The fact that Reagan wasn’t impeached...

 + In reviewing the history of Reagan’s Central American wars, where Powell played a key role, I was struck by the fact that the original Boland Amendment, outlawing the funding of military operations against Nicaragua passed the House by a vote of 411-0. The prohibition, of course, was quickly flouted by Reagan. The fact that Reagan wasn’t impeached for breaching a unanimous vote of the House, proved the impotence of Congress. There would be no reclaiming the balance of power from that moment on. The theory of the unitary power of the executive was no longer a theory of government, it was a cold hard reality.

+ Biden’s pick as the new US ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, declared China the “aggressor” this week. But how military bases does China have in Canada, the Aleutians, Mexico, Cuba, Greenland or Jamaica?

+ Senate defense appropriations bill is out giving the Pentagon more than $10 billion than requested, $725.8 billion. Neither Manchin nor Sinema are demanding any cuts…

Manchin and Sinema will pay no price for their obstructionism. They won’t be stripped of their committee assignments. Projects in their home states won’t be defunded. The DNC won’t stop raising $$ for them. Even if they lose their seats, they’ll land a lucrative job on a corporate board or in a K Street lobby shop, working to demolish progressive legislation from the outside, like Joe Crowley. The real problem is that putative progressives who go along with these betrayals don’t pay a political price either. Instead, they bemoan their own weakness, even as Sinema and Manchin have demonstrated just how thoroughly two lone wolf senators can crash the system for purely venal reasons. Imagine two progressives taking the same stand to give people health care, pull the plug on nuclear missiles or put solar panels on every rooftop in the US? People might just rally round them.

 

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/22/roaming-charges-31/