Welcome to the Monday Good News Roundup, where we work extra hard to bring you the good news about the rise of the Biden Administration and the continued implosion of the Trump administration.
Before we get to the news though, I got some extra special good news: I have a new friend helping finding articles for me for the GNR, you already know my long time collaborator Killer300, well now they will be joined by my other good friend Bhu, who will also hunting down Good news articles for me to post. And together we will be known, collectively, as the Monday GNR Newsroom.
And this week we’ll be starting off with two stories from Bhu, two stories from Killer300, and one from yours truly. So lets get right into it.
Conspiracy theorist and far-right talk radio host Alex Jones, who has promoted Donald Trump to his audience extensively for years, is heard in a newly leaked video expressing disgust at the former president in 2019.
“It’s the truth, and I’m just going to say it. That I wish I never would have fucking met Trump,” Jones says in the footage. “I wish it never would have happened. And it’s not the attacks I’ve been through. I’m so sick of fucking Donald Trump, man. God, I’m fucking sick of him. And I’m not doing this because, like, I’m kissing his fucking ass, you know. It’s, like, I’m sick of it.”
Our first story from Bhu concerns one Alex Jones, disgraced far right radio talk show host and what you would get if a grade school bully found the fortune telling machine from Big and woke up in an adult body. But even he is sick and tired of Trumps bullshit, as the included video indicates. Now when I showed this around someone commented it was obviously staged. Which, okay so what if it is? Either Jones is sincere about his disgust for Trump, or he’s so desperate for cash that he was willing to take fifty bucks from the Southern law Poverty Center to rag on Trump for five minutes. I’m satisfied with it either way.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has compiled a short list of successors in his home state of Kentucky, preparing for the possibility that he does not serve out his full term, Kentucky Republicans tell The Intercept.
The list is topped by his protégé, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, and also includes former United Nations Ambassador Kelly Craft, whose billionaire coal magnate husband is a major McConnell donor, as well as Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a former McConnell Scholar.
Under current law, the power to appoint McConnell’s replacement falls to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. But new legislation McConnell is pushing in the Kentucky General Assembly would strip the governor of that power and put it into the hands of the state GOP.
Senate Minority leader and possible reincarnation of Yertle the Turtle (Who you may recall was a fascist dictator who forced his people to form a giant tower so he could just sit on top of it and look over his domain, until the turtles at the bottom got sick of his crap and threw him off to his doom) Mitch McConnell might be planning an exit strategy. If Mitch leaves, this would be bad for the GOP since he’s probably the only member of the GQP who actually has any brains (And of course he’s trying to change the rules on the way out to keep the Democrat Governor from naming his successor, which is exactly what I expect from the little turd, but hey, don’t go away mad Mitch, just go away. Forever).
As an aside, Yertle the turtle is not one of the six doctor Seuss books that is being pulled for racism. Although I have a feeling that if Yertle had been pulled I don’t think the GQP would be complaining.
But now the Senate is different. Manchin recently said, “We are going to make Joe Biden successful.” That sounds like a cryptic statement, but it’s not too hard to decipher if you look at Manchin’s record. He believes that the people put President Biden and a Democratic Senate in office to get bills passed.
Read: Is Biden’s outreach to Republicans real?
Manchin’s much-publicized commitment to keeping the filibuster rule may seem contrary to his desire to push through legislation. But I don’t think it is. The trend in the Senate is to make exceptions to the filibuster rule, rather than to eliminate it. If an essential bill comes along and Manchin wants it to pass, an exception can be carved out to fit the circumstances and get the job done.
Politically, this path is typical of Manchin, because it keeps his options open. With no filibuster, Manchin might have the 50th-vote power that commentators are so eager to assign to him, but he would also be on the spot for every bill. With the filibuster still nominally in force, the GOP can do all the work on his right flank while he appeals for consensus.
Manchin will certainly flex his muscles when he needs to, especially when it comes to specific issues, including how climate-change legislation might affect his state. But when bills have popular appeal, whether they are sponsored by Republicans or Democrats, I expect Manchin to throw his weight behind them, just as he did when he was governor. And first on the docket is the coronavirus-relief bill. People are hurting, and West Virginians are hurting more than most. There’s going to be a bill, and it can’t come soon enough.
Here is this weeks first article from Killer300, which gives a case for the defense of the action of one Joe Manchin, the current bad boy of the Democratic majority. A guy who has the unenviable job of being a blue senator from the red West Virginia. I know a lot of people are annoyed by his unwillingness to destroy the fillibuster, and his noise making against the COVID bill, but I think it’si important to remember that at the end of the day he’s one of us, he’s on our side, and at the end of the day he’ll do what’s right.
American politics feels quieter with Joe Biden in the White House. The president’s Twitter feed hasn’t gone dark, but it’s gone dull. Biden doesn’t pick needless fights or insert himself into cultural conflicts. It’s easy to go days without hearing anything the president has said, unless you go looking.
But the relative quiet is deceptive: Policy is moving at a breakneck pace. The first weeks of the Biden administration were consumed by a flurry of far-reaching executive orders that reopened America to refugees, rejoined the Paris climate accords and killed the Keystone XL oil pipeline, to name just a few. Now the House has passed, and the Senate is considering, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, a truly sweeping piece of legislation that includes more than a half-dozen policies — like a child tax credit expansion that could cut child poverty by 50 percent — that would be presidency-defining accomplishments on their own.
It goes on. The White House just sent Congress the most ambitious immigration reform bill in years. It midwifed a deal to get Merck to mobilize some of its factories to produce Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, and now Biden is saying there should be enough of a supply for every American adult to get vaccinated by the end of May. Imagine! The administration is also working on an infrastructure package that, if early reports bear out, will be the most transformational piece of climate policy — and perhaps economic policy — in my lifetime. Biden is blitzing.
Hey, remember when we didn’t wake up every morning going “Oh God what did the president do this time?” Well those days are back again. I know for a lot of us we’re still processing what it’s like to have a president whose actually a president. But we’re here. It only gets better from here people, live it up.
But first, the bill has to go back to the other side of the Capitol, where the House -- which already passed its own version of the bill -- is scheduled to vote Tuesday to approve the changes made in the Senate. That vote is expected to succeed on a party line, as it did in the Senate, with a narrow Democratic majority.
Only after the House passes the Senate version would it land on Biden's desk.
After that, the turnaround time -- between it being a more than 600-page bill and money in people's pockets -- could be relatively quick. People could start seeing the $1,400 stimulus payments hit their bank accounts within days of Biden signing the bill -- which is expected to happen soon after the House votes on Tuesday.
Do you like money? Sure we all do, well once the Stimulus bill passes the house on Tuesday, it will hit Biden’s desk, and a lot of us will be getting 1,400 more dollars. I for one can’t wait.
WEE WOO WEE WOOO WE GOT AN INCOMING LAST MINUTE LATE STORY
On Sunday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), a longtime defender of the filibuster, signaled that he might nevertheless be open to filibuster reforms that could make it easier for Democrats to advance their legislative agenda.
In a series of television interviews, Manchin emphasized his support for the filibuster rule, which effectively imposes a 60-vote threshold for most legislative action in the Senate. But he told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd that “if you want to make [filibustering] a little bit more painful — make them stand there and talk — I’m willing to look at any way we can.”
He also reiterated that same point elsewhere on Sunday, telling Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that “[the filibuster] should be painful if you want to use it.”
Okay, So i literally finished the GNR and then Bhu dropped this story on me. Remember when I said Manchin was on our side? VINDICATION BABY. See, I thought this is how the Fillibuster worked anyway, having to actually stand up and talk. But I was informed the GOP can just say a bill is fillibustered and that’s it. So yeah lets change that rule, if McConnell wants to keep playing grim reaper he can run his voice dry doing it.
That does it for regular news, however I have one more bit of business before we go, a book rec: My good friend Killer300 asked that I plug this book: A Paradise built in Hell, the extraordinary communities that arise in disaster. I have not read it myself, but Killer300 swears by it and that’s good enough for me. So check it out if you want.
So that’s it for this week. Have a good Monday morning, stay healthy, stay hopeful, and stay positive. The best is yet to come.
