Source: Yahoo! News

President Joe Biden ordered yet another delay in the release of secret files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy yet to see the light of day more than 50 years after his death.

A White House memo, signed by Biden, said "[t]emporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure."

The order comes in response to the archivist of the United States recommending the president “temporarily certify the continued withholding of all of the information certified in 2018” and “direct two public releases of the information that has” ultimately “been determined to be appropriate for release to the public,” with one interim release later this year and one more comprehensive release in late 2022, according to the memo.

Delays associated with the coronavirus pandemic were cited as the reason for the recommendation.

Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/biden-delays-release-secret-jfk-015700211.html

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Getting delayed because of Covid? That's the excuse this year I guess.

Source: Komo News

WASHINGTON (SBG) — Asked about Sen. Joe Manchin forcing him to slim down his domestic agenda Thursday night, President Joe Biden chose his words about the West Virginia Democrat carefully.

“Joe's not a bad guy,” Biden said at a CNN town hall. “I mean, he's a friend. And he's always, at the end of the day, come around and voted for it.”

Manchin threw up several last-minute roadblocks ahead of the passage of Biden’s American Rescue Plan earlier this year, but he ultimately supported it. Resistance from Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., has already slashed his $3.5 trillion Build Back Better agenda in half, and neither senator has yet committed to backing a slimmed-down reconciliation package that needs both of their votes.

Other Democrats and progressive activists have been less diplomatic about Manchin. As he rejects major climate initiatives and insists on means-testing and work requirements for social safety net programs, kayaking protesters recently confronted him on his houseboat.

Read more: https://komonews.com/news/connect-to-congress/manchin-says-he-offered-to-leave-party-if-he-was-embarrassment-for-dems

Source: Politico

Bernie Sanders has been calling on Joe Manchin to support President Joe Biden’s full agenda for weeks. On Friday night, Manchin signaled he’s had enough of that.

In response to an op-ed from Sanders (I-Vt.) published in Manchin’s hometown paper on Friday night, Manchin snapped back: “This isn’t the first time an out-of-stater has tried to tell West Virginians what is best for them despite having no relationship to our state.”

“Congress should proceed with caution on any additional spending and I will not vote for a reckless expansion of government programs. No op-ed from a self-declared Independent socialist is going to change that,” Manchin said in a statement on Friday evening shortly after the op-ed published. Sanders caucuses with Democrats but is still technically an independent.


Sanders has taken his campaign to pass Democrats' $3.5 trillion spending proposal to media venues across the spectrum, including Fox News. Manchin has occasionally responded, albeit not in the fashion he did on Friday night. Sanders’ move to land an op-ed in Manchin’s backyard seems to have crossed the line for the West Virginia senator.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/15/manchin-sanders-op-ed-paper-516115

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Wow.

Source: Washington Post

Sen. Schumer blasted Republicans after the debt-ceiling reprieve. He was criticized for it — by Sen. Manchin.

Late Thursday, after the Senate passed a bill to raise the nation’s debt ceiling through early December, temporarily staving off a potential government shutdown and default, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the Senate floor to praise the move — and to blast Republicans for what he described as a “risky drama.”

“Republicans played a dangerous and risky partisan game, and I am glad that their brinksmanship did not work,” Schumer added. “For the good of America’s families, for the good of our economy, Republicans must recognize in the future that they should approach fixing the debt limit in a bipartisan way.”

Schumer urged the Senate to adopt a long-term solution so that it would not have to go through the same situation every few months.

But Schumer’s speech also rubbed one fellow Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), the wrong way.



Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/07/sen-schumer-blasted-republicans-after-debt-ceiling-reprieve-he-was-criticized-it-by-sen-manchin/

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https://twitter.com/burgessev/status/1446280352071364609

Source: CNN

(CNN)Facebook's week just went from bad to worse.

Facebook (FB), Instagram and WhatsApp all suffered outages midday Monday, according to public statements from the three Facebook services.

"We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products," Facebook said on Twitter. "We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

Outage tracking site Down Detector logged tens of thousands of reports for each of the services. Facebook's own site would not load at all for about an hour on Monday; Instagram and WhatsApp were accessible, but could not load new content or send messages.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/04/tech/facebook-instagram-whatsapp-outage/index.html

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This is almost certain to be the largest social media outage in history. Feels like 2005 for me.

Source: NBC News

The speaker told Democrats that the House will vote Thursday on the infrastructure bill. Progressive lawmakers have threatened to vote it down.

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Democrats on Monday that passage of the $550 billion infrastructure bill must not wait for President Joe Biden's multitrillion-dollar safety net bill, saying the larger package is not yet ready for a vote.

In a private caucus meeting, Pelosi, D-Calif., said the party must "make difficult choices," because the dynamics have changed and Democrats have not yet agreed to a spending level, according to a source familiar with the meeting.

"I told all of you that we wouldn't go on to the [infrastructure bill until] we had the reconciliation bill passed by the Senate. We were right on schedule to do all of that, until 10 days ago, a week ago, when I heard the news that this number had to come down," Pelosi said, according to the source. "It all changed, so our approach had to change.

"We had to accommodate the changes that were being necessitated. And we cannot be ready to say until the Senate passed the bill we can't do BIF," she said, using a shorthand for Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, the source said.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/pelosi-says-biden-s-infrastructure-bill-cannot-wait-social-safety-n1280215

https://www.wkyt.com/2021/09/24/haunted-house-actor-accidentally-stabs-11-year-old-with-real-knife-ohio/



This is insane!

Source: CNN

(CNN)Supreme Court justices, on the verge of a new term, will meet behind closed doors on Monday to discuss petitions that have accumulated over the summer and decide which cases should be added to the court's docket.

The private conference comes a week before the new term is set to begin when the justices will take the bench in person for the first time to hear arguments in over a year. The nine justices find themselves under the political spotlight after they allowed on a 5-4 vote a controversial Texas abortion law to go into effect.

Since that decision, several justices have given public remarks attempting to bolster the court's institutional legitimacy and arguing that they view cases according to their judicial philosophy and not from any political affiliation. But recent polls show the public -- particularly Democrats -- are souring on the court.

Already, the term -- set to start October 4 -- will be a blockbuster one as the justices will hear a significant Second Amendment case concerning a New York conceal carry law in November, followed by a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade in December.


Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/27/politics/scotus-new-cases-blockbuster-term/index.html

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Well, 10 years ago yesterday actually. What were your thoughts on this case? I remember protesting in the months leading to his death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Davis

Source: Politico

The White House has a new headache as it struggles to get its multitrillion-dollar party-line spending bill passed: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's objections to drug pricing reforms that are already struggling to make it through the House.

The Arizona Democrat is opposed to the current prescription drug pricing proposals in both the House and Senate bills, two sources familiar with her thinking said. They added that, at this point, she also doesn’t support a pared-back alternative being pitched by House Democratic centrists that would limit the drugs subject to Medicare negotiation.

Sinema met with President Joe Biden on Sept. 15 to discuss the social spending package, in which party leaders hope to include the Medicare prescription drug pricing proposal. Sinema has made her resistance to the current House prescription drug negotiation proposal clear to the White House, according to one of the sources, but it’s unclear if she’s completely immovable.

Both she and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who met with the president the same day, delivered what one source described as a sobering message for the White House about the fate of the reconciliation bill and its $3.5 trillion price tag, which they both say is too high. The social spending plan is designed to pass without GOP votes through budget reconciliation, meaning that Biden will need to win all 50 Senate Democratic votes to secure its passage.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/19/kyrsten-sinema-biden-drug-pricing-prescription-plan-512907