There Is No OSHA Vaccine Mandate

I've been posting on the information I've seen that there's in fact no realistic way OSHA can enforce a mandate that all employers of more than 100 people require them to be vaccinated in the name of "workplace safety". In fact, given the constraints of regulatory rule making, this would likely take so long that any COVID crisis would be over long before such a rule could go into effect.

This report on a question posed by a reporter to Press Secretary Psaki makes the situation even clearer.

The absence of even a scintilla of material to indicate the White House or any federal agency is organizing an action plan of how to structure the guidance itself is telling. The silence of the machine tells us it is not turned on. The bureaucracy has not been triggered. The machinery of the federal government has not been instructed to begin any process to execute on the instruction that OSHA will, “develop a rule that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated.” Nothing.

As the piece indicates,

[T]he White House has no idea what the current plan is for OSHA to create this rule that will require a national mandate for private sector workers. The emphasis is on voluntary compliance as an outcome of the decree that a mandate would be forthcoming.

In fact, this part of the plan is working. Consider United Airlines:

United Airlines is preparing to fire almost 600 employees who failed to comply with the company’s COVID-19 vaccination policy by the Sept. 27 deadline, company executives told employees Tuesday.

United was one of the first major US companies to announced [sic] a vaccine mandate for its 67,000 US employees, the overwhelming majority of whom have complied.

, , , President Joe Biden announced earlier this month that his administration will mandate that companies with over 100 employees require their employees get vaccinated or have them test regularly for the virus.

Company executives, though, have said the announcement was light on specifics and are awaiting details so they can implement a plan.

The problem for a company like United that goes ahead with "voluntary compliance" is that while this may provide a pretext for the action and allow some degree of both virtue signaling and public relations cover, it still leaves the company open to legal challenge. The story above says,

United did not provide a breakdown of the kinds of employees who haven’t yet been vaccinated, but nearly 400 workers represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers had not uploaded proof of vaccination by Tuesday, District 141 President Mike Klemm told CNBC.

The union represents more than 25,000 United employees.

Klemm said the union plans to file wrongful termination grievances if the workers who refused to be vaccinated are fired, according to the outlet.

And I'm still left with the question of what is a valid "proof of vaccination", especially if it's something you "upload", as the story puts it. Do you upload an image of your vax certificate? Can't this easily be photoshopped? I went on the web and found this:

Seems like I could edit this into something with my name on it just with MS Paint, cut and paste a photocopy and scan it, or buy something better on the black market. How does United's HR department have the time and resources to check 60,000 of these things?

The only bright side for United is what's implied in the Dilbert cartoon above. If a vaccination mandate requires a company to fire X percent of its workers, that's basically a free pass to downsize without a buyout for the workers who are cut. I'm surprised that more companies don't go for this, except that maybe the smarter ones are recognizing that "voluntary compliance" isn't a free pass, and in the end, nearly all whom they terminate will either get hefty settlements or be reinstated.

"Highly Overrated Person"

The news aggregators, if they mentioned this story at all, put it somewhere below Dog the Bounty Hunter in yesterday's developments, but this kept me thinking all day:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Democrats on Monday that passage of the $550 billion [sic] infrastructure bill must not wait for President Joe Biden's multitrillion-dollar safety net bill, saying the larger package is not yet ready for a vote.

. . . "I told all of you that we wouldn't go on to the [infrastructure bill until] we had the reconciliation bill passed by the Senate. We were right on schedule to do all of that, until 10 days ago, a week ago, when I heard the news that this number had to come down," Pelosi said, according to the source. "It all changed, so our approach had to change.

. . . The development indicates that the vote on the Senate-passed infrastructure bill is likely to happen in the House on Thursday, whether or not there is a deal on the separate bill by then, which progressives have demanded to win their votes for it.

But it is not clear that the infrastructure bill can pass the House, even if Pelosi calls the vote.

What struck me was less Pelosi's reversal than what she let out in the course of her statement: a week or 10 days ago, she "heard the news that this number had to come down". Well, wouldn't this be important? Apparently she kept it to herself until Monday night, which was pretty much past the last minute.

Why would she do that? I think it's fairly plain. She'd been telling the House moderates that she'd schedule a separate vote on the $1.5 trillion infrastructure package on Monday, while she'd been telling the Progressive Caucus she'd tie them together. Her solution was going to be to pull the rug out from under the moderates by "postponing" Monday's vote to Thursday, while hoping Sen Sinema might not notice, since the senator was on record saying if no vote took place Monday, she was a "no" on the bigger bill.

It sounds as though Sen Sinema did in fact notice this, and I assume important people contacted Pelosi about the problem (my money is on Sen Schumer). As a result, Pelosi made her Monday night announcement that the vote would take place on Thursday after all. Yeah, that's definitely gonna happen.

But then Bernie Sanders weighed in:

Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Tuesday urged House Democrats to block the $1.2 trillion “bipartisan” infrastructure bill, defying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) agenda of passing the legislation Thursday.

. . . “I strongly urge my House colleagues to vote against the bipartisan infrastructure bill until Congress passes a strong reconciliation bill,” the Sanders pleaded.

. . . “We had to accommodate the changes that were being necessitated,” Pelosi reportedly told Democrat members about the reconciliation package. “And we cannot be ready to say until the Senate passed the bill, we can’t do BIF [bipartisan infrastructure deal].”

“[W]e’re still waiting for the number because you cannot prove the design on the legislation without the number,” Pelosi explained. “And the president is working on that piece. He’s working on that piece.”

Pelosi’s reported attempt to whip the vote in favor of passing the “bipartisan” bill has not convinced far-left House members. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) told reporters Monday the bills are linked together and warned a Thursday vote could fail.

Indeed, as Pelosi said, Biden is working on that piece.

President Joe Biden canceled his trip to Chicago this week to stay in Washington to haggle with lawmakers over the administration's two large legislative priorities, a White House official said Tuesday.

. . . The battle over the $3.5 trillion price tag centers on Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, centrist Democrats who have insisted that it be reduced. But they have not named their price, which has led to protracted negotiations.

And neither Manchin nor Sinema has yet named a top-line number, even after meeting with Biden yesterday, and their statements after the meetings have been vague bromides about "progress". It's plain that Manchin and Sinema hold the cards and see no particular urgency in reaching a solution.

At this stage, their strategy is going to be to run out the clock while letting the House Democrats kill the infrastructure bill. What's becoming clear is that neither Pelosi nor Schumer nor Biden ever gave much thought to a Plan B. Pelosi in particular relied on making conflicting promises to the progressives and the moderates within her caucus, without gaming the situation out.

Highly overrated person.

Edging Toward Disaster

One thing that puzzles me in the current state of legislative action is how little skepticism there is among journalists and commentators across the board over whether any of their do-or-die agenda items will succeed at all. I've been bringing little to my perception other than my experience of everyday people who promise to get things done but don't, and I see similar patterns at the national level that keep being confirmed. This may be because elites are simply insulated from ordinary affairs that need basic planning skills and competence in execution.

So when I saw Speaker Pelosi moving the deadline for Monday's vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill to Thursday while getting the $3.5 trillion package done as well, and getting the continuing resolution through the Senate on top of that, I pretty much knew nothing like that is going to happen. This story simply confirms what I've been seeing here and there for weeks:

The $3.5 trillion package, written by self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders (I-VT), is not ready for a House vote, as Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) blocked a key tax provision on proscription [sic] drug makers that Sanders believes is needed.

Yesterday's developments didn't help:

Senate Republicans on Monday blocked a bill that would fund the government and suspend the U.S. debt ceiling, leaving Democrats scrambling to avoid a possible economic calamity.

. . . Lawmakers need to approve government funding before Friday to avoid a shutdown. The U.S. risks default if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling by a point that is likely to come in October, according to the Treasury Department.

Yet again, these are issues that had been known to the players for many months, but nothing was done to resolve them by the time Congress went on its summer recess. When it returned, the Democrat leadership lost itself in fantasies that everyone would "work all weekend" to get things ready. And as of now, we're in Speaker Pelosi's "week of intensity" where they'd get around to doing what they didn't do when they worked all weekend.

Meanwhile, President Biden yesterday did Speaker Pelosi one better and said the infrastructure bill, or maybe the whole $5 trillion package, up to now promised for Thursday, may not happen this week at all. Well, if the Progressive Caucus has 50 "no" votes on the $1.5 trillion unless it can vote on the $3.5 trillion package first, then likely it won't happen. But we're hearing in the link above that the $3.5 trillion package isn't ready in any case.

An op-ed piece in The Hill outlines the only possible outcome from this situation:

As Democratic infighting continues over their $3.5 trillion social spending legislation, the fate of Joe Biden’s presidency and the Democrats’ majority in Congress hang in the balance.

. . . Ultimately, President Biden must act urgently, using his influence among Democrats and moderate Republicans in the House to ensure the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure agreement, first and foremost.

Simultaneously, the president along with Democratic leaders in Congress must develop a set of principles or a framework that will convince progressives not to kill the bipartisan infrastructure plan, and then work to negotiate down the size of the $3.5 trillion bill to something that moderate Democratic Senators — namely, Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) — can get on board with.

The problem is that all such analyses assume a level of engagement and competence that's harder and harder to see from either President Biden or Speaker Pelosi. As of last week, the centrist analyses like the one above were saying Biden needs to Get Involved to break the stalemate. Well, he's involved, or at least as involved as he's gonna get. Joe Biden isn't LBJ.

Like him or hate him, Lyndon Johnson often got what he wanted, Ho Chi Minh aside. I think there are basic problems of character, possibly exacerbated by age, that are thwarting both Biden and Pelosi. Handsome is as handsome does. This is a crisis of their own making, and at this late stage, neither's going to change.

Pelosi Delays Infrastructure Vote

I said yesterday that today would be a test of Bruce's Law, "When there's an important deadline falling due next Monday, and the bosses promise everyone's going to work all weekend to meet it, this won't happen." The much-predicted September 27 vote on the bipartisan $1.5 trillion infrastucture bill has been moved to September 30, or maybe just "sometime this week". (I've been calling it the $1.5 trillion bill, but I've seen numbers from $1.2 to $1.7 trillion.)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a new date for the vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, after committing to moderate Democrats in August that the vote would take place by Monday, September 27.

On Sunday, in a "Dear Colleague" letter, the speaker told Democratic lawmakers the House would begin debate on the bill on Monday and hold the vote on Thursday.

. . . Pelosi told ABC she believes the House will pass the infrastructure bill "this week," but also conceded that she would never bring "a bill to the floor that doesn't have the votes."

While this confirms my prediction that the Monday deadline wouldn't be met, there are broader implications. By promising the vote would maybe sorta kinda take place Thursday, Speaker Pelosi is simply doubling down on an even bigger miracle. Thursday September 30 is also the deadline for a continuing resolution that keeps the government open through December.

The measure theoretically buys Congress about nine additional weeks to negotiate full-year spending bills for the rest of fiscal 2022, or perhaps more likely, an omnibus package that funds most agencies for the remainder of the year.

. . . But it’s unclear whether the continuing resolution will pass both chambers of Congress in its current form. The bill would also suspend the debt limit through Dec. 16, 2022, a measure Republicans have said they’re unwilling to support.

But earlier this month, predictions were much more sanguine about how things would fall together by now. According to The Hill on September 5,

Before October, the House is aiming to pass two major pieces of legislation: a roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a forthcoming $3.5 trillion spending package backed by Democrats that would advance key parts of President Biden’s economic agenda. They’ll also need to pass government funding legislation to avoid a shutdown on Oct. 1.

House leadership has set a Sept. 27 deadline to vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill as committee chairs rush to finish drafting their portions of the larger spending package by Sept. 15 to hold a floor vote shortly thereafter.

So as of early this month, work was expected to be complete on the $3.5 trillion bill, with a floor vote, by September 15. This hasn't happened. As best anyone can tell, Speaker Pelosi now intends to crush everything into just a few days:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said in a message to Democrat House members on Saturday that the upcoming week would be a “time of intensity” as the party will try to ram through three major spending bills.

“September 30th is a date fraught with meaning,” Pelosi began. “This week, we must pass a Continuing Resolution, Build Back Better Act and the BIF.” [The BIF is apparently the $1.5 trillion bill.]

But this piece in Politico following Pelosi's announcement outlines the size of the tasks that must now be completed within three days.

The continuing resolution has already passed the House [but faces problems in the Senate], the BIF is awaiting a vote (which Pelosi had promised would be held Monday) and Saturday night, the House Budget Committee moved forward the mammoth reconciliation package, aka BBB. The BBB is headed for a vote on the floor this week, even while it’s far from final as Democratic leaders grasp for “an endgame compromise that can pass both the House and Senate,” write Jennifer Scholtes and Caitlin Emma.

So everything has to turn out exactly right on three separate projects over the next three days, when as of just last week, everyone was going to work all weekend to get only one of them done. Didn't happen. This is not a formula for success. I think Trump may have had the right of it:

Nancy Pelosi should be ashamed of herself. She is a highly overrated person. I know her well. She is highly overrated.

So far, the focus has been on Biden for incompetence or diminished capacity. People need to look harder at Speaker Pelosi.

Testing Bruce's Law

On Thursday, I began to formulate what I'm calling Bruce's Law, which might be expressed as, "When there's an important deadline falling due next Monday, and the bosses promise everyone's going to work all weekend to meet it, this won't happen." In fact, when you might expect the office to be a beehive of urgent actitity on Saturday and Sunday, things will be dead quiet, and nobody will be there.

The New Yorker piece I linked yesterday, which is aimed at an elitist audience sympathetic to Biden's agenda, reflects the conventional wisdom surrounding tomorrow's key deadline to vote on the $1.5 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package:

On Wednesday, Biden spent five hours with Democratic members of Congress, in various groupings, in search of an elusive deal, and will surely be working the phones right up until Monday’s deadline for the House vote on the infrastructure bill—and beyond.

There it is, we'll be working on it all weekend, right up to Monday! Well, the first question is whether that's in fact what they're doing. Are they in the office? Are the phone lines humming? Well, no.

President Joe Biden left the White House on Friday for another weekend away from Washington, DC, as Democrats continue fighting over his planned $5 trillion in spending.

The president spoke with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on the phone in the afternoon before he boarded Marine One for Camp David.

. . . The White House cited “progress” in a readout of the call sent to reporters after Biden left.

“The three agreed to stay in touch about their outreach through the weekend,” the readout concluded.

Well, how close to agreement are the various sides? Even before the cliffhanger weekends I experienced in my corporate days, I had a pretty good idea of how much work needed to be done to meet the Monday deadline and how realistic a goal it was to finish it in a weekend. (Actually, the programmers had been goofing off for many months, and a single weekend never made a difference.)

What puzzles me is how difficult it's been to find realistic estimates of the House whip count. The numbers in most stories seem very small -- it's the Squad, AOC and a half dozen harpies, versus the House moderates, eight or ten who forced the September 27 vote on Pelosi some weeks ago. But the actual numbers, as far as I can tell, are much larger:

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said Friday that 50 House Democrats will oppose the $1.2 trillion “bipartisan” infrastructure bill, which is scheduled for a vote Monday.

“Pramila Jayapal told me at least 50 of her progressive members still plan to vote to sink the infrastructure bill if it goes forward Monday,” a CNN reporter tweeted. “She added that leadership taking some steps to move ahead on the big reconciliation bill is ‘not enough.'”

. . . When Jayapal was interviewed Wednesday on CNN, she explained she is concerned the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package will not pass the House if the Democrats give up leverage and pass the $1.2 trillion bill without its far more expansive cousin, which is full of far-left goodies.

Well, what about the Republicans? We're told that Speaker Pelosi can lose only a few Democrat votes, but if she loses 50, can the Republicans make up for it and pass the package? It doesn't look that way, according to Politico:

Fewer than a dozen House Republicans are expected to vote for the $550 billion infrastructure bill — which got 19 Senate GOP votes last month — according to multiple lawmakers in the party.

If House Democrats keep pushing their two-track plan for a party-line social spending bill and a bipartisan infrastructure bill, they can't expect many GOP passengers on that second train.

. . . Those numbers are still in flux, the members said, addressing the closely held vote count candidly on condition of anonymity.

Being Politico, the piece is sanguine about the possibility that the House Progressive Caucus can be prevailed upon to decouple the $1.5 trillion bill from the $3.5 trillion bill. But as of Friday, it was fairly plain this wasn't going to happen.

In the meantime, Biden is at Camp David, but he's sure gonna keep in touch.

This will be a key test of Bruce's Law. My bet is there's no vote tomorrow.

There's Actually No Vax Policy

The other day I saw a story that confirmed my surmise about having OSHA issue a national workplace vax policy, as Biden had announced:

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has yet to release a draft to force private businesses to mandate coronavirus vaccines or implement rigorous testing requirements, nearly two weeks after President Joe Biden made the demand.

The normal rule making process involves not just drafts, but public comment periods, advance notice, and so forth. But as I posted on September 16, OSHA doesn't have the staff or budget to enforce such a policy, which in any case is months from implementation. But employers who would be affected can't file suit against the policy until it's published and goes into effect, which delays likely reversal in the courts.

In fact, we could even think this is deliberate. It reminds me of the complaint in a recent New Yorker piece:

The Biden Presidency, on both the foreign and domestic fronts, remains a jumble of aspirations—and retains a haze of uncertainty about how to achieve them. Much of his political problem, it seems to me, is a vast gap between his articulated goals and what is politically possible. . . . the Democratic Party is barely a majority party in the U.S. Congress. It’s a fifty-fifty Senate, and a fifty-fifty world. In a purely practical sense, the challenge for Biden is that he hasn’t got to the hard part yet.

But as far as I can see, this isn't a bug, it's a feature. Biden's intent is to look like he's Doing Something about COVID, but his choices are all bad ones. Anyone who actually means to enforce vaccine passports, like Mayor DeBlasio, runs into the problem that many people who are denied entry for not having a passport are going to be minority, especially African-American. They claim with some justice that the policy is racist.

There's another conundrum here. The well-publicized New York brawl at Carmine's restaurant started when a staffer "accused [three women] of presenting fake COVID-19 vaccine cards". Wait a moment. What's an authentic COVID vaccine card? How can you tell a fake?

For instance, my barber shop, in a spontaneous policy, requires "proof of vaccination". My wife and I keep our vaccination cards in our home safe for the simple reason that if we lose them, some future policy could cause difficulties if we don't have them. So for my barber and anyone else who asks, I made a photocopy of the card and keep it in my wallet. But it's clearly a photocopy. My barber accepts it, but why should he? You can't use a photocopy of a driver's license or a birth certificate. Did the Carmine's staffer refuse to accept a photocopy? Is a photocopy "fake"?

There's no rule, because there's no actual policy. An employer who fires people for not being vaxxed in advance of an official OSHA policy runs a great deal of risk, especially if many affected are minorities. But this becomes the employer's problem, not Biden's, while the employer has no recourse, because he can't point to any actual policy that he's following, while on the other hand, he can't sue OSHA for redress, either. Meanwhile, Biden can claim he's Done Something.

And the ambiguity gets worse. On September 9, Biden strongly implied that in addition to the two jabs last spring, people would be required to get the boosters once they were available (which Biden at the time said would be nearly a week ago, September 20). But now, Dr Walensky of all people says the CDC is not changing its definition of "fully vaccinated".

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said Friday that the definition of “fully vaccinated” won’t change when COVID-19 booster shots are rolled out—at least in the near future.

Well, the FDA isn't completely on board with the boosters.

While they endorsed it for those who were 65 years and over, as well as those at high risk of severe disease, they didn’t endorse it for everyone else. That blew up Biden’s plans for a huge roll-out. Two senior FDA officials even quit last month, reportedly over what they felt was a rush to push out the shots for everyone in the country.

My wife and I are over 65. Barring any surprises, which I don't rule out, we'll probably get the boosters, but as of now, we have no idea when, where, or how we'd get them, except if it's anything like the first jabs, we can't just call our doctor at Kaiser, we've got to go to a cattle pen. But even if we didn't bother, it looks like for the foreseeable future, our existing vax cards will work.

Unless they change their minds.

Missing White Woman Syndrome

Media coverage of he Gabby Petito case has resulted in a focus on missing white woman syndrome, which Wikipedia characterizes as

the observed disproportionate media coverage, especially in television, of missing-person cases involving young, white, upper-middle-class women or girls compared to the relative lack of attention towards missing women who are not white, women of lower social classes, and missing men or boys.

The entry then cites what are essentially critical race theory explanations for the phenomenon:

Charlton McIlwain defined the syndrome as "white women occupying a privileged role as violent crime victims in news media reporting", and posited that missing white woman syndrome functions as a type of racial hierarchy in the cultural imagery of the West. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva categorized the racial component of missing white woman syndrome as a "form of racial grammar, through which white supremacy is normalized by implicit or even invisible standards".

But let's differentiate betweern two separate media, TV news programs and the true crime genre, either in print or on cable TV. (True crime cable TV shows are often based on books by specialized true crime writers like the late Ann Rule.) The accusation that TV news focuses on missing cute white women is probably true, but I don't think you can say this says something about the culture as a whole.

For starters, what appears on TV news is determined by TV news editors, who are themselves largely upper middle class white people. They're working from "instant" events that cross their screens, and the stories they decide are important are driven by a herd mentality common in the press. Gabby Petito will be important until the story fades and there's a hurricane or something else to replace it.

However, this type of TV network news has steadily been losing its audience. I don't think it's out of line to suggest that upper middle class white news editors are increasingly out of touch with the plebs, who simply aren't buyng the old formula as much. This says good things about the plebs, as far as I can see, while those critiquing news coverage via CRT are speaking from their own limited academic bourgeois perspective.

But let's look at the true crime genre of books and cable TV series and specials. These are out of the "news" category, since they often cover subjects like serial killers Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer, whose cases are now 40 and 50 years in the past. Beyond that, Gacy's and Dahmer's victims were males, which doesn't fit the missing white women characterization.

In fact, Ted Bundy is in many ways unique among the well-known killers in that he did single out attractive, young, middle-class white women, while others, like Gary Ridgway, the Green River killer, singled out street prostitutes of various racial backgrounds, in fact they were Lumpenproletariat. To true crime fans -- I think I can speak as one -- all such cases are of equal interest.

And as a true crime fan who doesn't follow TV news, I was pretty much impervious to the Gabby Petito story until early this week when the missing white woman theory caught my attention. But this is a phenomenon of TV news that says more about TV news than its shrinking audience.

This is not to say that there aren't poorly produced true crime shows, which are in fact often about missing white women. In fact, there's a "missing" subgenre on cable that covers cases that remain unsolved, often white women, with extensive weepy interviews with the victims' mothers and sisters. But these come more from Oprah Winfrey and seem to appeal to people who like to watch other people cry on TV. Nor are they particularly upper middle class; the mothers and sisters have tattoos and show deep cleavage.

But in addition, the actual detectives who are interviewed on the better true crime shows sometimes make the point that truly innocent victims are rare in the real world. The "missing single mom" often turns out to have three kids from two baby daddies and went missing because, after all, she was entitled to go bar hopping on Saturday nights, and what's going to be done with the three kids turns out to be problematic, because the dads sure don't want them.

I avoid shows like that.

What Could Go Wrong?

The current situation for the Democrats is bringing me back to my corporate days. Time after time, deadlines are slipping, customers are getting fed up, but Mahogany Row is just holding crisis management meetings with nothing coming out of them. That's when I began to learn it was time to update my resume.

Facing growing unrest in the Democrat party, President Joe Biden plans to host meetings at the White House on Wednesday to save his $5 trillion domestic spending agenda.

First, Biden will meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to discuss his $1.5 trillion infrastructure deal that has passed the Senate, his partisan $3.5 trillion climate and entitlement bill, and a continuing resolution to raise the debt limit and fund the government.

Well, I've been there. The big deadline comes on Monday, September 27, when Speaker Pelosi is supposed to hold a vote on the $1.5 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, without which Sen Sinema won't support the $3.5 billion bill, and without which the House moderates won't support it, either, except the House leftists want that bill tied to the big one, which the others don't want.

Back when I worked in tech, I'd see the same thing, the customer is expecting the big project to be delivered next Monday, but I know full well it's not half done -- but the bosses promise everyone's gonna work all weekend to finish it. So I have to come in Saturday anyhow, and lo and behold, nobody's there. The first time I saw this, I was pretty upset. I couldn't imagine how anyone could allow this to happen. But of course, it did. A couple of bosses would get fired in advance of the whole company closing its doors. I just got used to it, always have an updated resume off site at all times.

I guess this might be called Bruce's Law. When there's a life-or-death deadline just days away, if the bosses say they'll work all weekend to fix it, all they're doing is buying a few more days of same old-same old. It's the "then a miracle occurs" in the plan. I'm not the only one who suspects this is coming:

Radicals are holding the infrastructure bill hostage, demanding the $3.5 trillion budget bill be voted on first. That’s not going to happen. The bill is just too big and too complicated to get done before the deadline of September 27 to vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill agreed to by Nancy Pelosi and moderate House Democrats.

They're gonna work all weekend to fix it.

One reason employers don't like to hire older workers is they've been around the block a few too many times.

More Comes Out On Saturday's Fed Provocateur

The story we've seen is that at the Justice for J6 rally last Saturday, some of the very few ordinary citizens in attendance spotted a suspicious-looking man who appeared to be carrying a gun. They reported him to police, and since absolutely nothing else was going on other than hundreds of FBI, police, and reporters waiting for something to happen, the police in riot gear detained him, and the episode was fully documented.

In the view above, the man is dressed in black, with a black bandana style mask covering much of his face a la Antifa. He appears to have identified himself with a badge, surrendered his weapon, and given little other direct information as to what he was doing. According to the RedState blog,

Now the word is out where this guy was from. He is a 27 year old CBP officer from New Jersey. So yes, he was a federal agent. Fed on Fed arrest. He was allegedly detained for possessing a gun on the grounds of the Capitol but he was not prosecuted after they found out he was a police officer.

According to Fox News,

Generally, under federal law, law enforcement officers are given reciprocity to legally carry their weapons in other states, even those with restrictive gun laws. But the law has an exemption for government property or military bases where it is illegal to carry a gun, like the U.S. Capitol.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington said prosecutors were "not moving forward with charges" but did not provide additional information about the decision.

Two law enforcement officials said the officer was not at the rally in any official capacity. The officials could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general was also notified of his arrest.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it was aware of the arrest and was "fully cooperating with the investigation."

Something's hinky. New Jersey is more than 100 miles from DC. There were across-the-board recommendations to stay away from Saturday's rally, which just about everyone but reporters, police, and undercover feds followed. But one federal officer from New Jersey decides to attend in an "unofficial capacity" with a weapon, dressed like Antifa. Once he's caught, his agency mumbles something about integrity, but the US attorney decides not to prosecute. But they'll cooperate with any investigation that sorta maybe takes place.

Here are some thoughts I have.

• The most innocuous explanation is this guy is a junior wannabe who goes to DC from New Jersey on his own dime dressed as an Antifa, hoping he can incite an assault on the Capitol and then become a big hero by stopping it. Or maybe incite an assault on the Capitol and get a bunch of people clubbed and shot to prove how bad Trump is. Or something.
• But anyone with any kind of law enforcement experience knows you basically act within your training and policy, and any deviation must either be approved by your superiors or you're held accountable. For him to freelance this would be a career-ending move. Worse, it could land him in the slammer. Not many cops are that dumb. Maybe there are more federal agents who are.
• Who else knew about it? His supervisor? But if his supervisor cooked it up independently, that would also be a career-ending move that would risk prosecution. Everyone at that level must have had some assurance that if anything went wrong, it would all be made right. And so far, the US attorney says no prosecution.
• So I've got to think someone ordered something like this from much higher up, but it was badly bungled by our boy from New Jersey. My little daemon tells me the whole frammis is basically a great grand-nephew of the Watergate burglary fiasco, sloppily planned by a bunch of incompetents and bungled by amateurs.

I have a theory that just crossing a state border into New Jersey lowers your IQ by 30 points. My wife scolds me about this, but this may confirm my view.

Who placed the call to get this going? My money's on Pelosi.

Pray Tell Me, Sir, Whose Dog Are You?

Alexander Pope had this couplet engraved on the collar of a puppy he presented to Frederick, Prince of Wales in the 1730s:

I am his highness’s dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

The implication is, of course, that everyone has a master for whom he must roll over and do tricks.

One of the questions that I almost never heard addressed in my years studying in English departments was how writers must actually get money The assumption seems to have been that the act of producing metaphors was so inherently valuable that they all essentially lived F Scott Fitzgerald style lives. This was in the 1960s and 70s. There may be other, post-modern interpretations now, but I doubt if the actual business of writing ever gets much attention.

My wife and I were late adopters of cable, and for many years, we had only a simple tube TV with a rabbit ear antenna, which meant that much of watching was limited to PBS and the News Hour. Republican thought was represented by David Gergen and then David Brooks. Gergen seems to have made his living as some sort of professional intimate to presidents, but Brooks has always written a column, supplemented by being a talking head.

Thus Brooks has always needed someone to write for in order to earn a living, or as Samuel Johnson would have characterzed it, a Patron. The need to see something other than the cringing phony Brooks on TV was a major factor that drove my wife and me to cable.

So why is Brooks suddenly off the reservation?

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks said that the “underlying issue” in President Joe Biden’s underwater approval rating is Jimmy Carter-esque “incompetence.”

Brooks said that coronavirus is one issue bringing down Biden’s approval numbers, even though that’s not really President Biden’s fault.

He continued, “I think the border’s a strong one. I think pulling out of Afghanistan the way they did, not the pullout itself, but the way it was done. I think a lot of Americans were embarrassed and felt a little ashamed. But the underlying issue is Jimmy Carter. The underlying issue is incompetence. I thought these guys were the pros. I thought they were the experts. But in case after case, they don’t seem to be as professional as I thought they were.”

Brooks later discussed the nuclear submarine deal with Australia and stated that while it’s a good deal, “why not call France? … We didn’t call our allies before the Afghan pullout.”

Brooks does not write a comma, not a semicolon, that he's not told to write. His whole career has been an exercise in flaunting his single elite undergraduate credential to lend the appearance of thoughtful reflection to whatever bromide his Patron approves.

Looks like even the New York Times is off the reservation.

Why Is The Reconciliation Package A Cliffhanger?

My mother, who had a career in government after starting with the Republican National Committee, told me at a fairly early age that there are, or at least should be, no surprises at the policy level. (She fancied herself a lizard person.) Legislative leaders have the votes wrapped up well before actual votes take place. That's why parties have whips. Of course, she started her career in Washington when Lyndon Johnson was president, so this may have affected her outlook.

So I'm amazed at the story that's been developing over Democrat disorder over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, said to be the centerpiece of Biden's program, except that I'm increasingly convinced that Speaker Pelosi is the one who's running things. If there are questions about Biden's competence, I think they apply as well to Pelosi, who's actually giving the orders. As of this morning,

President Biden's two major economic agenda items hang in the balance this week as Democrats continue "intense discussions" on their $3.5 trillion spending plan and some Republicans are warning that their support for the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill could evaporate after Democrats "linked" it with reconciliation.

"It's gotten completely off the rails," Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan told Fox News. . . . "We've worked for quite some time to negotiate a bipartisan infrastructure bill, which did not include any of this additional spending. We've got the president to commit to it. We've got the Senate to pass it," Hogan said. "And then the House is now saying if we can't jam through our $3 and a half trillion of other stuff that we took out of this compromise bill, that they're not going to do it."

Last week, President Biden was supposed to have brought the two senate Democrat holdouts, Sens Manchin and Sinema, on board. But Manchin didn't change his public position, and over the weekend, it came out that Sinema not only didn't come around, but she gave Biden an ultimatum. (Can you imagine LBJ getting an ultimatum?)

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) delivered a tough message to President Biden at a private meeting Wednesday, Playbook reports: If the House delays its scheduled Sept. 27 vote on the bipartisan infrastructure plan — or if the vote fails — she won’t be backing a reconciliation bill.

“Progressives think if they band together and threaten to kill the infrastructure bill, it will convince moderate members to go along with the larger reconciliation package. But multiple sources — including a senior Democratic aide and several in the centrist camp — tell us the left is misreading their colleagues.”

At this stage, it looks less and less likely that either bill will be passed this fall. The status of any putative agreement between Pelosi and moderate House Democrats to vote on the smaller infrastucture bill separately from the $3.5 trillion package on September 27 seems increasingly unclear, given the stated intent of House progressives to defeat the smaller bill if it isn't linked to the big one.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal told Politico that the majority of her coalition, which comprises 96 members, has privately shared it is prepared to thwart the infrastructure bill in protest unless it is a package deal with the Democrat-spearheaded measure.

“Even if there were Republicans that come along” to support the Senate infrastructure in the House, Jayapal said, “we will have more individuals, more Democrats who are going to vote it down without the reconciliation bill.”

In fact, it almost looks as if Sen Manchin is in the position of brokering a solution:

Manchin reportedly told workers at a Procter & Gamble facility in Martinsburg, West Virginia, that he wanted to pause all negotiations on the $3.5 trillion bill until 2022.

. . . Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the House Majority Whip, said Sunday that Democrats might need to spend more time hashing out the differences between the party’s different wings.

“Sometimes, you have to kind of stop the clock to get to the goal,” he said.

“It may be $3.5 [trillion]. It may be close to that, or it may be closer to something else,” suggested they may change the spending levels for the mammoth legislation.

But I can think of two problems with any delay. First, the talk we're starting to hear from Manchin and Clyburn suggests that a delay would come to allow renegotiation for a lower total in the $3.5 trillion package, which would amount to a defeat for the progressives, and for that matter Pelosi-Biden. Second, a delay into 2022 as Manchin proposes would push the vote closer to the election, already assumed to be bad for Democrats. What assurance can they give that the new negotiation wouldn't last through September-October 2022, the worst possible outcome?

And of course, the need to delay the package would simply illustrate the incompetence of Pelosi in particular, who can't control her own caucus.

I kept thinking over the weekend about the image of Pelosi tearing up her copy of Trump's State of the Union address. You can see in her face her confidence that she's the one in charge. The real problem in 2021 isn't in fact Biden. He takes his orders from Pelosi.

Whence The Narrative?

It's plain that the QAnon Trump conspiracy theory of the January 6 Capitol demonstration has been collapsing for months, and news reports on the Justice for J6 rally in Washington yesterday indicate that it was attended by roughly 400 people who were at least not clearly identifiable as FBI or provocateurs, although of even the presumptive ordinary citizens, it's hard to know how many of those were also agents of some sort.

A fascinating episode was captured in the video at this tweet, wherein Capitol police in full Star Wars Trooper regalia surround an individual dressed as an Antifa type, complete with black bandana mask, only to discover that he's undercover -- and not just undercover, but given his outfit, clearly a government provocateur. Without arresting him or cuffing him, they escort him from the scene, at that point to keep reporters away.

And that was the big event of the afternoon. From occasional remarks by conservative YouTubers, especially after the FBI-led "conspiracy" to kidnap Gov Whitmer, they're contacted now and then by people who make crudely transparent attempts to bring them into something or other, but they're not hard to identify and shoo away.

The big event that turned Bill Clinton's presidency around following debacles with Hillarycare, Mogadishu, and Waco was the Oklahoma City bombing, a legitimate conspiracy among right-wing paramilitary types. Clinton was able to perfect a strategy of triangulation, portraying himself as the safe and sane middle between extremes. In retrospect, Clinton was sometimes successful as a moderate, especially in comparison to Biden.

I think the agenda behind the Justice for J6 event, which Trump correctly labeled a "setup", was to portray Trump supporters and Republicans in the same light as the Oklahoma City bombers, complete, it would seem, with black-clad provocateurs to make sure something like that might take place. Biden's handlers could then turn him into some sort of moderate uniter a la Clinton. The simple problem is that Biden isn't Clinton.

The actual result looks more like a good plot for an Austin Powers sequel. As an Aristotelian, I look for causes. Who thought this woulld be a good idea? Who had the juice to put all those agents in bermudas and sunglasses on the job?

I don't think either Biden or his handlers are capable of this; right now, they're in heads-down mode trying to solve their daily humiliations. The strategic thinker here is Speaker Pelosi, who's been trying to gain traction with January 6 since it took place, first impeaching a lame duck Trump days from his leaving office, then trying to gin up a House investigation.

Her strategy is pretty clearly to try to portray Republicans -- or at least, Republicans who aren't Lynne Cheney -- as domestic terrorists. She's trying to do this with an extremely slim House majority and a tied Senate, with every likelihood that with the next election, she'll lose the Speakership. As of now, she's calling the shots. I think it's reasonable to assume that if she called Gen Milley to give him orders, she's done the same with Director Wray and Attorney General Garland.

It reminds me a little of Winston Churchill, who late in World War II evaluated the option of trying to assassinate Hitler. Together with his generals, he decided the problem with that would be the Germans might replace Hitler with someone competent. Best to keep Hitler in place.

Same with Pelosi.

FDA Panel Rejects COVID Boosters

Via the New York Post:

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted against green-lighting COVID-19 booster shots Friday for most people — throwing up a major hurdle for President Biden’s plan to dole out a third dose to most Americans.

But the independent panel, which reviewed a 23-page FDA briefing document highlighting recent studies, recommended emergency use of a third dose for Americans over age 65 and those at high risk of severe infection.

. . . The FDA is not bound to follow the advice of the independent advisory panel but has followed its guidance so far on COVID-19 vaccinations.

Overall, the panel voted 16-2 not to recommend a third dose for people 16 years and up while unanimously green-lighting it for people 65 years and older.

This decision clearly undermines the current COVID narrative. and the mainstream media now appears to be backing off boosters, which Dr Fauci had been assiduously promoting. Via CNN,

Indeed, even the FDA's official briefing paper before the meeting expressed skepticism. "Overall," agency officials noted, "data indicate that currently US-licensed or authorized COVID-19 vaccines still afford protection against severe COVID-19 disease and death." The agency also stated that it's unclear whether an additional shot might increase the risk of myocarditis, which has been reported, particularly in young men, following the second Pfizer and Moderna shots.

Part of the disagreement arose because President Joe Biden had announced that Americans could get a booster as soon as Sept. 20, a date Fauci and colleagues had suggested to him as practical and optimal in one of their frequent meetings just days before — though he cautioned that boosters would need CDC and FDA approval.

As far as I can see, this is the first case of overt disagreement on The Science from within the public health establishment. The same people have been able to finesse disagreements over the lab leak theory of COVID, pushing any serious investigation into the background. This will be much less easy with official non-endorsement of boosters. And since boosters have been part of Biden's public agenda for vaccine mandates, this will also make that agenda harder to sell.

Alex Berenson cimmented via Substack,

Make no mistake, this is a huge loss for the Biden administration and for Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who was desperately pimping boosters as recently as two days ago, when he told Reuters that they were needed for everyone to stop a rise not just in infections but in “mildly to moderately symptomatic disease.”

Fauci is correct that the original two-dose regimen is now failing to prevent symptomatic disease.

. . . Which raises the question - if you are under 65, not at high risk for severe Covid, and have not yet been vaccinated, why on earth would you be? Putting side effects and long-term risks aside, you now know that vaccines are likely to do little more than delay your risk of infection for a few months. What’s the point?

In recent weeks, I keep remembering Stein's Law: That which cannot continue must stop.

Who's Pulling The Strings?

It's been pretty much conventonal wisdom that President Biden is a puppet, and someone else is pulling the strings. Over the past couple of weeks, I've become convinced it's Cruella De Vil, better known as Speaker Pelosi. What clinched it was the report fromm Bob Woodward's new book, Peril. According to the New York Post,

A transcript of a call [between Gen Mark Milley and Speaker] Pelosi two days after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, obtained by the “Peril” authors, has her ranting at Milley about Trump’s access to nuclear weapons.

“If they couldn’t even stop him from an assault on the Capitol, who even knows what else he may do? And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this? …

“He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time. So don’t say you don’t know what his state of mind is.”

Milley reportedly responded: “Madam Speaker. I agree with you on everything.”

The Army, of course, reports to the president as commander in chief, not to the House speaker. The call suggests, though, that Pelosi was giving Milley implicit orders, which included disregarding the authority of the president and defense secretary on the basis that the president was crazy, and the defense secretary was presumably kissing the president's butt. Under at least some circumstances, this would be cause for removal and potentially court martial.

But this also suggests Speaker Pelosi's view of her implicit authority, especially with a man of weak character now in the White House. The difficulty is that the Speaker's actual authority extends only so far, and even if Biden is in her pocket, the Senate is effectively tied, Sen Manchin is less easily bullied, and Manchin's own leader, Sen Schumer, has been keeping a very low profile.

The leverage Manchin has, which nobody has mentioned, is that senators can switch parties. In 2001, Sen James Jeffords, a Republican, became an independent and caucused with the Democrats, which switched the balance of power in the Senate. Cleary the potential exists for Manchin to do the same, which would halt the entire Democrat legislative agenda. Biden, in the Senate in 2001, must clearly be aware of this. Bullying Manchin is not an option.

Thus we see in Axios,

President Biden failed to persuade Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to agree to spending $3.5 trillion on the Democrats' budget reconciliation package during their Oval Office meeting on Wednesday, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.

Defying a president from his own party — face-to-face — is the strongest indication yet Manchin is serious about cutting specific programs and limiting the price tag of any potential bill to $1.5 trillion. His insistence could blow up the deal for progressives and others.

The problem for Cruella Speaker Pelosi is that she needs the support of the far-left faction of House Democrats for the full reconciliation package, and their position is currently that any reductions are non-negotiable. For Manchin to insist on substantial reductions in the package endangers its support in the House. He's effectively giving Biden, which is to say Pelosi, two bad options: get a partial infrastructure bill, requiring Pelosi to work out a compromise with the leftists, or see Manchin defect to the Republicans and lose everything.

One one hand, I'm not sure if Pelosi isn't the one suffering mental decline, because it seems as though her grip on power is loosening, while she's in denial. On the other, there's really too much in it for Manchin to back down. Apparently no amount of behind the scenes baksheesh has been sufficient to get him to do it so far; at minimum, this makes him a very important guy, effectively on a par with the House Speaker. He's not someone you can bully, and he's starting to like it that way.

Cruella is going to have a problem with this. You do not cross this lady.

Vaccine Mandates And Strategic Incompetence

On Monday, I speculated about the impact of Biden's workplace vaccine mandate on OSHA. It turns out that I underestimated the problem:

“[B]efore the first legal challenges against the mandate roll in, the Biden administration faces the more immediate conundrum of whether the chronically resource-strapped Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is up to the task of enforcing it,” Business Insider noted Tuesday.

“It’s reeling from deep staffing cuts under the Trump administration, and its fines are relatively low and often fought out in long court battles,” experts told the outlet.

The Trump cuts left just “1,798 total OSHA inspectors, federal and state, coming out to one inspector per 82,881 workers and just $3.97 budgeted per covered worker,” according to Business Insider. According to a similar report from Reuters, “OSHA now has an estimated 800 safety and compliance inspectors to cover the more than 100,000 private-sector companies affected by the new rule.”

I've also seen commentary from lawyer-YouTuber Robert Barnes that almost all current mandates lack a key provision for religious exemption. While the OSHA workplace rule will likely take some time to roll out, and lawsuits against it can't be filed until it is, other local vaccine mandates are already being challenged for lack of a religious exemption. A New York State mandate has already been rejected by a federal judge:

A federal judge temporarily blocked the state of New York on Tuesday from forcing medical workers to be vaccinated after a group of health care workers sued, saying their Constitutional rights were violated because the state's mandate disallowed religious exemptions.

But this is the same state mandate that already forced a hospital to stop delivering babies when key staff quit rather than get the shot. The lack of religious exemption isn't the only basis for lawsuits against local mandates. A group of LAPD officers filed suit against a municipal mandate:

The lawsuit, filed Saturday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, claims the mandate violates the employees’ constitutional rights to privacy and due process, and asks the court to provide immediate and permanent relief from the requirement.

The six LAPD employees suing include individuals “who could not assert a medical or religious exemption” to the vaccine requirement, as well as individuals who have “experienced and recovered from COVID-19″ and have natural antibodies to fight the virus, the complaint states.

A major problem for vaccine mandates is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The HIPAA Privacy Rule regulates the use and disclosure of protected health information, which is any information that is held by a provider regarding health care. With a few exceptions like court order or limited law enforcement, this information, which includes vaccination status, may not be disclosed without the patient's authorization.

Requiring someone to show his vaccination certificate to an airline agent, TSA, bus driver, barber, bartender, bouncer, or maitre d' is clearly a violation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule. As far as I can see, nobody in the White House, OSHA, CDC, or local health departments has thought this through. For that matter, the religious exemption is extremely broad. You don't have to prove you're a member of a designated sect to be able to claim it, because any designation from the government of which beliefs qualify constitutes an establishment of religion and is a violation of the US First Amendment.

Thus if anyone demands my vaccination certificate, I can claim it's against my religion, full stop, and anyone, especially a bouncer or whatever, risks getting into hot water for denying me service. I personally carry a copy of my certificate in my wallet and will show it when requested just to get on with my day, but not everyone feels this way. We'll likely see a proliferation of court cases well before the Biden-OSHA mandate goes into effect, if it ever does.

So if President Biden wanted to make a big show of Doing Something about COVID while making the whole effort meaningless and unenforceable, he could hardly do a better job than he has. Strategic incompetence?

Larry Elder Loses California Recall

Current vote tallies suggest Larry Elder has overwhelmingly lost the California recall election; he conceded last night. I was briefly optimistic when polls showed the race even, but more recent polling and analysis of the mail-in voting proved to be, if anything, too sanguine about the eventual outcome, which was disastrous for Elder.

I've seen little analysis so far of the reasons for this. One factor, I think, goes to Rush Limbaugh's frequent reply when people urged him to run for office: he'd say he knows how to attract a radio audience, but he knows nothing about how to attract votes. The applies all the more to Elder, who has been an also-ran host at lackluster Salem Media along with figures like Hugh Hewitt and Sebastian Gorka.

I occasinally tuned into his radio show when I was in the car now and then, but I found nothing to maintain my interest. He was saying many of the right things, but nothing new or compelling.

I think this carried over into his campaign, which consisted mainly of soundbites on Fox and other right-leaning media. One might argue that funding restrictions for recall candidates limited his ability to spend on ads, but the ads I did see were pretty bland.

It seems as if his announcement lent a measure of interest to the the recall in the beginning -- he was at least a better choice than Caitlyn Jenner, while the other leading Republicans were uninspiring -- but his message, insofar as he had one, never quite caught on. People were tired of Newsom, but he's up for reelection next year anyhow. The one good thing the recall did was keep Newsom from imposing new lockdowns for much of 2021, while a looming election in 2022 will now probably curb his wish to impose much more.

California does face a series of problems. including the results of the political alliance between the elites and the Lumpenproletariat, which include homelessness and the rise in both petty and violent crime. Other issues include deferred public water and highway projects, while the endless high speed rail boondoggle has sucked investment away from them. Forest management errors have led to worsening wildfires. Public education needs serious reform.

Elder paid only lip service to these issues and effectively acknowledged that with Democrat supermajorities in the legislature, his only ability to effect change in a one-year term would be to use the bully pulpit. Heck, he has a radio show for that.

The current establilshed ourder may be corrupt and unpopular, but Republicans have to present a serious alternative. Talk radio hosts have limited effectiveness, something Limbaugh himself fully understood.

Biden's Handlers Cut His Feed Again

It was noted during Biden's visit to Boise yesterday that at the point where he began, "Can I ask you a question? . . . One of the things that, ah . . . I've been workin' on with some others . . . is . . ." his handlers cut his feed. By now, this isn't new. On one had, there was a story last week about how his handlers cringe and mute the volume on their own screens when the boss goes off script.

On the other, everyone who's had to put up with Uncle Ted knows this signals the start of a ponderous and rambling discourse that's meant to display in tedious detail what a genius he is. But once again, I disagree with the people who think this is a sign of mental decline. I knew Uncle Ted. He was like that all his life. The main thing that got him going that way was a few too many Old Fashioneds.

This actually reminds me of the story that went around during the 2020 campaign that began with the quote from Obama, "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f*** things up". Farther down, you'd read:

While in office, young Obama aides are reported to have dismissed Biden, even 'eye-rolling' when the VP would begin speaking, while former members of the administrations have also treated Biden dismissively in their memoirs.

'In the Situation Room, Biden could be something of an unguided missile,' Ben Rhodes, Obama's former deputy national security adviser, wrote.

Former FBI Director James Comey also said that 'Obama would have a series of exchanges heading a conversation very clearly and crisply in Direction A. Then, at some point, Biden would jump in with, 'Can I ask something, Mr. President?'

'Obama would politely agree, but something in his expression suggested he knew full well that for the next five or 10 minutes we would all be heading in Direction Z,' Comey added.

It wouldn't surprise me that everyone who knows Biden recognizes "can I ask something?" as the signal that we're headed off for five or 10 minutes in Direction Z, and they cut his feed. Biden is Uncle Ted, and likely his morning pick-me-up gets him going that way.

But, er, can I ask something? We're told that the administration is in a make-or-break moment to push its legislative agenda past wavering Democrat senators, and Biden is key.

Biden assured Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he was ready to push for filibuster reform. Biden’s pressure would aim to help Schumer convince moderate Democrats to support a carveout to the filibuster, a must for the party if it’s going to pass new voting protections without Republican votes. According to a source briefed on the White House’s position, Biden told Schumer: “Chuck, you tell me when you need me to start making phone calls.”

But Biden is Uncle Ted, not LBJ. LBJ wouild grab people physically, push his face up against theirs, and not let them go until they went along. Biden will make Zoom calls and ramble on about his son Beau. And he's always been this way. If he were senile, people might cooperate out of sympathy. Instead, he's Uncle Ted.

I don't see this having a good result. Obama knew his man.

Have They Thought This Through?

I haven't seen much discussion about what the actual COVID mandate that Biden announced last Thursday will actually look like. For instance, various groups, unions, and states have announced they'll file suit against the mandate, but they can't even start until OSHA publishes the actual rules -- so far, I've seen nothing about when this will take place.

But let's say the rules go in, and they turn out to be fully constitutional, no problem, the Supreme Court refuses to intervene in any of the cases that come out. What could go wrong?

We really don't have solid numbers on exactly how many people would be affected by the current mandate. Anywhere from 60 to 80 million in the US are unvaxxed. We don't know how many work for companies that come under the mandate and would need to fire unvaxxed employees. Nor do we know how firm the unvaxxed will be when faced with getting the shots or losing their jobs.

But we're starting to get a taste of how this could turn out. In upstate New York,

An upstate New York hospital will stop delivering babies later this month, in part because of employee resignations over a requirement they be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Six maternity staff members resigned from Lewis County General Hospital during the past week, worsening an existing staff shortage, the Watertown Daily Times reported. The department has seven other unvaccinated employees who also could decide to leave, hospital officials said.

. . . Services also may have to be curtailed in five other departments if staff members resign rather than be vaccinated by the state’s Sept. 27 deadline for health care workers, authorities said.

But this leaves aside the question of how the mandate will be enforced once the rules are issued. How many employers have more than 100 workers? We're talking about some percentage of 60 to 80 million potential employees. It sounds like at least some employers will have their operations seriously limited if key employees are firm enough to quit or be fired. Will they risk penalties by looking the other way?

Where will OSHA find the staff to cover this completely new responsibility? Will they need training? What will happen when, inevitably, brand new power-mad OSHA inspectors shut companies down for bogus reasons?

Assuming this could seriously affect corporate operations, will exceptions need to be made? The US Surgeon General seems to be telegraphing this possibility, as it affects potential vaccine passports for flying. In a CNN interview:

[Vivek] Murthy was also defensive of Biden not announcing vaccination requirements on airplanes despite expanding these requirements to U.S. businesses and companies.

. . . And we know that, when it comes to mandating vaccines for travel, there are important issues around equity that would have to be worked out to ensure that people, for example, if they had to travel in the case of emergency to see a relative who got sick, would be able to do that, even if they weren't vaccinated,' he said.

But wait. What if GE is forced to fire a single mom with ten kids? What if those fired are overwhelmingly in minorities? Will equity apply there, too? But forget equity. You know darn well the reason the airlines don't want vaccine passports, it would cut their patronage by 40%. But if Ford or UPS loses 40% of their line workers, it'll have the same effect. Heck, what if you have to fire 40% of the police?

Will there need to be equity tribunals to solve these problems? You might say that some of the unvaxxed who get fired could go to work for the equity tribunals, except they'd be federal employees who'd need to be vaxxed.

In the same interview, Murthy says Biden has more regulations he'll announce this week. I seriously question whether anyone has thought any of these through.

Well, handsome is as handsome does. These are the people who brought us the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Uncharted Territory

Two data points over the past week bought to mind the image above, which is explained on this site:

[Nelson] Rockefeller, then vice-president of the United States, was on a campaign swing through upstate New York on Sept. 16, 1976, with Sen. Bob Dole, who had been selected to be President Gerald Ford’s running mate for the 1976 election. When someone in a group of heckling leftie SUNY Binghamton students gave Rockefeller the finger, Rockefeller gave it right back, much to the delight of Dole in the background.

At the time, Rockefeller’s finger flashing was scandalous and the gesture was referred to thereafter as “The Rockefeller Salute”. Rockefeller refused to apologize for his outburst. “I was just responding in kind”, he said, neatly avoiding the point that the apology was not expected to go to the hecklers but to the general public. Bob Dole was asked by a reporter why he didn’t join Rockefeller in “the salute”. He replied, “I have trouble with my right arm”.

This was a departure from public decorum to be sure, but what's interesting is that Rockefeller, a 24-karat lizard person, unhesitatingly and unabashedly gave the populist response to the hecklers, and there seems to have been at least an undertone of amusement in the national reaction, certainly implied in its characterization as the "Rockefeller Salute". But overall, this departure from decorum set no precedent, possibly because Rockefeller was a lame duck.

But something's changed over the past week. I first noticed it in the vehemence of the heckling Biden received from residents of Manville, NJ:

This was actually a couple of steps beyond a bunch of lefties giving a lame duck vice president the finger. And my view here has been that Biden isn't out of it, at least due to cognitive decline. He heard every word of the heckling in Manville, it rankled, and I seem to be the only person in the country to recognize that Biden's sudden firing of all the Trump appointees from the military academy boards was his direct response to it. I still think I'm right.

The next data point is the emergence of gleeful "[expletive] Joe Biden" chants at college football games as the new season gets underway. If you wish, you can find them on YouTube, but I won't link directly. According to this site,

Thousands of college football fans made their political stance clear by breaking out in “F–k Joe Biden” chants during multiple different games over the weekend.

“[redacted] JOE BIDEN chant at the first Coastal Carolina football game,” tweeted Old Row Sports along with a video of the anti-Biden cheers.

The chants became a movement as college football fans across the country celebrated their return to packed stadiums to watch the sport.

. . . College football fans filled stadiums across the country over the weekend, many not wearing masks with zero social distancing amid concerns over the rising cases of the COVID-19 Delta variant. Many viewed this as a sign that Americans are no longer taking the virus seriously, nearly two years after the virus began spreading in the United States.

Indeed. I would take this as a sign that the national mood is changing, and COVID is one factor at the root. "[Bleep] Joe Biden" is shorthand for "[Bleep] masks, social distancing, no football, no parties" and everything else, no doubt including the teams that kneel at the national anthem. According to this tweet, the trend, which started last weekend, is continuing. It began before Biden's attempt to impose a national vaccine mandate, but the tone of scolding and divisiveness in Thursday's speech will no doubt exacerbate the protest. And it ties Biden the more firmly to what the college kids don't like.

Again, Biden isn't out of it. He's aware of these things. And from what i've covered here, he's an angry and vindictive guy. His handlers know he has poor judgment and is hard to control. He'll likely have an angry and vindictive response, sooner rather than later, but for a US president to reply in kind isn't the same as Nelson Rockefeller, a lame duck pro tem vice president near the end of this term, doing the same thing.

We're in uncharted territory.

UPDATE: Yes, he's fully aware of this stuff.