The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[N.E. Brigand]

Surely, my friend N.E.B., you don't actually expect politics to make sense?

I'd like to know what centrists like Manchin want. It's hard to make a deal with someone whose goals are opaque.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Survival. That's what Manchin, a Democrat in one of the reddest states in the union, wants.

[N.E. Brigand]

Survival. That's what Manchin, a Democrat in one of the reddest states in the union, wants.

I'm glad to help him survive! But it's hard to help someone who won't tell you what he needs to survive.

It's a bit like the old joke: "I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat. I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?"

[N.E. Brigand]

I should note that the Editorial Board of the Washington Post also argues that the relief bill gives too much to the upper middle class:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

Here's part of that editorial:

We understand that Mr. Biden and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) are trying to placate not only centrist senators who wanted to tighten eligibility for the payments, but also the party’s left wing, which — in strange agreement with former president Donald Trump — favored $2,000 direct payments, with little or no means-testing. Democrats arguably have their narrow majority because their candidates for two decisive Georgia Senate seats ran on the promise of $2,000 “checks.”

In addition to thinking sincerely that the scope of the covid crisis warrants keeping that promise, progressives often assume that the way to build a constituency for longer-term income-support for the poor is to distribute some to the middle class as well. In our view, economic policy should be based on economic requirements, not political ones. Even in a cheap-interest world, government resources are not limitless and tradeoffs are still real. Funds Congress spends padding the bank accounts of people who aren’t poor, or even close to poor, are funds that won’t be available for other purposes, whether it’s programs to promote equity — or defense, scientific research and infrastructure. Real progressives accept that reality and set policy priorities accordingly.

There would be no further relief at all if Democrats didn't control the Senate.

Democrats control the Senate because Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won their January run-off elections.

Ossoff and Warnock promised voters that a Democratic senate would result in the $600 per-person stimulus being increased to $2,000.

Yeah, I think that's a promise that needs to be kept.

[N.E. Brigand]

Andrew Cuomo will (and should) be resigning at some point in the not too distant future. And yes, I understand that it is likely that a different standard will be applied to him as Democrat than to Trump or some other Republicans. Nonetheless, he will (and should) be resigning at some point in the not too distant future.

New York Times: Third woman accuses Cuomo of unwanted advances in 2019 as crisis deepens

I thought maybe he would be able to tough it out like Gov. Northam in Virginia after the blackface scandal, but the sexual harassment allegations combined with the nursing home scandal --the latter got worse tonight thanks to reporting in the Wall Street Journal and then the New York Times-- are likely to push Cuomo out.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I probably predicted that Northam would resign too, and if so I was obviously wrong.

Speaking of which, I meant to post about this a few days ago (it doesn't really belong in this thread, but what the hell).

Trump pardon unwinds some Manafort forfeitures

[N.E. Brigand]

Survival. That's what Manchin, a Democrat in one of the reddest states in the union, wants.

I'm glad to help him survive! But it's hard to help someone who won't tell you what he needs to survive.

It's a bit like the old joke: "I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat. I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?"

Alex Pareene of The New Republic, commenting on the note below from CNN's Manu Raju, notes that a lot of politicians aren't asked very often to explain their votes and when they do, they can't:

Sen. Maggie Hassan [Democrat of New Hampshire] wouldn’t answer when I asked her why she voted against an effort to raise wage to $15. “I have long been supportive of increasing the minimum wage,” she said.

I asked her what was wrong with this one, and her aide interjected and said she’s late for a meeting.

Oh, well, she's late and therefore the public doesn't have a right to know why she did that.

Seven Democratic senators plus Angus King, an Independent who caucuses with them, joined Republicans today in voting to remove the $15 minimum wage from the Covid relief bill. As Voronwë has said, there are logical reasons to do so (e.g., a belief in the traditions of the Senate preventing them from overriding the parliamentarian). But it doesn't look good that all but one of those senators (1) has a net worth of $3 million or more (Kyrsten Sinema is the exception) and (2) apparently can't even provide one of those logical reasons.

(Speaking of Sinema, her fellow Arizona senator Mark Kelly, who just four months ago beat the same opponent that Sinema defeated in 2018, and who has to run again in 2022 --whereas she's not up again until 2024-- voted for the minimum wage increase, so he seems to think it's politically safe to do so in that swing state.)

It doesn't appear to be political self-interest! One of the eight is Jon Tester of Montana. He won his last election by 18,000 votes, but 126,000 people in his state make less than $15 per hour and thus would be benefit -- and presumably be more inclined to vote for him -- if the minimum wage was raised.

A couple days ago, it was speculated that Joe Biden agreed to the requests of centrists like Joe Manchin to reduce eligibility for the $1,400 stimulus checks in exchange for Manchin backing the rest of the bill, including its generous unemployment insurance benefits.

But now it appears that Manchin, and every Republican, is backing Ohio senator Rob Portman's plan to cut the amount of unemployment in the bill.

Again I ask: what does Manchin want?

[N.E. Brigand]

Curious exchange (video at link) between a reporter (apparently from CBS) and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki today:

REPORTER: A lot of Americans are saying that the surges [in immigration] are happening under President Biden's watch after he reversed the previous policy, so does the Administration take any accountability for what's happening?

PSAKI: Who are the Americans?

REPORTER: Well, I know you don't want to answer to him, but the former president just released a statement saying that "The Biden Administration must act immediately to end the border nightmare that they have unleashed onto our Nation."

PSAKI: Former President Trump?

REPORTER: Yes.

PSAKI: We don't take our advice or counsel from former President Trump on immigration policy, which was not only inhumane but ineffective over the last four years. We're going to chart our own path forward, and that includes treating children with humanity and respect and ensuring they're safe when they cross our border.

A fair answer by Psaki, but it bothers me that the reporter attributed a statement by Donald Trump to "a lot of Americans." Yet another example of the mainstream media's bias in favor of Republicans.

[Frelga]

A lot of Americans are saying that, thanks to the propaganda coming from right-wing sources.

[N.E. Brigand]

In 1960, Ronald Reagan said that John F. Kennedy was just Karl Marx with a better haircut.

That was in a letter to Richard Nixon, in which Reagan also likened Kennedy's policy proposals to those of Adolf Hitler.

I learned that today from a Cornell University historian remarking on last week's speech at CPAC by South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, who quoted a 1962 speech by JFK and claimed that Reagan only became a Republican after the Democratic Party abandoned the principles espoused in JFK's speech.

But Reagan officially became a Republican that same year, during JFK's presidency, and that was not only two years after he compared Kennedy to Marx but a year after Reagan published a speech, in the form of a record album, in which he said that Medicare was socialism and would destroy America.

Oh, and this has all been public knowledge since 1984, when the letter was found in an archive and its authenticity was confirmed by Reagan.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Again I ask: what does Manchin want?

As I often tell my clients, I hate trying to speculate about people's motivations because they rarely make logical sense. In the case of Manchin, I don't think is actions are driven purely by either policy considerations or political expediency so much as a desire to be seen as a reasonable middle-of-the-road alternative to the two 'extremes' even though his position is not really reasonable and the two sides are not necessarily equally 'extreme'.

Or, he just likes the attention.

[River]

Why not both?

[N.E. Brigand]

So Manchin has agreed to a compromise. Per one reporter, here's how unemployment relief has changed since the plan was first proposed:

1. Biden plan: $400/week through September 30.

2. House Democrats' bill: $400/week through August 31.

3. Senate bill, Deal #1 (early today): $300/week through September 30, plus up to $10,000 [in relief now subject to] tax forgiveness [i.e., about $1,000 savings per person].

4. Senate bill, Deal #2 with Joe Manchin (just now): $300/week through September 6,plus up to $10,000 [in relief subject to] tax forgiveness.

At more than ten hours, the vote on the amendment that was held open in order for this deal to happen was the longest in Senate history, and the net result appears to be a change of about $12 billion, or less than 1%, in a $1,900 billion bill.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And he got lots of attention.

[N.E. Brigand]

As CNN's Elig Honig notes, it's now March 6, and "despite there being eminently qualified nominees, we still do not have a Senate-confirmed Attorney General, Deputy AG, or Associate AG. That’s unusual (typically Attorneys General get through right after inauguration) and bad for the Dept. of Justice and the country."

I looked it up. Only once since 1953 (the first time a non-incumbent president was inaugurated on January 20) has the Attorney General's confirmation happened this late:

Jan. 21, 1953 -- A.G. Herbert Brownwell (Pres. Eisenhower)
Jan. 20, 1961 -- A.G. Robert Kennedy (Pres. Kennedy)
Jan. 20, 1969 -- A.G. John Mitchell (Pres. Nixon)
Jan. 26, 1977 -- A.G. Griffin Bell (Pres. Carter)
Jan. 23, 1981 -- A.G. William French Smith (Pres. Reagan)
(Pres. Bush kept Reagan's last A.G., Dick Thornburgh, for two years)
Mar. 12, 1993 -- A.G. Janet Reno (Pres. Clinton)
Feb. 2, 2001 -- A.G. John Ashcroft (Pres. Bush)
Feb. 3, 2009 -- A.G. Eric Holder (Pres. Obama)
Feb. 9, 2017 -- A.G. Jeff Sessions (Pres. Trump)

Reno's confirmation was so late because she was Bill Clinton's third choice: she wasn't even nominated until February 11. His first two nominees for that role, Zoë Baird and Kimba Wood, both withdrew when it was found that they (and their husbands) had hired unauthorized immigrants as nannies. Baird and her husband had also failed to pay social security taxes for the nanny as they should have. Wood hadn't actually broken any laws, because at the time she hired the nanny, it was legal to do so. Today it's unlikely that such a scandal would force a nominee out. (Donald Trump hired hundreds of unauthorized immigrants.) It's also highly likely that many male cabinet members (and their wives) had engaged in the exact same behavior but never questioned about it because they were men.

Biden picked Garland to be Attorney General on January 6.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump has sent cease and desist letters to the Republican National Committee and the GOP organizations that support Congressional candidates demanding that they stop using his name and likeness to raise money.

It was just last week that Trump told CPAC that he wasn't planning to break from the Republican Party. But I guess they'll have to pay to keep him.

I'm posting that news here to try to let the Trump's America thread drop back again. Biden has rightly said that he governs for all Americans, and that includes the Republicans whose party is squabbling with its most famous member. And in that spirt, I'll note that conservative media has spent much of the last couple weeks focusing on minor cultural concerns rather than substantive issues. They spent a couple days complaining about Hasbro renaming the "Mr. Potato Head" brand as "Potato Head" (while keeping the two characters, Mr. Potato Head and Mrs. Potato Head), complaining that the Disney+ streaming service is putting content warnings on certain episodes of The Muppets, and most notably getting manipulated by the Dr. Seuss estate's decision to stop production of six little-known Suess books that include some racist imagery. In response to the estate's announcement, Fox and other conservative outlets essentially promoted Seuss's books, resulting in a few dozen other Seuss titles rapidly rising to dominate the best-seller list this week after coverage like this:



That'll teach 'em!

And then there was outrage that the character of Lola Bunny in the Space Jam sequel will be more athletic and less sexualized than she was in the original 1990s film, which is indeed a choice made by the new film's creators. But as this commentator points out, the image of Lola Bunny being shared by many conservatives is not from the earlier film. It was actually created later by a fan artist with some minor, um, enhancements, and was originally posted on a somewhat salacious website.

- - - - - - - - - -
Anyway, one of the few good things Donald Trump did as president was to call for increasing the individual stimulus in the December 2020 Covid relief bill from $600 to $2,000. Because he did that, and because other Republicans like Mitch McConnell opposed the idea, Georgia Democrats were able to run on the issue and win the election that gave their party control of the Senate, which today passed a new relief bill including that additional $1,400 (albeit for not quite as many Americans as originally intended). It was a bipartisan bill in that it includes amendments proposed by Republicans (and the whole package is supported by a strong majority of Americans including many Republicans), even though no Republicans voted for the final bill. There will be some adjustments over the next few days to reconcile the House and Senate versions, but it will become law when Pres. Biden signs it probably within a week.

Politico reports that even West Virginia's Republican governor is confused by Joe Manchin's power play yesterday that delayed passage of the bill by ten hours, which doesn't seem to have resulted in anything that helps the people in that state. Back on Jan. 6, in the wee hours after it was clear that both Warnock and Ossoff had won their run-off races, one commenter shared the following image with the caption "West Virginia after we're done bribing Joe Manchin":



And that was a price I was willing to pay! But instead Manchin found other ways to bolster his credibility (?), as when he (and Susan Collins, who previously has supported LGBTQ rights) voted today for an amendment proposed by Tommy Tuberville that would prevent trans kids from playing sports. (Because this bill was being passed via reconcilation, amendments need 60 votes to pass. The amendment failed today 49-50, with one Republican, Lisa Murkowski, joining all Democrats other than Manchin in the majority.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Sen. Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska:

"This weekend’s spending is bigger than the entire annual economy of Canada, yet only one percent of it is vaccine-related.... This $1.9 trillion ‘emergency’ bill is overwhelmingly non-emergency — we should’ve just bought Canada too."

Is Canada for sale? If so, I would definitely support the United States spending $2 trillion to make that purchase.

[Jude]

Sorry, it's not.

[RoseMorninStar]

Sorry, it's not.

Oh come now Jude, you're not really sorry, are you?

[Frelga]

NE, you forgot the outrage over Biden disrespecting Neanderthals. I'm looking forward to Neanderthals for GOP slogans next election, although I'm not sure for what party.