;)
The Commentariat -- June 25, 2021
Marie: I'm going on sort of a road trip this morning and probably won't be back till late Saturday afternoon. During this time I will have limited or no access to the Internet. So see you Saturday night!
Seung Min Kim of the Washington Post: "President Biden announced a bipartisan infrastructure agreement Thursday after meeting with Democratic and GOP senators at the White House, marking a victory in his quest to work across the aisle with Republicans who oppose most of his agenda. 'We have a deal,' Biden said Thursday alongside the 10 senators, who agreed on a package featuring hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending on the nation's roads, bridges and other infrastructure." MB: Not sure what this means. Last night, Elizabeth Warren was on Rachel Maddow's show, and I got the impression she wasn't going along with any such deal. We'll see. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Oh, President Biden doesn't know, either. ~~~
~~~ Morgan Chalfant & Alex Gangitano of the Hill: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that the House would not vote on a bipartisan infrastructure bill until the Senate passes a larger set of Democratic priorities through budget reconciliation. Biden said following the meeting with senators, 'We'll see what happens in the reconciliation bill and the budget process,' adding that the legislation will move in a 'dual track' with this infrastructure bill." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Update. Alex Gangitano & Morgan Chalfant of the Hill: "President Biden on Thursday said he won't sign the bipartisan infrastructure deal if Congress doesn't also pass a reconciliation bill, committing to a dual track system to get both bills passed. 'I expect that in the coming months this summer, before the fiscal year is over, that we will have voted on this bill, the infrastructure bill, as well as voted on the budget resolution. But if only one comes to me, this is the only one that comes to me, I'm not signing it. It's in tandem,' Biden told reporters at the White House. 'The bipartisan bill from the very beginning was understood, there's going to have to be the second part of it. I'm not just signing the bipartisan bill and forgetting about the rest that I proposed. I proposed a significant piece of legislation in three parts and all three parts are equally important,' the president said. Biden's remarks are likely to ease concerns among progressive Democrats who are wary of the bipartisan agreement because it does not include other Democratic priorities, like measures to expand access to child care, free education and paid family leave." ~~~
~~~ Marie: IOW, this "bipartisan" bill is a chimera. It covers only a piece of a larger package Democrats plan to pass through reconciliation. We all agree to fix the Queensboro Bridge, but we won't fix it till the kids on both sides get free education.
Guardian: "Joe Biden has vowed that Afghans who helped the US military 'are not going to be left behind' as his administration stepped up planning to evacuate thousands of Afghan interpreters while their applications for US entry are processed. Planning has accelerated in recent days to relocate the Afghans and their families to other countries before the US military completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to officials. The evacuation of the at-risk Afghans will include their family members for a total of as many as 50,000 people, a senior Republican lawmaker said. 'They're going to come,' Biden said in an exchange with reporters after an event to highlight a bipartisan agreement reached on infrastructure legislation. 'We've already begun the process. Those who helped us are not going to be left behind.'"
Jeff Schogul of Task & Purpose: "Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin put his foot down when asked by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) on Wednesday what the military and critical race theory -- a loosely defined term used by many conservatives to claim that liberals espouse the belief that America is fundamentally racist. 'We do not teach critical race theory,' Austin said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing about the Defense Department's proposed budget. 'We don't embrace critical race theory and I think that's a spurious conversation.'" An enjoyable read. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ James Clark of Task & Purpose: "During Wednesday's House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Defense Department's proposed budget, an angrier-than-usual-looking Gen. Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded to questions from two Republican lawmakers about the teaching of critical race theory at West Point, the United States Military Academy.... Milley seemed to be particularly ticked off at the notion that you can't read a book without suddenly becoming indoctrinated by the ideas contained in said text. (For anyone who needs this spelled out for them: That is not how books work, as the Navy's top officer recently pointed out during another Congressional hearing that played out much the same way.) 'I've read Mao Zedong, I've read Karl Marx, I've read Lenin. That doesn't make me a communist,' Milley said." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Notes from the Right-Wing Bubble. Jeremy Barr of the Washington Post: "Over the past few months, and particularly through June, hosts and anchors on Fox have ramped up the conversation about [critical race] theory, an academic legal framework for examining systemic and institutional racism that has become a hot-button issue for political conservatives. The concept has been around for more than 40 years, according to EducationWeek, but it has become a major programming theme on Fox News only in recent months as parents, buoyed by conservative activists and groups, have vocally opposed the teaching of the theory -- or something similar to it -- in schools throughout the country. Republican-led state legislatures have voted to outlaw it. The term 'critical race theory' was mentioned just 132 times on Fox News shows in 2020. In 2021, it has been mentioned 1,860 times, according to a tally using the media monitoring service Critical Mention."
Katy O'Donnell of Politico: "President Joe Biden will nominate housing nonprofit executive Julia Gordon to be the commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration, the White House said Thursday. Gordon is the president of the National Community Stabilization Trust, which facilitates the rehabilitation of homes in underserved markets. She was also the housing director at the Center for American Progress and managed the single-family policy team at the Federal Housing Finance Agency."
Christine Hauser & Isabella Paz of the New York Times: "The United States will search federal boarding schools for possible burial sites of Native American children, hundreds of thousands of whom were forcibly taken from their communities to be culturally assimilated in the schools for more than a century, the interior secretary announced on Tuesday. The initiative is likely to resemble a recent effort in Canada.... Addressing a virtual conference of the National Congress of American Indians, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said the program would 'shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past, no matter how hard it will be.'" See related story linked under "Way Beyond the Beltway."
Felicia Sonmez & Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced Thursday that House Democrats will form a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, one month after Senate Republicans blocked an effort to form an independent, bipartisan commission.... About 10,000 people laid siege to the Capitol on Jan. 6, and nearly 800 of them broke into the Capitol building.... The select committee -- which will require a majority vote in the Democratic-led House to be formed -- is a signal that Pelosi wants to centralize [committee] investigations in one body that will be equipped with subpoena power and tasked with publishing its findings." Politico's story is here. (Also linked yesterday.)
Josh Gerstein of Politico: "The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a pair of bills Thursday that would dramatically expand video coverage of federal court trials and other proceedings while putting Supreme Court arguments on camera for the first time. Both bills have bipartisan support, including the endorsement of the panel's chair, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), and the longstanding backing of the committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa. It's the first time such legislation has cleared the Senate committee in more than a decade, according to Fix the Court, a group advocating for more transparency in the judicial system.... Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a former Supreme Court litigator, warned that allowing TV broadcast of arguments there would lead to showboating by lawyers and justices." MB: Ha ha. Why, what would Ted Cruz know about showboating for the cameras?
Laura Reiley of the Washington Post: "Black and other minority farmers were dealt a new legal blow on Wednesday when a Florida federal court issued a preliminary injunction halting a key part of the Biden administration's federal stimulus relief package that forgave agricultural debts to farmers of color. U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard halted loan forgiveness payments and debt relief for disadvantaged farmers anywhere in the United States, according to the Middle District Court of Florida ruling. The lawsuit was filed by White farmer Scott Wynn of Jennings, Fla., who also has farm loans and has faced financial hardship during the pandemic. He said the debt relief program discriminates against him by race.... The program was already temporarily on hold, due to a separate restraining order in a case by a White farmer in Wisconsin.... The Florida case is considered the first nationwide preliminary injunction, said lawyers for the group Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed the lawsuit in May." MB: George W. Bush appointed Howard to the federal bench. (Also linked yesterday.)
** Nicole Hong & Ben Protess of the New York Times: "A New York appellate court suspended Rudolph W. Giuliani's law license on Thursday after a disciplinary panel found that he made 'demonstrably false and misleading' statements about the 2020 election as Donald J. Trump's personal lawyer. The court wrote in a 33-page decision that Mr. Giuliani's conduct threatened 'the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law.'... Mr. Giuliani now faces disciplinary proceedings and can fight the suspension. But the court said in its decision that Mr. Giuliani's actions had posed 'an immediate threat' to the public and that it was likely he would face 'permanent sanctions' after the proceedings conclude." A CNN story is here. (Also linked yesterday.)
Annie Karni & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., [Mike] Pence defended the constitutionally mandated role he played in certifying the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, when a violent mob of Trump loyalists -- some chanting 'Hang Mike Pence' -- stormed the Capitol while the president did nothing for hours to stop them. 'I will always be proud that we did our part on that tragic day to reconvene the Congress and fulfilled our duty under the Constitution and the laws of the United States,' Mr. Pence said, noting that as vice president, he had no constitutional authority to reject or return electoral votes submitted to Congress by the states. 'The truth is, there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.' It was the furthest that Mr. Pence, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2024, has gone yet in defending his role that day or distancing himself from Mr. Trump, to whom he ingratiated himself during their four years together in office." A CBS News story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Mikey, I do believe you just insinuated that your beloved leader was "un-American."
The Big Lie Won't Die. Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: Wealthy right-wing Trump supporters continue to pour millions of dollars into propaganda on various platforms promoting the false claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. "The baseless assertion ... is reverberating across this alternative media ecosphere five months after Trump and many of his backers were pushed off Facebook and Twitter for spreading disinformation that inspired a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol.... These falsehoods are now seeping into civic life, spurring citizens in multiple states to demand that local officials review the 2020 results.... The constant stream of purported evidence being cited by pro-Trump allies helps keep true believers engaged...." MB: This is a long piece, filled with familiar characters, but worth a read, or at least a skim. (Also linked yesterday.)
"Economics in a Post-truth Nation." Paul Krugman of the New York Times: "Despite some growing pains, the U.S. economy is clearly on a vaccine-and-stimulus-fueled tear, with just about every measure indicating rapid recovery from the pandemic slump.... Overall, we're clearly in a much better place economically than we were just a few months ago. Yet according to the long-running University of Michigan survey of consumers, on average self-identified Republicans assess the economic situation much less positively now than they did before the 2020 elections.... Whatever the explanation, post-truth politics has expanded its domain to the point that it overrides everyday experience."
"Just Shoot Them." Zachary Cohen of CNN: "The top US general repeatedly pushed back on then-President Donald Trump's argument that the military should intervene violently in order to quell the civil unrest that erupted around the country last year. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley often found he was the lone voice of opposition to those demands during heated Oval Office discussions, according to excerpts of a new book, obtained by CNN, from Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender.... The book reveals new details about how Trump's language became increasingly violent during Oval Office meetings as protests in Seattle and Portland began to receive attention from cable new outlets. The President would highlight videos that showed law enforcement getting physical with protesters and tell his administration he wanted to see more of that behavior, the excerpts show. 'That's how you're supposed to handle these people,' Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials, according to Bender. 'Crack their skulls!' Trump also told his team that he wanted the military to go in and 'beat the f--k out' of the civil rights protesters, Bender writes. 'Just shoot them,' Trump said on multiple occasions inside the Oval Office, according to the excerpts." ~~~
~~~ Marie: So here you have the POTUS* demanding the military -- who are under his command -- murder protesters who disagreed with his policies. What we thought was going on -- was going on. Trump was trying to turn a nominal democracy into a dictatorship.
Jeanna Smialek of the New York Times: "As Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin scrambled to save faltering markets at the start of the pandemic last year, America's top economic officials were in near-constant contact with a Wall Street executive whose firm stood to benefit financially from the rescue. Laurence D. Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, was in frequent touch with Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Powell in the days before and after many of the Fed's emergency rescue programs were announced in late March. Emails obtained by The New York Times through a records request, along with public releases, underscore the extent to which Mr. Fink planned alongside the government for parts of a financial rescue that his firm referred to in one message as 'the project' that he and the Fed were 'working on together.'... BlackRock's ability to directly profit from its regular contact with the government during rescue planning was limited.... But how the Fed and Treasury devised their rescue package mattered to BlackRock." (Also linked yesterday.)
We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times: "... it's great that we again have a president respected by the world. But we are not 'back,' and we must face the reality that our greatest vulnerability is not what other countries do to us but what we have done to ourselves.... In terms of our well-being at home and competitiveness abroad, the blunt truth is that America is lagging. In some respects, we are sliding toward mediocrity.... The latest Social Progress Index, a measure of health, safety and well-being around the world, ranked the United States No. 28. Even worse, the United States was one of only three countries, out of 163, that went backward in well-being over the last decade.... [President] Biden's proposals for a refundable child credit, for national pre-K, for affordable child care and for greater internet access would help address America's strategic weaknesses. They would do more to strengthen our country than the $1.2 trillion plan pursued by American officials to modernize our nuclear arsenal. Our greatest threats today are ones we can't nuke.... To truly bring America back, we should worry less about what others do and more about what we do to ourselves." (Also linked yesterday.)
The Pandemic, Ctd.
Carla Johnson & Mike Stobbe of the AP: "Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now are in people who weren't vaccinated, a staggering demonstration of how effective the shots have been and an indication that deaths per day -- now down to under 300 -- could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the vaccine. An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that 'breakthrough' infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 853,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. That's about 0.1%." MB: People don't get vaccinated for various reasons, but one is that some of these dead people listened to Tucker Carlson's vaccine disinformation special segments. Yes, Tucker is killing people to get ratings.
Lena Sun of the Washington Post: "Federal health officials said Wednesday there is a 'likely association' between two coronavirus vaccines and increased risk of a rare heart condition in adolescents and young adults, the strongest assertion so far on the link between the two. Data presented to advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adds to recent findings, most notably from Israel, of rare cases of myocarditis -- inflammation of the heart muscle -- predominantly in males ages 12 to 39, who experience symptoms after the second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Most cases have been mild and have taken place several days to a week after the second shot, officials said. Chest pain is the most common symptom. Patients generally recover from symptoms and do well.... Getting covid-19 puts someone at far greater risk of heart inflammation and other serious medical problems than the risk of getting myocarditis from vaccination, [experts & health officials] said." The story is free to nonsubscribers.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Thursday are here: "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday approved a one-month extension of the national moratorium on evictions, scheduled to expire on June 30, but administration officials said this will be the final time they push back the deadline." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live Covid-19 updates for Thursday are here. (Also linked yesterday.)
As He Lay Dying. Damian Paletta & Yasmeen Abutaleb of the Washington Post in an adapted excerpt from their book on how the Trump administration dealt with the pandemic: "A five-day stretch in October 2020 -- from the moment White House officials began an extraordinary effort to get Trump lifesaving drugs to the day the president returned to the White House from the hospital -- marked a dramatic turning point in the nation's flailing coronavirus response. Trump's brush with severe illness and the prospect of death caught the White House so unprepared that they had not even briefed Vice President Mike Pence's team on a plan to swear him in if Trump became incapacitated. For months, the president had taunted and dodged the virus, flouting safety protocols by holding big rallies and packing the White House with maskless guests. But just one month before the election, the virus that had already killed more than 200,000 Americans had sickened ... [him]. Trump's medical advisers hoped his bout with the coronavirus, which was far more serious than acknowledged at the time, would inspire him to take the virus seriously.... Instead, Trump emerged from the experience triumphant and ever more defiant." (Also linked yesterday.)
Beyond the Beltway
Wisconsin. Scott Bauer of the AP: "Retired police officers hired by Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos are being paid $3,200 a month to investigate 'potential irregularities and/or illegalities' in the 2020 presidential election.... The investigators will be paid $9,600 each over three months.... Vos signed two contracts in recent days and has said he intends to hire a third investigator and an attorney to oversee the probe. Vos last month announced plans to have officers investigate the election results as part of the Republican response to ... Donald Trump's narrow loss in Wisconsin. Republicans have also ordered a review by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau and they have passed several bills tightening rules for absentee voting, measures Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is all but certain to veto."
Way Beyond
Canada. Amanda Coletta & Michael Miller of the Washington Post: "A First Nation in Canada says it has found 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, at least the second such discovery here in less than a month as the country again confronts one of the darkest chapters of its history. The Cowessess First Nation made the 'horrific and shocking discovery' at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in the southeastern part of the province, according to a statement released Wednesday by the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents 74 First Nations in Saskatchewan." (Also linked yesterday.) The Guardian's story is here.
News Lede
The New York Times' live updates of developments in the condo collapse near Miami Beach, Florida, are here: "An intense search operation with trained dogs and sonar looking for any signs of life continued overnight and into Friday morning after the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers condo complex just north of Miami Beach. The disaster left at least one person dead and 99 unaccounted for."
Share Article
Reader Comments (6)
There's an old saying, attributed to the Sioux:
"A people without history is like the wind of the buffalo grass. What may be worse are a people without a heart unable to see half their countrymen and countrywomen as anything but the enemy."
Tim Egan on "America is Getting Meaner"
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/trump-jan-6-america.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
So, Fox's coverage of BLM protests incited Trump to order Americans killed. Luckily they were not successful because of a little push back. But their covid coverage did, and continues to, get people killed.
By the way–––––35 years ago Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy's infamous lawyer who became Trumps' was disbarred; today Rudy G. has met the same demise. And, poor Michael Cohen done take that bullet he once said he'd take for Trump and moved on after his stint in the slammer.
"Every one he touches turns to dust" someone said long ago about the man who still thinks he has that magic ––the kind that lets him off the hook for all those deaths and deceits. Tick tock?
I'll bet that Marie is road tripping to Bedminster NJ to interview
that former guy.
Can't wait to read her reporting on questions like: Are you really
as stupid as you come across on TV?
How much do you pay Melonie to stay around and do you call it
an allowance or hush money?
If you consider yourself a good Christian, how come you've been
married so many times and pay porn stars if you think you're so hot?
Just can't wait for the reporting on these and many more.
Here's a good one from the Daily Show yesterday:
https://youtu.be/RsB3qPvtfvU
Thanks for the memories, Rudy "Toot Toot" Guiliani.
The DOJ suit against Georgia for it's recent vote suppression legislation is sure to incur howls of "federal overreach" from confederates.
But the 14th amendment prohibits denial to minorities of the right to vote, and specifically authorizes congress to pass necessary legislation to ensure that.
And even though SCOTUS said that the specific 1965 Voting Rights Act, renewed for the umpteenth time, the "necessary legislation", was invalid because justices know better than legislators, the confederates said that all was not lost. Although the SCOTUS invlaidatedf the prior DOJ clearance requirement of Section 4 of the VRA, Section 5 still allowed post-hoc lawsuits to enforce the Act.
So that is what the DOJ is now doing, post hoc suit to enforce the VRA.
And even though entirely legal and politically valid and in accord with the express wishes of the majority of the people, the confederates will say the lawsuit is divisive and dicatotrial federal overreach. 100% hypocrisy, but that is their nature.
Also Article 1 Section 4 of the Constitution says the Congress can determine the rules for state elections to federal offices, which the VRA does. Makes you wonder how the "originalist" SCOTUS thought they couldn't, despite the plain language.