US politics: Everything in moderation, including moderation

[ThinkerX]

40 minutes ago, DMC said:

You mean the reconciliation bill?  A bill cut to that extent wouldn't make it to Biden's desk.  I don't know where the hell you're getting your figures from, but even if Manchin/Sinema got everything they wanted it's pretty clear even they don't wanna cut the bill in half.  Anywho, all this pessimism really flies in the face of, ya know, what's literally happening right now - Senate holds sleepy Saturday session as negotiators finalize infrastructure deal:

 

I was not talking about the bipartisan deal.  

 

Way I see it, the bipartisan deal will pass - give the GOP congress critters something to pump up back home - 'see, I held firm and got the money for this badly needed boondoggle from those corrupt demo-rats.'  They can even take credit for insisting its mostly paid for without tax hikes.  All that works in their favor.

 

The reconciliation bill, though, I strongly suspect we've barely begun to see the purely democratic infighting on that, plus the republicans will do everything they can to tank it - wasteful spending on ordinary people and all.  I expect to see large chunks of this vanish, maybe because of cost, maybe because of parliamentary reasons, maybe because parts of it would flop before a court challenge.  Worst case - maybe 50-50 (?) the whole thing simply collapses.  And then the GOP congress critters get to A) point out (with cause) how utterly incompetent the democratic party is; and B ) boast about how that bill would have exploded the deficit and put hard working right thinking 'merican's in poverty paying for it all. 

 

But again, that's just me.  

oh, your link was pay-walled. 

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

I was not talking about the bipartisan deal.  

I was referring to the reconciliation bill as well.  I'm saying even if Manchin and Sinema were given everything they wanted on it, even they wouldn't want to cut the bill in half.

8 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

oh, your link was pay-walled. 

That's really weird, The Hill should not be paywalled.

[Martell Spy]

'Down the drain’: Millions face eviction after Biden lets protections expire
The federal eviction moratorium in place since September is set to expire Saturday, after the Biden administration refused to extend it and Democrats in Congress couldn't muster the votes to intervene.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/31/eviction-moratorium-rental-assistance-biden-501917

Quote

 

As the clock runs out on a nationwide eviction ban for what’s expected to be the final time, millions of tenants are staring at the prospect of losing their homes as they wait for emergency rental aid that the government has failed to deliver.

The federal eviction moratorium in place since September is set to expire Saturday, after the Biden administration refused to extend it and Democrats in Congress couldn't muster the votes to intervene. Now lawmakers and activists fear an unprecedented surge in evictions in the coming months just as the highly transmissible Delta variant causes a spike in coronavirus cases.

The eviction wave is expected to hit population centers across the country. Housing advocates point to renters in Ohio, Texas and parts of the Southeast — where tenant protections are generally low, housing costs are high and economic problems from the pandemic linger — as particularly at risk. Even though it has its own ban in place through August, New York is also a concern, because it has been especially slow at distributing rental assistance funds to the hundreds of thousands of tenants in the state who are behind on their rent.

“We’ve been circling a drain,” said KC Tenants Director Tara Raghuveer, a housing organizer in Kansas City, Mo. “On Saturday, poor and working-class tenants go down the drain in some places.”

 

 

[ThinkerX]

because she keeps getting mentioned in this thread and elsewhere:

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sinema-strikes-big-bipartisan-infrastructure-deal-and-suffers-a-democratic-backlash/ar-AAMLEFs?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580&fbclid=IwAR0k4bWX2YCRyS1SW4wuebzF0tkCQFD9aQSCMo73VktHIc1DO9xxcSXzmRc

 

 When a group of 22 senators negotiates a $1 trillion bill, conversations can go off track. And when they did — "far too many (times) to recount," joked one senior staffer — Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema would urge them to finish the job, even if that required some liquid courage.

....

These progressives said that Sinema's bill advancing through the Senate now is just the latest offense, after she publicly defended the filibuster and opposed the price tag of a $3.5 trillion bill expanding the social safety net.

 

[Zorral]

Had an extensive chin-wag via fone yesterday with a long-time, dear friend who lives in Austin. Earlier she'd been on the national Moral March for Democracy as it arrived in Austin.  Thousands and thousands, in the hot sun, went to state capitol, Willie Nelson sang for the marchers, in the extremely hot weather.

Her heart is broken.  Texas has broken it.  The r's are doing even more gerrymandering to keep the majority blue voters from carrying elections.  One large segment of her family are leaving the state all together for New Mexico, which isn't anywhere near as crazy with r gerrymandering as Texas.

She doesn't know what to do, being alone.  She'd paid off her mortgage a year or two prior to the pandemic.  In earlier years she moved around a lot (equally rooted in NY and Texas via family) and did different things, including being -- and still is -- a wonderful singer, who does still perform in Austin's pro music scene, or did, until the pandemic.

She owns her own home, has had a really good job that she loves (and her company has said they are all going to stay working from home, as long as Texas won't vaccinate), with a nice pension accumulation and terrific  benefits, particularly in health care.  She just can't face starting all over yet again, feels she can't. I get this entirely.

Further, the US has also broken her heart.  This is a person, who until second bushwa, paid absolutely no attention to politics and current events of any kind, as they mattered not at all to her.  Yet somehow we just got to be better and closer friends, and now she's maybe more radical than I am.  This what Texas -- and particularly, first, what are still called 'women's issues', the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the pandemic, tRumper, and Texas r's have made of her.

[DMC]

Hilarious!

[Zorral]

Biden demands that the Cuban government 'turn on the internet,' and allow Cuban people 100% internet access.  He's presenting his own rewritten history, by ignoring the facts that Cuba is so generally w/o internet access because the US ordered the 1980'-90's global fiber optic cable initiatives such as FLAG to leave Cuba unconnected.  The only reason there is the little internet access there is for the Cuban people is Hugo Chavez financed and built a cable connection from Venezuela to Cuba. Yet stupid Joe seems to think all the government has to do is flip some switch.

Moreover he declares that other than blood relatives no one can send money to Cubans in order that the Cuban military doesn't get a cut of such remittances.  The military never has taken a cut of such monies. The military controls and is supported financially by the state tourism systems and facilities (which we never dealt with or gave money to in our projects there).  This is what the Cubans have been protesting, that so much of the military resources keep going to tourism rather than to efforts to better the lives of the Cuban people. But stupid Joe has made tRump's Cuban policy all his own, and, in the grand tradition of stupid Dems since 1960's determined to show his virility by being tougher on Cuba than that.

And it's the people who suffer and are immiserated; Miami and Rubio and Menendez rejoice -- who have NEVER EVER BEEN TO CUBA, and once they go they will die of shock because, surprise you white insane corrupt meffers -- it's full of people who are BLACK.

 

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Biden demands that the Cuban government 'turn on the internet,'

Multiple non-governmental groups like NetBlocks assert that the sudden and immediate cut-off of mobile access to WhatsApp, Facebook, and other communication apps is intentional, according to the data they have collected through their internet monitoring services. It wasn't a gradual degradation of service, as you would expect of an actual error rather than a deliberate closure. They note that it's very similar to what happened back in November when there were other protests going on.

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Moreover he declares that other than blood relatives no one can send money to Cubans in order that the Cuban military doesn't get a cut of such remittances. 

American International Services (AIS), widely-used by Cubans to receive and process remittances, is owned by FINCIMEX, which in turn is part of the umbrella organization GAESA, which is controlled by the Cuban military.

The Cuban military is absolutely taking a cut of remittances. 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

The Cuban military is absolutely taking a cut of remittances. 

The current regime is always taking a cut, and will continue to for years if not decades. The question is how much can we stomach? Personally I don't think we should worry that much so long is a large share is directly going to the people its meant for. 

But then again I'm of the opinion that we should end the embargo, lift a number of sanctions and encourage tourism to the island. I'd happily spend a week in Havana if I could. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

36 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

But then again I'm of the opinion that we should end the embargo, lift a number of sanctions and encourage tourism to the island. I'd happily spend a week in Havana if I could. 

Here, here!

I couldn't agree more.

It's almost as if normalization could foster.....normalization .

Isolation and antagonism has accomplished nothing but hardship these many decades. Time to move beyond what hasn't worked.

[Ran]

48 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

But then again I'm of the opinion that we should end the embargo, lift a number of sanctions and encourage tourism to the island. I'd happily spend a week in Havana if I could. 

Entirely in agreement with you, to be honest. Just correcting misinformation regarding the role of Cuba's military in remittances.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

20 minutes ago, Ran said:

Entirely in agreement with you, to be honest. Just correcting misinformation regarding the role of Cuba's military in remittances.

I think it's hard to get good information about Cuba in the US, even with all the sources the internet provides. Just for example it was pretty shocking to hear how people in South America described the country a decade ago when I was in my early 20's. It was night and day from my education here, and at the time I was going into my senior year of college as a poli sci major and had previously taken a course focusing on Central and South America.

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think it's hard to get good information about Cuba in the US, even with all the sources the internet provides.

Indeed. And sometimes it's hard to get honest information from inside of Cuba, too.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

20 minutes ago, Ran said:

Indeed. And sometimes it's hard to get honest information from inside of Cuba, too.

I think it's almost entirely impossible to get unbiased information about Cuba, inside or out, hence why I strongly support a reopening of the nation. I fail to see where the downside is unless one is hung up on giving the current regime any resources at all, a stance that I think has proven to be completely misguided while acknowledging that the Cuba state has been a failure since the 1960's (and even before that under Batista). 

[maarsen]

26 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think it's almost entirely impossible to get unbiased information about Cuba, inside or out, hence why I strongly support a reopening of the nation. I fail to see where the downside is unless one is hung up on giving the current regime any resources at all, a stance that I think has proven to be completely misguided while acknowledging that the Cuba state has been a failure since the 1960's (and even before that under Batista). 

And before that under the US.

[Ran]

19 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think it's almost entirely impossible to get unbiased information about Cuba, inside or out, hence why I strongly support a reopening of the nation. I fail to see where the downside is unless one is hung up on giving the current regime any resources at all, a stance that I think has proven to be completely misguided while acknowledging that the Cuba state has been a failure since the 1960's (and even before that under Batista). 

Again, largely agree with you. I've said much the same plenty of times before. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

50 minutes ago, maarsen said:

And before that under the US.

Truth be told I only know but so little about Cuba under Batista's dictatorial rule and even less about the time that predates it.

45 minutes ago, Ran said:

Again, largely agree with you. I've said much the same plenty of times before. 

I'm aware that we're simpatico on this subject, and I appreciate your perspective on U.S.-Cuban relations given they're lived experiences for you. It must be hard at times for you to take these positions given they're antithetical to much of the thinking in the South Florida Cuban community. At least with the old heads, that is. 

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

It must be hard at times for you to take these positions given they're antithetical to much of the thinking in the South Florida Cuban community. At least with the old heads, that is. 

It's easier that I no longer live in the U.S., so mostly interactions are with family... but lets just say that many of them do indeed hold he traditional position. (And no, they were not wealthy people in Cuba; they were bus drivers and farmers and mechanics.) My most outspoken cousin who holds a similar view to me is Cuban-born (he's a couple of years older) and actually just got his U.S. citizenship the other week. I'm sure I have one or two other cousins who see things the way I do, more or less, but for the most part it's all pretty hardline or they just aren't that engaged by the question of Cuba.

[Mindwalker]

6 hours ago, DMC said:

Hilarious!

These are the people some Dems want bipartisanship with.

[Mindwalker]

Manchin said in an interview with Tapper that he won't even do sth to the filibuster for voting rights.

But don't worry, the other day Dem organizers told Biden (and us) that they could out-organize voter suppression... No worries!