;)
December 28, 2021
Late Morning Update:
Poland. Andrew Higgins of the New York Times: "Wary of jeopardizing Poland's relations with the United States, its closest ally and military protector, the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, on Monday announced that he would veto a contentious media bill that could have led to an American-owned television station [-- TVN, majority-owned by the Discovery network --] losing its license. The veto frustrated a yearslong effort by more hard-line elements in Poland's nationalist governing party to restrict foreign influence and shrink the country's media space to outlets that share the party's deeply conservative and sometimes xenophobic views. Mr. Duda last year won a second term with support from the governing party, Law and Justice. His veto is likely to strain an already fractious coalition government bitterly divided over how far to push a conservative agenda rooted in fealty to the Catholic Church and the belief that Polish sovereignty trumps commitments to partners in the European Union and NATO, which Poland joined in 1999." ~~~
~~~ Vanessa Gera of the AP: "Poland’s president on Monday vetoed a media bill that would have forced U.S. company Discovery to give up its controlling share in Polish television network TVN."Russia. Soon Coming to the USA? Ivan Nechepurenko of the New York Times: "Russia's Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the liquidation of Memorial International, one of the nation's oldest and most revered human rights organizations, which chronicled political repression and became a symbol of the country's democratization that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The decision comes after a year of broad crackdown on opposition in Russia and more than three decades after Memorial was founded by a group of Soviet dissidents who believed that the country needed to reconcile with its traumatic past to move forward. In particular, the group dedicated itself to preserving the memory of the many thousands of Russians who died or were persecuted in forced labor camps during the Stalin era. Over the past year, the Kremlin has moved aggressively to stifle dissent in the news media, in religious groups, on social networks and especially among activists and political opponents, hundreds of whom have been harassed, jailed or forced into exile." The AP's report is here.
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Connor O'Brien of Politico: "President Joe Biden signed a $768 billion defense policy bill on Monday, after Democrats and Republicans rejected his initial Pentagon plans and endorsed a major boost to military spending.... The bill rejects Biden's $715 billion Pentagon budget request and instead calls for $740 billion for the Defense Department." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
AND in yesterday's Comments, unwashed put two and two together and came up with billions of dollars to pay for Covid-19 vaccinations for the whole world. No magical thinking required; just arithmetic.
Jacqueline Alemany & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans to begin holding public hearings in the new year to tell the story of the insurrection from start to finish while crafting an ample interim report on its findings by summer, as it shifts into a more public phase of its work. The panel will continue to collect information and seek testimony from willing witnesses and those who have been reluctant -- a group that now includes Republican members of Congress. It is examining whether to recommend that the Justice Department pursue charges against anyone, including ... Donald Trump, and whether legislative proposals are needed to help prevent valid election results from being overturned in the future.... The panel is expected to recommend legislative and administrative changes.... Also on the agenda is whether the panel will refer to the Justice Department crimes they believe may have been committed by Trump and his aides."
Hugo Lowell of the Guardian: "The Guardian reported last month that [Donald] Trump, according to multiple sources, called lieutenants based at the Willard hotel in Washington DC from the White House in the late hours of 5 January and sought ways to stop [Joe] Biden's certification from taking place on 6 January.... Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, has said the panel will open an inquiry into ... [that] phone call.... Trump first told the lieutenants his vice-president, Mike Pence, was reluctant to go along with the plan to commandeer his ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress in a way that would allow Trump to retain the presidency for a second term, the sources said.... But as Trump relayed to them the situation with Pence, the sources said, on at least one call, he pressed his lieutenants about how to stop Biden's certification from taking place on 6 January in a scheme to get alternate slates of electors for Trump sent to Congress. The former president's remarks came as part of wider discussions he had with the lieutenants at the Willard -- a team led by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn and Trump strategist Steve Bannon -- about delaying the certification, the sources said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
A Nonviolent Plan to Steal the Election. Sarah Burris of the Raw Story: "The Daily Beast revealed Monday that [Trump trade director Peter] Navarro's book cites Steve Bannon as a cohort in a 'hail Mary' attempt to stop the election certification. Further, Navarro confessed that he coordinated with Republican members of Congress to do it.... The co-conspirators even named the mission, calling it 'the Green Bay Sweep.' When discussing it in an interview with the Beast, he named Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as officials who helped spearhead the effort. [The idea was to run out the clock.] 'We spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen, including some senators. It started out perfectly...,' Navarro told the Beast. 'It was a perfect plan. And it all predicated on peace and calm on Capitol Hill....'... Read the full interview and excerpts from Navarro's book at the Daily Beast [firewalled]."
Trump: Okay to Yell 'Fire' at a Crowded Rally. Sky Palma of Raw Story: "In his effort to have a lawsuit accusing him of sparking the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol dismissed..., Donald Trump is arguing he's not responsible for the violent actions his supporters took, Bloomberg reports. 'Speakers at political rallies do not owe a duty of care to members of Congress or Capitol Police Officers not at the rally,' Trump's lawyer Jesse Binnall said in the Dec. 24 court filing. Trump's team argued that his words on Jan. 6 were in line with a president's right to 'take advantage of the bully pulpit.'" The Bloomberg story, which Palma linked, is firewalled.
OMG! Boy Voted "Most Popular" Is John Roberts. Lydia Saad of Gallup: "Chief Justice John Roberts earns the highest job approval rating of 11 U.S. leaders rated in a Dec. 1-16 Gallup poll with 60% approving of how he is handling his role. Only two other leaders on the list are reviewed positively by majorities of Americans -- Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell (53%) and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Dr. Anthony Fauci (52%)." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
The Pandemic, Ctd., Brought to You by the Unvaccinated
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Tuesday are here. The Washington Post's live Covid-19 updates for Tuesday are here.
Kevin Liptak of CNN: "President Joe Biden, speaking to the nation's governors, conceded Monday the steps he took earlier this year to scale up testing capacity for Covid-19 weren't enough to meet demand as a wave driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant crashes across the country. 'It's not enough.... If we'd have known, we'd have gone harder, quicker if we could have,' he said while joining a weekly virtual meeting between state leaders and members of his Covid-19 response team. He said long testing lines over the Christmas weekend 'shows that we have more work to do.'"
Benjamin Mueller & Isabella Paz of the New York Times: "As daily coronavirus cases in the United States soared to near record levels, federal health officials on Monday shortened by half the recommended isolation period for many infected Americans, hoping to minimize rising disruptions to the economy and everyday life. Virus-related staff shortages have upended holiday travel, leading to the cancellation of thousands of flights, and now threaten industries as diverse as health care, restaurants and retail. Yet health experts warn the country is only in the early stages of a fast-moving surge.... The [CDC] had previously recommended that infected patients isolate for 10 days from when they were tested for the virus. But on Monday, it slashed that period to five days for those without symptoms, or those without fevers whose other symptoms were resolving. Americans leaving isolation should wear masks around others for an additional five days after their isolation periods have ended, officials said. The updated guidance comes amid a rising tide of infections that threatens to swamp the U.S. health care system, particularly given that tens of millions remain unvaccinated." The Washington Post story, which is free to nonsubscribers, is here. The AP's report is here.
Brittany Shammas of the Washington Post: "... Anthony S. Fauci said Monday the United States should consider a vaccination requirement for domestic air travel amid a surge in coronavirus cases that has contributed to days of disruptions for airlines that are missing crew members. While noting that there were pros and cons to such a move, Fauci said it was 'just another one of the requirements that I think is reasonable to consider,' along with similar requirements at some universities and workplaces." An AP story is here.
Tali Arbel of the AP: "Flight cancellations that disrupted holiday travel, stretched into Monday as airlines called off more than 1,000 U.S. flights because crews were sick with COVID-19 during one of the year's busiest travel periods, and storm fronts added to the havoc. Flight delays and cancellations tied to staffing shortages have been common this year. Airlines encouraged workers to quit in 2020, when air travel collapsed, and carriers have struggled to make up ground this year, when air travel rebounded faster than almost anyone had expected. The arrival of the omicron variant only exacerbated the problem."
Five States Paying People to Spread Covid. Aaron Gregg of the Washington Post: "At least five Republican-led states have extended unemployment benefits to people who've lost jobs over vaccine mandates -- and a smattering of others may soon follow. Workers who quit or are fired for cause -- including for defying company policy -- are generally ineligible for jobless benefits. But Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas and Tennessee have carved out exceptions for those who won't submit to the multi-shot coronavirus vaccine regimens that many companies now require. Similar ideas have been floated in Wyoming, Wisconsin and Missouri.... It wasn't long ago, [observers] note, that two dozen Republican-led states moved to restrict unemployment aid to compel residents to return to the workforce and ease labor shortages."
Beyond the Beltway
California. Jil Cowan & Christine Chung of the New York Times: "Body camera and surveillance footage shows a man attacking holiday shoppers [in a Los Angeles clothing store] before police officers opened fire, killing him and a 14-year-old girl who was in a dressing room.... The scene unfolded in chaotic detail on Monday in newly released footage from surveillance and police body cameras of the episode on Thursday.... The 35-minute compilation shed new light on the city's latest high-profile police shooting, which has reignited an intense debate in Los Angeles over the role police should play in keeping communities safe." The Guardian's story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: I'm sure there are good LAPD officers, but in my experience, they're a bunch of thugs.
Virginia. Eduardo Medina of the New York Times: "Crews removing the pedestal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Va., on Monday found what appeared to be an elusive time capsule that may contain rare Confederate memorabilia, including a photo of Abraham Lincoln in his coffin. The discovery stoked excitement among historians and officials, including Gov. Ralph Northam, who declared on Twitter: 'They found it! This is likely the time capsule everyone was looking for.'... Last week, a separate time capsule was found near the base of the same statue and opened. The items inside that one, however, puzzled conservators, who theorized that that one might have been left behind by the workers who built the statue. Inside was an 1875 almanac, a waterlogged book of fiction, a British coin, a catalog, one letter and a photograph of James Netherwood, a master stonemason who worked on the Robert E. Lee pedestal." An ABC News story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Sorry, Ralph, I can't get all excited by what a bunch of admirers of Robert E. Lee thought was "valuable."
News Ledes
AP: "John Madden, the Hall of Fame coach turned broadcaster whose exuberant calls combined with simple explanations provided a weekly soundtrack to NFL games for three decades, died Tuesday morning, the league said. He was 85."
Washington Post: "Four people were killed and three injured, including a police officer, in a series of shootings that authorities described as a 'killing spree' in the Denver and Lakewood, Colo., area. The suspected shooter was also killed, while an officer of the Lakewood Police Department was undergoing surgery late Monday, Lakewood police spokesman John Romero said at a news conference. Law enforcement officials stressed that the investigation was ongoing and details were limited, but that they believed the shootings were the work of one person and the community faced no further threats."
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Reader Comments (8)
Have to say unwashed's comment might have been the most trenchant I've read in a long time.
Not a new idea, I know. The wisdom behind put your money where your mouth is has been around for a long time, and likely predates the invention of money itself, but in present world circumstances, the contrast between all our earnest pleasings and our actions that unwashed pointed to couldn't be more stark--or depressing.
Hadn't looked at defense spending in quite that way since the Iraq war, which has so far cost around 2 trillion dollars.
Back then (was it nearly twenty years ago?) I thought we could have accomplished far more of whatever goals we might have had in the Middle East if we'd just used half of what we spent killing people on humanitarian aid instead. Down the road, we might even have been liked rather than hated...
Of all the scams, the many bad investment choices our economy offers, our military budget, the wars themselves and the downstream violence generated by training thousands of young people to kill are surely the worst.
@Ken Winkes: Yes, and I think unwashed's premise that an international "war on Covid" should be a Defense budgetary item is logical. The whole purpose of the Defense Department is to keep Americans "safe" from invaders, and that of course is what a virus is. Covid has killed more Americans than any war, and more than several major wars combined.
Re Defense spending on global health: The Army's Walter Reed Army Institute of Research has, since WW2, diligently plugged away at prophylactic requirements to protect U.S. forces, which get deployed to some fairly infectious places. The anti-AIDS campaign in Africa (PEPFAR) has been a huge success and the US part is largely operated and funded by DOD.
For decades, US Pharma paid little attention to tropical diseases, and WRAIR and France (for its own reasons) carried the burden. Navy and Army Medical Research Units in Egypt and Malaysia and Bangkok kept the ball rolling on parasitic diseases.
And now, the Army says it may have a generic vaccine for SARS/corona type viruses. I won't hold my breath but it seems encouraging.
The Defense budget is full of waste and pork, but some of it does good work.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/12/us-army-creates-single-vaccine-effective-against-all-covid-sars-variants/360089/
@Patrick
Didn't mean to knock the entire DOD mission, and don't think we should have stayed at home during WWII (by far our most expensive war) and counted our savings.
Might be more honest budgeting, however, to separate its humanitarian efforts from the DOD budget and place them somewhere else, so it wouldn't be so easy to confuse our real goals and identify what each really costs.
Dream on, Ken.
On the bashing the Biden administration took last night on MSNBC (have seen some in the press, too) over the sudden shortage of Covid tests:
There may be some justifiable blame there somewhere, but Omicron first made the news around the end of November, coming as a surprise, and that was only a month ago...
Seems the pundits are a bit desperate to find fault.
Anything to fake even-handedness, I guess.
More personally, on Covid testing:
Have been trying to schedule a PCR for myself and it's been hard.
There's Covid in the family and while I have no symptoms thought another test (the last was negative) in order.
Regular doctor's office closed yesterday due to weather (snow and ice on roads), but got an appt. an an urgent care clinic. Drove there (roads not that bad), stayed in the car, called in, got in trouble because I'd parked in the wrong place, moved the car to the right one, got registered and was told to wait, that I would get another call and a provider would come out to see me for an interview, after which someone else would come out with the test (no problem; I knew the drill). So I opened my book and waited.
Was surprised when the phone rang within ten minutes. Even excited. This was working out very well. But....
The cold weather had led to some maintenance issues in the building. They closed the clinic.
Will try again today at my regular doctor's office. I think they will be open....
That damn Biden screws up everything!
"War on COVID" as a budgetary item for DOD...of course. Out here, where I'm massively outnumbered by "freedom" and "rights" about the only things that cause pause are money and defense. Use the available tools; necessity is the mother of invention.
"not -- interested in a man who is short on book-learning." As a lysdexic college grad in a blue collar work field and as a person who recently went back at 60 to get a MS, I think that is a powerful sentence. I was always struck by how in Alaska one of the first things done after the oil pipeline was done is all the libraries in the state were rebuilt (and restocked). Another thing I've remembered is how when I was an exchange student on the East Coast, I was asked, "what state is Montana is in?". I met illiterate artisans and dumb fuck book-smart people. One of the most beautiful things about returning to college was to spend time outside my bubble and be together with engaging and earnest young people looking forward to the future. How cool is that! The percentage of people younger than I am expands every day; I plan to grow older being better able to listen to that expanding percentage of people. Booksmart people in our country couldn't figure out how to read what the Bolsheviks did about the Muslims. This is almost the exact same lack of imagination about seeing COVID as a defense threat. I would suggest, that it is lack of imagination versus lack of book learning that is a bigger issue. If we segregate ourselves by age, by education, by gender, by region, by whatever, we will wither without cross pollination. This is where MLK and Gandhi both reigned supreme and fascists bite the dust from in-breeding. I am humbled as "booksmart" after taking OChem, genetics, biochem, cell and molecular biology, etc in my late 50s, when I read the clarity Gloria waltzed with to explain the Big Bang and Webb the other day (comments 12.26). Thanks for your efforts and nurturing of this space to share ideas, Marie.
According to Politico, the $768 billion defense spending bill only
authorizes spending and doesn't actually allocate any money for it.
Does that mean that each taxpayer (143 million of us) will be billed
for $5,370 sometime in the future? Or will rich people buy more
government bonds? How does that work anyway? Inquiring minds
want to know, (my civics, government classes were taught by the
coach, shortage of teachers).
Anyhow, I won't be paying much income taxes in the future. Our
Christmas cards to clients included a statement that 2021 was our
last year in the landscaping business. Should have said good luck
finding someone dependable.
"How does that work anyway?"
A main idea in the organization of the USG is to separate powers so that no one person/entity can act alone. The separation of powers goes far below just the three branches of government.
One of the "separations" in congressional budgeting is the existence of "authorizing committees" and separate "appropriating committees." The "authorizers" in each area (e.g., defense, justice, education, etc.) are supposed to create the justification for planned expenses in the budget; the parallel "appropriators" subsequently figure out what actual amounts should go where. The Senate and the House each have both types of committees.
The recent Defense bill was for "authorization." It means the Congress and (when signed) the Executive Branch agree on defense priorities and rough estimates.
Appropriation comes later. A whole new round of logrolling.
Until around Reagan, authorizers had a lot of power. But in recent decades, with the increased use of omnibus Continuing Resolutions ("We can't agree on numbers so, Executive, just keep doing things at the level you've been doing them.") and Supplemental Appropriations ("Whoops! A new thing came up, we have to pay for dealing with it, but its not in the budget, so let's appropriate a quick increase!") and Nondiscretionary expenses (money that has to be disbursed no matter what, like interest on debt, Medicaid, etc.), authorizers are almost powerless and appropriators are the big cheeses.
Forrest, you will never be billed. Yes, you pay taxes, but those are not determined by the amount of national debt. In fact, you "own" the note on that debt --- we borrow from ourselves.
And yes, rich people will continue to buy that debt, all of it, all the time, as long as the US dollar remains convertible. Buying US debt is the safest way for people with more money than current ways to spend it, to protect their liquid assets. Even when the interest is below the inflation rate and they are "paying" the US Treasury to hold their bigbucks for them for a while.
Few other countries can treat debt the way the US does. Which is why when R's threaten to hold the debt ceiling, they are threatening one of the US economy's primary trump (you should pardon the expression) cards. R's are either immensely stupid or think the voters are -- and of course could be both.
Wow. Is there anyone in the GOP that is not compromised by the Russians? Cawthorn met his ex-wife just like everybody else, a random Russian officer he met at a Russian casino later invited the guy in a wheelchair to a fake Crossfit competition where he met his future fiancee. Totally normal...