9.12.21: The Spirit of The Nation

There are other methods, other than vaccines, to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic despite the Biden Administration mandating vaccination for millions in public and private sectors. As discussed by Chuck Todd and Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, instead of mandates, those other methods include masking and social distancing and testing to mitigate the spread. 

All of this was an academic conversation given that many Republican governors have banned mask mandates and have either remained silent about misinformation or spread it themselves, i.e. Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL). Now Republican Governors are threatening to sue the Biden Administration for the mandates, to which the president has responded for them to 'bring it on.'

How that will go is that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of the Governors, in line with the court's federalist nature. States will be able to decide for themselves if they want to mandate vaccines. But here's the rub: the virus doesn't recognize state borders and will continue to spread. That's simply a fact. And while the governors thrwart efforts to combat the virus, our hospital systems will be overwhelmed. In Florida and Alabama, hospitals and funeral homes have ordered mobile morgues to store the dead.

Fighting the pandemic is no more a matter of not being equipped, but one of the unwillingness of Americans to rise above their own selfish interests for the public good. And we're not saying that means one must be vaccinated, but if one decides not to be vaccinated, do practice some mitigation for the safety of you and your family.

As Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) explained, we allocated $5.4 trillion dollars in covid relief and all those monies haven't been distributed yet. So his argument for the $3.5 trillion budget is too much money to be spent at this time given the covid-relief allocation. Perhaps it's unworkable legislatively, but it the Democrats should work through a budget that covers the $3.5 trillion, but with a provision for a lesser amount to be implemented at first, then if the spending bill is doing what it's supposed to, implement the rest of the money in the second five years of the 10-year budget proposal. Whether that's a workable solution or not, something has to give. Yes, it is politics 101 to negotiate support for one bill to leverage another, but it will be unforgivable on the part of Democrats if they do not get the 'hard' infrasture bill passed. Nuances aside, that's how it will be perceived.

Senator Manchin also explained that there are a number of factors such as inflation, employment numbers and of course Covid that could effect spending and how the country can recover. But of all the possible factors you can think of, it all comes back to eliminating the pandemic.

With regard to commemorating the 20th anniversary of 9/11, I think about this past Thursday when 3,160 people died of Covid-19, more in one day than died on September 11, 2001. The spirit of coming together as a nation is being lost, as Mrs. Goodwin explained. How far we've come...

Panel: Hallie Jackson, NBC News, Kimberly Atkins Stohr, The Boston Globe; Doris Kearns Goodwin, Presidential Historian; George Will, The Washington Post. 

9.5.21: A Working Joe in a Polarized America

Whether you approve or disapprove of how President Joe Biden is doing his job in this divided America, you have to concede that he's been a hard working, busy guy. Again, for good or ill according to your own assessment, but with that in mind, Mr. Biden's current approval rating hovers around 45 percent. 

To paraphrase PBS's Yamiche Alcindor, new administrations want to set their own agenda but real life situations and crises happen to set the agenda for them, which is certainly still the case on battling the pandemic. We agree with Governor Larry Hogan (R-MD) that the messaging from the White House, the FDA and the CDC has been poorly coordinated and confusing. (Best thing to do btw is to just check the CDC website.) However, responsibility for the record cases and a death count of one thousand five hundred Americans per day falls on all political leaders, obviously, because the Biden Administration has made the vaccine widely available and free while still encouraging people to get vaccinated. 

Outside of that, it's up to, frankly, Republican governors to act more like Governor Hogan and less like Ron DeSantis (R-FL). We're not going to go completely down this wormhole but Covid-19 infections and deaths will continue in this country unless we get past what Ms. Alcindor called our original sin of the pandemic, which was policizing masks and vaccines. 

Speaking of both, here's what we don't get... You see clips on the news you see someone without a mask threatening a school board member about mask mandates. This seems completely counterintuitive. If you're going to threaten someone in front of a camera don't you want to wear a mask so that they cannot identify and arrest you later, which is what inevitably happens. Take it as a bit of advice, but to protect yourself and others along the way of threatening people is a nice added bonus. Bottom line is that masks aren't a big deal, get over it.

And then there are the vaccines, which according to a number of people who have taken horse dewormer to fight Covid-19 and ended up in a poison control unit. We are not good at math, admittedly, but millions of people have taken the vaccine and have stayed out of the hospital and a few thousand have taken horse dewormer and have either gotten sick and or ended up in the hospital. Hmmmm... we'll take a moment to figure it out.

But in the meantime, there's reacting to real life and then there's acting in the face of extremism, which is exactly what Texas' new abortion bill represents. First, ninety percent of abortions occur after six weeks of pregnancy because most women don't discover they are pregnant until after that time. This six week stipulation has effectively shut down women's health clinics that provide that care. This puts upon women an undue burden of access which as it stands is federally against the law. Having said all that, this column thinks of it in more base/ libertarian terms. A person, any person, has the right to control his or her own body and that should not be legislated. Men shouldn't legislate over womens' bodies and minds because they have no idea what they're talking about. If women passed a law that said men had to be castrated if found guilty of any rape or sexual assault, how do you think that would go over? None too well, we assure you.

But even if you're pro-life or pro-choice and feel that what we wrote above is a load of it, here's something else to consider. The Texas legislature took the coward's way out on enforcement, giving the task of caring out the law to citizens, which is like the Texas government saying we're too chicken to enforce the laws that we pass.  Instead they've opted for vigilante justice. An 'assinine' law is what Republican strategist Brendan Buck called. 

If this law is left to stand, one can only dread the consequences not to mention that surely in a year's time you'll tune into Texas Public Access Television and watch "Abortion Hunters in Texas" searching the Lone Star state for bounties, and a cottage industry is born. There you go polarized America, who said we can't contribute?

Panel: Yamiche Alcindor, PBS; Betsy Woodruff Swann, Politico; Matt Bai, The Washington Post; Brendan Buck, Republican Strategist

8.22.21: Mr. Biden's Obstinate Strategy Owns the Chaos In Afghanistan Right Now

So many head-scratchers, they seem more like head-slappers. As more stories come out of Kabul over the week, one thing is for certain and that is that the 'chaos fear and desperation,' as Mr. Todd described it, is only going to get worse.

Everything that Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) said made sense; the panel was brutally accurate; and even National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan's explanations were direct and sober. So why are we left scratching our heads?

The flat truth of the matter is that President Biden has been completely off the mark, in his remarks and his inability to see the bigger picture and plan appropriately. This is why he is justifiably being criticized from all sides, including from our NATO allies. President Biden wanted to own and said that the buck stops with him, but you can not then pass the proverbial buck.

Mr. Sullivan explained that 'no plan survives first contact with reality,' which makes complete sense and therefore adjustments need to be made. However, this forgets the initial premise of having a comprehensive plan in the first place, which it seems did not consider all the circumstances of what would happen on the ground. He also explained that the United States planned to have a diplomatic presence in Kabul after the withdraw, which was a farcical notion since the Taliban have no interest in diplomacy. To that point, Mr. Sullivan said that they have agreements with the Taliban to allow Americans safe passage out of the country and if they didn't honor those agreements, the U.S. would respond militarily - that's the diplomacy the Taliban understand. The last thing the Taliban want is an open space conflict with the U.S. military who they truly are afraid of, the same military that airlifted 7,900 people out of country just yesterday, 30,000 total.

Dispatch founder, Stephen Hayes was pointedly correct in contesting what Mr. Biden said in his speech - that our allies were inline with us, that Afghans didn't want to fight, that Americans can get out safely, and that Al Qaeda isn't already in country. 

Our closest allies are furious with us as while this is mostly a stain on the reputation of the United States, it's also a blow to trust in NATO. Seventy-five thousand Afghans died fighting the Taliban and their moral back was broken with the final blow of closing Bagram Airbase, which Military Times editor Leo Shane III explained. And while the Taliban is indeed harassing Americans and Afghans alike throughout Kabul, terrorist groups are definitely making their way in. 

But on that last point, they have been planning the move for a while, from May 2020 in fact. Representative Cheney explained the entire progression and that we're in fact in this situation at present because of the agreement the Trump Administration, the deal then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo specifically made with the Taliban back in May of 2020, in which the Taliban conceded nothing for the United States pulling out in a year, and completely undercutting the Afghan government that lead to its quick collapse. Ms. Cheney also explained her concern for Afghanistan becoming a safe haven for terrorists once again, but unsurprisingly there were shades of her father in her statements that are meant to say that we should keep a force in country indefinitely, which simply isn't sustainable given what she earlier explained as the inevitability of the Taliban taking complete control. - at Kabul's airport.

But despite that inevitability, Mr. Sullivan didn't really have a good answer for Chuck Todd when he asked him, why didn't the administration get the civilians out before the military so that maybe some of these tragic consequences could be mitigated? 

What Mr. Sullivan couldn't answer was left to Andrea Mitchell of NBC News and Helene Cooper of The New York Times. Ms. Cooper, the paper's Pentagon correspondent, explained that the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs recommended keeping troops in country to get everyone out, but Mr. Biden didn't heed that advice, and now there is a lot of blame shifting going on. More pointedly, Ms. Mitchell said that the stance of Joe Biden in 2009, to just get out is the president's prevailing thinking and that the optic of troops leaving Afghanistan has blinded him to the immediate consequences.

This is certainly a blight on Mr. Biden's record as president and his poll numbers presently reflect that, along with his handling of the pandemic. However, let's be honest, on the latter the president's performance is being sabotaged by state governors who are putting political and ideology gain over public health.

One last noted for the week on Afghanistan, its immediate future isn't certain. There is already resistance in the Northern provinces lead Ahmad Massoud whose father was the leader of the Northern Alliance back in 2001 and assassinated two days before September 11th. Also, seventy percent of Afghans are under 25 years old, and in Kabul too young to ever know life under the Taliban. Twenty years of being able to live how you want to live accompanied by hope for the future are notions not easily crushed as history has shown us.

 

Panel: Helene Cooper, The New York Times; Andrea Mitchell, NBC News; Stephen Hayes, The Dispatch; Leo Shane III, Military Times

 

8.15.21: In All War, There is the Right and the Very Wrong

There was a lot to digest from today's "Meet The Press" on the pending collapse of Afghanistan's central government and take over by the Taliban as the U.S. completely withdraws from the country, leaving only core diplomatic personnel on the ground.

As with all war and conflict, there is the right and the very wrong.

We'll start with the former first, which is whether the U.S. should keep a residual force on the ground in Afghanistan. Given that the previous administration set a deadline for complete withdrawal for May 1st, the Biden Administration had its hands tied... loosely. They gave themselves an extension hence the newsreel images we're seeing, but going far past any deadline starts the clock ticking on when American soldiers become targets. And if not that, it's inevitable that American soldiers will be forced to engage with the Taliban. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken explained that our capabilities to closely monitor the situation on the ground to mitigate the a resurgence of Al Qaeda or other terrorist activity is very strong, to which anyone would respond, "It better be."

But it's time to go and it's the right thing to do, and it's very true what Secretary Blinken said that our adversaries would like nothing better than to see us bogged down in Afghanistan for another 5 to 10 years. It is not in the United States national interest to do that. And yes, how do you ask another soldier to make the ultimate sacrifice for a mission that has clearly changed but isn't clear.

However, the bad is egregous given that all this was forseeable, back in January as a matter of fact. Coming into office the Biden Administration knew that it was faced with this deadline. Even this column, sitting in the cheap seats, could see that it was inevitable that the Taliban would once again control the country, but the Biden Administration was slow to act and didn't have a plan in place to get the tens of thousands of Afghans out of the country (if they want to leave) and others who worked for the U.S. The forseeable tragedy of the oppression of women will once again take hold in Kabul, a humanitarian crisis waiting to happen.

One thing that particularly draws our ire is the fact that the U.S. military has been in Afghanistan for 20 years, trained a local force of 300,000, spent a trillion dollars, and gave them an airforce. The U.S. gave them all the tools, but once again as NBC's Richard Engel reported, the Afghan military is just 'melting' away without even confronting the Taliban. If the Afghan military refuses to defend the country themselves, how can you expect the U.S. to continue to do it after all that? 

Rightly, as Mr. Engel also reported, Afghans are angry at everyone - the U.S. for the quick bail on the country, the corrupt Afghan government and of course the Taliban because everyone knows what life is going to be like when they take complete control again. 

During the panel discussion, Mr. Todd posed the question of why the U.S. couldn't have something in Afghanistan like we do in South Korea or Germany or Japan  - a permanent base in place. The panel agreed, but it's not that simple. The last of these bases was established in South Korea in the 50's, and much has changed since then. Too much to make it geopolitcally tennable to have such a presnce. But South Korea was and is an ally. Germany we we have a base, we're surrounded by allies. In Japan after the war, the country didn't have a military as part of the conditions. The U.S. helped to rebuild Japan and has become one of our greatest allies, which we were positioned to defend against an aggressive China. With all that said, you have to ask, is Afghanistan our ally, really? Our geographically closest ally is Pakistan, which we wouldn't say is an ally per se, but a country that we have to deal with. Plus they have their own problems considering their tasty combination of extremists and nukes.

The previous administration set the parameters, but make no mistake, the Biden Administration owns this policy now and the tragic repurcussions inevitably to follow. But this demoralizing devistation isn't the only crisis in country as Afghanistan is in the midst of a historic drought already causing food shortages and let's not forget the covid pandemic.

Speaking of which, we'll just say this as to what is happening in the United States at present. With the numbers we're seeing today, we're basically back where we started, probably worse considering the Delta variant spreads twice as quickly and the fact that Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota explained that we have to start using better masks. How is that going to happen when Republican governors - yes, Ron DeSantis in FL and Gregg Abbott in TX - are actively thrwarting mitigation efforts. Cynical sadists letting their own constituents die for political power. A**holes.

Panel: Anne Gearan, The Washington Post; Kristen Solis Anderson, Republican Strategist; Peter Baker, The New York Times; Cornell Belcher, Democratic Strategist

8.8.21: Delta Level Polarization

"The pandemic we're experiencing at this time is a 'pandemic of the unvaccinated.'"
                                                                        -says Everyone.

Republican officials, such as Governor Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), are shifting their position on vaccinations and mask mandates, but it's too late. The political distrust that has been baked into the cake writ large is the toothpaste out of the tube so to speak. Cook Political Report's Amy Walter explained that as the coronavirus delta variant has become more prevalent, the political attitudes of the right and left are becoming even more hardened. 

So where does that leave us? 

In a bad spot, according to Dr. Fauci who explained that if you give the virus the oppotunity to circulate, it can further mutate which could possibly become a strain that also affects the vaccinated. This is really virology 101 and should be common knowledge for anyone who has gotten a vaccination, which is 99 percent of the U.S. population, at some point or another.

Forty percent of the covid cases are coming from two states, Texas and Florida. Governor DeSantis has decided to ban mask mandates and is relying on people making a personal decision on getting vaccinated, not letting industries like cruises require vaccination. The result is that it is putting millions of people at risk of infection and death. Governor DeSantis is willing to take that risk for the sake of politics. 

The panel agreed that Joe Biden's presidency depends on his handling of the pandemic and without the cooperation of Republican governors in the aforementioned states along with others like South Dakota who won't get out of the way, making our way forward is not going to come anytime soon.

At this point, people are learning to live under this constant threat and as long half the country refuses to take it seriously, it will continue to be the circumstance.

The real tell will be when kids go back to school in little over a month. Pediatric hospitals are seeing a rise in childhood covid cases and one can only imagine that even if it isn't a dramatic spike in cases and hospitilizations, there will be increases. Even with 90 percent of teachers in the United Federation of Teachers represented by Randi Weingarten, she is worried about the delta variant, so much so that as a matter of personal conscience she is advocating for vaccine mandates for teachers. Dr. Fauci, on the subject, said that the best way to protect the kids is to surround them with vaccinated individuals and to have everyone mask indoors. Both of which aren't going to happen in Florida or Texas.

And it's not the people, it's the civic leaders that are doing their constituents are disservice by not being honest with them. The ethos of love thy neighbor but trust no one seems to be the American way and it's killing us.

Panel: Amy Walter, Cook Political Report; Jake Sherman, Punchbowl News; Donna Edwards, fmr. U.S. Congresswoman (D-MD); Sara Fagen, fmr. White House Political Director for George W. Bush

One More Thing...
This column called for Andrew Cuomo to resign when these allegations first came to light. The allegations are worse than first revealed and the resignation should be immediate, post haste. 

7.11.21: Should We Have Stayed or Were We Right to Get Out of Afghanistan?

Should we have stayed or should we go?  The messiness that is foreign policy; such decisions are never clear cut and the results are unpredictable. In the case of Afghanistan, it's even more so. Consider Rep. Adam Kinzinger's (R-IL) perspective, who fought in the country and has a deep personal feeling to the soldiers he fought alongside of and to the Afghans that helped the U.S. military. From his perspective it is a crushing defeat, as characterized by an Economist headline, because he sees the Taliban coming back into power, which naturally makes one ask, "Why did we sacrifice blood and treasure?"

Mr. Kinzinger said that he would see to see a residual force left there - the 2,500 soldiers - to keep the Taliban at bay and the population, especially women, safe. It's a reasonable position, for the right reasons because we do not want Afghanistan return to being a safe haven for terriorist, but you have to understand that that would be another 20-year commitment, in the same sort of policy positioning we have with South Korea or other places where the U.S. has military bases.

To quote Mr. Kinzinger, "The Americans have the watches, but the Taliban have the time." There is no changing that dynamic and in realizing that, a decision on the commitment has to be made. Always complicating factors further is carrying through policy from one administration to another.

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) explained that the Trump Administration set a date for full withdrawal from Afghanistan as May 1st, instead of creating a withdrawal scenario based on conditions on the ground. In keeping the word of the U.S. government, even if it was lead by a different president, it said it would withdraw so that it what President Biden has done. However, it hasn't been done well. 

The visas and refugee status for Afghans whose lives are in danger for helping the Americans should have already been expedited, with people on planes as we speak, leaving from Bagram Airbase. Speaking of which, there seemed to be no formal handover plan of the airbase to the Afghan military... that has an air force.

Staying in Afghanistan would reinforce the notion of the U.S. Military as the world's police force and that's not sustainable. Will the U.S. be involved in Afghanistan with military advisors and aid? For a long time. But here is where diplomacy can make a difference.

Best case scenario for Afghanistan is that it gets to resemble Pakistan, without the nukes of course. Where there is a civilian government and a military that can take on the Taliban. If the Afghani and Pakistani governments could work together to squeeze the Taliban, then there could be some stability achieved, and that's the opportunity the U.S. has. 

And there is no doubt that the U.S. would have been more successful in Afghanistan if it had not been for the war in Iraq. That's the history we have to take with us and learn from, no white washing it away.

And speaking of which, Republicans white wash the insurrection of January 6th at their own political peril. The commission is going to move forward and when there is a full accounting, we believe that you're going to see some names in Congress change. 

Panel: Kasie Hunt, NBC; Stephanie Cutter, Democratic Strategist; Al Cardenas, Republican Strategist; Mark Leibovich, The New York Times.

Today's "Meet The Press" was cut short for a special report on Richard Branson's Virgin Galatic making a suborbital flight, the first 'space' flight for commercial aircraft. We're write more about this later in the week, but the significance of the flight can not be understated.

Have a great Sunday and thank you for reading.

7.4.21: Normal Left a Long Time Ago

Definitely not the direction we would have gone for this week's "Meet The Press" considering it is Independence Day here in the States. We're 245 years old, by the way. Maybe discussing the state of our democracy and the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution would have been more appropriate for today given the fragile state that it's in at present, but we get it. President Biden set Independence Day as the date for his goal of having at least 70 percent of adult in the U.S. vaccinated with at least one shot, against Covid-19 so where are we?

We've fallen short of that goal, but for the administration's part it has provided enough doses so that every person has easy access to a free vaccination. However, what we see, as Dr. Fauci described, are regions of the country where the vaccination rate is low are seeing increased infections and hospitalizations due the new highly transmittable delta variant of the virus.  

Regional outbreaks... The lowest vaccination rates are in the Southern regional states and other that with the exception of North Carolina are all run by Republican governors who either made a political issue out of the vaccine or didn't push hard enough to dispell misinformation. Mississippi has the lowest vacination rate in the United States... for once, just once we'd like to see Mississippi not bringing up the rear, but here we are... again. 

There are many who have genuine concerns about getting vaccinated and for vaccines in general, what ever they are it's understandable, but given above how can one say that it hasn't been politicized? The sad political commentary about this is that a Republican president continuously touted the speed in which the vaccine was coming and delivered but because he lost the election and it was left to a Democratic president to distribute it and then encourage people to get vaccinated. 

Because of politics, people don't want to listen. Yet, we have the foremost expert on infectious disease in the world telling us that 99.2 percent of the deaths occuring right now in the United States are among the unvaccinated, and are 'entirely avoidable and preventable,' Dr. Fauci explained.

 With all that, this holiday weekend is being viewed as a beginning to 'getting back to normal,' but it's going to be a long time in the making, if it's coming back at all. Most of us would agree with NPR's Audie Cornish that "normal left a long time ago." We add: on so many levels...

A lot of the panel discussion focused on physically going back to work and the overall change in work culture. Interestingly, psychologist Adam Grant explained that flexibility in the workforce (hybrid) should be the way going forward citing a study in which people working from home were 13 percent more productive. But employers, especially corporations, are willing to eat that 13 percent in productivity as they have too much invested in infrastructure and they want bodies in seats, thinking that there will be greater accountability. Time will tell, but 'normal,' yeah, not so much.

NBC's Kate Snow viewed this summer's opening up as a mental health reset. And damn, do we all need it.

HAPPY FOURTH EVERYONE, and thank you as always for reading.

Panel: Audie Cornish, NPR; Kate Snow, NBC; Adam Grant, psychologist

 

6.27.21: The Tragedy in Surfside, Infrastructure and Climate Are Part and Parcel

 Amidst the debate on infrastructure, Joshua Johnson explained that there's nothing like tragedy to focus the mind, and when you look at the horrific images from Surfside, FL preventing it from ever happening again. 

Turns out that there was a 2018 report filed that outlined the building's structural deficiences and one would have to conclude that being ocean front for 40 years facing storms and salt water andd erosion played a part in its decline.

The fact of the matter is that when it comes to infrastructure and buidling for the future, the United States cuts corners and hasn't invested in a real way in over sixty years, sacrificed at the alter of profit motive. And as Andrea Mitchell explained, the 'pay-fors' for the bipartisan agreement are make believe, citing that the IRS explanation is the 80's version of waste, fraud and abuse which at this time is standard practice. The bottom line is if corporations aren't going to be taxed, it's going on the credit card... and interest rates are likely to increase. Not a good look.

But it's all tied together - the tragedy in Miami Beach, the infrastructure deal and the climate and we have to wrap our collective head around this notion. Without mentioning climate specifically, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) explained that he was happy to see that money is being put aside in the agreement for receding coastlines and river and canal reinforcing. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said that she wasn't as much stuck on a number as she was as to whether or not the agreement makes a positive tanglible impact on people's lives. And she does make a point that if Senator Cassidy citing his wife calls bridges and roads a woman's problem, then yes, we need to get women baby sitters. You could take that as code that she expects a much larger reconcilliation bill to come along, but the point is that it does seems that eveyone wants to get to 'yes.' 

That's the good news, everyone wants a 'yes' vote on infrastrure. Bad news is that equal voting rights for all Americans is a 'no.' 

The Department of Justice this week announced that it would challenge Georgia's new voting laws that the DOJ says targets minorities to suppress their vote. And here's where Danielle Pletka once again put her foot in her mouth saying that the Republicans don't want to known for voter suppression as much as the Democrats don't want to be known for voter fraud. Frankly, that's a bush league disingenous comparison and she should know better because the fact is that Democrats didn't commit any voter fraud yet Republican statehouses around the county are passing voter suppression bills, purging voter rolls of tens of thousands of voters. So... 

Yamiche Alcindor put it in perspective explaining that when it comes to voting rights, there are going to be various court battles while there is also a legislative tract. Ms. Alcindor also reminded us that these laws are based on the lies told by the former president, which Ms. Pletka said that she could separate out from the bills being passed on the state level. Again, an example of intellectual dishonesty in this column's humble assessment.

Maybe this is the 'Hail Mary' on the part of Republicans as Joshua Johnson described and that this fervor will pass. However, right now it looks like a jump ball in the endzone and who comes down with it, we'll find out.

Panel: Andrea Mitchell, NBC News; Yamiche Alcindor, PBS NewsHour; Danielle Pletka, American Enterprise Institute; Joshua Johnson, NBC News 

6.20.21: We Have Our Own Version of Putin's 'No Happiness in Life'

What was evident from today's balanced discussion of international diplomacy and domestic issues is that as Mr. Todd noted, 'we're in for more politics than Putin' because of the lack of bi-partisanship hence Congress's inability to get anything  big done. However, when you have have Mitch McConnell, do you really need more Putin?

Fiona Hill noted that the United States inability speak with a unified voice on domestic issues spills over internationally as someone like Putin uses that. It's no secret to the world that the Republican party in the United States cannot be relied upon to negotiate in good faith. Allied and advisarial governments alike look at this intransience and know that stability within the United States and with regard to diplomacy predictability has gone out the window.

The United States, the champion of democracy, is rated a flawed one. The discussions today are the cases in point.

On infrastructure, according to Cornell Belcher and the consensus in Washington is that Democrats will not kill a bipartisan deal, they won't like a lot of the concessions to get there, but they'll swallow it. In essence they'll concede to an enhanced version of what Republicans call 'infrastructure' but by Senator Rob Portman's (R-OH) own admission the Republican plan is to borrow the money. In other words, deficit spend with the justification of it being a long-term investment, which by the way, makes no sense. What also didn't make sense was putting a user fee on people who purchase hybrid and electric cars, as the senator suggested. Ah, no... one should get a tax break for purchasing such automobiles. 

And then there's our own version of Putin's 'no happiness in life' in the form of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

A bipartisan group of Senators is negotiating said infrastructure package, which Mr. McConnell will kill because someone that he thinks shouldn't be taxed gets taxed.

A bipartisan police reform bill being negotiated by Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), which Mr. McConnell will kill because somewhere in it there will be a weakening of qualified immunity.

A moderate Democrat proposes some major concessions on a Voting Rights bill, but Mr. McConnell will kill it, having already deemed it unnecessary and of course because Stacey Abrams endorsed the compromise.

Speaking of which, to clearly illustrate the above, Republican strategist Brad Todd (no relation) said that Ms. Abrams purposely endorsed the compromise with the clear intent of defeating the notion. The degree of cynicism was unbelievable to the extent that no one on set, in fact, believed it. 

So to answer the question of whether President Biden's meeting with Vladimir Putin was a success of a mistake...

Putin looked small and at time squeamish in interviews, press conferences and photos during the summit. It was necessary for President Biden to set down a marker and tell Putin what's what when it comes to his country's interference of the U.S.'s internal infrastucture and discourse as well as its agression toward allies of the United States, particularly when it comes to cyberattacks. 

We liked how Ms. Hill framed the conversation when it comes to cyberattacks. She cited the example of what happened in Syria when Russian troops tried to decieve American forces by posing as separatists. Russian troops shot at American troops and got some. The Americans embarrassed the Russians because of their own foolishness. Think of that example, when it comes to cyber, she suggested. 

We'll have to wait and see how Mr. Putin reacts in the coming months, but for right now, we don't need more Putin, we have our own champion of 'there's no happiness in life.'

Thank you very little, Mr. McConnell.

Panel: Amna Nawaz, PBS; Ashley Parker, The Washington Post; Cornell Belcher, Democratic Strategist; Brad Todd, Republican Strategist