The White House is in a bind over the potential breach of the federal debt ceiling as GOP lawmakers refuse to help Democrats avert a national financial catastrophe, leaving the administration with few easy answers as time runs out.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has insisted Republicans will not cooperate with pleas from the Biden administration to increase or suspend the debt ceiling — the legal limit for what the federal government can borrow to avoid defaulting on its obligations.

Meanwhile, the White House has ruled out offering policy concessions to Republican lawmakers to lure GOP votes, according to three senior administration officials familiar with the matter. McConnell has not communicated any requests to the administration of what he wants in exchange for support for the suspension, the people said. Even if McConnell does outline a proposal, the White House has no intention of rewarding the GOP for trying to use the debt ceiling as leverage in other negotiations, the officials said, with one describing the position as “a matter of principle.”

Instead, the Democrats and Republicans have spent recent days publicly bludgeoning each other over the debt ceiling, yet another sign that there are no negotiations to resolve the impasse.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/09/20/white-house-debt-ceiling/

“Don’t DeSantis my California” became a rallying cry for Democrats, but it’s unclear what the results mean for 2022.

As the California recall campaign intensified in July, Democratic operatives peered at the written responses to their latest survey asking voters about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s handling of the pandemic.

One word kept popping up among those who supported the Democratic leader: “Florida.”

The Sunshine State’s deadly summer battle with the coronavirus Delta variant, it turned out, would help galvanize California Democrats. In the months that followed, Newsom and his Democratic allies turned Gov. Ron DeSantis into an unofficial opponent. They linked the Republicans on the ballot to DeSantis’ hands-off approach to the public health crisis and doubled down on vaccine and mask mandates that Florida’s governor has opposed.

“Don’t DeSantis my California,” became a rallying cry that sparked Internet memes and campaign signs.

“What was happening in Florida, in Texas, was leading the national news every day,” a senior adviser to Newsom’s anti-recall campaign, Nathan Click, told the Tampa Bay Times. “It provided a very clear contrast.”

https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/09/18/newsom-used-desantis-to-win-california-recall-does-it-mean-anything-in-florida/

“Don’t DeSantis my California?” Did anyone in California hear this "rallying cry" during the runup to the recall? I never did.

If you’ve been around the block as much as I have, you know you can’t hardly trust anyone about anything. You have to ignore all the so-called experts and do your own research. But sometimes, the truth is in your heart. Like how there’s just no way Trump lost an election to Biden.

I may not be some mainstream pollster with funny maps and fancy questionnaires and shit, but I know where you find real American voters, and it ain’t at some George Soros-funded white lives don’t matter march — it’s here, in the Intensive Care Unit at Our Sisters of Mercy Hospital.

Now get ready for some real talk, because you will not believe the red pills I’m about to drop.

We’re doing field research, so let’s talk about sample selection criteria. Only patriots vote, and patriots are proud of who they are. They don’t hide their faces behind masks like some Antifa super soldier burning Portland to the ground. Well, a nurse assured me that nobody in this place ever put a mask on, not even for Halloween. I’d say we got a room full of citizen suffragists here, let’s see what they have to say!

https://thehardtimes.net/blog/if-biden-really-won-the-election-how-come-no-one-in-this-icu-voted-for-him/

There were plenty of other people who could have stood up to the president, who instead chose the easy way out.

What do you do when a president is crazy?

That’s essentially the question Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, faced in the twilight days of the Trump administration. His answer, as reported by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their forthcoming book, “Peril,” has some people up in arms.

It seems that Milley, according to published accounts from those who have read the book, became convinced his tantrum-throwing, spittle-spewing, reality-denying commander-in-chief was in a state of mental collapse and as such, was an immediate threat to world peace. So the general went around him, twice reaching out via back channel to his Chinese counterpart, General Li Zuocheng.

The first call was last October. Milley had reportedly seen intelligence suggesting that China, rattled by U.S. military exercises in the South China Sea and by President Trump’s bellicose rhetoric, believed an American attack was imminent. He assured Zuocheng that this was not the case and went so far as to issue an extraordinary promise: “If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time.”

https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2021/09/19/why-was-general-milley-left-to-deal-with-a-mentally-unbalanced-president-trump-column/

The days of full covid coverage are over. Insurers are restoring deductibles and co-pays, leaving patients with big bills.

Large insurance companies waived cost-sharing for coronavirus care in 2020, but it has sprung back in 2021

Jamie Azar left a rehab hospital in Tennessee this week with the help of a walker after spending the entire month of August in the ICU and on a ventilator. She had received a shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in mid-July but tested positive for the coronavirus within 11 days and nearly died.

Now Azar, who earns about $36,000 a year as the director of a preschool at a Baptist church in Georgia, is facing thousands of dollars in medical expenses that she can’t afford.

“I’m very thankful to be home. I am still weak. And I’m just waiting for the bills to come in to know what to do with them,” she said Wednesday, after returning home.

In 2020, as the pandemic took hold, U.S. health insurance companies declared they would cover 100 percent of the costs for covid treatment, waiving co-pays and expensive deductibles for hospital stays that frequently range into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/09/18/covid-hospital-bills-insurance-deductible/

Mr. Zeldin, a conservative Republican, says the disease is in remission, and that his bid for governor of New York will be unaffected.

Representative Lee Zeldin, a staunch conservative from Long Island and the leading Republican candidate in next year’s race for governor in New York, revealed that he was diagnosed with leukemia last year and has been receiving treatment.

Mr. Zeldin, 41, told attendees at an Ontario County Republican Party dinner on Friday night that he had been grappling with the diagnosis of early-stage chronic myeloid leukemia since November 2020. He confirmed on Saturday in a text message to The New York Times that he had cancer, and then released a statement.

“Over the last nine months, I have achieved complete remission, am expected to live a normal life, and my doctor says I currently have no evidence of this disease in my system,” Mr. Zeldin, one of the most vocal supporters of former President Donald J. Trump, said. “My health is phenomenal, and I continue to operate at 110 percent.”

Mr. Zeldin had mentioned his diagnosis partly because the Ontario County party chairwoman, Trisha Turner, had been facing her own health crises. Brian Kolb, a former state assemblyman, said that Mr. Zeldin had brought her roses, and drew a parallel to her struggles and his own. Mr. Kolb, a Republican, recalled Mr. Zeldin saying he had wanted to make sure that he had his illness under control before he began campaigning earlier this year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/18/nyregion/lee-zeldin-leukemia.html

WASHINGTON—In an effort to dare pry where the mainstream media would not, Tucker Carlson announced Thursday that he would be putting his life on the line by getting a booster shot for a Fox News investigation into the Covid-19 vaccine.

“God only knows what will happen to me when I take this shot, which is why I’ve selflessly volunteered to become one of the first to receive it,” said Carlson, who informed Tucker Carlson Tonight viewers that they would be the first to know if he were injured or even killed in his attempt to secure his third dose of the Pfizer vaccine, gravely explaining that he was conducting tireless research into booking a booster shot appointment for as soon as possible before he lost his nerve.

“Remember, if you hear about a clinic or pharmacy offering Covid-19 booster shots, do not take it; instead, call the show, and I’ll be there to ask the tough questions like, ‘Am I eligible?’ and ‘May I have it?’”

At press time, Carlson was calling for an investigation into the nurse at his physician’s office who told him he still needed to wait a few more weeks for the CDC’s clearance just like everybody else.

https://www.theonion.com/tucker-carlson-announces-he-putting-life-on-line-by-get-1847688854

Israeli agents had wanted to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist for years. Then they came up with a way to do it with no operatives present.

Iran’s top nuclear scientist woke up an hour before dawn, as he did most days, to study Islamic philosophy before his day began.

That afternoon, he and his wife would leave their vacation home on the Caspian Sea and drive to their country house in Absard, a bucolic town east of Tehran, where they planned to spend the weekend.

Iran’s intelligence service had warned him of a possible assassination plot, but the scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, had brushed it off.

Convinced that Mr. Fakhrizadeh was leading Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb, Israel had wanted to kill him for at least 14 years. But there had been so many threats and plots that he no longer paid them much attention.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/18/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-fakhrizadeh-assassination-israel.html

Source: New York Times

Mr. Polis is the first sitting governor to have a same-sex wedding.

Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado married his longtime partner, Marlon Reis, in a traditional Jewish ceremony on Wednesday, the first time a sitting governor has had a same-sex wedding.

It was another first for Mr. Polis, 46, who was the first openly gay man to become a governor when he was elected in 2018. In a statement on Facebook on Thursday, he said the wedding was a small ceremony attended by “family and a few close friends.”

“We are both excited for this new chapter in our lives together, and our hearts are full with the blessings of health, love, and family,” he said.

Mr. Polis and Mr. Reis, a writer and animal rights activist, have been together for 18 years and were engaged in December, according to the governor’s office. They have two children, ages 7 and 9.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/jared-polis-wedding.html

Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON — A scientific advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration on Friday overwhelmingly recommended against approving a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for people 16 and older.

The committee voted 16 to 3 after holding an intense daylong public discussion on whether booster shots are necessary and if so, for whom. The Biden administration has been hoping the F.D.A. would approve a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine in time to begin rolling out boosters for Pfizer recipients next week.

The vote came after a sharp debate in which many of the panel’s independent experts, including infectious disease doctors and statisticians, challenged whether the data justified a broad rollout of extra shots when the vaccines appear to still offer robust protection against severe Covid-19 disease and hospitalization, at least in the United States.

“It’s unclear that everyone needs to be boosted, other than a subset of the population that clearly would be at high risk for serious disease,” said Dr. Michael G. Kurilla, a committee member and official at the National Institutes of Health.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/fda-booster-shots-meeting-covid.html