Pay Attention, America. Biden and His Democratic Allies Are Getting Shit Done.

We interrupt this hiatus with a Big Fucking Deal. Congress passed a fiscal pandemic relief bill that President Biden signed this afternoon with almost immediate improvements in our fight back to normalcy (via Jacob Pramuk at CNBC):

The plan will send direct payments of up to $1,400 to most Americans. Direct deposits will start hitting Americans’ bank accounts as soon as this weekend, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday.

The bill will also extend a $300 per week unemployment insurance boost until Sept. 6 and expand the child tax credit for a year. It will also put nearly $20 billion into Covid-19 vaccinations, $25 billion into rental and utility assistance, and $350 billion into state, local and tribal relief.

“This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country,” Biden said before signing the legislation. “And giving people in this nation, working people, middle-class folks, the people who built this country, a fighting chance.”

Other things Americans need to understand about the American Rescue Plan relief package:

• No Republican in both the Senate and the House voted for it.
• The Rescue Plan boosts health care coverage to more Americans, solidifying Obamacare and ensuring health recovery from the pandemic can get taken care of.
• No Republican in both the Senate and the House voted for it.
• The Plan expands food stamps (SNAP) funding, increases financial aid to K-12 schools, and is set to hopefully cut child poverty numbers by half, on a scale we haven't seen since the 1960s.
• And to really drive this point home, NO REPUBLICAN WAS IN FAVOR OF ANY OF THESE BENEFITS TO AMERICAN FAMILIES AND THE NATION AS A WHOLE.

You can see in real time an entire political party refusing to work towards the best interests of their nation and the majority of our citizenry, including a solid plurality of Republican voters who were okay with the ARP relief packages. The Far Right zeal for obstruction and destruction continues apace.

This is what we're going to see over the next two years: Republicans refusing to do the right thing and attacking Democrats over ludicrous and unproven accusations of culture war nothingburgers; while Democrats just go to work and get shit done.

And we're facing a serious possibility the Republicans will cheat and vote-suppress their way back to power in Congress in 2022 all because not enough Americans will pay attention to what's happening here.

Sigh.

Back to our regularly scheduled hiatus.

Please Don't Let Him Back Onto The Mainland

What the everloving hell (via The Atlantic):

“Every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here and what is your death count? Sixteen people, versus in the thousands,” Trump said. “You can be very proud. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people.”

It gets worse:

During his briefing, he made an apparent attempt at a joke about the cost of recovery. “I hate to tell you Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack,” he said. 

“That’s fine. We saved a lot of lives.” Yet the remark comes in the context of Trump repeatedly mentioning Puerto Rico’s debts as both a reason for the slow recovery and a reason to think hard about reconstruction there. Nor did he make similar remarks after hurricanes in Texas and Florida.

Okay, this is the part where I lose it.

62 million of you voted for this disaster. Happy?

Aid to Puerto Rico

If trump is too busy to tweet about Puerto Rico's financial woes before the hurricanes hit, the rest of us might actually try to do something about HELPING OUR FELLOW AMERICANS (yes, Puerto Ricans are citizens ever since 1917):

Charity Navigator

Florida Association for Volunteer Action in the Caribbean and the Americas

All Hands Volunteers

ShelterBox USA

Unitarian Disaster Relief

United for Puerto Rico

National Voluntary Organizations Active In Disasters (supplies)


Do take the time to make sure the charities you're donating to are legitimate and have a history of helping out.