The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[Sunsilver]

There's a Don Quixote joke in there somewhere...

xkcd has risen to the challenge!

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/alternativ ... k8V4oYdL7w

[N.E. Brigand]

There's a Don Quixote joke in there somewhere...

xkcd has risen to the challenge!

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/alternativ ... k8V4oYdL7w

It's not often you see a reference to John Christopher's The Tripods, a series I very much enjoyed (having first encountered them adapted into a serialized comic strip in Boys' Life magazine).

Edit: I deleted the joke about Ted Cruz because there is some doubt about whe the photographs are accurate.

[elengil]

There's a Don Quixote joke in there somewhere...

xkcd has risen to the challenge!

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/alternativ ... k8V4oYdL7w

It's not often you see a reference to John Christopher's The Tripods, a series I very much enjoyed (having first encountered them adapted into a serialized comic strip in Boys' Life magazine).

Edit: I deleted the joke about Ted Cruz because there is some doubt about whe the photographs are accurate.

Oh man, my 5th grade teacher read us the Tripod books originally! I still have The White Mountains (I think that was the first book?) I need to double check, and get the rest.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Edit: I deleted the joke about Ted Cruz because there is some doubt about whether the photographs are accurate.

Thank you.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Assuming the joke was about Sen. Cruz traveling to Cancun, that appears to be true. And while he doesn't have any direct role in addressing the crisis, I don't think it is a laughing matter.

[Dave_LF]

I don't know if this counts as a joke or not, but IMO leaving the country is one of the best things Cruz and his ilk could do for it.

[elengil]

I don't know if this counts as a joke or not, but IMO leaving the country is one of the best things Cruz and his ilk could do for it.

Only if we can keep him from coming back.

[River]

His official line is he's escorting his family and once they're safely enscounced he'll come right back.

Between that, and Governor Abbott's insistence that it's all because of windmills, I'm wondering if Texas politicians just think their constituents are idiots and their constituents have gotten so used to being insulted and abused by their elected officials they don't even recognize the bad behavior for what it is anymore.

[Frelga]

Meanwhile Beto is tweeting how he is organizing volunteers on phone calls to check on seniors and drive them to warming centers if necessary.

[River]

And FEMA's finally sending in generators.

Edited because they were already mobilized and now they're escalating with the direct aid (in my experience following severe flooding in my region, FEMA mostly hands out money and material help comes at the local level).

[N.E. Brigand]

Assuming the joke was about Sen. Cruz traveling to Cancun, that appears to be true. And while he doesn't have any direct role in addressing the crisis, I don't think it is a laughing matter.

It wasn't much of a joke. I just said that he was no Don Quixote. (And I totally missed the opportunity to refer to his woeful countenance.)

- - - - - - - - - -
In December, Cruz's communications manager mocked the mayor of Austin online for going to Mexico on vacation during the pandemic.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

To misquote Sancho Panza, " I don't like him; I really don't like him."

Sent from my VS988 using Tapatalk

[Frelga]

Screenshot_20210218-172302.jpg (39.56 KiB) Viewed 2489 times

[RoseMorninStar]

BOOM!

[Dave_LF]

cruzmissile.png (147.61 KiB) Viewed 2465 times

[Frelga]

Elie Mystal makes a point.

How come @BetoORourke and @AOC work to raise money for struggling Texans, many of whom didn't vote for Beto and think AOC is a she-witch, doesn't count as a UNITY story?

How come the media isn't spinning it that way? How come "unity" can only mean "giving the GOP what it wants"?

[elengil]

Elie Mystal makes a point.

How come @BetoORourke and @AOC work to raise money for struggling Texans, many of whom didn't vote for Beto and think AOC is a she-witch, doesn't count as a UNITY story?

How come the media isn't spinning it that way? How come "unity" can only mean "giving the GOP what it wants"?

That would be giving them credit, and they can't possibly do that, how will you ever build any unity giving your mortal enemies credit!?

[N.E. Brigand]

Trouble for one of Joe Biden's nominees: Joe Manchin, Democratic senator of West Virginia, has said he will vote against Biden's nomination of Neera Tanden as director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Tanden is the president of the Center for American Progress. She was also notoriously aggressive on Twitter, and had previously insulted a number of prominent political figures there, including not only many Republicans but also Bernie Sanders, who chairs the committee reviewing her nomination. When her nomination was announced, Tanden deleted about a thousand tweets, and she apologized repeatedly during her confirmation hearing. Sanders chastised her but indicated that he'd vote for her regardless.

But without Manchin, it's unlikely she'll be approved.

Many observers are noting that Sen. Manchin did vote for some of Donald Trump's more controversial nominees, including Richard Grenell to be the U.S. ambassador to Germany. Grenell likewise had a salty history online and had deleted a whole bunch of tweets.

Manchin's motivation in both cases presumably is that the vote makes liberals mad at him, and he can use that fact to get himself reelected in conservative West Virginia.

(My question is whether this was Biden's plan all along. Is having Manchin block one of his nominees something he decided to "give" Manchin in order to "get" his support for other votes? The White House says they're not pulling Tanden's nomination. That means Manchin will have a vote against a Biden nominee on the record. If this hypothetical is correct, I wonder Tanden knew it, too. And I suppose there's a chance that some moderate Republican supports her even as Manchin doesn't and she ends up confirmed anyway.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I had the same thought. I'm not at all a fan of hers, so I would not be disappointed to see her go down.

Sent from my VS988 using Tapatalk

[River]

The usual drama seems so cute now.