Orange Meltdown, Con't

"America's CEO" ran the country like a business, which apparently entailed trashing the place, blaming everyone else, and running away with the loot.

It was the whopping-yet-still-disappointing 6.5% annualized growth number for the second quarter that got most of the attention when the U.S. gross domestic product report came out Thursday. But the data release from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis also included revisions to GDP and related measures back to 1999, making this an opportune time to take another look at economic growth under Donald Trump and his predecessors.

This is, let’s be clear from the start, not a perfect way of measuring presidential economic performance. There are lots of things that determine economic growth rates other than who is in the White House, and when a president does make a difference the results may be felt long after he’s left Washington. Still, it’s a widely used metric and Trump was downright obsessed with it, so here goes.






OK, maybe that GDP obsession didn’t work out so well for Trump. The chart starts with Dwight Eisenhower because his was the first presidency for which the BEA has full quarterly GDP data. Annual GDP numbers go back to 1929, and if you measure from Herbert Hoover’s first year in office (1929) to the year he left (1933), annualized growth was negative 7.4 percent. So Trump did a lot better than that! But his was the worst GDP performance since then (measured the same way as with Hoover, annualized GDP growth was 9.1% under Franklin Roosevelt and 1.8% under Harry Truman).

This does seem a bit unfair, given the pandemic and all. Trump didn’t always rise to the challenges posed by Covid-19, but thanks in part to legislation he signed and a vaccine-development program his administration put in motion, the U.S. economy has experienced one of the world’s quicker recoveries. Lots of other presidents have suffered economic setbacks due to events outside their control, of course, and you can’t just ignore a quarter or two because they were affected by bad economic luck. But there is something to be said for trying some other ways of measuring growth during his term.

One is to adjust the timing. For the above chart I’ve taken real GDP in the quarter a president entered office and the quarter he left, and calculated the compound annual growth rate from one to the other. Here’s what it looks like if you shift that back or forward by a quarter.



It looks a lot better for Trump (not to mention Barack Obama, and Gerald Ford) if you shift a quarter later, although this still puts him behind everyone but George W. Bush. There’s an argument for shifting the measurement period even later, given how long it can take for the effects of economic policies to be felt, but there’s also a point beyond which that starts to get a little ridiculous, plus we don’t have the data yet to do that for Trump.

 

Trump was the worst in my lifetime by far, economically, morally, and criminally.  And unless you've hit the century mark yourself (and if you have, gratz!) he's been the worst economic president at least in your lifetime too.

The criminal and moral part isn't up for debate.

Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

We know Trump had the Rosen Justice Department interfere with Arizona's election certification process, now we find out he did the same in Georgia through former acting Civil Rights division head Jeffrey Clark.

 

Top members of the Department of Justice last year rebuffed another DOJ official who asked them to urge officials in Georgia to investigate and perhaps overturn President Joe Biden's victory in the state -- long a bitter point of contention for former President Donald Trump and his team -- before the results were certified by Congress, emails reviewed by ABC News show.

The emails, dated Dec. 28, 2020, show the former acting head of DOJ's civil division, Jeffrey Clark, circulating a draft letter -- which he wanted then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue to sign off on -- urging Georgia's governor and other top officials to convene the state legislature into a special session so lawmakers could investigate claims of voter fraud.

"The Department of Justice is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States," the draft letter said. "The Department will update you as we are able on investigatory progress, but at this time we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia."

The draft letter states: "While the Department of Justice believe[s] the Governor of Georgia should immediately call a special session to consider this important and urgent matter, if he declines to do so, we share with you our view that the Georgia General Assembly has implied authority under the Constitution of the United States to call itself into special session for [t]he limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors."

The vote count in Georgia became a flashpoint for Trump and his allies and Trump at one point falsely claimed that it was "not possible" for him to have lost the state.
MORE: Statewide audit results reaffirm Biden winner in Georgia

But to date, the Justice Department has uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would tip the results of the presidential election. Attorney General William Barr also announced in December that the department had "not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome of the election." A statewide audit in Georgia last year also affirmed that Biden was the winner.

The emails were provided by the DOJ to the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating efforts to overturn the election results. And they come as the DOJ investigator general looks at whether any officials in the department sought to overturn the outcome of the election.

Donoghue's notes about Trump telling Republican members of Congress to "leave it to him" when it came to the January 6th coup attempt was bad enough, but now we see that the efforts to manufacture a coup came about because Trump couldn't get acting AG Jeffrey Rosen to bite on saying the elections were fraudulent.

And yes, Trump absolutely had acting DOJ employees who wanted to publicly trash the 2020 elections as fraud, as we can see here.

We came this close to a coup, folks.

Cuomo's #MeToo Moment, Con't

With the investigation into his misconduct now complete, NY Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is almost certainly not going to last until the end of the year as the state's chief executive, he may not make it until the end of the month.

 

An investigation found that Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women inside and outside state government and worked to retaliate against one of his accusers, New York’s attorney general announced Tuesday in a finding that is certain to renew calls for the Democrat’s resignation or impeachment.

The nearly five-month investigation, conducted by two outside lawyers who spoke to 179 people, found that the Cuomo administration was a “hostile work environment” and that it was “rife with fear and intimidation.”

People interviewed included complainants, current and former members of the executive chamber, State troopers, additional state employees and others who interacted regularly with the governor.

“These interviews and pieces of evidence revealed a deeply disturbing yet clear picture: Gov. Cuomo sexually harassed current and former state employees in violation of federal and state laws,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said at a press conference on Tuesday.

James said her investigation has concluded. There were no referrals to criminal prosecutors, though that wouldn’t preclude local authorities from using the evidence and findings of the report to mount their own cases.

On at least one occasion, the investigation found, Cuomo and his senior staff worked to retaliate against a former employee who accused him of wrongdoing. Cuomo was also found to have harassed women outside of government, the investigation found.

The report also detailed, for the first time, allegations that Cuomo sexually harassed a female state trooper on his security detail. It said that the governor ran his hand or fingers across her stomach and her back, kissed her on the cheek, asked for her help in finding a girlfriend and asked why she didn’t wear a dress.

“These brave women stepped forward to speak truth to power and, in doing so, they expressed faith in the belief that although the governor may be powerful, the truth is even more so,” Joon Kim, one of the lawyers leading the investigation, said at the press conference.

Investigators said they found all 11 women were credible, noting that their allegations were corroborated to varying degrees, including by other witnesses and contemporaneous text messages.

 

Cuomo's last grip on the side of the cliff was "We need to wait until the investigation is completed, which will exonerate me."

 

The investigation damned him instead. The victims deserve justice.

 

A long fall for a man who deserves to not only be removed from office, but put in prison. 

Al Franken did the right thing and resigned for less.

At the absolute minimum, Cuomo has to step down and await the criminal investigation and charges, and face those in a court of law, and then there's the entire nursing home COVID disaster he has to answer for too.

No, Cuomo has to go.

Left-Handed Compliments

The big political story in the Tri-State today is the Democratic primary in OH-11, as Cuyahoga County Democratic Party chair Shontel Brown takes on former Bernie Sanders campaign aide Nina Turner for Rep. Marcia Fudge's seat, as Fudge is now Biden's HUD Secretary. Two Black women Democrats competing for a Democratic Black Congresswoman's seat should be a cause for celebration, but the fight between Turner and Brown has gotten deeply personal and even ugly as Turner has all but lost her commanding lead over the last six weeks.

Despite taking place during a politically off-cycle campaign year, a major intraparty battle heavy with national implications is brewing in Tuesday's Democratic primary special election for Ohio's 11th Congressional District.

The contest presents an early test case of whether progressives can gain traction ahead of a pivotal midterm election cycle by going up against establishment-backed candidates. A slew of high-profile figures even descended on the Cleveland area in the lead-up to election day -- including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and House Majority Whip Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.

With Republicans simultaneously vying in another heated primary in the suburbs of Columbus in the state's 15th Congressional District, Tuesday's race in the 11th district takes place in one of Ohio's few reliably blue areas and features more than a dozen Democratic candidates. Whoever comes out on top is all but guaranteed to go on to fill the seat left vacant by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge when she joined the Biden administration.

Over the last several months, the field narrowed down to two candidates -- Nina Turner, former state senator and top Sanders campaign aide, and Shontel Brown, who currently serves as chairwoman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.

Regardless of who advances from the primary, either of the two candidates would continue the more than two-decade long tradition of Black women representing the 11th district in Congress. Although the pair of front-runners share the common cultural baseline in their goal of speaking on behalf of the majority-Black district in Washington, Turner and Brown approached the campaign trail from different ends of the Democratic political spectrum.

"I've talked to people, my team has talked to people, and although people ... believe that things can change, they also say that they want a fighter, somebody that's gonna push back," Turner told ABC News in an interview.

Turner has brought in some big guns: Bernie himself, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, but Brown has come to the fight with her own endorsements: Rep. Jim Clyburn, CBC chair Rep. Joyce Beatty, and Marcia Fudge's mother, Marion Saffold.

Turner had a big lead earlier this year in the polling, but that has evaporated as her own less-than-glowing comparison of Joe Biden's 2020 campaign as eating "half a bowl of shit" (compared to Trump's full fecal feast) came to light. Turner has also flubbed easy questions like "Did you vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016" which of course she won't answer.

But Brown has her own problems, with The Intercept accusing her of corruption in contract dealings as party chair (hello, Walker Bragman!) and stating she'll face an ethics probe. While anything Bragman does makes me immediately suspect that Brown is the better candidate by an astronomical unit or six, the attacks in the final week or so have been hurting Brown.

We'll see who prevails today. Most of you I suspect know how I feel about Nina Turner.

For what it matter, I want to see Shontel Brown win.

Last Call For Hungary? Tucker In!

I've talked about Hungarian PM Viktor Orban before and his authoritarian government, but apparently not only is FOX News Professional White Supremacist Tucker Carlson a big enough fan to go speak at Orban's International House Of Paincakes conference, he's hosting his White Supremacist Power Hour from Budapest itself.

Tucker Carlson is on the bill to deliver a speech, appropriately titled “The World According to Tucker Carlson,” this coming Saturday at MCC Feszt, a far-right conference in Budapest that is backed by Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban.

The news of Carlson’s apparent appearance follows a reported meeting between the Fox News star and Orban, as a friendly photo posted to the leader’s Facebook page revealed on Monday that Carlson had hosted Orban on his online show for Fox Nation.

Carlson appeared on his show from Budapest on Monday evening and announced his show would be broadcast from the Hungarian capital all week.

Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Orban granted $1.7 billion—or about one percent of Hungary’s GDP—to Mathias Corvinus Collegium, or MCC, with the aim of training a new generation of conservative elite across Europe.

According to Open Secrets investigative researcher Anna Massoglia, Hungary paid a D.C. lobbying firm $265,000 in 2019, in part to arrange an interview on Carlson’s Fox News show.

In turn, Carlson has publicly praised Orban’s government on Fox News, including in July of that year, when he lauded the prime minister’s anti-immigration policies in the face of declining birth rates.

“Instead of helping the native population to have more children, the Hungarian government, they say, should import a replacement population from the Third World,” Carlson said at the time of the “neoliberals who run” the European Union. “That’s the George Soros solution. But Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, has a different idea. Instead of abandoning Hungary’s young people to the hard-edge libertarianism of Soros and the Clinton Foundation, Orban has decided to affirmatively help Hungarian families grow.”

 

Folks, this is Carlson straight-up doling out pro-Orban white supremacist propaganda, uncut and raw, and speedballing it on world TV. This is not Carlson's usual footsie with facists here, this is a make-out session at Lovers' Lane.

 

Orban is an unrepentant proto-fascist. Carlson is sucking up to him, giving him free airtime in the US on his super-popular show. 

That should be a problem, but...well...we all know Carlson will be rewarded for this, and so will Orban.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Republicans really can't help themselves with disgusting, anti-Semitic comparisons of vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, because they know they can get away with it.

On Friday, John Bennett, the chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, made a striking comparison on the group’s Facebook page: Private companies requiring employees to get the coronavirus vaccine, he said, are just as bad as the Nazis forcing Jews to wear the yellow Star of David on their clothes.

“Those who don’t KNOW history, are DOOMED to repeat it,” read the caption, below an image of a Star of David patch with “Unvaccinated” written across the top.

The post triggered swift condemnations from top state Republicans and Jewish organizations in Oklahoma. But on Sunday, Bennett doubled down on his comments in a nearly seven-minute video he shared to the party’s Facebook page.

The Nazis “gave [Jews] a star to put on, and they couldn’t go to the grocery store, they couldn’t go out in public, they couldn’t do anything without having that star on their shirt,” Bennett said. “Take away the star and add a vaccine passport.”

Bennett, a Marine Corps veteran who served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was elected chairman of the Oklahoma GOP in April. The former state lawmaker has a history of making hateful comments, specifically about Muslims, according to the Oklahoman.

In a town hall meeting in 2014, Bennett said Islam “is a cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out.” In 2017, he drafted an 18-question survey for Muslims in Oklahoma to fill out before he agreed to meet with them in his legislative office. One of the questions asked was “Do you beat your wife?” A senior imam of the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City told the Oklahoman that Bennett threatened to demolish all the mosques in town.

Bennett is the latest GOP official to equate the persecution of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to mandates related to the coronavirus. In March, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) compared vaccine passports to Nazis forcing Jews to wear the yellow Star of David. In June, Washington state Rep. Jim Walsh (R) wore a yellow Star of David during a live stream, stating that it conveyed how “denying people their rights … can lead to terrible outcomes.”

Also in June, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) apologized after she repeatedly compared mask mandates to the Star of David. But she evoked the Holocaust again in July, this time calling those leading a vaccine push from the Biden administration “brownshirts.” The term refers to a paramilitary group that helped Hitler and the Nazis gain power in Germany.

The image of the yellow Star of David patch that Bennett posted on the Oklahoma Republican Party’s Facebook page on Friday included what appeared to be identification numbers and a chip.

The post also said: “Limited access to travel within their State, Province or Territory. The bearer may not fly, cannot enter a pub, restaurant, club or theatre. … WAKE UP PEOPLE — Is this sounding familiar?”

 

It won't end, because Republican voters will continue to elect anti-Semite jackasses like Bennett and Greene and Cawthorn, who will have lifetime terms in Congress as performative hate junkies. Take from a guy in KY-4 with clown Thomas Massie, who still has yet to get a single piece of legislation out of committee.

And voters are fine with this. They will send these jackasses back to Congress for decades just to pick fights, because "Congress is useless anyway".

So these are the electeds we get.

The Good Package, Con't

The Senate has wrapped up the infrastructure bill, which means it's actually Infrastructure Week™ for once and unironically so.

Senate Democrats and Republicans unveiled on Sunday a roughly $1 trillion proposal to improve the country’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections, setting in motion a long-awaited debate in the chamber to enact one of President Biden’s economic policy priorities.

The package arrives after weeks of haggling among a bipartisan bloc of lawmakers, who muscled through late-night fights and near-collapses to transform their initial blueprint into a roughly 2,700-page piece of legislation. The fate of their labors now rests in the Senate, where proponents of infrastructure reform have little margin for error as they race to adopt the sort of bill that has eluded them for years.

Virtually no part of the U.S. economy is untouched by the plan chiefly put together by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). Roughly half of its $1 trillion overall price tag constitutes new federal spending, with the rest coming from existing, planned investments in the country’s roads, highways and bridges, according to details released in recent days by lawmakers and the White House, which supports the proposal.

Those thoroughfares would see major expansions and repairs under the bill, which has additional investments in the nation’s transit system as well. Senators also said the measure calls for $66 billion targeting passenger railways, which the White House says is the largest such investment since the creation of Amtrak nearly a half-century ago.

Lawmakers plan to set aside $55 billion to improve the country’s drinking water, including a program that seeks to replace every lead pipe in America. There’s an additional $65 billion to expand broadband Internet access nationwide and ensure those who do have connectivity can afford their monthly payments. And Senate lawmakers are pursuing additional sums to upgrade key commercial hubs, including potentially $25 billion for repairs at major airports.

The proposal, called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, further seeks a significant tranche of funding to combat the threat of climate change, aiming to reduce emissions and respond to the deadly consequences of a fast-warming planet. Lawmakers have called for $73 billion to modernize the nation’s energy grid and $21 billion to respond to environmental concerns, including pollution. And they propose allocating new sums to advance clean-energy technologies, including a $7.5 billion initiative for a first-ever national network of electric vehicle charging stations, they announced last week.

“It takes our aging and outdated infrastructure in this country and modernizes it, and that’s good for everybody,” Portman said in a Sunday night speech, one of many from the deal’s chief architects heralding their work.

As I said before, this really is a good package, and this will pass the Senate.

The House, well...that's another story. 

Moderate Democrats held a press conference Friday calling for a speedy vote in the House. But progressives, along with a key committee chair, are insisting that they won't support it until the Senate passes a separate multitrillion-dollar bill to advance Biden's other priorities.

"First, we've got to get it out of the Senate. Then we'll get it here. There's a thousand permutations of how this could go," Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., told reporters. "When it gets here we should have a standalone vote."

Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., said the House should vote on it "as soon as possible."

But Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., the chair of the Transportation Committee, said in an interview that the Senate deal was "an imaginary bill" written by senators "who know nothing about transportation."

He said that based on the outlines he has seen, the water provisions were "not good" and that the bill entrenches highway-centric policies that "will not deal with climate change." He added that it should only be considered in the House alongside a separate bill that includes policies to combat climate change.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has insisted that the House won't consider the bipartisan infrastructure deal until the Senate also passes the so-called budget reconciliation bill.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the leader of the progressive caucus, repeated demands that both bills must be sent to the House before a vote is taken.

And Democrats are battling over the parameters of the larger bill.

Sinema said Wednesday she doesn't support the $3.5 trillion price tag that party leaders are targeting, which drew a fierce rebuke from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

"She is threatening to nuke everything — bipartisan deal, reconciliation, all of this — by reneging on an agreement that was already settled several weeks ago," Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview, calling the $3.5 trillion price tag "already too low" and a product of compromise.

 

It's possible that some Republicans in the House will vote for the Senate infrastructure bill, but a grand total of zero Republicans will vote for the reconciliation Even Better Package™ .

The hard reality is that the reconciliation bill isn't going to pass, and that Mitch McConnell has quietly won again, getting a bipartisan deal that's a fraction of what Biden and the Dems were talking about in reconciliation. Sinema will absolutely blow up the reconciliation bill trhe moment the Senate Bill gets passed, saving McConnell the trouble. He doesn't have to be the bad guy here.

Dems will do it for him. Ideally for McConnell, when Sinema kills the reconciliation bill, The Squad will turn around and kill the Senate Bill, and Mitch will get a complete victory without lifting a finger.

Maybe I'm fatalist, I mean Dems did get the ACA done (at great and terrible political cost), but 2010 is going to look like a picnic if Dems blow this now.

We'll see if they fall into the pit, or cross the ravine on a tightrope vote.

Last Call For The Vax Of Life, COn't

There are far fewer cases of delta variant COVID right now than there were in January.

The number of hospitalizations is worse now than it was seven months ago, or ever, in this ongoing pandemic.

It will get worse from here.

As the country grapples with a surge in the delta variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci believes that lockdowns the country saw last year are likely to not return, though he warned "things will get worse" during an interview on ABC's "This Week."

"I don't think we're gonna see lockdowns. I think we have enough of the percentage of people in the country -- not enough to crush the outbreak -- but I believe enough to not allow us to get into the situation we were in last winter. But things are going to get worse," the nation's top infectious disease expert told "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl on Sunday.

"If you look at the acceleration of the number of cases, the seven-day average has gone up substantially. You know what we really need to do, Jon, we say it over and over again and it's the truth -- we have 100 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not getting vaccinated. We are seeing an outbreak of the unvaccinated," he added.

"From the standpoint of illness, hospitalization, suffering and death, the unvaccinated are much more vulnerable because the vaccinated are protected from severe illness, for the most part, but when you look at the country as a whole. And getting us back to normal, the unvaccinated, by not being vaccinated, are allowing the propagation and the spread of the outbreak which ultimately impacts everybody," Fauci said.

Concerns over the coronavirus resurged this week, as research about the outbreak of the virus in Provincetown, Massachusetts, indicated that the now-dominant delta variant may be able to spread among fully vaccinated people.

During an investigation of the outbreak, researchers learned that the amount of virus in the noses of vaccinated people experiencing a breakthrough infection was the same as in an unvaccinated person -- a concerning sign that vaccinated people can also spread the virus.

The data helped the CDC make its decision to bring mask guidelines back for vaccinated individuals in areas of high or substantial spread of the virus -- despite the fact that breakthrough cases in vaccinated individuals are overwhelmingly mild and do not result in hospitalization or death.

"That has much more to do with transmission," Fauci said of the new guidelines.

"You want them to wear a mask, so that if in fact they do get infected, they don't spread it to vulnerable people, perhaps in their own household, children or people with underlying conditions," Fauci said of the new guidance for the vaccinated.

 

Get the vaccine.

 

Wear a mask indoors.

 

I'll keep saying this until I'm blue in the face...or more correctly, until you're blue in the face, intubated, awaiting palliative triage.

The Rent Is Too Damn High, Con't

Neither President Biden nor House Democrats moved to extend the eviction moratorium over the weekend, and starting Monday as many as six million Americans will be kicked out of their apartments and rental homes right into the teeth of the delta variant. As CNN's Zachary Wolf states, this didn't have to happen.

It's like Democrats in the White House and Congress forgot the date. 

Now it's the first of the month and rent -- and back rent -- is suddenly due for millions of Americans who have been shielded from eviction during the pandemic. 

Millions of households could face eviction over the next month -- when lawmakers on are on their annual August recess -- and some have predicted a full-blown eviction crisis, just as a surge in Covid cases from the highly contagious Delta variant may be prompting renewed calls for people to stay home and keep their distance. 

"We only learned of this yesterday," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Friday evening after the House tried and failed to pass legislation that would extend the federal eviction moratorium. "There was not enough time to socialize it within our caucus as well as to build a consensus necessary," she said, with a promise from her top lieutenant to revisit the issue ASAP. Probably after the break. 

Pelosi was likely referring to the fact that the Biden administration only formally asked Congress to pass an extension on Thursday, two days before the program expired. 

Some White House officials made a late-stage push last week to reexamine the legal potential for President Joe Biden to extend the moratorium but were told by administration lawyers it wasn't possible, according to people familiar with the deliberations. 

You'd never know from the White House's late ask or Pelosi's lame excuse that the Supreme Court was very clear one month ago; either Congress could vote again to authorize the program or evictions could go forward. 

Not that a successful House vote would have accomplished anything. An eviction moratorium bill that can't pass the Democratic House would have been laughed out of the evenly divided Senate, where the rules give any one senator the right to slow anything down. There are plenty of Republicans who opposed the temporary hold on evictions when it was first enacted during the Trump administration in September of 2020. Today, there is a gaping divide over whether the government can or should tell private landlords they can't kick tenants out. 

But this is a story of Democrats' failure to manage time just as much as it is about Republicans' obstruction.

"I absolutely believe that in this moment, yes, we are failing the American people," Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley told CNN's Ryan Nobles on Saturday evening. "We absolutely should have received word from the White House much earlier than we did. ... There is still time, though, to right this wrong. I do believe that the White House and CDC can act, should act unilaterally. And if we are challenged by the courts, that will still buy these families time." 

And it's a clear sign that extraordinary efforts by the government to help Americans through the pandemic are temporary, even if the virus is here to stay. 

Expanded unemployment benefits that Democrats were able to sustain without Republican help will expire in September. 

A novel new direct payment for parents, meant to pull kids out of poverty, will end in 2022 unless they can find a way to extend it. 

What may be most frustrating for Democrats who helped Biden enact his American Rescue Plan to fight Covid this year is they earmarked money to help renters, but most of it has not yet been spent.

 

That's the real problem though. States are sitting on billions earmarked for rental relief, and most have made no effort to spend a dime of it.  Landlords in particular made no effort to go through the process to get the money they are screaming about losing, because they want to evict people and make room for renters who *can* pay. The vast majority of landlords in America are large rental corporations who can afford to take a temporary hit if it means clearing the decks of lower-income renters and bringing in new tenants at higher rents.

Congress knew that the Roberts Court made it clear that they, not Biden, had the authority for the moratorium extension. And all Mitch had to do in order to win again was drag out the clock on everything else, leaving Dems high and dry this weekend.

Not passing a House bill and not forcing a Senate vote is something that's going to haunt the Dems well into 2022 and beyond.

As for the millions evicted, well, you can't vote without an address, can you?

Which was always the point.

Sunday Long Read: Olympian Pressure

As the Tokyo Summer Games continue into their second week, and the world discusses delta variant spread, the toll on athletes mental health, and whther or not the Olympics can still be justified from an economic, infrastructure, housing fairness, and moral standpoint, we have our Sunday Long Read from Australian former rhythmic gymnast Rebecca Liu in The Guardian, who looks back on her childhood career and what it meant.

Every four years, the same argument plays out. The Olympics reminds the public of the existence of rhythmic gymnastics and the public scoffs at this ridiculous spectacle, with its “ribbon dancing”, its sequins, its extravagant bending and pirouetting. Where artistic gymnastics – the one with the beam and the bars, the one with triple backflips and the constant risk of broken bones – is dignified and athletic, rhythmic gymnastics is frilly and absurd. How is this even a sport? Why is it part of the Olympics? These are the usual criticisms. In return, embattled admirers will point out that rhythmic gymnastics is extremely difficult, actually. There is immense skill involved in those backbends and leaps; besides, have you tried throwing and catching a ball while holding your foot above your head?

When I first caught sight of rhythmic gymnastics, I knew nothing of this. The reasons the sport is mocked – the sequins, the balletic dancing, the kilowatt-bright, beauty-pageant smiles of the gymnasts – were the reasons I found it delightful. I was six, sitting in my kitchen in Auckland, staring at the television. On screen, a gymnast at the 2000 Sydney Olympics tossed a bright red ribbon high into the air before catching it with astonishing ease. She was, to me, the height of womanly sophistication: beautiful, graceful, and covered in glitter. I dragged my mother into the room, pointed to the television and announced that this was the sort of lady I would like to become.

My mother was used to this. When I was a baby, she had moved us to New Zealand, while my father stayed in China, working to support our lives abroad. Like many immigrant parents, she wanted to provide her child with opportunities that she, growing up as one of four siblings in rural 1970s China, did not have. By the time I was a toddler, I was going to Chinese dance lessons, which I loved, and Chinese language classes, which I hated. As I grew older, I built up a near-maniacal collection of hobbies. I wanted to play piano, then violin. I wanted to be a ballerina. I was gripped by figure skating. Much later, my mother started worrying about the lack of male influences in my life and I was sent to after-school electronics clubs, where I spent a lot of time soldering.

These fixations were intense and brief. I usually lost interest within weeks. But with rhythmic gymnastics, it was different. Not long after my epiphany in front of the TV, my mother searched through the Auckland Yellow Pages and found a gymnastics club near our house. A few weeks later, we set off on a 15-minute journey through the suburbs for my first class. It was a good opportunity, my mother thought, for her daughter to get some regular exercise.

Later, when my gymnastics career was behind me, after all the accolades and the trophies and the gold medals, I would loudly reminisce about it to my friends, teachers, acquaintances, anyone who would listen – a 13-year-old wistfully reflecting on her glory days. But as I grew older, embarrassment crept over me. I wondered what it had meant to dedicate so much of my childhood to a sport that now seemed shamefully girly and unfeminist. This is a sport that first asks women to be graceful and model-thin, then scrutinises their every movement and facial expression for imperfections. The lifecycle of an elite rhythmic gymnast would please the most ardent misogynist. Ideally, you begin as early as possible, so you develop maximum flexibility before the grim reaper (puberty) comes knocking. Then, in the years when you are allegedly at your most beautiful, and certainly at your most emotionally insecure, you are expected to dazzle. Once you are no longer capable of dazzling, you exit the stage. Senior competitive gymnasts commonly retire in their early 20s.

At university, I made peace with my childhood passion by presenting it cynically, showing friends photos of myself on the gym floor, clad in makeup and sequins, with an air that said, “Yes, I, too, have semi-read The Second Sex”. Mostly, though, when I looked at these photos, I felt old. One summer, watching yet another round of gymnasts getting their taste of Olympic glory, all of whom seemed to be rudely getting younger and younger, I phoned my dad in a panic, telling him that I had become a has-been. He replied that I was 18, and thus still had plenty left to live for.

Almost a decade on, I recently searched online for any remnants of my life in rhythmic gymnastics. Gone. I asked my mother if she still had any of the medals. Lost in an old house move. What about that time I was interviewed in the local paper? Gone, gone, gone. That child national champion, so driven and so athletic, feels like another person who somehow inhabited my body decades earlier, before bolting it without warning, shutting the windows and doors and leaving no trace. Was that even me?

It's a good story, and we all know someone like Rebecca, a childhood athlete, prodigy, wunderkind. We ask "What happened to so-and-so" some decades later, as plenty compete in sports as kids, but rarely do they ever rise to the ranks of Simone Biles or LeBron James.

I still think the Olympics have outlived their usefulness, however.