•The House Armed Services Committee today grills Secretary of State Antony Blinken on President Biden’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan. On Tuesday, Blinken testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (NPR and Roll Call).
•The Senate returns from its summer recess today and must get to work writing the $3.5 trillion “social infrastructure” budget reconciliation bill. Congress must also fund the federal government, with the fiscal year ending September 30.
•Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned Congress it must raise or suspend the debt ceiling or face running out of money by October.
•California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recall election is Tuesday.
Manchin on Unknown Unknowns — Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, on This Week With George Stephanopoulos Sunday spoke about the need to make a “strategic pause” in the $3.5-trillion Build Back Better funding program due to what he refers to as “the unknown,” saying, “So the unknown is there, and we don’t know what that’s going to — going to partake.” While he was talking about the economic effects of the additional spending, it is conceivable that he was glossing the late former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who once noted, “There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don't know.”
Manchin noted elsewhere that “strategic pause” will result in a much smaller reconciliation bill. “It’s going to be $1, $1.5 (trillion),” Manchin told Dana Bash on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday. “It’s not going to be at $3.5, I can assure you.”
Note: As an example of his rationalization for the need of a pause, Manchin said, “People are talking to me in West Virginia about the price of gas, the price of everything they buy, including their groceries, how it's affecting them.”
Let’s look at gasoline.
According to AAA, as of 9/12/21, the day of Manchin’s appearance, the national average for a gallon of gas is $3.175. The average price for a gallon in West Virginia is $3.024.
Looking at the states that share a border with West Virginia, there is Virginia at $2.977, Kentucky at $2.896, Ohio at $2.986, and Maryland at $3.041. Yes, all lower than West Virginia. The remaining border state, Pennsylvania, is higher, at $3.296.
Three known things to keep in mind about gas prices, which, admittedly, have risen.
1. Last year petroleum demand collapsed due to the pandemic and fewer people were on the roads, thereby resulting in decreased gas prices.
2. This past week included Labor Day. Federal holidays are when more people take to the roads. More demand drives higher prices.
3. According to a Bloomberg report September 9 about the consequences of Hurricane Ida, “The historic storm, which swept through the Gulf of Mexico almost two weeks ago, drove a record 1.5 million-barrel decline in daily crude output, according to weekly data from the Energy Information Administration going back to 1983. Nearly three-fourths of U.S. Gulf oil output was still offline as of Thursday.”
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North Korea Tests Long-Range Cruise Missiles – The state-run Korean Central News Agency announced Monday that North Korea successfully tested long-range cruise missiles that hit targets about 930 miles away on Saturday and Sunday. The announcement “implies” North Korea developed the missiles with the intent to arm them with nuclear warheads, the Associated Press reports.
Note: With just a short break for the “love affair” between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a few years ago, the Hermit Kingdom has consistently sought attention from the West with such potentially deadly antics. North Korea appears to be suffering a more critical famine than usual thanks to the pandemic’s supply chain shortages, and negotiations over the country’s nuclear capabilities that would have potentially mitigated its famine have gone nowhere since negotiations between Trump and Kim stalled in 2019. But that’s of no comfort to South Korea and Japan, both well within the range of the missiles tested last weekend.
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Worth Repeating – Former President George W. Bush, in a speech at the Flight 93 National Memorial Saturday in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks: “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols – they are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them.” (Per The Washington Post.)
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash