“This is, in my opinion, political incontinence on our part. We are wetting ourselves and can’t do anything about. This is insane”

Steve Womack

Said: Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) commenting on a small faction of GOP leaders who were bent upon blockibg the functioning of the House. 

Leadership remains unclear what exactly the group of 11 Republicans want, and different members want different things, making it more difficult to address their concerns.

According to The Washington Post, a two-day stalemate between hard-right Republicans and GOP leaders has effectively frozen the House from considering any legislation for the foreseeable future, as both groups failed to find a resolution to the standoff that would allow the majority to vote on bills.

"McCarthy, Biden and their lieutenants had brokered a deal days before to suspend the debt ceiling until 2025 and cut federal spending, prompting outrage from several hard-right GOP lawmakers who argued that the bill did not cut spending enough — and who accused McCarthy of violating several promises that they say helped them elect him speaker. The blockade presents a high-stakes challenge for McCarthy. The conflict not only threatens McCarthy’s tenure with the speaker’s gavel, but also the House’s ability to take up any legislation, contributing to growing irritation within the razor-thin majority," the Post reported.

“This is, in my opinion, political incontinence on our part. We are wetting ourselves and can’t do anything about. This is insane,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) said. “This is not the way a governing majority is expected to behave. And frankly, I think there’ll be a political cost to it.”

Womack did not save criticism for leaders, noting that rank-and-file members had not heard from their leadership all day about what was happening Wednesday.

“You got the tail wagging the dog. You got a small group of people who are pissed off that are keeping the house of representatives from functioning today, and I think the American people are not going to take too kindly to that,” he added.

"Why do anchors and their guests behave like ghouls at a post-mortem when their patient is still alive?"

"Why do anchors and their guests behave like ghouls at a post-mortem when their patient is still alive?," asked Mukul Kesavan, a historian, novelist and political and social essayist.

Mukul Kesavan, in his article titled "BJP-bin Dakshin" in The Telegraph online, reviewed the way anchors at different TV channels were covering the live election results of the Karnataka Assembly yesterday. He specially cited a moment during the Karnataka results show when the Congress’s leads dropped to 113, a bare majority. According to him the oddest reaction to the Congress’s brief slump in the leads was Rajdeep Sardesai’s bizarre outburst on the India Today channel. "Sardesai took it upon himself to chide the Congress spokesperson, Congress leaders, and party workers for a) not working hard enough on the ground to ensure a substantial majority and b) for celebrating prematurely," he wrote.

However, when it became clear that the Congress was all set to comfortably cross the majority mark, most anchors changed their tune and started praising the Congress's overall strategy. Kesavan termed the election coverage as 'T20-style' and asked: "Why do anchors and their guests behave like ghouls at a post-mortem when their patient is still alive?"

Read the full article here.

China’s ruling Communist Party is seeking to create “client economies and governments"

"China’s ruling Communist Party is seeking to create “client economies and governments,” said Jeremy Fleming, head of the secretive GCHQ, Britain’s intelligence, cyber and security agency. Fleming said this in an address to the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London. 

"In a future crisis, Beijing could exploit information covertly extracted from client economies and governments, or use its monopoly to demand compliance in international fora. To catch a glimpse of that future, one only needs only look at how China has already sought to do just this, leveraging its influence over many smaller nations in votes over technology, ethics and foreign policy," he said.

Fleming also spoke about Russia's failure in the Ukraine war and “strategic errors in judgment” committed by President Vladimir Putin.

You can go through the full transcript of Jeremy Fleming's lecture and also watch the entire video here.

“This notion that somehow banning Russian oil would raise prices on American consumers is an admission that this guy, that this killer, that this butcher, Vladimir Putin, has leverage over us.”

Marco Rubio

Said Florida senator Marco Rubio (R) on Sunday’s US TV talk shows. This appears in a news item published in today's The Guardian. 

Rubio said he supported Biden’s resistance to issuing a Russian oil import ban so far. But the US could “phase that in pretty rapidly” using “reserves for the purposes of buffering that”.

“We have more than enough ability in this country to produce enough oil to make up for the percentage that we buy from Russia,” Rubio said, adding that: “This notion that somehow banning Russian oil would raise prices on American consumers is an admission that this guy, that this killer, that this butcher, Vladimir Putin, has leverage over us.”

“I think we have enough that we should produce more American oil and buy less Russian oil or none – actually, none at all,” Rubio added.

Marco Antonio Rubio is an American politician and lawyer serving as the senior United States Senator from Florida, a seat he has held since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he served as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives from 2006 to 2008. Wikipedia

Read the full news item here.

'Putin's personal security is very good and it will be very good until the moment it isn't.'

Eliot A. Cohen

Said Eliot A. Cohen from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think-tank in an article by Elmira Tanatarova for Mailonline and AFP.

'That's happened numerous times in Soviet and Russian history.'

The article discusses five different ways set out by Experts that Russia's invasion could develop.

 
Russian President Vladimir Putin is keeping a close eye on domestic dissent. Though not seen as likely at this stage, the possibility of Putin being brought down in a popular backlash or even a palace coup is not being ruled out.

Read the full article here.

"A coup would not stand. It would end the best way possible for the G.O.P.—with him dead or in jail. He doesn’t want either of those, so it’s a con.”

Said: William Kristol, the conservative leader of the Never Trump movement when asked "Is This a Coup, or Just Another Trump Con?" by Susan B. Glasser who writes a weekly column in The New Yorker on life in Trump’s Washington. The question asked was in reference to Donald Trump's refusal to concede defeat, and prevent Joe Biden, The President Elect, from smooth transition.

Susan, in her Nov. 13 column "Is This a Coup, or Just Another Trump Con?" in The New Yorker writes: 

On Thursday, five days into this insane impasse, I asked a dozen of the smartest Washington hands I know what to make of it all: Was this a coup in the making, or just another Trump con? Taken together, their responses were modestly reassuring. 

“A little coup, a lot of con, and a total and reckless disregard for the health of our democracy or country,” William Kristol, the conservative leader of the Never Trump movement, told me. “He couldn’t organize a one-car funeral; he sure as hell can’t organize a coup,” a leading Republican pollster, who worked with a number of the Party’s candidates this election and asked not to be named, said. “Besides, a coup would not stand. It would end the best way possible for the G.O.P.—with him dead or in jail. He doesn’t want either of those, so it’s a con.”

Don't Forget the Workers

Says Earl Anthony Wayne, Public Policy Fellow, Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, Washington. In an article titled "Don't Forget the Workers" published on September 25, 2020, Wayne, who has served as Career Ambassador to Afghanistan, Argentina, and Mexico, suggests that as the U.S. Congress makes yet another effort to approve a new covid-19 relief package, it is urgent that the legislators include additional robust funding for re-skilling and upskilling workers. 

"Congressional action should encompass opportunities for workers still on the job as well as those who are out of work, those whose jobs will never return, and younger individuals seeking to enter the job market. If done well, such programs will boost employment, the economic recovery and the future of U.S. workers and businesses," he writes.

Wayne quoted a 2019 McKinsey study, which predicted that workers without college degrees would be four times more likely to lose their jobs to automation than those with a bachelor’s degree over the decade. "Those same workers have experienced the greatest losses of employment and income during the pandemic," writes Wayne.  

"The pandemic appears to be fueling even greater negative effects for less skilled workers across North America as companies adopt new technology to help deal with the health-related workplace challenges for manufacturing, supply chains, service provision, etc."

Wayne warns, quoting a report published in The Washington Post, that inequality seems to be widening in the United States, with higher skilled workers adapting more successfully to the downturn than less educated and less skilled workers. It is clear that the economy that emerges from this crisis is not going back to old ways, nor will it put aside the new technologies and automation now being adopted. More jobs will be transformed, requiring new skills, and some will be permanently eliminated.  

"The pandemic is more widely driving home the lessons of America’s relative underinvestment in primary and secondary education, for example, with very tough lessons for many families. As the pandemic accelerates technological transformations, the urgency of taking action to build a more skilled workforce grows," he concludes.