Biden White House repeats Pelosi’s “vote no and take the dough” charge against Republicans

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be the savviest Democratic elected official of the last 10 years or more. Not only has Pelosi gotten many good Democratic bills passed in the House, she also gave Donald Trump a well-deserved toddler time out more than once. But one of the best things Speaker Pelosi has done is to communicate her points in an effective way. A great example is her phrase “vote no and take the dough” which Pelosi uses to describe Republicans who vote against Democratic-sponsored federal relief and funding, but who then brag, try to take credit, and even engage in ceremonies when such funding arrives in their state or district.

Speaker Pelosi’s first use of “vote no and take the dough” seems to be from last March, when, after every U.S. House and Senate Republican voted no on President Joe Biden‘s COVID relief package and the legislation passed with only Democratic votes, many of those same Republicans went and and bragged to their constituents about the benefits they were bringing in when the money was distributed. Likewise, with the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act beginning to dole out many millions of dollars to local Congressional districts for flood relief and other crucial projects, Speaker Pelosi is keeping a list of House Republicans who voted against the legislation, but who are publicly celebrating the incoming funds. There’s a word for folks who do that, and that word is “hypocrite.”

Today’s Snark: Sarah Palin COVID edition

What Sarah Palin frequently hears

Sometimes, politicians’ words come back to bite them. That seems to be the case this week, as failed Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin‘s defamation trial against The New York Times had to be delayed when Palin tested positive for COVID. Palin had already declared last year that she had been diagnosed with COVID,  but the trial judge in the current case noted that Palin still “is of course unvaccinated.” Indeed, Palin recently stated that she would get the Coronavirus vaccine “over my dead body.” Based on Sarah Palin’s own previous statements (some of them infamous), we can say the following:

1. COVID put its sights on Palin and said, “don’t retreat, reload.”

2. Palin is pallin’ around with COVID.

3. (To Palin) How’s that non-vaccinatiney thing workin’ for ya?

Photo by Ernest, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/l7PycJ

Democrats use MLK Day to push for voting rights

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, Washington, DC

Every year on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we hear platitudes from politicians honoring the fallen civil rights leader. At least Democrats mean their praise of Dr. King sincerely; Republicans clearly do not. Indeed, according to one recent poll, a majority of Republicans do not even think MLK Day should be a national holiday. But yesterday, many Democrats took an effective extra step: they linked Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with voting rights. Specifically, Democrats, including Dr. King’s own children, cited MLK Day to call for passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that has been passed by the U.S. House and is currently pending before the U.S. Senate.

Such linkage between MLK Day and voting rights, for example was all over Twitter:

The Republicans’ War on America

Republican attack on U.S. Capitol

In his February 2021 annual letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett, considered to be the most successful investor of all time, wrote:

Our unwavering conclusion: Never bet against America.

However, looking back at 2021, the Republican Party certainly failed to heed Mr. Buffett’s advice. The Republicans bet against America when they disbelieved and then tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. They bet against America when they incited, supported and funded a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol that was designed to stop the certification of Electoral Votes for then President-elect Joe Biden. They bet against America when they fought, and continue to fight, against sensible COVID protections such as masks, vaccinations, school accommodations, and social distancing. And they bet against America when they side with one of our most dangerous global opponents, Russia, to hurt American democracy.

Surely, the Republicans’ War on America presents some stark campaign fodder for the 2022 elections.

Senator Joe Manchin, worse than a Republican

Sen. Joe Manchin and his Maserati

Last weekend, the U.S. Senate adjourned for the rest of 2021, without passing the Democrats’ signature Build Back Better bill that the U.S. House passed on November 19. Much of the blame for the lack of Senate passage of Build Back Better lies with Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who cynically kept moving the goalposts on what it would take to win his vote, until ultimately he declared that he would not vote for the bill at all.

Of course, Republican Senators were not going to vote for Build Back Better, because it is a Democratic bill that helps President Biden and elected Democrats politically, and helps millions of people across the United States. That means that all 50 Democratic Senate votes (plus, most likely, the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris) would have been needed to pass the bill. And Senator Manchin had at least been going through the motions of negotiating over the Senate bill for weeks, repeatedly proposing cuts to various spending portions and whittling the bill down in size. However, every time an item got cut based on Manchin’s objections, Manchin would name new items that were obstacles to getting his vote, including everything from paid family leave to methane emissions to taxes. Manchin then complained that the bill itself would add to inflation, when in fact experts said the opposite. It eventually became apparent that nothing was going to get Manchin’s vote.

Internet finally blows up over January 6 U.S. Capitol attack

Scene of the Trump crime

Republican Mark Meadows is in the lead to be this week’s Villain of the Week, although he has competition from cohorts such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham of Fox “News,” and as always, Donald Trump. That’s because, after many months of the mainstream media ignoring or downplaying the January 6, 2021 terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol that sought to overturn the election of Joe Biden as President, regular folks finally got fed up enough to light up the airwaves and share incriminating information about the Republicans.

In particular, word got around very quickly on Tuesday, by a vote of 222-208, the U.S. House of Representatives held Meadows in criminal Contempt of Congress. The vote took place after Meadows, a former Republican Congressman and White House Chief of Staff to Trump, who had originally cooperated with the House Committee, suddenly stopped cooperating, defying a subpoena to appear for a deposition, and indeed sued the committee and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attempting to defeat the subpoena for both his deposition and phone records. Before that happened, Meadows had turned over to the Committee a Republican PowerPoint presentation recommending Trump to declare a “National Security Emergency” in order to remain in the presidency rather than turn over power to Biden on Inauguration Day. Meadows had also given the committee text messages he received on January 6 while serving as Trump’s Chief of Staff, including ones from Hannity, Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade of Fox, and several from Donald Trump, Jr. These texts all had the same desperate tone, begging Meadows to get Donald Trump to stop the insurrection at the Capitol. For example, one of Ingraham’s texts read:

Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.

Likewise, Hannity’s January 6 text to Meadows, talking about Trump, was:

Can he make a statement? … Ask people to leave the Capitol.

It’s a Biden Boom: share the news

The Biden Boom

One of the most important stories of 2021 is one that does not get told enough: the Biden Economic Boom. Specifically, in less than 11 months, following the Trump Recession in which millions of jobs were lost, President Joe Biden has presided over a historic economic and jobs recovery. This includes:

–Extraordinary economic growth, estimated to be 7.8 percent this year.

–Income, wage and salary growth all way above the figures for 2018 and 2019.

–Unemployment falling from 6.3 percent in January 2021 (Donald Trump‘s last month in office) to just 4.2 percent last month, a historic drop in such a short time. And jobless claims just hit a new 52-year low.

Indeed, The Hill calls this “the fastest economic recovery in history.”

Moreover, the Biden Boom is no accident, but rather, a result of the Biden administration’s phenomenal efforts to vaccinate Americans against COVID; the American Rescue Plan which put money in the pockets of many Americans; and now the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (which may soon be followed by the Build Back Better Act). It turns out that Americans really do like competence in government, or what we call Good Government, and that is part of the Democratic Party’s brand.

Today’s Snark: Trump bitten by his own words edition

Before being fired, Trump may have infected many

There were news reports this week that, last year, Donald Trump attended the first presidential debate against Joe Biden, as well as rallies, meetings with Gold Star families, and the infamous maskless White House COVID super-spreader party for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, all after learning that he had COVID. While these reports are shocking, and reveal behavior that seems criminally negligent at best, we also can’t help being reminded of a couple of expressions that Trump uses repeatedly to trash his opponents.

In particular, note that first Trump and then Biden (through Trump at the debate) were both exposed to the Coronavirus, but only Trump got infected. And then note that after four years of poor approval ratings, including the historic milestone of never even reaching 50 percent, Trump lost the election to Biden by over seven million popular votes and a very healthy electoral vote margin. So, to use Donald Trump’s own words, it turns out that Trump was both “weak” and “low-rated.”

Photo by Ron Cogswell, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/T1VfZ3

Messaging Maxim #9: Call out the Straw Man

Thanksgiving dinner with a side of Straw Man?

If your Thanksgiving dinner included any lively political discussion, chances are someone brought up a Straw Man argument. This is a type of logical fallacy whereby:

someone takes another person’s argument or point, distorts it or exaggerates it in some kind of extreme way, and then attacks the extreme distortion, as if that is really the claim the first person is making.

In the political arena, Republicans often use the Straw Man against Democratic proposals by making false, overbroad generalizations about the proposals, and then going after the fictional scenario they just concocted. For example, President Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats have proposed, in the Build Back Better legislation that was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, to raise income taxes only on households with over $400,000 annual income. Indeed, many Americans would see lower taxes under the Democratic proposal. But you are hearing Republicans say instead that President Biden and the Democrats want to raise taxes on “middle class Americans.” A similar Republican Straw Man from the past is the PolitiFact Lie of the Year 2010 that President Barack Obama‘s Affordable Care Act was “a government takeover of healthcare,” when in fact the law left our private healthcare and health insurance systems in place. Note that such Straw Man arguments often feed existing political narratives, such as the Republican narratives that Democrats favor “Big Government” and “higher taxes.”

Republican Repetition and the “Fargo” TruCoat scene

Republicans sell politics like selling cars

In one of the early scenes in the Coen Brothers’ 1996 film Fargo,” car salesman (and central figure) Jerry Lundegaard has an exchange with an irate customer and his wife about the unwanted installation of TruCoat on the car they ordered. Here’s part of the exchange, the video for which is linked above:

CUSTOMER
We sat here right in this room and went over this and over this!

JERRY
Yah, but that TruCoat –

CUSTOMER
I sat right here and said I didn’t want no TruCoat!

JERRY
Yah, but I’m sayin’, that TruCoat, you don’t get it and you get oxidization problems. It’ll cost you a heck of lot more’n five hunnert –

CUSTOMER
You’re sittin’ here, you’re talkin’ in circles! You’re talkin’ like we didn’t go over this already!

JERRY
Yah, but this TruCoat –

Not surprisingly, as the scene ends, the salesman has worn down the customer by sticking to and repeating his agenda, and the customer grudgingly pays for something he did not want. This sales tactic is very similar to the Republican Party’s successful use of repetition in the political arena to get what they want, even when most of us do not agree with it.