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Open thread August 13, 2021

Dan Crawford | August 13, 2021 8:57 am

Comments (16) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
16 Comments
  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    August 13, 2021 at 9:35 am

    How Dems will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

    WASHINGTON — Nine moderate House Democrats told Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday that they will not vote for a budget resolution meant to pave the way for the passage of a $3.5 trillion social policy package later this year until a Senate-approved infrastructure bill passes the House and is signed into law.

    The pledge, in a letter released early Friday, is a major rift that threatens the carefully choreographed, two-track effort by congressional Democrats and the Biden administration to enact both a trillion-dollar, bipartisan infrastructure deal and an even more ambitious — but partisan — social policy measure. The nine House members are more than enough to block consideration of the budget blueprint in a House where Democrats hold a three-seat majority.

    The Senate passed the infrastructure bill on Tuesday with 69 votes, including 19 Republicans. It then approved, on a party-line vote early Wednesday, a $3.5 trillion budget resolution that, if passed by the House, would allow Democrats in both chambers to assemble the social policy bill this fall without fear of a Republican filibuster in the Senate. …

    House Moderates Say They Won’t Back Budget Vote Until Infrastructure Bill Passes

     

    • Fred C. Dobbs says:
      August 13, 2021 at 9:44 am

      Apparently, the idea is that House is to insist that the Senate

      act immediately on the big Infrastructure bill, because these

      nine Dem moderates in the House want to start using the

      funds appropriated in the recently passed measure right now.

      Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey is the lead author of the moderates’ letter. “It’s time to get shovels in the ground and people to work,” they wrote …

      • Fred C. Dobbs says:
        August 13, 2021 at 9:57 am

        This is critical since, constitutionally, budget resolutions
        must commence in the House. The Senate can’t act on the Big
        Bill until the House kicks it off.

        ‘a budget resolution meant to pave the way for the passage
        of a $3.5 trillion social policy package later this year’

      • EMichael says:
        August 13, 2021 at 3:33 pm

        These are ludicrous people. Both Pelosi and Biden have said they will not allow the bipartisan bill without the Reconciliation bill.. That’s the two most powerful people in government. They got no shot.

        These “Nonsensical Nine” better get ready to lose their committee assignments and get ready for a primary if they continue this nonsense.

        • Fred C. Dobbs says:
          August 13, 2021 at 7:14 pm

          Ii it possible that these ‘nine moderate Dems’ in the House

          simply do not want the Big Infrastructure Bill to get passed?

          My take is that that with their stated position, this will be the case.

          Either they back off, if Pelosi disembowels them, or there

          is to be a sort of final stalemate on these key parts of

          the Biden agenda, thanks to nine House Dems.

           

  • rjs says:
    August 14, 2021 at 1:44 am

    of note, the global Covid new case count would be going down if not for the surge in the US….we’ve had more new cases this week than India, Brazil, Indonesia, and the UK combined..

    • Fred C. Dobbs says:
      August 14, 2021 at 9:44 am

      … Ranked by country, the United States topped the number of new infections over the past week, with 543,420 new cases, a nine per cent jump, followed by India, which had 283,923 new cases and a seven per cent increase.

      Indonesia had 273,891 new cases, followed by Brazil’s 247,830 and Iran’s 206,722 new infections. …

      Latest COVID-19 data confirms infections have risen…

      • Fred C. Dobbs says:
        August 14, 2021 at 11:14 am

        It would appear that ‘over the past week’, the number of new covid

        cases in the US (543K) was surpassed by the total in India, Brazil

        and Indonesia (805K), not counting the UK, according to the UN.

        • rjs says:
          August 14, 2021 at 5:55 pm

          Fred, i was looking at the totals here:

          https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/weekly-trends/#weekly_table

          which shows the US had 903,471 new cases over the past week…

          that site has been consistent with other reports…

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    August 14, 2021 at 8:52 am

    Tap Dancing With Trump: Lindsey Graham’s Quest for Relevance

    … Mr. Graham’s reaffirmed devotion has come to represent something more remarkable: his party’s headlong march into the far reaches of Trumpism. That the senator is making regular Palm Beach pilgrimages as supplicant to an exiled former president who inspired the Capitol attack and continues to undermine democratic norms underscores how fully his party has departed from the traditional conservative ideologies of politicians like Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney and Mr. Graham’s close friend John McCain.

    To critics of Mr. Graham, and of Mr. Trump, that enabling comes at enormous cost. It can be seen, for example, in Republicans’ efforts to torpedo the investigations of the Capitol riot and in the way the party, with much of its base in thrall to Mr. Trump’s stolen-election lie, is enacting a wave of vote-suppressing legislation in battleground states.

    Mr. Graham, of course, describes his role in far less apocalyptic terms. Even as he proclaims — from under the hard gaze of a half-dozen photos of Mr. McCain — that the Republican Party is now “the Trump party,” even as he goes on Fox to declare that the party can’t “move forward” without the man who twice lost the popular vote …

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    August 14, 2021 at 11:06 am

    Was America’s involvement in Afghanistan worth it?

    (Of course it wasn’t. That is absolutely a no-brainer.

    It was just something we had no choice but to do, literally.

    Congress decided this for us right after that horrible day

    in September, 2001. And somewhat later, another bad

    decision, promulgated by Geo Bush Jr, to liberate Iraq.

    Unleashing twenty years of war for America and the world.)

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    August 14, 2021 at 4:52 pm

    Canada promises refuge for 20,000 Afghans as nations scramble to evacuate

    Canada has promised to resettle more than 20,000 Afghan citizens from groups it considers likely targets of the Taliban, including leading women, rights workers and L.G.B.T.Q. people, as many nations scramble to evacuate their nationals and help Afghans flee.

    Canada’s immigration minister, Marco Mendicino, announced the resettlement process at a news conference on Friday, adding that Canada could “not stand idly by” as the Taliban seized control of cities and provinces. The rapid advance has prompted a surge in refugees and stirred fear among those who have worked with Western governments or organizations, or with the current authorities.

    About 250,000 Afghans have been forced to flee their homes since late May, most of them women and children, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency. …

    Canada did not provide a timeline for its resettlement program. On Friday, it was continuing to repatriate those who had worked with its diplomats and armed forces in Afghanistan, according to government officials.

    “We owe them a debt of gratitude, and we will continue our efforts to bring them to safety,” the country’s foreign minister, Marc Garneau, said. 

     

    • Fred C. Dobbs says:
      August 14, 2021 at 5:07 pm

      How the US is doing admitting Afghan refugees

       

      … So far, about 1,200 Afghans have been evacuated to the United States and that number is set to rise to 3,500 in the coming weeks under “Operation Allies Refuge,” with some going to a U.S. military base in Virginia to finalize their paperwork and others directly to U.S. hosts. …

  • Michael Smith says:
    August 15, 2021 at 8:18 pm

    If we were a tech company:

    I am in the foodtech agribit business. We take bits and implement them into non-fungible pods of amino acids coated in carbonic compounds and bury that into an incubatorial system surrounded by multiple high energy engineered systems. Our output is a highly sustainable, regenerative tech output that each consumer needs to have on a daily basis, and arguably will consume 3-5 times a day. 

    We need $5 billion to get started, as this is a completely new enterprise that is going to revolutionize major sectors of our economy and bring new tech to the world.

    • Michael Smith says:
      August 15, 2021 at 8:21 pm

      All kidding aside, tech IPOs are getting ridiculous and the data collection is invasive and limited at best. The valuations are severely over blown.

      • Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
        August 16, 2021 at 7:11 am

        The big money in tech is in consumer tech.  I worked in tech for 47 years, but all corporate accounting and government services.  If consumers will pay $1K for a pocket phone that accesses the Internet and are willing to buy most of their nondurable goods sight unseen delivered to their door, then consumer tech is a gold mine for investors that get in early on the next fad.  Consumer tech does not need to make sense to make dollars.

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