I’m looking forward to seeing how McConnell will reply to that volley. I expect that he will…turtle up.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’m looking forward to seeing how McConnell will reply to that volley. I expect that he will…turtle up.
It won’t work. Conservatives have maintained their big tent by surgically excising their shame.
He will ignore it and do nothing. This election proved that he can pretty much say and do whatever he wants and not worry about ramifications over it. I mean, the other day he was attacking democrats for the unprecedented suggestion that they’d block a supreme court nominee. I doubt he even knows how to spell shame
So every once in a while, in the interests of trying to understand the enemy, I go over and swallow my bile and read Foxnews. Today there is an article almost exactly like this, making fun of the hypocritical Democrats who tried to rush things through in 2008 but are insisting on proper procedures now. And I’m afraid I believe them.
Often, false equivalence is false. But sometimes it isn’t. If Anyone can point me to a politician of either party who has said “These are my beliefs, so I’m sticking to them now even though their application would be bad for my party,” I would be very impressed.
Which Democrats are these? The real-world American Democrats sat on their hands and did nothing in 2008 and are mostly happy to capitulate to Trump now.
Stop reading Faux News.
That’s like visiting the slymepit to understand the enemy, I tried that once, it was a bad idea.
Did Fox News really say 2008? I wouldn’t be surprised. But cabinet confirmations for the first Obama administration actually occurred in 2009. And I don’t recall which Democrats argued that the new president’s nominees should be exempt from background checks. Would someone please name these mythical creatures? And here are the actual dates when Obama’s first cabinet officers were confirmed (a few were tardy because original nominees withdrew):
Secretary of State Clinton, January 21
Secretary of the Treasury Geithner, January 26
Attorney General Holder, February 2
Secretary of the Interior Salazar, January 21
Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack, January 21
Secretary of Commerce Locke, March 24
Secretary of Labor Solis, February 24
Secretary of Health & Human Services Sebelius, April 28
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Donovan, January 27
Secretary of Transportation LaHood, January 23
Secretary of Energy Chu, January 29
Secretary of Education Duncan, January 21
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Shinseki, January 20
Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano, January 21
brucegee1962 — You might check this Wikipedia article: Confirmations of Barack Obama’s Cabinet.
I don’t have time to read all of it, but I see nothing about “rushing” the nominations. What I have read suggests some deliberation.
Clinton as Secretary of State was complicated mostly because of her position as a Senator. She was nominated on December 1. Hearings started on January 13th, and the confirmed her on the 15th. She was sworn in on the 21st, the day after Obama. I guess that might be a rush job.
Tim Geitner was nominated as Secretary of the Treasury in late November and confirmed January 26th. There were issues with his nomination because of unpaid self-employment taxes. We still don’t know anything about TweeterDum’s taxes, and I’m not sure we’ll see anything from his boy club.
Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense under Bush, was carried over. So he was a no brainer.
Bill Richardson was nominated for Secretary of Commerce, but withdrew a month later (before the inauguration) because of federal investigations of his political donors…I can hardly imagine Mitch and TweeterDumb doing any such thing, although there are some obvious possibilities for conflicts of interest. He was replaced by Judd Gregg, a Republican Senator from New Hampshire. McConnell was opposed to his nomination because the Democratic governor of New Hampshire would probably select a Democrat to replace Gregg, thus giving Democrats a super-majority in the Senate. Gregg eventually withdrew.
Hilda Solis was not confirmed as Secretary of Labor until February 24, 2009…that’s over a month after the inauguration.
Obama nominated Tom Daschle as Secretary of Health & Human Services, but he withdrew in early February because he had received speaking fees to healthcare providers and received $16 million for consulting with healthcare providers. His replacement, Kathleen Sebelius was not confirmed until April 28, 2009…nearly two months after Daschle’s withdrawal. Hardly a rush job.
As is well known and documented, Republicans have stonewalled on approving many of Obama’s nominations to court positions, including the Supreme Court. I don’t recall any party doing that to any president.
In addition, I don’t recall Democrats at the time rushing a raft of legislation to fundamentally change things like, oh, I don’t know, medical insurance, Medicare, Social Security, and so forth. There is ample evidence that Republicans see this as their moment to secure the revolution they have dreamed of for decades, a revolution to dismantle the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act, ACA, and ultimately Roe vs Wade and civil liberties and equal protection for the LGBTQ community.
While I would agree that Democrats are far from perfect, and are culpable for many of the social and political ills we face, I don’t find them to be as staunchly partisan as Republicans nor as willing to throw the country under the bus to fulfill their ideological dreams.
And so in the comments we yet again see the problem. If you read a Faux News article fact checking BEFORE passing the bullshit on is essential otherwise you are doing their job for them.
We were ethics lawyers for Bush and Obama. Trump’s cabinet hearings must be delayed (published yesterday, 9-Jan-2017):
Another case of “do as I say, not as I do”
the developments give all the indications that it is going to be one very interesting year!
uncle frigy
Perhaps. However the reality-based community needs to avoid having its own version of the facist’s echo chamber (as well as other facist tricks such as lying or ignoring the inconvenient). As such, knowing what faux et al is saying is both useful (know the opposition) as well as a reminder (don’t lie and become like “them”).
Related to this is what may be or become a (semi-)regular column in the Granuid, Burst your bubble: five conservative reads for this week (the link is to the most recent known-to-me edition): “Liberals are more likely than conservatives to go out of their way to avoid opposing points of view, a study shows — let’s change that in the new year”. This is a series of excerpts of, and commentary on, (what usually seems to be) the less kooky ringwing / wingnut opinions.
Liberals are MORE likely to go out of their way to avoid opposing points of view? Bullshit. I visit liberal and conservative forums and blogs all over the place. It’s the conservative ones that most often delete posts and ban dissenters. Liberal ones just criticise and provide rebuttals unless someone begins making threats or just repeating the same nonsense over and over.
The thing missed about the “rush” jobs for Obama was that he had followed the process in both terms. They’d gotten their background checks and vetting done, things had been disclosed, etc. The hearings were done to make sure the transition was in place because they did the work before hand.
What’s happening here is that they are trying to get the same fast track working but without the background and ground work (what we liberals like to call “research” and “facts”) being done. It’s probably easier to paint it as obstruction, since that fits the narrative they want to spin, but that doesn’t make it true.