Comrade Big Bird 

The Week That Was:  Finally, after enduring a rough election week, the barely Democratically controlled Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill, the one that was previously passed by the Senate. The bill includes new money for transportation projects, the utility grid, the replacement of some lead pipes and the building out of broadband, all those things that the FG pretended to promise but never delivered during his many so-called Infrastructure Weeks. Congress didn’t take a vote on Biden’s larger Build Back Better bill, but did go forward with a procedural vote with a plan to bring Build Back Better up for a vote “within two weeks” once the Congressional  Budget Office releases its scoring report. Seeing that score was a requirement of many members of the Democrats more moderate, as in vulnerable for reelection, caucus. The Bipartisan Infrastructure bill passed by a vote of 228 to 206 with thirteen Republican ayes and six Democratic nays.  The Republican crowd included Katko, Bacon, Van Drew, Young, Upton, Kinzinger, Gonzalez, Fitzpatrick, Reed, Gabarino, Malliotakis, McKinley and Smith of New Jersey, a mix of soon to be retirees and swing district representatives. If Van Drew’s name sounds familiar it’s because he is the odd NJ Congressmen who switched parties during the FG’s reign when it looked like he would be primaried from the left.  Given that the bill had already passed the Senate on a bipartisan basis it wasn’t surprising that some Republicans stepped up to vote for it but it was notable that Pelosi needed their support to get the bill through as she had to offset the nays from her six cranky progressives. That crowd which included the usual suspects of AOC, Omar, Bush, Bowman, Pressley and Tlaib, mostly voted no to stand by their promise that they wouldn’t vote for the bipartisan plan unless the Build Back Better bill was also put up for a vote.  Their position appears to be all or nothing even if nothing takes down their moderate colleagues.  If that sounds like a familiar strategy, it’s because it is, it’s the one employed by the Republican’s Freedom Caucus who routinely held up legislation when Republicans controlled the House, leaving their party’s leadership to rely on Democratic help the few times they actually tried to get something passed. As to the Build Back Better bill, the second leg of Biden’s infrastructure plan, though many aspects of it have been nailed down, its final content remains in flux.  One thing that is in, at least for now, is an increase in the amount of state and local taxes that will be deductible to $80,000.  To the extent the SALT fix remains in, it will be a big win for representatives from high tax states like New York, New Jersey and California.  Oddly enough, even though some of them are from high tax states that’s one of the provisions that the uber progressives like AOC aren’t fond of as they view it as a giveaway to the rich.  The passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill like the many positive economic indicators that were released last week should be good news for Biden but given the topsy turvy world of politics these days, who knows if it will help his and the Democratic party’s ratings as the mainstream media continues to push and amplify narratives about dissension and the unhappiness of the electorate.  And of course the FG  is still out there.  No surprise that his response to Biden’s infrastructure success was to denounce Senate Minority Leader McConnell and the House Republicans who voted for the bill saying it was “very sad that the RINOs in the House and Senate gave Biden and Democrats a victory on the 'Non-Infrastructure' Bill.”  Of course he did.      

 

Viral Musings: While kids lining up for the vaccines should be the biggest story right now, over the weekend their was more press coverage about Texas’s Senator Ted Cruz having his shorts in a knot over “Six year old” Big Bird’s announcement that he had gotten his child sized jab.  Cruz uttered something about Big Bird being a communist after the much loved character announced he’d been vaccinated.  Of course Cruz ignored that Sesame Street have always used their platform to encourage vaccinations.  Texas sending us only their best?  Also front and center was the continuing discussion of Cheesehead quarterback Aaron Rodgers and his lie about having gotten “immunized.” He called out the woke press for harping on his lie while revealing that that he takes his health advice from conservative radio host Joe Rogan. Like Rogan, QB Cheesehead has now gotten an infusion of monoclonal antibodies and is taking horse dewormer because spending thousands of dollars on an infusion and going the Mr Ed route is so much better than just taking a proven $20 shot. A Wisconsin health care group has ended its long term partnership with Rodgers for fairly obvious reasons.  Though US covid cases and deaths appear to still be trending down, the direction is not uniform and may not be sustainable. In crowded New York City, where getting vaccinated is the norm, positivity rates are just below 1.00% but upstate in some far less dense rural counties where vaccination rates are embarrassingly low, positivity rates are over 10%. As to mandates, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the same group of judges who sustained Texas’ bounty abortion law, temporarily halted President Biden’s vaccine mandate on larger businesses while the mandate winds itself through the courts. That mandate wasn’t due to go into effect until January, hopefully providing time for this nonsense to get rationally resolved.