Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia authorized extensive efforts to interfere in the American presidential election to denigrate the candidacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr., including intelligence operations to influence people close to former President Donald J. Trump, according to a declassified intelligence report released Tuesday.

The report did not name those people but seemed to be a reference to the work of Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who relentlessly pushed allegations of corruption about Mr. Biden and his family involving Ukraine.

“Russian state and proxy actors who all serve the Kremlin’s interests worked to affect U.S. public perceptions in a consistent manner,” the report said.

The declassified report represented the most comprehensive intelligence assessment of foreign efforts to influence the 2020 vote. Besides Russia, Iran and other countries sought to influence the election, the report said. China considered efforts to influence the presidential vote, but ultimately concluded that any such operation would fail and most likely backfire, intelligence officials concluded.

A companion report by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security also rejected false allegations promoted by Mr. Trump’s allies in the weeks after the election that Venezuela or other foreign countries defrauded the election.

The reports, compiled by career officials, amounted to a repudiation of Mr. Trump, his allies and some of his top administration officials. They categorically dismissed allegations of foreign-fed voter fraud, cast doubt on Republican accusations of Chinese intervention on behalf of Democrats and undermined the allegations that Mr. Trump and his allies spread about the Biden family’s work in Ukraine.

The report also found that there were no efforts by Russia or other countries to change ballots themselves, unlike in 2016. Efforts by Russian hackers to probe state and local networks were unrelated to efforts by Moscow to influence the presidential vote.

the Biden Administration.

The real GOP? You mean that group you can count on one hand?

Hopefully Mr. Putin will help the American people resist and undermine the Biden Administration.

Hopefully Mr. Putin will help the American people resist and undermine the Biden Administration.

(...) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell today warned Democrats in the Senate not to get rid of the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation. “Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, can even begin, to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like,” he said. But, in fact, they can, because it was McConnell himself who got rid of the filibuster to hammer through Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, and who pushed through Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which benefited only the very wealthy, by using a technique that avoided the filibuster.

McConnell warned that, without the filibuster, he would defund Planned Parenthood, pass anti-abortion legislation, and create national concealed-carry gun laws. But all of these measures are quite unpopular in the nation, so it’s not clear that these are threats the Democrats want to avoid. It’s entirely possible that permitting the Republicans to push through those measures would hurt the Republicans, rather than the Democrats.

Democrats are talking about reforming the filibuster because they are keen on passing H.R. 1, the voting rights act that would defang the voter suppression measures Republicans are pushing in 43 states. If those measures become law, it will be hard for the Democrats ever again to win control of the government, no matter how popular they are. H.R. 1 will level the democratic playing field, so both parties compete fairly. But fair elections will disadvantage Republicans, who have come to rely on voter suppression to win.

Hence McConnell’s threats.

(...)

Biden is reaching out to Republicans with an infrastructure package. Republicans were caught wrongfooted when they all voted against the enormously popular American Rescue Plan, and he is offering them an infrastructure bill at the same time Democrats have gotten rid of a ban on so-called “earmarks,” local spending funded in a federal package. Earmarks tend to increase bipartisanship by enabling lawmakers to go home to their constituents with something tangible in hand in exchange for their vote on a bill. Infrastructure spending is popular among voters in both parties, so this approach might break the united front of Republican lawmakers to oppose all Democratic policies.

Finally, I am fascinated by the Democratic-led, bipartisan move among congressional leaders to repeal the 2002 authorization for the Iraq War. President Biden has called for a “more narrow and specific” authorization of military force (AUMF), and 83 Democratic lawmakers and 7 Republicans agree. Their dislike of the AUMF comes from its expansion under former president Trump, who used it to justify the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani—an official from a country with which we are not at war—saying that Soleimani was undermining efforts to stabilize Iraq’s government. This was an expansion of military action that legal analysts think might well have been illegal.

In the past, Congress had justified AUMFs with the idea that they could control the president by controlling the money behind military actions, but Trump commandeered money to build his wall by declaring a national security emergency, buying time to do what he wished by forcing Democrats to take him to court to stop him. This opened up concerns that the power of the purse was really no power at all if a president chose to undermine it.

The willingness to hand to the president the power to engage us in military action illustrates the dangerous growth of power in the executive branch. I will follow with interest whether Biden’s interest in returning us to the traditional forms of the Constitution extends to reducing the power of the president to assume Congress's role in taking us into war.

Doubts regarding negative outcomes from the AstraZeneca jabs pale into the sunset compared to what Pfizer's execs let out of the bag in this video.

Please explain why you would want an ex-KGB, violent murderer dictator to help with any American interest.

Are you saying conservatives are too weak or too stupid to convey their message that Communism is a better governmental way of Life? Is that really what you're saying here?

I think this something the FBI should handle. Enemy sympathizers are under their charter.

Like Trump said in 2016, he joked about wanting Russian help, you're joking here, too?

If not, even flirting with treason can be dangerous.

The genius is in denial that Putin is an enemy of the state.

(...) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell today warned Democrats in the Senate not to get rid of the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation. "Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, can even begin, to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like," he said. But, in fact, they can, because it was McConnell himself who got rid of the filibuster to hammer through Trump's Supreme Court nominees,

and who pushed through Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which benefited only the very wealthy, by using a technique that avoided the filibuster.

McConnell warned that, without the filibuster, he would defund Planned Parenthood, pass anti-abortion legislation, and create national concealed-carry gun laws. But all of these measures are quite unpopular in the nation, so it's not clear that these are threats the Democrats want to avoid. It's entirely possible that permitting the Republicans to push through those measures would hurt the Republicans, rather than the Democrats.

Biden is reaching out to Republicans with an infrastructure package. Republicans were caught wrongfooted when they all voted against the enormously popular American Rescue Plan, and he is offering them an infrastructure bill at the same time Democrats have gotten rid of a ban on so-called "earmarks," local spending funded in a federal package. Earmarks tend to increase bipartisanship by enabling lawmakers to go home to their constituents with something tangible in hand in exchange for their vote on a bill. Infrastructure spending is popular among voters in both parties, so this approach might break the united front of Republican lawmakers to oppose all Democratic policies.