Congress ‘Close’ to Coronavirus ‘Deal’ Updated
at the end of the comment stream.
The good, the bad, and the very, very dismal fucked up.
‘Hill leaders close in on Covid stimulus deal’ Negotiators have left out the two most contentious items of the possible agreement’, politico.com, Dec. 16. 2020
“Congressional negotiators are on the brink of a coronavirus rescue package that would include a second round of direct payments and boost unemployment benefits, but would leave out state and local funding and a liability shield, according to lawmakers and sources briefed on the talks.
The price tag of the emerging deal is roughly $900 billion, and a deal could be finalized on Wednesday, those sources said. Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said the proposal would likely include direct checks to individuals of $600 to $700 and a weekly unemployment boost of $300 through March.
[No mention of checks for children…]
“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sounded upbeat on Wednesday morning about the progress that the top four congressional leaders had made over the last 24 hours. He said he believed the impending compromise can pass both the House and Senate and gain support from both parties.” […]
“Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also said negotiators are close to an agreement. He also said that his party would push for a larger deal next year when Joe Biden assumes the presidency.”
You rock, Chuckles; whatever the ‘larger deal’ will contain!
‘Congress close to coronavirus deal that includes stimulus checks’, thehill.com, Dec. 16, 2020
“The $900 billion package is the result of months of stop-and-start negotiations that received a boost in early December when a bipartisan group of senators and House members unveiled their own $908 billion package after talks between Democratic leaders and the White House stalled.
The emerging deal, however, will not include $160 billion in new state and local aid or liability protection for businesses and other organizations — two of the most contentious issues of the talk.
The new round of stimulus checks cost approximately the same as the $160 billion in state and local aid that negotiators have set aside in hopes of reaching a deal by week’s end.
Senate and House leaders want to attach the new coronavirus relief package to a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending package that needs to pass by Dec. 18 to keep the government funded.” […]
“Thune said the plan for the House to act on the combined COVID relief-omnibus spending package first and send it to the Senate to pass before the Friday night deadline.”
On the right sidebar at the hill.com: 'Ocasio-Cortez: I'm 'not ready' to be Speaker but Pelosi and Schumer need to go', Scott Wong - 12/16/20 ; )
(cross-posted from Café Babylon)
Comments
Eviction moratorium?
Maybe I could make a living making those 78" by 28" boards so that people can live in their Honda CR-Vs...
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
You know I don't care about Berkshire-Hathaway Real Estate
But I do have sympathy for the Mom & Pop three flats that are gong to go under because of the rent jubilee.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
but...but...but:
dementia joe says 'People Don't Want Handouts!'
shoot, i'd replied earlier,
must have pressed Preview, not Send.
it was close to: 'do you supply poles to erect tube tents w/ your boards?'
Here's the photo.
You can put down the passenger seats on a Honda CR-V, lay the board across the seats (you'll need a box to prop up the back end), put a pad on the board, a sleeping bag on the pad, and a pillow up against the front seat, and your CR-V is now a home. The left rear passenger seat is where you put your camping stove.
I lived in my CR-V, as such, for a fair portion of a year. I had to find cleverer ways of blocking out the windows at night so that nobody would look in, unless I was camping in a wilderness, and I had to move the CR-V to places where the temperatures were not intolerably cold, specifically in the last two-thirds of February of 2019.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
i remember your having
recounted that time in your history. above, i'd thought you'd meant that part of the board was outside, hence: tube tent. my spaniel and i lived in a closet for a year or two in boulder, but it was quite a large closet. ; )
WTF, over
the only thing stimulating about this next 'compromise'
is how congress will blame each other for another
screwing of americans (tm) without fixing what's wrong
here Joe/Jane take your 600 and be happy about it!
congress really doesn't feel our pain much
question everything
damn straight,
and the blame fingers are already pointing across the aisle, and within the duopoly parties, QSM. the Q is, as ever, how do we make them feel OUR pain?
dynomite
or dolomite as the case may be...
question everything
I don't care if AOC is right about some things, the bad far
outweighs it.
Yes she is backpedaling and saying new leadership is required but obviously will do nothing to make that happen.
She also is not an inch closer to doing more than just talk about M4A, but everybody knows that,, however she just went over my 'red line' in an interview on The Intercept with Jeremy Scahill regarding Julian Assange.
JS: Final question for you, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. There’s discussion right now about Donald Trump using the pardon power in the waning days of his administration. And primarily, it’s focused around potentially preemptively pardoning members of his family or his inner circle. But I wanted to ask you, and this could apply to either Trump or Biden, if you believe that these individuals should be pardoned: Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Reality Winner, Daniel Hale, and others who have been charged under the Espionage Act because of leaking or publishing information that cut to the heart of some of the crimes of the American empire committed abroad. Should all of those people be pardoned by either Trump or Biden?
AOC: I do believe that Edward Snowden should be considered. I think there are considerations and concerns around Assange, to just be completely frank, but I believe the Obama administration was correct in declining to use the Espionage Act to pursue charges. And so, you know, I would agree with these assessments. And while I understand there’s kind of debate and many areas on this, but I think that it was part of the the authoritarian shift in the Trump administration to specifically levy the Espionage Act against these individuals..."
Jeremy Scahill did a good interview with a lot of criticism of the Obama administration over prosecution of whistle blowers, but he did not correct AOC when she basically laid all the prosecutions at tRump's feet. (all emphasis mine)
https://theintercept.com/2020/12/16/intercepted-aoc-pelosi-biden-cabinet...
i'll take you at your word,
but the irony is hilarious. it was likely scahill himself who'd busted reality winner, fuck him. my apologies, but also an african american man whose name i can't recall. (see below)
so no, i won't listen to them. but i will say that RT.com has the same story, and ties it directly to her Twitter spat with justin jackson.
'Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Democrats should drop Pelosi as leader, right after defending her against the left', 16 Dec, 2020
it opens:
Oh, those nefarious forces in a power vacuum! and will someone tell her 'a federal jobs @ $15 isn't even close to a living wage?
sure, mull over a pardon for assange, he's almost dead already!
thanks, aliasalias; i'm just venting a bit of my fury.
on edit: i went back thru my media files and found 'Terry Albury'. and likely Daniel Hale as well. One More Time: Do Not Trust the Intercept, café babylon
I don't trust the Intercept either, it was a tweet that made me
want to look at the interview. That place has long been against Julian Assange and after Reality Winner I can't believe anyone can trust them with information that can get them busted.
As far as AOC's long rambling excuse for not wanting to have a vote on M4A, diverting the subject to things she feels can get done is hogwash, the part about the $15.00 an hour wage in particular.
AOC is in the 'House' so what is she talking about? She talks like getting M4A passed is futile because the Senate will block it, so she prefers to try to pass the $15 an hour wage increase instead? Where was she when this happened in 2019?
July 18, 2019
House passes bill to raise federal minimum wage to $15 an hour
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by October 2025, a big win for workers and labor groups, even as it remained unlikely the bill would pass a Republican-controlled Senate.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-minimum-wage-idUSKCN1UD2DV
jeezum crow, good catch.
breaking news on assange, (h/t mr. wd, and he says sputnik has it as well), but i'm read out till my eyes are crossed for tonight. and yes, we knew some of it earlier, although i'd thought it was luke harding's book. and yes, we're leery for good reason of conservative Project Veritas...
‘NEW Assange recording reveals WikiLeaks founder tried to WARN Washington about damaging release, defying claims of carelessness’, RT.com, 16 Dec, 2020
briefly, but worth reading it all:
This is a huge story and it’s too bad that it won’t
get picked up by the mainstream media. Not that it’d do much good cuz people still believe that Assange worked with Russia. And that’s why they connected him to it. The left once would never have stood for what’s happening to him, but now they believe he cost Hillary the election.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
it is huge;
but of course you're correct that it's akin to Black-Listed news, as it doesn't support the conventional narrative which equals: The Truth. i just checked, and the guardian doesn't appear to have it./s
no matter how many OPCW whistlblowers testify, it's been written in stone: Assad Gassed his own People. Putin novichocked the Scripals.
Another one shot "stimulus"
of $600 is insulting. People have lost their jobs and their healthcare, if it came with the job, and have been subsisting on a measly one time $1,200 check for nine months. This is ridiculous while the rest of the world including third world countries have universal healthcare and most first world countries are keeping their citizens whole financially during this pandemic.
The United States government is run by sociopaths who hate the very people they have been elected to represent and who pay their salaries. This is totally unacceptable.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
goddam right!
and all of this is 'likely', including 'a weekly unemployment boost of $300 through March. nothing for chirren? eviction moratoriums?
well, we'll know more on friday, but yes chuck: wall street will likely get the bulk of it, much like before.
i'd been about to past together a 'Biden Loves Banksters and War Criminals' piece, went l0oking for this...and thought of this Caitltyn Johnstone polemic that Popular Resistance had sent out recently. boy, howdy, does it resonate:
‘In An Insane World, Revolution Is The Moderate Position’, dec. 7, 2020 (just a few excerpts):
i know that the elites have convinced us we have no power, and i'd say especially the Democrat Party, where all good social have movements go to die. but during the coming deepening depression, there may be a point when people have simply had enough, and do revolt because there's Nothing Left to Lose.
I guess we should get on our knees before the clowngress
critters and say
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
yep, biden may indeed be
worse than trump in many directions, but he'll do it all with an 'affable, demented smile' and the D team, WaPo, NY/cia/Times will provide cover for him as they did for Obomba.
Don't get fooled again...
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Cut their salary to match
the STFU money they are trying to bribe the public with for their next corporate giveaway. Hell, they'll spend that much of our money on a lunch, or getting their hair "blown out".
blowing the corporate dicks
congress role
question everything
you might be pingng
pelosi getting her hairdresser to open her salon...just for a quick blow dry (without masks).
when recently did congress vote themselves a pay rise? what else could they have done with that unprecedented bipartisan $741 billion war budget? remember lst year the D team gave Boss Tweet more than he'd asked for?
War versus people
The war budget always zips through Congress at warp speed, but something for the people? "We must wait until the time is right" If you are doing the right thing, the time is always right, right NOW.
Why does our government hate its own people so much?
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
oh, my;
what a haunting question:
while i'm tempted to answer in quips such as 'we only matter insofar as we're necessary to serve their needs (
how many ways are included)' or 'you'd think they'd want to pacify us at least somewhat to stave off a major rebellion', my mind is on the next phase: biden's new cabinet members, many chilling ones. i'm just putting the finishing touches on that one, and am so very queasy already.
may i drop this here for now, as we'd been discussing the project veritas tapes wand julian assange? ‘Tape of Assange warning US government in 2011 is ‘overwhelming evidence’ of his innocence, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief tells RT’, 17 Dec, 2020
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca0pZpemSac&feature=emb_logo ]
kristinn says it's so cold inside belmarsh gitmo that julian has to stack books in front of the window...to keep a bit of cold our.
biden, of course, has called him a 'high tech terrorist'.
Crumbs, maybe,
for the proletariat. No political courage. Maybe that’ll change.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
maybe it will change,
but imo, ordinary people will collectively have to make it change. but 'crumbs, maybe', has reminded me of buffy saint marie's: 'We're drowning in their gravy spills'.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX_AhL2SsUs]
g'night, sleep well, dream well.
It will never change unless
the people make it change. Power cedes nothing without a demand. We have been demanding for a long time and they refuse to meet the needs of the people. This country has reached third world status if we use the metrics of hunger, homelessness, poverty, and healthcare. I read where Los Angeles now has a homeless population of over 65,000 and it is growing every day.
I have said it before and I will say it again. People with nothing left to lose are the most dangerous people in the world. The United states has reached a critical mass of people with nothing left to lose and a measly $600 bribe is not going to solve that. Our government is run by sociopaths with feckless little bobbleheads like AOC, Bernie, and the squad running cover for them. Not one of them is willing to stand up to the sociopathic power that runs this country.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
They’re coming for us next
The working class has gotten poorer every administration and after wiping out so much equity in the last crash that affected minorities and poor people the most the PTB are going after the middle class. When they’re done they will come for the elderly who aren’t rich.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
amen to that.
the ruling capitalists can't help being vermin Eating their hosts (
The word you're looking for is "parasites"
Vermin can manage to survive on whatever they can scrounge wherever they can find it. Parasites are totally dependent on their hosts, and if they kill the host, they die too.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
thank you, and yes
i did mean parasites.
morning additions:
Part 1:
‘Lawmakers Are Closing In on Virus-Relief Deal: Congress Update’ Bloomberg News, this a.m.
“The potential deal follows nine months of fruitless negotiations as the U.S. economy suffers under pandemic-related lockdowns. Some 7.8 million Americans have fallen into poverty since June as benefits from the prior virus relief package lapsed, according to an analysis of ongoing Census data by economists at the University of Chicago and University of Notre Dame.
The 2.4 percentage point rise in the estimated U.S. poverty rate through November is nearly double the largest annual increase since the 1960s, the economists said. The increase in poverty has been sharpest in states with more limited unemployment insurance benefits.”
Patrick Martin at wsws dug deeper into the study, and what he found is illuminating, if beyond terrifying.
part 2, as this needs to stand alone, imo:
several days ago, jacob cross at wsws was describing the bipartisan earlier sausage-making of 'the threadbare stimulus plan', but had featured this disgusting horror show:
one might be forced to conclude that those wealthy politicians have No Earthy Clue that they are 'miracle-gifting' our own tax dollars, i.e., the fruits of OUR labors...back to us, and in such unconscionably paltry amounts that many will simply not survive the winter.
are they sociopaths, even of the acquired sort? or do they simply reside in the Ruling Class Congressional Bubble that they helped to create, then feed off one another's cavalier calumny and believe that it's so?
are they redeemable? (a largely rhetorical Q...)
We keep asking this Q
are they sociopaths, even of the acquired sort?
We are watching congress decide to let the US economy crash and burn for many of the working class so that their donors can get richer. They will do nothing as millions of families with grandparents raising kids who if poor are already struggling. Throwing millions out of the home in this moment is unconscionable. This will leave to more deaths that we're being told we must get under control and that's why no one can work. Unless you're powerful enough to by indulgences. That TV and movies are being filmed whilst ma and pa shops go under is insane. In a sane world people would be brought up on charges of crimes against humanity.
Depraved indifference. Malicious with deliberate outcome. Whatever word you like, it is a massive crime. I cannot wrap my head around it. World leaders should be speaking out except that they are poodles. Macron has the Rona as do a lot of GOP congress critters. Every one of them will probably get the cure and yes we can call it one but only if you're important and rich enough to qualify for it. But damn I want to see every one of them pay a price.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
i'd thought i was
furious earlier, but the content of these last two comments sent me over the moon, almost speechless with rage.
so i thank you profusely for your long and point by point reaction. and when the depression hits in earnest, our capitalist rulers will try to blame on the virus, but as we know it's been brewing for years...again, but this fukkery will be part of it.
i'm not sure what you mean about getting the cure, but for my money, they can take their Rushed Pfizer vaccines and stuff them.
thanks again, snoopy.
Pure psychopaths,
the lot of them.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
i confess that i've forgotten
the difference between sociopathy and psychopathology (and am too frazzled to look it up), but right now, i'll agree. i'd been humming a counter-version to 'bless them all...' on the order of 'fuck them all...for their christmans gifts and miraces!'
closing time for me.
tonight's closing song is by santee sioux talking poet, americn indian movement leader:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y88AaSnJwqA]
hint: they're all rih man's wars.
♫ Now that the buffalo’s gone…
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-the-buffalo-no-longer-roame...
The buffalo = independent small business and mom-and-pop anything
No more self-reliance! — sorry, Ralph Waldo Emerson!
The transcontinental railroad = the elite-controlled (and soon-to-be thought-policed and censored) global-capitalist-monopolist Internet
Buffalo Bill & Co. = the lockdown logic of “medical martial law”
The result = Everyone whose way of life depended on the “buffalo” — independent economic activity and self-employment — will either starve or be forced onto “reservations” designed by a “Great Reset” government and its Big Bank / Big Tech billionaire backers
quite a metaphor,
including the mountain of buffalo skulls and:
they'd served their masters' well for pittances, and then were airbrushed out of the completion story. and yes to all your analogies, and yes, it's coming soon:
and with the $th industrial revolution, fewer and fewer humans will be necessary to further the WEF MOTU's visions. pretty soon klaus schwab and bill gates will be the joint rulers of Planet Earth. .
I read that as "Sith Industrial Revolution"
and somehow I don't think that's too far off.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
ay, yi, yi:
what i'd meant to type was 4th industrial revolution: a WEF link. a too-coy overview, then specific headings:
@SAMSHARPFBPE
The Great Reset is not an evil conspiracy to take over the world. It's a theory on reforming capitalism to benefit the worker. You will benefit from it. Instead of realising this you've just decided to believe unfounded theories from the internet.
7:27 AM • Dec 18, 2020
; )
Meet the new boss...
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver