The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

What elengil said.

[River]

Mitch McConnell today suggested that if Republicans retake the Senate in 2022 and there is subsequently a vacancy in the Supreme Court, they will leave the seat vacant rather than vote on Joe Biden's nominee to fill it.

Since when was McConnell ever interested in that part of his job?

[N.E. Brigand]

I think it's worth noting because it shows that Republicans have no actual objection to changing the size of the Supreme Court.

[N.E. Brigand]

From today's New York Times:

"Ms. Sinema of Arizona has privately told colleagues she will not accept any corporate or income tax rate increases."

If that were true, I would take it as evidence suggesting that Senator Sinema was being bribed. Because in 2017, she voted against the Trump tax bill, which lowered the corporate tax rate and the income tax (particularly for those with the highest incomes) to their current levels, and to my knowledge, she's never said anything about why conditions since then would necessitate her changing positions on this issue.

Also, it would mean that Biden's agenda was dead.

But I doubt that it's true.

[N.E. Brigand]

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Oct. 16, 2020:
---"We can't have corrupt leaders, but the Hunter Biden story signals exactly that kind of corruption and does tremendous damage to Joe Biden's credibility."

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem today:
---"Listen I get it. I signed up for this job. But now the media is trying to destroy my children."

This follows an AP story which opens this way:

Just days after a South Dakota agency moved to deny her daughter’s application to become a certified real estate appraiser, Gov. Kristi Noem summoned to her office the state employee who ran the agency, the woman’s direct supervisor and the state labor secretary.

Noem’s daughter attended too.

Kassidy Peters, then 26, ultimately obtained the certification in November 2020, four months after the meeting at her mother’s office. A week after that, the labor secretary called the agency head, Sherry Bren, to demand her retirement, according to an age discrimination complaint Bren filed against the department. Bren, 70, ultimately left her job this past March after the state paid her $200,000 to withdraw the complaint.

[N.E. Brigand]

1. "More than 99 percent of a North Carolina hospital system’s roughly 35,000 employees have followed the mandatory vaccination program."

2. "North Carolina hospital system fires about 175 workers in one of the largest-ever mass terminations due to a vaccine mandate."

Which of these two sentences is more newsworthy? (In the middle of a pandemic which killed more than 9,000 Americans in the past week.) Which one is in the fifth paragraph of the Washington Post article about this news, and which is the story's headline that's being promoted by the Washington Post on social media?

[Frelga]

And that's not considering how many healthcare workers were lost to death and disability in the pandemic.

At least CNN did better.

Almost all United employees complied with the vaccine mandate

[N.E. Brigand]

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Oct. 16, 2020:
---"We can't have corrupt leaders, but the Hunter Biden story signals exactly that kind of corruption and does tremendous damage to Joe Biden's credibility."

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem today:
---"Listen I get it. I signed up for this job. But now the media is trying to destroy my children."

This follows an AP story which opens this way:

Just days after a South Dakota agency moved to deny her daughter’s application to become a certified real estate appraiser, Gov. Kristi Noem summoned to her office the state employee who ran the agency, the woman’s direct supervisor and the state labor secretary.

Noem’s daughter attended too.

Kassidy Peters, then 26, ultimately obtained the certification in November 2020, four months after the meeting at her mother’s office. A week after that, the labor secretary called the agency head, Sherry Bren, to demand her retirement, according to an age discrimination complaint Bren filed against the department. Bren, 70, ultimately left her job this past March after the state paid her $200,000 to withdraw the complaint.

Oh boy. Or perhaps: "womp womp."

The conservative website American Greatness ("the leading voice of the next generation of American conservatism") is reporting, per "multiple sources," that "South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is having an extramarital affair with adviser Corey Lewandowski, who previously served as a campaign manager for Donald Trump. The alleged fling reportedly has continued for months".

Bizarrely, the headline for that breaking news is "Kristi Noem Shows Why Republicans Can't Have Nice Things."

[N.E. Brigand]

Oh boy. Or perhaps: "womp womp."

The conservative website American Greatness ("the leading voice of the next generation of American conservatism") is reporting, per "multiple sources," that "South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is having an extramarital affair with adviser Corey Lewandowski, who previously served as a campaign manager for Donald Trump. The alleged fling reportedly has continued for months".

Bizarrely, the headline for that breaking news is "Kristi Noem Shows Why Republicans Can't Have Nice Things."

And it turns out that was the better of today's two stories about Corey Lewandowski.

"Trump donor: Corey Lewandowski made unwanted sexual advances" (Politico)

"A Donald Trump donor is accusing Corey Lewandowski, one of the former president’s longtime top aides, of making unwanted sexual advances toward her at a Las Vegas charity event over the weekend.

Trashelle Odom, the wife of Idaho construction executive John Odom, alleges that Lewandowski repeatedly touched her, including on her leg and buttocks, and spoke to her in sexually graphic terms. Odom said that Lewandowski 'stalked' her throughout the evening.

Four people who were first-hand witnesses at the event corroborated Odom’s allegations. POLITICO also spoke with two people — one who was at the event and another who was not — who described conversations they had with Odom about the incidents immediately after they happened."

Emphasis added.

- - - - - - - - - -
Edit (Sep. 30): Asawin Suebsaeng of The Daily Beast reveals what was apparently an open secret:

"During the Trump presidency, if you walked into the lobby of the Trump hotel in D.C. at night, there were multiple occasions you coulda walked in on Corey Lewandowski just passed out on one of the somewhat comfy chairs near the bar, while patrons drank & loudly conversed around him."

I have to say, before checking the Wikipedia page on Lewandowksi tonight, I had completely forgotten the incident in Oct. 2019 when a Fox Business host interviewing a slurring Lewandowski suggested on air that he was drunk, cut the interview short, and urged him to get a cup of coffee.

[N.E. Brigand]

President Trump repeatedly voiced opposition to wind turbines because, as he noted, birds who fly into them are killed. Even more birds are killed flying into buildings, and Trump said nothing about that. But more egregiously, his administration stopped enforcing criminal penalties against industries that violate the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Oil companies and other firms welcomed that change.

Today the President Biden's administration announced that it would reinstate those penalties.

[RoseMorninStar]

So much going on with Lewandowski/Trump campaign but I cannot help but be distracted by.. Trashelle ...?? Who did that to their poor daughter?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, the Democrats are simply imploding. While there is plenty of blame to go around, and most want to target Manchin and Sinema and the moderates in the House, I think it is the progressives that are most acting like little children who overturn the game board when things don't all go their way.

[N.E. Brigand]

It turns out that more than two months ago, Joe Manchin secretly told Chuck Schumer that he wouldn't promise to* vote for a reconciliation bill that was more that $1.5 trillion, and he also presented Schumer with a bunch of other demands, including that the Senate debate on the reconciliation bill wouldn't begin until October. So this whole time that it appeared that Manchin wouldn't say exactly what he wanted (he said that $3.5 trillion was too much, and he said he didn't want to rush the process), he's had a list of requirements that Schumer has been trying meet behind the scenes, and we're only learning about this today.

Manchin says he's compromising by increasing from $0, and if liberals want to go above his number, they need to elect more liberals to the Senate. (Never mind that this is almost impossible and that the best opportunity for doing so would have been to allow D.C. voters to have representation in Congress, something which Manchin opposed.)

Meanwhile progressives, in public, expressed a wish for a $10 trillion plan, proposed a $6 trillion plan, and compromised on a $3.5 trillion plan in exchange for agreeing to support the bipartisan infrastructure bill that Manchin negotiated with his Republican colleagues. And remember, what progressives are backing, and what Manchin is undermining, is the plan put forward by the Democratic president, Joe Biden.

(In other words, I disagree very much with V. Remember, I have been saying since January that West Virginia should get whatever Manchin wants, and I have been complaining since then that Manchin won't say what he wants.)


*Edit: Reading the news more carefully, I do see that there is room for Manchin to vote for more. The $1.5 trillion was the most he would guarantee to support. And I suppose that means that, depending on Sinema, something is probably going to pass. And to be fair to Schumer, while he signed Manchin's agreement," it doesn't preclude him from trying to get Manchin to vote for more, which he says he's been doing.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sinema has been much more difficult to pin down than Manchin. But it is ludicrous of "progressives" to refuse to vote for the trillion dollar "hard" infrastructure bill until they get their way on the larger soft infrastructure bill, as everything that is in the former are things that they support and that desperately needs attention. Get something done and then get the rest done. Instead, nothing will get done, there will be a bloodbath in the 2022 mid-terms and the GOP will control both houses of Congress (which will in turn even further solidify their hold on the Supreme Court), and then Trump will win back the White House in 2024.

[N.E. Brigand]

Sinema has been much more difficult to pin down than Manchin. But it is ludicrous of "progressives" to refuse to vote for the trillion dollar "hard" infrastructure bill until they get their way on the larger soft infrastructure bill, as everything that is in the former are things that they support and that desperately needs attention. Get something done and then get the rest done. Instead, nothing will get done, there will be a bloodbath in the 2022 mid-terms and the GOP will control both houses of Congress (which will in turn even further solidify their hold on the Supreme Court), and then Trump will win back the White House in 2024.

I believe that Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden all said that the two bills would be passed and signed together. Biden specifically said that he wouldn't sign one without the other. That was the deal. That's what got progressives on board.

It's the moderates that are blocking that.

They're blocking a bill that is polling at 60% or higher.

And while the end result for the Democratic Party will be the same, it's mainly the moderates who will lose in 2022. The progressives come from safe seats.

I strongly suspect some of the moderates have decided that Republican control of Congress is inevitable in 2022, and that therefore they are better off not letting anything too progressive get passed before then, because that would hurt their chances of getting the most lucrative corporate positions.

[N.E. Brigand]

I would add that I think this take by NBC reporter Benjy Sarlin is basically right:

"For all the noise, everything mostly seems headed where we thought it would go six months ago: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in a room with the White House and Democratic leadership, taking a big chunk out of a bill, then seeing if they can sell it to the rest of the Democrats with near zero room for error."

And with Manchin and Sinema in the catbird seat, that makes sense. They've got the power and they will use it. Again, I've been calling for nine months for the White House to trade Manchin whatever he wants in order to get Biden's agenda passed. It's all the drama getting there that is so frustrating. Why build up everyone to expect more, why put a deal on the table, if it's all just for show?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I believe that Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden all said that the two bills would be passed and signed together. Biden specifically said that he wouldn't sign one without the other. That was the deal. That's what got progressives on board.

Yes and no. There has been a lot of different things said at different times, but the fact of the matter is that they are two separate bills, both with things that are needed. The worst case scenario is that neither of them pass.

I strongly suspect some of the moderates have decided that Republican control of Congress is inevitable in 2022, and that therefore they are better off not letting anything too progressive get passed before then, because that would hurt their chances of getting the most lucrative corporate positions.

I think that is unfair.

In any event, I think eventually a deal will be reached that will be much closer to Manchin's $1.5 trillion number than the $3.5 trillion. Maybe the $2.1 trillion that has been bandied about, but probably still less than that.

[N.E. Brigand]

President Biden said this on June 24 about the infrastructure bill:

"if this is the only one that comes to me, I'm not going to sign it."

And today, White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, said this about President's Biden's view of the process:

"These are his proposals. This is what he believes in. Both pieces of legislation."

There's still room for interpretation there, sure. But to me, it seems that the progressives are trying to honor Biden's wishes, and the moderates are trying to undermine them.

(I do think that you're right about the eventual size of the reconciliation bill. Because progressives are likelier than moderates to compromise.)

[N.E. Brigand]

And it sounds like President Biden, in his meeting with Congressional Democrats tonight, while acknowledging that the final version of the reconciliation bill is going to be less than $3.5 trillion, nonetheless stood with the progressives in his party by not urging them to vote now on the infrastructure bill, as the moderates want.

It is telling that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business lobbying group, is saying that the President is wrong about this. They urge Congress to pass the infrastructure bill now, and they have been lobbying heavily to kill many initiatives in the reconciliation bill.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And the path towards failure continues.

Kyrsten Sinema Followed Into Bathroom By Protestors

Well played, progressives. Way to be the grown-ups in the room!