I Guess Halloween Is A National Holiday

I noted last week that the conservative blogs and aggregators have been generally out to lunch covering the BIF-BBB crisis in the House. The only media that've done a consistent job have been Politico and The Hill, as long as you can filter out their wishful thinking. One question the conservatives haven't taken up at all is the obvious one: with the vote last Thursday a didn't happen, what's next? This morning's headline in The Washington Examiner, though, is Biden and Democrats divided over Thomas Jefferson's legacy.

I guess they took the weekend off to stock up on candy for the trick-or-treaters, huh? Where's Byron York? I had to go to The Hill to find any substance at all:

House Democrats are looking to pass both the social spending and bipartisan infrastructure bills as early as Tuesday, a leadership aide told The Hill.

. . . An aide for Democratic leadership told Axios that committees were notified by House leaders that they had to finish any changes on the spending bill by Sunday and that the House Rules Committee could meet as soon as Monday to mark it up.

But it's hard to imagine this is anything but wishful thinking. According to Politico,

The Democratic Party is desperately trying to figure out just how solid Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion social spending framework really is.

Different factions of the party are arguing that the outline the president presented this week is not final, hoping to add back in still-disputed provisions on immigration reform, taxes, Medicare expansion, paid leave and prescription drug prices before the social spending package gets a vote.

The House has already released hundreds of pages of legislation to fully articulate Biden’s vision, the bulk of it devoted to climate change action and the social safety net. Yet even after the House passes its version of the bill, which could happen as soon as next week, some Democrats insist that it’s not the final word.

In other words, even if Speaker Pelosi imposes a cutoff on legislative language for a House version of BBB, she has no control over the Senate -- and indeed, no control over her own progressive caucus. The word is that they threw her out of their Thursday morning meeting last week:

Multiple sources confirmed to The Uprising that Pelosi was “kicked out” of the meeting by Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal.

“She got kicked out and said she was leaving anyway,” a Democratic staffer, who was granted anonymity to discuss the confidential meeting, said of Pelosi.

This suggests to me that Pelosi is simply continuing her "we're gonna work all weekend" story even as it steadily sheds its last vestiges of credibility. The problem is that there's simply no deal so far. The progressives and Sen Sanders aren't happy with the cut down "framework" and want things put back in. Sens Manchin and Sinema have made no specific commitment. President Biden has actually undercut Speaker Pelosi's effort to impose a settlement. Again, Politico:

As Biden prepared for the high-stakes meeting with House Democrats on Thursday, Jayapal made an urgent plea on a call with White House chief of staff Ron Klain: Don’t send the president to pressure liberals to vote Thursday on the Senate’s infrastructure bill without a more progressive social spending bill that’s fully done.

Klain pushed Jayapal, who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, to vote for the infrastructure bill during the call, according to a source familiar with their conversation. Jayapal responded that she wanted to avoid sending Biden off to Europe on Thursday with a failed vote, according to multiple Democrats.

What happened next is a dizzying fall of dominos. Biden didn’t directly ask House Democrats to pass his bipartisan infrastructure bill, leaving Pelosi to make the request. Then Jayapal’s progressives dug in against the infrastructure vote that the speaker wanted to tee up — using the president’s lack of a request for cover.

In other words, it's highly doubtful that, even if Pelosi is able to get a House BBB bill with full legislative language that echoes the "framework", the progressives will buy into it. They'll demand more, which Sens Manchin and Sinema will veto. It's too early to call a cap on the dealmaking.

But the House is in session only for the first week in November, when it takes the following week off for a Veterans Day recess. Then it goes home again for Thanksgiving after only four days the following week. I question whether anything can be finalized in that period of time.

It's harder and harder to avoid thinking Speaker Pelosi is a lame duck. She knows this as well.

So, Why Did The Vatican Limit Coverage Of Biden's Visit?

There hasn't been a whole lot said about Biden's visit to the Vatican, in part I'm sure because by limiting press availability, that was the Vatican's plan. What's leaked out is puzzling. I was particularly taken by this video excerpt, apparently taken by the Vatican and released after the fact:

It partly depicts Biden in a reception line, clearly confused about how this sort of thing works and, taken aback that people are shakng hands with the Holy Father before they get to him, throwing his arms up in a clear "whatever" gesture and later withdrawing his hand and raising it in a strange fist. Dr Jill, who seems to be in the habit of closely monitoring Joe during his public appearances, notices this with a certain hint of anxiety behind her fixed smile.

What strikes me as most peculiar is that I spent formative years in Washington society being groomed by a socially ambitious mother. I've been in reception lines with ambassadors and cabinet secretaries. (My guardian angel whisked me off to LA before this could take full effect.) This sort of routine is just muscle memory, especially for someone like Biden, who spent nearly his whole adulthood in that environment. Yet he acts like a 14 year old, disappointed that he's not Number One. Napoleon handled this stuff better; Hitler simply bypassed it.

Raymond Arroyo suggested something similar on Fox:

Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo said Friday that an awkward moment between President Joe Biden and Pope Francis showed why the Vatican did not want to broadcast the meeting.

Arroyo joined Fox News host Harris Faulkner to discuss Biden’s meeting with the pope as well as the Vatican’s last minute decision not to televise the event.

. . . “I think the Vatican was concerned that a live meeting, video of a live meeting, might expose Biden to a gaffe. No telling what he might say, and you heard some of the blarney about drinking and whiskey and being an Irishman. They wanted to tamp some of that down,” he continued.

The question yet again is whether this is a result of cognitive decline or whether he's always been that way. Having dealt with relatives with whom this was an open question, in the end, it's just hard to tell. After all, I knew those people when I was a toddler and started out believing that, like all adults, they were perfect. As I grew up and matured, I began to see serious questions of character and judgment. Did they emerge at just a certain age, or had they always been there?

Up to 2020, Biden's public profile had been a mediocre senator in a safe seat, and then vice president. The media never really focused on him, other than the plagiarism episode that ended his 1987 presidential bid, which was revealing in hindsight -- but nobody ever saw him as anything but a wannabe until he wasn't. My guess continues to be that he's always been that way.

It looks as though the Vatican made the best of a bad situation. But then, they have millennia of experience at doing just that. And don't neglect that the Vatican has the best intelligence operation anywhere, with agents in every town and village.

Just In Time For Halloween

I followed the deveopments in the BIF-Framework Democrat crisis in the House all day yesterday, but I found conservative media, aggregators, and blogs remarkably absent. The Hill, Politico, and NPR were, however, on the case, at least as far as individual developments were concerned. As of yesterday's post, things had just begun not to happen.

The problem was that on Wednesday, Speaker Pelosi had been unable to deliver on a House vote passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill. As a result, Thursday was represented as a last-ditch effort to pass it, either to give President Biden some sort of trophy to take to Glasgow, to give the party prestige going into the November 2 elections, or not to embarrass the president, or for the sake of his entire presidency. According to Politico,

President Joe Biden left Thursday for his second trip abroad with his massive domestic agenda -- and, by his own admission, his entire presidency -- hanging in the balance on Capitol Hill.

. . . "When the President gets off that plane, we want him to have a vote of confidence from this Congress," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told fellow Democrats in the meeting, stressing she wanted a vote on a bipartisan infrastructure package by the end of the day -- and imploring her her members "don't embarrass" Biden by voting down the package as he heads overseas.

According to The Hill,

In an exceptional interaction Thursday, Pelosi walked into a strategic meeting of the [Congressional Progressive Caucus], only to leave a short time later without speaking to the group.

[CPC Chair] Jayapal emerged not long afterwards to explain the group’s position. With a number of issues still unresolved in the social spending bill — and parts of the text yet to be written — Jayapal said liberals are sticking with their initial strategy, even if it means bucking leadership to delay the vote on the bipartisan infrastructure framework, often referred to as the BIF, until next week.

“There are ... too many 'no' votes for the BIF to pass today. However, we are committed to staying here until we get this Build Back Better Act done, get the legislative text,” Jayapal said after huddling in the basement of the Capitol with other members of the CPC.

Nevertheless, Pelosi waited intil very late in the day to delay the vote. Politico summed up,

THERE’S ALSO THIS LITTLE PROBLEM: BIDEN DIDN’T SELL IT. This entire episode looks similar to what happened in late September, when House Democratic leaders hoped Biden would come to the Hill and say to progressives: Vote for this damn BIF, and vote for it now.

But once again, he didn’t. And progressives picked up on that.

“He did not ask for a vote on the BIF today,” Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-Wash.) said right after the meeting. “The speaker did, but he did not. He said he wants votes on both bills."

The Hill summed up this morning:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) early Thursday evening delayed a vote on a separate $1 trillion infrastructure measure, despite having pushed hard to pass the measure earlier in the day.

The delay — the second postponement for the bill — was a rare exhibition of weakness from the Speaker, who prides herself on both her vote-counting abilities and her capacity to sway recalcitrant members of her caucus.

Wait a moment. "Rare exhibition of weakness"? She hasn't been able to get anything done since summer. The consensus is that the past week is just a replay of the end of September, when she had to delay precisely the same vote, calling on precisely the same Capitol visit from Biden, with precisely the same holdouts, despite weeks of precisely the same optimism on the Sunday talks. The establshment media is now saying she can maybe fix this somehow and try again next week. In other words, yet another do-or-die, last-ditch effort.

Except that with the "framework" for the BBB now in writing and key programs left out, it's Sen Sanders who's threatening to withdraw his Senate vote on the BBB. What's emerged this week is that neither Speaker Pelosi nor President Biden turns out to be capable of unifying the Democrats and delivering on promises. Meanwhile, they're wasting time and energy trying more do-overs, when it's increasingly plain that neither Pelosi nor Biden has the credibility to push the program forward.

What was that about doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result?

Never Mind

As I write this, President Biden has delayed his departure for Rome and as far as I can tell is in the process of addressing House Democrats on a whole new economic package that will somehow achieve a Democrat consensus when months of work on the BBB couldn't achieve this. This vignette shows where things actually stood yesterday afternoon as prospects for a vote on the BIF-cum-framework evaporated:

Democrats have already nixed a contentious plan to tax the wealth of roughly 700 billionaires, Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) confirmed Wednesday, after moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) voiced concerns earlier in the day over the proposed provision in President Joe Biden’s spending package.

. . . The senator’s comments came less than six hours after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, released legislative text for the proposed billionaire income tax, which would have required billionaires and Americans making more than $100 million annually to pay a long-term capital gains tax on unrealized profits.

So they're writing legislation at the very last minute and negotiating over it in public, running things up the flagpole and pulling them down again within hours. That's the status of the BBB -- Manchin has an immediate veto power over anything that might be proposed, except that Sen Sanders and the House progressives have a re-veto power over the BIF. According to Politico,

One Democratic source close to progressive lawmakers said Thursday morning that they had concerns that Sinema and Manchin still have not yet committed to voting for the [BBB] bill. This source added that Sanders has told House progressives he supported their position to hold off on advancing the infrastructure bill unless it and the social spending bill at the same time through their chamber.

. . . And they’re getting support from liberal allies in the Senate.

“A framework is part of getting to a final bill, but I’m not OK with the infrastructure bill being passed out of the House until we actually have a bill in the Senate,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).

According to NPR,

Biden is expected to travel to the Capitol building to address the House Democratic caucus at 9am and then address the nation at 11:30am ET.

This is a developing story.

The aggregators have been very spotty in covering this at all, but think about it. The president delays his departure on a junket, where he'd much prefer to be, in order to address House Democrats and then address the nation. At least in Biden's mind and those of his handlers, this is a full-blown crisis. You don't normally address the nation on short notice unless, say, the cities are burning down or the stock market has crashed.

Think of everything he's ignored, or paid lip service to at best, but a stalemate over a fantasy political agenda is a full-blown crisis. As an Aristotelian who looks for causes, I've got to ask why.

As NPR says, this is a developing story.

OK, So Here's What "Framework" Was

Yesterday, the media was buzzing about "framework.' As of this morning, it's not worth mentioning. I went to all kinds of effort to parse out what it meant, but suddenly this morning, it's a big never mind. Why? In addition, yesterday I was linking to stories from the weekend and early this week that there could be a vote on the BIF "as early as Wednesday", which is today, but this morning, there's not a peep about a vote. I've been suggesting for days that this wasn't going to happen.

Here's the frammis. As of yesterday, I pieced it out that the "framework" was some sort of executive summary or something of the BBB bill -- that is, the theoretical version of the bill acceptable in some reduced form to Sen Manchin --- without the legislative language. In other words, a sorta-kinda temporary placeholder for the actual bill. But why would such a thing be needed? This wasn't really made clear until later yesterday, when details of a meeting among Democrat legislators Monday evening gradually leaked out:

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) on Monday evening signaled she would continue to stall President Joe Biden’s massive spending agenda until her demands are met.

Jayapal told reporters she and her caucus remain as holdouts until both the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package and the $1.2 trillion “bipartisan” infrastructure are voted upon immediately after one another.

So there we are. This was the circumstance last summer, and despite the happy talk over the last two months about "progress" and how they're "this close" to a deal, it looks like nothing has actually changed. The House Progressive Caucus wants the BIF and the BBB voted on together, because they continue to feel they need the leverage of holding the BIF hostage to the BBB. Except the BBB is still up in the air and nowhere near ready for a vote, because nobody knows what will be in and what will be out yet. The story goes on,

Democrat leadership has floated the idea of voting on the “bipartisan” bill with only a framework in place for the reconciliation package. But allowing one measure to pass without a vote on the other would reduce the leverage the far-left has worked to maintain.

As a result, Jayapal flatly said a framework agreement on the reconciliation package would not suffice, demanding instead the reconciliation package be written and voted upon along with the “bipartisan” bill.

The demands to have the reconciliation package written could take weeks longer. Only parts of the package are reported to be written. The legislative text of the package is important to the far-left because it would guarantee certain radical provisions would be included.

So the "framework" is no longer a thing, having lasted as an idea for only a few days until as of Monday night it became clear to the Democrat leadership that there wasn't going to be a vote today, framework or not. So the media has quietly dropped it and gone back to Alec Baldwin.

But as of even yesterday, it was somehow urgent that there be a vote on the BIF "as early as Wednesday". As I'd surmised in scoping out the necessary timeline last week, President Biden leaves tomorrow for his junket to Rome and Scotland, so anything that must be finsished needs to be finished essentially by today. The reasons given are that he needs to have some sort of trophy to take to the global warming conference in Scotland, which he now hasn't got, and he needs some sort of prestige going into next week's elections in Virginia and New Jersey, ditto.

In fact, it appears that those in the know had understood that nothing had changed in the legislative calculations for months. I'd surmised this, but I had no inside sources to confirm it. The question I have is why the journalists who did have such sources never mentioned it. Instead, they allowed a charade to be played out for as long as they could.

Here's another question: much was made of a Sunday breakfast meeting among Sens Manchin and Schumer and President Biden. The assumpton seems to have been that they could potentially hash out a deal, but nothing came of it, other than Manchin's remarks a day later that a framework "should" emerge by the end of the week, except even if it does, it won't make any difference now. But where was Sen Sinema in this meeting? Doesn't she have her own independent issues over the BBB?

Last we heard, she's not necesssrily even returning Biden's calls. I'm not sure why Manchin did show up. That meeting was just for show. Manchin fully understood this and humored Biden for his own reasons. Sinema didn't bother.

I think the media across the board is negligent in reporting how bad the situation is for the administration. Among other things, I think they've completely underplayed what the insiders must know about Pelosi's incompetence and likely her own medical issues. Stein's Law: that which cannot conktinue must stop.

What Means "Framework?

On a day when the media was still preoccupied with Alec Baldwin, I seized on one of the few grains of potential information I could find. After Sen Manchin's breakfast with Sen Schumer and President Biden Sunday with no statement, Manchin did tell reporters something inscrutable yesterday:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Monday that he believed Democrats "should" be able to get a deal on a framework agreement for President Biden's social spending bill this week.

"Having it finished with all the t's and the i's and everything you know crossed and dotted that will be difficult from the Senate side because we have an awful lot of text to go through, but as far as conceptually we should, I really believe," Manchin told reporters on Monday.

Manchin added that Democrats "should be" able to reach a deal on a framework this week, adding that "it really should be" finished.

I guess it depends on what the meaning of "should" is. From my tech days, a common expression was "should work", meaning that if you've got a problem, you talk to your colleagues, read the manual, and check with the support desk, they'll give you a solution that should work, except that tech being tech, there's always a gotcha, and it might well not work, in which case you're on your own.

Then there's the sense that if someone finds someone's's wallet with cash and ID, he should return it with the cash to its owner. If you're driving on a road with a 50 mph speed limit and you see a sign saying reduce speed to 25, you should slow down. If the weather report says rain tomorrow, you should take an umbrella.

But on top of that, what's a "framework"? In context, it looks like Manchin is referring to a revised outline of the BBB bill that, while not in final legislative language, is acceptable to Manchin and would receive his critical vote. Should be done by Friday. Yeah.

As far as anyone knows, Manchin's conditions inclulde a top line something like $1.5 or $1.75 trillion, elimination of financial incentives for utilities to convert away from fossil fuels, and inclusion of the Hyde Amendment, which would contnue to prohibit federal funding of abortion. It appears to have been clear to all parties for some weeks at least that these are Manchin's terms for his vote. But according to Politico, as of last weekend,

Democrats believe a top line agreement is unlikely to come from Sunday's meeting given how much work is left, but things are moving fast enough that House leaders now may hold a vote on the Senate's bipartisan infrastructure deal as soon as Wednesday, according to multiple sources. That legislation has been caught up in the House, held by progressives who want a commitment from Manchin and Sinema on the rest of Biden's agenda.

While Democrats are hopeful that the president and the two senators can hash things out and strike a framework for the legislation aimed at climate action, child care, health care and education, they are somewhat far apart. Manchin is insisting on his $1.5 trillion number, and the White House and Democratic leaders are aiming to go as high as $2 trillion after initially pursuing a total of $3.5 trillion. Both sides may need to show some flexibility down the stretch, and if Manchin comes up to a higher number, it could save a program or two from being cut entirely from the package.

The slimming of the legislation is threatening to derail two long-held Democratic priorities: paid leave and Medicare expansion for dental, vision and hearing. Neither Biden nor progressives in the Senate have signed off on eliminating those, though that could become necessary to win Manchin's support and strike a quick deal.

It sounds as though Manchin's remarks to reporters yesterday were basically a nice way of saying he's still waiting to hear what he wants to hear. It also sounds as though he understands a "framework" is not the legislative language, which can't possibly be ready by the presumptive House vote tomorrow, Wednesday. This piece at the RedState blog is the only update on the stalemate I've found, and it cites a Twitter thread from CNN reporter Manu Raju:

On that topic, Steny Hoyer, the number 2 person in the Democrat House poured cold water on claims of leverage from the Bernie Sanders wing.

The RedState piece concludes,

In the end, these comments on negotiations show a party in chaos. Their coalition has crumbled, and those that have no leverage refuse to admit that reality. That’s a recipe for stalemate, and that’s exactly what we are currently seeing. The idea that a deal gets done before the end of the month, which is the White House’s goal, is probably a fantasy at this point.

I'm Still Skeptical

On September 29,. Roll Call ran this headline: Infrastructure vote still on despite reconciliation stalemate

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late Wednesday that the House will move ahead with a Thursday vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, despite massive uncertainty that Democrats can pass it.

“The plan is to bring the bill to the floor,” the California Democrat told reporters after she and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer met with President Joe Biden at the White House.

Asked whether she would have the votes needed to pass it, Pelosi promised nothing.

“One hour at a time,” she said.

On September 24, this story ran on Geen Wire: Pelosi confirms vote ‘next week’ on reconciliation package

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed today she’ll bring a multitrillion-dollar reconciliation bill to the chamber floor next week that makes major investments in combating the climate crisis.

The California Democrat’s announcement could end the intraparty standoff over the fate of a separate, $1 trillion infrastructure bill on Monday, Sept. 27. Moderates say that measure needs to be voted on by that date, but progressives said they’d tank it if they don’t have a reconciliation bill to vote on with it.

But it’s still not clear what, exactly, the House will be voting on next week, as negotiations with the Senate continue over key policy provisions as well as the current, $3.5 trillion top line.

A month later, we're getting deja vu all over again: Pelosi on Trillion Dollar Spending Bill: 'I Think We Are Pretty Much There Now'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced on Sunday that Democrats would reach an agreement this week on President Joe Biden's proposed spending bill.

"We have 90 percent of the bill agreed to and written. We just have some of the last decisions to be made," Pelosi said, according to The Hill.

When asked if a deal could be struck before Biden leaves for Europe on Friday, Pelosi replied, "I think we are pretty much there now," adding that the scaled-back plan, scheduled for Oct. 31, is still set.

As of yesterday,

Deadline driven, President Joe Biden brought two pivotal senators to his Delaware home Sunday for talks aimed at resolving the disputes that have stymied the Democrats’ wide-ranging social safety net and environmental measure at the core of his domestic agenda.

Beyond the domestic timetable, Biden is pressing for progress so he can spotlight his administration’s achievements to world leaders at overseas summits that get underway this week.

. . . The White House said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., came to Biden’s home in Wilmington, where he was spending the weekend, for the session but did not immediately provide a statement detailing what was discussed.

Indeed. We're seeing the exact same pattern we had last month, with Speaker Pelosi giving happy talk about what's going to happen tomorrow or next week, while the one key player, Sen Manchin, is keeping quiet. So why do the Sunday talks keep letting her get away with this over and over?

Meanwhile,

Pelosi appeared surprised when CNN’s “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper asked about whether she would run again for her congressional seat, which she has held since 1987.

“I do want to ask about your own future in Congress. Are you going to run for reelection?” Tapper asked.

“Oh, you think I’m going to make an announcement right here and now?” she responded.

As someone once said, she's a highly overrated person. It's harder and harder to keep the secret. I also get the sense Sen Manchin detests President Biden, but that's another story.

Let's Go Fauci!

The photo above appeared on one of the aggregators with the caption Cruella de Fauci. What's actually been on my mind for some weeks, as an Aristotelian who looks for causes, is why Dr Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health and Dr Fauci's boss, chose to announce his retirement when he did.

The news cycle at the time had been relatively benign as regarded Fauci, Dr Walensky, and Collins himself, but my guess is Collins was fully aware of FOIA and similar requests for records regarding US funding of Wuhan gain of function research. as well as the Tunisian puppy experiments.

The White Coat Waste Project, the nonprofit organization that first pointed out that U.S. taxpayers were being used to fund the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology, have now turned its sights on Anthony Fauci on another animal-testing-related matter — infecting dozens of beagles with disease-causing parasites to test an experimental drug on them.

. . . According to the White Coat Waste Project, the Food and Drug Administration does not require drugs to be tested on dogs, so the group is asking why the need for such testing.

White Coat Waste claims that 44 beagle puppies were used in a Tunisia, North Africa, laboratory, and some of the dogs had their vocal cords removed, allegedly so scientists could work without incessant barking.

This dubious research was funded by Fauci's NIAID, and the agency had a responsibility to monitor the grant, as it did the Wuhan gain of function research. There seems little question that Fauci lied to congress about the Wuhan matter, but now it looks like his agency has been outsourcing puppy torture to the Tunisians as well. Not only that, but Fauci's wife, Dr. Christine Grady, is currently Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. A web search on Dr Grady brought up this link, a fact check from Reuters:

Fact check: Dr. Christine Grady, Anthony Fauci’s wife, is not Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister.

Well, that's a relief. Reuters is on the case! Dr Fauci can ask his wife for impeccable bioethical advice whenever he needs it now! I guess the possibility that she was Ghislaine Maxwell's sister kept him from asking her about the puppies before this.

I have a feeling Dr Collins knew he'd be in the line of fire over the puppies, Wuhan, and likely other cases we still don't know about, and decided to duck out while the ducking was good. There's no question that Fauci should have been fired well before now; he's been the chief spokesman and public enabler for a public health and public policy catastrophe that's had worldwide effects that are still playing themselves out. A key step, long overdue, would be to replace US public health leadership with capable people who aren't connected to the current group, if any such can be found.

In fact, I would think a key step President Biden could take to arrest his current decline in the polls would be to announce some version of a firing for Fauci, and maybe other key deputies, like today. There are few public figures more unpopular with the plebs than Fauci at this point, except of course the president, the vice president, and the speaker. But a public skewering of Fauci would mark a start in clearing the atmosphere.

Fauci could avert this by preemptively announcing his own retirement, which Hugh Hewitt, a second-string Salem Radio host, has already suggested to him. Indeed, the White House should be strongly suggesting this course as we speak, but of course, it won't.

Let's Go Fauci!

They're Working All Weekend!

Via ABC News:

A deal within reach, President Joe Biden and Congress’ top Democrats edged close to sealing their giant domestic legislation, though the informal deadline appeared to slip as they worked to scale back the measure and determine how to pay for it.

Negotiations were expected to continue into the weekend, all sides indicating just a few issues remained unsettled in the sweeping package of social services and climate change strategies.

No agreement was announced by Friday's self-imposed deadline to at least agree on a basic outline. Biden wants a deal before he leaves next week for global summits in Europe.

Biden met at the White House on Friday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer joined by video call from from New York, trying to shore up details.

. . . Pelosi hoped the House could start voting as soon as next week, but no schedule was set.

President Biden will be in Rome to meet with the pope on Friday, October 29, so I assume he's leaving October 28. If this were a realistic estimate, the leaders should have a package for him by Wednesday. But anyhow, the president is on the case!

At the White House, the president has "rolled up his sleeves and is deep in the details of spreadsheets and numbers,” press secretary Jen Psaki said.

Biden was to spend the weekend at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

Well, that should tell you just how urgent this matter is! The problem is that, as the story I cited yesterday says, the one who actually controls the deal is Sen Manchin. His view is that he's comfortable with no deal, and things ought to wait at least six months. ABC News didn't seem to want to contact him about that. As yesterday's story quoted him,

"This is not gonna happen anytime soon, guys," he said Thursday afternoon.

“I don’t see that happening," he also told reporters.

Don Lemon Didn't Get The Memo

But he's begun to see that there is one. According to Fox News:

CNN host Don Lemon flipped out on Democrats Wednesday, slamming his fist on his desk as he ranted that they weren't doing enough to sell their agenda to the American people and rescue democracy.

. . . "Democrats get your butts in gear and get passionate about saving this damn country! You’re not doing it. You’re weak. You are weak. You are weak," Lemon said as he beat his hand on his desk.

Lemon claimed the massive Democrat-backed multi-trillion dollar social spending package included items that Americans wanted but weren't being advocated for in the right way.

I've been saying since last month that something's hinky about this whole BBB-Bernie $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. The bosses have been saying they're gonna work all weekend to get it done, but as I learned in my tech days, if you actually go in to the office over that weekend, nobody's there. But deadline after deadline comes and goes, and there's no sense of urgency in Washington, either. Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer have had nothing to say all week, and Biden has been reminiscing about Amtrak again.

Clearly something else is up. I got a sense of it here:

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) squabbled behind closed doors Wednesday, with Manchin using a raised-fist goose egg to tell his colleague he can live without any of President Biden's social spending plan, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The disagreement, recounted to Axios by two senators in the room, underscores how far apart two key members remain as the Democratic Party tries to meet its deadline for reaching an agreement on a budget reconciliation framework by Friday.

The politely mislabeled "disagreement" between Manchin and Sanders is nothing new, but all of a sudden we learn of a "deadline for reaching an agreement on a budget reconciliation framework by Friday," which is today, and which is clearly not going to happen. But yet again, this is oh by the way, and there's no urgency, at least for anyone but Don Lemon. But the story has more:

Manchin's comfort level with zero as a final number — and his willingness to threaten Sanders with it publicly at Wednesday's lunch for Senate committee chairs — reveals a stark reality for Democratic negotiators: Manchin can control the final dollar amount.

But how is this public? The story gives the context as a "behind closed doors" meeting of Democrat committee chairs. Except that two Deomocrat committee chairs promptly leaked what went on.

Another witness, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said, "There was a vigorous, 10-minute discussion. Bernie said, '$6 trillion.'" . . . Overall, Coons said, there was "significant progress" in the meeting about identifying the core issues remaining.

He said the parties also forged ahead with "figuring out which of our different committee chairs and caucus leaders have a role in getting those issues closed, and trying to get people to be to be direct."

So wait a moment. According to this story, they've missed yet another deadline for coming up with a "framework", but that's OK, they've made significant "progress" on identifing "core issues". Now, the next announced deadline is October 31, with four legislative days remaining before then. And both Pelosi and Manchin have already said the October 31 deadline is nowhere near set in stone.

But there was another story that gives away another part of the deal:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) in an exclusive interview with The Hill on Thursday said he has no plans to leave the Democratic Party and has not threatened to do so.

. . . “What is true,” Manchin told The Hill, “is that I have told the president, Chuck Schumer, and even the whole caucus that if it is ‘embarrassing’ to them to have a moderate, centrist Democrat in the mix and if it would help them publicly, I could become an Independent — like Bernie — and then they could explain some of this to the public saying it’s complicated to corral these two Independents, Bernie and me.”

Not only that, but Manchin has been trolling Sanders all week, and it sounds more and more as if this is to the tacit amusement of his colleagues. In other words, this whole idea of Manchin holding up the show is, yet again, kabuki. Manchin is still in the club, still a good ol' boy. There's an amusing food fight between Manchin and Sanders (who I suspect is not in the club) at the closed-door luncheon, but in the background is a very clear sense that the Democrat insiders are slow-walking this whole process. It isn't going to get done by October 31 or any other date.

There's another ingredient to the kabuki, the debt ceiling, which must be extended by December 3. Sen McConnell has told Schumer he must pass it via reconciliation, with no Republican help. Since November will be an effective total loss, Schumer should be setting up for this now, right? Instead, crickets.

There's been a deal. The memo has likely been out for months. The BBB-Bernie thing goes quietly away, and McConnell delivers the Republican votes on the debt ceiling. They're throwing Biden under the bus, but he's served his purpose. Actually, I wonder if Biden was ever more than a wannabe with the club. Obama knew this as well.

More Thoughts On The Ordinariate Missal

I've moved on from studying Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes and have started Anthony Esolen's The Beauty of the Word: A Running Commentary on the Roman Missal. This is described as "A comprehensive, step-by-step commentary on the changes in the Order of Mass (including Prefaces), the Proper of Time, and the Proper of Saints" for the 2011 revision of the Roman Missal.

Looking back on my various confirmation classes, including Evangelium and the RCIA course, but going even farther back to my Episcopalian confirmation class, almost nothing covered in the Vatican II constitutions, and none of the key insights Esolen brings to the liturgy, was in any of those classes, which is unfortunate, but I'm at least glad to have been able to catch up. For instance, it was only after researching the subject several years ago that I discovered the three-year lectionary, now adopted by most US Anglicans as well as something like 200 other Protestant denominations, was an innovation stemming from Vatican II.

In fact, the lectionary, which I admire tremendously, seems nevertheless to be at the basis of objections in the US to The Episcopal Church's 1979 Book of Common Prayer. But so little time was spent on this in my Episcopalian confirmation class that I assumed it came from the Church Fathers or something -- only someone like St Augustine could have had the comprehensive understanding of scripture to put something like that together. At least, that's what I thought. Instead, I discover it was developed much more recently by people who were nearly as smart.

I haven't followed critiques of the ordinariates' Divine Worship missal very closely, except that in light of reading Esolen, I'm beginning to see that in comparison to the 2011 Roman Missal, the DW missal is looking more and more like a slapdash job. My regular correspondent from the old blog brings me up to date:

Presumably most ordinariate members/attendees outside the UK are quite happy with Divine Worship:The Missal. But it has many detractors, although from inconsistent points of view. Christian Campbell from time to time lobs an acid comment onto one or other of the two main Ordinariate-themed Facebook pages regarding DW’s debt to the Ordinary Form mass, a very Bad Thing in his opinion. Presumably he and those who “Like” his comments want the Ordinariates to uphold English standards of church decor, choral music, liturgical taste and tone, etc but are really Traditional Latin Mass supporters at heart.

On the other side we have Christopher Mahon and the “Anglican” contingent, who lament DW’s every departure from the Book of Common Prayer: the three-year lectionary and the consequent disharmony between the Collects and the readings, the Cranmerised Roman Canon, the general cut-and-paste nature of DW. Naturally there is overlap in their specific complaints about the Ordinariate liturgy, although they come from opposite perspectives.

I think the problem is summed up by Bp Lopes’s decision regarding the celebrations of Ascension Day and Epiphany. The Anglican tradition is to celebrate these on the fortieth day after Easter and January 6, respectively; the USCCB has moved both to Sundays. Bp Lopes stated that the OSCP could not differ from the USCCB on both celebrations, and after consultation left Ascension Day on a Thursday and moved Epiphany to the Sunday. A foot in both camps, in other words.

My impression is that anyone who is genuinely knowledgeable about liturgy finds much to deprecate about DW, however satisfactory it is to those who simply enjoy its Olde English Bulldogge/TLM-lite aesthetic. Consequently it’s hard to imagine how Bp Lopes could be regarded as qualified to chair a liturgical committee, but then Bp Rozanski also would also seem an odd choice.

BTW, one of the announcements at the recent annual meeting of all active OCSP clergy is that there will be an external audit of every community’s finances this coming year. Not a minute too soon, I would imagine. Presumably an attempt to avoid a repetition of the debacle at St Barnabas, Omaha.

So what I'm seeing is that there's a cult of traditionalists who not only object to mass in the vernacular, but who also object to the three-year lectionary. I've run into this now and then, but the specific issues remain unclear to me -- the reasoning seems to be that if Catholics were less reverent after 1970, it was due not only to the departure from Latin, but also the new lectionary. And this is also related to traditionalist Anglican objections to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

The question I would raise is that the only ordinariate that's doing well at all, the one in North America, is still functioning at a C-minus level, to the point that the chancery seems now to be worrying about where such money as the communities have is being spent. (Let's not think for now about the priest who beat his wife before the altar, or the one who got the hospital sisters upset by celebrating OF daily mass ad orientem.) Well, maybe if they could clean up the collects, the prefaces, and the readings, things would get better. Yeah.

The problem I have with that is as I read Esolen, I discover that the people who put the 2011 missal together had all the potential discrepancies worked out. And they did a good job with it. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?

Two Incongruous Bishops

This morning, the sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Given all that isn't happening with the BBB, the BIF, and the debt ceiling, yesterday's big news was the elevation of Dr Rachel Levine to the rank of four star admiral, a breakthrough for transgenders. The crack journalists at the RedState blog posted a word salad headline: Democrat Counter to Glenn Youngkin Enthusiasm Enters Into the Pathetic.

But with everyone else on virtual vacation, I can at least fall back on the Roman Catholic ordinariates for recovering, or maybe not, Anglicans. Let's take the case of The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali:

{T}he former Anglican bishop of Rochester, England, was received into the church Sept. 29 by Msgr. Keith Newton, head of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, which was established in 2011 by Pope Benedict XVI for the corporate reception of Anglican communities.

I'd noticed Bp Nazir-Ali on occasion when he was still in Rochester as a conservative voice in the Church of England, but his course since then strikes me as erratic. The story continues,

The married father of two retired from Rochester, England, in 2009 and, since 2010, has served as the visiting bishop of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina.

A "visiting bishop", at least in The Episcopal Church, is a largely honorary position awarded to retired bishops. Their chief duty is to "visit" parishes for confirmations and other ceremonial "episcopal visits", mainly to relieve the schedules of the diocesan and suffragan bishops. However, Bp Nazir-Ali held this position in the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, which is part of the Anglican Church in North America, a breakaway body from The Episcopal Church that is not in communion with it, the Church of England, or the rest of the Anglican Communion.

As a result, the Catholic reporting on Nazir-Ali neglects the point that by this time, he's an Anglican-with-an-asterisk and had already left the Anglican Communion. In fact, from what I hear of the screening process for former Anglican priests seeking ordination in one of the ordinariates, a reasonable question for the bishop would be why he chose to go to the more-Protestant-than-the-Protestants ACNA rather than simply to convert to Catholicism once his dissatisfaction with Anglicanism became clear to him.

In fact, the ACNA is known for being "low church", that is, leaning toward the side of Anglicanism that takes the XXXIX Articles seriously. These, among other things, denounce the pope and transsubstantiation. Was he not serious in going to the ACNA? If not, how do we know he's serious in now converting to Catholicism?

Another question that Msgr Newton might not ask him is why he chose to be received via the UK ordinariate, which is moribund. Few of its parishes own their property, and few use the Divine Worship missal that is used mainly in the US. Beyond that, Nazir-Ali is 72, retired first as a bishop and now as a "visiting bishop". It would seem his ordination is a purely political gesture, actually not much different from the elevation of Admiral Levine to flag rank.

A visitor sent me a link to this piece in California Catholic Daily, The strange race for chair of the USCCB liturgy committee with the remark that Bp Steven Lopes of the North American ordinariate, who was left indisposed for many months last year after a mysterious fall from an attic ladder, may simply have been practicing to climb another ladder. The article says,

But this year, the race to chair the bishops’ liturgy committee features an interesting pair of choices, Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski of St. Louis and Bishop Stephen Lopes of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. Neither appears an obvious selection for the job, which might suggest that some potential candidates have steered clear of running for a seat on the third rail of American ecclesiastical life.

. . . Lopes was made a bishop in 2016, making him relatively young in the conference for a senior committee chair. Like Rozanski, he possesses no advanced degrees in liturgical studies, though he has studied sacramental theology. But perhaps most interesting is that Lopes doesn’t even lead an ordinary Latin rite diocese at all.

As ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, Lopes is responsible for shepherding former Anglicans who came into communion with the Church after Benedict XVI’s 2009 apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus.

Lopes's version of the liturgy, whose approval he facilitated while at the Vatican, is an overlong and clumsy merger of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer with a translation of the Tridentine Roman Canon, larded with archaisms and normally celebrated ad orientem. The ordinariate over which he presides has been dogged with repeated scandals and infelicitous ordinations. It numbers about 40 communities and has membership in the mid four digits, though with that, it's far more successful than those in the UK and Australia.

I ran this by my regular correspondent from the old blog, who reported on the consensus in the blogosphere:

Some support for the point of view in this article — ie nobody wants the job, but there is also the suggestion that Bp Rozanski does want the job and has made a deal with Cdl Cupich in return for supporting something or other. In any event, Bp Lopes seen as a no-hoper, but along with his Prayer Breakfast gig and some other appearances does suggest to me that he is trying to raise his profile and get away from narrow identification with the North American ordinariate, which is going nowhere.

How Is This "Negotiation" Anything But A Charade?

Media reports from both ends of the spectrum on what's being hyped as "negotiations" on the BBB and BIF bills are in a strange never-never land. I noted yesterday that the Washington Examiner says the BBB is "still unwritten", but this doesn't stop CBS News from referring to a 2,465 page bill and listing a series of line items. So how does Susan Ferrechio, Chief Congressional Correspondent for the Examiner, who wrote that piece, still have a job if someone from CBS can give a page count?

CBS calls it the standard $3.5 trillion in that piece, but this story by Sean Moran, who happens to be a a congressional reporter for Breitbart News, calls it "the $3.1 trillion reconciliation bill, or the Build Back Better Act". This is just one of the many discrepancies over the actual numbers for both the BBB and BIF that I've seen in recent weeks.

The only conclusion I can draw is that none of these people is working real hard. Sean Moran goes on to say,

Since Senate Democrats only have a one-member majority, either Manchin or Sinema could tank the Build Back Better Act by withdrawing their support.

A promising middle school student who follows current events knows this is incorrect: the Senate is tied, nobody has a majority, but the vice president, currently a Democrat, casts the deciding vote in a tie. How does a professional journalist anywhere on the spectrum get this so wrong? The whole press corps, with only a few exceptions, is lazy and ignorant, and they get away with it. People like me have to spend some amount of time and energy every morning double checking these paid and prestigious experts.

But we're basically getting the same happy talk about "progress" that we got last month. The Hill has this story:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) met separately Monday with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) as liberals and centrists in the party struggle to cut a deal on President Biden's sweeping spending plan.

Except it isn't "President Biden's sweeping spending plan"; reports are that Sanders is the author. Biden has been detached at best. The story goes on,

"I would hope that we're going to see some real action within the next week or so," Sanders told reporters. "We discussed the way forward."

But NBC News reports,

As the clock ticks with few signs of progress, the White House is holding a series of meetings this week to pressure Democrats to resolve their differences and reach a deal on President Joe Biden's sweeping economic policy bill.

. . . "The president is certainly feeling an urgency to move things forward, to get things done. I think you've seen that urgency echoed by members on the Hill who agree that time is not unending here and we're eager to move forward with a unified path," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a key centrist holdout who has rejected the proposed $3.5 trillion level, expressed doubt that a deal could be reached by the end of the month.

"There's an awful lot that's going on. I don't know how that would happen," he told reporters Monday.

For now, I think what's happening is that Pelosi is quietly dropping the Götterdämmerung strategy the Democrats adopted after the 2020 election: if the world is going to end, the thing to do is run up your credit cards just before it does so you don't have to pay them back. Conservative Treehouse, a blog on the Kraken right, summarizes this strategy:

Joe Biden is an appointed figurehead for a background agenda driven by Obama’s Chicago Marxists. The Biden far-left policy agenda is strategically a massive throw everything at the legislative process in an effort to create major change in a short period of time. Biden is the disposable front man for this operation, and Pelosi is the facilitating legislative cohort.

. . . Everything you would normally consider to be a concern that would limit the extremes of any legislative effort has been removed. They plan to lose next year, so they have nothing to lose right now.

I question that this anything like a strictly Marxist agenda -- Marx had nothing to say about climate change or gender dysphoria, for instance -- but it's correct to see it as an attempt to run up the credit cards before the world ends.

The problem is that Visa is already declining charges well before you've bought the yacht. The actual strategy for now is to transition to "never mind" without seeming to. So just as we did last month, we're goinng to see happy talk about we're gonna work all weekend until something else comes up and the whole thing drops off the screen. The point now is exclusively to save face.

I suspect the press knows this and isn't putting much effort into the story.

Is Obama Pulling The Strings?

Back in August, I was frustrated that nothing was happening in the news, but at least I could justify it, because it was August. But as of this morning's headlines, still nothing. The big event is the death of fully vaxxed Colin Powell from COVID. But right after that, a major aggregator has Washington Post Deputy Editorial Page Editor Ruth Marcus getting trolled for mask-shaming some dude in an elevator. Nothing's happening.

So this may be one reason for a steady stream of speculation about who's pulling President Biden's strings, mostly focusing on Barack Obama. Most recently, commentators have noted that Obama is campaigning for McAuliffe in Virginia when Biden would probably be a net negative there.

The problem is that if Obama were in fact pulling Biden's strings, it's hard to imagine that Biden would be doing as disastrously as he is. But Obama himself reportedly said, “You know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden.” Obama may be campaigning for McAuliffe, but as far as trying to negotiate the BBB deal among the feuding Democrats, he's nowhere to be found. Other people have the leverage there.

Respectable media is finally starting to notice that nothing's happening. The Washington Examiner has begun to catch up:

The House and Senate return to session next week and will have only 10 legislative days [actually eight] to meet an Oct. 31 deadline set to pass both the social welfare spending package and a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

The two measures, which make up the entirety of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda, are in doubt.

. . . In an interview Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t commit to the Oct. 31 date she set just weeks ago.

“We’ll bring the bill to the floor when we have the votes to bring the bill to the floor,” the California Democrat told reporters at a San Francisco event touting the still-unwritten legislation.

In addition to getting the number of legislative days wrong, this story also illustrates the obtusenss of reporters on either end of the spectrum. The BBB is hardly "still unwritten". In 2009, the late Rush Limbaugh made an important point about Obamacare: he said that bill must have been drafted years earlier in think tanks, and the draft had long been circulating. The BBB agenda is the same. It's described, as it is above, as "the entirety of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda", but stories also say now and then that Sen Sanders, the self-described socialist, is the one who drafted it.

And likely Sanders himself had little to do with its actual content, except to endorse what other well-placed loonies had put into the draft, which a Limbaugh in health would be asserting now is likely a years-old pipe dream that Sanders and his allies could finally bring to the floor due to Pelosi's and Biden's weakness. But the pipe dream was something concocted in a time when the Democrats had bigger majorities. Their current control of congress is so thin that in both houses, tiny groups of recalcitrants in the low single digits can stall a putative juggernaut.

Right now, if anyone is pulling the strings, it's Sen Sinema. Everyone else is in a fantasy.

I'm Not A Karl Rove Fan

But the clip above shows he's been paying attention. I've been focused on the putative Oct 31 deadline to pass BBB via reconciliation, but Rove speaks to the bigger picture: by the White House schedule, the debt ceiling extension, governmnent funding, the BIF, and the BBB must all be passed by December 3. He makes the point that Sen Schumer doesn't want to use reconciliation to pass the debt ceiling extension, because this leads to a "vote-a-rama". CNN explains this:

Usually in the legislative process, lawmakers can use a series of procedural maneuvers to avoid voting on amendments. But in a budget reconciliation process -- which Democrats are using to advance their sweeping package -- you can't do that.

Lawmakers cannot hold a final vote on a reconciliation bill until all the amendments have been "disposed of," or in simpler terms, "voted on." The practice involves votes on a series of amendments that can -- and usually do -- stretch for hours.

. . . These marathon voting sessions can go for hours and often all night. The amendments are not binding, but they serve as a way for each party to force the other side on the record about controversial issues. This is where future political ads are born.

Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, said Tuesday that it's possible an agreement is reached to have 10-minute votes and to finish by midnight, but he cautioned that it's "easier said than done."

Other estimates I've heard recently suggest it would take roughly two weeks to pass either the BBB or debt ceiling extension by reconciliation with a vote-a-rama. This is at least the public reason Sen McConnell allowed Sen Schumer until December to pass the debt ceiling extension, presumably plenty of time if Schumer actually takes that step. However, every indication is that Schumer won't take it.

But Rove also raises the point that the UN Climate Conference is taking place in Glasgow on Nov 1-2, to which many administration figures will travel, and it will be part of Biden's own European trip beginning Oct 30. And although Rove mentions the Thanksgiving holiday (a week-long congressional recess), he doesn't mention the additional week-long Veterans Day congressional recess, also in November. So between junkets and holidays, it's even more likely than I had originally surmised that November is a near total loss.

And so far, all we've heard from Speaker Pelosi is the same happy talk about "progress" that she gave last month. And if Sen Schumer were serious about advancing anything via reconciliation, the unlikelihood of getting anything at all done in November means he needs to start when the Senate returns from its latest recess tomorrow.

So it looks like the Democrats are continuing to channel the incompetent tech managers I used to work for, doubling down on bigger and bigger deadlines that they're gonna work all weekend to meet. But now there's yet another deadline:

Since his inauguration this year, questions have been raised about Biden's physical and cognitive wellbeing.

Psaki repeated her previous promise that once the president gets a physical - which she said in May would be before the end of 2021 - the administration would be 'transparent' about its findings.

. . . Requests for Biden's medical records were reignited last month after a September 16 speech the 78-year-old president made was frequently interrupted by his persistent cough.

Stein's Law: that which cannot continue must stop

Stuck In The 1960s

Further to yesterday's post, I'm still not seeing any willingness by congressional leftists to recognize a need to make serious reductions in their reconciliation package to get anything through, although President Biden is now making noises in that direction

President Joe Biden publicly conceded Friday that the dollar amount of the proposed $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill was going to shrink during a speech at a child care center in Connecticut.

'We're not going to get $3.5 trillion, we'll get less than that. We're going to get it. And we're going to come back and get the rest,' he said, addressing a room partially filled with Democratic lawmakers.

But this suggests to me that there's no serious coordination taking place between the White House and congressional Democrat leaders. He went on to say,

But the question is how much of what is important will we get into the legislation. I’m of the view that it’s important to establish the principle on a whole range of issues, without guaranteeing you get the whole things here.

In other words, he seems to be endorsing the strategy that they'll fund a wide range of programs on a short-term basis and get funds to continue them later. But in yesterday's post, I noted Speaker Pelosi's position:

“Overwhelmingly, the guidance I am receiving from Members is to do fewer things well so that we can still have a transformative impact on families in the workplace and responsibly address the climate crisis: a Build Back Better agenda for jobs and the planet For The Children!”

So with two weeks and eight legislative days to go until their October 31 deadline, so far, they haven't focused on a single strategy. But Sen Sanders, who seems to be the leader of the leftist congressional faction, appears still to think they can get the whole package without negotiation, if only they can bully Sens Manchin and Sinema into going along:

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) are ramping up their war of words as Democrats struggle to get past weeks of increasingly public infighting over their sweeping social spending plan.

Sanders, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, fired the latest salvo on Friday taking the fight over the plan to West Virginia. Sanders penned a Charleston Gazette-Mail op-ed, which will run in the newspaper Sunday, to tout the benefits that could be included under a $3.5 trillion bill, a top-line figure that Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) oppose.

. . . Sanders has downplayed that he, Manchin and Sinema need to get in a room together to try to work out their differences, recently telling a reporter who floated the idea that "this is not a movie."

. . . “The time for us to be negotiating with ourselves is over, and I think it is absolutely incumbent on the two senators ... to start telling us what they want," Sanders told reporters during the Tuesday call.

Nevertheless,

Sanders hasn't yet said what below $3.5 trillion he could support, characterizing the top-line figure as a significant compromise for progressives who wanted a $6 trillion bill.

Yet again, I don't think either the leftists or the Democrat leadership understand the basic question of time and the calendar. In the 1960s, Sanders and those in his corner had all the time in the world to make useless protests and demonstrations. The difference is that now, a clock is ticking.

But there's also the increasing likelihood that the pressure Sanders is actively and tacitly putting on Manchin and Sinema to get them not just to negotiate but to surrender will serve only to irritate them further and potentially push one or both out of the Democrat party.

Yeah, We're Gonna Work All Weekend

So now I'm seeing that the Democrats plan to finish an agreement on the BIF and the BBB by October 31. Both the House and Senate have been on recess this past week, with key figures like Speaker Pelosi and Sen Sinema in Europe. The House and Senate do return next week, but the House will be working only four day weeks until the 31st, while the Senate will at least be wrorking five day weeks.

Although I had earlier seen December 3 as a deadline, November is going to be pretty much of a loss, with both houses in holiday recess for two weeks. But a Washington insiders' newsletter says,

We’ve pointed this out before, but Democrats truly are nowhere when it comes to finishing this reconciliation package. The “serious progress” that has been made is not really evident to us, or to the lawmakers involved.

→ Democratic leaders on the Hill have been unable to reach agreement on a topline number. This is key to everything and is at the heart of their stalemate.

→ Progressives, especially in the Senate, are still demanding a massive expansion of Medicare to include vision, healing and dental programs. That’s a big, big expenditure.

→ House Democrats continue to push for Medicaid expansion and making Obamacare subsidies permanent.

→ The two chambers keep exchanging proposals -- there have been some swapped this week. But they aren’t close to a deal, our sources tell us. Which is why the White House needs to lean in.

So there's unwillingness to compromise among House leftists, while Sens Manchin and Sinema appear to be holding the line on their own demands.

A major holdup in the talks is Sinema's opposition to any tax increases for individuals and large corporations, per two Senate Democratic aides familiar with the matter. Her position threatens to deprive the package of over $700 billion in revenue to finance the bulk of President Joe Biden's agenda.

. . . Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chair of the 96-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters that progressives were open to cutting the price tag but not the overall scope of the package, favoring packing as many priorities into the legislation as possible, with shorter expiration dates.

"We're not going to pit childcare against climate change," she said. "We're not going to pit seniors against young people."

But Speaker Pelosi is sending a different message:

“In order to pass both the Build Back Better Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill on time, it is essential that difficult decisions must be made very soon,” she wrote to House Democrats, referencing the two planks of Biden’s agenda.

She continued: “Overwhelmingly, the guidance I am receiving from Members is to do fewer things well so that we can still have a transformative impact on families in the workplace and responsibly address the climate crisis: a Build Back Better agenda for jobs and the planet For The Children!”

As I've been saying, a key indicator of incompetence is an inability to plan tasks realistically and adhere to any sort of real-world schedule. It doesn't appear to me that anything has been done to resolve the problems that led to the Democrat failures last month, despite vague happy talk about "progress". We're still just gonna work all weekend to fix it.

The COVID Religion And Abp Broglio

The controversy over United Airlines's vaccine mandate has brought to the fore a key question for people who request exemptions based on religious or conscientious grounds. United's original policy states:

"Given our focus on safety and the steep increases in Covid infections, hospitalizations and deaths, all employees whose request is approved will be placed on temporary, unpaid personal leave on October 2 while specific safety measures for unvaccinated employees are instituted," said United's memo to employees. "Given the dire statistics...we can no longer allow unvaccinated people back into the workplace until we better understand how they might interact with our customers and their vaccinated co-workers."

Although the employees' unions were slow to react, six individual employees did file a class action suit against the company, which is covered in a lengthy, obtuse, and poorly organized piece in Breitbart News.

United Airlines originally told its 67,000 U.S. employees they must be vaccinated against Chinese coronavirus (or secure an exemption) by September 27 or face termination. As the airline’s vaccine mandate stands, any employees with exemptions would still be considered employed but would be placed on unpaid leave and would lose their benefits for up to six years or until the airline deems pandemic conditions safe for unvaccinated employees to return, according to the complaint.

However, the airline indicated that exemptions of any sort would be few and difficult to obtain, and employees who considered requesting one would, according to the CEO, be "putting your job on the line. You better be very careful about that." But in response to the lawsuit, "the airline agreed of its own accord to postpone its vaccine mandate until October 15 for employees with exemptions during litigation." Yesterday, the judge issued a temporary restraining order extending this deadline to October 26 as he considered other issues raised in the case. Still, unvaccinated employees are subject to punitive and humiliating treatment during even this pause:

According to an internal memo obtained by Breitbart News, the airline has temporarily mandated that unvaccinated employees wear N-95 or KN95 respirator masks at all times, effective October 2, as it waits for “the outcome of the litigation” regarding its reasonable accommodation process.

The internal memo continues,

You must wear your mask at all times in all United locations, including outdoors and on aircraft (this includes for personal or business travel). You may remove your mask only when you are actively eating or drinking and you must put your mask back on in between bites and sips. To the extent possible, please only eat or drink outdoors or in rooms alone or when socially distanced from others. Failure to comply with this mask requirement is subject to disciplinary action as outlined in the mask policy in the Working Together Guidelines.

This policy goes well beyond current CDC guidlines or OSHA rules and amounts to effective religious discrimination. In fact, for those who suggest COVID has become a state religion, it clearly suggests that the unvaccinated are ritually unclean and disregards current medical evidence that vaccinated individuals spread COVID as easily as unvaccinated.

I can't help but see Abp Broglio's announcement in that context:

“No one should be forced to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience,” Timothy Broglio, archbishop for the military services, said in a statement.

Since Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a military-wide vaccine mandate this summer, Broglio said, some service members have requested a religious exemption through the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. While he said the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had determined that being vaccinated was “not sinful,” the church valued its teachings on the “sanctity of conscience.”

“This circumstance raises the question of whether the vaccine’s moral permissibility precludes an individual from forming a sincerely held religious belief that receiving the vaccine would violate his conscience,” he wrote. “It does not.”

The problem for the past two years has been an environment of constantly changing "science" and moving goalposts enforced by the power of the state that leave little room for informed personal choice, or indeed the nudgings of conscience. I can't imagine that Abp Broglio made his announcement without coordinating it with the USCCB and possibly the Vatican as well. This will definitely strengthen the ability of military members, and probably others as well, to substantiate their requests for exemption.

The bishops are showing considerable insight into the real issues at stake in the COVID crisis.