ShazamIam
ShazamIam's JournalDemocrats' voting rights bill is a big test for Biden's global democracy agenda
beginning a few paragraphs into the article:
...It’s unclear if HR 1 will pass in its current form, or at all. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will bring it up for a procedural vote on Tuesday, where lawmakers will decide if the bill should come up for an approve-or-deny vote in the future. Most analysts say the bill won’t clear that hurdle, potentially killing HR 1 for good in this Congress.
That would be a serious blow to Biden’s domestic agenda. After the House passed the bill in March, the president said its measures were “urgently needed to protect that right [to vote], to safeguard the integrity of our elections, and to repair and strengthen our democracy.” Biden even made Vice President Kamala Harris his point person for voting rights.
But on a grander scale, it could potentially harm the core message of Biden’s foreign policy. “Biden’s global democracy agenda depends on US democracy continuing to strengthen at home,” said Heather Hurlburt, a director at the New America think tank in Washington, DC, and so far the record is “terrible on voting rights and election integrity. So turning those around is important.”
https://www.vox.com/2021/6/21/22543506/hr1-for-the-people-senate-vote-biden-foreign-policy
Two articles from CNN providing cover story for two recent scandals.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/20/politics/justice-department-subpoenas-congressional-democrats-trump/index.htmlIn this, text article, CNN claims the collection of data on Democratic Congressional members and their families and others were just part of a witch hunt, (not their words), and it was inadvertent that Swalwell and Schiffs and their families data was requested.
CNN)The subpoena that swept up the records of two Democratic congressmen, their staff and family members in 2018 appears to have been the result of a leak investigation that initially included scrutinizing a senior aide on the House Intelligence Committee, and not the lawmakers themselves, sources told CNN.
The Justice Department's original secret subpoena to Apple, sources say, was an effort to identify people connected with the staffer. Apple provided names connected to the accounts the company had records for, including then-House Intelligence ranking member Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell, two vocal political enemies of former President Donald Trump. This was potentially the first instance federal investigators knew they had records of the two California Democrats, according to the sources.
There is more in the link if interested.
This article is blaming the long time effort by Republicans to suppress the Democratic vote is simply because they believe Trump's Big Lie. Because they only began this effort after the turnip lost the election. /s
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/21/politics/voting-rights-senate-republicans-trump-biden/index.html
This is also a text article.
When former President Donald Trump lost last year's election, most Republicans didn't do what most losing parties do -- agonize over how to modify their message and appeal to a majority to deliver them future power.
Instead, party leaders in Washington and the states dedicated themselves to enshrining his anti-democratic behavior as GOP orthodoxy and whitewashing events that led to Trump's disgrace, including his pandemic failures, lies about non-existent major electoral fraud and the Capitol insurrection.
Instead of examining why voter
s rejected the ex-President after a single term, Republican state legislators drew up bills rooted in his falsehoods about a stolen that could make it easier to install their preferred victor after future elections -- even if voters decide otherwise.
Edit: correct link and delete some of the text.
Trump Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross made at least $53 million from private companies while serving
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-commerce-secretary-wilbur-ross-made-at-least-dollar53-million-from-private-companies-while-serving-in-government-report/ar-AALf3fY?li=BBnb7KzThe investigative organization: CREW, https://www.citizensforethics.org/
...While leading the Department of Commerce, Ross reported making a minimum of $53 million to $127 million in outside earnings.
However, according to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Ross may have "earned significantly more as he was not required to specify certain income totals over $1 million."
...According to the CREW report, Ross made at least $42 million in 2017, which included "more than $6 million he was paid for giving up unvested restricted Invesco shares and more than $5 million from selling Invesco stock."
The development comes after The Washington Post reported last month that a security unit within the Department of Commerce had morphed into a counterintelligence-like operation "that collected information on hundreds of people inside and outside the department."
...The Investigations and Threat Management Service (ITMS) searched workers' offices in the evenings and looked through emails in search of possible foreign influence, according to the Post.
Per the Post report, the Biden administration paused all ITMS investigations in March and suspended its activities last month.
According to Forbes, Ross started a special purpose acquisition company in the Cayman Islands in January while still in his government role.
*Edit: Add he to The, remove some extra ellipses (...).
The High Cost of Biden's Meeting with Putin
New Yorker allows one free read.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-high-cost-of-bidens-meeting-with-putin
Biden’s main negotiating tool appears to have been the carrot of bringing Putin back to the world stage. The summit gave Putin what he craves: being treated as an important voice in world affairs, getting a photo op with Biden, holding a press conference before Biden if not with him, being called a “worthy adversary” by the American President. Biden warned Putin that this access and respect were conditional: if the jailed opposition politician Alexey Navalny were to die in prison, or if Russia waged cyberattacks on critical infrastructure in the U.S., Putin would find himself even more marginalized than he was before the summit. If there is a way to talk to Putin without harboring illusions—without pretending that he is a good-faith negotiator—this is probably it. But it comes at a cost.
Negotiations necessarily begin with establishing the interlocutors’ respective positions, making them instantly normal. Consider Navalny. Biden didn’t demand his immediate release; he demanded only that he not be killed in prison. Consider Ukraine: Biden didn’t demand that Russia withdraw from the parts of the country it has occupied, but only asked that Russia work within the framework of the Minsk agreement, a series of cease-fire agreements that would not necessarily return the occupied territories to Ukraine. Georgia, another country where Russia has occupied about a fifth of the territory, didn’t figure in either President’s account of their conversation. The very act of drawing red lines legitimizes the status quo.
Another perk of the summit for Putin is the amount of Western media attention to his person and his words. The most shameful example was a sit-down interview with the NBC correspondent Keir Simmons. The journalist asked him about being called a killer; Putin smirked, deflected, and lied. Simmons moved on to his next prepared question. It was entertaining, and Putin got the last word on a lot of people who are either dead or in jail.
The world is probably a slightly safer place following the summit. The Presidents agreed to return ambassadors to their respective postings. It’s likely that Alexey Navalny is a little safer now, too. But President Biden and this country paid a high moral price for it.
U.S. wants nuclear deal done before Iran's new president takes power
https://www.axios.com/us-iran-nuclear-deal-talks-raisi-inauguration-ed00555e-db84-4d26-9e2b-1ad8b21f9fc5.html
The Biden administration wants to finalize a deal with Iran to return to the 2015 nuclear deal in the six weeks remaining before a new Iranian president is inaugurated, a U.S. official tells Axios.
Key quote: The official said it would be "concerning" if talks dragged on into early August, when Iran's transition is due to take place. "If we don't have a deal before a new government is formed, I think that would raise serious questions about how achievable it's going to be," the official said.
Driving the news: Conservative judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi, a close ally to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is the clear favorite to win Friday's presidential election in Iran. No prominent members of the reformist camp were permitted to run, meaning the more moderate President Hassan Rouhani will almost certainly hand power to a hardliner.
Analysts and some diplomats involved in the negotiations have long said it would be easier to reach a deal with the outgoing administration than with a newly inaugurated government, particularly one led by Raisi.
Six rounds of talks have been held so far in Vienna, with the U.S. not in the room but negotiating indirectly through EU intermediaries.
Starlink dishes go into "thermal shutdown" once they hit 122 Fahrenheit
Source: Arstechnica.com
A Starlink beta user in Arizona said he lost Internet service for over seven hours yesterday when the satellite dish overheated, demonstrating one of the drawbacks of SpaceX's broadband service. When the user's Internet service was disrupted, the Starlink app provided an error message saying, "Offline: Thermal shutdown." The dish "overheated" and "Starlink will reconnect after cooling down," the error message said.
...
Thermal shutdowns affect other users
Officially, SpaceX has said that "Dishy McFlatface" is certified to operate from 22° below zero up to 104° Fahrenheit. Temperatures reached about 120° yesterday in Martin's town of Topock, near Arizona's border with California, he said. Though Dishy doesn't go into thermal shutdown until it hits 122°, the dish can obviously get hotter than the air temperature.
Read more: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/06/starlink-dish-overheats-in-arizona-sun-knocking-user-offline-for-7-hours/
Charlie Kirk, of KochsTurningPointUSA, is having some issues with Junteenth
He claims it is to replace July 4.
https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1405581114488459264
from 2020 (Charlie Kirk again) and posted on twitter by Justin Amash, today.
"This is your daily reminder that we wouldn't be celebrating Junteenth had Republicans not freed the slaves."
https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1405610781471825921
Biden just canceled hundreds of millions in student loan debt -- do you qualify?
Nancy Sarnoff
Wed, June 16, 2021, 12:17 PM·4 min read
Biden just canceled hundreds of millions in student loan debt — do you qualify?
The Biden administration has announced it's wiping away hundreds of millions of dollars in student loan debt for borrowers who said they got ripped off by their school.
This latest wave of debt forgiveness comes on top of at least $2.3 billion in student loans that the Department of Education canceled earlier this year. Those borrowers now have more room in their budgets to save, invest or get a handle on their other debts.
As millions of Americans wait for word on whether President Joe Biden will provide massive student loan forgiveness, here's a look at whether you might be covered by the new action.
Who's eligible for the latest forgiveness?
The fresh debt forgiveness is going to students who attended ITT Technical Institute and made claims against the school for misrepresentation or deceit, the Education Department announced Wednesday. ITT, a for-profit technical school that operated campuses across the U.S., closed in 2016.
Eligible borrowers will receive 100% loan discharges, totaling about $500 million. Claims from some 18,000 students have been approved, the department says.
"Our action today will give thousands of borrowers a fresh start and the relief they deserve after ITT repeatedly lied to them," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona says in a news release.
More at:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/biden-just-canceled-hundreds-millions-172700191.html
Ilhan Imar's identity politics minefield from, theweek..com
This is more propaganda, the conservatives claim Democratic,are too focused on, "identity, a lie when it is so obvious the Republicans are fully committed to a Whites Only kind of identity since Nixon.
They want to be allowed to exclude, people who they consider to be something, other than a rightful and fully franchised Citizen.
The conservatives and Republicans will never admit, that if all citizens are not allowed access and participation in political and economic and education, housing, food and a safe environment, those rights and privileges are at risk for all citizens.
Like, the exposed gathering of information against Democratic in Congress, which has a history in the U.S. via Hoover's FBI, the Nixon dirty tricks team, the W. Bush suppression of the anti-Iraq War movement, and etc.
https://theweek.com/politics/1001417/ilhan-omar-identity-politics-minefield
Ilhan's remarks are not related in any way to "identity," politics but to the superior idea of equality for all humans as humans.
Can our Democratic political organizations and teams, find an effective way to combat this notion, that equality for all is NOT identify politics and that seeking inclusion for all is not about identity it is about being human and enfranchised as a Citizen.
When I have had conversations and pressed this point with conservatives, they sincerely believe that granting equal rights to women and others who have been legally excluded is a loss of their own rights. They claim, they are losing their rights to lesser types or some other nonsense and that granting equality to all is, an actual theft of their privilege as what they believe is a superior identity.
Our President and First Lady are having a very good visit to the UK and for the G7,
I am surprised there are so few articles and posts about it here on DU.
The expressions of the participants and people we have been given photos are full of smiling and or at least pleasant looking faces, not the strained expressions in that visit by the turnip.
I admit I am a bit of an Anglophile, with a Great Grandfather from Yorkshire (Father's side) and a Great Grandmother from Wales, (Mother''s side), so the connection is not that distant and there are still stories and family legends. I may have spent more time than average reading the articles and looking at the photos.
I have noticed though that sites like thehill .com, politico .com and a few others all are featuring conservative writers making picks and digs at the Bidens and Joe. Such pitiful attacks.
I'm not including links, we all have preferences but naturally bbc.com has the most to offer, but pbs has coverage.
Strange isn't it, how muted the coverage is, considering the coverage given earlier U.S. Presidential visits to UK.
That is probably my point, the muted coverage of this visit.
*edit: EU to G7
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