November 15, 2021
Michael Shear & Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: "President Biden on Sunday night named Mitch Landrieu, a former mayor of New Orleans and a former lieutenant governor of Louisiana, to oversee $1 trillion in infrastructure spending from the bipartisan legislation that the president will sign into law on Monday. As a senior adviser to Mr. Biden with the title of infrastructure coordinator, Mr. Landrieu will supervise funds for upgrading roads, bridges, pipes and broadband internet as the federal government distributes the money to states over the next several years, the White House said in a statement." CNN's report is here.
E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post: Democrats must learn to control the debate. "The ... logic applies to the battle for democracy itself. Democratic politicians should be ashamed that while Trump has turned his 'Stop the Steal' lies into a mobilizing battle cry for Republican base voters, Democrats have been unable to do the same with their defense of the right to vote. Turnout in GOP areas in Virginia and New Jersey was off the charts. Democrats couldn't match it.... The [Democratic] party, starting with the president when he signs the infrastructure bill on Monday, can use the power it has now to change the nation's political conversation. Or it can resign itself to defeat at the hands of a GOP in which a majority is not even willing to fix the damned roads." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Actually, it is not Republicans controlling the debate. It's Donald Trump. Here's Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who holds a leadership position. ~~~
Hannah Demissie & Janae Morris of ABC News: "Republican Sen. John Barrasso refused to criticize ... Donald Trump for recently revealed comments he made about former Vice President Mike Pence.... [ABC 'This Week' host George] Stephanopoulos played the audio of Trump's interview with Karl for Barrasso and pressed, 'Can your party tolerate a leader who defends murderous chants against his own vice president?' The senator avoided the question, saying that 'the Republican Party is incredibly united right now' and argued that 'Trump brings lots of energy to the party.' [Stephanopoulos continued to press Barrasso]: '... I'm asking if you, if you believe -- if you can tolerate the president saying, "hang Mike Pence is common sense.'" 'It's -- it's not common sense,' Barrasso said, though he refused to criticize Trump for the comments when asked once more by Stephanopoulos."
Trump's Plot to Steal the 2020 Election, Ctd. Libby Cathey of ABC News: "In a memo not made public until now, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows emailed to Vice President Mike Pence's top aide, on New Year's Eve, a detailed plan for undoing President Joe Biden's election victory, ABC News' Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl reports. The memo, written by ... Donald Trump's campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis..., [demonstrates] how Pence was under even more pressure than previously known to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Ellis, in the memo, outlined a multi-step strategy: On Jan. 6, the day Congress was to certify the 2020 election results, Pence was to send back the electoral votes from six battleground states that Trump falsely claimed he had won. The memo said that Pence would give the states a deadline of '7pm eastern standard time on January 15th' to send back a new set of votes, according to Karl. Then, Ellis wrote, if any state legislature missed that deadline, 'no electoral votes can be opened and counted from that state.' That would throw the decision to the House, which "shall vote by state delegation," and Republicans controlled 26 states. ~~~
~~~ Marie: IOW, this was not just some off-the-wall plan proposed by a crazed right-wing professor who had captured the attention of a deranged loser-president; it was an organized plot in which at least one individual at the highest level of government -- the Chief of Staff to the POTUS* -- participated. As Donald Trump would say, "You've never seen anything like it." No, we have not. As a number of Reality Chex contributors have written in recent days, Democrats must stop pussyfooting around and talking about "the rule of law," yada-yada-yada, and speak instead about the "seditious conspiracy to overturn the presidential election." Or something. ~~~
~~~ Teaganne Finn of NBC News: "The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol will 'move quickly' to refer Mark Meadows ... for criminal contempt for not cooperating with its investigation, a committee member, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Sunday." ~~~
~~~ Jonathan Swan of Axios: "NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told 'Axios on HBO' that the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol was also an attack on the core values of the world's biggest military alliance.... 'I regard that as an attack on the core democratic institutions of the United States and therefore also on core values of NATO,' Stoltenberg said in an interview recorded last Monday at NATO's headquarters in Brussels." ~~~
~~~ ** "Power at Any Cost." Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "At 1.35pm on 6 January, the top Republican in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell, stood before his party and delivered a dire warning. If they overruled the will of 81 million voters by blocking Joe Biden's certification as president in a bid to snatch re-election for the defeated candidate, Donald Trump, 'it would damage our Republic forever'. Five minutes before he started speaking, hundreds of Trump supporters incited by the then president's false claim that the 2020 election had been stolen broke through Capitol police lines and were storming the building. McConnell ... went on: 'If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral.... Every four years would be a scramble for power at any cost.' Eleven months on, McConnell's words sound eerily portentous. What could be construed as an anti-democratic scramble for power at any cost is taking place right now in jurisdictions across the country. Republican leaders loyal to Trump are vying to control election administrations in key states in ways that could drastically distort the outcome of the presidential race in 2024.... The stage is being set for a spectacle that could, in 2024, make last year's unprecedented assault on American democracy look like a dress rehearsal." Read on. ~~~
~~~ Marie: I'm sure the irony is not lost on you -- that is Addison Mitchell McConnell, of all people, warning against taking "power at any cost."
Jonathan O'Connell of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump's real estate company plans to sell the federal lease to its luxury D.C. hotel to Miami-based CGI Merchant Group, according to a report Sunday in the Wall Street Journal. The Trump Organization, which leased the Old Post Office property beginning in 2013, has been in discussions with CGI Merchant about selling the lease, according to two people who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the discussions. CGI Merchant signed a contract to buy the lease for $375 million, according to the Journal, citing anonymous sources." ~~~
~~~ Kara Scannell of CNN: "The Miami group is expected to remove the Trump name from the ornate building located a short walk from the White House and is partnering with Hilton Worldwide Holdings to brand it a Waldorf Astoria...."
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The Washington Post's live updates of Covid-19 developments Monday are here.
Emily Anthes of the New York Times (Nov. 13): "Throughout the pandemic, schools have been flash points, the source of heated debates over the threat the virus poses and the best way to combat it. School nurses are on the front lines. They play a crucial role in keeping schools open and students safe but have found themselves under fire for enforcing public health rules that they did not make and cannot change. This new academic year has been the hardest yet, they say. After a year of remote or hybrid learning, schools generally reopened at full capacity; many did so in the middle of the Delta surge and in the midst of an escalating political battle over 'parents' rights' to shape what happens in schools."
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Sunday are here: "Several dozen New York City workers have been suspended without pay as a part of an investigation into the use of fake vaccine cards at the Department of Sanitation, a city official with knowledge of the investigation said." Marie: Real IDs are free; fake IDs are not. On the other hand, workers with fake IDs have not forever lost their manly sexual potency and they do not have Joe Biden sitting in the White House residence watching their every move with the aid of the sensors the virus implanted in their bloodstreams.
Florida. Lori Rozsa of the Washington Post: "A special legislative session dubbed 'Keep Florida Free' begins Monday at the behest of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who wants lawmakers to pass more measures to block coronavirus vaccine mandates by public and private employers. The four bills being considered would ratchet up the penalties for businesses, local governments and other entities that require workers to be vaccinated against the virus and students to wear masks in school. According to DeSantis (R), the session will strengthen as well as augment rules already in place -- in part through his own executive orders." MB: Ron thinks the path to the White House is paved in pandering to anti-vaxxers & making people sick. And he thinks this is "governing."
Beyond the Beltway
Texas. Giulia Heyward of the New York Times: "A 9-year-old boy on Sunday became the 10th, and youngest, person to die from injuries sustained at the Astroworld festival. The boy, Ezra Blount, had been in a medically induced coma from injuries his family believes he sustained after being trampled at the Nov. 5 festival, an outdoor concert in Houston headlined by the rapper Travis Scott that was attended by 50,000 and took a tragic turn after a crowd surge occurred near the stage during his performance. Authorities are still trying to determine the cause. The death was announced on Sunday night by the mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner."
Wisconsin. Kim Bellware of the New York Times: "Whether Kyle Rittenhouse provoked the first fatal encounter on the streets of Kenosha, Wis., last summer and whether he can be found guilty on a charge less serious than first-degree homicide are among the crucial questions a judge said he will ask jurors to consider when they convene for deliberations this week. Judge Bruce Schroeder gave tentative rulings as he hashed out jury instructions with lawyers in a sparsely populated courtroom on Friday. The jury had been sent home for a three-day weekend before closing arguments that will begin Monday. Rittenhouse, 18, was present Friday. Schroeder indicated how he will rule on what probably will be the most consequential decisions guiding how jurors apply the law and consider the evidence in the charges against Rittenhouse."
Way Beyond
Myanmar. Richard Paddock of the New York Times: "Danny Fenster, an American journalist, was released from prison in Myanmar on Monday and will be allowed to leave the country, according to a spokeswoman for the ex-diplomat who helped secure his freedom. The release of Mr. Fenster, who was sentenced on Friday to 11 years in prison, is a rare positive development in Myanmar, which has been torn by violence since the military staged a coup in February and began a brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protesters. 'This is the day that you hope will come when you do this work,' said Bill Richardson, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who has a long record of winning the release of American prisoners from autocratic countries." CNN's story is here.
U.K. Miriam Berger, et al., of the Washington Post: "British police said Monday that a car explosion that took place outside a hospital in northwest England that left one person dead and another injured on Sunday was a 'terrorist incident.' The blast occurred right before 11 a.m. local time as a taxi pulled up outside an entrance of Liverpool Women's Hospital, according to a Merseyside Police statement. Witnesses said the vehicle was quickly engulfed in flames. One passenger, who has not been publicly identified, was declared dead at the scene."
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Reader Comments (5)
Saw this online. Thought I’d pass it along. The numbers check out, although some sources put Zuckerberg’s 2011 wealth at $13.5 B and Bezos’ 2021 wealth at $211 B, both of which are even more outrageous.
“Wealth of Elon Musk
2011: $2,000,000,000
2021: $271,500,000,000
Wealth of Mark Zuckerberg
2011: $17,500,000,000
2021: $121,900,000,000
Wealth of Jeff Bezos
2011: $18,100,000,000
2021: $203,100,000,000
U.S. Minimum Wage
2011: $7.25
2021: $7.25
Three words: tax the rich”
If you do an equation of the 10 year increase, in comparison, the
minimum wage should now be $116.00 per hour.
Could be that $7.25 per hour is why so many companies are
scrambling for employees. Try offering a living wage and cut a
few million off the top. That might work.
GOD IS IN THE DETAILS:
Faith based groups are pushing to scratch the mandates in Biden's Child Care Plan:
Sure enough, it's ok for religious groups (and others) to say nay to government funding for abortions but it's just fine and dandy for them to insist on government funding for their faith based child care facilities that discriminates freely and with feeling!
And again we have jolly Joe whose man chin is raised high and mighty and says, yeah, he wants to ensure that religious programs can fully participate in the Child Care initiative cuz his state ain't getting much else from him.
But––in the House most Democrats are adamant that the provision be retained in order to prevent federal monies going to organizations that discriminate. This is another example of that 'old time religion' taking hold, tightening the screws, and refusing to let go.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/14/us/politics/religious-groups-child-care.html
PD,
It’s funny, in’it? The “Party of Families”, soooo concerned about the welfare of fetuses, doesn’t give a soggy dishcloth for families after the birth. As Barney Frank once said, “They care about you from conception til birth. After that, you’re on your own”. Oh, unless you’re wealthy. And a Republican donor, or gun owner.
But they also don’t care about the welfare of families either. Trump tried to strip millions of their healthcare. The entire party was (and still is) against healthcare for all.
But what about paid parental leave? Surely there must be a concern for that in the richest country in the world. I mean, if we can’t afford it, surely no one else can. Right?
Of all the nations in the world, only a handful don’t offer paid parental leave. The United States, Papua, New Guinea, Suriname, and tiny island nations like Bongo Bong.
This means “shithole countries” care more about families than the US.
Know why?
Republicans. That’s why.
But the right of deranged lunatics, gangsters, and terrorists to purchase a mountain of weaponry and walk into a child care facility, elementary school, airport, or bar? They’re down with that shit.
AK: Someone once said the Republicans were stewing in their own specificity. I always liked the sound of that. It's really not about governing anymore–-this party is now simply a transactional side of congress–-they operate like termites eating away at the government structure and they do it with loud voices whose lies hang like shredded party paper after a night of MAGA rallying rounds; their hangovers infect the system that already suffers from a virus–-"Thats What We Do" they say smiling, so certain they have the playbook for 2024.