All Things Biden: Is It Over Yet?

[Tero]

The legislative session is wrapping up by August. The wishful thinking for the voting rights bill is not going to work. Will Manchin break?

Robert Reich: Republicans didn’t compromise with Democrats when they were in power — they passed their giant 2017 tax cut for the wealthy and corporations by reconciliation, and McConnell changed the filibuster rules so that he could ram through all of Trump’s right-wing judges with a simple majority. Now McConnell is already sketching out how he’s going to block Biden’s agenda if Republicans take back control of the Senate next year — and his plan will likely come to fruition if Senate Democrats don’t abolish the filibuster and deliver on their promises to the American people. Time is running out. They must act now, before it’s too late.

[Tero]

[Tero]

[Sean Hayden]

I get the joke is Trump, but seriously she's oh so familiar with our history right, definitely believable...

[Tero]

Chuk Todd summarizes summit result: the ambassadors can be ambassadors again.

[Tero]

Good conference for Biden. The anti-Trump. Fuck you, Putin!

[Tero]

Trump was on Hannity (Fox) and Hannity repeatedly phrased questions with "if you were still president." Trump did not object.

That was the concession. He is just going to pretend run for 2024 now.

[Tero]

Franken:

On a Thursday evening in July 2009, one of us had just cast his last vote of the week on the U.S. Senate floor and wished a Republican colleague a good weekend by saying, "I'll see you on Monday!"

The colleague replied, "Oh, I won't be here on Monday. It's a cloture vote."

That's when the senator realized just how egregiously his Republican colleagues were abusing the filibuster. Mitch McConnell was well on his way to filibustering more of former President Barack Obama's executive branch nominees than had been filibustered in the previous 200 years. And yet, only one Republican would have to show up on Monday.

"Why do we have to come up with 60 votes to end a filibuster?" the senator thought to himself. "Why don't they have to come up with 41 votes to sustain a filibuster? That way I could work in my state on Monday. Or even better — fundraise!"

Later that weekend the senator talked to the other one of us, the political scientist, who explained how the filibuster was no longer serving its original purpose. Instead of giving the minority a chance to stop legislation it strongly opposed, the filibuster had become a tactic to eat up time.

It wasn't uncommon for McConnell to object to, say, an Obama appeals court or Cabinet nominee, forcing first a two-day delay to get a cloture motion to "ripen," and then spending days till Democrats finally got 60 votes (in July 2009, Ted Kennedy lay dying in Hyannis Port) and then waiting another 30 hours of "post-cloture debate" after which the nominee was confirmed — sometimes unanimously.

The strategy very often had nothing to do with principled opposition to a nominee, or in other cases, to a bill. It was only deployed to eat up hours and hours of Senate legislative time to bollix up the Senate and hurt Obama and Democrats.

Both of us had grown up in St. Louis Park where all the Republicans were reasonable, all the Democrats were civic-minded, and all the children were pro-Israel. The political scientist (OK, by now you should've out figured out that's Norm) had gone off to Michigan to get his Ph.D. in political science. The senator (Al) to New York for a degree in sketch comedy.

Now we were both in Washington, D.C. And it didn't take a Ph.D. in political science for Al to see that the Senate was all messed up. Both had grown up during the fabled civil rights era, when Strom Thurmond, Richard Russell and a legion of Southern segregationists had filibustered against civil rights and voting rights, taking to the Senate floor for hours (Thurmond once for 24 hours straight, with either a cast iron bladder or a catheter) to defend their position.

Not anymore. Why? The biggest reason was an inadvertent effect from a bipartisan change in the Senate rules in 1975. For many decades, the requirement to stop debate and move to a vote, in the Senate's Rule XXII, was two-thirds of senators present and voting. The Senate changed the rule to three-fifths of the entire Senate. On the surface, it was a change to make ending filibusters easier. But it actually raised the bar.

With a present and voting standard, the majority facing a filibuster could go around-the-clock, and minority senators would have to be there, waiting for the possibility of a vote. If, say, only 60 senators showed up, it would take just 40 votes to invoke cloture and move to a vote on the underlying bill or nominee. The burden was on the minority to be there.

And that meant that starting a filibuster could bring discomfort and stress to the minority. It also meant that the drama of an around-the-clock session would bring serious national attention to the issue, forcing the minority to explain why they opposed something widely popular with the public.

The change in the rule perversely put the burden on the majority. Want to go around-the-clock? The minority needs only to deputize one or two of its members to stay in the Senate in order to prevent a unanimous consent agreement to move to a vote. But the majority would have to stick around to make a quorum to stay in session. Meaning it was the majority senators who would have to sleep on lumpy cots off the Senate floor. But unless they had the 60 votes, that would serve no purpose.

Then came Mitch McConnell. And Barack Obama. Honeymoon? Hah. It is clear McConnell is ready to do the same mass obstruction to block all of President Joe Biden's, and Democrats', priorities in 2021.

What to do now? Flip the numbers. Instead of requiring 60 votes to end debate, require 41 to continue debate. Then, the majority leader could call votes any time the Senate was in session, and the minority would have to show up. Including for votes at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., coming off their lumpy cots off the Senate floor. Around the clock. Including 87-year-old Chuck Grassley and both 86-year-olds Richard Shelby and Jim Inhofe. And soon-to-be-79-year-old Mitch McConnell. No Mondays off while only the majority had to be there. Weekends in D.C., including for the 17 Republicans up for re-election in 2022, who want to be back home campaigning.

This kind of simple change would not eliminate filibusters. In fact, it would restore their original purpose — for the minority to demonstrate when it really cares about something, maybe even leading to, oh, constructive compromises. It would take away the incentive to use the tactic on every bill as a delaying device and begin to limit its use to high profile legislation.

Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have made clear that they are adamantly opposed to eliminating the filibuster. OK. Great! They revere the tradition of a minority willing to go, literally, to the mattresses for something they believe deeply. So they should be enthusiastic about supporting a rule that provides just that.

Al Franken represented Minnesota in the U.S. Senate from 2009-2018. He is host of "The Al Franken Podcast."
Norman Ornstein is an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and contributing editor at the Atlantic.
https://www.startribune.com/make-the-fi ... 600020321/

[L'Emmerdeur]

The senile, doddering old fuck managed to fool Putin, but he's not fooling the perspicacious right wing media.

Or maybe Putin is just lying, and secretly ate Biden's lunch.

'Putin Hails Biden After Russian Senator Questions U.S. Leader's Fitness'

Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed the door on state-media speculation that his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden was too old to go toe-to-toe with him after the two met Wednesday for their first summit.

“The image of President Biden that our, and even American, media present has nothing to do with reality,” Putin said in response to a Russian senator’s question if the U.S. president was suffering from what she called “dementia.”

“Biden’s a professional, you have to be very attentive with him so as not to miss anything. He doesn’t let anything get by, I assure you,” Putin, 68, said in televised comments.

Russian media have been questioning the 78-year-old U.S. president’s mental capacity at least since he agreed with an interviewer in March that Putin is a “killer.” During coverage of the summit in Switzerland, the country’s main 24-hour news channel repeatedly observed that while Putin spoke from memory, Biden had note cards.

“We all do that,” Putin said Thursday in his colleague’s defense.

[L'Emmerdeur]

The records of the interaction between Putin and Biden will go in the National Archive at the end of his presidency per US law, so historians may eventually know precisely what took place. The same cannot be said of Trump's cosy visits with Putin.

[L'Emmerdeur]

I admit I didn't see this one coming.

'"Great News": Biden Backs 2002 AUMF Repeal as Schumer Announces Senate Vote'

Just ahead of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announcing a vote on repealing the Iraq war authorization later this year, the White House this week declared its support for legislation to end the 2002 measure—a development welcomed by Democratic lawmakers and progressive groups that have demanded an end to "endless wars."

At issue is Rep. Barbara Lee's (D-Calif.) H.R. 256, which would repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 that passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The repeal measure—whose supporters now include even right-wing groups like Americans for Prosperity—has 134 bipartisan co-sponsors. The House is set to vote on the bill Thursday.

In a statement of administrative policy released (pdf) Monday announcing support for H.R. 256, the Biden administration said that "the United States has no ongoing military activities that rely solely on the 2002 AUMF as a domestic legal basis, and repeal of the 2002 AUMF would likely have minimal impact on current military operations." The statement also declares President Joe Biden's commitment to working "with the Congress on repealing and replacing other existing authorizations of military force."

[L'Emmerdeur]

Oh, and by the way ...

'Biden signs "Juneteenth" bill, asks U.S. to reflect on slavery's "terrible toll"'

U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris signed a bill into law on Thursday to make June 19 a federal holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans, as the White House pushes to address the country’s historical injustices.

The bill, which was passed overwhelmingly by the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday after clearing the Senate unanimously, marks the day in 1865 when a Union general informed a group of enslaved people in Texas that they had been made free two years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War.

"Juneteenth marks both a long hard night of slavery subjugation and a promise of a brighter morning to come," Biden said. The day is a reminder of the "terrible toll that slavery took on the country and continues to take."

European colonists first forcibly brought enslaved Africans by ship to the British colonies that became the United States in the 1600s; millions of people were legally owned there until the 13th Amendment passed in 1865.

"Great nations don't ignore their most painful moments...they embrace them," Biden told a room filled with about 80 members of Congress, community leaders and activists including 94-year-old Opal Lee, who campaigned for decades to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Vice President Harris reminded the White House guests that they were gathered in a "house built by enslaved people," and said the holiday would be an occasion to "reaffirm and rededicate ourselves to action."

[pErvinalia]

When does the white man get a holiday?!?

[Brian Peacock]

Cucker Tarlson is going to fulminate on that for weeks.

[Tero]

Biden hires kids of staff members for summer jobs, completely neglecting Hunter:
https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEF ... id=US%3Aen

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden- ... chetti.amp