Jessica Gottlieb writes for the left column on how the failed California recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom, D, is a bellwether for former President Trump’s Republican Party.
Scroll down with the trackbar on the far right to read it. TIP: Read the center column before reading the left and right columns.
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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021
•Germany holds national elections this coming Sunday as Chancellor Angela Merkel steps down as the country’s leader after 16 years.
•President Biden leads a meeting of “The Quad” today at the White House, along with leaders of Japan, India and Australia. Their big issue for discussion is over China’s military dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.
•The CDC last night gave green light to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine booster and added health care workers and others whose job puts them at risk, as eligible, along with seniors 65 and older, and those 18 and older with a high risk of illness.
Pelosi, Schumer Announce ‘Framework’ on Social Infrastructure – House Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, have announced a “framework” that is to bring moderate and progressive Democrats together on the $3.5-trillion “social infrastructure” budget reconciliation package, Politico reports. But progressives want to delay the September 27 vote deadline on the $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill that Pelosi has attached to the bigger reconciliation bill, while moderates want to stick with next Monday’s deadline on what they see as a sure thing and rare win for President Biden.
Note: The Pelosi-Schumer announcement has left most pundits scratching their heads over whether this framework means anything substantial at all. Regardless, there are going to a whole lot of people spending the first weekend of fall crunching numbers in their offices and others twisting arms. Politico reports Friday that Pelosi plans to meet her obligation to hold a vote on infrastructure Monday, so with this framework she can also call for a vote on the $3.5 trillion spending bill framework without forcing a final vote on the bigger package.
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House 1/6 Committee Subpoenas Four Trump Aides – The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection on the Capitol Thursday subpoenaed three Trump White House officials and advisor Steve Bannon, the Associated Press reports. The committee has “also requested a trove of records from the White House,” which the AP says President Biden has authority to decide whether to release.
Subpoenas went to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, deputy chief of staff for communications, Dan Scavino, Defense Department official Kashyap Patel, and Bannon. All are believed to have close contact with Trump January 5 and leading up to the pro-Trump riots January 6. Democrats cite Bannon’s January 5 prediction, “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”
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Dog Bites Man in Arizona — The six-month, $6-million audit of election results in the 2020 presidential election conducted by Cyber Ninjas in Maricopa County, Arizona, found that Joe Biden had 99 more votes than had been originally tabulated and Donald Trump had 261 fewer votes, according to a draft report of the review that had been obtained by The New York Times. Yes, Biden won Arizona.
Maricopa County, Arizona’s Twitter account put it this wayt: “The #azaudit draft report from Cyber Ninjas confirms the county’s canvass of the 2020 General Election was accurate and the candidates certified as the winners did, in fact, win.” … In a second tweet, it added; “Unfortunately, the report is also littered with errors & faulty conclusions about how Maricopa County audited the 2020 General Election.”
Note: It should come as no surprise that Texas, which Trump won, will conduct an audit of the results in four countries (Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant,” TheNYTreports, in response to Trump’s request to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for a “Forensic Audit of the 2020 Election.” As is sometimes said in the Lone Star State, “He don’t know nothing from nothing.” And the pronoun could apply to either of the individuals.
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Bush Backs Cheney – No, it’s not a long-lost headline from 2000. Former Republican President George W. Bush will hold a fundraiser October 18 in Dallas for the re-election campaign of his vice president’s daughter, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-WY, the Associated Press reports. While this might seem uncharacteristic of the 43rd president, who has kept a low political profile, the AP quotes Bush’s spokesman Freddy Ford as saysing, Bush “has historically helped a few key candidates and friends each cycle, so this one shouldn’t come as any surprise.”
Cheney has ticked off former Republican President Donald J. Trump by voting for his second impeachment last January and joining the House select committee investigation into the January 6 Capitol attacks.
Trump is leading the “primarying” of Republican congress members “disloyal” to him in next year’s midterm election and backs Wyoming attorney Harriet Hageman’s challenge next year.
Underscoring how much the GOP has changed in just the last decade, Trump called Bush 43 a “RINO,” in a statement, and accused Cheney of being “warmongering,” and being “so bad for Wyoming.”
Note: Which is to say Cheney is “so bad” for Wyoming’s blindly diehard Trump supporters.
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Primary Challenge Unlikely Here – Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, announced early Friday on Twitter he will run for an eighth term, The Hill reports. Grassley managed to stay in Donald Trump’s good graces while not closely aligning with the former president. Grassley, already the oldest U.S. senator, turned 88 last Friday, which means should he win re-election – a good bet as he beat a Democratic challenger five years ago by 25 points – he will be 94 at the end of his next term as senator.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
•Leaders of African countries will speak before the UN General Assembly today about global inequity in COVID-19 vaccine supplies, NPR reports.
•The FDA may sign off as early as today on Pfizer BioNTech booster shots for its COVID-19 vaccinations, but only for those 65 and older and those at high risk. The booster shots could be available next week, The Washington Post reports.
Special Envoy to Haiti Resigns Over Biden Policy – Daniel Foote, appointed special envoy to Haiti following the assassination of the country’s president, Jovenel Moise, has resigned, citing the Biden administration’s “inhumane, counterproductive decision” to send Haitian refugees from Texas back to their native country, The New York Times reports. Since its president’s assassination in July, Haiti has also been hit by a deadly earthquake.
Note: An estimated 14,000 Haitian refugees had gathered under the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas over the last several days, and the White House came under criticism from advocates who say President Biden is simply continuing Donald Trump’s draconian immigration policies. It should be noted, however, that most of the Haitian refugees are being identified as having come from South American countries, gathering in southern Mexico in recent weeks, according to a report on NPR’s Morning Editon.
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Highway Bill Becomes a Bargaining Chip – The law that allows federal highway and transit spending expires September 30, three days after Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, D-CA, date for a House of Representatives vote on the Senate’s bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, Roll Call says. Pelosi continues to insist the House will get the $3.5 trillion “soft infrastructure” budget reconciliation bill and the bipartisan bridges-and-roads infrastructure done in time, while nearly everyone else on Capitol Hill is panicking.
Note: However, several progressives making the rounds of media outlets insist they have a mandate on the bigger reconciliation bill and appear confident that their priority – the “soft infrastructure” bill that includes environmental and child-welfare programs – will get passed in time.
“We are on schedule. And we’re calm and everybody’s good and our work is almost done,” Pelosi said. House progressives seem to have left some room to negotiate the $3.5 trillion down to placate Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV. Also worth noting is that the House will have completed its work, per Pelosi, if it passes the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and sends it to President Biden’s resolute desk, while approving the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill and then sending it back to the Senate. Pelosi’s task is to make sure that both moderate and progressive Democrats vote in favor of the reconciliation bill.
Furthermore: Biden extracted a concession from moderates in a five-hour meeting with 23 legislators in the Oval Office, ending 7 p.m. Wednesday, according to Politico Playbook. “Moderates agreed that they need to coalesce around an offer to the liberals,” a senior White House official told Politico, to which the online publication added; “The White House views the commitment from the Manch-ema wing as ‘a real breakthrough.’”
What Would it Take to Get You Into this Reconciliation Bill Today?: Biden remains frustrated, however, that the Manch-ema wing, which includes Manchin, Sen. Krysten Sinema, R-AZ, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-FL and Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-NJ, would not give him a specific “this is my final deal” number anywhere south of the $3.5 trillion price tag.
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Coal & Climate & West Virginia — It’s not all about the price tag for Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV. After leaving the Oval Office meeting with President Biden yesterday evening, Manchin said of the climate provisions that are part of the infrastructure package, “I have big problems” and added, “Probably [the president] and I are in a different place on that,” Politico reports. There is some $150 billion in the package for “clean energy,” which doesn’t mean coal.
Note: Think what you may about Manchin’s intransigence, coal is hugely important to West Virginia’s economy. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, based on 2019 data, it is the second-largest coal producer in the nation, accounting for 13% of total U.S. coal production, and more than one-third of the 93 million short tons of coal mined is exported to foreign markets. In terms of consumption of coal vs. other fuels, it consumes 621.7 trillion BTU from coal and 238 trillion BTU from second-place natural gas. Manchin does represent a state that has a huge amount riding on coal.
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Federal Reserve to ‘Taper’ Bond Purchases – The Federal Reserve indicated it would begin to “taper” – that’s the technical economic term – off its $120 billion monthly purchase of bonds and other assets at the end of its rate-setting committee’s two-day meeting Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reports. Such tapering would help alleviate inflation in the U.S., although the Fed believes the current inflation rate of 5.3% annually is “transitory,” and will come down as workers return to factories and production ramps up to normal again. The Fed’s target rate for inflation is 2%
“The purpose of that language,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said, referring to the signal of a tapering, “is to put notice out that that could come as soon as the next meeting,” which is scheduled for November 2-3, the WSJ says.
Note: Federal bond purchases, industrial production and delivery (freight ships are stacked up in the waters outside most of the nation’s ports, thanks to a shortage of truck drivers and rail capacity, PRI’s Marketplace reports), and the inflation rate will affect the success of whatever combo of President Biden’s infrastructure program and reconciliation bill gets signed in the next couple of months. Although “tapering” will start to relieve inflationary pain, it will take months, at best, to reduce the inflation rate from 5.3% to just 2%. It’s yet another issue that will affect the November 2022 midterm elections.
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Senate Compromise on Police Overhaul Stalls – Months of negotiations between Senate Democrats and Republicans on police reform legislation came to an abrupt halt Wednesday, Roll Call reports. Efforts to negotiate a package that would placate Republicans in their opposition “ran out of steam,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, said.
Rep. Karen Bass, D-CA, lead sponsor of a bill the House passed in March criticized Senate Republicans for being “unwilling to compromise.” The House bill includes a ban on chokeholds by federal officers, would end qualified immunity for police departments against civil lawsuits and create a national standard for policing, Roll Call notes. Bass has been negotiating with Booker and Sen. Tim Scott, R-SC, on the bill.
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EPA Regulates Hydrofluorocarbons – The Environmental Protection 0Agency is issuing a new rule that cuts use and production of hydrofluorocarbons found in refrigerant and air conditioning by 85% over the next 15 years, The Washington Postreports. The regulation implements a law Congress passed last year, although it has broad bipartisan support as a likely job source from the production of green alternatives
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods
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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2021
•As if budget reconciliation, infrastructure, the debt limit and next Thursday’s federal budget deadline aren’t enough, the House of Representatives has begun debate of the $778-billion fiscal 2022 defense spending bill, with 476 amendments proposed, Roll Call reports.
•More than a dozen shots were fired at a car carrying Serhiy Shefir, principal aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinsky, Politico reports, via Ukrainian media. Shefir was unhurt, but his driver was injured, and hospitalized. Speculation is that the assassination attempt stems from Zelinsky’s campaign to punish corruption in Ukraine. He is best-known in the U.S. as the recipient of the “perfect call” that led to President Trump’s first impeachment, in 2019.
•The Taliban wants to send a high-ranking official to the UN General Assembly being held in New York City this week, The Washington Post reports. The Taliban has sent the request to UN Secretary Gen. Antonio Guterres asking that Mohammed Suhail Shaheen be named the group’s permanent representative. A State Department official told reporters that such requests take time to deliberate.
End of Month Showdown on the Debt Limit – Let’s make sure we’re all on the same page regarding the federal budget and the debt limit. Without a vote on a budget, federal agencies run out of funding and shut down after September 30 –a week from tomorrow. Meanwhile, if Congress fails to raise the federal debt limit, we run out of funds for federal programs in October, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin.
The House of Representatives last night passed a short-term funding bill that would keep federal agencies open through December 3, while raising the debt limit through December 2022, Punchbowl News reports. The 220-211 vote was along party lines, with Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-AZ, not voting. The House bill goes to the Senate today where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, will call for cloture (to subvert a filibuster), but that vote won’t happen until Friday, the Capitol Hill newsletter says.
Republican senators are expected to vote to keep the federal government open, but Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, has made it clear budget reconciliation with the debt limit increase is dead on arrival, even as Democratic senators complain they voted for such an increase when the Trump tax cuts passed. The question, according to Punchbowl News, is whether Democrats continue to push the budget reconciliation bill, all $3.5-trillion of it, with the debt limit increase attached or “find another path”?
Note: The “other path” comes down to the months-old issue of how to get progressive House Democrats on board and pass the $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill separately from the budget reconciliation bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, has scheduled September 27, which is next Monday, as deadline for House passage in order to send it to President Biden's desk for signature. The $3.5-trillion “social infrastructure” budget reconciliation bill simply will not get through the Senate as-is, without removing the legislative filibuster, and Sens. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, and Krysten Sinema, D-AZ, are not going to vote for the filibuster suspension.
As several news outlets have pointed out, the ongoing fight between moderate and progressive Democrats threatens to “derail” Biden’s agenda.
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Trump Family Feud – Donald J. Trump has filed suit against his niece, Mary L. Trump, The New York Times and three of its reporters, accusing them of conspiring on an “insidious plot” to improperly obtain the real estate developer, former president and reality TV star’s tax records “and exploit their use in news articles and a book,” the Times reports. The lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court in Dutchess County was first reported by the DailyBeast Wednesday morning.
Trump’s lawsuit claims the reporters “relentlessly” sought out his niece – a psychologist and frequent cable news pundit the last four years who criticized the ex-prez and her family in the 2020 book Too Much and Never Enough – and “persuaded” her to smuggle the tax records out of her attorney's office. This breached a confidentiality agreement that was part of a litigation settlement involving the will of Trump’s late father, Fred C. Trump, who died in 1999. The lawsuit says Times reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner, and Ms. Trump “engaged in an insidious plot to obtain confidential and highly-sensitive records which they exploited for their own benefit and utilized as a means of falsely legitimizing their publicized works.”
The suit follows scheduling by a Manhattan criminal judge’s scheduling Monday of the trial of the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, who are accused of dodging taxes. The trial is set for late summer of 2022 and alleges Weisselberg avoided $1.7 million of taxes on fringe benefits received from the Trump Organization.
Note: The AP reports that Susanne Craig, reacting to this claim of an “insidious plot,” tweeted, “I knocked on Mary Trump’s door. She opened it. I think they call that journalism.” Drop the mic.
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Biden Says Government Will Buy Half-Billion Vaccines for Developing Nations – Following his speech to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, President Biden announced the U.S. will buy a half-billion COVID-19 vaccine doses from Pfizer BioNTech to be donated to developing nations in need. The announcement comes after Biden re-committed the U.S. to re-engage with the global community, which comes after four years of Trump administration nationalism.
“Instead of continuing to fight the wars of the past, we are fixing our eyes on devoting our resources to the challenges that hold the keys to our collective future: ending this pandemic; addressing the climate crisis; managing the shifts in global power dynamics; shaping the rules of the world on vital issues like trade, cyber, and emerging technologies; and facing the threat of terrorism as it stands today,” Biden said.
“We’ve ended 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan. And as we close this period of relentless war, we’re opening a new era of relentless diplomacy…”
Note: Of course, Biden’s words glossed over an end to the Afghan war largely criticized for its poor organization. Meanwhile, the French government is still reeling – and has called its ambassador back to Paris from Washington, D.C., over the U.S.-U.K.-Australian nuclear submarine deal.
And as for the vaccines, according to the BBC, only 4% of the African population, for example, have been vaccinated -- there are some 1.3-billion people who live there. As the Pfizer vaccination requires two shots, half-a-billion doses doesn’t go too far in a place like that.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2021
•President Biden is scheduled to lead off the United Nations General Assembly in New York City Tuesday with a speech expected to address climate change, the coronavirus pandemic and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
•Johnson & Johnson is promoting its COVID-19 vaccine as an efficacious booster, announcing that it prompts a strong response months after patients have received the first dose. “A booster dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine further increases antibody responses among study participants who had previously received our vaccine,” said the drugmaker’s research & development global chief, Dr. Mathai Mammen (per the AP).
•Jessica Gottlieb On the Left and Bryan Williams On the Right comment on the lessons for last week’s recall election of California Gov. Gavin Newsom to the Republican Party. Scroll down to the next file using the trackbar on the far right of this page to read news analysis in the center column, and then their commentaries to the left and right.
House to Vote on Short-Term Funding – Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, has scheduled a House of Representatives vote on short-term federal funding that will extend the debt limit to 2022 to avoid a government shutdown. But the extension faces a wall known as the U.S. Senate, where Republicans are firmly with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, on filibustering the bill, notes Punchbowl News.
“Republicans, from Sen. Mitt Romney” of Utah, “to Shelley Moore Capito” of West Virginia are committed to following McConnell’s lead on opposing raising the debt limit, the online publication says. While Punchbowl News reports that Pelosi hopes a sufficient number of Senate Republicans will change their minds, it reports that Democrats have “No Plan B” so far.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin has warned in a guest editorial in The Wall Street Journal that the government could hit its debt ceiling by next month.
Note: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, was quoted on NPR’s Morning Edition that Democrats voted with Republicans to raise the debt limit for President Trump’s massive tax cuts for the rich and corporations a few years ago, suggesting there is room for Republicans to reciprocate … as if that would trigger any empathy from the minority leader. In addition to being the Republican leader who greeted the Obama administration by promising to essentially block everything he proposed, McConnell now has the potential to exert his partisan power and chip away control of the GOP from Donald Trump, with whom he has fallen out over the January 6 Capitol insurrection. The former president has said he wants to replace McConnell at the top of Senate Republican leadership.
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First Suit Filed in Controversial Texas Abortion Law – A self-described “disbarred and disgraced former Arkansas lawyer” has filed the first suit connected to Texas’ controversial abortion law, which calls on individuals to file suit against virtually anyone connected with delivering or accepting an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, The Washington Post reports. Plaintiff Oscar Stilley has sued San Antonio physician Alan Braid, who wrote an op-ed for the WaPo saying he performed an early abortion that nevertheless exceeded the parameters of the law, as his duty as a doctor, and “because she has the fundamental right to receive this care.”
Thus the next showdown for Roe v. Wade is set for the Supreme Court.
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Trudeau Wins Another Minority Government – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau managed to hang on to his minority leadership in Monday’s snap elections, which he called two years early in an attempt to push his Liberal Party to a majority of Parliament’s 339 seats. The Globe and Mail calls the Liberal’s third straight win a “status quo” government, with the party having won or elected 158 seats as of Tuesday morning. Conservatives have 119, Bloc Quebecois 34, NDP 25 and the Green Party, two according to the early returns.
Some of Trudeau’s erstwhile supporters reportedly resented his calling the snap elections during the pandemic. He will have to continue to work with other parties in order to get legislation passed.
Note: Perhaps there’s a lesson here for progressive Democrats in our democratic republic?
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Customs Investigates Border Patrol on Horseback – The U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility has begun an investigation regarding footage of Border Patrol agents on horseback “menacingly” using what appears to be whips on migrants at the U.S-Mexican border, Politico reports. The Department of Homeland Security also has dispatched personnel to oversee border patrol operations.
The investigation comes as an estimated 14,000-plus Haitian refugees gather in Del Rio, Texas. The Biden administration is extending use of a Trump-era policy to return refugees to the country from which they came on health concerns because they risk spreading the coronavirus. Many of the Haitian refugees reportedly have immigrated north from countries in South America, where they were most recently living.
Note: Monday’s News & Notes noted that the Senate parliamentarian ruled in favor of the Republican caucus to prevent Democrats’ plan to attach immigration reform to the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill. In other words, it’s the White House’s problem, and there’s little relief in sight from either party in working to alleviate the ongoing border crisis.
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Kim Jong Un Unhappy — AUKUS, the defense pact created by Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. (see where the acronym came from?), has caused consternation in Pyongyang, North Korea, with the Korean Central News Agency (part of the government) quoting a Foreign Ministry official (part of the government) as saying “It is quite natural that neighboring countries including China condemned these actions as irresponsible ones of destroying the peace and stability of the region and the international nuclear nonproliferation system and of catalyzing the arms race,” The Washington Post reported.
Note: On the subject of stability, it is worth noting that North Korea is expanding its Yongbyon nuclear enrichment facility and has recently conducted long-range missile tests. Exactly the sort of thing that a country not at all interested in proliferation and arms races would do.
It also brings to mind Donald Trump’s bromance with Kim Jong Un, which was to lead to something — a treaty? a Trump Hotel in downtown Pyongyang? — that never materialized, just a photo ops between the two leaders with some of the most bizarre tonsorial looks on the planet. (We now learn from Peril that Trump reportedly described the man from whom he received “love letters” as a “f**king lunatic.”)
Which brings to mind that Trump really had a problem with accomplishment. While Biden is being raked over the coals for the seemingly bungled departure from Afghanistan, note how Trump had agreed to a May 1, 2021, withdrawal deadline that was set for after his single term in office – although he obviously figured the deadline would come during his second term in office.
And while we are seeing problems at the southern border of the U.S., not only did Trump not finish the big, beautiful Wall, but Mexico hasn’t ponied up the building costs like he said it would.
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U.S. COVID Deaths Surpass that of 1918-19 Influenza – The number of COVID-19 deaths in the United States has surpassed 675,000, which is roughly the number of deaths from influenza in 1918-19, The Washington Post reports, citing newly released CDC numbers. While it is the case that the number, 675,000, represented a much bigger percentage of the U.S. population a century ago – it reached 106 million in the 1920 Census versus 331 million last year (per Wikipedia) – the U.S. has recorded a much bigger share of global deaths for the coronavirus than for the influenza.
There were about 49 million influenza deaths globally, the CDC says, which means U.S. deaths equaled 1.4%. There have been 4.7 million COVID-19 deaths globally so far, with the U.S. taking about 14.4% of that.
Note: “A lot of people think that it goes away in April, with the heat.” – President Donald J. Trump in February 2020.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods
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MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2021
•Scroll down using the trackbar on the far right, for debate on what last week’s California recall election means for the future of the Republican Party under Donald Trump. Jessica Gottlieb opines from the left, with Bryan Williams on the right. Tip: Read the center column first.
•Canada holds “snap” federal elections today. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for the elections two years early, in hopes of building his Liberal Party’s numbers in Parliament, but Canadian polls say the party may actually lose strength and threaten Trudeau’s leadership.
•The United Nations 76th General Assembly holds its annual gathering this week in New York City, beginning Tuesday.
•Pfizer BioNTech reports Monday that its COVID-19 vaccine is safe for children 5 years old and up, says NPR’s Morning Edition.
Senate Democrats Can’t Attach Immigration to Budget Reconciliation – The Senate’s nonpartisan parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, has ruled that Democrats cannot attach to the $3.5 trillion “social infrastructure” budget reconciliation package an immigration plan that would give several categories of immigrants permanent residence and possible U.S. citizenship, the Associated Press reports. The ruling ends Senate Democrats’ hopes that immigration reform could be passed by a simple majority vote along with the rest of budget reconciliation. Instead, any separate immigration bill will need 60 votes, including 10 Republicans, to avoid a filibuster.
Note: Fate of immigration reform passes back to the Republicans, again. How has that worked out for the last 20 or so years?
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Politico Scoop: Sinema Hands Biden Ultimatum on Budget – Sen. Krysten Sinema, D-AZ, reportedly told President Biden last Wednesday she will not back his $3.5-trillion “social infrastructure” budget reconciliation package if the House fails to vote for, and pass, the $1.2-trillion infrastructure plan by Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, D-CA, September 27 deadline, according to Politico. Sinema is one of two Senate Democrats – the other is West Virginia’s Joe Manchin III, of course – who could torpedo the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill, needing just 50 votes to pass.
Politico Playbook further notes there are at least 10 moderate Democratic House members playing hardball over infrastructure vs. reconciliation, including Rep. Kurt Schrader, of Oregon. “If they delay the vote,” Schrader told Playbook, referring to progressive House Democrats, “or it goes down – then I think you can kiss reconciliation goodbye. Reconciliation would be dead.”
Note: Finally, outward signs that moderate House Democrats are playing hardball with the progs. The White House’s weakened position on its agenda following the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan is almost certainly fortifying the moderates’ position.
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Cassidy Looks Forward—In an interview Sunday with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-LA, with Todd using the decision by Rep. Anthony Gonzales, R-OH, not to seek re-election and former President Trump describing the representative as “a grandstanding RINO, not respected in D.C. who voted for the unhinged, unconstitutional, illegal impeachment witch hunt” as the setup, Cassidy made several comments which seem to indicate that there are some in the Republican Party who are not focusing on grievances of days past, as these following quotes indicate:
Note: Cassidy was one of seven senators who voted to impeach Trump during his second impeachment trial. Cassidy was re-elected to the Senate in 2020 so he has no immediate concern vis-à-vis his own position.
It is interesting to note that statements like these, as well as reports that there are several Republican politicians who are grumbling that Trump won’t leave the stage, the deflated protest that was “Justice for J6,” and Gavin Newsom’s convincing showing in the recall election, may indicate that when the Republicans get serious about 2022 and 2024 Trump may not be the force to be reckoned with that he is now — or has been, up until now.
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And Yet, Trump Wants a New Republican Senate Leader – Flying in the face of Sen. Cassidy’s comments above, Donald Trump is shopping for a new Senate leader to depose Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, The Wall Street Journal reports. Here’s a surprise: No one wants it. There’s “little appetite” to replace McConnell, even among such Trump sycophants as Sen. Tommy Tuberville, of Alabama, who has already declined, the Journal says.
McConnell, whose eighth term as GOP Senate leader runs to January 2023, voted against Trump’s second impeachment conviction. But his relationship with Trump has been frosty, to say the least, since the minority leader denounced the former president in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor. McConnell holds Trump’s constant repeat of his Big Lie responsible for his own demotion from majority leader after two Democrats took Georgia’s Senate seats, pushing Democrats into the majority, in the January runoffs.
Note: The WSJ piece notes that Trump has raised $102 million in political cash in the first six months of the year but hasn’t paid any of it off to GOP candidates. The newspaper also notes that Trump’s discussions “risk driving a deeper wedge” between McConnell and Trump. One of the savviest Capitol Hill strategists, McConnell must now be considering whether holding firm against President Biden’s agenda, or whether negotiating for better bi-partisanship is his better path to firming up his power. We’d bet on the former. And while Trump allegedly wants his previous job back, too, given how that’s been working out, odds are McConnell is not overly concerned.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
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Scroll down with the track bar on the far right to read our three-column debate on implications of the California recall election results for ex-President Trump and the future of the GOP.
Bryan Williams writes for the right column on how the failed California recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom, D, has no significant implications for the future of the Republican Party.
Scroll down with the trackbar on the far right to read it. TIP: Read the center column before reading the left and right columns.
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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news
By Jessica Gottlieb
After conducting six weeks of frenetic influencer outreach on behalf of the Newsom team here in California, one thing is very clear: The GOP has a Trump problem.
As every outreach must begin and end with active listening, I spent the weeks leading up to the California recall election searching for redundancies and, oh boy, did I find them. Donald Trump and Republican candidate for part two of the ballot, Larry Elder, tried – and perhaps will continue to try – to reignite the Big Lie, sow seeds of disinformation, and generally undermine electoral norms. Will Wilkinson of the Progressive Policy Institute writes, “by accusing California Democrats of cheating anyway, Elder has given away the game.”
There is no reason to believe disinformation won’t continue to be a GOP strategy if the party doesn’t disengage from Trump.
I was brought to the recall campaign when the vote was as predictable as a coin toss. The far right has a grassroots army of online trolls who, left unchecked, dominate online conversations. The far left is busy conducting purity tests, and the middle was frankly confused about the entire recall process.
California, with our ballots full of propositions, has a unique political landscape. Our rare recalls make headlines because it becomes possible for an unqualified and unendorsed candidate to lead the pack. California politics looks exactly like the rest of the country in that people want to vote for leaders who will understand their unique needs. Though tech and entertainment may be in the national conversation, California is an agricultural hub with vast regions of rural land.
When I spoke with constituents on- and offline, they expressed concern for personal safety; this included access to healthcare, such as abortion, mask mandates, and a fight against vaccine disinformation. Evangelical women in Orange County told me they were proud to have spoken up about voting “no” on the recall. I had an anti-union tech entrepreneur write a screed in a private group chat about how protecting a $15 per-hour minimum wage would keep California’s economy growing.
Larry Elder, Ron DeSantis, and Greg Abbott, all of whom emulate Trump with bombast and antipathy for both science and civility, may have been Newsom’s greatest assets. Vaccinated voters are afraid of leaving COVID-19 unchecked. They are afraid for their health and for their household finances. Catholics have heard Pope Francis state that getting the COVID-19 vaccine is an act of kindness, and they do not appreciate being told to not listen to the pope.
Women who previously were anti-abortion witness the otherworldly law coming out of Texas and have no choice but to vote for candidates who will not turn their daughters into felons should they seek an abortion. The GOP’s unchecked extremism has caught the attention of the half of the nation who would be punished first. Make no mistake, Texas’ law punishes men as well, but they will be punished only after the women.
Celebrity and pundit endorsements alone are fabulous starting points for candidates. Fundamentally, constituents win elections. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that constituents’ chatter is likely guided by their favorite star.
With everyone a click away from their favorite celebrity, harnessing an engaged and motivated fanbase of Instagrammers to re-share content was vital to our success in blocking California’s recall attempt. Sydney, with her 600 friends on Instagram, created 600 additional conversations, because she’s one of the 180 million passionate fans of Selena Gomez, but also because she’s a voter. An organic mix of aspirational and attainable messaging is why social media holds so much value. The Larry Elder campaign was far from aspirational.
Today’s GOP is saddled with Trump’s army of science-denying conspiracy theorists. They tweet, post, and gather online with no clear leader in sight. GOP leadership has confused bots and trolls with consensus constituents. For the many Americans who lost their loved ones and livelihoods, voting for a party that wavered between disinterest and contempt for its constituents, will increasingly be a tough sell.
As California goes, so goes the nation.
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Jessica Gottlieb is a digital marketing consultant and Internet personality living in Los Angeles.
By Todd Lassa
Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, R-OH, announced his retirement from the House last week, at the same time Democrats were celebrating California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decisive victory in his Tuesday recall election.
There is a connection. Gonzalez, 38, was considered a rising star in GOP politics, representing a district to the west and south of Cleveland. He is one of 10 Republican members of the House of Representatives to vote for President Trump’s impeachment following the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, which has in turn prompted former Trump aide Max Miller to “primary” him next year. Gonzalez cited “the toxic dynamics inside our own party,” though he also noted his young family as a factor in his retirement after just two terms.
Trump reacted to Gonzalez’s news, last Friday, saying; “Good riddance to Anthony,” and “one down, nine to go,” according to The Washington Post.
But the tea leaves that California pundits are reading say the former president’s influence on the GOP is beginning to wane, and the state’s recall election last Tuesday is the first sign of Trump’s Waterloo. In California’s rather convoluted recall rules, which can hand keys to the governor’s mansion to a challenger earning far less than 50% of the vote if more than 50% of the electorate votes to recall, 63.5% said “no” to removing Newsom, a comfortable margin.
Trump’s candidate Larry Elders in the second part of the recall ballot, which asks voters to choose whom they would like to have replace the governor if recalled, earned “just” 47.1% of the vote. That’s not an insignificant share if you consider that 46 candidates ran to replace Newsom, including Democrat Kevin Paffrath, who earned 9.9%, and former San Diego Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer, a moderate who scored just 8.4% (results per The New York Times.)
Democrats are particularly enthused about the high turnout in the recall, which is expected to be “north of” 50%, according to The Mercury News of San Jose. The party is not known for good turnout in odd years and midterms, when there isn’t a presidential election. Worse for the GOP, Elders’ unfounded claims on Monday that the election already was rigged in favor of retaining Newsom likely stifled Republican in-person voting on Tuesday.
Since the California recall election and Gonzalez’s early retirement, Democrats and never-Trumper Republicans already are claiming a second victory with poor turnout for the “Justice for J6” rally in Washington, D.C., Saturday planned by ex-Trump campaign staffer Matt Braynard. “Fewer than 100 right-wing demonstrators, sharply outnumbered by an overwhelming police presence and even by reporters” had gathered Saturday at the Capitol to protest “mistreatment of ‘political prisoners’ who had stormed the building” January 6, The New York Times reports.
For now, Republican rank-and-file, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and all but 10 of his caucus appear eager for Trump to continue to head the party through next year’s midterms and on to a 2024 presidential election that the former president has all but promised to contest. But all Democratic and Republican eyes will be on a number of upcoming early indicators. Next is Virginia’s gubernatorial election, which pits a Republican, Glenn Youngkin, who has been steadily backing away from his MAGA association, against former one-term Democratic governor of the purple state, Terry McAuliffe, who is all too eager to pin the Trump connection to his opponent.
Until November 2, then, the score has anti-Trumpers leading Trumpers, 2-1.
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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news
By Bryan Williams
Woe the California GOP? If I had a nickel for every time someone pointed out that the last Republican to win statewide in California was in 2006 … I’d have a lot of nickels. And, at least until June 2022 (the statewide primary elections) it looks like that losing streak will hold.
Because of our “better, more-fair,” politics here in California, a Republican isn’t even guaranteed a spot on the general election ballot next year for governor – the top two vote getters in the primary move on. There was one high-polling Democrat on last week’s recall ballot, Kevin Paffrath. Maybe it’ll be Newsom vs. Paffrath next year.
So…did the “Republican Power Grab” recall go down in flames because of Larry Elder being a Trumpista, or because, at the end of the day, this is a state where Democrats rule? Turnout was, as of this writing, about 54%, which is low overall, but pretty good for an off-year election. His party woke up to save Gavin Newsom, who otherwise isn’t well-liked by many Democrats. But the prospect of electing a guy like Larry Elder, who sounds a lot like Donald Trump, scared them into keeping Newsom for the last 14 months of his first term.
I think Newsom could have been recalled if the men and women running to replace him had 1) more money, and 2) devoted their campaigns to offering policy on the “nuts and bolts” of governing, which in my opinion, Newsom has (and Jerry Brown before him, and maybe even Arnold Schwartzenegger before him had) failed at tremendously.
Billions of dollars lost on fraudulent unemployment claims while the legitimately jobless have to wait on-hold for hours to try and collect before they’re hung up on, a Department of Motor Vehicles, with its ridiculously long lines, running off software from the 1970s, a state war on petroleum production resulting in foreign oil from the Middle East being shipped thousands of miles in tankers spewing tons of carbon dioxide, and massive wildfires that are now more predictable than rain (to name just a few problems, not to mention COVID shutdowns and the French Laundry hypocrisy), are all Newsom’s responsibility to fix. The fixes do not require rocket science. A populist candidate could have pounded Newsom on this and won.
Instead, we got a re-hash of 2020 where Trump was rolled out as a bogeyman, and Larry Elder was his stooge. It worked. Would this have worked if, say, California was Idaho or any other red state where Trumpism is still a winning ideology?
I don’t like it, but it wins elections. It’s also easy. It’s much harder to actually campaign on details like those listed above. It’s difficult to outline how government fails the people where they encounter it and need it the most while at the same time the candidate articulates how he or she will make it better, and then actually do it once elected.
Can you imagine the approval ratings and re-election odds for a governor who can make filing an unemployment claim as easy as ordering from McDonald’s on UberEats? Or who can enact a jobs program with good wages, to clean up our overgrown forests so we don’t have to endure months of smoke-filled skies, destroyed homes and closed parks?
There were a few candidates, out of the 46 on the recall ballot, who were serious and probably would have tried to tackle these problems in earnest. They would have made great candidates in any state had they the money to run a campaign to get their message out.
But on the question of whether Trump continues to be the trademark of the Republican Party? Don’t look to California for a referendum on that. Trump won without California in 2016 against a weak Democratic candidate, and, if Joe Biden (or Kamala Harris) are the (weak) Democratic candidates in 2024, he’ll win again. Without the Golden State, again.
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Bryan Williams is a mental health professional and former Republican Party official in California.
Editors:
In reading David Iwinski's commentary ("So Joe Is Losing Patience, Is He?", right column), I paused over the factual assertion Iwinski makes that both Biden and Harris "said in nationally televised interviews that they would never take this vaccination."
Politfact has a thorough fact check on this. It notes that this piece of disinformation emanated from an out-of-context editing job that began on TikTok and then surfaced on Facebook. Both sites have taken the video down.
Politifact concludes: "The video was selectively edited to leave out the context of their statements. Their full statements show they were raising doubts about Trump’s trustworthiness, his ability to roll out the vaccines safely and the risk of political influence over vaccine development. We rate the video False."
I looked at the unedited Harris video myself. Harris quite clearly says that she would take the vaccine if recommended by health professionals. Biden said as much in a number of news accounts. For example: https://www.axios.com/biden-vaccine-scientists-ready-34e27a23-51f9-41dc-94ce-ad9a7b51fe91.html
--Name Withheld by Request
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Note: The Hustings strives for accuracy in its center column news and analysis, as well as its left and right columns. We appreciate readers who call us out on inaccuracies or disputed facts or data. We are not Facebook. The Hustings requires authors' names for reader commentary, except when an author has a legitimate reason for posting as "anonymous." To request anonymity, you must send your comments to editors@thehustings.news and include a valid return email and phone number so we can verify your identity. --The Editors
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Scroll down to read Stephen Macaulay on President Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, “People Get Sick. People Die.”
Reflections on the 9/11 attacks 20 years later are below that, in the center column only.
Scroll down further to read Jim McCraw’s left-column commentary on the Texas abortion law, and Bryan Williams and Stephen Macaulay’s commentaries in the right column. As always, email your comments on these and on items in News & Notes to editors@thehustings.news.
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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2021
•The U.S. Capitol Police have prepared for Saturday’s ‘Justice for J6’ rally, organized by former Trump campaign official Matt Braynard, with temporary fencing erected around the Supreme Court Capitol buildings. Braynard has said the rally would be ‘100 percent’ peaceful (Newsweek), but there also are reports of individuals online saying they will target “local Jewish institutions, elected officials and ‘liberal churches.’”
•The FDA issues a decision today on whether to authorize booster shots for those who already have taken full doses of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Milley Says Calls to Chinese Counterpart Were Part of His Job – Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed he called his Chinese counterpart to warn of former President Trump’s potential authorization of a strike against the country, and said his actions were “perfectly within the duties and responsibilities of his job.” Milley’s remarks were made to an Associated Press reporter and one other reporter in Athens, Greece, while on a tour of Europe.
Milley told the two reporters such calls were made “to reassure both allies and adversaries in this case in order to ensure strategic stability.”
The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, whose term is set to run from October 2019 to October 2023, has been the topic of argument over whether he should step down or be fired, after release of excerpts from Peril, an upcoming book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post revealed that Milley took action before and after last November’s presidential election because he perceived instability in Trump’s reaction to his loss.
Note: It is interesting the Republican base have attacked the CIA, the FBI and now the Joint Chief of Staff. Wasn’t the GOP the party of “law and order” and “strong defense”?
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Biden Cannot Use Public Health to Expel Immigrants – U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has ruled that Title 42, a public health order, cannot be used to expel immigrants crossing the Southern border, Politico reports. The Biden administration had sought to use the policy to return immigrants to Mexico. The judge’s order takes effect in 14 days.
Note: It makes sense the Biden administration has attempted to extend Trump’s policy, as the president suffers criticism over allegedly record crowds of immigrants trying to cross the Southern border, but it seems there is no real solution short of immigration reform.
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Immigration Crisis Intensifies – More than 10,000 Haitian refugees have crossed the Rio Grande into Texas over the past few days, where they are sleeping outdoors under a bridge in the town of Del Rio, The Washington Post reports, creating a humanitarian emergency. WaPo notes that the refugees, coming from an island country hit by a severe earthquake weeks after its president was assassinated, comes as the Department of Homeland Security struggles to resettle more than 60,000 refugees from the sudden withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
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Climate Is a Concern … A Big Concern — In a global survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 72% of the respondents answered, “Concern that global climate change will harm you personally in your lifetime” as “Very/somewhat concerned.” And 80% said they would do “A lot/some” willingness to change the way they live and work in order to “help reduce the effects of global climate change.”
The survey shows that while 78% of people from around the globe surveyed think that China is doing a bad job when it comes to addressing global climate change, the U.S. is in second place, with 61% saying it is doing a bad job.
Of the question regarding whether they think climate will have an effect on them during their lifetime and their level of concern, 33% of Americans answered “somewhat” and 27% “very.”
Note: Even climate is ideological in the U.S. When asked about their willingness to make “a lot/some” change in their daily living to help mitigate climate change, 45% of those identifying as being of the right-wing said they would, while 83% of centrists and 94% of those on the left said they would. This 49% difference between the right and the left is by far the biggest ideological divide among the countries surveyed. Canada, which has the second highest, has a divide of just 26%.
Not surprising, older Americans are less concerned than younger ones. While 52% of those who are 65+ are “very/somewhat concerned,” 71% of those who are 18-29 say they are.
One could conclude that a whole lot of right-wing Americans who are collecting Social Security figure they’ll be checking out before anything bad happens climatically.
This age and ideological divide should give Republicans pause. Maybe they’re doing okay right now, but those seniors are on the wane while the younger demographic is growing.
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Corporations Shouldn’t Talk About Abortion — Forty-six percent of U.S. adults think that it is acceptable for brands to talk about access to abortion in their messaging while 39% say they oppose it, according to a Morning Consult poll. While that might seem to put abortion access messaging in a good place (15% answered “don’t know,” or have no opinion), of the 13 issue categories raised, abortion access is the only one below 50% positive. Odds are that isn’t going to be a message in ads for consumer products.
Note: The next-lowest rankings are for Black Lives Matter, police reform and racism, all at 52% acceptable. LGBTQ rights and immigrant rights are both at 53%. Then there is a notable jump, with climate change at 62%. Voting rights is at 65%, civil rights at 67%, registering to vote at 68%, women’s rights at 69%, and health care access at 73%.
The most acceptable topic of all: equal pay, at 76%. You’d imagine that talking about wages is one of the last things that corporations would be interested in discussing.
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Australian PM Says He Told Macron About Sub Deal – Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he told French President Emmanuel Macron in June that Canberra might scrap its deal to purchase conventionally powered submarines from France’s Naval Group, Politico reports. French Foreign Minister Jean Yves-LeDrian said it was a “stab in the back” when Australia announced yesterday it would cancel its 50-billion euro ($58.8 billion) agreement in favor of joining a U.S.-U.K. alliance to supply nuclear-powered subs to the country.
Note: China and France are in the same boat. Sort of. China is angry about the possibility of quiet Australian nuclear subs lurking about the South China Sea for months at a time. France is unhappy they lost the boat-building bid.
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Trump Critic Won’t Seek a Third Term – Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, of Ohio, one of 10 Republican House members who voted to impeach President Trump last January has announced he will not seek a third term, according to Roll Call. Gonzalez, 38, cited wanting to grow a young family in a tweet announcing his retirement from Congress, but added, “the current state of our politics, the especially toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision.”
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2021
•Democrats on the House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee completed mark-up Wednesday of the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package, which now proceeds to the full House and Senate (The Washington Post). President Biden met with Sens. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, and Krysten Sinema, D-AZ, Wednesday to help work out a deal, but the two appear to remain resistant (The Hill). Their votes are needed for the bill to pass the Senate without Republican support.
•The FDA says data show that the coronavirus vaccines remain effective without the need for booster shots, and it’s not ready to recommend their use. WaPo says an FDA panel will vote Friday on whether to approve Pfizer’s booster shot. President Biden had planned to have booster shots available for most adults by next week.
•SpaceX successfully launched a rocket with a capsule carrying an all-civilian crew Wednesday that will circle the Earth every 90 minutes for three days before splashing down this weekend in the Gulf of Mexico (MSNBC).
Nuclear Subs to Australia – A new defense alliance among the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia will share nuclear-powered submarine technology, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. The alliance will provide Australia with its first nuclear-powered subs, which can move faster, are much quieter, and can remain submerged for months. Just six countries have the technology, an analyst told the BBC.
The U.S.-U.K.-Australian nuclear-powered subs will not carry nuclear warheads, but they do pose a counterpoint to the People’s Republic of China’s recent aggression in the South China Sea.
Note: Negotiations between the U.S. and Australia go back 18 months, which means they began under the Trump administration. The deal thus represents another international affairs issue in which the Biden administration is hewing to the predecessor’s policy direction, in this case, playing up adversarial relations with China. Reuters reports that the Chinese embassy in Washington reacted by saying in a statement that the U.S. needs to “shake off the Cold War mentality.”
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Biden Briefs Execs on Vaccines — President Biden met with top executives from Columbia Sportswear, Disney, Microsoft, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Kaiser Permanente, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Louisiana State University yesterday to detail the vaccine/testing mandates that his administration is putting in place after his address to the nation last week, The Washington Post reports. The newspaper quotes Tim Boyle, Columbia Sportwear chief executive, as saying; “Now with the federal government stepping in, that’s where we really felt comfortable and immediately put out a similar message to our employees.”
Note: Essentially the Biden administration is providing business with “cover” in terms of their being able to mandate their employees get the vaccinations or take the tests. What is notable about this meeting is that unlike the previous occupant of the White House, Biden didn’t make a big deal about meeting with these executives.
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Milley Isn’t Going Anywhere – Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, ranking Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has called for Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to resign after revelations he warned a Chinese counterpart of President Trump’s potential plans last year to launch a military attack on the country, to maintain control of the White House, and told chief military officers to consult with him before executing a potential command by Trump of a missile launch. But President Biden pushed back, saying he has “great confidence” in Milley, whose four-year term as Joint Chiefs’ chairman ends in October 2023.
“The president has complete confidence in his leadership, his patriotism, and his fidelity to our Constitution,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at the daily briefing (per Roll Call).
Note: Milley took these precautions because Trump appeared to be particularly unhinged in the weeks surrounding his loss in last November’s election, according to excerpts of Peril, the book by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa due for release next Tuesday. Milley’s defenders in the media say the final months of the Trump administration resembles that of Richard M. Nixon in 1974, when cabinet members feared what the president might do with his military powers as he was reportedly drinking heavily, talking to paintings in the White House, and demanding Secretary of State Henry Kissinger get down on his knees and pray with him.
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Yes, Virginia, There is a Republican Gubernatorial Candidate – Now that the California recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom has gone the way most every poll and analyst expected, sending Larry Elder back to his AM radio day job, the punditocracy is concentrating on an early election that should tell us much more than the Golden State did about the condition of Donald J. Trump’s hold on the GOP.
Purple Virginia’s gubernatorial election is November 2, with Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin and Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe seeking to replace term-limited Democrat Ralph Northam.
The odd-year election sets former Democratic National Committee chairman and Clinton confidant McAuliffe, who already has served one term as Virginia governor, against businessman Youngkin, a former CEO of the Carlyle Group, who has been distancing himself from Trump. An early Youngkin campaign commercial pictured supporters sitting in an audience, only one of whom was wearing a red hat – it was impossible to tell from the commercial whether the hat was embossed with “Make America Great Again”.
Note: Currently, the Republican campaign is running a commercial that pivots from Youngkin, saying in a voiceover; “It’s your right to make your own choice,” to “I hope you’ll join me in getting the vaccine.”
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Tucker Carlson on Time100 List -- Fox News personality Tucker Carlson is the only TV talker to make the Time100 List of most influential people, TVNewser reports. This means that Carlson joins other broadcasters, including Gayle King (2019), Sean Hannity, Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb (2018), Gretchen Carlson (2017), Jorge Ramos (2015), Charlie Rose and Megyn Kelly (2014), Matt Lauer (2012), and Joe Scarborough and Ayman Mohyeldin (2011).
Note: Given what happened to some of the men in the list, it is a somewhat dubious honor. And one can only wonder what some of the other people on that list think about the latest addition.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods
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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news
Scroll down to read David Iwinski on President Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, “So, Joe Is Losing Patience, Is He?”
Reflections on the 9/11 attacks 20 years later are below that, in the center column only.
Scroll down further to read Bryan Williams and Stephen Macaulay’s commentaries on the Texas abortion bill in the right column, and Jim McCraw’s commentary in the left column.
As always, email your comments on these and on items in News & Notes, to editors@thehustings.news.
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By Stephen Macaulay
Let’s say for the sake of argument that planet Earth is invaded by an alien species that replicates inside human hosts. You and me. The downside for the human hosts is that the replication has deleterious consequences, in many cases leading to death of the hosts.
The aliens are, well, alien to the extent that they aren’t “living creatures” in the way that is ordinarily thought to be the case, in that they don’t have the wherewithal to make proteins by themselves but must invade another organism for purposes of replication. But invade and replicate they do. Over and over and over again.
But be that as it may, (1) the human hosts become ill and (2) the human hosts can die.
The aliens really don’t care whether the host is young or old, a man or a woman, a Republican or a Democrat.
People get sick. People die.
Jobs are lost. The economy suffers.
People get sick. People die.
Hospital systems are overwhelmed.
People get sick. People die.
The aliens don’t care.
People get sick. People die.
At the end of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, where Earth is invaded by Martians, which lay waste to the planet, it turns out the aliens were “slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared.”
Biological luck.
At present, we are being attacked by an alien species, the COVID-19 virus. Scientists are split on whether a virus is a “living” being. As David Bhella, researcher at the University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research has written, “Life is the manifestation of a coherent collection of genes that are competent to replicate within the niche in which they evolve(d). Viruses fulfil this definition.”
So if we accept that, then COVID-19 is an alien species that is attacking the Earth.
This is not a fanciful notion.
As I am writing this, the alien has killed 4.55-million people on Earth. Some 662,000 of those were U.S. citizens.
As I am writing this, the alien has infected 219-million people on Earth. Some 41.3-million are U.S. citizens.
People get sick. People die.
We have a defense against the aliens. Something against which “their systems [are] unprepared.”
Vaccines. Pfizer. Moderna. J&J.
“My job as President is to protect all Americans.” That was Joe Biden on September 9.
“I’m announcing that the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees, that together employ over 80 million workers, to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.”
Overreach?
Get a couple of pokes in the arm? Or get a nasal swab?
Oh, a violation of your liberties?
In June 1919 the Harvard Law Review published an article by legal philosopher Zechariah Chafee, Jr.,“Freedom of Speech in War Time,” that includes the observation:
“Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”
And as the virus is primarily invasive in the respiratory system — including the nose — your right to carry a deadly virus that could kill people is really not a right.
We are being attacked by an alien species.
Oh, an exaggeration, you might think. Then I refer you back to the 4.55-million Earthlings that have been killed, the 662,000 Americans.
And so what should a man whose job it is to protect Americans do if not take action when it is necessary?
You’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
In his Aphorisms Hippocrates wrote, “For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.”
If we are not in extremis now, who knows when we will be?
“We have the tools to combat COVID-19, and a distinct minority of Americans –supported by a distinct minority of elected officials — are keeping us from turning the corner,” Biden said. “These pandemic politics, as I refer to, are making people sick, causing unvaccinated people to die.”
People get sick. People die.
The alien species is here.
Do we hope for “putrefactive and disease bacteria”?
Or does Joe Biden do his job and protect the American people with the tools at our disposal?
And if this is overreach, then maybe we can deal with it when doctors and nurses aren’t at the point of exhaustion, when teachers wonder each and every day whether they’ll be infected when they try to teach our kids, when the elderly don’t have to be concerned to visit with their grandkids, when we get back to what we’ve long known as the “American way of life.”
Because right now we aren’t living it.
And people are getting sick. And people are dying.
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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news
By Todd Lassa
Non-smokers in the U.S. have been able to enjoy fresh air in offices, office lobbies, restaurants, hotels, retail stores … bars, even, for decades now. Laws barring cigarette and cigar smoke from public spaces began in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco and reached most every corner of the U.S., even tobacco-growing states like Virginia and Maryland, after Brown & Williamson executive Jeffrey Wiegand blew the whistle on how his industry squelched research on the dangers of secondary smoke, as Vanity Fair revealed in its 1996 investigative article, “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”
Today, you only have to watch for those smoke-stations, usually just outside the lobby of a hotel or office building, if you’re a non-smoker. If you are a smoker, you may be fuming about how hard it is to consume a legal product in public, especially in the rain or the middle of winter.
That’s the kind of struggle many Americans face today. The on-and-off virtual shutdown of the national and global economy has put many hard-working business owners and entrepreneurs, and their employees, out of work.
After a few weeks last summer in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared “masks off!” in a confusing policy on social distancing, the Delta variant of COVID-19 began filling hospitals again, particularly in states where governors resisted or opposed reverting to life before March 2020.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, R, has gone so far as to threaten localities in his state with $5,000 fines for imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
It should be noted that many on the left who were anti-vaxxers before March 2020 remain resistant as well. For both ends of the political “horseshoe,” it comes down to personal liberty.
But Joe Biden was elected president in part because of his promise to make eradication of the coronavirus his top priority. Last week, Biden announced a vaccine mandate for private employers with more than 100 employees to be enforced by the Occupational Safety & Health Administration.
Key provisions:
•Requires all employees with 100 or more employees to ensure workers are vaccinated or tested weekly, requires vaccination for all federal workers and for millions of contractors that do business with the federal government, and requires COVID-19 vaccinations for more than 17 million health care workers at Medicare and Medicaid participating hospitals and health care “settings.”
•Also “calls on” entertainment venues to require either proof of vaccination or testing for entry.
•Requires employers to provide paid time off to get vaccinated.
•Provides easy access to booster shots for all eligible Americans, and ensures Americans know where to get such shots.
•Sweeping school mandates call on all states to adopt vaccination requirements for all school employees, provide federal funding to school districts for safe re-opening, require students and staff to get tested regularly, and provide “every resource” to the Food & Drug Administration to “support timely review of vaccines” for children under 12 years old.
•Increases testing and masking, and adds new support for small businesses affected by shutdowns, while also streamlining the paycheck protection program loan guarantees.
The Republican National Committee said it would sue the Biden administration over “un-Constitutional mandates.” Republican governors Greg Abbott of Texas, Mark Gordon of Wyoming, Kristi L. Noem of South Dakota, and Brian Kemp of Georgia, also announced they would sue the White House.
To which Biden responded: “Bring it.”
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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news
By David Iwinski
As the COVID situation continues to spin off in ever new, unplanned directions, we see the inevitable rise of the far left standing up and clapping in support of Joe Biden's naïve and unfounded belief that he has somehow ascended from possible presidency to confirmed emperor.
Let me assure you, he has not.
Virtually every story in mainstream media that talks about COVID-19 finds it necessary to insult, denigrate, and show contempt for anyone who doesn't drink the Kool-Aid, with nary a thought or sentence devoted to to how we arrived here.
This information about COVID has been flowing hard and fast since the first reports from Wuhan started to leak. So how is it, exactly, that tens of millions of people have simply lost all confidence in not only what they read in popular media but also in organizations that claim to stand for Science (and I did mean that with a capital S).
Let's start with the fact that when President Trump announced he was putting the combined forces of government research and funding together with private industry to try to come up with a vaccine at Warp Speed, faster than ever been done in history, who were the ones leading the charge to say they would never take the vaccine? Why none other than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
They both said in nationally televised interviews that they would never take this vaccination. Now perhaps Joe’s befuddled mind has convinced himself that he alone conducted the research for the vaccines, but that work was long in play back when mentioning the possibility of him getting more votes than Obama would have provoked little more than a hearty laugh.
Then we have to look at the Department of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, of course, our kindly surrogate for Marcus Welby, M.D., (yes, I am that old) Dr. Anthony Fauci. Rather than stick strictly to hard science and analysis, these organizations and people have become hopelessly politicized with opinions changing on masks, therapies and effectiveness of vaccines depending on which way the wind is blowing. You can watch on social media hours of video showing the same people saying essentially the opposite thing depending on how it serves the political interest of the moment.
Then, just as it did in the election, the leftward leading social media organs have taken it upon themselves to ban virtually any news that doesn’t run in complete parallel with the orthodoxy proposed by the Biden administration. We are not simply talking about strangers ranting on Tik-Tok (of which there are many) but some who are experienced, well-educated and capable researchers pointing out weaknesses in the various vaccine regimen to the point where now even posting ideas contrary to what is being pushed by the left might get you to have your accounts frozen or even cancelled.
Last, but most importantly, no true American smiles as the harness is buckled on and freedoms are ripped away, never to return. A virtual certainty in political history is that freedoms won by strife, battle and historical commitment once lost, are gone forever. Joe Biden now thinks he can control the lives, decisions and the virtual financial survival of every man, woman and child as he is petulantly pouting that they will be ruined unless they submit to his regiment. And he is losing his patience! Of course, the far left eagerly embraces this because their game isn’t medicine, but sheer power and they know that you should never miss a chance to use a crisis.
It isn’t that the folks on the right weren’t paying attention because they weren’t smart enough, but because we did pay attention, we discovered that the reliability and credibility that many of these institutions and organizations have built over decades and centuries of reliable stability has been thoroughly co-opted. Why then would we ever we trust our life, our health and that of our children to an administration with a solid record of disaster and non-performance?
More simply put, does anyone really think it’s prudent to trust your life and health to the engineers of the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan?
This is America and if you trust those folks, then take the shots, take the boosters, wear the masks and social distance for the rest of your life. Of course, it might be a little hard for us, through all of your masks, to hear you singing,
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
o're the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Still, I have a feeling the rest of us will adapt.
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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news
•Coming up soon in the left column: Pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay comments on President Biden's vaccine mandate.
Scroll down using the vertical bar on the far right of the page to read “Twenty Years After the 9/11 attacks,” a collection of reflections by our editors and contributing pundits.
In the left column, scroll down further for contributing pundit Jim McCraw’s comments on Texas’ new abortion law.
Comment on these columns and on today’s News & Notes by emailing us at editors@thehustings.news or click on the “comment” tab. Subscribe to our daily newsletter at thehustings.substack.com.
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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news
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)
•••
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?
•••
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.”
•••
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.
•••
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
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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news
•Coming up soon in the right column: David Iwinski on President Biden's vaccine mandate.
Scroll down using the vertical bar on the far right of the page to read “Twenty Years After the 9/11 attacks,” a collection of reflections by our editors and contributing pundits.
In the right column, scroll down further for comments by contributing pundit Bryan Williams, and pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay, on Texas’ new abortion law.
Comment on these columns and on today’s News & Notes by emailing us at editors@thehustings.news or click on the “comment” tab. Subscribe to our daily newsletter at thehustings.substack.com.
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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news