Good morning,
Itâs looking like today might be the day the Democrats actually announce a number. Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer were in Wilmington, Delaware, on Sunday meeting with the president, and Nancy Pelosi went on TV saying they were 90 percent of the way there. President Biden is headed to Europe later this week to see the pope and then to Glasgow for the climate summit. The idea, reports Punchbowl, is to pass the infrastructure bill by Wednesday and have a reconciliation package firmed up that they can vote on soon. Yippee.
The piece you need to read today is The Washington Postâs report on the Willard Hotel âwar roomâ for the January 6 coup. John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Bernard Kerik, and Steve Bannon are the key players in this grisly story, which centers on pressuring Mike Pence to throw out enough electoral votes to call the presidential result into question. These people are such scumbags. And why did convicted felon Bernie Kerik have $55,000 to spend on a hotel bill?Â
The New York Times has a big rundown on the Alec Baldwin tragedy on the set of Rust, built around an interview with Joel Souza, the filmâs director. It sheds some light on the normal protocols regarding guns on a movie set, but it still doesnât answer the basic question we all have, namely how that gun got loaded.
Remember the name Frances Haugen. Sheâs the Facebook whistleblower who has taken a ton of damning information about Mark Zuckerberg to the Securities and Exchange Commission. A big Washington Post piece today combines her information and original reporting to show what a liar Zuckerberg is. For example: âZuckerberg testified last year before Congress that the company removes 94 percent of the hate speechit findsâbut internal documents show that its researchers estimated that the company was removing less than 5 percent of hate speech on Facebook.â
Op-ed of the day: Binyamin Appelbaum in the Timeson why we pay taxes: âDemocracies impose higher taxes than other forms of government because democracies are communities of common purpose. We create and maintain our society through our contributions.
âOr we donât. And things fall apart.â Hear, hear. Â Backup op-ed of the day: Alexandra Petri in the Post on the Top 50 Halloween songs of all time. Of course âMonster Mashâ is #1. But who even knew there were 50? Â Today at NewRepublic.com, Grace Segers checks in on the Virginia governorâs race (she went to Saturdayâs rally in Richmond headlined by Barack Obama). Walter Shapiro advises that you ignore midterm predictions for a while yet. And please, if you havenât read Marion Renaultâs amazing report from Mobile, Alabama, on how red Americaâs vaccinated minority has dealt with the vaccine resistance that surrounds them, do it today. Itâs a beautiful piece of journalism. Â Happy Monday, Michael Tomasky, editor
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