WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2021
•North Korea fired two ballistic missiles off its east coast Wednesday, toward the Korean peninsula’s east coast, South Korea said, and landed in waters outside the Japanese Exclusive Economic Zone (Politico).
•The House of Representatives’ Ways & Means Committee holds its fourth and final day of markup for the $3.5 trillion social spending budget reconciliation package today (The Hill).
Book: Austin, Blinken Called for Slower Afghanistan Withdrawal – Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed for a slower withdrawal from Afghanistan, but President Biden ignored them, says The Hill Wednesday via a CNN book report on Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post.
Blinken in March changed his recommendation about removing all U.S. troops at once after a meeting with NATO ministers, according to the report. Austin proposed a “gated” withdrawal in three or four stages that would have allowed for more negotiations, the book indicates. Biden initially proposed full withdrawal by September 11 but moved the deadline up to August 31 and actually announced completion a day earlier. Former President Trump had proposed a March 1 deadline before he thought he would be named winner of last November’s elections.
CNN is among the news media outlets that have an advanced copy of Peril, which goes on sale next Tuesday. …
Democrats Are as Critical as Republicans of Afghanistan Withdrawal Explanations: Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, told NPR’s All Things Considered he was very troubled by Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller’s testimony in a classified, closed-door hearing. He is not satisfied with the White House’s responses – and lack thereof – to questions and concerns about the poorly handled withdrawal.
Trump Brought Democracy Closer to Destruction than We Knew, Book Says: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley twice took measures to block Trump from the possibility of launching nuclear weapons against a perceived enemy.
Per CNN’s advanced copy of Peril, Chris Cuomo said:
•Milley contacted his Chinese counterpart to warn him not to react to Trump’s bellicosity.
•Milley instructed his top military officers to make sure he was consulted before responding to any orders by President Trump to launch missiles. Milley reportedly saw the officers’ compliance as “an oath.”
In addition, Trump spoke with Mike Pence on January 5 about how the vice president could upset the formal Electoral College count in Congress the next day. Pence said he wouldn’t want any one person to have that power, but Trump replied: “Wouldn’t it almost be cool to have that power?”
No, the Veep replied – he had apparently consulted fellow Hoosier former Vice President Dan Quayle on the matter – “I’ve already (considered) every way around it. It’s simply not possible.” To which Trump replied, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you can’t do this.”
Pro-Trump insurrectionists constructed gallows for Pence outside the Capitol the next day.
The Milley Judgment: Is Gen. Milley a military hero or his own kind of megalomaniac who overstepped his bounds in warning China about a potential military strike, and should he have resigned to reveal Trump’s apparent treason?
Laura Ingraham considers Milley a traitor for having tried to wrest the military from civilian control and took time on her eponymous Ingraham Angle on Fox News Tuesday night to sneer at MSNBC hosts and contributing pundits for lionizing Milley.
Had Ingraham paused her remote at CNN on her way to MSNBC, she would have found more nuance. Alexander Vindman, the retired European Affairs director at the National Security Council who blew the whistle on Trump’s “perfect call” of pressure on Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden, told host Chris Cuomo; “Mark Milley must resign if he usurped civilian power over the military” without accountability.
Prior to Vindman’s segment on Cuomo Prime Time, Miles Taylor, author of A Warning, and the chief of staff to Trump’s Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said cabinet members and staff had plotted similar checks on Trump’s power as early as 2017. But Taylor declined to make a judgment on Milley (chairman since October 2019) until more details come forth.
Note: Milley will have to step down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the distracting weight of this publicity alone. Trumpists will condemn Milley while giving no consideration to the book’s allegations of the former president’s treason.
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Trump Loses California Again – Should Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom be recalled? Californians voted “no,” 64.2% to 35.8%, according to the Los Angeles Times, and so the top challenger to replace him on the second part of the ballot, right-wing radio talk show host Larry Elder, has conceded the race.
That’s the buried headline.
Newsom’s campaign successfully painted Elder as the Trumpist Republican on the ballot’s second question, and his gracious concession Tuesday night contrasts with charges he made prior to the election that the recall election already was rigged. Trump more recently echoed those inaccuracies. Elder did not rule out the possibility he will run for governor again in November 2022, when Newsom’s first term actually expires. “Stay tuned,” he said.
For his part, Newsom, who was recalled largely because of state-imposed shutdowns responding to the pandemic, and his own poorly timed violation of social distancing with a dinner party at Napa Valley’s French Laundry restaurant, has not announced whether he will run for re-election. The former San Francisco mayor said in his victory speech Tuesday; “’No’ is not the only thing that was expressed tonight. I want to focus on what we said ‘yes’ to. We said ‘yes’ to science, we said ‘yes’ to vaccines, and we said ‘yes’ to ending this pandemic.” (AP)
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French Health Care Workers Require Vaccinations — French medical care, home care, and emergency workers must have had at least one COVID-19 vaccination, or they will not be paid as of today, the Associated Press reports. This is the result of approval by the country’s parliament this past summer. A judicial ruling prevents the unvaccinated health care workers from being fired. There are some 300,000 health care workers who have not been vaccinated in France.
Note: The AP story quotes Christophe Prudhomme, emergency room doctor and CGT union member, as saying, “We are raising the alarm ... if you insist on implementing this measure your beds will be closed, thus reducing chances (of survival) for a number of patients.” A sentiment that is repeated by some in the U.S.
Two points: (1) the R0, the number of people that someone can inflect, was calculated as being 3 for the original virus (one person can infect three people on average) and, as of April, between 4 and 5, according to a mathematics professor at the Sorbonne, so that “health care” can be problematic; (2) where are these unvaccinated workers going to get jobs? Even restaurants in Paris require vaccine passports.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods
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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2021
•Secretary of State Antony Blinken hops from the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee pan into the fire of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a hearing today on the Biden administration’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of our longest war.
•In his House committee testimony, Blinken pledged $64 million in aid to impoverished Afghans, who are facing food shortages, that will not go to the new Taliban government there, but instead, go to non-government organizations and United Nations agencies.
•President Biden stops in Denver today to promote his infrastructure program and his $3.5 trillion spending plan (The Hill). Biden had visited the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise Monday on his way to California, where he touted the spending plans while supporting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bid to defeat today’s recall election. Next Tuesday, The Hill says, Biden will address the U.N. General Assembly in person.
August Inflation Slows to a Still-High 0.3% -- The August inflation rate was 0.3%, a troublesome number, but eased a bit from July’s 0.5% increase. The U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics says the inflation rate for the last 12 months is 5.3%.
Price increases weigh heavily on President Biden’s infrastructure program and his $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation spending plan, the latter of which no Republicans in either the House or Senate support, citing its likely effect on inflation.
August energy prices were up 2%, versus a 1.6% increase in July, while gasoline prices rose 2.8% from a 2.4% inflation rate the previous month. But food prices were up 0.4% in August, compared with an 0.7% July rate.
With computer chip supplies stifling production, the August inflation rate for new vehicles was up 1.2% in August, compared with 1.7% in July. The 12-month cumulative rate is 7.6%. Used car prices, which led increases in previous months, actually fell 1.5% in August, after an 0.2% increase in July, and with a staggering 31.9% 12-month inflation rate, the BLS reported.
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Blinken Testimony Goes Where You’d Expect – If you’ve watched any congressional committee hearings on contentious matters of the day since, oh, perhaps the Watergate era, you’ve seen the Q&A of various cabinet members and even Supreme Court nominees devolve into a bipartisan circus.
Monday’s House Armed Services Committee virtual grilling of Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan actually was not quite that, because some Democrats are upset as at least the moderate Republicans for the “disastrous” manner in which we left, leaving behind allies who were promised safe refuge, as well as $85 billion in high-tech weapons.
But with Blinken essentially blaming the quick withdrawal on the “deal” the Trump administration made last year with the Taliban and on the 11-day collapse of Afghanistan’s democratic government propped up by nearly 20 years of U.S. support, Republicans called on the secretary of state to be fired. There will be a congressional investigation into the “debacle.”
Note: Blinken’s defense of the Afghanistan withdrawal essentially is that the Biden administration did the best it could by actually getting out of a war that outlasted three previous presidents. While the U.S. was able to fly out some 120,000 individuals out of a Kabul airport surrounded by Taliban, including all but roughly 100 American nationals, 13 U.S. troops died in the effort days after the helicopter airlift off the roof of the U.S. embassy looked just like Saigon 1975. The question we would have liked answered is; How many Afghani translators and other allies promised safety by U.S. troops over the two decades remain in the country, facing certain threats by the new Taliban government?
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Putin Self-Isolates – Russian President Vladimir Putin has self-isolated after COVID-19 cases were detected in his entourage, Russian media reports Tuesday, via Politico. The Kremlin released a statement that “in connection with the detected cases of coronavirus in his environment, he must observe the regimen of self-isolation for a period of time.”
Putin, 68, shook hands with Syrian President Bashad al-Assad in Moscow Monday.
Note: Another opportunity for Putin to appear in photos shirtless after he emerges from isolation?
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California Gov Looks Likely to Keep His Job – Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom looks likely to keep his job after today’s recall election, in which he must get better than 50% of the first part of the ballot to avoid being replaced by the leader of more than 40 candidates on the second part of the ballot. An average of polls finds that 57.3% of voters want to keep Newsom, compared with 41.5% who will vote to remove him, says FiveThirtyEight. Leading Republican candidates to replace him are Los Angeles right-wing talk radio host Larry Elder, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Falconer and “YouTube Landlord Influencer” – whatever that means – Kevin Paffrath, according to NPR’s Morning Edition.
Note: Despite Democrats’ dominance of California politics, particularly on the Coast, the state’s entrepreneurial class, upset over Newsom’s pandemic clampdown on small businesses while he ate cake at a staff party held at Napa Valley’s French Laundry restaurant would score an unusual upset if the first part of the ballot doesn’t go Newsom’s and the polls’ way, and the second part of the ballot does go Larry Elder’s way.
On Monday President Biden traveled to California to support Newsom. Keep Newsom in office, Biden said, “or you’ll get Donald Trump.” Already, the ex-prez has told Newsmax that the recall election is “probably rigged,” according to Politico, as the GOP, via such pre-emptive strikes against a near-certain loss combined with restrictive voter laws in such states as Texas and Georgia continue to chip away at democratic elections.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods
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MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2021
•The House Armed Services Committee today grills Secretary of State Antony Blinken on President Biden’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan. On Tuesday, Blinken testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (NPR and Roll Call).
•The Senate returns from its summer recess today and must get to work writing the $3.5 trillion “social infrastructure” budget reconciliation bill. Congress must also fund the federal government, with the fiscal year ending September 30.
•Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned Congress it must raise or suspend the debt ceiling or face running out of money by October.
•California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recall election is Tuesday.
Manchin on Unknown Unknowns — Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, on This Week With George Stephanopoulos Sunday spoke about the need to make a “strategic pause” in the $3.5-trillion Build Back Better funding program due to what he refers to as “the unknown,” saying, “So the unknown is there, and we don’t know what that’s going to — going to partake.” While he was talking about the economic effects of the additional spending, it is conceivable that he was glossing the late former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who once noted, “There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don't know.”
Manchin noted elsewhere that “strategic pause” will result in a much smaller reconciliation bill. “It’s going to be $1, $1.5 (trillion),” Manchin told Dana Bash on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday. “It’s not going to be at $3.5, I can assure you.”
Note: As an example of his rationalization for the need of a pause, Manchin said, “People are talking to me in West Virginia about the price of gas, the price of everything they buy, including their groceries, how it's affecting them.”
Let’s look at gasoline.
According to AAA, as of 9/12/21, the day of Manchin’s appearance, the national average for a gallon of gas is $3.175. The average price for a gallon in West Virginia is $3.024.
Looking at the states that share a border with West Virginia, there is Virginia at $2.977, Kentucky at $2.896, Ohio at $2.986, and Maryland at $3.041. Yes, all lower than West Virginia. The remaining border state, Pennsylvania, is higher, at $3.296.
Three known things to keep in mind about gas prices, which, admittedly, have risen.
1. Last year petroleum demand collapsed due to the pandemic and fewer people were on the roads, thereby resulting in decreased gas prices.
2. This past week included Labor Day. Federal holidays are when more people take to the roads. More demand drives higher prices.
3. According to a Bloomberg report September 9 about the consequences of Hurricane Ida, “The historic storm, which swept through the Gulf of Mexico almost two weeks ago, drove a record 1.5 million-barrel decline in daily crude output, according to weekly data from the Energy Information Administration going back to 1983. Nearly three-fourths of U.S. Gulf oil output was still offline as of Thursday.”
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North Korea Tests Long-Range Cruise Missiles – The state-run Korean Central News Agency announced Monday that North Korea successfully tested long-range cruise missiles that hit targets about 930 miles away on Saturday and Sunday. The announcement “implies” North Korea developed the missiles with the intent to arm them with nuclear warheads, the Associated Press reports.
Note: With just a short break for a “love affair” between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a few years ago, the Hermit Kingdom has consistently sought attention from the West with such potentially deadly antics. North Korea appears to be suffering a more critical famine than usual thanks to the pandemic’s supply chain shortages, and negotiations over the country’s nuclear capabilities that would have potentially mitigated its famine have gone nowhere since negotiations between Trump and Kim stalled in 2019. But that’s of no comfort to South Korea and Japan, both well within the range of the missiles tested last weekend.
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Worth Repeating – Former President George W. Bush, in a speech at the Flight 93 National Memorial Saturday in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks: “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols – they are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them.” (Per The Washington Post.)
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash