I've been subscribed to Hubbell's newsletter for a while and I'm finding his read on the daily issues extremely calming and informative. Started as letter to his daughter, off to school, in an attempt to keep her up to date on current events, it has grown to a subscriber base of about 50,000. No fees or paywall is required but donations are accepted.
Here is the link to his Substack page with recent posts: [link:
https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/todays-edition-june-4-2021|
4 Paragraphs from today's edition:
One way to assign blame in this situation is to attribute the failure to the “moderate” views of Senators Manchin and Sinema. A better way to look at the current negotiating weakness of Democrats is to see it as a collective failure to flip several vulnerable GOP Senate seats in 2020 (e.g., Joni Ernst and Susan Collins). From the second viewpoint, our challenge is not only that of changing the minds of Manchin and Sinema, but of creating a margin of control in the Senate that is not dependent on one or two conservative Democrats.
Before leaving this topic, I want to paraphrase comments from a reader with a deep background in economics who wrote in praise of Biden’s efforts to “Go Big” in the American Jobs Plan. The reader sent a note saying that an expansive infrastructure bill “is not only right for our country at this time on a humanistic, moral, and political basis, but it also works economically and should be supported from this viewpoint. Specifically, it wisely departs from the Republican economic theory of the last forty years, which was deeply embedded in the Trump tax bill, of “supply side” and “trickle down” theories, which have not worked to stimulate economic growth, or for the benefit of the middle and lower economic classes. Instead, they have only served as a charade to support tax cuts for corporations and the upper economic class.” The reader concludes with the argument that Republican claims of “fiscal responsibility, inflation, and future financial burdens” is pure political posturing designed to obstruct any and all Democratic legislation. Well said!
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The controversy over the “lab-leak” theory traces back to Trump’s efforts to blame China for the coronavirus. Trump infused the “origin” question with racial overtones, calling Covid-19 the “Kung flu,” the “China virus,” and the “Wuhan flu.” Those racial slurs were amplified by Steve Bannon, who helped spread the false claim that China developed SARS-CoV-2 “as a bio-weapon and purposefully unleashed it on the world.” See Vanity Fair, “The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins.” The early racial slurs and whacko bio-weapon theories made it difficult to take seriously those scientists who believed that the coronavirus “escaped” from a lab in Wuhan, China.
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The WHO study is here: WHO-convened global study of origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part.” Many people are suspicious about the integrity of the WHO investigation. I have no way of judging whether WHO’s findings are accurate or complete; I can only report on the findings based on press reports and by reference to the original report itself. The report states on page 119 that there was “no serological evidence of infection in [lab] workers through SARS-CoV-2-specific serology-screening.”
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If he doesn't read the Democratic Underground, I'd be surprised.
