So laughably absurd and yet cause real harm

John Stoehr and his Editorial Board, a newsletter about politics in plain English, discussed the American Rescue Act passed by Congress (well, the Democrats in Congress) and signed by Biden. There’s a major change in policy. Here’s the central question in that change in policy: Are you worthy of help because you are a citizen or are you worthy of help because you’re deserving? The second part has been the conservative view since the 1990s (when they got rid of much of welfare). The first part has been a core liberal approach since Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society. Conventional wisdom was that one had to deserve help from the government and government measured being deserving by productive labor (never mind how much those not working needed help). Without that government was vulnerable to fraud. The 2008 stimulus package was based on that thinking. The handout was tax breaks, which don’t help those not working. Quite a few in government, including Jerome Powell, head of the Federal Reserve, have now prioritized employment over inflation. And no one is talking about whether people deserve aid, or needing work requirements. Biden is taking up where Johnson left off. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Daily Kos quoted Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg. Republicans didn’t vote for the relief bill because they didn’t want to be accused of being unwilling to fight, to be called RINO, Republican in Name Only. However, their talk about the federal deficit being too big is getting nowhere after they made those big tax cuts in 2017 that made the deficit much bigger. Dworkin also quoted Molly Jong-Fast of Daily Beast who wrote about the anti abortion, sorry, “pro life” bill just signed by Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

It was a bill so bad it wasn’t written to ever be enacted. Instead, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed Senate Bill 6 with the hopes that it would be overturned and begin a legal battle that could theoretically lead to overturning Roe v. Wade and making abortion illegal in the United States. You’d think Republicans might be a bit sheepish about protecting the lives of embryos since they’ve shown such apathy toward protecting the lives of actual living people. But 530,000 Americans have died of COVID, and still Republicans are largely indifferent toward masking and other restrictions. On Wednesday, Texas ended its mask mandate despite only having vaccinated 8.5 percent of the state.

Jared Yates Sexton tweeted about the GOP beliefs:

You can’t organize Republican beliefs logically because they are inherently illogical. This isn’t an ideology, it’s a reactionary, panicked defense of white patriarchal supremacy and entrenched power. It is whatever the moment needs it to be and will find any possible outlet. ... People have a hard time with this and other fascistic movements because they’re so laughably absurd and yet find purchase and cause real harm. Exploitation itself isn’t absurd, but the cover stories and narratives are senseless and brittle. Republicans “ideas” or “principles” don’t have to be consistent or make sense. What matters is that it protects entrenched power and motivates people to protect it with violence. This is madness, what we’re watching, and you don’t need to treat it like it’s logical. Again, the GOP isn’t fiscally or socially conservative, they’re not for small government, they’re not pro-troops or pro-American, and they’re certainly not pro-life. They’re whatever they need to be to beat back any hint of reform or progress. It’s defense, not a platform.

Kos of Kos discussed how the Republicans are faring with Biden. Kos compared Obama’s first year ...

The first year of President Barack Obama’s presidency, however well-intentioned, was a disaster. What should’ve been a quick move to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA) became a painfully drawn out 14-month ordeal, with Republicans pretending to negotiate with the president while at the same time publicly and gleefully mocking those efforts, obstructing to the very end. It almost worked on a policy level: Not only did those negotiations significantly water down the ACA to a shell of what it could’ve been, but the only reason the law passed was because one Republican (Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter) defected to the Democrats at the last minute to provide the necessary 60th vote. On the political level, however, it was a resounding success. The long process prevented Obama from tackling other key liberal priorities like pro-union card check and immigration reform, angering and demoralizing key segments of our base.

... to Biden’s first few months. He invited some GOP moderates to the White House to hear their tiny counteroffer to his big rescue bill. Then he did not bargain. He said thanks, but no. Democrats would pass it on their own.

It is impossible to overstate just how momentous this accomplishment is. Biden proposed a $1.9 trillion rescue plan, and Congress passed a $1.9 trillion rescue plan. Democrats delivered not just a massive boost to a recovering economy, but also passed the most comprehensive anti-poverty initiative in generations.

The bill, now law, is so widely popular, Republicans aren’t even trying to undermine it publicly, the way they did for Obamacare. This bill is going to significantly help the economy to recover, so what do Republicans have to run on in 2022? Hunter of Kos discussed a situation he’s noticed – media companies are annoyed with Biden because he isn’t playing their game. He’s too boring. He isn’t doing press conferences.

It should be a given at this point that the reason the White House reporters want a White House press conference between Biden and themselves is because the political press corps Wants To Be On Camera, and the interminable boringness of the new team's unwillingness to provide the necessary spectacle is grating on them in a way that half a million deaths could not seem to muster. That’s it. That’s all. It is not that the administration is not answering their questions; the administration is just not answering those questions in a manner that makes for the most dramatic television scenes. ... In past years many of us would be on this same bandwagon, muttering that the nation's top leader certainly ought to be expected to address questioners directly, and in theory Important Questioners, and in theory being the spokesperson for the government's next plans and priorities is the very essence of the job. But that was before it was proven so conclusively that all of this was, the whole time, complete and utter bulls###—a farce. Not only can any politician stand up in front of a journalism crowd and lie brazenly with no cultural or political repercussions, the top politician can do it, and incessantly, and to the point where the spectacle puts visible gouges on democracy with every performance. What "the president" says to the press is, it turns out, completely irrelevant. It can be earnest, or crooked, or list off facts, or claim the moon is made of cheese, and not a damn bit of it matters except that it ends with a few new clips for a few pundits to snipe over and for propagandists to recut into useful fiction while the rest of America wanders off, eyes glazed over, now convinced that however long they spent doing their begrudging civic duty of paying attention was time cheated from them after all. ... I am so, so tired. Each of the institutions bearing the most responsibility for our multiple catastrophes are hellbent on returning to "normal" and pretending none of it happened, which is the one thing—the only thing—still absolutely assured to result in it all happening again.