Senate Votes To Advance Nomination of Trump FCC Nominee (reuters.com) 94
The U.S. Senate voted Tuesday by a 49 to 47 vote to advance the nomination of a senior Trump administration official who has helped lead an effort seeking social media regulations to a seat on the Federal Communications Commission. From a report: The Senate is set to vote later on the nomination of Nathan Simington, a Commerce Department official, after U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly urged lawmakers to take action. If Simington is confirmed, the FCC could initially be deadlocked 2-2 between Democrats and Republicans when Democratic President-elect Joe Biden takes office next month.
mad scramble (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta get our cronies installed before we go. We can't waste time with the nation-wide emergency that is crippling our economy, destroying small businesses, taking American lives, depriving our children of an education, and putting our ability to freely travel at long term risk.
It's the dying gasp of a failing system.
Re:mad scramble (Score:5, Insightful)
The result is more Americans dead in under a year of Covid than in the entirety of World War 2.
Re:mad scramble (Score:5, Informative)
Not yet. US dead for world war 2 was ~400k.
The fact that we're over half way there in under a year, when World War 2 was from 1939 to 1945 is pretty bad though.
Re:mad scramble (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm giving you the gold medal for mental gymnastics. Trying to say it's all old people who were circling the drain.
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A lot of them were. I'm sorry but they just were. Take all the comorbidities out and this is still a very scary virus but it's not Captain Trips. There's nothing wrong with pointing out the obvious.
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So their deaths are justified based on age?
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No, their deaths were not justified based on their age. They were predictable based on their age. They were more likely. That was my only point.
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The disease that put my father in the hospital for a month was not diabetes, it was COVID. He lost over 100 pounds during his stay in the hospital.
He is now having memory issues. OK he is 81 that's normal you say. But a month ago, he knew he didn't have a dog at home, now he thinks he does.
Yes co-morbidity is
Re: mad scramble (Score:2)
I really hope our study of the virus' long term effects better helps us understand mental disease. The report of memory issues is very interesting considering the pathogen seems to have zero direct connection to brain tissues. Have you noticed any changes in mood?
I am sorry for what your family has lost. I hope your father still lives a full life.
Re:mad scramble (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump did not put in a massive effort, he put on a massive show of trying to claim the virus was no big deal and that wearing a mask was unnecessary and just a form of political correctness, and so on. People behind the scenes were trying to do a good job, but the guy in charge was undermining them at every turn. This was the moment that demanded leadership and Trump failed to step up.
This is why I don't usually bother with /. anymore (Score:1)
>By the way, Thinking that Trump could stop the virus or that Biden can is stupidity. Trump has put in a massive effort,
Ok considering we're doing worse than a lot of countries with less resources. Come on man you're so full of shit and you're totally aware of it.
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It was recently discovered there were early mutations resulting in a far more aggressive and virulent strain and that presence of the mutation in testing correlated to the places that fared worse whereas differences in measures have had poor correlation.
But hey, one side had been ignoring science while claiming science was with them in their hysteria spread. Why do something different now?
(depaywalled NYTimes article)
https://www.deccanherald.com/science-and-environment/evidence-builds-that-an-early-mutation
Re:mad scramble (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody with any sense of reality thought that Trump, or anyone else, could have stopped Covid.
However, he didn't need to go on television contradicting health experts, and publicly flaunting disdain for life saving measures like mask wearing and social distancing. He knows there's a lot of people looking to him as an example (for some reason, but that's a whole other discussion) and could have been a good example rather than a piss poor one.
The only thing that stops this virus is mass vaccination. However, slowing it down as much as possible until the vaccines are ready, is just good public health policy - and one that he completely ignored because it got in the way of television appearances and shitty political rallies.
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Not really. Quarantining the high risk groups while encouraging the spread among healthy people to the greatest extent possible is good health policy.
Slowing a virus down provides it time and selection pressure to mutate. Letting it spread like wildfire among low risk groups would have produced a rapid herd immunity allowing our collective immune systems to suppress the fire. Yes, many of the healthy people would still die, low risk is not no risk and this would mean intentionally assuming that small risk.
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Yeah ok, the US was involved from 1941 to 1945 that still means that there was a 100k/year death rate if you distributed it evenly across that time period. Covid is already at 285,880 deaths in 2020 (so far) with quite a bit of December left, with the Thanksgiving superspreader event cases just now getting to full speed.
Right now we're at over 2k deaths per day, with 24 days left; so let's just call Covid 3x as deadly as the deadliest shooting war that humanity has ever had, if we simplify the distribution
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Not really, if you take out co-morbidities it drops to like half that.
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And if you cherry pick data, you can make it say whatever you want.
Those people are still dead, who wouldn't otherwise be.
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"Those people are still dead, who wouldn't otherwise be."
That isn't something you know or is knowable. The average age of a COVID connected death is 78... which is the average age of death. On average most of these people would have died. After COVID deaths will almost certainly be LOWER than otherwise because the people most likely to die (78+) will already have died, will you then credit whoever you blame for COVID with saving lives?
When someone with AIDS dies do you blame the final cold or do you blame t
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In 2015, the number of people that died from any cause was in the neighborhood of 55 million. In WW2, there were some 70 million casualties, both civilian and military.
Considering that the number of casualties in WW2 is larger than all yearly causes of death combined, I think you don't know what you are talking about.
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How many died in WWII each year? Just wondering.
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The latest numbers I could find were for 2017 and total worldwide deaths were still only 56 million so it looks like your statement doesn't hold up to reality just yet.
https://ourworldindata.org/cau... [ourworldindata.org]
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That isn't accurate but a lot of people are dead. Blaming Trump for their deaths is is largely a political parlor trick. It has already been shown there was an early mutation that is far more aggressive and contagious which correlates to increased deaths far more accurately than variation in 'measures.'
It still remains a fact that the best thing we could have done is quarantine the elderly and infirmed and have everyone else gather in mass groups trading coughs each afternoon. It would have burned through t
Re:mad scramble (Score:5, Informative)
Thus far, Dolly Parton has done more to advance a COVID vaccine than Trump.
As for disarming the populace, the last person to suggest gun grabbing was Donald Trump.
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Drumpf banned bump stocks which is actually more gun control measures than his predecessor did.
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And it was still just gun control Kabuki Bullshit. You can make a bump stock with a piece of string, your thumb, and a belt loop.
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-1 Inconvenient Truth
Re:Dolly Parton? (Score:5, Informative)
Try again. The goal of "warp speed" was to produce and deliver [hhs.gov] 300 million doses of vaccines by January 2021. Yes, Moderna did produce a vaccine, but it will not be able to get 300 million doses by January 2021.
Also, Pfizer's vaccine was funded by Germany, not the U.S., and Pfizer was not part of "warp speed" [msn.com]. It also won't be able to deliver 300 million vaccines by January.
While government figures welcome the program's progress, Kathrin Jansen, the head of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, sought to distance it from them. She told The New York Times: "We were never part of the Warp Speed. We have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone."
Trump got the best military expert in logistics to make a plan for distributing the vaccine quickly,
Military logistics is far different than medical logistics, especially when that medicine needs dry ice to stay valid for five days. Moderna might have a better chance of distribution, but there's still no plan for distribution.
Also, the "quickly" part only applies to people on the front lines, the ones who are dying as we speak [cnn.com], and who have been pleading for the past eight months for people to wear masks and socially distance while the con artist has gone out of his way to demonize any mask wearing or measures designed to slow the spread. This in turn has caused ~290,000 people to die in this country alone, with over 15 million cases. So far.
I'd like to read more about Dolly Parton's efforts to advance the Covid vaccine. It must be pretty impressive. Do you have links?
Yes, here is a link to her contribution [cnn.com]. So tell us, how much of his money did the "billionaire" give?
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The idea that Trump, masks, or your neighbors are responsible for the death counts is debunked.
(depaywalled NYTimes article)
https://www.deccanherald.com/science-and-environment/evidence-builds-that-an-early-mutation-made-the-pandemic-harder-to-stop-919462.html
Re:Dolly Parton? (Score:5, Informative)
Back when Trump was telling us it would just go away by summer, she donated a million dollars to research [cnn.com].
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Biden was the last one to suggest gun grabbing (banning the guns of tomorrow is still gun grabbing) and Trump actually did grab guns... or rather gun parts via an ex post facto law. He made having bought bump stocks illegal, retroactively.
Re:mad scramble (Score:5, Insightful)
Really.
So part of "fast tracking" "the vaccine" (there is more than one) was to tell Pfizer "thanks, but no" to locking in the purchase of millions of doses [youtube.com] this last summer, and now waiting in line behind other nations that did?
Put the kool aid down, buddy. The federal response has been a total clusterfuck since day 1, and the guy in charge refuses to accept any responsibility for that clusterfuck. The good news is that he's going to be thrown out on his fat ass in about 40 days.
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I really like referring to him as President-Reject Trump, owing to his norm shattering loss and becoming an increasingly rare one-term president.
Re: mad scramble (Score:5, Insightful)
"He tried fast tracking the vaccine for the high risk groups"
No, he didn't. He didn't even pay up front for any vaccines, so Dolly Parton has literally done more to produce a vaccine than the Trump administration.
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First they claimed there was no vaccine and he was making it up. It was reported that the vaccine was real by major media, quietly on the back page, because it came out at election time.
He literally ordered the FDA to fast track research, development, and approval of the vaccine that sure enough, actually existed. Then they claimed you couldn't trust any sort of sketchy vaccine Trump came up with.
Then the FDA declared it safe... YESTERDAY.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-ensur
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Trump passed on buying more doses from Pfizer, so now we will have enough for only 50M Americans.
So he did nothing that anyone wouldn't do (every nation fast-tracked covid research) and I'll bet you a dollar he had to be talked into doing that. And then he decided nah, we don't actually need that vaccine, or at least not enough to make a sizable dent. As long as he and his will get vaccinated, he's happy.
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"now we will have enough for only 50M Americans"
I'm not sure what the count of high risk people 78+ is off hand but 50M of the 300M certainly seems reasonable. Just how many of the precious global allotment do you think we should take before allowing anyone elses high risk citizens a shot?
Re: mad scramble (Score:2)
You have to immunize enough people to get the transmission rates down, which as I understand it requires vaccinating about half the population. That is to say, more than three times the number of people the Trump administration has prepared us to immunize. So once again, Trump fucked up the Covid response.
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We have to immunize the people at high risk. The rest can immunize the old fashioned way. They take off the mask and get the freaking cold already.
Re: mad scramble (Score:2)
So to be clear, you want people to die so that trump doesn't have to be competent? Because your way is a mass murder.
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Who cares about Trump? Your way is mass murder. You would give perfectly healthy people with perfectly functional immune systems a vaccine rather than share it with people who are actually at high risk around the globe. What kind of selfish monster are you?
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It hasn't been cheap, and it has to be done right. It's going as fast as it can given the constraints.
The regulations for vaccine approval are stringent and necessary. Can you imagine the debacle of rushing a vaccine approval only to find out it wasn't safe and/or effective. As a point of fact, the vaccine approvals are on the fastest track ever and the Trump administration deserves credit for getting us to where we are today.
Trump likes playing down the severit
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"What part of "well regulated" do you not comprehend?"
Well regulated meant well trained. That is it. Just like militia meant all able bodied men and to this day congress has formally defined it in such a manner with all able bodied males between certain ages who are not otherwise part of the military or national guard being part of the "unorganized militia" callable by the congress or since they delegated the authority to him in US code, the President.
Well regulated means the militia should be well trained
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That is your interpretation and I disagree as would anybody with an average command of the English language. Trained is not a synonym to Regulated, Controlled and Regulated are synonyms. Gun controls are in fact regulations. Examples of gun control include no fully automatic weapons, no grenades, etc. We already have gun control.
Your argument that any gun controls are unconstitutional implies that there can be no limits whatsoever. In heavily populated areas this is
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It is my opinion and that of historical legal scholars who say that this was a common turn of phrase in the late 1700's. The bill of rights was explicitly written as LIMITATION of government authority, no part of it grants the government powers. It is twisting to the extreme to interpret anything in the bill of rights as grant of authority to regulate something.
This is one of hundreds of sources...
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-op-second-amendment-well-regulated-militia-meaning-20180412-story.html
"
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Damn moderation abuse. Call it flamebait if you will but this isn't a troll. Stopping modding people you just disagree with as 'troll'
"He tried fast tracking the vaccine for the high risk groups and not crippling the economy. Nobody wanted any of that remember? What did they want? Apparently nothing short of gestapo beating people and forcing them back into their homes like the monsters in India did to their people would suffice. Next up, disarming the population so that doing something of that sort or not
Re:mad scramble [to lose-lose] (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty sure you're talking about "He whose name need not be mentioned" and less sure you got garbled in your haste to FP.
My view is that it's not a zero-sum game. Not even a win-win game. It's another lose-lose game where the strategy is to make your opponents (the Democrats in this example) lose more because you (the GOT in this case) can't win. In relative terms you think your side won even though everybody (and the "failing system") loses.
Latest discussion of this topic that I encountered was in The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy D. Snyder. However he was mostly focusing on how Putin is trying to make Russia relatively stronger by making America and Europe weaker. I think China is the big winner of the game, and Snyder even acknowledged that regarding one topic in the book. (But of course the Slashdot 2020 response is TL;DR.)
I keep trying to think of solutions to the problems of democratic republics. Then I remember that we get the leaders we deserve. Time to stop thinking?
Way to go! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Then they can claim the next government is incompetent and increase the odds of winning the next election. They've already trialed this with tax cuts vs spending and it has worked well so far.
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The R's have been campaigning on the Government Doesn't Work So Let's Shut It Down and Feed It to the Beltway Bandits since Reagan. They are essentially a one trick pony.
Re:Way to go! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Is it a life time appointment? (Score:1)
If not, you fire the sucker. Besides that, what is Biden going to do? Will he put the ISPs under common carrier? Repeal DMCA? Restore a progressive tax system? Anything at all?
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It's a little known fact that in 2020 Biden ran for President, not Senator. He's been out of the Senate for years now. So therefore he can't do any of the things you mentioned (except for firing people). If you want those things, talk to your congresscritters.
Re: Is it a life time appointment? (Score:2)
In fairness, multiple times during his campaign Biden too thought he was running for Senate.
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In fairness, you are wrong...another Republican Automaton Talking Point.
Re:Is it a life time appointment? (Score:4, Informative)
This is a total non-story. Traditionally the FCC has 5 seats on it, 2 go to Republican appointments, 2 go to Democrat appointments. And then the 5th seat is filled by the sitting President, and the Chairman is appointed by the sitting President. Terms last for 5 years.
So this is merely filling a seat that should have a Republican in it, traditionally, if it would result in a "2-2 deadlock" as TFS says. And then Biden gets to fill the 5th seat with his pick for chairman. Just like normal.
What a click bait piece of shit.
Re:Is it a life time appointment? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's still a story, unless you assume that the Republican seats *have* to be filled with industry shills or mouth breathing morans.
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Well, it's a seat that Republican senators view is "theirs" and they have full discretion on whether to confirm the person nominated, so if you don't want an industry shill or a mouth breather, you should probably take that up with those Senators.
Republican President nominates Republican for traditionally Republican seat on a federal commission that reports to a Republican administration, which is confirmed by a Republican majority senate. And this is somehow news?
It would be news if anything else happened
Re:Is it a life time appointment? (Score:4, Insightful)
It still should be news, because it's important, and also because this time it's different. Usually a Republican president appoints Republican establishment types. This is not an insult -- every successful party has an establishment, which is both useful and a bit of a problem. So you can expect a Republican president to appoint commissioners who are pro-telecom business and a Democrat to appoint a commissioner who's got more of a consumer affairs/public interest orientation. It's not perfect from anyone's standpoint.
What's different here is Trump is appointing someone who his hostile to a particular industry rather than the run-of-the-mill anti-regulatory Republican appointment.
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To be fair, I know nothing of the nominee other than party affiliation.
Now, if he's some kind of zealot that's interesting, but it still doesn't change the fact that he's going to be a back bencher for basically his entire appointment - no batshit crazy shit that he tries to bring up will get votes from the 2+ democrats on the 5 person committee. Biden isn't exactly going to nominate any of Trump's sycophantic lackeys, so he serves as a puppet vote for the other "establishment" republican for the next 4 ou
Re:Is it a life time appointment? (Score:5, Insightful)
I love the people who claim this is clickbait. Currently the Senate has a Republican Majority. Unless the Democrats get lucky and win Georgia in both races, Congress will stifle any presidential appointments by Biden to .... stick it to the libs.
Then when the midterms come about, they will sell themselves as doing a great job by sticking it to the libs, because obstruction is their only selling point at this time.
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Sacrificing the ability to mod you down ("-1: Wilfully dishonest", perhaps?) - the point here is the claim that "then Biden gets to fill the 5th seat with his pick for chairman. Just like normal.".
There is no "normal" in the modern Republican party. There is only brazen dishonesty and gaming the system. Biden will simply never get to fill that 5th seat. NEVER. McConnell will block every appointee he names, forever, *just because he can*. In the same way and for the same reasons as speedrunning a Batshit Cra
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I see where you're coming from, but I also disagree.
Yes, Senator McConnell is an asshole. Yes, he's a total partisan hack. However, he's already walking away from Trump and refusing to carry his water on this NDAA / CDA Section 230 nonsense. There's a really good chance that we see a veto override in his remaining days, which would be an appropriate "fuck you" to this President who loves to dream he has the absolute power of his hero tinpot dictators.
The closer we get to 20 January, the more people are g
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This is not a non-story at all, this is quite a big deal. Not as important as Merrick Garland, but the same idea, and the Republicans got
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FCC appointments are for 5 years. It is common practice to have the board comprised of 3-2 (based on party lines) and the majority goes to the party in power at the time. This appointment doesn't really do much to change that other than the second Republican appointee will be selected by Trump instead of Biden asking Republicans (Obama asked McConnell and Ajit Pai's name was put forward) for a suggestion as to which Republican to nominate.
Once Biden takes office he will select a 5th member to the FCC board
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Biden will do nothing. He may. . .repeat *MAY* get to the point of taking credit for congress and the senate behaving every so slightly lass bat-shit insane towards one another, but in a general sense Biden's not known as a go-getter. He's known as a "must build a coalition" guy. And let's face it, so long as Mitch McConnel exists, there will be no building of a coalition on any issue. So Biden will claim obstruction, and put zero effort into getting around that obstruction.
Which really is pretty much w
Who cares? (Score:1, Informative)
The FCC is a 5 member commission. This will only bring it up to 4 - two Republicans, two Democrats. It will be deadlocked on the day Biden takes office, yes, but Biden has another appointment to make and it will be 3-2 Democrat nominees once that happens.
The screeching here is ridiculous and uncalled for.
Re: Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
"The screeching here is ridiculous and uncalled for."
You mean like when Republicans screeched about Obama making a Supreme Court pick? Fuck you, hypocrite.
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No. The Supreme Court is not an independent Executive Branch agency that is required by law to have limits on party membership of appointees.
If the appointment was delayed until Biden was sworn in he would have to APPOINT A REPUBLICAN, or at least not another Democrat. The party of the President gets the tie-breaking member/chair of these types of things, but that's it.
Obama did what prior Presidents did -- defer to the head of the opposite party (R) to pick who they wanted him to nominate.
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All irrelevant to the point made. Besides, if you can [trivially] find fake democrats, why can't you find a fake republican?
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Mostly because these appointments need Senate confirmation and many get run through a non-partisan qualification committee first. It has only been in the last four years that the Senate has shown itself willing to cram through some patently unqualified candidates just because they have an "R". Even then, they still rejected some of the most egregious.
The problem is the very worst were, at least superficially, technically qualified, just hyper-partisan.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah he's still doing nothing in regards to passing a stimulus bill. https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
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This. If we don't manage to boot both critters with an R after their name in the run-offs, McConnel will spend the next four years simply blocking all appointments by the Biden administration unless Biden goes out of his way to appoint Republican sycophants. Which, with his track record is not completely out of the question.
If he loses those 2 seats in GA (Score:2)
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Well, he did spend 8 years trying to make Obama be a single term president. It's a good think his job doesn't involve math. Oh wait, it does... It's hardly a sign of leadership when the sole activity is to delay and do nothing until you get someone from your party back in the White House. And yet, that's apparently what the GOP leadership wants and they prefer dysfunction over moderate and centrist policies.
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Who is screeching exactly?
They're going to do as much damage as they can (Score:3)
Remember, that's damage to you too.