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solarbirdPeople are seriously downplaying Donkeyballs Donald's threat to adjourn Congress. He certainly cannot do it himself, that's true. But he could if Moscow Mitch went along with it. All he'd have to do is set up that "disagreement" with the House, and... well. There you'd go.
This is a massive deal and people are saying - even on the left - that it's just more trolling. It's fucking well not. But he does need Moscow Mitch's help.
As to why McConnell would go along, picture this:
Trump - or rather, the Heritage Foundation, he won't do the work - preps a huge list of recess appointments. Qualifications? Ffft, fuck that. Just names, baby. And a lot of 'em.
He adjourns Congress for a day, a week, whatever. However long it takes to sign all the papers.
Congress returns. Moscow Mitch continues to block everything and chortle about it like he does, the absolute motherfucker.
Result: mass cram-through of Trumpist judges and other appointees without hearings or Democratic holds.
From McConnell's standpoint, what's the downside?
And now, the news.
----- 1 -----
Wendell Potter
twitter.com/wendellpotter
14 April 2020
https://twitter.com/wendellpotter/status/1250225405732073472
[THREAD]
IMPORTANT: Will be very interesting tomorrow when the nation’s biggest insurer UnitedHealthGroup announces its recent earnings. Why? As ER docs & other physicians risk their lives treating #COVID19 patients, UnitedHealth is playing games to rake in profits. Let me explain: (1/10)
To maximize profits, insurers like to squeeze doctors into taking bad contracts. This hurts patients by limiting the number of doctors in network, and hurts doctors by nickel and diming them. But know who gains from this? Health insurance execs. I know - I used to be one. (2/10)
As we all were bracing for the pandemic, UnitedHealth began notifying ER docs, radiologists & anesthesiologists that their contracts would be terminated without cause if they didn’t agree to much lower reimbursement, forcing many to accept pay cuts up to 60% -- or else. (3/10)
[CONTINUES AT THREAD]
----- 2 -----
GOP lawmakers, protesters call on DeWine to begin re-opening Ohio
By Anna Staver and Cole Behrens
Posted Apr 14, 2020 at 7:34 AM
https://www.beaconjournal.com/news/20200414/gop-lawmakers-protesters-call-on-dewine-to-begin-re-opening-ohio
A growing chorus of Ohio’s Republican lawmakers want Gov. Mike DeWine to set a date for the first phases of re-opening businesses, schools and public places.
“We need to get the economy open, even if that means social distancing of some sort for months to come,” Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, wrote in a Facebook post. “We can’t stay like this much longer, and the hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who’ve lost their jobs or the thousands of small business owners can’t keep doing this either, or their lives will be irreparably destroyed.”
At the same time, President Donald Trump contends it’s up to him, not governors like DeWine, to establish a timeline to re-open the country.
“When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total,” Trump said during his daily coronavirus briefing Monday after being asked about governors’ authority.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS WAS BEFORE THE WALKBACK ON REOPEN AUTHORITY]
----- 3 -----
Aaron Rupar
twitter.com/atrupar
15 April 2020
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1250477451307823106
people are owning the libs by waving Trump flags at Michigan's pro-coronavirus rally
[SEE ALSO REPLY]
Dennis Livingston
twitter.com/dennis_14_
Replying to
twitter.com/atrupar
15 April 2020
https://twitter.com/dennis_14_/status/1250481484324052994
Here’s another flag that’s flying in Lansing today... let’s protest the stay at home order by flying a confederate flag....
[EDITOR: Due to disinformation campaigns, I verified that the photo was not of a pre-existing event. I can also verify its location as being part of the protest location, to wit: https://goo.gl/maps/7F8VRE3GrgeqK7Yw9 ]
----- 4 -----
Washington’s successful vote-by-mail system wasn’t built overnight
Many states are looking for guidance on conducting their own 2020 elections by mail, but Washington state officials warn it won’t be easy.
by Donna Gordon Blankinship
April 15, 2020
https://crosscut.com/2020/04/washingtons-successful-vote-mail-system-wasnt-built-overnight
State officials across the nation are turning to Washington state for advice on how to set up a vote-by-mail system before the November presidential election, but officials say that question is just the first of many they should be asking.
Secretary of State Kim Wyman, who is in charge of Washington’s election system, and King County Elections Director Julie Wise, who runs elections in the county where more than a third of Washington voters fill out a ballot, said the list of questions other states need to answer in order to effectively implement vote-by-mail is long and complicated.
And mid-April may be too late to start making the switch from a mostly in-person system to a vote-at-home configuration, said Wise, who worked on in-person voting for a decade before moving, along with the state of Washington, to vote-by-mail elections in 2011.
“We’ve been at it for a decade. It’s not an easy lift to make that transition,” said Wise, between meetings to plan for a November election that could change dramatically — even in one of the nation’s five vote-by-mail states — because of the ongoing threat of the coronavirus.
----- 5 -----
The Protests in Michigan Have Signaled the Nonsense Is Coming
Coronavirus lockdowns may trigger the next Tea Party-style movement.
By Charles P. Pierce
Apr 15, 2020
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a32160723/michigan-protests-coronavirus-lockdown-conservatives/
On Wednesday, there was a protest in Michigan against Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order. It had a spiffy name—“Operation: Gridlock”—and it had a spiffy display of, among other banners, the Confederate battle flag. The protest represented tens of actual voters whom Whitmer undoubtedly has lost. But what that protest represents is not half as funny as this bunch of angry shut-ins made it look on Wednesday. From The Daily Beast:
The acting director of the Office of National Intelligence is encouraging citizens to break local laws, endangering themselves and others, in the middle of a pandemic. Of all the screwy moments that we have experienced since the founding of Camp Runamuck, this is going to rank very close to the top. And it is not going to be a surprise to anyone if another AstroTurf movement similar to the Tea Party rises, especially if the president* “opens up” the country at the beginning of May.
----- 6 -----
'Operation Gridlock': Convoy in Michigan's capital protests stay-at-home orders
Protesters caused a traffic jam around the capitol building in Lansing.
By Bill Hutchinson
April 15, 2020
https://abcnews.go.com/US/convoy-protesting-stay-home-orders-targets-michigans-capital/story?id=70138816
For three decades, Meshawn Maddock and her family have run A-1 Bail Bonds in Milford, Michigan. But just a few days ago, she said she was forced to lay off her last three employees due to courts being shuttered and jails being emptied to blunt the spread of coronavirus in the hard-hit state.
Instead of staying in her house, adhering to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's stay-at-home orders, Maddock drove 60 miles from her residence to Lansing, the state capitol, to join a convoy of motorists Wednesday afternoon protesting the governor's pandemic directive and calling on state leaders to allow small businesses to reopen so employees can get back to work.
----- 7 -----
Holly Figueroa O'Reilly
twitter.com/AynRandPaulRyan
15 April 2020
It's COVID-19 because it was discovered in 2019, you fucking idiot, not because there were 18 strains of COVID before it.
JFC these fucking people...
Kellyanne Conway: "This is COVID-19, not COVID-1 folks..."
[EMBEDDED VIDEO AT LINK of Kellyanne Conway]
----- 8 -----
Pennsylvania state senate votes to override governor's stay-at-home order
By Zack Budryk - 04/15/20
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/493060-pennsylvania-state-senate-votes-to-override-governors-stay-at-home-order
The Pennsylvania state senate on Wednesday sent a bill that would partially lift the lockdown on most of the state’s businesses to Gov. Tom Wolf’s (D) desk.
The measure, Senate Bill 613, would require the governor’s office to align with federal guidelines in determining which businesses will be allowed to reopen during the pandemic, allowing all those that can safely operate with mitigation strategies under Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency guidelines.
The measure passed the senate 29-21 Wednesday after passing the state House 107-95 Tuesday.
The Republican senate also approved a bill that would allow county governments to implement their own plans to reopen independent of the state’s plan.
----- 9 -----
The virus-fighting agency Trump gutted (it’s not the WHO)
Under the US president, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has retreated from the international leadership role it once played.
By SARAH WHEATON, ASHLEIGH FURLONG and JOANNE KENEN
04/15/2020
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/the-virus-fighting-agency-trump-gutted-its-not-the-who-188666
Donald Trump may be threatening to defund the World Health Organization, the United Nations agency he accuses of “severely mismanaging” the coronavirus epidemic.
But diplomats and public health experts at the WHO and elsewhere say the U.S. president has already gutted the agency that has traditionally taken the lead in battling global pandemics: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC is the world’s pre-eminent disease-fighting body. Its staff of more than 20,000 people is mostly based in Atlanta, but they’re also spread around the U.S. and dozens of countries
The agency is the model for the much smaller European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, as well as similar agencies in Africa and around the globe. It played a major role in eradicating smallpox, as well as the near-elimination of polio. Globally, it won acclaim for helping fight AIDS, Ebola and Zika.
“Almost every major outbreak has seen the United States step up and lead, and we’re seeing exactly the opposite with President Trump,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.
The CDC has become a “nonentity” in the coronavirus fight, said Ilona Kickbusch, a WHO adviser and founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of Geneva.
“It was a highly professional, trusted organization, and they’re gone basically,” she added. “It’s a tragedy for global health.”
----- 10 -----
Trump threatens to adjourn Congress to get his nominees but faces obstacles in Senate
April 15, 2020
By Mike DeBonis and Colby Itkowitz
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/trump-threatens-to-adjourn-congress-to-get-his-nominees-through/
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump threatened Wednesday to try to force Congress to adjourn so he could fill his administration’s vacancies without Senate approval, the second time this week he has claimed unprecedented executive authority amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The president cited a never-exercised constitutional power to shut down Congress if the House and Senate are in disagreement over adjourning, pushing both the executive and legislative branches into uncharted territory.
...
Article II, section 3 of the Constitution says the president “may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.”
Rep. Justin Amash, I-Mich., quickly tweeted that Trump could not take such a step if the House did not vote to adjourn.
“Without one chamber participating in this improper scheme, this action would be unconstitutional. The president has no general, unilateral power to adjourn Congress. He may do so only in the limited ‘Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment,’ ” Amash wrote.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the House Judiciary Committee who taught constitutional law, said in an interview that Trump’s idea of “dissolving an assembly comes out of a dictator’s handbook. That’s banana republic stuff.”
Raskin said no other president has “has tried to force a collision between the House and the Senate to try and indefinitely adjourn one of the houses. . . . That would provoke a true constitutional crisis. The president has just never reconciled himself to the existence of other branches” of government.
Trump suggested that the courts would have the final say.
“They know they’ve been warned and they’ve been warned right now. If they don’t approve it, then we’re going to go this route and we’ll probably be challenged in court and we’ll see who wins,” Trump said when asked if there was a timeline on his threat.
This is a massive deal and people are saying - even on the left - that it's just more trolling. It's fucking well not. But he does need Moscow Mitch's help.
As to why McConnell would go along, picture this:
Trump - or rather, the Heritage Foundation, he won't do the work - preps a huge list of recess appointments. Qualifications? Ffft, fuck that. Just names, baby. And a lot of 'em.
He adjourns Congress for a day, a week, whatever. However long it takes to sign all the papers.
Congress returns. Moscow Mitch continues to block everything and chortle about it like he does, the absolute motherfucker.
Result: mass cram-through of Trumpist judges and other appointees without hearings or Democratic holds.
From McConnell's standpoint, what's the downside?
And now, the news.
- UnitedHealth is playing games to rake in profits.
- GOP lawmakers, protesters call on DeWine to begin re-opening Ohio
- people are owning the libs by waving Trump flags at Michigan's pro-coronavirus rally [EDITOR: Also, of course, Confederate flags]
- Washington’s successful vote-by-mail system wasn’t built overnight
- 'Operation Gridlock': Convoy in Michigan's capital protests stay-at-home orders
- Kellyanne Conway: "This is COVID-19, not COVID-1 folks..."
- Pennsylvania state senate votes to override governor's stay-at-home order
- The virus-fighting agency Trump gutted (it’s not the WHO)
- Trump threatens to adjourn Congress to get his nominees but faces obstacles in Senate
- Trump threatens to adjourn Congress to get his nominees but faces obstacles in Senate
----- 1 -----
Wendell Potter
twitter.com/wendellpotter
14 April 2020
https://twitter.com/wendellpotter/status/1250225405732073472
[THREAD]
IMPORTANT: Will be very interesting tomorrow when the nation’s biggest insurer UnitedHealthGroup announces its recent earnings. Why? As ER docs & other physicians risk their lives treating #COVID19 patients, UnitedHealth is playing games to rake in profits. Let me explain: (1/10)
To maximize profits, insurers like to squeeze doctors into taking bad contracts. This hurts patients by limiting the number of doctors in network, and hurts doctors by nickel and diming them. But know who gains from this? Health insurance execs. I know - I used to be one. (2/10)
As we all were bracing for the pandemic, UnitedHealth began notifying ER docs, radiologists & anesthesiologists that their contracts would be terminated without cause if they didn’t agree to much lower reimbursement, forcing many to accept pay cuts up to 60% -- or else. (3/10)
[CONTINUES AT THREAD]
----- 2 -----
GOP lawmakers, protesters call on DeWine to begin re-opening Ohio
By Anna Staver and Cole Behrens
Posted Apr 14, 2020 at 7:34 AM
https://www.beaconjournal.com/news/20200414/gop-lawmakers-protesters-call-on-dewine-to-begin-re-opening-ohio
A growing chorus of Ohio’s Republican lawmakers want Gov. Mike DeWine to set a date for the first phases of re-opening businesses, schools and public places.
“We need to get the economy open, even if that means social distancing of some sort for months to come,” Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, wrote in a Facebook post. “We can’t stay like this much longer, and the hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who’ve lost their jobs or the thousands of small business owners can’t keep doing this either, or their lives will be irreparably destroyed.”
At the same time, President Donald Trump contends it’s up to him, not governors like DeWine, to establish a timeline to re-open the country.
“When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total,” Trump said during his daily coronavirus briefing Monday after being asked about governors’ authority.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS WAS BEFORE THE WALKBACK ON REOPEN AUTHORITY]
----- 3 -----
Aaron Rupar
twitter.com/atrupar
15 April 2020
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1250477451307823106
people are owning the libs by waving Trump flags at Michigan's pro-coronavirus rally
[SEE ALSO REPLY]
Dennis Livingston
twitter.com/dennis_14_
Replying to
twitter.com/atrupar
15 April 2020
https://twitter.com/dennis_14_/status/1250481484324052994
Here’s another flag that’s flying in Lansing today... let’s protest the stay at home order by flying a confederate flag....
[EDITOR: Due to disinformation campaigns, I verified that the photo was not of a pre-existing event. I can also verify its location as being part of the protest location, to wit: https://goo.gl/maps/7F8VRE3GrgeqK7Yw9 ]
----- 4 -----
Washington’s successful vote-by-mail system wasn’t built overnight
Many states are looking for guidance on conducting their own 2020 elections by mail, but Washington state officials warn it won’t be easy.
by Donna Gordon Blankinship
April 15, 2020
https://crosscut.com/2020/04/washingtons-successful-vote-mail-system-wasnt-built-overnight
State officials across the nation are turning to Washington state for advice on how to set up a vote-by-mail system before the November presidential election, but officials say that question is just the first of many they should be asking.
Secretary of State Kim Wyman, who is in charge of Washington’s election system, and King County Elections Director Julie Wise, who runs elections in the county where more than a third of Washington voters fill out a ballot, said the list of questions other states need to answer in order to effectively implement vote-by-mail is long and complicated.
And mid-April may be too late to start making the switch from a mostly in-person system to a vote-at-home configuration, said Wise, who worked on in-person voting for a decade before moving, along with the state of Washington, to vote-by-mail elections in 2011.
“We’ve been at it for a decade. It’s not an easy lift to make that transition,” said Wise, between meetings to plan for a November election that could change dramatically — even in one of the nation’s five vote-by-mail states — because of the ongoing threat of the coronavirus.
----- 5 -----
The Protests in Michigan Have Signaled the Nonsense Is Coming
Coronavirus lockdowns may trigger the next Tea Party-style movement.
By Charles P. Pierce
Apr 15, 2020
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a32160723/michigan-protests-coronavirus-lockdown-conservatives/
On Wednesday, there was a protest in Michigan against Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order. It had a spiffy name—“Operation: Gridlock”—and it had a spiffy display of, among other banners, the Confederate battle flag. The protest represented tens of actual voters whom Whitmer undoubtedly has lost. But what that protest represents is not half as funny as this bunch of angry shut-ins made it look on Wednesday. From The Daily Beast:
The tension has prompted Republican lawmakers and supporters of the president to publicly call for Americans to defy their local orders, claiming they infringe on constitutional rights. On Monday, Richard Grenell, acting director of the Office of National Intelligence and the U.S. ambassador to Germany, posted a photo of the Bill of Rights on Instagram with a title “Signed Permission Slip to Leave Your House.” Below the post, in the caption, Grenell wrote “Love this!” A reporter tweeted the post after its publishing saying: “Seems the top US intelligence chief ADNI
The acting director of the Office of National Intelligence is encouraging citizens to break local laws, endangering themselves and others, in the middle of a pandemic. Of all the screwy moments that we have experienced since the founding of Camp Runamuck, this is going to rank very close to the top. And it is not going to be a surprise to anyone if another AstroTurf movement similar to the Tea Party rises, especially if the president* “opens up” the country at the beginning of May.
----- 6 -----
'Operation Gridlock': Convoy in Michigan's capital protests stay-at-home orders
Protesters caused a traffic jam around the capitol building in Lansing.
By Bill Hutchinson
April 15, 2020
https://abcnews.go.com/US/convoy-protesting-stay-home-orders-targets-michigans-capital/story?id=70138816
For three decades, Meshawn Maddock and her family have run A-1 Bail Bonds in Milford, Michigan. But just a few days ago, she said she was forced to lay off her last three employees due to courts being shuttered and jails being emptied to blunt the spread of coronavirus in the hard-hit state.
Instead of staying in her house, adhering to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's stay-at-home orders, Maddock drove 60 miles from her residence to Lansing, the state capitol, to join a convoy of motorists Wednesday afternoon protesting the governor's pandemic directive and calling on state leaders to allow small businesses to reopen so employees can get back to work.
----- 7 -----
Holly Figueroa O'Reilly
twitter.com/AynRandPaulRyan
15 April 2020
It's COVID-19 because it was discovered in 2019, you fucking idiot, not because there were 18 strains of COVID before it.
JFC these fucking people...
Kellyanne Conway: "This is COVID-19, not COVID-1 folks..."
[EMBEDDED VIDEO AT LINK of Kellyanne Conway]
----- 8 -----
Pennsylvania state senate votes to override governor's stay-at-home order
By Zack Budryk - 04/15/20
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/493060-pennsylvania-state-senate-votes-to-override-governors-stay-at-home-order
The Pennsylvania state senate on Wednesday sent a bill that would partially lift the lockdown on most of the state’s businesses to Gov. Tom Wolf’s (D) desk.
The measure, Senate Bill 613, would require the governor’s office to align with federal guidelines in determining which businesses will be allowed to reopen during the pandemic, allowing all those that can safely operate with mitigation strategies under Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency guidelines.
The measure passed the senate 29-21 Wednesday after passing the state House 107-95 Tuesday.
The Republican senate also approved a bill that would allow county governments to implement their own plans to reopen independent of the state’s plan.
----- 9 -----
The virus-fighting agency Trump gutted (it’s not the WHO)
Under the US president, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has retreated from the international leadership role it once played.
By SARAH WHEATON, ASHLEIGH FURLONG and JOANNE KENEN
04/15/2020
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/the-virus-fighting-agency-trump-gutted-its-not-the-who-188666
Donald Trump may be threatening to defund the World Health Organization, the United Nations agency he accuses of “severely mismanaging” the coronavirus epidemic.
But diplomats and public health experts at the WHO and elsewhere say the U.S. president has already gutted the agency that has traditionally taken the lead in battling global pandemics: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC is the world’s pre-eminent disease-fighting body. Its staff of more than 20,000 people is mostly based in Atlanta, but they’re also spread around the U.S. and dozens of countries
The agency is the model for the much smaller European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, as well as similar agencies in Africa and around the globe. It played a major role in eradicating smallpox, as well as the near-elimination of polio. Globally, it won acclaim for helping fight AIDS, Ebola and Zika.
“Almost every major outbreak has seen the United States step up and lead, and we’re seeing exactly the opposite with President Trump,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.
The CDC has become a “nonentity” in the coronavirus fight, said Ilona Kickbusch, a WHO adviser and founder of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of Geneva.
“It was a highly professional, trusted organization, and they’re gone basically,” she added. “It’s a tragedy for global health.”
----- 10 -----
Trump threatens to adjourn Congress to get his nominees but faces obstacles in Senate
April 15, 2020
By Mike DeBonis and Colby Itkowitz
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/trump-threatens-to-adjourn-congress-to-get-his-nominees-through/
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump threatened Wednesday to try to force Congress to adjourn so he could fill his administration’s vacancies without Senate approval, the second time this week he has claimed unprecedented executive authority amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The president cited a never-exercised constitutional power to shut down Congress if the House and Senate are in disagreement over adjourning, pushing both the executive and legislative branches into uncharted territory.
...
Article II, section 3 of the Constitution says the president “may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.”
Rep. Justin Amash, I-Mich., quickly tweeted that Trump could not take such a step if the House did not vote to adjourn.
“Without one chamber participating in this improper scheme, this action would be unconstitutional. The president has no general, unilateral power to adjourn Congress. He may do so only in the limited ‘Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment,’ ” Amash wrote.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the House Judiciary Committee who taught constitutional law, said in an interview that Trump’s idea of “dissolving an assembly comes out of a dictator’s handbook. That’s banana republic stuff.”
Raskin said no other president has “has tried to force a collision between the House and the Senate to try and indefinitely adjourn one of the houses. . . . That would provoke a true constitutional crisis. The president has just never reconciled himself to the existence of other branches” of government.
Trump suggested that the courts would have the final say.
“They know they’ve been warned and they’ve been warned right now. If they don’t approve it, then we’re going to go this route and we’ll probably be challenged in court and we’ll see who wins,” Trump said when asked if there was a timeline on his threat.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-16 11:19 pm (UTC)