The Ethos of the Tundra

 

Does the Libertarian mindset always say, "I got mine. You want yours? Go fuck yourself." That's what I think when I read about Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's changing her vote for Jethro's One Big Beautiful Bill because she got bought off. David Dayen, reporting for Prospect.org:

Overnight, the Senate radically altered its Big Beautiful Bill, zeroing in on one state and one Senator in an attempt to buy her vote....

...the gifts to Alaska, designed to sway Murkowski, came fast and furious. The federal share of payment for Medicaid would be increased for “the state with the highest separate poverty guideline.” That happens to be Alaska. Their share would increase 25 percent above that of a typical state.

Other programs bundle together benefits for “noncontiguous states,” referring to Alaska and Hawaii. That includes an exemption from work requirements for SNAP, an increase in Medicare reimbursement rates to select health care providers, and a waiver from the cost-sharing provisions, whereby a state must contribute to SNAP funding. As long as the noncontiguous state is “actively implementing a corrective action plan” to reduce error rates in the program (meaning people given benefits who do not qualify), that cost share can be eliminated. Alaska has the highest error rates in the nation, but under this provision, by simply saying they’re trying to fix it, they can avoid the cost share.

 

9 Blackbirds Sitting in a Pie

 

"It's darkest before the dawn." 

Get outta my face with that shit! I totally appreciate the proverb and get it that the November 3rd election is "the dawn," and dawn is supposed to reestablish hope when so much seems lost, but in all honesty I don't feel better. This moment is more like a minute to midnight to me, than anywhere near 6 a.m. There are still some 44 days til we vote the bastard out, say. Or, say, McConnell fails to get Trump's nominee through before November 3rd because of defections in his caucus. Will that even matter? Because McConnell will still have another bite at the apple, starting on November 4th, as he strong-arms a lame duck session with still plenty of time to display the full measure of his corruption. 

Who are the potential Senate defectors from another McConnell power grab? The esteemed men and women who actually know right from wrong but who en masse gave up long ago objecting to wrong? The equivocators, the shrinkers, the shell-shocked. Which of these are the Senators most likely to resist? 

(Presented here in rank order of most likely to stand firm against McConnell hypocrisy to least likely to let out a peep):

Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) -- Told an interviewer on Friday, shortly before the announcement of Justice Ginsburg’s death, that she opposed confirming a new justice before Nov. 3. “I would not vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee,” she said. “We are 50 some days away from an election.” Murkoski has shown steel in her spine before, especially as relates to displeasing Trump. I think the guys don't strong arm this chick.

Mitt Romney (Utah) -- Increasing defiance of Trump all year, so maybe he's actually grooving to the perception that he finally took his balls out of the lockbox. This might be another watershed moment for a revivified Mitt Romney.

Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) -- Previously the judiciary panel’s chairman, said in 2018 that if there were a vacancy in 2020, he would not bring a nomination before his committee until after the election if he were still in charge. But he surrendered his gavel to Lindsey Graham (see below). Grassley is perfectly capable of standing up for principle, in his Grandpa Simpson way, just as he's also perfectly capable, in his Grandpa Simpson way, of getting confused and wandering out of frame. He did not say last night how he would vote as an individual senator. At least he's thinking about it.

Ben Sasse (Nebraska) -- As recently as August 10 called Trump's attempts at power-wielding "unconstitutional slop." Trump immediately lashed his naked back: “RINO Ben Sasse, who needed my support and endorsement in order to get the Republican nomination for Senate from the GREAT State of Nebraska, has, now that he’s got it (Thank you President T), gone rogue, again, This foolishness plays right into the hands of the Radical Left Dems!” Trump has Ben Sasse's number. He's disciplined Sasse before, and Sasse obediently sat in the corner. But he also likes to think of himself as a virtuous warrior, and he might get a wild hair and impersonate a do-or-die Marine for Halloween. 

Cory Gardner (Colorado) -- Could the showdown over SCOTUS awaken Gardner's disgust with McConnell's hypocrisy, and might he attempt a "hail Mary" to turn around his fortunes in the Colorado Senate race? Hickenlooper looks likely to beat him. But Gardner's defection is a longshot. Gardner looks too cowed by the Trumpists, though maybe the independent vote in Colorado makes Gardner less predictably cowed than Susan Collins.

Susan Collins (Maine) -- The most endangered Republican incumbent (according to Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman). Collins told The New York Times this month that she would not favor voting on a new justice in October. “I think that’s too close,” she said. “I really do.” But it's a classic Susan Collins head-fake. She always caves. She really, really does.

Thom Tillis (North Carolina) -- Though he's shown rogue moments of independence, he's been whipped thoroughly into line, and he's gonna go for any SCOTUS nom Trump puts forward. Jumping ship would destroy him with much of the Republican base.

Martha McSally (Arizona) -- She knows she's losing to Democrat Mark Kelly in her reelection campaign. Losing means she's totally free to be as Trumpist as possible before she exits the scene.

Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) -- The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would consider any nominee, said in 2018 that if an opening occurred in the last year of Mr. Trump’s term, “we’ll wait to the next election,” but then hedged in July, telling CNN that “we’d have to see.” In a statement issued Friday night mourning Justice Ginsburg, Graham, who is in a competitive reelection race of his own (against Jaime Harrison), made no mention of when to fill the vacancy. So ... as you were. Graham would never buck Trump/McConnell.

 

Yes, We're Tired of So Much Winning!

Vice President Mike Pence broke a 50-50 tie in the US Senate last night to deny bank and credit card customers the ability to band together in class action lawsuits against Wall Street banks and credit card companies that rip them off.

They say that Trump will sign the bill immediately, probably with a brass band and marching elephants to celebrate getting to sign something, anything, despite how badly it hurts the consuming public. He won't know what's actually in the bill and how it hurts regular, non-billionaire type people, but then, he also won't care.

So who were the two Republicans who forced the tie-breaker? Surprise! Not Bob Corker and not Jeff Flake and not Susan Collins and not John McCain and not Lisa Murkowski. They all voted for it. The two defecting Republicans were Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Kennedy of Louisiana.

Bribery Monday

1. Can Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins be bribed? Those two Republican senators have said they needed to see how the Graham-Cassidy health care bill would affect their states. Presto! Graham and Cassidy got to work over the weekend and rewrote their bill to give more money to Alaska and Maine. They're rolling out the new version of the bill this morning ... which, just incidentally, the Congressional Budget Office will never be able to "score" before the end of the week. Question: If the latest Republican "fix" for Obamacare is so great, why would it take bribery to get it passed?

2. Charge of Massive Voter Fraud in New Hampshire Earns Four Pinocchios. Kris Kobach, Trump's top vote suppressor, keeps trying. Bless his heart.

3. American citizens in great distress following hurricane. Does Trump understand that the people of Puerto Rico are American citizens? They're not just brown people on some distant island. They're American citizens. And they're in much worse shape than either the people of south Texas or the people of Florida. Some 80% of local agricultural crops were destroyed by Maria, and the very real specter of starvation is facing thousands. Maybe Trump could take a break from tweeting about the brown people in professional sports and actually do something to help Puerto Rico.

4. Trump loves those self-inflicted wounds. The backlash against Trump's outburst against the National Football League for condoning protest has drawn its own high-powered backlash. Many team owners -- all or most of them million-dollar donors to Trump -- have condemned the comments and either symbolically or literally linked arms with their players. Meanwhile, a Trump lickspittle group started running Facebook ads urging Trump supporters to turn off NFL games on TV. Good luck with that project.

Well ... McCain!

Perhaps mortality focused his energies and his resolve, and he came through like he said he would. Perhaps he didn't want a legacy of killing health care for millions as he approaches his own battle with an aggressive brain cancer.

“I’ve stated time and time again that one of the major failures of Obamacare was that it was rammed through Congress by Democrats on a strict party-line basis without a single Republican vote,” he said in a statement explaining his vote. “We should not make the mistakes of the past.”

Two votes were called just after midnight. The first was a Democratic motion to refer the "skinny repeal" back to committee. It failed. The second vote was to pass the "skinny repeal." If you were watching, you know that the second vote prompted a full-court press by Republican brass on Senator John McCain.

McCain was seated next to Sen. Lindsay Graham who had derided the "skinny repeal" earlier in the day as a fraud but who had decided to vote for it anyway because he thought he had a promise from House Speaker Paul Ryan that it would never become law. Hell of a way to govern: "I'm voting for this law because I know it'll never become law."

Lisa Murkowski, one of the three no votes, approached McCain who smiled up at her and gave her a thumbs-down. Susan Collins joined the conversation. All three no votes were now talking.

From the well of the chamber, Majority Leader McConnell dispatched the other Arizona senator Jeff Flake to lobby McCain. McCain wouldn't look at him and continued talking to Murkowski and Collins.

According to reporter Ed O'Keefe, "That left Flake, one of the most polite members of the Senate, leaning into the conversation uncomfortably with a pained look on his face, as if he had to tell his father that he had run over the family dog with his car."

Seeing that Flake was getting nowhere, Vice President Mike Pence joined the conversation, and for 21 minutes he cajoled McCain, Murkowski, and Collins until he was pulled away for a phone call from the White House.

At 1:10 a.m. McCain crossed the Senate chamber and talked to Chuck Schumer and other Democrats. Sen. Dianne Feinstein gave him a big hug. As the vote on passage began, McCain was again off the floor talking to V.P. Pence, but he returned at 1:29 a.m. and delivered his no vote to the clerk.

There were audible gasps in the chamber.

Wonder how his best friend Lindsay Graham feels this morning, having witnessed an actual act of courage last night.

Dick Burr Mistakes His Thumb for a Magic Wand

How did Sen. Dick Burr vote yesterday on the Paul Ryan plan to turn Medicare into a Republican coupon worth approximately 13 aspirin? He voted for it, natch! He's one of only 40 Republican senators who've decided to make what Jennifer Steinhauer at the NYTimes calls a "chin-out" defense of a scheme that would effectively end Medicare.

All righty then! The Ryan "end Medicare" budget is now about as popular as prickly heat in August. So deciding to lead with one's chin when one's biceps have gone soft like pudding might seem a strange sparring technique, but Burr perhaps figgers he has almost six years for people to forget where he stood on this issue before he has to stand on his record.

The Republican senators who said "no thank you very much" to the Ryan scheme and who voted with the Democrats to defeat it?

Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts
Susan Collins of Maine
Olympia J. Snowe of Maine
Lisa Murkowski of Alaska

Lisa Murkowski, ever since the Palin tea partiers ran a candidate against her in last year's Republican primary, and after she won reelection anyway as a write-in candidate, has been saying "up yours" right regularly to the mullahs of conservatism ever since.

A fifth Republican senator also voted "no" on the Ryan budget, and he's a bit of a surprise: Rand Paul of Kentucky, who bears no resemblance to the other four except that he breathes air. According to Steinhauer of the Times, Paul thought the Ryan scheme was just too weak.

Remind me to send a sympathy card to the voters of Kentucky.