Jake Tapper tweeted:
I get it that Bernie is now chair of the budget committee and that’s all cool and groovy. He should have gotten a phone call from Biden about who the OMB nominee was going to be. On the other hand, if Bernie is the chair and is doing his homework, wouldn’t he already know who Biden was going to pick? It’s not a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
If Bernie was in fantasy mode and thought for one minute that he was going to navigate this country to some Socialism lite utopia with his vision and supreme oratorial skills, he was sadly mistaken. Tanden is an HRC loyalist. Does that mean she’s a straight down the line center right leaner ala Obama? I don’t think so. If I recall correctly, Hillary Clinton bent over backwards to kiss Bernie’s ass during the 2016 campaign season. She was no centrist but she was more palatable for people who are not ready to nationalize every means of production.
I exaggerate, of course. But it seems to be the season of exaggeration, doesn’t it? It’s very much the “Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine!” routine. And, you know, I’m sure there will be plenty of room for pushing whatever envelope Berniecrats want. It’s just that this isn’t the time for holding one’s breath. I don’t mean to say that in a way that implies that we’re never going to entertain wild and crazy ideas. Anybody who knows me knows I love a wild and crazy idea once in awhile. Where budgets are concerned, I especially love them when they have good models and thought experiments and safety words, er, ramps.
But when you are only a month and a half away from an insurrection and 54,000,000 Trump voters are still convinced that he wuz robbed, this really isn’t the time to be choosing the mountain to die on.
Bernie and Neera are probably never going to be friends. Too bad. That’s politics. You learn to work with the one you got stuck with. If she’s on your team to begin with, that’s a plus.
Quit whining, Bernie.
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
A blast from the past:
By the Ascended Madoka, I wish our country was ready for social democracy, but it isn’t.
Yeah, the Dems are gonna mess up sometimes, but in the USA of the real world, the only alternative to being governed by these imperfect centrists is being governed by frothing neo-fascist lunatics who want to lynch all politicians who are not their own, partly because they actually believe their political opponents kill children and harvest them for some spurious drug. That being the case, I will facepalm when necessary
and keep voting for the imperfect centrists, unless and until we can actually get more social democrats into positions of power.
If not for the perfectionists, we might have avoided both Bush Jr. and Benedict Donald in the Oval Office, and thus might have 8-count ’em-8 Democrats on the Supreme Court now. Thanks, Purity Ponies! 😡
Break: Glorious Socialist Vikingland was giving us music videos before Imperialist Running Dog MTV! 😉
Except of course, for that cloud monster that somehow sucks all your red corpuscles out without breaking your skin. And the Giant Space Amoeba. And Redjac and that entity which makes people fight one another because it eats hate as its food. And the Borg and the Dominion and the Breen. (The Klingons and
RomulansRihannsu can stay–they’re cool once you get to know them. Also the Gorn, because Lizard Folk Are Kewl.) And Vegan Choriomeningitis and Rigellian Fever and the Symbalene Blood Burn. And that tentacle monster which sucks people in and sends them back out half-eaten–oh wait, that one’s from Space: 1999. My bad. And Nomad and M-5 and Vaal and V’Ger and the Probe That Gets Mad If It Can’t Find Whales To Talk To. And that annoying Q. 😉I forgot the Doomsday Machine (best episode soundtrack EVER!):
How are you doing, IBW? I mean how is your heart?
Well, I’ll find out tomorrow. I could have found out the results of my nuclear stress test of Feb. 9 this afternoon, but I did not grow up with cell phones, so I’m not in the habit of carrying it around 24/7, and I went out to get the mail, and forgot to bring the damn phone, and the office called while I was out getting the mail. 😡
I guess at least it wasn’t urgent, or they’d have tried my house phone as well, and probably would have tried earlier in the day, and more than once. Who the fuck expects a call from a clinic after 5 PM?
I might have gotten back to my phone in time if I hadn’t needed to remove the mail carrier from my mailbox. AGAIN.
Okay, the test showed I have some narrowing of the arteries.
However, nuclear stress tests show a roughly 20% rate of false positives, so I will have an angiogram on March 15.
If the NST result was accurate, then the angiogram should tell my doctor more about the narrowings, and whether or not I need any surgery, or whether it can be controlled with diet, exercise, and medicine alone. Of course, I hope it’s the latter.
Unfortunately, the human body is adapted to conditions of nearly perpetual scarcity. It does not know what to do with perpetual, if unevenly and unfairly distributed, abundance.
Omg, I hate it when doctors’ offices call just as they are closing for the weekend. So stressful. They’re the ones causing the heart attacks.
Well, keep us updated on all the tests and such.
Yes, I get the excess abundance thing. Fortunately, my last surgery extracted at least a pound of flesh. I’m already bouncing around my house again and my physical therapist says it’s time to start training for that 5k, albeit slowly at first. So, brisk walking for 15 minutes a stretch, twice a day and then more and more as the days get longer and warmer.
We can do it together if it helps.
i heard something today about whether the plan for a $15 minimum wage which is part of the Covid Relief Bill, would be found by the House Parliamentarian to be appropriate to be dealt with via Reconciliation. The report said that Sanders declared that this was “nonnegotiable.” This is another example of Sanders’ ego, and belief that he is very important.
Biden is not stupid. If he chose Tanden for head of OMB, she must be very qualified. This was not a payoff, like DeJoy’s appointment and Devos’s were. So for Sanders to complain that he was not consulted is arrogant and inappropriate. I am glad that you pointed it out. Somehow Sanders seems to have maneuvered from the person who cost Hillary the election, and who was thrilled to have his followers denigrate the entire Democratic primary field last year, to an eminence grise, someone who must always be consulted about everything economic.
The Bernie Bros hate Tanden. The major attacks on her come from the Far Left, which paints her as some kind of corporate warmonger who physically attacked someone (she is probably 5’2″,105 or so). What i do know is that if the Democrats think that going further left on economics is going to help them keep a majority, they are totally wrong, and we will end up with someone really bad running things. The thing is, i don’t think they care. I am betting that Sanders really wants Tanden to be withdrawn, so he doesn’t have to blow his cover by voting against her. And i think that she knows a good deal more about economics than he does.