The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[Jude]

Maybe that belongs in the typo thread

[Frelga]

Biggest gain in 2017 years? I didn't know they had kept holiday sales records that long.

The original receipt is for frankincense and myrrh, filed by the Magi.

[RoseMorninStar]

Biggest gain in 2017 years? I didn't know they had kept holiday sales records that long.

The original receipt is for frankincense and myrrh, filed by the Magi.

[N.E. Brigand]

The top story at the Wall Street Journal today is headlined "Holiday Shopping Rebounds With Biggest Gain in 2017 Years", having increased 8.5% from 2020 and 10.7% from 2019.

Sorry, that should have read 20,017 years.

[RoseMorninStar]

The top story at the Wall Street Journal today is headlined "Holiday Shopping Rebounds With Biggest Gain in 2017 Years", having increased 8.5% from 2020 and 10.7% from 2019.

Sorry, that should have read 20,017 years.

I don't even know what to make of that, but it's quite the rebound!

[Inanna]

20,000 years???? That makes no sense.

[N.E. Brigand]

Sorry, I was making light of my initial typo. It was just 17 years.

[RoseMorninStar]

Sorry, I was making light of my initial typo. It was just 17 years.

[N.E. Brigand]

The right wing media outlet Breitbart is touting this news about Joe Biden's first year in office:

"More Border Patrol Agents died in the line of duty during 2021 than in any other time since the agency’s inception. The line-of-duty deaths of 15 Border Patrol agents mark a grim milestone in the agency’s history."

The previous high was six deaths in 1998, and the article (and the Breitbart social media pushing the article) suggests the deaths are connected to a "historic migrant surge."

But the piece does at least have the honesty to note that thirteen of the fifteen died from Covid, and the other two died in car accidents.

One of the two officers killed in a car accident wasn't wearing a seatbelt. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that most or all who died from Covid weren't vaccinated.

[N.E. Brigand]

Since voting rights have been a much discussed topic during Biden's first year, I think this is the right thread to share an actual tweet issued by the Republican Party in Texas today:



And speaking of Covid, two different lawyers arguing against the Biden administration's vaccines mandates before the Supreme Court today had to appear remotely because they'd recently tested positive for Covid. That's per the Supreme Court's Covid requirements. And yet some observers feel the Court is poised to rule against at least the OSHA vaccine mandate. Worker safety for me but not for thee!

[N.E. Brigand]

Fox News today is reporting this morning's economic news as a "poor jobs report" that "falls far short of expectations."

The report says that 199,000 jobs were added in December as the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 3.9%.

When the unemployment rate was reported as 3.9% for August 2018 following the addition of 201,000 jobs, Fox News described this as "huge growth" and a "booming economy."

But it's not just Fox. Here's what AP reporter Zeke Miller tweeted about both reports (with my boldface):

"US adds a strong 201K jobs; unemployment stays at 3.9%" -Sep. 7, 2018

"US employers slowed hiring in December, adding 199,000 jobs as economy contends with inflation and shortages." - Jan. 7, 2022

The unemployment rate was the same, so I guess the 2,000 jobs made all the difference between good news and bad!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Well, the expectation was that considerably more than 200,000 jobs would be added, so when it was only 199,000 it is considered a disappointment. Of course, in all likelihood, the number will end being adjusted upward considerably in coming months, but the "poor jobs report" reporting will already have been set in stone.

[N.E. Brigand]

Republicans in 2018 touted the 3.9% unemployment number as only the ninth time that the rate had dropped below 4% since 1970 and the lowest rate achieved since December 2000. That's absolutely true. The improvement to the economy that started in Dec. 2010 (when unemployment was 9.3%) continued steadily but achingly slowly through most of Barack Obama's and Donald Trump's presidencies until the pandemic hit.

U.S. unemployment jumped to 14.7% in April 2020 and has fallen since then. It was 6.4% when Joe Biden took office last January. So in eleven months it improved by 2.5% to reach the December number, something which took four years to happen under Obama and Trump.

[Dave_LF]

Shouldn't we be rooting for negative job creation at this point given that we can't fill the ones we have?

[N.E. Brigand]

The Mine Workers of America union, whose members include coal miners in West Virginia, says they back the Build Back Better plan because they recognize that the demise of coal mining is inevitable and they believe that Joe Biden's plan will help them transition to other careers. After a representative of the coal mining companies owners told the Washington Post that they were disappointed the union was accepting the collapse of the industry rather than "go down swinging," the union spokesperson said, "We're still swinging, but we're swinging in a smart way and in a way that will provide a real future for fossil energy workers in West Virginia and throughout the country."

[N.E. Brigand]

More police officers in the U.S. died "in the line of duty" in 2021 than in any year since 1930: 458.

Here's a story about this which has been shared by multiple news outlets across the country -- in that case by a Columbus, Ohio television station.

But it's not until you reach the last sentence of the fourth paragraph that you learn that 301 of those deaths (65%) were due to Covid-19. And that fact is never mentioned again. The remaining two-thirds of the article concerns police officers killed by criminals.

And while the article obviously doesn't say, I would expect that most of those Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented if the officers in question had been vaccinated.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I haven't clicked on the article yet, but how can they possibly justify calling dying of Covid-19 a death in the line of the duty? Because they were infected while working? I guess that makes sense, maybe.

[N.E. Brigand]

Just a day or two ago, Stacey Abrams opted not to appear with President Joe Biden when he gave a speech in Georgia pushing for Congress to pass voting rights legislation.

Today, Senators Sinema and Manchin both announced that they wouldn't change the filibuster in order to allow the Senate to pass voting rights legislation. (The arguments made by Sinema and Manchin in support of the filibuster are entirely bogus, but the seem to be immovable.)

Some observers now say that Abrams foresaw this happening and didn't want to be tied to a losing effort. Which leads me to ask:

Would Joe Biden and Democrats be more popular if they were trying to do less? How would they be covered by the press if they just did nothing? Republicans passed very little legislation during the four years of Donald Trump's presidency. Did that help or hurt them in the effort to hold on to power? And to what degree should holding on to power be a motivation for Democrats? Have Democrats accomplished all that can be done until 2025? Should they just sit quietly and hope that Biden wins reelection and that they retake Congress at that time with a slightly larger majority that actually can kill the filibuster?

Edited to add: one prominent political commentator says that Joe Biden and the Democrats need to focus on Joe Biden's campaign promise that his presidency would get the country back to normal. But how do they do that?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think they only chance that Biden has to get the country back to "normal" is if he gets lucky, and the most optimistic progressions of omicron quickly turning Covid-19 from a pandemic to an endemic disease similar to the common cold or a normal flu. Even then, he is still screwed because Manchin and Sinema simply have a different point of view about what the right path forward is. I don't believe that their perspective is the right one, but that is only my perspective.

[N.E. Brigand]

Some Republicans are making much hay of the fact that Democrats used the filibuster today to stop Ted Cruz's bill that would have blocked completion of the Nordstream 2 pipeline which will provide Russian oil to Germany. 49 Republicans plus 5 Democrats voted to advance the bill, but because of the filibuster, just 45 Democrats were able to block it.

There are concerns about whether the bill would have punished Germany more than Russia, but nonetheless, I would be happy to abolish the filibuster as Republicans now apparently believe should happen.