$600 for Christmas!
COVID relief deal reached, House vote today
DONE DEAL
Congress takes the long way around to make COVID relief deal
ABC
$600 to most Americans. $300 jobless benefit until March.
No liability protection. No city and state money.
House will vote tomorrow. Senate after that.
Let it be recorded that in a once-a-century pandemic as state and local governments shut down businesses for health reasons the federal government passed two relief packages in 2020 with $1800 in direct funds going to the populace. Another round of PPP loans will be a breath of fresh air for business owners. Hopefully that bridges us to the real recovery as the vaccine rolls out.
Hopefully.
…
hopefully…
GOP winning Georgia runoff ad war
POLITICO
Perdue and Loeffler:
Trump pushes back on report that he floated marshal law to rerun election
THE HILL
I honestly wonder if these headlines, as normal as breathing over the last four years, are going to be a relic or the new normal? All of this revolves around unofficial Trump lawyer and noted Kraken promiser Sidney Powell.
From Axios’ retelling of the volatile Friday meeting for which this report came from:
"It's basically Sidney versus everybody,"the source said. "That is why voices were raised. There is literally not one motherf—r in the president’s entire orbit — his staunchest group of supporters and allies — who doesn't think that Sidney Powell should be on that first rocket to Mars."
Biden NASA advisor signals cooperation with China
POLITICO
Between this and the idea of Bob Iger as ambassador it seems very safe to say that the United States will be a far warmer relationship with China under Joe Biden.
Testing czar says new COVID variant no “reason for alarm”
POLITICO
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Transportation planner coming in for a hot take. Public transit, if done right, can be life changing but boyyyyyy howdy does it take a lot of political capital to pull off and deep pockets to maintain. Trains and buses are the most efficient and environmentally sound way to move people, it's just the pay off on investment is slow. High quality mass transit is a long term investment but us freedom lovers in the USA tend to prefer short term rewards. (wider highways, strip malls and Tesla tunnels) Don’t take my word for it though, I'm just a random guy on the internet. - ANOTHER BRIAN
Coming from the car culture of Florida I easily slid into the utility of public transit lifestyles in the Bay Area and NYC. When it works, it can really work. But when it’s poorly planned or allowed to degrade it’s a blight. Honestly, I simply think it’s a city by city decision and even then it’s a crapshoot based on leadership.
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I dunno, man.
This is a guy who works on the internet in the Bay Area commenting on government weekend shutdown.
Full stop. - DAVIN
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So, Tuberville. Bold move. Can he be given zero committee assignments and made lame-duck from the get-go? Is he really willing to give up all his future power in a super safe senatorial seat in his first week? - SEAN
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The readers here are wonderful. Like some weird, distant family. A wide variety of beliefs and perspectives that are shared and respected. I've walked out on most things political right now, but JuRY, his newsletters, and his readers give me hope that perhaps honest political discourse is not dead. These readers are exactly what my heart and our country need.
Merry Everday and Happy Everything to all of you! - ANDREA
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Prison is intended as a deterrent to behavior we don’t like, if all you do when someone doesn’t pay their taxes is be like “ahhh, I see what you did there, now come along and pay your taxes next time” then there’s no (non-morality based) reason to pay your taxes, because in the worst case scenario, you’d just have to pay them. Unfortunately, because of the fuzziness of “behavior we won’t like” prison has mainly become a place to keep “people we don’t like” who are predominantly poor people, and African American men. This is what institutional racism is. It’s a white person being more likely to get probation for the same crime a black person goes to prison for.
So, when it comes to Donald Trump, there are a lot of people who really don’t like him. However, his style is to bend the laws to the point of breaking and so I’m sure he’s done a bunch of illegal stuff. So I go back and forth on it, part of me thinks “it would help the country move forward if he was just pardoned like Nixon was” and part of me thinks “he gets away with a bunch of really shady shit because he’s an upper class white man, and he should be accountable.” If he had just accepted his election loss, I’d be more inclined towards the former.
However, after not accepting his loss, and all of the time he’s wasted in court, he has convinced me of one thing: everyone does deserve their day in court. Let’s see how much he likes it when the court is on the other foot. - JOHN
I think a lot of these discussions are purely philosophical until we see a case actually brought against Trump that has a serious penalty attached.
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I've been dipping my toes into the Hunter Biden's tax investigation and his connections with CCP officials. It's going to be ironic (not in the Alanis Morissette way) if Joe Biden is impeached over his ties to his son's business dealings. Just a thought...it would be generate great ratings for the podcast, and can you imagine the Trump tweets! - KYLE
Same thing here.