Lazy Caturday Reads: Congressional Follies

Posted: October 2, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 12 Comments
Woman in Pink Dress and Cat, Teresa Tanner

Woman in Pink Dress and Cat, by Teresa Tanner

Good Morning!!

President Biden made a dramatic appearance on Capitol Hill yesterday to urge Democrats to find a compromise on the infrastructure bills. His visit was apparently prompted by the progressive caucus forcing Speaker Pelosi to delay the planned Thursday vote on the bi-partisan portion of the bill separately from the budget bill that is to be passed by reconciliation.

The New York Times: Progressives Flex Muscles on Biden Agenda, Adopting New Tactics.

The nearly 100-member caucus refused to support a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that is a major piece of President Biden’s agenda, seeking leverage for a bigger fight.

Their stance forced Speaker Nancy Pelosi to delay a planned vote on the measure and ultimately prompted Mr. Biden to side with them in saying that there could be no vote on the infrastructure legislation until agreement on a far broader, multitrillion-dollar social policy and climate measure.

The maneuver drew plaudits from liberal activists who had watched with dismay in the past as their allies in Congress caved to pressure from Democratic leaders and surrendered in policy fights. And it signaled that the progressives enjoyed newfound influence, including the backing of a president long associated with his party’s moderates.

“Things only happen here when there is urgency,” Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on Friday. “I’m just so proud of our caucus, because they are standing up for people who feel like they have not been heard in this country for a very long time.”

Still, while the progressives scored a tactical victory, negotiations continued to whittle down the size of the social policy and climate bill, which was already much smaller than the initial $6 trillion to $10 trillion that many of them had envisioned.

Their persistence also risked the collapse of both bills, angering moderates in the party who had delivered the slim majority to Democrats and are at the highest risk of losing their seats in the midterm elections.

Click the NYT link to read more.

Leslie Ann Ivory

Painting by Leslie Ann Ivory

Axios reports that: Biden floats roughly $2 trillion price tag for reconciliation.

President Biden, meeting with House Democrats on Capitol Hill on Friday, indicated they must further delay a final vote on a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and scale back his $3.5 trillion social spending package to around $2 trillion range if either is to pass, lawmakers told Axios.

Why it matters: Biden made clear he wants to keep the two packages linked together and that he is optimistic there can be an agreement.

  • “It doesn’t matter if it’s six minutes, six days or six weeks, we’re going to get it done,” the president told reporters on his way out of the meeting.
  • Two lawmakers told Axios they anticipated it could be another month before both bills can be passed.
  • While moderates don’t want to wait on the infrastructure vote and progressives don’t want to spend less on the social programs, the pause likely moves the fragile Democratic coalition closer to ultimately securing major portions of the president’s agenda ahead of the 2022 midterms….

What they’re saying: “He is the President of the United States and he says that he wants to get this done, and he basically linked them together,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), a moderate Democrat, told Axios.

  • “He basically said it’s not going to be $3.5 (trillion). It could be $1.9 trillion-$2 trillion. The president threw out some numbers, so I assume there was a reason why.”

  • The president discussed a range that went as high as $2.3 trillion, other sources in the room said.

  • “The president said we’re gonna get both bills done, and in order to get the rest done, we have to get this agreement on the reconciliation,” Rep. Pramila Jaypal (D-Wash.), chairwoman of the Progressive Caucus, told reporters.

Yesterday, before Biden’s visit to Congress, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent wrote that the White House didn’t pressure progressives to vote for the infrastructure bill on Thursday. Opinion: The Biden agenda is in peril. Here’s the hidden reason it might survive.

Natalya Bronnikova

By Natalya Bronnikova

If you want a glimpse into the deeper choreography behind the Democratic maneuvering around President Biden’s agenda, start with a call that Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) received from a senior White House adviser late Thursday night.

The adviser informed Jayapal, the Congressional Progressive Caucus chair, that the White House had yet to reach a deal with Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.-Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) on a framework for the multitrillion-dollar social policy bill that is to pass by reconciliation, a Democratic aide familiar with the call tells me.

Democratic leaders were set to hold a House vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate — yet the White House adviser exerted no pressure on Jayapal to get progressives to vote for it, the aide confirms. Soon after, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) canceled the vote because it would have failed.

This underscores a critical element of the dance unfolding among Democrats: The remarkable absence of Democratic leadership pressure on progressives to drop their strategy of withholding support from the infrastructure bill to leverage centrists into supporting a robust reconciliation package.

This dynamic is key to understanding what might happen next — but also how it could all come crashing down.

Sargent explains:

By refusing to help pass the infrastructure bill, progressives helped secure more space for negotiations on the reconciliation framework. The reconciliation bill is the Biden and Democratic Party agenda: It’s made up of all the climate provisions, economic infrastructure and tax reforms designed to secure our decarbonized future and rebalance our political economy after decades of upward skew.

The centrists are the ones who oppose passing this agenda. For that framework, Manchin seems to be insisting on a top line of $1.5 trillion — less than half the $3.5 trillion target Biden wants — as well as making its welfare benefits less universal via means testing and its climate change provisions more friendly to fossil fuel interests. And it’s still unclear what Sinema wants.

By Sandra Bierman, 1938

By Sandra Bierman, 1938

But importantly, they all seem to be seriously negotiating. The key nuance here is that Democratic leaders would have preferred the infrastructure bill to pass Thursday, to bank this as a win, but at the same time, they didn’t lean very hard on progressives to help do this. They knew it wouldn’t work, because progressives are dug in, and it’s precisely because Democratic leaders have largely accepted this that success is more likely.

In short, the White House and Democratic leaders aren’t asking the left to function as their bad cop against centrists — but they know having a bad cop is useful. It’s spurring along these negotiations over the reconciliation framework. All this helps explain why that lack of pressure on the left is a critical ingredient.

Read the rest at the WaPo.

Congressional Democrats also face an upcoming battle with Republicans on the debt ceiling. The Federal government will run out of money in mid-October. Mitch McConnell says that Republicans won’t support raising the debt limit and Democrats will have to do it on their own somehow. Jennifer Bendery at Yahoo News: 

Congress has less than three weeks left to raise the debt limit before the U.S. government runs out of money, something that’s never happened before and would translate to economic disaster for the entire country.

But there’s no plan on how to get this done in the Senate, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) keeps saying that Democrats, led by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), are on their own and that it’s totally normal for Republicans to stand in the way of doing this.

“The facts are that the majority party has had in the past, in this situation, to raise the debt ceiling by themselves,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday. “The last time that happened, during [President George W. Bush’s administration], both Schumer and [then-Sen. Joe] Biden voted against raising the debt ceiling. So, there is no tradition of doing this on a bipartisan basis.”

He added, “Sen. Schumer and now-President Biden were in exactly the same position, in reverse, during the Bush years. They handed us the opportunity to raise the debt ceiling one-party only. Around here, almost everything comes around.”

Muppet on the Quilt, Lesley Anne Ivory

Muppet on the Quilt, Lesley Anne Ivory

But the GOP leader is wildly mischaracterizing what Republicans are doing right now, which is far more dangerous than he’s letting on. He’s simply hoping that people aren’t paying attention or don’t know what he’s talking about as the U.S. government inches closer to defaulting on its debt obligations.

McConnell is arguing that because Democrats voted against raising the debt limit in 2006, when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, it’s no different than Republicans forcing Democrats to raise the debt limit by themselves this time around.

It is very different. In 2006, Democrats agreed to a request by then-Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to let the Senate increase the debt limit by a simple majority vote, or 51 votes, instead of requiring 60 votes to break a filibuster. That ensured that Republicans had enough votes to raise the debt ceiling themselves, by a vote of 52-48. Getting it done was never in doubt.

The Washington Post reports that the White House explored possibilities for dealing with the debt ceiling emergency, but didn’t come up with many ideas: Senior Biden aides privately explored whether payments could continue even if U.S. breached debt ceiling.

The review concluded that the White House would be unable to avoid falling behind on obligations and catastrophic economic consequences even if the administration effectively tried to spend in defiance of the debt ceiling, according to one of the officials familiar with the deliberations.

The debt ceiling sets a legal limit on how much the Treasury Department can borrow, and the government will run out of flexibility to avoid breaching the debt ceiling on Oct. 18.

By Sandra Bierman

By Sandra Bierman

As part of their internal review, White House officials have circulated internal memos with a range of untested theories should Congress fail to resolve the debt ceiling standoff, including the creation of a $1 trillion “coin” idea that has been popular among some liberals for years, the people said. But these options have been set aside as unworkable, the people said….

A senior official familiar with the matter said it was the administration’s responsibility to review all possible options. Still, White House officials have reached the conclusion that unilateral action is not viable and the only way to avoid economic devastation is for Congress to act to maintain the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, according to the officials and Michael Gwin, a White House spokesman.

But experts argue there are solutions. This is from Dylan Matthews at Vox: How Joe Biden could end the debt ceiling — all by himself.

The obvious solution, proposed by Georgetown Law professor and congressional procedure expert David Super, would be for Democrats to use the budget reconciliation process to eliminate the debt ceiling with a majority vote in the Senate. That path faces myriad procedural obstacles, though, and unless Congress moves decisively toward pursuing it, the Biden administration needs to start thinking about backup options.

Some of these options might seem unacceptably extreme. But an absurd crisis calls for absurd solutions. The Biden administration should, if Republicans in the Senate continue to promise a filibuster of a debt ceiling increase, unilaterally abolish the ceiling using executive powers.

There are at least four available to Biden, each with their own advantages and disadvantages:

  • Minting super-high-value coins to fund the government
  • Invoking the 14th Amendment to nullify the debt ceiling
  • Issuing more debt as the “least illegal” option available to the Treasury
  • Creating a new class of bond to fund the government while it cannot issue Treasury bonds
Taņa with a cat, Aleksandra Beļcova, 1928

Taņa with a cat, Aleksandra Beļcova, 1928

Each of these actions would effectively make the debt ceiling law a dead letter. Congress (or a minority thereof) would no longer be able to threaten default as a means of extracting concessions from the president, and the single biggest source of inter-branch conflict in the federal government would cease to exist.

The short-term political implications could be tough for the Biden administration to bear. But if the choice is between default and a presidential power grab, a power grab is the only defensible course of action. A responsible leader does not plunge his people into a wholly preventable financial crisis. If backed against a wall, Biden mustn’t flinch. He must kill the debt ceiling once and for all.

More reading on the debt ceiling conundrum:

Lindsay M. Chervinsky at The Bulwark: The Disturbing Precedent for McConnell’s Debt-Ceiling Brinksmanship.

Bloomberg: Biden Says GOP Filibuster on Debt Limit Would Be Unconscionable.

Insider: Republicans gear up to inflict maximum pain on Democrats as the debt default deadline inches closer.

Paul Krugman at The New York Times: Wonking Out: Biden Should Ignore the Debt Limit and Mint a $1 Trillion Coin.

I’ll add a few more stories in the comment thread. Have a great weekend, Sky Dancers!!

Thursday Reads

Posted: September 30, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 16 Comments
David Hockney, Northern Sunset

David Hockney, Northern Sunset

Good Morning!!

It looks like an agreement to keep the government running has been reached at the last minute, but there’s no agreement on raising the debt limit as yet. CBS News: Schumer announces agreement to prevent government shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Wednesday night that an agreement to keep the government funded and prevent a government shutdown has been reached.

“We have an agreement on the C.R. — the continuing resolution — to prevent a government shutdown, and we should be voting on that tomorrow morning,” he said on the Senate floor. The majority leader said he hopes to hold a vote on final passage by midday — hours before government funding would have run out, at midnight Thursday.

The short-term government funding bill would keep federal agencies operating through December 3, but it does not address the looming deadline to raise the debt ceiling to avoid U.S. default. The bill includes $6.3 billion for relocation efforts for Afghan refugees, as well as $28.6 billion for disaster assistance following a spate of devastating hurricanes and wildfires. 

Once the bill passes in the Senate, the House will take it up, so it can then be sent to President Biden to sign before government funding expires.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Sunset Long Island

Next on the Congressional agenda: Biden’s infrastructure bills, which are being held hostage by “Democrats” Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. 

The Washington Post: Waiting for ‘Manchema’: House liberals grow exasperated with two Democratic senators as Biden agenda struggles.

House Democrats facing down tight deadlines and spiraling worries that President Biden’s agenda could soon fall apart are growing increasingly exasperated with a pair of Democratic senators whose votes are key but whose views are unclear when it comes to what they want out of legislation to expand the social safety net.

Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) have said Biden’s $3.5 trillion proposal for expanding heath care access, boosting education programs and fighting climate change is too expensive, but they have been reluctant to engage in detailed discussions about how they want it changed.

“We need to know what he’s a skeptic on so that we can have the conversation with him. There has been no clarity in what they actually want, both Sinema and Manchin,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a member of the House Progressive Caucus.

Until they do, House liberals eager to enact the legislation say they are essentially banging their heads against the wall. House moderates, meanwhile, are wary of signing onto potentially politically fraught policies until they know whether they have the blessing of the senatorial pair and will make it into law.

 

Claude Monet, Sunset

A vote is scheduled in the House today, but no one knows what would be required for it to pass the Senate.

Late Wednesday, Manchin released the type of statement that has irritated large groups of Democrats in the past with its emphasis on slowing down and scaling back.

“At some point, all of us, regardless of party must ask the simple question — how much is enough?,” he wrote. Manchin didn’t provide more details on his views beyond concern over the package’s size, but he did emphasize that he wanted any new programs to have provisions that would establish limits on who could receive the benefits based on income….

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.), a moderate Democrat who wants to pass the infrastructure bill regardless of the state of negotiations on the other package, said he has spoken to Manchin, who told him his top line number, but Cuellar would not say what it was. Manchin has floated that something in the range of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion could potentially work, but Sinema has not given any inclination of what she could support.

While Manchin often talks with reporters, puts out statements and writes op-eds, Sinema prefers to share as little as possible publicly and declines to answer reporters’ questions.

Vincent-van-Gogh/-Willows-at-Sunset.-

Some voters in Arizona are getting fed up with Sinema’s act. Kyrsten Sinema Is at the Center of It All. Some Arizonans Wish She Weren’t.

Jade Duran once spent her weekends knocking on doors to campaign for Senator Kyrsten Sinema, the stubbornly centrist Democrat whose vote could seal the fate of a vast Democratic effort to remake America’s social safety net. But no more.

When Ms. Sinema famously gave a thumbs down to a $15 minimum wage and refused to eliminate the filibuster to pass new voting rights laws this year, Ms. Duran, a Democrat and biomedical engineer from Phoenix, decided she was fed up. She joined dozens of liberal voters and civil rights activists in a rolling series of protests outside Ms. Sinema’s Phoenix offices, which have been taking place since the summer. Nearly 50 people have been arrested.

“It really feels like she does not care about her voters,” said Ms. Duran, 33, who was arrested in July at a protest. “I will never vote for her again.”

Ms. Sinema, a onetime school social worker and Green Party-aligned activist, vaulted through the ranks of Arizona politics by running as a zealous bipartisan willing to break with her fellow Democrats. She counts John McCain, the Republican senator who died in 2018, as a hero, and has found support from independent voters and moderate suburban women in a state where Maverick is practically its own party.

But now, Ms. Sinema is facing a growing political revolt at home from the voters who once counted themselves among her most devoted supporters. Many of the state’s most fervent Democrats now see her as an obstructionist whose refusal to sign on to a major social policy and climate change bill has helped imperil the party’s agenda.

Little can proceed without the approval of Ms. Sinema, one of two marquee Democratic moderates in an evenly divided Senate. While she has balked at the $3.5 trillion price tag and some of the tax-raising provisions of the bill, which is opposed by all Republicans in Congress, Democrats in Washington and back home in Arizona have grown exasperated.

According to NBC News, Sinema could even face a primary challenge.

Winslow-Homer-Sunset

And then there are the “progressives.” Sam Brodey at The Daily Beast: Progressives Come to Their Put-Up or Shut-Up Moment.

With a critical vote looming on a pivotal part of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, it’s a put-up or shut-up moment for every faction of the Democratic Party, but one particular group especially: the Progressive Caucus.

In recent years, liberal Democrats have often found themselves swallowing much of their discontent as watered-down policies and compromises were the norm in a divided government. But with Democrats now fully in control of Washington, progressives finally seem poised to fight.

There are two bills Biden has said he wants to get done: a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill for things like roads and bridges, and a $3.5 trillion bill for social programs like childcare, elder care, climate change, and a host of other programs that Democrats would have to pass on their own through a special reconciliation process.

After the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed the Senate in August, a small group of moderates in the House have been angling for ways to pass that bill and only that bill—the larger reconciliation package be damned. Progressives, realizing that this is the gambit, have sworn they will not support the infrastructure bill unless and until the $3.5 trillion package moves through Congress too.

On Thursday, progressives may finally get their chance to show moderates that they aren’t bluffing.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has promised a vote on the infrastructure bill, and though that plan has been rapidly in flux for days, progressives will get a chance to demonstrate to moderates that it’s all or nothing—either both bills pass, or none of them do.

Fjord in Sunset, Johann Holmstedt

Read more at the link. And at CBS News, see a summary of what’s in the $3.5 Trillion bill. While all this bickering goes on in Congress, Biden is remaining calm for now. The Washington Post: Biden sticks to his dealmaking strategy, as some Democrats want him to do more to bring holdouts on board.

President Biden is navigating the most perilous week for his legislative agenda yet with an approachhe’s honed over his decades in Washington: Hear out the warring factions, determine the realm of the possible and find the point of compromise that satisfies all sides.

That strategy has been clear in meetings with pivotal Democrats in the past week, with Biden speaking and hosting a stream of lawmakers — in particular a pair of moderate Senate Democrats who have wielded outsize influence in shaping the president’s agenda.

But the lack of tangible progress evident from those talks, combined with growing concerns from congressional Democrats, are testing the legislative acumen of a president who prides himself as a consummate creature of Capitol Hill. Particularly in the House, there are growing calls from Democrats for Biden to be more forcefully and personally involved with the domestic policy plans, largely viewed as the party’s one and only shot to enact their top priorities ahead of the 2022 midterms.

“I do think it would be helpful for the president to be more engaged,” said Rep. Daniel Kildee (D-Mich.). “I think his voice matters a lot.”

Kildee added: “He’s been engaged, don’t get me wrong. But I think him becoming more personally engaged would be helpful.”

How Biden cajoles key moderate holdouts and assuages restive liberals will help determine the fate of his chief domestic priority in Congress — a sweeping package totaling trillions in new spending that aims to remake much of the nation’s social safety net and invest in health and climate priorities by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. It will also test his ability to cut deals — a skill he’s proved over the years, from an agreement with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff” in 2012 to persuading a handful Republican senators to support the economic stimulus in 2009 — but this time, with his own party and with Biden as the leader.

Fjord in Sunset, Johann Holmstedt

Read the rest at the WaPo.

More important stories to check out:

Fred Kaplan at Slate: We Now Know Why Biden Was in a Hurry to Exit Afghanistan. He made several missteps, but on the big picture, he was right.

Margaret Sullivan at The Washington Post: A Trump lawyer wrote an instruction manual for a coup. Why haven’t you seen it on the news?

CNN: January 6 committee targets organizers of Stop the Steal rally in latest batch of subpoenas.

David Leonhardt at The New York Times: The Right to Health

Ed Yong at The Atlantic: We’re Already Barreling Toward the Next Pandemic.

Have a good day!!!

Tuesday Reads

Posted: September 28, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 18 Comments
Leon Kroll, Nude Woman Reading a Paper

Leon Kroll, Nude Woman Reading a Paper

Good Morning

A quick update: I think I’m beginning to recover from my pain flare-up. I’ve found a good book on dealing with chronic pain along with an chronic pain app that is helping me better understand what is happening in my body and brain. I’ve been working on slowing down my breathing and letting go of my fear of the pain. So I’m working on being proactive.

Here are some stories that have captured my interested this morning:

The ACLU has apologized for it’s offensive editing of a famous quote by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The New York Times: A.C.L.U. Apologizes for Tweet That Altered Quote by Justice Ginsburg.

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Monday that he regretted that a tweet sent out recently by his organization altered the words of a well-known quote by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The A.C.L.U. tweet, which was sent out Sept. 18, changed Justice Ginsburg’s words, replacing each of her references to women with “person,” “people” or a plural pronoun in brackets. Justice Ginsburg, who died last year, is a revered figure in liberal and feminist circles and directed the A.C.L.U.’s Women’s Rights Project from its founding in 1972 until she became a federal judge in 1980.

The tweet by the A.C.L.U. occasioned mockery and some anger on social media from feminists and others.

“We won’t be altering people’s quotes,” Mr. Romero said in an interview on Monday evening. “It was a mistake among the digital team. Changing quotes is not something we ever did.” Mr. Romero first noted his regrets in an interview with Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times columnist, who wrote a column that spoke to the danger of trying to “change the nature of reality through language alone.”

From Michelle Goldberg: The A.C.L.U. Errs on R.B.G.

Recently, on the anniversary of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, the American Civil Liberties Union set out to pay tribute to her pro-choice heroism, and ended up making the sort of self-parodic blunder the right salivates over.

One of R.B.G.’s iconic quotes came from her 1993 Senate confirmation hearings, when, instead of shying away from commenting on reproductive rights like most Supreme Court nominees, she made a forthright case for their indispensability to human flourishing.

Interno (1921). Luigi (Gigi) Chessa (Italian, 1895-1935)

Interno (1921). Luigi (Gigi) Chessa (Italian, 1895-1935)

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices,” Ginsburg said.

In a ham-handed attempt to make the quote conform to current progressive norms around gender neutrality, the A.C.L.U. rendered it this way in a tweet: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] well-being and dignity … When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices.”

This was a mistake for two reasons, one that’s easy to talk about, and one that’s hard.

Goldberg explains:

The easy one is this: It’s somewhat Orwellian to rewrite historical utterances to conform to modern sensitivities. No one that I’m aware of used gender-neutral language to talk about pregnancy and abortion in 1993; it wasn’t until 2008 that Thomas Beatie became famous as what headlines sometimes called the “First Pregnant Man.” There’s a difference between substituting the phrase “pregnant people” for “pregnant women” now, and pretending that we have always spoken of “pregnant people.”

What’s more difficult to discuss is how making Ginsburg’s words gender-neutral alters their meaning. That requires coming to terms with a contentious shift in how progressives think and talk about sex and reproduction. Changing Ginsburg’s words treats what was once a core feminist insight — that women are oppressed on the basis of their reproductive capacity — as an embarrassing anachronism. The question then becomes: Is it? [….]

A gender-inclusive understanding of reproduction is in keeping with the goal of a society free of sex hierarchies. It is one thing to insist that women shouldn’t be relegated to second-class status because they can bear children. It’s perhaps more radical to define sex and gender so that childbearing is no longer women’s exclusive domain.

Yet I think there’s a difference between acknowledging that there are men who have children or need abortions — and expecting the health care system to treat these men with respect — and speaking as if the burden of reproduction does not overwhelmingly fall on women. You can’t change the nature of reality through language alone. Trying to do so can seem, to employ a horribly overused word, like a form of gaslighting.

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” Simone de Beauvoir wrote. You can interpret this to support the contemporary notion of sex and gender as largely matters of self-identification. Or you can interpret it as many older feminists have, as a statement about how the world molds you into a woman, of how certain biological experiences reveal your place in the social order, and how your identity develops in response to gender’s constraints.

Seen this way, a gender-neutral version of Ginsburg’s quote is unintelligible, because she was talking not about the right of all people to pursue their own reproductive destiny, but about how male control of women’s reproductive lives makes women part of a subordinate class. The erasure of gendered language can feel like an insult, because it takes away the terms generations of feminists used to articulate their predicament.

Read the whole thing at the NYT.

The Bookseller's Son, by Chad Gowey

The Bookseller’s Son, by Chad Gowey

The Washington Post reports on a “revelation” from the new book by former Trump WH press secretary Stephanie Grisham: Trump played tough with Putin when cameras were around, while Putin toyed with his insecurities, a new book says.

Little is known about what happened in the 90-minute conversation between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Osaka, Japan, two years ago. But as journalists were quickly ushered out of the room at the 2019 Group of 20 Summit, Stephanie Grisham once again found herself with a close-up view of the action.

She saw Trump lean toward Putin that day and tell him: “Okay, I’m going to act a little tougher with you for a few minutes. But it’s for the cameras, and after they leave, we’ll talk. You understand.” [….]

Raw Story on what happened next: 

Trump then “quickly” and “playfully” told Putin not to meddle in U.S. elections, USA Today reported at the time.

“Don’t meddle in the election, president,” Trump said in a joking manner, wagging his finger at Putin.

“When an interpreter translated Trump’s ‘request,’ Putin laughed,” USA Today reported.

Seriously: was anyone taken in by that? I doubt it. More on the Grisham book from the WaPo article:

Her 352-page book — obtained by The Washington Post — alleges a litany of misdeeds by the 45th president: from ogling a young female staffer, to orchestrating lies for the public, to attempting to ban the news media from the White House compound. It also gives a rare firsthand look at Melania Trump, who craved her privacy, and a blow-by-blow of how she wound up wearing that “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” jacket.

Grisham even claims to know dirt on Trump’s hair, which she says he cuts himself with “a huge pair of scissors that could probably cut a ribbon at an opening of one of his properties.” [….]

A major theme of the book is the culture of lies that pervaded Trump’s administration. “Casual dishonesty filtered through the White House as if it were in the air conditioning system,” Grisham writes.

For example, in 2019, Trump went to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center without disclosing to the media that he was going, or why.

It was a days-long mystery in the national news, but Grisham’s book strongly hints that the president went for a simple colonoscopy, without actually using the word. (She wrote that it was “a very common procedure” for which “a patient is sometimes put under” and that George W. Bush had one as president, too.)

As for the elaborate concealment — Grisham writes that Trump was resistant to having Vice President Mike Pence in power even for a short period of time, and he didn’t want to be “the butt of a joke” on late-night TV.

Alice, by Sir John Lavery 1856-1941

Alice, by Sir John Lavery 1856-1941

Grisham on Jared and Ivanka:

She is particularly negative about the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner — both of whom held senior White House positions. She wrote that the first lady and White House staff called Ivanka “the Princess” who regularly invoked “my father” in work meetings, and Grisham dubbed Kushner “the Slim Reaper” for his habit of inserting himself into other people’s projects, making a mess and leaving them to take the blame.

Tellingly, Grisham writes that Ivanka and Jared tried to push their way into meeting Queen Elizabeth II alongside the president and first lady, a wild breach of protocol on a state visit, but were thwarted when they couldn’t fit into the helicopter. “I finally figured out what was going on,” Grisham writes. “Jared and Ivanka thought they were the royal family of the United States.”

On Melania’s I don’t care jacket:

The first lady had been upset by the situation her husband’s immigration policies had caused and wanted to see it for herself. For reasons that still remain a mystery, she’d ordered a $39 jacket online from Zara. Grisham said she was on her phone ironing out details for the trip and missed the chance to stop Melania Trump from wearing it.

It was just a jacket, Melania said, as she huddled with Grisham for a damage-control session on the plane. As they arrived back at the White House, an aide told them the president wanted to see his wife in the Oval Office. It was the first time he’d ever summoned her in such a way in front of staff. He yelled and asked “what the [expletive]” they thought they were doing. Then just as quickly he came up with a solution. He would tweet out that the jacket was a message to the Fake News Media.

So that’s your daily dose of gossip.

More stories to check out today:

The New York Times: As Sinema resists the budget bill, she is set to raise money from business groups that oppose it.

Insider: The former Fox News editor who called Arizona for Biden says the Cyber Ninjas audit was meant to undermine trust in elections.

CNN Politics: ‘We won’: Trump and his allies barrel ahead with election lies despite Arizona review confirming his loss.

Steve Benen at MSNBC: When Trump says the U.S. ‘will not survive,’ don’t look away.

Adam Serwer at The Atlantic: The Lie About the Supreme Court Everyone Pretends to Believe.

The vaccine misinformation is happening in Canada too. Global News: Edmonton family with father in ICU for surgery complications witnessed ‘surreal,’ horrific scenes.

Fiona Hill at Foreign Affairs: The Kremlin’s Strange Victory. How Putin Exploits American Dysfunction and Fuels American Decline.

What stories are you following today?

 

Saturday Open Thread

Posted: September 25, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 6 Comments

Good Morning Sky Dancers!!

I’m still having a difficult time with sciatica. I’m trying to hang in there, but I can’t do a regular post yet. Wish me luck!

I wanted to share this Twitter thread from Gregg Gonsalves on the anti-abortion laws and the elite insistence from the Washington elites that we must be polite and respectful with our protests. Gonsalves is a long-time AIDs activist and Associate Professor at Yale School of Public Health.

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441713458186174466?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441713974194679814?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441714934744686592?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441716533844189184?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441717967205642240?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441720272663498754?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441722947740135426?s=20

https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1441725935464550401?s=20

There’s much food for thought there. Have a nice weekend everyone!

Thursday Reads

Posted: September 23, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 21 Comments
Leon Kroll

Leon Kroll, Blanche Reading

Good Morning Sky Dancers!!

I’m still under the weather, but I’m going to post some stories for you to check out today. I talk to my doctor this afternoon; I hope she will have some suggestions for me. I’ve mentioned before that I have rheumatoid arthritis, but I have also had sciatic nerve pain for years. Apparently, the two are related, at least in that they involve inflammation. This is the worst it has ever been. I’d be very grateful if you would keep me in your thoughts.

https://twitter.com/19Dumptrump/status/1440812909496455171?s=20

This is an open thread.

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