The Biden Administration

[indy]

The White House is putting out a bunch of tweets with Republicans whining about school loan forgiveness alongside how much in PPP loans they were forgiven. Here is a sample:

[goldenvalley]

My goodness such turmoil over trying to help people that have been victimized by the generations long held concept that a college education will make their lives more profitable in the long run so they need to pursue it even if it means incurring debt. You'd think all the Ivy League grads were getting $200,000 checks upon graduation. This really smacks of SQUIRREL! Look over here at student loan forgiveness and forget all the other stuff that is going on in the country. There are many more life shaking things happening.

[LFC]

Some of the comments in the White House posts about Republicans getting their PPP loans forgiven are great.

[LFC]

No "semi" about it, Joe.

Quote Of The Day

Joe Biden: “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the—I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism.”

[LFC]

I love butthurt Republicans' tears.

Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), who the White House said had $1.4 million PPP loans forgiven, was the first of those called out in the thread to respond.

“Another ignorant attack from a career politician who has never created a single job,” he tweeted. “74 days before midterms, Joe Biden is targeting business owners for protecting their employees from government lockdowns.”

“President Trump always supported American workers and job creators,” he added, wistfully.

Other GOP lawmakers who hadn’t been highlighted by the White House were loath to miss out on the action.

“President Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan could not be more different, despite his lame attempts to draw similarities between the two,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) wrote in an op-ed on Fox Business’ website, explaining his past support of PPP.

“This is a handout that primarily benefits the highly educated and already well-off, the laptop liberals and Marxist misfit activists who have never run a business, made payroll, or worried about something other than what pronouns to use,” he added.

Rep. Bryon Donalds (R-FL), a freshman who identifies himself as “liberty loving” and “pro-Trump,” called the tweets “trash.”

“This is trash coming from an idiotic White House,” he tweeted. “PPP funds were designed to be forgiven, because the government shut down the economy. Student loans were designed to be paid back… I should know I paid mine back earlier this year. Where is my check Joe??”

Some other big names in the MAGA universe were eager to frame the tweets as an attack on business owners.

[LFC]

Jersey, represent! Sounds like she may have been the one behind the hypocrisy exposing tweets about grifting Republicans.

Just five years after interning on Phil Murphy’s 2017 gubernatorial campaign, Livingston native Megan Coyne is on her way to the White House.

Coyne, one of the architects of New Jersey’s hugely successful Twitter account with an attitude departed last week as Murphy’s social media director to join the Biden administration.

“It’s an absolute dream come true to be joining the Office of Digital Strategy as Deputy Director of Platforms,” Coyne said on Twitter on Monday. “So excited for the journey ahead.”

Coyne and her boss at the time, Pearl Gabel, brought life and a quintessential New Jersey manner to a once dull state-run Twitter account that began to take off in 2019.

“Who lets New Jersey have a Twitter?” tweeted someone with 88 followers.

The reply – “Your mom” – had nearly a half-million likes and 85,000 retweets.

More than 439,000 followers watch the wit and sarcasm of New Jersey’s official Twitter account every day, which has garnered national attention.

“Megan Coyne has been an incredibly valuable member of our team, and her humor and wit will be greatly missed in our office,” said Murphy. “Her passion for our state—and fierce defense of Central Jersey—is unparalleled and as the person behind @njgov, Megan’s voice has become synonymous with New Jersey. I wish her the best at the White House.”

As New Jersey’s social media tone setter, Coyne has played nearly every conceivable New Jersey card: the Sopranos, Springsteen and Bon Jovi. She has picked fights with other states, especially in defense of New Jersey’s pizza industry, and has treated the Taylor Ham vs. Pork Roll fairly, even though she knows the real name is Taylor Ham.

Besides the snark, Coyne also played a governmental role managing Murphy’s official social media accounts. That gives her the right to wear a championship ring as a member of a team that made Murphy the first Democratic governor in 44 years to win re-election.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 26, 2022 17:42:24 GMT LFC said:

I love butthurt Republicans' tears.

Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), who the White House said had $1.4 million PPP loans forgiven, was the first of those called out in the thread to respond.

“Another ignorant attack from a career politician who has never created a single job,” he tweeted. “74 days before midterms, Joe Biden is targeting business owners for protecting their employees from government lockdowns.”

“President Trump always supported American workers and job creators,” he added, wistfully.

Other GOP lawmakers who hadn’t been highlighted by the White House were loath to miss out on the action.

“President Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan could not be more different, despite his lame attempts to draw similarities between the two,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) wrote in an op-ed on Fox Business’ website, explaining his past support of PPP.

“This is a handout that primarily benefits the highly educated and already well-off, the laptop liberals and Marxist misfit activists who have never run a business, made payroll, or worried about something other than what pronouns to use,” he added.

Rep. Bryon Donalds (R-FL), a freshman who identifies himself as “liberty loving” and “pro-Trump,” called the tweets “trash.”

“This is trash coming from an idiotic White House,” he tweeted. “PPP funds were designed to be forgiven, because the government shut down the economy. Student loans were designed to be paid back… I should know I paid mine back earlier this year. Where is my check Joe??”

Some other big names in the MAGA universe were eager to frame the tweets as an attack on business owners.

Yeah Rep. Donalds the loans were made to be forgiven.  The point of the tweets is to show how much you and your like minded people got out of the program.  And it's more than $10 or 20 K and was given all at once to you in a nice check, not parsed out over years of loan payments

[AnBr]

Aug 26, 2022 13:55:07 GMT LFC said:

No "semi" about it, Joe.

Quote Of The Day

Joe Biden: “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the—I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism.”

Just what I said when I heard it on the radio this morning on the way to work. Not semi, but out and out fascism.

[LFC]

Not great, but nonetheless interesting.

Nathan Gonzales has an interesting observation in Roll Call. Presidents generally lose ground in public support during first midterm election years and they never become more popular. That is until Joe Biden.

Gonzales looks back 70 years to Harry Truman and finds the pattern is consistent. The only marginal exception is Donald Trump in 2018. But that’s largely because he started off at 39% and was at 40% by election day. Biden was a great exemplar of this pattern until about seven weeks ago. He started the year weak, treaded water until the spring and then saw his numbers drop consistently. Then about seven weeks ago he started an upward trend which now has him at about 43% support.

Needless to say these are not great numbers. They’re a bit below Barack Obama’s at his first midterm, a bit over Trump’s at the same period. Both had big midterm losses. But the upward trend this late in the cycle is basically unprecedented.

[LFC]

Whoever is in charge of Biden's Twitter feed is doing a heckuva' job. Keep reminding people of all the crazy shit Republicans want to do!

[LFC]

Kamala isn't just window dressing. This was apparently discussions with Japan about things that need to stop being sent to Russia. That's not fluff.

[LFC]

This doddering old man sure seems to have his shit together.

[LFC]

Biden is definitely taking out the Senate majority out for a spin. It's not a done deal, especially with Sinemanchin, but still a lot more possible.

President Joe Biden yesterday renominated Gigi Sohn to the long-empty fifth spot on the Federal Communications Commission in hopes that the Senate will finally give Democrats a 3-2 FCC majority.

The FCC has been deadlocked with two Democrats and two Republicans for Biden's entire presidency so far. He first nominated Sohn, a longtime consumer advocate and former FCC official, on October 26, 2021.

The full Senate never voted on whether to confirm Sohn as an FCC commissioner. Republicans vocally opposed her, and Democratic leaders seemingly weren't able to line up support from more conservative party members such as Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

Sohn's chances are better now that Democrats have a 51-49 majority (including three independents who caucus with Democrats). There was previously a 50-50 split, with Vice President Kamala Harris giving Democrats a tiebreaker on party-line votes.

[LFC]

House Republicans are already trying to re-neuter the IRS to allow it's big donors to continue their tax cheating as freely as possible. Biden told them to forget it.

The White House made its first veto threat of the new Congress Monday, targeting a House Republican bill that would rescind funding allotted to the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law last summer. 

“This reckless bill would increase the deficit by nearly $115 billion over 10 years per an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office by enabling wealthy tax cheats to engage in additional tax fraud and avoidance,” the administration said in a statement, citing the score released Monday.

“If the President were presented with H.R. 23 — or any other bill that enables the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations to cheat on their taxes, while honest and hard-working Americans are left to pay the tab — he would veto it,” it added. 

Such a bill, should it pass the House, would almost certainly never survive the Democratic-controlled Senate to reach Biden’s desk.

Republicans of all stripes, from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), have latched on to a baseless conspiracy theory centered on the IRS funding. They claim that the money will be used to hire 87,000 armed IRS agents to kick down the doors and threaten the lives of middle class Americans. 

“Are they going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small-business person in Iowa?” mused Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Fox and Friends last summer.

I wonder how much the gun nutter right would be screeching in laughter if a Democrat used the term "AK-15." That's the kind of small dick energy (I really love that term) we expect from them rather than engagement in facts and policy.

[LFC]

I find this scary but with the number of stories that have come out about the Secret Service, like the "missing" texts pre- Jan 6, I wouldn't trust them either.

According to a new book offering an inside look at President Joe Biden’s White House, Biden actively distrusts the Secret Service to the point that he does not speak freely in front of his agents and he believed that the agency lied about an incident where Biden’s German shepherd Major bit an agent.

In The Fight of His Life, out January 17, author Chris Whipple details how Biden was showing a friend around the White House and pointed to the spot where Major allegedly bit a member of Biden’s security team. “Look, the Secret Service are never up here. It didn’t happen,” said Biden.

The book obtained by Vox ahead of publication offers an inside-the-West Wing account of Joe Biden’s first two years in office and provides a mostly positive spin on Biden’s efforts to cope with a multitude of crises, ranging from the Covid-19 pandemic to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet it also captures the insecurities of an administration that was left in anxiety over whether Donald Trump would try to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. And then there are Biden’s anxieties about the Trumpists in his Secret Service detail.

In a statement, Robyn Patterson, a White House spokesperson, told Vox, “We respect that there will be no shortage of books written about the administration containing a wide variety of claims. We don’t plan to engage in confirmations or denials when it comes to the specifics of those claims. The author did not give us a chance to verify the materials that are attributed here.” In a separate statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told Vox that [Biden] “has confidence in the men and women who protect him and his family.”

[goldenvalley]

Jan 18, 2023 22:26:13 GMT LFC said:

I find this scary but with the number of stories that have come out about the Secret Service, like the "missing" texts pre- Jan 6, I wouldn't trust them either.

According to a new book offering an inside look at President Joe Biden’s White House, Biden actively distrusts the Secret Service to the point that he does not speak freely in front of his agents and he believed that the agency lied about an incident where Biden’s German shepherd Major bit an agent.

In The Fight of His Life, out January 17, author Chris Whipple details how Biden was showing a friend around the White House and pointed to the spot where Major allegedly bit a member of Biden’s security team. “Look, the Secret Service are never up here. It didn’t happen,” said Biden.

The book obtained by Vox ahead of publication offers an inside-the-West Wing account of Joe Biden’s first two years in office and provides a mostly positive spin on Biden’s efforts to cope with a multitude of crises, ranging from the Covid-19 pandemic to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet it also captures the insecurities of an administration that was left in anxiety over whether Donald Trump would try to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. And then there are Biden’s anxieties about the Trumpists in his Secret Service detail.

In a statement, Robyn Patterson, a White House spokesperson, told Vox, “We respect that there will be no shortage of books written about the administration containing a wide variety of claims. We don’t plan to engage in confirmations or denials when it comes to the specifics of those claims. The author did not give us a chance to verify the materials that are attributed here.” In a separate statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told Vox that [Biden] “has confidence in the men and women who protect him and his family.”

Wow!  I wonder what the Biden folks know about the conduct of SS during the Trump years.  Did Trump have more loyalists in the body of officers than we know?  This is similar in my mind to the number of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3% who are veterans...an authoritarian bent that is attracted to the supporting a dictator.

[LFC]

Go, Joe! He handed House Republicans their asses at the State of the Union. One of my favorite moments was when he Joe shoved their attacks on Social Security and Medicare right up their smug noses. They howled and somebody (probably MTG) called him a liar so basically they tried to lie about their position, of course. After their little performance Joe hit them square between their dim, lifeless eyes.

“Contact my office. I’ll give you a copy of the proposal.”

Then he pushed them publicly into a corner and made a massive public setup where touching either program will be a complete shitshow. Biden owned them. Qevin had a boo-boo face when he realized Biden used his team's Howler Monkey antics against them.

[LFC]

Josh's take on the SOTU (paywalled).

Watching State of the Union addresses is one of my least favorite parts of what I do at TPM. I find them a mix of tedious and stressful to watch. By and large they don’t matter. I’d prefer not to watch them. But it’s part of the job. This was very different from any of the State of the Union addresses I’ve seen in 40-plus years of watching them.

Joe Biden isn’t a particularly rousing public speaker normally. The first ten or fifteen minutes of his address were fairly boilerplate, occasionally halting. The substance was pitched toward mid-sized and small towns in post-industrial America. This was unsurprising but well-executed. But then it went somewhere entirely different, not in substance but in presentation, energy and tone.

I don’t need to describe the speech to you because you presumably saw it. Here are the two points that stood out to me.

The first part of Biden’s speech was unity, unity, unity. How we “came together,” essentially thanking the whole Congress and explicitly Republicans too for helping him accomplish all the things he got done in the first two years of his presidency.

As I said when it was happening, it’s always important to remember that these statements are aimed not at the members in the hall but at an audience at home. I don’t want to say it wasn’t sincere but it amounted to a set up. Biden then pivoted toward a series of unobjectionable or provable claims that set congressional Republicans to a series of catcalls, boos, jeers and more. The CSPAN video captured more ugliness than the networks did in real time. We’ll be seeing more of those clips. He lead them into a trap which they could only spring on themselves and they did so to a tee. I don’t know how else to describe it. He brutalized them in a bear hug of bipartisanship. He thanked them for their moment conversion and agreement not to cut Social Security.

Biden got energy from the angry and unhinged responses. Kevin McCarthy spent the second half of the speech trying to shush his members, the same feral radicals who tortured him for a week last month. The whole tableau spoke more than a thousand words.

It was beautiful.

The second standout was all in the moment – perhaps planned but still un-rehearsable. They jeered and screamed; he engaged. They went toe to toe: Biden smiling and Republicans snarling. He was enjoying himself, clearly drawing energy from the verbal fisticuffs. The best and most powerful parts of the speech were Biden’s ad-libs in response to feral Republican antics. He showed in an effortless and natural way quite the opposite of what many see as his achilles’ heel, the sense — not limited to Republicans — that he lacks vigor, is tired, simply too old for the job. Perhaps he is. But not tonight. As writing teachers say, show, don’t tell. And he did.

Many commentators say he baited Republicans into overreacting or reacting poorly. It’s true in a way if ungenerous. But it worked because he was able to bait them with entirely unobjectionable points or, again, things that are demonstrably true. That’s why it worked. In more than a few moments you could see Kevin McCarthy melting inside. It had moments of true beauty and while State of the Union addresses are not the highest bar it was the best one I’ve ever seen.

[LFC]

I watched about as much of the Suckabee-Sanders response as I could stomach. It was nothing more than the same bogus Faux News MAGAt propaganda that’s pushed for years. The most disgusting moment I saw was when she played the cancer card. Isn’t it sweet that she survived due to a life saving treatment? I guess she forgot that she was wonderful government provided health insurance while her party doesn’t want universal healthcare. Instead it was all about her.

[goldenvalley]

I intentionally did not watch the State of the Union address.  They are usually a waste of time.  Now I'm sorry I missed an entertaining show. I'll go look at Twitter for video clips.

[LFC]

Here's coverage of Biden actually playing chess (compared to the bullshit about Trump's multi-level chess Candyland) with the Republican bomb throwers over Social Security and Medicare. I like the one comment I read someplace that he set a trap for Republicans that only they could spring themselves, and they hurled themselves right into it.

In the strongest moment of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, the President used Republican boos and jeers to veer off script and push members of the opposing party into backing off their long-discussed desire to cut Medicare and Social Security.

Republicans, who heckled to such an intense degree that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) repeatedly shushed them from the dais, erupted as soon as Biden mentioned their plans.

“Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years,” he said, prompting the uproar.

Despite the faux outrage, many Republicans have publicly expressed their desire to cut the programs. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) included sunsetting both of them in his plan for the Republican Senate agenda, forcing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to explicitly and publicly slap down the proposals.

Republicans also called for cutting both programs in the House Study Committee budget, and McCarthy and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) both went on TV and did not deny the plans — Scalise, instead, quibbled with calling Republicans’ desired changes “cuts.” McCarthy has since walked back his own support for changes to the programs, but numerous other Republican members have been candid in their desire to see the programs gutted.

“I’m not saying it’s the majority of them,” Biden ad-libbed, as the Republican side of the chamber started to shout.

“Anybody who doubts it, contact my office — I’ll give you a copy of the proposal,” he said, raising his voice above the din.

McCarthy shook his head, and a fur-clad Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) yelled “liar!”

“Now, I tell you, I enjoy conversion,” Biden quipped of the seeming policy reversal, sending the chamber into laughter.

“I’m politely not naming them, but it’s being proposed by some of you,” he said, turning his body to address the vocal Republican side of the House floor.

“So as we all apparently agree — Social Security and Medicare are off the books now,” he said to loud applause, giving a thumbs up. “Alright — we’ve got unanimity!”

[LFC]

Joe Scarborough face-palmed bigly.

MSNBC pundit Joe Scarborough mocked Republicans for their outbursts during the State of the Union address on Tuesday night, saying the displays made President Biden come off as stronger than he would have otherwise.

“Can’t anybody play this game?” Scarborough asked while doubled over his desk early Wednesday on “Morning Joe.” “Why is my former party so stupid? The booing — we said yesterday on the show, ‘Republicans, he wants you to yell, he wants you to shout.’ ”

A number of Republicans shouted at Biden during his address, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who called Biden a “liar” after a remark by the president about Medicare and Social Security.

At another point, Republicans in the chamber shouted “secure the border” and at least one lawmaker was heard yelling “it’s your fault “when Biden was talking about the ongoing opioid crisis in America.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who had previously said Republicans would not play “childish games” during the speech, was seen trying to quiet members of his caucus during the outbursts.

“I really do think that there is a plant inside the RNC [Republican National Committee]. And it is a Democrat that was planted in there somewhere in like 2013, 2014, with the sole purpose of making Republicans the dumbest political party that’s ever existed,” Scarborough quipped on Wednesday. “Biden didn’t even have to give a good speech last night, the Republicans time and again just — alley-oop. Boom. Set up one jam after another.”

[LFC]

Romney totally dissed Santos to his face.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah told GOP Rep. George Santos of New York: “You don’t belong here,” according to a member who witnessed the tense exchange in the House of Representatives chamber Tuesday night.

Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, made the remarks as he walked into the chamber for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

After the speech, Romney told CNN he criticized Santos for standing in the front aisle “trying to shake hands” with the president and senators “given the fact that he’s under ethics investigation.”

“He should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet instead of parading in front of the president and people coming into the room,” he said, noting that Santos may have responded to his remark but he “didn’t hear.”

Santos posted on Twitter after the speech: “Hey @mittromney just a reminder that you will NEVER be PRESIDENT!”

I actually find this kind of hilarious since Romney proved himself to be a world class liar when he ran for president, even denying he said things they had on video. Of course Santos is in a whole different class. I'd say a class by himself but then there are the Trumps.

[AnBr]

Feb 8, 2023 15:21:32 GMT LFC said:

Josh's take on the SOTU (paywalled).he best one I’ve ever seen.

Go Joe! He baited them and they were foolish enough to swallow it, hook, line, and sinker.

[AnBr]

Feb 8, 2023 15:19:18 GMT LFC said:

Qevin had a boo-boo face when he realized Biden used his team's Howler Monkey antics against them.

Almost have to wonder if someone punked her into wearing the white fur to make the image more complete.