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The Biden Presidency

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Reversing Trump, Biden Restores Aid to Palestinians
The move will once again make the United States a leading donor to the United Nations agency that assists about 5.7 million Palestinians in the Middle East.



The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it would restore hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid to Palestinians, its strongest move yet to reverse President Donald J. Trump’s policy on the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The package, which gives at least $235 million in assistance to Palestinians, will go to humanitarian, economic, development and security efforts in the region, and is part of the administration’s attempt to rehabilitate U.S. relations with Palestinians, which effectively stopped when Mr. Trump was in office.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/07/world/middleeast/biden-aid-palestinians.html
 
Captain_Swoop said:
The package, which gives at least $235 million in assistance to Palestinians, will go to humanitarian, economic, development and security efforts in the region, .....
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They forgot to mention "handling fees", "contingency reserves", "currency conversion fees" and the like so that when it gets down to Mohamed Doe it will effectively be $2.35 mil.
 
smartcooky said:
Just on a slightly different tack, I have to say that I never thought I would enjoy watching White House press conferences so much until this year.

Whenever some dickwit reporter from Faux News, or One America Nutjobs or Newswanks tries to pull out a "gotcha" question, that Jen Psaki woman just dismantles their arguments and humiliates them in front of the press corps.

Truly awesome to watch!
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Any favorites? I don't watch TV, in general, but I've seen some praise a few times.
 
I have seen a few articles making the same sort of claim as this one:

From: Politico
...By 1984, it was landslide territory for Ronald Reagan. The population was overwhelmingly white and thoroughly middle class, largely living in tract homes and driving their cars to industrial (jobs)...They were, by all appearances, Democrats. But they weren’t voting like it.....Greenberg coined a term for these voters—“Reagan Democrats”
...
Then something important happened: In leaning too hard into white identity politics...Trump accelerated the rise of a new voting bloc that is, in many ways, the mirror image of the Reagan Democrats. Call them the Biden Republicans...Greenberg sees the Biden Republicans as more affluent, highly educated and supportive of diversity. Historically, they identified with the Republican Party as their political home....They don’t consider themselves Democrats—at least not yet—but they are voting for them

Interesting idea. Hopefully there is some truth to it. After all, Reagan had a significant impact on politics, and even managed to string 3 consecutive terms in the white house (if you count Bush Sr., who might have benefited on good will towards Reagan.) It would be nice if Biden were able to have the same sort of impact.... building a coalition that will keep the Republicans from the white house until they can get their act together.
 
smartcooky said:
Just on a slightly different tack, I have to say that I never thought I would enjoy watching White House press conferences so much until this year.

Whenever some dickwit reporter from Faux News, or One America Nutjobs or Newswanks tries to pull out a "gotcha" question, that Jen Psaki woman just dismantles their arguments and humiliates them in front of the press corps.

Truly awesome to watch!
Click to expand...

She is really good. I've been impressed.
 
Stacyhs said:
Compared to the last bunch of WH press secretaries, all she had to do was be able to walk and chew gum at the same time to impress us. But, yes; she's very good.
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In all fairness to them, trying to bring clarity to Trump and his intentions is futile.
 
Segnosaur said:
Call them the Biden Republicans...Greenberg sees the Biden Republicans as more affluent, highly educated and supportive of diversity. Historically, they identified with the Republican Party as their political home....They don’t consider themselves Democrats—at least not yet—but they are voting for them

Interesting idea. Hopefully there is some truth to it. After all, Reagan had a significant impact on politics, and even managed to string 3 consecutive terms in the white house (if you count Bush Sr., who might have benefited on good will towards Reagan.) It would be nice if Biden were able to have the same sort of impact.... building a coalition that will keep the Republicans from the white house until they can get their act together.
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I'm not surprised by that, this is pretty much what I've been here in Canada for the last decade at least. I used to vote PC in just about every election, but the collapse of that party federally and the rise of the new Conservative Party pretty much pushed me out.

I had some hopes that I could return to the PCs at least provincially in the last Ontario election, but then they went and made Doug Ford the party leader. And it wasn't even a close vote, either. It's as if the people running the PCs these days actively don't want my vote.
 
The governor of Vermont is a "Biden Republican," it seems. He made his opposition to T**** clear early on, but was noncommittal about how he'd vote, but I believe he said finally that he'd gone for Biden.
 
Carter will take all your guns
Clinton will take all your guns
Clinton will take all your guns if he's reelected
Obama will take all your guns
Obama will take all your guns if he's reelected
Biden will take all your guns
 
It's nice to know in these times of intense partisan division in this country, both Republicans and Democrats can agree that our massively bloated, budget chugging military could actually stand to be a bit bigger.

BREAKING: Biden proposes a $753,000,000,000 Pentagon budget, a significant increase from last year's budget.
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https://twitter.com/Public_Citizen/status/1380542399730966530

We may not have universal health care, but nobody can evaporate some poor brown kid with a Raytheon missile quite like the good ole USofA. Rock, flag, and eagle, USA #1.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
BREAKING: Biden proposes a $753,000,000,000 Pentagon budget, a significant increase from last year's budget.
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https://twitter.com/Public_Citizen/status/1380542399730966530
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While I agree that a good portion of the money spent on the military could be used elsewhere, their use of "significant increase" feels a little misleading. The dollar amount looks like a lot (because it is), but it's only a 4.4% increase over last year. Previous years were 5.1%, 7.3%, and 9.7% according to budget figures on Wikipedia.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
It's nice to know in these times of intense partisan division in this country, both Republicans and Democrats can agree that our massively bloated, budget chugging military could actually stand to be a bit bigger.
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If it were me, I would have cut the budget by exactly how much Trump took when he declared the state of emergency to allow him to siphon off money for his border wall.

That, or ask for a big increase in military budgets now, but declare a new state of emergency (over something like global warming) in order to divert the money (to something like green energy projects).
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
It's nice to know in these times of intense partisan division in this country, both Republicans and Democrats can agree that our massively bloated, budget chugging military could actually stand to be a bit bigger.

Quote:
BREAKING: Biden proposes a $753,000,000,000 Pentagon budget, a significant increase from last year's budget.
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/Public_Citizen/status/1380542399730966530

We may not have universal health care, but nobody can evaporate some poor brown kid with a Raytheon missile quite like the good ole USofA. Rock, flag, and eagle, USA #1.
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The proposed budget is $715 billion, not $753 billion. They should at least get the number they're outraged about right. Republicans, like McConnell, are having hissy fits over the low budget Biden has allocated to the military:

“President Biden’s budget proposal cuts defense spending, sending a terrible signal not only to our adversaries in Beijing and Moscow, but also to our allies and partners,” McConnell said in a statement also signed by James Inhofe, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham and Richard Shelby. “Cutting America’s defense budget completely undermines Washington Democrats’ tough talk on China and calls into question the administration’s willingness to confront the Chinese Communist Party.”
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The $715 billion plan represents a 1.6 percent increase in spending from fiscal 2021 but would amount to a decrease of about 0.4 percent when inflation is factored in. Unlike past years, when overseas operations were funded through a different account, the $715 billion total includes all Defense Department spending.
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But an administration official said that “a large chunk” of the defense spending increase will go towards a scheduled pay raise for troops next year, as well as more money for “the civilians that support them.”

Under the federal formula used to calculate annual pay raises for service members, troops should expect to see a paycheck boost of about 2.7 percent starting next January. Each 1 percent of pay raises adds about $6 billion in new defense spending over five years.
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https://www.militarytimes.com/news/...lat-defense-budget-plan-white-house-promises/
 
You know, that "adjusted for inflation" always gets used, and seems to make sense on the face of it, but when's the last time we really had inflation? Those numbers never ever seem to be adjusted down when we have deflation.
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
You know, that "adjusted for inflation" always gets used, and seems to make sense on the face of it, but when's the last time we really had inflation? Those numbers never ever seem to be adjusted down when we have deflation.
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GDP inflation's been at 2% in recent years. Cost inflation for technical projects such as biomedical research is growing a little faster, currently at 2.5%. We've never had actual deflation since WW2. Downturns have been recessions, not depressions.

https://officeofbudget.od.nih.gov/gbiPriceIndexes.html
 
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Silly Green Monkey said:
You know, that "adjusted for inflation" always gets used, and seems to make sense on the face of it, but when's the last time we really had inflation? Those numbers never ever seem to be adjusted down when we have deflation.
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Hmm? Isn't it just a matter of comparative currency worth at two points in time, with the note that overall, inflation has been happening to the dollar pretty consistently?
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
You know, that "adjusted for inflation" always gets used, and seems to make sense on the face of it, but when's the last time we really had inflation?
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Well, the inflation rate seems to be in the 1-2% range. (That's the overall inflation rate; the rate in different sectors of the economy might differ, but if we're talking about pay for military families, they are probably interested in a more general 'how much toilet paper and taco bell can I buy' approach to inflation, rather than individual economic sectors.

Is 1-2% low? Well, its much lower than the inflation rate in the 70s/80s, but it seems to be pretty consistent over the past few decades.

See: Trading Economics

Those numbers never ever seem to be adjusted down when we have deflation.
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Deflation seems to be pretty rare. According to the web site above, the only 2 cases of deflation in over a half century occurred:
- During the 2007/2008 recession (after which it eventually returned to normal, and even went up to almost 4% a few years later
- once very briefly round 2015, but that was less a case of 'deflation' and more a case of 'things aren't changing AT ALL')

So there's not much need to account for deflation when 1) it is very rare, and 2) doesn't really have any sort of long-term impact on the econonmy
 
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