden did exactly what he would say he would do?

That article is from November 7th.

So maybe you're the only one surprised?

You're mad when I don't give Biden any credit and now you're mad that I gave him credit. If you hadn't already admitted to purposefully thread shitting I'd ask why you'd make this dumb post. Luckily since you've already established your commitment to posting dumb things there is no mystery here.

[Kaelik]

Adding to the time delay issues, Biden promised a $15 minimum wage. He never really specified a timeline, but most people thought it would be you know, a gradual progression that reached that point at the end of his term.

So now we have a timeline courtesy of the democratic senate..... 5 years after enactment.

Jesus fucking christ you pieces of shit. You don't actually have to make sure that zero promises were kept on election day but might be kept in the future!

Why can't democrats ever learn a single fucking lesson from the ACA which no one benefited from until Democrats lost an election, and was shit on release, but now is considered good?

Just fucking pass a law that makes it so that one ELECTION DAY 2024 people are being paid $15 fucking dollars an hour.

I promise the fucking AppleBees will survive!

[Kaelik]

Democratic bad decisions of gerontocracy competing with democratic bad decisions of running republicans on the democratic ticket. Sure Manchin may not allow a single law to pass but he may not even get a chance when our ancient democrats just up and die and the GOP get to be the majority anyway.

Leahy hospitalized.

[Kaelik]

I guess I should mention Biden's EO on private prisons, which is basically a direct violation of his campaign promises.

Obama had an EO that said they wouldn't renew federal contracts for private prisons for non immigration contexts. ICE still got to have all the private prisons they wanted, and immigrant detainees in private facilities made up more than half of federal detainees in private prisons in 2016, and that percentage has only increased. Obama's ICE post his own EO before Trump took over had already renewed several contracts.

Biden's campaign website written by an intern that we were all assured were very real promises he was definitely going to carry through on said "Stop corporations from profiteering off incarceration... building off an Obama-Biden admin policy...And, he will make clear that the federal government should not use private facilities for any detention, including detention of undocumented immigrants."

And he has since.... reinstated the Obama EO that doesn't effect ICE in any way and we are just going to keep doing the private immigration jails.

So in case you believe that intern writings are promises, they aren't! Biden said 5 words and someone else was told to write a paragraph and Biden didn't even know about much less mean any part of that paragraph that wasn't the five words he said in a speech.

[Kaelik]

In GOOD news, Biden's pro torture CIA director Morell withdrew. Apparently he was worried about the fake news witchhunt the democratic committee members would have conducted at his hearings.

Not exactly my words:

"I knew I could’ve said something like, while I have some disagreements it's an important part of the historical record; but...that’s not what I believe."

Morell also says that clearly the coverage of the torture program, etc, shows "there's fake news on both sides of the political spectrum."

So in other words, this mother fucker is STILL SO PRO TORTURE he doesn't even want to say he had some disagreements with the program (which doesn't even mean with torture specifically) and he thinks accurate coverage of CIA torture is fake news.

But I want to stress, this is him complaining because he's withdrawing, so fuck him. Hopefully his next nominee won't be pro torture!

[Koumei]

It looks like Biden is saying he's not going to make any trade deal with an independent UK. Some sources simply say he's not doing it yet and will wait a while and make sure the UK doesn't get a better deal with the US than the EU gets, while others say it's straight-up no deal unless they rejoin.

If he sticks to this, it won't help the overall global problems like the climate apocalypse, the capitalism apocalypse or the rise of fascism, it won't really do anything for America either, but it will be good for fighting against "We should also break away from the EU and then we can be right-wing despots at will!" movements, pressuring the UK into doing itself a favour for once in its fucking existence, and potentially weakening the Tories.

[Kaelik]

pressuring the UK into doing itself a favour for once in its fucking existence, and potentially weakening the Tories.

It won't matter because Kier Starmer will continue to announce his plans to be a more boring Boris Johnson and labour will flounder.

[MGuy]

I fully expect anything that isn't covid, military, or economy related to go on the back burner for Biden. How he deals with it will be of the utmost importance. I suspect ICE will still be trucking along except with pressure from the top to not get on the news cycle. So hopefully the raids stop.

I'm not even sure Biden had changed his position significantly on immigration. As far as I can tell the centrist dem position is important but that it shouldn't get quite as bad as how it got under Trump. Just going back to Obama's plans and getting immigrants to languish in other countries instead would likely work well enough. If he's hiring the same people to handle it then that would not be a good sign.

I wonder how long he's going to keep up this unity pitch. Not only have the Republicans co-opted it to argue that nothing should be done about Trump but McConnell is actively threatening to throw a fit if his ability to disrupt Congress is taken away. He's threatening this even though apparently the likes of Manchin have already promised him they wouldn't allow it.

[Kaelik]

Merrick Garland doesn't want Biden's horrible piece of shit Google and Amazon attorney to head the antitrust division.

Instead he wants his horrible piece of shit who defended Facebook against antitrust to head the antitrust division.

Democrats just really want the entire world to be owned by 7 companies.

[violence in the media]

Democrats just really want the entire world to be owned by 7 companies.

Well, duh. How else can Karen complain to the manager about all this poor service?

[Kaelik]

The Biden admin has begun a little country wide press tour of Biden's agenda being obstructed by Congress. They just picked two states at random out of a hat and they were West Virginia and Arizona. Totally at random starting locations, VP Harris assures us that these are just the first stops on a tour of many parts of the country and were not picked for any specific reason.

Now obviously, it is dumb that our politicians feel like they have to lie to our faces for no reason (and kind of do have to of course because as Sander's demonstrated, if you don't the media will lie about you non stop). Obviously that sucks.

But, this is really good. The Biden admin seems to have realized that the republicans are not his enemies, they are a force of nature, and that Joe Manchin is his enemy.

[Kaelik]

So Far having Joe Manchin in the senate is exactly like having a republican in the senate for West Virginia, which should cause you to question whether it might be a good idea to run an actual fucking democrat, possibly even a dreaded leftist, in West Virginia for the chance at having a good senator instead of just running a republican again.

But let's also remember that Kyrsten Sinema is currently also indistinguishable from a republican senator because she also believes that the Republicans should remain in control of all committees until 2022.

While it is of course, wrong to believe that Joe Manchin is the only person who could ever win in West Virginia (and primarily grounded in the fact that democrats can't imagine running a leftist who talks about unions) it can't possibly be argued that you can only win Arizona with a republican with a D in front of the name.

So literally every time for the next 4 years that Kyrsten Sinema acts exactly like a republican, please remember that the Democratic Party stepped in to place her ahead of everyone else in the 2018 primary so that she could have a free path to Senate and we could have a (probably decades long because the dem party will keep brutally destroying primary challengers) republican senator from Arizona funded by the Democratic party.

[Kaelik]

Joe Biden admin continuing the long storied history of the Iranian Time Travel research.

Blinken says that Iran could be weeks away from having enough material to build a bomb.

Iran has been an imminent threat of obtaining a nuclear bomb since 1987. In fact they bought Soviet weapons in 1991 (until eventually it turned out they hadn't). But then they bought some in 1992. But they hadn't again. But that's okay because in 1992 they had all or nearly all the components according to the US House Republican Research Committee. The CIA said that Iran was making progress and on track to have nuclear weapons by 2000. Skipping past a bunch of claims, in 1995 Clinton's secretary of state was saying they had a crash program, but no timetable.

Skipping some more, in 2004 ISIS (the US one that had to change it's name) said they could run their nuclear enrichment to produce enough weapons grade uranium for 25-30 weapons a year. Reuters reported that Iran would have one within three years. In the first offical report of being one year away, Iran was one year away in 2005 according to Israeli Defense Minister Mofaz. A year and 6 months and three years bounced around for a while from Israel after that.

The US was still thinking two to three years in 2007 when Bush officials and ISIS head were talking to the media. But by 2009 US Defense Secretary Robert Gates was giving interviews with timetables of a year. General Cartwright, vice chairman of the JCOS joined in 2010. Leon Panetta said instead that they needed 2 years. Gary Samore, Obama's advisor on nuclear issues told the time that it was a year. Pretty much every year since a high level US official has said Iran is a year away from having a bomb. John Kerry even testified it could be as little as two months in 2014.

So good to know that in 30 years Iran will still be trapped in their time bubble, unable to get to the year 2011 when they will finally have nuclear weapons.

[Kaelik]

Today ICE flew a plane filed with removals. 108 removals. That 100 day moratorium is going well.

I don't know if the moratorium is stupidly written and this is allowed or if ice just ignored the president or if the moratorium deliberately allowed certain kinds of removals. All of those are bad though.\

EDIT: A fourth bad thing. A republican judge stayed Biden's 100 day moratorium.

[MGuy]

Texas judge apparently didn't find the reason for Biden's moratorium compelling enough so it got a big nope. I hope judgments like this don't end up becoming more of a problem in the near future.

[Kaelik]

Texas judge apparently didn't find the reason for Biden's moratorium compelling enough so it got a big nope. I hope judgments like this don't end up becoming more of a problem in the near future.

Let me be clear. He was appointed by Trump in 2020. He's the absolute bottom of the federalist society dregs.

When it comes to an order like this there is absolutely no fucking "reviewing the reasoning" for a 100 day moratorium when the plaintiff doesn't allege equal protection grounds.

The judge said basically that he thinks it's probably true that it is arbitrary and CAPRICIOUS for Joe Biden to change Trump's immigration policy because no one could predict that a new president would change the old one's policies, so therefore they can't be changed ever.

Also he says that actually, the federal statutes on deportations prohibit the president from taking longer than 90 days to deport no matter what, even, apparently, when they are currently involved in a suit to enjoin. Amongst other things, this is absolutely fucking wrong because on AVERAGE during the Trump admin, a removal would take place about 170 days after an order of removal was made final.

This is patent political action.

[Kaelik]

Joe Biden has bombed seven countries so far and has just announced his support for the Space Force.

In case anyone was stupid enough to believe that democrats wouldn't be fawning over our brave Space Force defending us from.......... literally nothing. No worries, democrats also love breaking international law to funnel money to Raytheon!

EDIT: I guess I'll also mention that the democrats new plan is to deny relief checks to half of the recipients of the $600. So in case you want to argue that $600 given before the promise was made plus $1400 8 months later is really $2k, it turns out that democrats intend to break their promise to half of all families even under that twisted logic.

[Pseudo Stupidity]

EDIT: I guess I'll also mention that the democrats new plan is to deny relief checks to half of the recipients of the $600. So in case you want to argue that $600 given before the promise was made plus $1400 8 months later is really $2k, it turns out that democrats intend to break their promise to half of all families even under that twisted logic.

I've been following the checks because I feel it's the most obvious case of the Democrats being fucking horrible. All I've heard so far is that Biden is being all about not reducing the total amount (of $1,400, so it's already a reduced amount) , but very about doing some bullshit where it goes out to fewer people. I didn't catch any specifics on just how the new ones would be targeted, though. Is there anything on which specific senators I should blame for this garbage, and are any of them Warren? She's mine so I can only yell at her.

[Kaelik]

EDIT: I guess I'll also mention that the democrats new plan is to deny relief checks to half of the recipients of the $600. So in case you want to argue that $600 given before the promise was made plus $1400 8 months later is really $2k, it turns out that democrats intend to break their promise to half of all families even under that twisted logic.

I've been following the checks because I feel it's the most obvious case of the Democrats being fucking horrible. All I've heard so far is that Biden is being all about not reducing the total amount (of $1,400, so it's already a reduced amount) , but very about doing some bullshit where it goes out to fewer people. I didn't catch any specifics on just how the new ones would be targeted, though. Is there anything on which specific senators I should blame for this garbage, and are any of them Warren? She's mine so I can only yell at her.

The stories are leaks about "Still very fluid" discussions, but the idea being leaked is that the checks will either not go out to people or phase out after 50k income in single individual tax units and 100k or 150k for heads of househould. EDIT: To be clear, this is all using 2019 tax data so.... get fucked anyone who lost your job for some reason starting around March of 2020.

The leaks say "Some democratic senators are talking about it in talks with republicans" without names, but presumably this is the gang of 16 (8 Democrats) and not Warren. It may also involve Schumer as Majority Leader.

The "Gang" in question is, as far as Dem's go: Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Mark Warner (Va.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), John Hickenlooper (Colo.), Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Independent Sen. Angus King (Maine), who caucuses with Democrats.

Though that's just who's involved in negotiations allegedly. It's very likely that many of them would go along with Chuck Schumers order to pass it by reconciliation if he tried. The only absolutely confirmed person who won't is Manchin, who has repeatedly explained that he will never in a million years vote for anything that doesn't have republicans voting yes too.

In particular yesterday he was asked in the hallway about it and he said "I will only support moving in a bipartisan way."

So ultimately it's probably 90% Manchin's fault and 10% the fault of all the people who ran Manchin. Sinema has not taken a public position on whether or not she will allow democrats to use reconciliation, unlike Manchin, who has been very clear that he won't.

[deaddmwalking]

I've been following the checks because I feel it's the most obvious case of the Democrats being fucking horrible. All I've heard so far is that Biden is being all about not reducing the total amount (of $1,400, so it's already a reduced amount) , but very about doing some bullshit where it goes out to fewer people. I didn't catch any specifics on just how the new ones would be targeted, though. Is there anything on which specific senators I should blame for this garbage, and are any of them Warren? She's mine so I can only yell at her.

Democrats have learned some thing from Republicans, and that is they will be obstructionist twats, no matter what they do. They can offer the package they want which will get zero Republican support. Or, to make things bipartisan, they can give the Republicans dozens or hundreds of things Republicans claim they want (like targeting the relief), and STILL get zero Republicans to vote for it.

Republicans have asked for changes to the calculations, but the current calculations essentially boil down to -$100 for every $1,000 you make over x. What that means is if the total was $600, if you made $6,000 over x, you'd get nothing. On the other hand, if the check amount is $1400, you'd have to make $14,000 more than x before you get nothing. Republicans say they want to change all of the variables - the amount, the maximum income before you get nothing, and how quickly you go from getting something to nothing.

Biden will use Reconciliation to push through a bill that includes $1400 checks for Americans using the same criteria as before, with the caveat that he won't IF the Republicans commit to the votes to pass an actual bipartisan bill faster. Why would he want to get Republican support? There are a couple of reasons - the first is that not everything can be included in a bill passed by reconciliation (like the $15 Federal Minimum Wage). It's actually an open question whether that could be included, but long story short, one guy who is the accepted rules lawyer for the Senate (the Parliamentarian) gets to decide what can or can't be passed via Reconciliation. Secondly, it plays to the unity message if Congress can pass things with both parties endorsing them.

Edit
Here's a tool that can calculate the differences based on income and the initial amount of the check to show what a specific individual would get.

[Kaelik]

Biden will use Reconciliation to push through a bill that includes $1400 checks for Americans using the same criteria as before, with the caveat that he won't IF the Republicans commit to the votes to pass an actual bipartisan bill faster. Why would he want to get Republican support?

This will be 100% false. They will definitely lower the income amounts at which people receive the amount.

There are a couple of reasons - the first is that not everything can be included in a bill passed by reconciliation (like the $15 Federal Minimum Wage). It's actually an open question whether that could be included, but long story short, one guy who is the accepted rules lawyer for the Senate (the Parliamentarian) gets to decide what can or can't be passed via Reconciliation.

This is also all wrong. What actually decides what can go into reconciliation is 51 votes from Senators. But also, the Parliamentarian is chosen by the majority party and they can just choose whomever they want.

The $15 minimum wage is a payfor in reconciliation because it raises tax receipts. This is the "correct" legal answer, but also, doesn't matter because Schumer can just decide who gets to decide and 51 votes can overrule it at any time. If the minimum wage isn't passed through reconciliation it is because democrats choose not to pass it as a political matter.

For the love of god, I don't understand why people are so committed to pretending that politicians don't have the power they have and that it's really some secret technocrat making rulings based on complex rule questions.

[Kaelik]

Random Good News Breakdown:

New Secretary of Defense ordering a standown for regiments to have conversations about extremism. Probably won't be effective, but it indicates it's a problem he wants to address, which is better than usual. Random bad end on: "extremism" is what you say when you mean that healthcare is as bad as white supremacy.

Matt Duss hired for an unspecified position in the State Department. Random uncertainty end on: We have no idea what position.

Biden has increase the refugee cap for admitting immigrants to 125k. Random we are all fucked end on: ICE has been making it extremely clear that they consider Biden's orders illegitimate and they will keep being assholes.

Random Republican not being shit thing: Romney proposed a child benefit that is better than Biden's plan. Still probably won't be passed, but just the proposal is a good thing and means at least one Republican would probably vote for a good bill. Random Bad End On: It's the GOP what do you think he's going to keep a promise?

[Kaelik]

EDIT: I guess I'll also mention that the democrats new plan is to deny relief checks to half of the recipients of the $600. So in case you want to argue that $600 given before the promise was made plus $1400 8 months later is really $2k, it turns out that democrats intend to break their promise to half of all families even under that twisted logic.

I've been following the checks because I feel it's the most obvious case of the Democrats being fucking horrible. All I've heard so far is that Biden is being all about not reducing the total amount (of $1,400, so it's already a reduced amount) , but very about doing some bullshit where it goes out to fewer people. I didn't catch any specifics on just how the new ones would be targeted, though. Is there anything on which specific senators I should blame for this garbage, and are any of them Warren? She's mine so I can only yell at her.

I can now give you an official list:

Manchin
Sinema
Hassan
Tester
Shaheen
King*
Hickenlooper
Warner
Kelly

That's the cosponsor's on the amendment that would reduce income caps.

So a lot of overlap with the gang of 16 members, but some additions and removals both.

[Kaelik]

Oh fucking god.

Another amendment, passed already. Denys relief to undocumented immigrants. Here's the list of D senators that voted for the amendment.

Tester
Manchin
Hassan
Kelly
Sinema
Peters
Stabenow
Tester
Hickenlooper

Fucking fuck all these people.

[MGuy]

Biden is now talking about ending US support from Yemen. Arms sales, seeking diplomatic talks, military operations, etc were mentioned. He also assures that we will continue to defending the Saudis still. A very out of left field thing given that I don't think making this move was even necessary for him. A definite good thing even if defensive support of the Saudis might still give an 'out' to doing unsavory things in Yemen.