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.