Month: October 2021

The deficit scolds, I mean:

After Rick Scott cites debt concerns as the reason he won't support infrastructure legislation, Chris Wallace asks him if the Trump tax cuts should be repealed, since they will increase the deficit by $2t. Scott says no, he wants lower taxes and spending should be cut instead. pic.twitter.com/eo2kWDSUeC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 31, 2021

Same old, same old.

Here’s something to think about. Stephanie Kelton of Modern Monetary Theory was on Fareed Zakaria today:

ZAKARIA: “Let’s get this done.” That’s what President Biden said before heading to the G-20 in Rome. He wanted Congress to pass his proposed $1.75 trillion climate and social spending bill and $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.

Both have had their price tags halved, and there’s still hand-wringing over how much they cost. But does the cost really matter?

Stephanie Kelton is a professor of economics and public policy and the author of “The Deficit Myth.”

Welcome, Stephanie. One of the things that you have talked about in your book and — is that, when we think about this question of are we spending too much, will this kind of deficit spending cause problems like inflation, you say it’s as if the last 30 years of history didn’t happen. Tell us what you mean by that.

STEPHANIE KELTON, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY: Well, Fareed, for so many years we have been taught to think about government deficits as something that’s inherently irresponsible. Maybe in a time of crisis, like after the financial crisis and the Great Recession, or during the COVID pandemic, we make allowances and we say, “Well, OK, we have to run some deficits because it’s a moment of crisis.”

But in more normal times we’re told that deficits are something that we ought to strive to avoid, that governments ought to balance their budgets, that they should effectively balance like — a budget like a household, that deficits are dangerous because they do things like driving up interest rates, making our long-term debt unsustainable, producing a slower growing economy, putting us at risk of national bankruptcy, insolvency, turning into Greece, the kind of thing that we saw in 2010 with many countries in Europe struggling with debt.

So we have been taught to think of deficits are something that’s inherently dangerous and risky. And I think the last 30 years, as you just said, really should cause us to rethink a lot of that.

ZAKARIA: And — and explain what you mean by that, that we — we have been going through — we’ve been spending; we’ve run up large deficits. Countries like Japan have run up huge deficits and no inflation.

KELTON: Yeah, Japan’s been running large fiscal deficits for the last three decades, and — and you’re right, with little inflation to show for it. The U.S. has been running fiscal deficits basically my entire life, with the exception of really four years during the Clinton presidency.

And, you know, we have just witnessed in the last 18 months or so Congress commit about $5 trillion to fighting the pandemic, supporting the economy. And what did we end up with?

We ended up with the shortest recession in U.S. history. So we have demonstrated the power of fiscal policy, what it is possible to do, lifting nearly half of all the kids in this country out of poverty, supporting families, supporting small and large businesses, protecting this economy through the pandemic. And it works. And it works without producing all of the negative consequences that we’ve been taught to associate with deficits.

ZAKARIA: What about the argument that now you are seeing inflation?

Larry Summers has argued that right now, because of, really, the COVID relief spending that was in his view too much, you are seeing inflation. Summers, I should explain, does support a lot of the social spending and the infrastructure bills, but he feels like all of it together is producing inflation. And the numbers do seem to be ticking up, right?

KELTON: Well, look, one of the first things that we teach students in their very first economics course is not to confuse correlation with causation.

So, yes, we have had two things happen. We have had a huge increase in fiscal support — so large government deficits that have supported the economy and pulled us out of a recession very, very quickly.

And, yes, we have higher-than-normal inflationary pressures — not just here in the U.S., Fareed, but, of course, around the world.

And so you could look at these two things and say they’re happening alongside one another, therefore it must be evidence that the government has pushed too far with fiscal policy, that in fact the spending is creating the extra inflationary pressures we see today. I don’t think that’s right at all.

And if you look at what, let’s say, the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, they’ve got a research staff. And some of their researchers, just within the last two weeks, published a study asking this exact question, how much of the current inflation we’re experiencing can we trace to the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package that was passed in March?

In other words, is Larry right, is Larry Summers right that that is what’s been driving a lot of the inflation that we are currently experiencing?

What they found is that the answer is unequivocally no, that this year, that spending will add something like 0.3 percentage points to the inflation index that the Federal Reserve cares most about, and that next year, it will add about .2 percent to inflation.

In other words, it is practically negligible. And what we’re dealing with are supply chain and reopening, the pressures related to those kinds of challenges are pushing inflation higher. But it doesn’t appear that it is correct to say that the government pushed spending too far.

ZAKARIA: And what about the long-term issue of entitlement spending, Medicare, Social Security, all going — you know, people say, “Look, we’re facing a future where spending is going to take off, so we have to be careful today.”

KELTON: Well, look, we have commitments that we have made to retirees, to dependents, to the disabled, in the form of Social Security. And we have commitments that we have made…

(CROSSTALK)

KELTON: … to people receiving Medicare. And so there are two separate questions here, right? One is can the federal government afford…

ZAKARIA: Stephanie, I’m — I’m — I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, I realize I got the timing wrong. We — we are out of time. We’re going to have you come back and talk about all of this more.

I just want to give one — one thought, leave viewers with one thought, which is the spending is over 10 years. It’s important to keep in mind, and it’s about $3 trillion. America’s GDP over that 10 years will be about $300 trillion. And we will be back.

FWIW, Krugman is basically saying the same thing. They could be wrong. But they could be right, too. All the crying of deficit wolf over the past 30 years should have made everyone skeptical of the scolds’ braying, especially since the Republicans have been crude political games with it for the past 60 years.

I think there is far more cynical opportunism leading the GOP establishment to fall in line behind Dear Leader but cowardice explains it too. Here’s some evidence that they may actually have some reason to be afraid:

PA GOP Senate candidate Everett Stern announces he was approached earlier this year by representatives of Michael Flynn’s ‘Patriot Caucus’ to “gather intelligence” on Senators, Judges and Congressman in order to extort them to support audits. He says he gave the evidence to Feds.

Stern said that Michael Flynn was running the operation in multiple states, and it was being financed by Texas billionaire Al Hartman. He said he was initially given two main targets – Sen Pat Toomey and Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick.

Here is a Dec 7, 2020 interview with the Flynn associate Ivan Raiklin, who Stern says was the one who contacted him about this scheme: “Remember, I said there are 4 paths to victory. I won’t go into the 5th one. That one would be after J6. I don’t want to talk about that one.”

Originally tweeted by Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) on October 31, 2021.

Creepy.

Is any of this for real? I don’t know. But if they have Texas billionaires bankrolling them, this kind of operation could be potent. Some of these politicians might just decide that life is too short.

From the WaPo:

The Washington Post published a three-part investigation that found that law enforcement officials failed to heed mounting red flags that there would be violence when Congress formalized the electoral college vote on Jan. 6. The project documented the consequences of President Donald Trump’s inaction during the Capitol siege and examined how his false claims of election fraud helped incite the attack and, in the ensuing months, fostered a deep distrust of the voting process across the country.

The Post investigation was based on interviews with 230 people and thousands of pages of court documents and internal law enforcement reports, along with hundreds of videos, photographs and audio recordings.

The Post provided Trump a list of 37 findings reported as part of its investigation. His spokesman Taylor Budowich provided a lengthy written response that included series of unrelated, inflammatory claims that The Post is not publishing in full.

In response to the investigation’s findings, Budowich said that the former president “greatly objected” to all of them. He disputed The Post’s investigation as “fake news” and falsely cast people who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 as “agitators not associated with President Trump.” The statement repeated Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was rigged.

Lol. I noticed that he hasn’t released this letter in a public statement yet. I wonder why?

The Washington Post has more information on the lad up to January 6th today in a piece called “Red Flags.” There were plenty:

The head of intelligence at D.C.’s homeland security office was growing desperate. For days, Donell HarvinDonell HarvinAs the head of intelligence at D.C.’s homeland security office, Harvin led a team that spotted warnings that extremists planned to descend on the Capitol and disrupt the electoral count. and his team had spotted increasing signs that supporters of President Donald Trump were planning violence when Congress metto formalize the electoral college vote, but federal law enforcement agencies did not seem to share his sense of urgency. On Saturday, Jan. 2, he picked up the phone and called his counterpart in San Francisco, waking Mike Sena before dawn.

Sena listened with alarm. The Northern California intelligence office he commanded had also been inundated with political threats flagged by social media companies, several involving plans to disrupt the joint session or hurt lawmakers on Jan. 6.

He organized an unusual call for all of the nation’s regional homeland security offices — known as fusion centers — to find out what others were seeing. Sena expected a couple dozen people to get on the line that Monday. But then the number of callers hit 100. Then 200. Then nearly 300. Officials from nearly all 80 regions, from New York to Guam, logged on.

In the 20 years since the country had created fusion centers in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Sena couldn’t remember a moment like this. For the first time, from coast to coast, the centers were blinking red. The hour, date and location of concern was the same: 1 p.m., the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6.Story continues below advertisement

Harvin asked his counterparts to share what they were seeing. Within minutes, an avalanche of new tips began streaming in. Self-styled militias and other extremist groups in the Northeast were circulating radio frequencies to use near the Capitol. In the Midwest, men with violent criminal histories were discussing plans to travel to Washington with weapons.Click or tap these icons for additional background and sourcing.

Forty-eight hours before the attack, Harvin began pressing every alarm button he could. He invited the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, military intelligence services and other agencies to see the information in real time as his team collected it. He took another extreme step: He asked the city’s health department to convene a call of D.C.-area hospitals and urged them to prepare for a mass casualty event. Empty your emergency rooms, he said, and stock up your blood banks.

Harvin was one of numerous people inside and outside of government who alerted authorities to the growing likelihood of deadly violence on Jan. 6, according to a Washington Post investigation, which found a cascade of previously undisclosed warnings preceded the attack on the Capitol. Alerts were raised by local officials, FBI informants, social media companies, former national security officials, researchers, lawmakers and tipsters, new documents and firsthand accounts show.

This investigation is based on interviews with more than 230 people and thousands of pages of court documents and internal law enforcement reports, along with hundreds of videos, photographs and audio recordings. Some of those who were interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions or sensitive information.

While the public may have been surprised by what happened on Jan. 6, the makings of the insurrection had been spotted at every level, from one side of the country to the other. The red flags were everywhere.

One of the most striking flares came when a tipster called the FBI on the afternoon of Dec. 20: Trump supporters were discussing online how to sneak guns into Washington to “overrun” police and arrest members of Congress in January, according to internal bureau documents obtained by The Post. The tipster offered specifics: Those planning violence believed they had “orders from the President,” used code words such as “pickaxe” to describe guns and posted the times and locations of four spots around the country for caravans to meet the day before the joint session. On one site, a poster specifically mentioned Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) as a target.

Key findings

Law enforcement officials did not respond with urgency to a cascade of warnings about violence on Jan. 6

Pentagon leaders had acute fears about widespread violence, and some feared Trump could misuse the National Guard to remain in power

The Capitol Police was disorganized and unprepared

Trump’s election lies radicalized his supporters in real time

View all key findings

An FBI official who assessed the tip noted that its criminal division had received a “significant number” of alerts about threats to Congress and other government officials. The FBI passed the information to law enforcement agencies in D.C. but did not pursue the matter. “The individual or group identified during the Assessment does not warrant further FBI investigation at this time,” the internal report concluded.

The paralysis that led to one of the biggest security failures in the nation’s history was driven by unique breakdowns inside each law enforcement agency and was exacerbated by the patchwork nature of security across a city where responsibilities are split between local and federal authorities.

While the U.S. government has been consumed with heading off future terrorist plots since 9/11, its agencies failed to effectively harness the security and intelligence infrastructure built in the wake of that assault by Islamic extremists to look inward at domestic threats.

Intelligence officials certainly never envisioned a mass attack against the government incited by the sitting president.Story continues below advertisement

Yet Trump was the driving force at every turn as he orchestrated what would become an attempted political coup in the months leading up to Jan. 6, calling his supporters to Washington, encouraging the mob to march on the Capitol and freezing in place key federal agencies whose job it was to investigate and stop threats to national security.

For months, the president had been priming his supporters to believe that the election was rigged, that he was the rightful winner, and that Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate and the product of a conspiracy by Democrats and the media. Throughout the fall and winter, Trump leaned on election officials in states such as Georgia and Arizona with a blizzard of tweets and personal phone calls, trying to get them to undo the results of the election.

When that failed, he turned his focus to Jan. 6, historically a pro forma ritual by Congress.

His words triggered rapid action by angry supporters who made plans to go to the nation’s capital, fusing together in a dangerous call-and-response.

Come to Washington, Trump tweeted to his supporters on the Saturday before Christmas, issuing a clarion call for them to gather and protest on Jan. 6: “Be there, will be wild!”

His supporters immediately responded on the pro-Trump forum TheDonald.win under a thread titled “TRUMP TWEET. DADDY SAYS BE IN DC ON JAN. 6TH.”2MrMcGreenGenesWell, shit. We’ve got marching orders, bois.TheDonald.winButtFart88He can’t exactly openly tell you to revolt. This is closest he’ll ever get.ListropoeThen bring the guns we shall.Source: SITE Intelligence Group

It was the first time since Election Day that the president had urged his backers to turn out in Washington and protest. His message immediately began to shift the intelligence landscape, with the volume of threatening messages about Jan. 6 expanding by the hour.

As Jan. 6 neared, Trump ratcheted up his calls for action on that day – and the pressure on Vice President Mike Pence, whose role was to preside over the joint session. The president embraced a cast of renegade lawyers who argued that Pence could reject electors from a handful of states and, ultimately, nullify Biden’s victory.

The plan was far-fetched and, according to legal experts, unconstitutional. To Trump, Pence appeared open to the legislative maneuvers the president was demanding, soliciting detailed legal analyses to determine how far he could bow to Trump’s wishes.3

Trump primed his base to view Pence as either a would-be hero or villain, depending on the path the vice president took.

“I hope Mike Pence comes through for us,” he declared at a rally in Georgia two days before the joint session, adding: “If he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him as much.”

Trump’s supporters not only knew where the president wanted them to gather on Jan. 6. They knew whom to target.

Th report goes on. The FBI thought it was just a bunch of malcontents exercising free speech and the Department of Justice thought it was the military’s prob’s. The locals assumed everything was fine because the permits were in order and they had some bike racks set up. The head of the FBI was afraid the president would go after him and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was afraid the president would try to use the military to stay in power.

They were all at cross purposes and obviously didn’t take the threat of violence all that seriously (I would guess because the threats were coming from white middle class Americans who like to cosplay as revolutionaries.)

There are many who think that January 6th was just a bunch of angry citizens who got out of hand and that it doesn’t represent anything more than an one-off case of mob violence. We can certainly hope that’s true. But with Trump and his party out there flogging the Big Lie and ginning up the crazy fr their own cynical, political purposes I don’t think that’s a given. Trump has no limits and neither do his fanatic followers. It’s not a game to them.

A good piece of advice from former press secretary Joe Lockhart:

​​Political messaging is generally based on one of two things: Hope or fear. Since President Joe Biden’s inauguration, Democrats have mainly relied on the Obama model of appealing to the hopes of all Americans. Now, with the President’s agenda being squeezed by Republicans — and Democrats who act like Republicans– it is time to change strategy. Hope has failed; fear can and will work.

President Biden has largely focused on the benefits of his Build Back Better program, that is, when he’s not trying to clean up the Covid mess he was left with. Republicans, who lost the last election, are driving the political debate with largely fanciful and fearsome stories designed to strike terror into every American.

Click onto Fox News and you’ll see a story about $7 gallons of gas in one Virginia station presented as a trend sweeping across America, even though the average price is less than half of that. Or right wing TV featuring year-old and out-of-context images of empty store shelves — from places like Japan, Nebraska, Australia and Berlin– misrepresented as current photos of shelves depleted by widespread supply chain failures. There are commentators warning of a looming socialist takeover, and even about Democrats trying to take away your hamburgers.

It is bogus, but it has proven critical in shaping the national political debate — on Fox News and other right wing outlets — and in my opinion it even bleeds into coverage by the rest of the mainstream media. The message: Time for panic, not hope, with this President.

So, how do Democrats pivot to a tough message while prosecuting a righteous agenda that will lift up millions of Americans? That one is easy — make it all about Donald J. Trump. The debate over whether to ignore the president who failed to win reelection is long over. Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican party, and most Americans should be afraid of his return to office.​
There remains no doubt that Trump poses an existential threat to the United States and its democracy. He continues to undermine our legitimate elections by shouting fraud where no fraud exists. He is attempting to thwart Congressional investigations seeking to get to the bottom of the January 6th coup attempt. And his approach to Covid and vaccines as a political wedge issue, rather than a public health crisis, continues to threaten all of us in tangible ways.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders fight like children to demonstrate who is the closest to Trump and who carries his mantle in Congress. For painful evidence of this, look no further than some Republicans — including ones who cowered in fear from a surging mob — now trying to claim that January 6th was just a peaceful gathering and that the real victims are those who were arrested during a coup attempt.

Every Republican politician who does not publicly repudiate Trump owns the baggage he creates with American voters. Just look at the fancy footwork of GOP gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. He needs Trump voters but won’t go so far as to invite the ex-president to the state to campaign for him because of the vexation Trump creates with independent and Democrat voters. Democrats need to make sure no Republican can get away with that dance.

Yet governors in Florida, Texas, Mississippi and beyond have been putting Trump-style politics on vaccines and mandates ahead of the health of their own constituents. And even the most ambitious potential GOP candidate for president in 2024 knows there is no campaign for them if Trump is also running. And guess what? I think he’s running.

Democrats should alert every American to the danger of a return of Trump chaos, and they can do it without using the GOP tactic of making things up — without abandoning the issues important to them. A simple change from focusing sunnily on the social benefits of their priorities to the dark menace that succumbing to the Trump agenda will bring would offer an arguably much more powerful message to most Americans.

And it’s not just fears regarding Covid and Jan.6 that will resonate and persuade Americans to get behind Biden’s agenda and not Trumpism. There are huge and consequential health care issues that affect women.

Yes, every woman should have the right to make decisions about her own body. But the Trump Supreme Court and Trump-wannabe governors are in the process of stripping away those rights as we speak. It is important for Democrats to focus on this threat and who is responsible for it.

America also needs to change its economic model to combat climate change — whose threat to humanity has become visible to us every day around the country and indeed the world. But politicians and other policymakers’ lengthy discussions of the value of renewable energy have not done enough to move the American people.

Here too, it’s time to shift focus: to the unbearable and unthinkable costs to our lives and families of leaving climate change unaddressed. Democrats should zero in on the price the rest of us pay when Republicans protect the narrow special interests of polluting fossil fuel companies.

What’s more, when talking about the social safety net, it’s great to talk about the benefits of each of the new programs Biden and Democratic lawmakers propose for Americans, but what would be more powerful — and true — is a message that Republicans are trying to take things away from those plans.

The child tax credit that was in Biden’s American Rescue Plan and is in the budget bill — albeit in pared back form — is a great example. From a messaging perspective, Democrats need to attack GOP efforts to curtail a program that’s taken millions of Americans out of poverty since July, not just focus on how the program represented good governing.

Finally, on voting rights, it’s a good message that we all deserve the right to vote. But that’s not as powerful a message as saying that Republicans are using voting rights to ensure an authoritarian, non-democratic government led by Donald Trump and his six conservative Supreme Court justices.

It’s not like Democrats must make up a whole new playbook. This attack-Trump-and-what-he-stands-for strategy produced a Biden victory by more than seven million votes, a mandate by almost any reasonable measure. That strategy also allowed Biden to tout many of his plans for programs that are now in his budget bill.

The difference between now and the last election was that the attack on Trump was the main message during the campaign, while the social legislation now being haggled over was the benefit derived from defeating Trumpism.

Democrats need to move the attack on Trump front and center again.

Politics should be about what’s best for everyone. The reality, though, is that politics is about what can get you more than 50% of the vote. That maxim fuels the politics of fear every day.

Democrats need to get tougher on Republicans. And that means acknowledging the elephant in the room — Donald Trump is the Republican Party right now. When it comes to politics, Democrats need to abandon the reach-for-the sky aspiration as their primary pitch to Americans and replace it with the sky-is-falling reality called Trump.

Agreed 100%.

Great googa-looga, can’t you hear me talking to you

There are libraries filled with things I don’t know. Like, how the hell our democracy survives this latest moral panic. Because unlike others we’ve lived through (like ‘ritual satanic abuse’ of the 1980s), this one is both massive and deadly.

This is the face of a cult. The religion she’s referring to is Trumpism. She’s willing to lose her life over this “freedom” to infect others. The elevator says what we are all thinking … “Going Down.” https://t.co/Nyn79ynWUO

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) October 31, 2021

Is the US ok? Big big parts of the world are shaking their heads/laughing at the state of the nation that used to be envyed by us all. Where will all this end?

— Kim Hansen (@Kipan01) October 30, 2021

https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1454615198208245761?s=20

Rap on, brother, rap on

UPDATE: I forgot this bit of “Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!” from Friday. Look who’s retweeting Democratic Underground.

There are 269 members of the Democratic caucuses in Congress at the moment, including two independents on the Senate side. Two of them hold a veto over what the rest of the caucus and the president want passed. The press depicts this as Democrats in disaray. Meanwhile, in one of those tweets that got refreshed away before I could grab it, a reporter said in all the years of covering Washington, she (or he) has never seen Democrats more unified.

Fighting for what you want is important even if you fail to achieve it. But you have to be seen to be fighting. From one of my posts on Saturday:

“If we are running on policy appeals and they are running on identity appeals, we are going to lose that battle,” Obama White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said. “But identity isn’t just race and gender; it’s who you are fighting for and who you are fighting against.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is still fighting for paid family leave. The principle obstacle to including it in the President Biden’s still-unvoted spending package is one of the two members standing, each separately, against the other 267 and the president (Washington Post):

The New York Democrat targeted the chief objector to the program, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). She hit the phones Friday and fired off a flurry of texts to her moderate-leaning colleague that continued into the weekend, saying she would be even willing to “meet him in D.C. or anywhere in the country” to make the case for the benefits, she said in an interview.

Yet Manchin refused to relent, Gillibrand said, resisting her latest entreaties much as he had the many alternatives that Democrats had presented to him in recent weeks.

Still, Gillibrand remained undeterred. “It’s not over until it’s over,” she said.

The burst of activity from Gillibrand reflected what some reluctantly have acknowledged is a last-gasp attempt to salvage one of their most popular policy promises. With the House set to vote on a sweeping spending measure as soon as Tuesday, it marked a new test as to whether Democrats, largely led by women in the House and Senate, could sway Manchin and deliver the help they long have promised to millions of Americans.

The paid-leave plan that Democrats originally envisioned would have provided 12 weeks of aid for Americans who fall ill, need to care for a sick loved one or are tending to the birth of a new child. Tens of millions of workers don’t have access to some or all of these benefits now through their employers, according to federal estimates, resulting in a gap that has hit low-income families and women the hardest.

Manchin may not budge. The other holdout, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, is a cypher. On Thursday, the Post reports, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pledged she was not done fighting “for the babies.”

A day earlier, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) hammered Manchin indirectly, stressing that Democrats are “not going to let one man tell all the women in this country that they can’t have paid leave.” And a wide array of lawmakers, including Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), have placed calls to Manchin directly about the issue, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

For his part, Manchin, a seasoned politician, seems to be deliberately not understanding how the program would work and be funded. He has variously complained about the possibility of fraud, about the impacts on small businesses, and about work requirements “even though employment is a condition for one to take leave in the first place,” sources told the Post.

The $1.75 trillion compromise under negotiation, half the original proposal, leaves out a lot of programs people want and need, including more climate-related spending. Some activists will portray whatever is left in the final package as a betrayal by “the Democrats.” But in fact, it is only two blocking the full $3.5 trillion package and forcing the compromise.

It is easy for progressives to be angry at “the Democrats.” Democrats are the only ones in Congress with the power to disappoint them because left-activists expect better of them. They expect nothing of Republicans. Republicans are “in array” against women and “the babies” and the environment and voting rights and everything else Democrats want to improve Americans’ lives. But it is Democrats who get vilified as feckless or useless or corporate sellouts, etc.

With the narrowest of congressional majorities that leave no room for defections in the Senate, any one member of the 50 in the caucus can obstruct the rest, not only on the spending package but on revising or revoking the filibuster rule that might give Democrats more leeway for passing voting rights legislation. But short of sending the two naysayers off to Guantanamo for persuasion, it’s not clear what critics expect the other 267 to do.

In crafting “Via Dolorosa,” playwright David Hare examined the intractable Israeli–Palestinian conflict close up. He visits settlers Danny and Sarah who live in a Spielberg-esque subdivision built on occupied territory. They discuss the Oslo framework for peace which the pair consider a betrayal of their interests. Hare tries to tease out what they think is a better solution.

“Not pieces of paper call Oslo,” says Sarah.

“No I know what you think the way forward isn’t,” Hare replies. “I’m asking what the way forward is.”

“I look at my children and I want them to leave in peace I never had,” says Sarah.

“But how is it to come about?’

“I don’t know.”

And I don’t know what can be done to get everything passed that needs to be passed by a sharply divided Congress with no room for error.

Hilaria Baldwin is best known for faking an accent and pretending to be European. So we knew she she was weird. But this is something else. Watch all three …

Alec Baldwin speaks out on the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of RUST:

“She was my friend … We were a very, very well-oiled crew shooting a film together, and then this horrible event happened.”

Alec Baldwin on meeting with Halyna Hutchins’ husband and son:

“I wouldn't know how to characterize it. They’re mortified … There are incidental accidents on film sets from time to time, but nothing like this. This is a one-in-a-trillion episode.”

Alec Baldwin asks reporters to stop following him: “My kids are in the car crying … I'm not allowed to comment on the investigation, I talk to the cops every day."

Originally tweeted by The Recount (@therecount) on October 30, 2021.

whoa…

There’s been a ton of back and forth among computer experts and legal experts on this story and it’s all above my pay grade. I have been inclined to leave it all alone because it just seems like a rabbit hole that probably leads nowhere. However, I did find myself reluctantly intrigued by the Maddow show’s update so I might as well share it:

I think about the original Alfa Bank article from Slate often.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html

And every once in a while we get an update.

Originally tweeted by Karyn Amira (@KarynAmira) on October 30, 2021.

The update:

Hmmm. I don’t know what to think about all this except that it’s clear to me that the Durham investigation is horseshit.

Since Trump lost the election, the Trumpiest areas of the country have had a death toll 50% higher than blue areas. The GOP is killing its own voters with its own lies. And they don’t care. https://t.co/tkwpWdVHYe

— Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) October 30, 2021