Quick take: Sinema steals Senate dunce cap from Collins, takes selfie

 On one or three or... a hundred occasions, it is possible that I might have... referred to Sen. Susan Collins as... the dumbest member of the US Senate.  Recall the technical distinction between "wingnuts" and "moonbats."  A wingnut is a right-wing extremist, and a moonbat is a left-wing extremist.  My contempt for both does not require me to praise "moderates."  Do not fall prey to that fallacy.  Nevertheless, Susan Collins is a strangely stupid creature, whose crown is occasionally stolen.  This week, by frequent contender, Kyrsten Sinema.  Manchin knows what he is doing.  He negotiated, he got something that likely will not hurt him in West Virginia after backing away from a typically terribly named Democratic bill in favor of a bill that has nothing to do with inflation, but so what?  And then there's Sinema.

OK, Kyrsten, you are the "pivotal voter," in political science parlance.  The bill passes or fails by your decision.  The world is your oyster.  What do you want?  You can have it, so long as it doesn't drive Manchin away.  And what is so important to Kyrsten?  The carried interest tax?!  Really?!

Unless she is secretly managing a fund and making fuckloads of money on the side, she just stole Susan Collins's dunce-crown.  When you have that much power, you fucking use it.

Yeah, yeah, blah-blah, lefties spread their conspiracy theories about how much money she gets in campaign contributions from fund managers, but everyone does.  They give money to everyone except the straight-up commies.  So why Sinema?  As I said, unless she is running investments on the side, she's a moron.  She could have gotten anything.  Instead, she needed to justify holding out, but couldn't come up with anything better.

Yes, she has defended that tax benefit before, and whatever, but there is no way it is really that important to her.

Moron.