Sunday, December 11, 2016

The GOP-Led Senate Adjourns-- By Passing 2 Major Bills Selling Out Trump Voters

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The queen of coal country screws the retired miners

Friday night was this Senate's last. When they adjourned-- actually it was around 6 Saturday morning-- it was for the last time. In January it will be a new Senate with 5 new Democrats-- Kamala Harris (CA), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Chris Van Hollen (MD), Maggie Hassan (NH) and Catherine Cortez Masto (NV) and 2 new Republicans Todd Yoiung (IN) and John Kennedy (LA). There will be 2 more Democrats than there were this session and Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid will be replaced by the odious Wall Street-owned slimeball Chuck Schumer.

The last roll call was to pass John Cornyn's bill "to designate the Federal building and United States courthouse located at 1300 Victoria Street in Laredo, Texas, as the 'George P. Kazen Federal Building and United States Courthouse.'" Friday morning we explained how the importance of the bill is unrelated to a courthouse in Texas but was actually a vote to accept Paul Ryan's decision to do away with the "Buy American" provisions a crucial water infrastructure bill which the Senate had passed and President-elect had dishonestly claimed to have embraced. Progressives filibustered the bill but McConnell was able to shut down the filibuster 69-30, with many of the conservaDems joining the Republicans who could care less about the "Buy American" promises that were made to American workers. Sell-out Dems included all the usual suspects from Joe Donnelly (IN), Joe Manchin (WV), Tom Carper (DE), Jon Tester (MT), and DiFi (CA) to the two corporate whores from Virginia, Mark Warner and (awwww... were you fooled?) Tim Kaine. Progressives like Elizabeth Warren (MA), Bernie Sanders (VT), Tammy Baldwin (WI), Mazie Hirono (HI), Jeff Merkley (OH), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Barbara Boxer (CA), Ed Markey (MA), Sherrod Brown (OH) and Tom Udall (NM) kept fighting to the end.

Friday night, McConnell shut down another filibuster, this one to temporarily fund the government. His cloture motion passed 61-38 and then the bill itself passed 63-36.The dispute was over another Republican attack against working families, this time, ironically, a dispute over healthcare benefits for retired miners. I say "ironically" because the people being victimized by the Republicans were the very ones who voted so overwhelmingly for Trump and other Republicans in last month;s elections. In the three top coal mining states, for example, Trump beat Clinton 489,371 (68.6%) to 188,794 (26.5%) in West Virginia, 1,202,971 (62.5%) to 628,854 (32.7% in Kentucky and 174,419 (68.2%) to 55,973 (21.9%) in Wyoming. It gets even worse when you look at just the biggest coal-producing counties:
Campbell County, WY- 88% Trump, 7% Clinton
Marshall County, WV- 73% Trump, 22% Clinton
Boone County, WV- 75% Trump, 21% Clinton
Logan County, WV- 80% Trump, 17% Clinton
Pike County, KY- 80% Trump, 17% Clinton
Harlan County, KY- 85% Trump, 13% Clinton
Perry County, KY- Trump 77%, Clinton 20%
Each of these counties voted more for Trump-- some gigantically so-- than they did for Romney. Do you think any of them will realize it was Democrats who fought to save their health benefits? Joe Manchin (D-WV) led the battle and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) joined him, as did Rand Paul (R-KY) but the other big coal mining state senators know the coal miners will never find out how they voted and that it wouldn't matter even if they did. McConnell (R-KY), Barrasso (R-WY), Enzi (R-WY) and Toomey (R-PA) all get huge support from coal miners, but they laughed at their plight and voted, in effect, to cut cut their health benefits. Who stood up for the miners? Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley, Elizabeth Warren, Mazie Hirono, Ed Markey, Al Franken... a bunch of liberals whose states don't even produce coal but who are looking out for the miners themselves.

After such a tough Friday night/Saturday morning, don't we all deserve a little hard-hitting analysis from Saturday Night Live? A fresh look at el Presidente-elect Señor Trumpanzee's Cabinet from Hell:



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5 Comments:

At 3:38 AM, Anonymous Hone said...

Imagine. Imagine that Hillary was selecting her cabinet and other appointments instead of the Trumpanzee. Or Bernie! What a world of difference it would be. The American people have been cheated out of a victory and our country and the world will suffer greatly for it. Hey, maybe the electoral college members will go against tradition and not give Trump the win!!!!! Only in my dreams.

 
At 7:01 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

$hillbillary's noms would also be a list of bankers, corporate shills and lobbyists. Just a little less kkk.

Bernie's, one would imagine, might be better. But who knows.

The Rs know, from decades of experience, that they can ass rape their voters after an election and none of THEIR voters will notice nor care. The Ds won't care, since most of them are disguised Rs; the media won't care since there aren't any, you know, journalists left; and voters won't notice since they are all uncritical believers in their religion of political party. When some retired coal miner dies from lack of medicine, they'll reflexively blame democraps (which isn't as far afield as it would have been back when democraps were Democrats).

It is after episodes like this where I really miss Jon Stewart's Daily Show. This is precisely the kind of bipartisan ass raping that he would delve into so well.

But his viewership wasn't enough to have mattered much nationally. If the American electorate cared, his show should have drawn 200 million instead of the couple of million it got. CS, corporate owned (Viacom) suppressed viewership by airing it in the late hours, betraying their true priorities.

 
At 8:22 AM, Blogger geminijlw said...

Anyone who followed Trump through his interviews for years, or the lies he had told during his campaign, could have been checked at Politifacts, would know what would happen once elected. I am sorry but the evidence was there prior to his election.

 
At 9:00 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

First, I wouldn't trust PolitiFacts without checking every source they list and four others besides. Second, suggesting the people who voted for Trump could have checked online shows precisely the kind of smug, college-educated snobbery that made people vote for Trump.

Try to get it through your heads that when you're working three jobs to keep a roof over your head and your kids properly fed, you don't have a lot of spare time to go surfing the internet to check out the veracity of some politicians promises. And if you aren't working, the depression that goes with that status isn't conducive to being politically active either.

How about we stop whining about who won and start putting money and energy to work trying to save as much as we can, hmm? Time to get out of the armchair and out onto the field instead of complaining we don't like the way other people on the team tie their shoes.

 
At 9:51 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Liz, your exhortations are sound... if it were 1966 instead of 2016.

College kids then were worried about being drafted and killed in some jungle 12000 miles away to save a corrupt western puppet.
College kids today are just trying to get a degree without going into debt 6 figures and being able to get a job above burger flipper.

In 1968 the activism nearly nominated an anti-war D. But the Democraps flipped it to a pro-war loser, the Chicago police started a riot to discredit the activists and we got fucking Nixon.

Today the DNC ran a serial liar who is openly owned by goldman sachs and has extolled the virtues of war vs. Russia and all of the xxFTAs ever conceived.

But today, 250M could march, write and protest. But as long as the other 60M still voted R, nothing would change; and the money would still own 425 congresswhores; the DNC would still give us some corporate fucktard to keep 100M at home; and we've already agreed to (via the ballot) losing 9/10 of the bill of rights.

 

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