In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

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 a...

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 sec...

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. . . ...

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 ...

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 detail...

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 "shoul...

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 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. . . . Accordi...

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 2...

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 ...

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 in...

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 co...

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 ...

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 M...

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 -- stretc...

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...

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. → Progre...

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 orig...