Clips. Your wish is my command. Now don’t get to rough on him

Dumb evil spellchecker. Sorry Clipe.

Texas weather: President Biden to declare major disaster

US President Joe Biden is set to declare a major disaster for Texas, clearing the way for more federal funds to be spent on relief efforts.

Power is returning in the state and temperatures are set to rise but some 13 million people are still facing difficulties accessing clean water.

Mr Biden has said he will visit Texas as long as his presence is not a burden on relief efforts.

Nearly 60 deaths have been attributed to cold weather across the US.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed Mr Biden has asked his team to expedite Texas' request for a disaster declaration....

As I hope I've made abundantly clear elsewhere, I am no defender of Trump, who I despise. However, I also despise the MSM, and I can't help wondering how the BBC would have reported it if Trump, when President, had taken this long to declare a disaster - a disaster which hasn't yet actually been declared:

US President Joe Biden is set to declare a major disaster...

This BBC article nowhere mentions the delay nor offers any criticism of it (perhaps if it is to be a simple news reporter it should mention the delay (as a fact, on which people can form their own view) but should not criticise. My point is simply that had it been Trump, I have little doubt (though of course I can't prove it) that much would have been made of the delay and the criticism would have been loud and clear.

Biden's Covid relief bill is costing every man, woman, and child in America $5,700.

And they're sending people $1,400.

"Clipe. Your wish is my command"

?

OK I get it AK.

It flew right over your head.

Time for a fresh Triump thread, now that the man is in office. There is bound to be much to discuss.
Jan 21, 2017 at 5:38 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

I just exchanged names.

Time for a Biden thread now that the man is... much to discuss.

California Democrats are getting all uppity about ballot signature validation in the recall process for Governor Newsom in California - and it's not even an election!

I daren't point my irony meter in that direction ...

Prez Joemala

‘Never before’ has the leader of the free world been ‘so cognitively compromised’

How soon we (and Sky News) forget Prez Reagan.

Click

Biden said 'Diplomacy is back!' Then he started dropping bombs
Trita Parsi
Biden may inadvertently achieve what Trump couldn’t: destroying the Iran deal, Obama’s main foreign policy achievement

"Diplomacy is back!” President Joe Biden declared at the Munich Security Conference last week. But so is bombing Syria, apparently. Biden has only been president a bit more than a month, but he has already ordered his first bombing campaign. (It took Trump four months to do the same.) The target was facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran-backed militia in retaliation for rocket attacks against US troops in Iraq earlier this month.

Presumably, Biden wanted to signal to Iran that it would pay a heavy price if it ordered attacks against US troops in order to pressure Washington to return to the Iran nuclear deal. But by bombing Syria for this reason, Biden proved how failing to rejoin the nuclear agreement endangers US national security – Iran’s nuclear program continues to advance while the US and Iran glide closer to a military confrontation.

Biden knows these arguments quite well. He made them against Donald Trump only a few months ago. His top officials have spent the past years extensively criticizing Trump’s maximum pressure strategy. They were all correct.

Which makes his steps on Iran in his first month all the more perplexing. While Biden’s intent to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) seems unquestionable, good intentions and good strategy are not the same thing. Rather than bringing diplomacy back, Biden appears to be falling back into old patterns where appearing tough trumps being smart and where diplomacy is merely a slogan sprinkled on policies centered on coercion, not a genuine give and take.

Of course, few doubted that reviving the JCPOA would be without challenge. And the lack of priority given to Iran may simply be due to the plethora of domestic and international crises Biden has to attend to with less than a full staff.

Yet, these exonerating circumstances do not explain the many seemingly unnecessary and counterproductive measures the Biden administration has taken on the JCPOA since taking office....

I'm always perplexed at how keen Democrat politicians seem to be on bombing other people.

tomo, oh yes, I agree it's complex, and that I think is a good reason why the west should keep out (and should have kept out for the last 30 years at least).

My point was that it's unusual for a paper like to the Guardian to be making anti-Biden comments so quickly; and he's been remarkably quick to start dropping bombs. I shouldn't have thought dropping bombs will help with that "net zero" agenda, either....

The Guardian seems to have decided that it's not keen on Biden after all:

Khashoggi was killed in cold-blood. Yet Biden refuses to hold culprits accountable
Mohamad Bazzi
Biden resorted to the longstanding US foreign policy that looks the other way as America’s autocratic allies commit atrocities at home and abroad

On Friday, Joe Biden’s administration confirmed what the world knew: that Saudi Arabia’s ruthless crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, approved the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Biden followed through on a campaign promise to release a summary report of the US intelligence community’s findings on the murder, and he undid two years of stonewalling by Donald Trump.

But Biden failed to keep a more important promise: to hold Khashoggi’s killers accountable. Worried about disrupting the US-Saudi relationship, Biden decided not to impose sanctions on the crown prince. By giving the prince a pass, Biden skirted true justice for the murdered journalist and other dissidents who have suffered at Prince Mohammed’s hands. And, in turn, the reckless prince is unlikely to be dissuaded from more repression and crimes....

...Despite this evidence, Biden and his aides decided that Prince Mohammed was too big to punish. While Biden had promised during the presidential campaign to change the US-Saudi relationship, he reverted to his cautious nature. In the name of pragmatism, Biden resorted to the longstanding US foreign policy that looks the other way as America’s autocratic allies commit atrocities at home and abroad.

Biden’s reluctance to hold Prince Mohammed accountable for Khashoggi’s murder raises doubts about whether the new administration will follow through on its pledges to remake the US-Saudi relationship. ...

And:

Joe Biden says his hands are tied on a $15 minimum wage. That's not true
David Sirota
Democrats argue that it’s impossible to deliver a higher minimum wage, when there are plenty of ways to overcome this impasse

When a Republican is president, Democratic politicians, pundits and activists will tell you that the presidency is an all-powerful office that can do anything it wants. When a Democrat is president, these same politicians, pundits and activists will tell you that the presidency has no power to do anything. In fact, they will tell you a Democratic president cannot even use the bully pulpit and other forms of pressure to try to shift the votes of senators in his own party.

A tale from history proves this latter myth is complete garbage – and that tale is newly relevant in today’s supercharged debate over a $15 minimum wage.

In that debate so far, we have seen Democratic senators prepare to surrender the $15 minimum wage their party promised by insisting they are powerless in the face of a non-binding advisory opinion of a parliamentarian they can ignore or fire.

That explanation is patently ridiculous and factually false, so Democratic apologists are starting to further justify the surrender by suggesting that even if the party kept a $15 minimum wage in the Covid relief bill, conservative Democrats such as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema would block it anyway.

The White House itself is now falling back on the idea that it doesn’t have the votes to do much of anything, insinuating that Joe Biden – who occupies the world’s most powerful office – somehow has no power to try to change the legislative dynamic. And this spin is being predictably amplified across social media....

And:

Biden is already backtracking on his promises to provide student debt relief
Astra Taylor
Let’s be clear: whatever he may say, Biden absolutely has the power to unilaterally cancel all federal student debt

At his recent town hall, Joe Biden made a series of convoluted and condescending comments about American student debt. His remarks cast doubt on his ability, or willingness, to confront this country’s ballooning student loan crisis. Within hours, #cancelstudentdebt was trending on Twitter.

Biden’s rambling justification of the status quo was peppered with straw men, invocations of false scarcity and non-solutions. He pitted working-class Americans against each other, implying that people who attend private schools aren’t worthy of relief, as though poor students don’t also attend such schools. He said that money would be better spent on early childhood education instead of debt cancellation, as if educators aren’t themselves drowning in student debt, and as if we can’t address both concerns at once. He suggested relying on parents or selling a home at a profit to settle your debt, a luxury those without intergenerational wealth or property cannot afford. And he touted various programs, including Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), that have totally failed borrowers: over 95% of PSLF applicants have been denied.

In contrast to Biden’s smug comments, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley recently revealed that she defaulted on her student loans. Similarly, at a recent Debt Collective event, congressional hopeful Nina Turner said that she and her son owe a combined $100,000. Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has, of course, proudly confessed to being in debt, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said that becoming a congressperson was easier than paying off her debt. Philadelphia councilmember Kendra Brooks (who is planning to introduce a city resolution calling on the Biden administration to cancel all student debt) has also spoken out about her own struggles as a borrower. Their experience and candor – and commitment to real solutions including cancellation – demonstrate why we need debtors, not millionaires, in our public offices.

Let’s be clear about another thing. Biden absolutely has the legal authority to use executive power to cancel all federal student debt. Congress granted this authority decades ago as part of the Higher Education Act. It’s even been put to the test: in response to the Covid pandemic, Donald Trump and his former education secretary, Betsy DeVos, used that authority three times to suspend payments and student loan interest.

As he rambled on, Biden gave the distinct impression that he preferred not to have the power to do so. That way he could blame Congress should his campaign promises go unkept. (The day after the town hall, Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, attempted to clarify her boss’s remarks about whether he will use executive authority to cancel student debt. She stated that the administration was still considering the possibility.)

Adding to the confusion, Biden seemed unable to keep his own campaign pledges straight, muddling his student debt cancellation proposals. For the record, he campaigned on two distinct planks. One: “immediate” cancellation of $10,000 for every borrower as a form of Covid relief. Two: the cancellation of all undergraduate student loans for debt-holders who attended public universities and HBCUs and who earn up to $125,000 a year. Keeping these two promises is the absolute minimum the Biden administration needs to do to keep the public’s trust....

Swamp dwelling FBI director slithers and slides.

https://youtu.be/5BfNba3i23U

Seems relevant

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/woodrow-wilson-stroke