Basically, McCabe wrote about how placidly Flynn seemed to misstate facts in his FBI interview, according to his agents. He used the figurative language that it was *as if* Flynn kept staring outside on a normal day and remarking on the beautiful black sky.
A Fox reporter with poor reading comprehension wrote up the book saying McCabe said Flynn *actually made* the "beautiful black sky" comment. He did not, it was an analogy.
Given Q lore on the storm, obsession with secret messages + Flynn, here we are
The Fox piece eventually added the disclaimer that McCabe didn't use quotes and maybe Flynn didn't really say it. But that wasn't in the original version of the piece (comparison here). No correction of course.
Tweets are now deleted but Flynn's conspiratorial brother Joseph referenced "beautiful black sky" on Twitter, giving more fodder for Q believers trying to decode.
(Not the General on the call about the National Guard response, a different brother)
Schumer on Senate floor re: organizing resolution: "Leader McConnell’s proposal is unacceptable and it won’t be accepted. And the Republican leader knew that when he first proposed it."
Schumer said all he wants is the same agreement for the last 50-50 Senate in '01, and that McConnell's making an "extraneous demand" to put "constraints on the majority."
Says in addition to higher-profile nuclear option uses McConnell used it last Congress to speed nominations
McConnell argues that "there wasn't a need" in 2001 to reaffirm the basic rules, because it was "safely assumed" that no majority would break them.
That assumption was not so safe — Republican senators became fixated on the idea just two years later.
There's a lot that's smart about this @ezraklein column but the assumed connection between passing a lot of progressive policies and subsequent electoral success does not seem evident to me
For instance Bill Clinton was least popular when he was trying to pass his health care bill, most popular when Republicans controlled Congress, the economy was good, and not much was happening policywise.
GOP governors in blue states w/ Dem legislatures are incredibly popular
Obviously policies that help people are worth pursuing because... they help people!
But the idea that electoral success will likely follow, and that the only thing holding Dems back from success is their inability to pass more stuff, smacks of wishful thinking to me.
With the exception of the budget reconciliation process, bills in the Senate will need at least 10 Republican votes to overcome the filibuster.
How can Democrats get 10 Republican Senate votes? There are basically three ways. (1) Try to pick them off individually (quite difficult, 10's a lot). (2) Put up bills Republicans will simply want to vote for (or be hesitant to block). (3) Cut a deal with McConnell
Whether any of these are achievable depends on the issue.
In 2009, Obama and Democrats managed to pick off 3 Senate Rs to get the stimulus past a filibuster (Snowe, Collins, Specter).
But Dems' majority then was much bigger, they had 58. Much harder to pull that off with 50
"Elites" get a bad rap lately but the reality is that if Republican elites purely represented their voters’ wishes, the post-election period would've been a whole lot uglier as the GOP “fought” for Trump at every level (certifications, electors, more support for Cong. challenge)
The reason most didn’t is because most of those GOP elites still have an epistemic understanding of the election results that is on some level based in reality — that there was no widespread fraud and that Trump is lying constantly about this.
So whether it was swing state governors or state officials, state legislature leaders, Barr, McConnell, Pence, they largely averted their eyes when asked to actually *do* anything to change the results.
Because of this shared factual understanding that Trump's case is BS
The "25th Amendment legislation" Pelosi references would need to be passed over President Trump's veto, meaning the threshold for success (2/3 of both houses) would actually be higher than for impeachment
I wrote about Raskin's 25th amendment bill last year. Though it might make sense as a reform idea, it makes no sense as a crisis response
The bill Pelosi is referring to would not invoke the 25th Amendment. It would set up a commission that — if Mike Pence agreed — would invoke the amendment.
So the bill itself still wouldn't get around the Pence problem, even if it somehow became law