The Last Time Ever I Saw Your Face . . .

. . . it was in April 2020. 

But get ready to rejoice, my friends!  Face coverings (FCs) appear to be on the way out, at least for a good long time before we have to deal with COVID again, in its current strain or in a future one.

With the seven-day average of new COVID cases having dropped to below 70,000 for the first time since October, and with hospitalizations down significantly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says we don't have to wear FCs in areas where hospitalization rates are low or medium - about 70 percent of counties, districts (Alaska) and parishes (Louisiana) in the United States.  Most of the 30 percent of the counties, districts and parishes with high hospitalization rates are in - you guessed it - the South and West.

Where  I live, a nearby town that happens to be one of these suburbs reinventing itself as a destination town - it has an art museum - is repealing its FC mandate ahead of schedule.  The art museum is resuming its free admission on the first Thursday night of the month this week for the first time in two years.  I'm probably going to hold off, though, and not go to a free first Thursday night until April or May just to be on the safe side.

Oh, yeah, don't expect the FCs to come off at President Biden's State Of the Union address tonight, even though the District of Columbia has a low hospitalization rate, because, as I understand it, FCs are still required on federal property.  And, the last time I checked, the U.S .Capitol is federal property (at least until the next insurrection).  On this, Biden ain't budging, thanks largely to his COVID paranoia after FC restrictions were lifted in June 2021, and FCs were being taken off just as the delta corona was taking off.  Thus, FCs and COVID tests will be required for those who attend the speech in person. 

And so, let history record that the only two times that two women - Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - were sitting behind the President in a joint session of Congress, they were wearing face coverings both times. The pandemic will likely be over completely in 2023, but Kevin McCarthy will likely be sitting in Nancy Pelosi's place. 

At least both people behind President Biden will still both be Californians.

However, it will be appropriate if all of Congress is masked up like armed bandits tonight, if only to remind us what Mark Twain once said about Congress being America's only criminal class. 

The Song Remains The Same

Cable news anchors should take this week off.  They can just run repeats of their Monday broadcasts for the rest of the week. Because the news hasn't changed: Democrats still haven't passed a reconciliation bull to expand social amenities, the Senate is trying to come up with a climate policy President Biden can advocate for at the upcoming climate summit in Scotland, Joe Manchin has issues, and the remaining sticky wickets are the scope of parental leave benefits, Medicare and Medicaid expansions, a "billionaires tax" in place of a tax rate hike, and lowering the cost of prescription drugs. And this is really putting pressure on the gubernatorial race in Virginia.

Right now, I'm cautiously optimistic that something will get passed soon, though I think top Democrats in Congress are more optimistic than I am.  Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer says that “a final deal is within reach" in the face of disputes on two particular issues, Medicare expansion and prescription drug prices.  That's sort of like saying that a new car is almost ready to come off the assembly line but the factory workers still have trouble installing the engine and the axles.  

The story will likely remain unchanged tomorrow, and the day after that.  And on Friday, when MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell has his day off.  He won't miss much.  But perhaps the reconciliation bill and the basic infrastructure bull can both pass sooner rather than later.  But probably not soon enough of Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, who, I'm afraid, is already toast. Why did he even want to come back?

Through the Roof

The United States is on the verge of defaulting on its debt, and only a fool would be nonchalant about remaining unworried of the debt ceiling blowing up.

The Republicans aren't worried.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has insisted that the Democrats raise the debt ceiling but themselves but won't let them move ahead with a procedural vote to do it on their own.  He wants the Democrats to do it without any form of Republican participation, which is to say, he wants them to use a budget reconciliation.  Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer can't do that.  It'll take a long time - far longer, most likely, then the expected default date of October 18.

I have cautious optimism and confidence that Schumer can get this job done.  He's vowed to get the debt ceiling raised by having Senate Democrats stay over the weekend if he can't get it done by Friday.  He won't get it done today; the procedural vote he's set up for today to raise the debt ceiling will inevitably fail, thanks to the GOP filibuster.  If the debt ceiling isn't raised, the American economy and possibly the global economy will fail.  The GOP is banking on Democrats to get the blame for letting the country default simply because they control the Presidency and Congress.  If that sounds ridiculous, because everyone can see what McConnell is doing, consider that the Republicans have always pulled this trick and have always dodged the blame and deflected it to the Democrats.  They stonewalled much of Bill Clintons agenda in 1993 and 1994 and did the same to to all of Barack Obama's agenda (except for health care reform) in 2009 and 2010.  Result?  They won the House in the subsequent midterms. 

What really frustrates me - and Democrats as well, I'm sure - is that Democrats tried to work with Republicans in good faith on the Clinton and Obama agendas with much larger congressional majorities when they should have gone it alone.  This time the Democrats have learned their lesson and have been trying to get things done on their own.  But with the narrow majorities they have right now, it's too late.

Meanwhile, the Republican objective to take back power in 2022 and 2024 and turn America into a fascist dictatorship continues full steam ahead.

I only hope we don't end up selling apples on the street two weeks from now. 

Boris On the Brink

Boris Johnson - he of the messy blond Beatle haircut - made an effort to get a no-deal Brexit plan through Parliament and got . . . no deal.  The House of Commons wouldn't go along with it.  Then when he tried to call for snap elections to get something resembling legitimacy for his prime ministership, Labour Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn blocked the effort.  Johnson's efforts were stymied by defections from his own Conservative, or Tory, party, and numerous Tories resigned their Member of Parliament (MP) seats.  Two of them were relatives of famous British prime ministers.  One was the grandson of Winston Churchill, and the other was the brother of . . . Boris Johnson. 

The United Kingdom may still leave the European Union, but Johnson's efforts to subvert Parliament - including an effort to dissolve it - are being met with resistance from a bipartisan group of MPs, the sort of national interest you do not see among Republicans in Congress when Donald Trump tries to buy Greenland or, I don;t know, occupy the Rhineland.  British lawmakers stand up to Johnson when he tries to pull a fast one to take the U.K. out of the European Union.  Here, Trump can force the United States to make pullouts of its own, like withdrawals form the Paris Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, and that's the end of it.  No one can figure out how to appeal a Trump decision.

Just remember, the British perfected democracy long before we did.

Shut Down, Vol. 19

There are no winners here.

The federal government has just shut down, per a failed Senate vote on a continuing resolution passed by the House.  Although five of ten Democratic senators from states Trump won voted for the resolution, four Republicans - including South Carolina's Lindsey Graham - voted against it, Graham in particular fed up with Trump's irrationality.  

The Democrats stood their ground on a permanent solution to the children of undocumented immigrants, but they were probably playing politic at the wrong time on the wrong issue.  Republicans tried to use the Children's Health Insurance Program - unfunded since September - as a bargaining, er, chip to cow the Democrats into submission while refusing to deal with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients.  And neither side seems to have a clue abut how to maintain troop readiness in the military.  No one will budge, and nothing is happening.

This is the nineteenth time the government has shut down.

As far as I'm concerned, the whole damn country can shut down.  Our representative form of government has only been in effect for 229 years, a few moments in the Big Bang scheme of things, is still brief enough to be considered an experiment.  

It just failed.

Congress can still get something worked out by Monday morning, before the shutdown has a noticeable effect on the country.  Don't bet on it.

DACA Caca

Trump got his henchman Jeff Sessions to announce that former President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for children brought into this country illegally by their parents was being wound down and terminated by March 2018.  Such individuals - called the Dreamers because they would benefit from passage of the as-yet unpassed immigration-reform Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, Act - are now in jeopardy of being tossed out of the country despite having been brought here as kids, despite the fact that they are now in college or in the workforce and are contributing to society, and despite the fact that they know no country other than this one.

Everyone, including I myself, agrees that Trump shouldn't have done this.  Now even Trump agrees that Trump shouldn't have done this.  Because although some liberal commentators have accused Trump of playing to his base of white men who want to make America more purely Caucasian than Sweden, he wants to try to find some way to get Dreamers to stay, because they themselves have done nothing wrong.  However, he believes - and to be fair, he has a case - that it is the legislative and not the executive responsibility to fix what passes for our immigration system. That's why he moved to let Dreamers know that he hopes to ensure that they'll be able to stay in the United States through congressional action.

Marco Rubio, Florida's Republican U.S. Senator and the son of Cuban immigrants, can relate.  "I know how difficult it is,"  He recently said, "I know how highly charged immigration can be as an issue. I know how difficult it can be to narrowly address one piece of the puzzle. So I’m concerned about those things."

So now it's crunch time.  Washington has to get this sucker fixed.  But don't expect Steve Bannon to give Trump a pep talk to get it done.  He's been insisting that the Catholic Church in America wants illegal aliens to swell their ranks.

Where's Martin O'Malley when you need him?

And by the way . . . we should stop calling Obama's program by its acronym.  No one knows  what it means, and DACA sounds like the capital of Bangladesh.  Also . . . the Dreamers?  They're immigrants, not Freddie Garrity's backing band. 

I'm telling you now . . ..