Category: Politics

Will Putin invade Ukraine?
President Biden is vowing to stop the start-up of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if he does, even though it’s unclear how much power Biden has to do this.

From the Washington Post:
What is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and why does it matter to Russia?
The project is a natural gas line from Russian fields to the German coast, spanning 764 miles under the Baltic Sea. The $11 billion line will double the capacity of the original 2011 Nord Stream, which runs parallel to the new project. The line will supply gas to Germany — a nation heavily dependent on gas and oil imports — at a relatively low cost as the continent’s production capacity decreases.

The new pipeline is entirely owned by Russian energy company Gazprom, which is majority government-owned. The company also owns 51 percent of the original Nord Stream pipeline. A group of European energy companies, including Shell and Wintershall, paid half the construction costs.

Construction was completed in September, and the pipeline has been filled with gas since late December. Before it becomes operational, though, it needs regulatory approval from Germany and a review by European Union authorities. The head of the German regulatory body said in December that a decision would not come until the second half of 2022 at the earliest.

What started as a bad week for the Biden Administration/ the Democrats, looked much better by late Friday night.
There were good October jobs numbers out this morning, and the Housed passed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that includes transport, broadband and utility funding, sending it to the President’s desk.

Tuesday was a rough odd-year Election Day for Democrats, not boding well for next year’s mid-term elections. Trumpist Republican Youngkin won the Virginia governor’s race. Democratic governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, barely won his race.

Why has President Biden’s support, and that of the Democratic Party in general, been declining?

I guess it doesn’t help that the pandemic is dragging on. Republicans and their supporters fight the vaccine and mask mandates, though.
People don’t know, don’t care, don’t believe— that we have now lost 750,000 Americans. That’s more than the population of Alaska, or Vermont, or Wyoming.

Should the Democrats ring the alarm bell and finally pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework & Build Back Better legislation?

Maybe it will help, but maybe not much. Paul Kane of the Washington Post writes ‘If history is any guide, Democrats will pass this massive agenda in the weeks or months ahead — and it will have little to no impact on their political standing in next year’s midterm elections’. He mentions several cases where the party in power passed transformative legislation aligned with its values (Obama 2009: Affordable Care Act, Trump 2017: Tax Cuts), only to be pummeled at the midterm elections thereafter.

Another week gone, and here is October 2021 on us, already.
Every night all the calamities of the moment are covered by NBC Nightly News. In a way, the news is always the same.
We’re in a climate crisis.
Hospitals are still filled with Covid-19 patients.
We’re told America could be just weeks away from defaulting on its debt for the first time ever.

And as far as enacting President Biden’s policy agenda, we don’t have 6 major political parties in government, the way the Germans do. We have only two.
I would argue we actually have only the Democratic Party.
(The Republicans are AWOL. They very, very rarely work with the Democrats. They will kill American democracy— and kill us all— if they come back into power).
The moderates and the progressives in the Democratic Party are tussling over two big policy bills.
There’s the $1 trillion infrastructure bill, and a $3.5 trillion social policy bill that includes measures related to climate change, family aid, and expansions to Medicare.

Here’s what Amber Philips writes in today’s Washington Post about the key players in the Democrats’ congressional battles.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.): Leader of centrist Democrats in the House
What he wants: A vote on the infrastructure bill on Thursday, which he didn’t get.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.): Leader of the progressive caucus in the House
What she wants: Centrist Democrats, particularly in the Senate, to get behind the $3.5 trillion spending bill that would be the capstone of Democrats’ control of Washington right now.
Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.): A centrist holdout in the Senate
What he wants: Democrats’ social safety net legislation to cost much less, around $1.5 trillion.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.): Another holdout in the Senate
What she wants: First off, for the House to pass the infrastructure bill. She helped negotiate that in the Senate, where 19 Republicans voted for it.
And like Manchin, she wants Democrats’ social safety net/climate change legislation to cost much less. But unlike Manchin, she’s been more quiet about what she could support, frustrating liberals who feel like they can’t negotiate with a moving target, or no target at all.

Here is a set of slides from Deutsche Welle’s website that shows the outcome of Sunday’s federal elections in Germany.
Angela Merkel’s party (the Christian Democrats) lost ground everywhere.
For the first time since the 1950s, at least three parties will be needed to form a coalition in Germany’s government. (The two largest parties are unlikely to form a coalition on their own).
The Social Democrats and the Green Party made the biggest gains.

‘I want to focus on what we said yes to as a State.
We said yes to science; we said yes to vaccines;
we said yes to ending this pandemic;
we said yes to peoples’ right to vote without fear of fake fraud or voter suppression;
we said yes to a woman’s fundamental constitutional right to decide what she does with her body, her faith and her future;
we said yes to diversity;
yes to inclusion;
we said yes to pluralism;
we said yes to all those things we hold dear as Californians – and I would argue as Americans: economic justice, social justice, racial justice, environmental justice, our values, where as Californians had made so much progress.
All those were on the ballot this evening.
And so I’m humbled and grateful to the millions and millions of Californians that exercised their right to vote, and expressed themselves so overwhelmingly to rejecting the division, by rejecting the cynicism, by rejecting so much of the negativity that’s defined our politics in this country over the course of so many years’.
– California Governor Gavin Newsom at a press conference tonight

Good news from California: the recall of Governor Gavin Newsom has failed.
This was a sour-grapes, politicizing-of-COVID effort from the Republican Party of Suffering and Death to unseat Newsom; a waste of $276 million. Per California law they had needed only 50% of the vote to recall Newsom, and install the challenger with the most votes. In this recall it would have been Larry Elder, a conservative radio talk show host and Trumpist.  That would have been downright awful.

What a horrible day at Kabul International Airport.
The terrorist organization called ISIS-K (Islamic State Khorasan Province) claimed responsibility for the attacks. ISIS-K was founded by former members of the Pakistani Taliban, Afghan Taliban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

ISIS-K sees the Afghan Taliban as its strategic rivals. It brands the Afghan Taliban as ‘filthy nationalists’ with ambitions only to form a government confined to the boundaries of Afghanistan. This contradicts the Islamic State movement’s goal of establishing a global caliphate.  (From ‘What is ISIS-K?’ at theconversation.com by authors Amira Jadoon & Andrew Mines).

Today the President spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, reaffirmed his strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket attacks from Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza, and condemned these indiscriminate attacks against Israel.
– Statement from the White House @WhiteHouse on Twitter

It just seems to me that this statement is somewhat tone-deaf. It hides many, many of the complexities of the Israel-Hamas/ Palestine conflict. Yes, Israel has a right to defend itself. What about the rights of Palestinians, who have been forced with an iron fist, to live like third-rate citizens in the confines of the Gaza strip and territories in the West Bank?

The stills below are from a video posted in the New York Times, of the destruction of the Gaza Tower.

Tomorrow marks President Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office.
Tonight, he addressed a joint session of Congress, with two women on the dais behind him for the first time in the country’s history (Madam VP Kamala Harris and Madam Speaker Nancy Pelosi).
The president noted that 220 million vaccine shots had been given since he had taken office, and talked about his $2 trillion infrastructure plan.

Biden’s plans are big and bold. All told, there is a total of $6 trillion in the spending plans he has rolled out.
He says he will move ahead with these plans, even if he does not receive a single Republican vote of support in Congress:
The American Rescue Plan (the coronavirus relief bill), passed by Congress in March, $1.9 trillion.
The American Jobs Plan (infrastructure plan), unveiled Mar. 31, $2.3 trillion (paid for in part by raising the corporate tax rate).
The American Families Plan, unveiled this week, $1.8 trillion (paid for by increases in tax collection and high-earner income & capital gains taxes).

The deadly shooting in Boulder today,  was the second massacre here in the United States in less than a week. So let me exercise my First Amendment rights, to address all Second Amendment gun fanatics.

The National Rifle Association is a domestic terrorist organization.
Of that I’m 99% sure.
(That the NRA is a domestic terrorism enabler, is borne out 100% by facts).

The domestic terrorist is almost always a white male.
More often than not, he is apprehended ‘without incident’.
(If he were black or brown, he would be shot dead).
The real ‘incident’ would usually be, what — 6, 8 .. or 10? people murdered in cold blood.
.. with an AR15 or something similar, a military-grade weapon that should have been outlawed decades ago,
.. and that the terrorist might have purchased just hours ago, over the counter (as in the case of Atlanta last week).

Is all of this the ‘well-regulated militia’ referred to in the (should-be-repealed) Second Amendment? Not even close. It’s a guns-for-all Wild West, that enables crazy people to go on killing sprees.

‘While it was different for everyone, we all lost something, a collective suffering, a collective sacrifice. A year filled with the loss of life and the loss of living for all of us’.
– President Joe Biden, in a nation-wide address today, on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the pandemic

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan bill is about to be voted on for the final time (tomorrow, in the House). Then it will be signed into law by President Biden.

Direct payments will be sent to 150 million households ($1,400 per person), $300/ month unemployment benefits will be extended through September, additional monthly assistance will be paid to families with children, and it will provide funding for vaccine distribution & for state and local governments, and also boost subsidies for healthcare.

In the Senate, Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan through a procedure known as ‘reconciliation’, which enables certain budget bills to pass with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes necessary for a regular bill. (The Senate can only pass three bills a year through this process, and there are strict limits as to what can be in them).

If I have it right, not a single Republican has voted for the bill so far. Their anti-democratic, anti-everything, Party of Perceived Grievances should dissolve. You’re fired, all of you.