Good morning, this is The Smoke Eater for Friday, December 18, 2020 and you are more than just your name.
Quick Hit
* I forecasted a shutdown before it was cool * Defending the right to shitpost at the expense of soldiers on Christmas * Clinging to hope in Georgia so you doesn't have to cling to McConnell in D.C. * Forgetting Feinstein * A metaphor for the inefficiencies of self-serving politicians *
NOTE: Unlike some others, I'll be around next week. There's a couple of things I've been wanting to write about, like the Russian hack, ship building, and killer robots. Besides, it’s not like I have anything better to do. The Smoker Eater is mobile friendly, totally free and supported by super awesome readers. If you want to be super awesome, tip me on Ko-Fi, find me on Venmo, or Paypal, or subscribe to my Patreon!
COV-AID
After Democrats and Republicans started playing the blame game, it's starting to look like COVID aid and omnibus spending negotiations will stretch into the weekend. Right now the most likely package will include a $600 stimulus checks, a $300 weekly boost for unemployment, and $325 billion for schools, vaccine distribution, and transportation. Parties were still bickering about evictions, FEMA and SNAP, and then Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey started demanding limits on the Fed and Treasury's ability to dole out emergency cash in the future -- something that's pissed off Democrats as it could really screw President-elect Joe Biden when he takes over on Jan. 20. The WSJ's editorial board is defending Toomey, hilariously declaring, "The financial markets are in good shape, unlike in March and April." (Spoiler Alert: They're not.)
There's no word on whether anyone will #SaveOurStages, let alone bars and restaurants that have been walking on broken glass for the last nine months.
Members of Congress were telling reporters they'd be able to avoid a shutdown after leadership decided to drop help state and local governments getting hammered by a lack of tax revenue in exchange for tabling the liability protections Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been demanding. The hope is everyone can continue squabbling under a Biden administration, and leave him saddled with the "blue state bailout," as Republicans from states with itty bitty GDPs have called it.
Some paper pushers I know in the federal government tell me they've been preparing for a(nother) shutdown since Wednesday. Asking why only elicited cynical laughter.
Trump recently injected himself into the negotiations, the Washington Post's Jeff Stein reports, by insisting on $2,000 checks, but White House child wranglers were able to wrestle his phone away. Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley tried to advance his 2024 hopes by proposing bigger stimulus checks earlier today, but Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson shut him down over concerns it would add to the national debt.
Defending Dumb-ocracy
Adding to the complete clusterfuck is Trump's continued refusal to sign the National Defense Authorization Act. Trump has to sign or veto the bill by Dec. 23, and members are already is starting to plan on heading back to the Hill the week of Dec. 28 for an override. If an override has to be carried out, a number of legislators will be forced to appoint proxies to vote for them as COVID gives zero fucks about politics. House Armed Services Chair Rep. Adam Smith says that if Congress can't muster the votes to embarrass Trump with an override they'd have to wait a month for Biden. That could prove difficult and time consuming as lawmakers would have to draft a new bill, and pose major national security consequences. The New York Times' Julian Barnes writes that the NDAA has a bevy of cyber security provisions intended to attack and defend against state and non-state assholes from pulling off digital B&Es of critical U.S. systems.
Trumpland became so butthurt after WaPo dug up a report from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that found the U.S. could save $2.6 billion if Biden stopped building Trump's wall on his first day in office that acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller ordered a complete stop to all cooperation with Biden's transition team, Axios reports. Miller is denying the report, saying he simply sent everyone home for the holidays, but Biden's transition director, Yohannes Abraham, called bullshit and told reporters, "Let me be clear: there was no mutually agreed upon holiday break ... it’s important that briefings and other engagements continue during this period as there’s no time to spare."
The Trump administration has refused to conduct an annual a report about racial discrimination in the military since FY2017, Reuters reports. When Reuters started digging into the missing Workplace and Equal Opportunity Survey of Active Duty Members, the Pentagon denied FOIAs of the 2017 data, and refused to explain why it was withholding the data and the report, simply stating its release could, "reasonably be expected to interfere with the government’s deliberative process."
Dozens of progressive groups finally cobbled together their hippy dream team of national security people for the Biden administration. They're not releasing the list publicly, but Foreign Policy's Jack Deitch has details on a handful of the more prominent nominees. A majority of people on the list are women and people of color. Because leadership position in the blob have historically been dominated by white, angry and aging men (WAAMs), a number of people on the list don't have experience toiling away in bureaucracy, so they're targeting less flashy positions in the hope making a difference.
Odds and Ends
Biden's gripping tightly to the fantasy that he can work with Senate Republicans thanks to his special relationship with Sen. McConnell, but privately Biden's telling his people that the party needs to clench the Georgia run-offs in order to get anything done. Things will only get more dramatic in the coming days as Republicans struggle with skitzoid messaging about winning/losing the presidency, mail-in voting, and the difference between the three branches of government. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports almost 76,000 new registered voters, a majority of whom are under 35. All of that has put a little pep in the step of Democrats who see the tantrums of Trump and his digital army of batshit keyboard cryhards as a blessing in disguise.
Republican's won't be doing any kind of autopsy of the 2020 elections. Party bosses feel that with voter participation up and candidates down the ballot beating expectations they should dive deeper into Trumpland and gin up more of the radical populist fantasy nonsense that churns out domestic terrorists. Meanwhile, the Never Trump grifters are plotting their own hustles. Some are hoping to ride Biden's coattails hard enough that they drag him to the right, some want burn down the GOP and start again, and other hoping to make a couple of bucks with new media empires built on trolling and shitposts.
California Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein has had some public brain farts that are as humiliating as they are concerning, as Jane Mayer wrote in the Atlantic recently. In an attempt to rebut accusations that shuffle up to a line that reads "senility," Feinstein spoke with the LA Times' George Skelton. The interview quickly pivots off Feinstein's mental faculties to say the distinguished 87 year-old might be a bit ... forgetful, but she won't be stepping down lest California's embattled governor become a kingmaker in 2021.
With almost nothing left on the schedule for the 116th Congress, Senate Republicans are moving to install yet another conservative judge in the hope that Biden will adhere to a tradition of resurrecting judicial nominees that couldn't make it to the bench before the end of the last legislative session. It's also possible the lameduck Trump administration skip all that nonsense make a recess appointment. During a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Feinstein cut through the mental fog to accuse the Republican-led committee of attempting to "stack the federal courts," adding, "Despite the fact that President Trump has lost his re-election bid ... we are still processing his judicial nominees instead of addressing the most pressing issues before us."
One More Thing...
Toho's Shin Godzilla is on the Internet Archive. Where as the original Godzilla is an metaphor for the dangers of nuclear weapons, this film's updated themes and tone are much darker and timely, referencing tsunamis, earthquakes, the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and serves as a criticism against inefficient bureaucracy. It's a treat for kaiju fans, and another weird as hell giant monster movie for everyone else.
Note: This film has English subtitles.
OK, here's a cute critter video: ALL THE BABIES!
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