The DINOs still ruined the effectiveness of the Dems’ multifaceted bill even though it was already whittled down. First, let’s talk about DINO Joe.
If you were wondering why Sen. Joe Manchin suddenly changed his mind to support some of the “Build Back Better” agenda, I was too. It turns out the motivation for that DINO is hardly surprising. You wonder why it took the NY Times so long to solve this puzzle for me (article in the 8/2 edition), although they did nothing more than report what was in a press release (the parties involved waited to Monday, 8/1, to give DINO Joe’s reason for changing so abruptly).
I can summarize what happened. That old DINO finally read Trump’s Art of the Deal and wrangled a mishmash of eco-friendly and eco-unfriendly deal with the Biden administration. I was also wondering why POTUS didn’t seem all that surprised, but he’s always been willing to bend principles to make deals with racist, bigoted, and openly fascist politicians in the world’s worst deliberative body, the US Senate, to get things done. He hides under the Devil’s cape of bipartisanship, i.e., he can drink his Kool-Aid and work with fascists, being always ready to sell his Catholic soul to the Dark Lord of political expediency. (To be fair to Biden, Photo-Op Chuck and Nana Nancy also participated in concocting the deal with both DINOs.)
While opinions differ on both sides, the Daffy Dems and the FPA (the Fascist Party of America aka Good Ole Piranhas), the dangers to Gaia that had made DINO Joe’s Mountain Valley Pipeline project comatose yet not justifiably dead, unlike that old al Qaeda doctor who got the justice he deserved (reminding me of a scene in a Clancy novel!), still remain. With this DINO’s deal, another battle in the war against climate change will have mixed results: A loss with the pipeline deal and a few gains with the bill the DINOs will now vote for. But is it a done deal? This sad tale continues with what Biden et al are giving up to get Senator Kyrsten Sinema onboard. I knew something was afoot when I saw the two DINOs plotting, caught huddling on the Senate floor by a stealthy camera.
Reading between the lines, DINO Joe was probably scared that sooner or later King Coal will be dethroned (it’s in its death throes now). Hell, maybe he saw the out-of-control climate in next-door Kentucky’s tornados and floods, or the wildfires out of control in the West because of the longest drought in recent history, as proof that climate change is an existential problem for all flora and fauna on Earth, a threat that includes the MAGA West Virginians that DINO Joe panders to, and he decided to hedge his bets a bit and get that natural gas pipeline done (burning natural gas is cleaner than coal, although not by much). Or, maybe it’s just self-preservation on his part? Old DINOs like him in his state aren’t getting any younger, and young progressives’ numbers are increasing there like everywhere else and could become the asteroid for DINOs everywhere. (Biden, Photo-Op Chuck, and Nana Nancy might become victims of that asteroid too, but Biden’s the one most willing to appease anyone, including young progressives. That famous “big tent” of the Dems all too often shows that trying to please everyone results in pleasing no one!)
I have more of a problem with DINO Kyrsten’s deal. The original bill appropriately went after the windfalls corporate America has received while everyone else suffers through this bad economy caused by Covid-19 and the Putin’s war against Ukraine. Sinema, ever the lover of corporate excesses, brokered a pare-back of the 15% tax minimum on large, profitable corporations; and she got the proposed tax on the obscene carried-interest credits Wall Street bankers and hedge-fund managers receive removed entirely. In an attempt to compensate and make the bill more budget friendly, she agreed to add a 1% tax on stock buybacks, another sleazy trick the wealthy use to make themselves even wealthier.
There’s some validity to the argument that old politicians should move aside and let younger ones try their hand at governing this divided nation, with its now fading beacon of democracy, as the whole world faces the onslaught from the new fascists everywhere we look. Perhaps we need younger people with new energy, ideals, and a more spine that allow them to stand up to the old politicians who are willing to make a deal with anyone, no matter how morally wrong it is. Biden showed his ineptitude by mishandling the withdrawal from Afghanistan and his lack of moral spine by visiting Saudi Arabia, putting him nearly at the level of that “f^%$ing moron” with his hit-and-miss foreign policy and pandering to the murdering MBS; and now by making an immoral deal with the DINOs, Joe and Kyrsten, continuing to sell his soul. That might be all for naught because Biden et al don’t yet have the last word from the parliamentarian about whether this bill can be passed with only 50 senators for it and not 60. We’ll see what happens.
The politics of expediency is alive and well in today’s White House and the rest of DC’s cesspool even though it’s not as evilly practiced by Biden and his minions, many of them not with bad intentions but just incompetent, compared to Trump and his mafia-like lieutenants, who will finish ruining this country if they ever get back in power!
Let’s send a clear message in November to all the fascists and incompetents that Americans want an honest, moral, and effective federal government!