As I write this, it is still unclear whether the Senate will undergo the marathon parliamentary endurance contest known as "vote-a-rama" tonight or not. If so, the Senate will likely be in session until the wee hours of Friday morning finishing up the amendment process on the bipartisan infrastructure deal. This could even lead to a cloture vote and final passage of the bill before the weekend, although that still has to be considered a longshot. Saturday passage might be a lot more realistic, although the chances of at least the vote-a-rama happening tonight appear to be greater [note: former Senator Mike Enzi's funeral is scheduled for Friday, which effectively scratches that day from the schedule].

For the Senate, it must be noted, this is operating at top speed. The bill was formally introduced at the start of the week, and so far the Senate has voted on 22 amendments to the bill. As Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pointed out, under his leadership the Senate has already had the opportunity to vote on more amendments to all bills since January than happened under Mitch McConnell for the previous two entire years (2019-2020). Schumer has opened the process up in a return to more-normal Senate behavior. Many more amendments are expected to get floor votes, which is what the entire "vote-a-rama" process is all about. Now that the Congressional Budget Office has released its scoring of the bill, there seems to be nothing standing in the way of the vote-a-rama getting underway.

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Let the chanting begin:

"Hey hey, ho ho, A. Cuomo's got to go!"

At this point, it seems that the only person who doesn't agree with that sentiment is Andrew Cuomo himself, who insists he did nothing wrong and will be serving out the rest of his term as New York's governor. Pretty much everyone else (his fellow Democrats included) are calling upon him to step down.

The New York attorney general spurred all of this with her damning report on the sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations against Cuomo. The report concluded that the allegations were credible and backed up by witnesses and other evidence, and that Cuomo had indeed broken both state and federal laws. Accordingly, criminal investigations have begun against him. The state assembly is now considering whether to impeach him. And this isn't even the only criminal scandal Cuomo faces, as he is also under investigation for multiple other lapses as well.

Personally, I've never been a fan of Cuomo's but haven't paid a whole lot of attention to him (since I don't live in New York). My reasons for not supporting Cuomo all stem from his personal political style, which harkens back to the uglier days of "machine politics." Cuomo was raised in a political family (his father Mario used to hold the office Andrew now does), and has lived his entire life in the bubble of political machinery. Sometimes this turns out to be a good thing (as it has with Nancy Pelosi, for example), but sometimes it leads to chasing and abusing power in naked ways that once may have been tolerated but no longer should.

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There are two interesting special election primaries happening today in Ohio for two vacant seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The winners of the races today will likely coast through the special election itself, since both are in reliably partisan districts (one Democratic and one Republican). They are even more interesting because they are both fierce factional races which will provide a few tea leaves for those looking to see what the future of the two parties might be. Which factions will prevail? Whether it means anything in the grand scheme of things or not, it's at least something for pundits to discuss during the long "silly season" of August.

In the 11th District, the contest is between a progressive Democrat and an establishment Democrat. More on that one in a bit. In the 15th District, the race is between one candidate endorsed by Donald Trump and a whole pack of other Republicans who failed to get his endorsement. No matter which candidate wins this race, it's all going to be about Trump and his relative influence on Republican primary elections. This isn't really "factionalism," though, it's closer to who can show the most rabid form of fanaticism (for Trump).

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There is an abject lesson in the failure to successfully get federal help to renters and landlords in a timely fashion. And I'm not talking about how Congress and President Joe Biden couldn't manage to extend the eviction moratorium deadline, either. That was a preventable tragedy, but what's even more instructive is the fact that of the billions earmarked for rental assistance, only a tiny fraction of the money actually made it to the people it was intended to help. Compared to how the direct COVID-19 pandemic aid payments were distributed, it's pretty easy to see there's a right way and a wrong way to deliver federal aid. With Bernie Sanders now putting the finishing touches on a vast expansion of federal programs to make people's lives better, one certainly hopes this lesson has been learned so that future programs won't get so bogged down in red tape or bureaucracy that they wind up being both ineffective and frustrating.

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President Joe Biden is now getting very close to securing the second leg of his three-legged economic legislative stool. To put it another way: this week we all finally got to experience the almost-mythological "Infrastructure Week" which we had been promised for lo, these many years. Bipartisanship struggled back to life, fulfilling not just a campaign promise from Biden but also his deep-seated desire to return Washington to some sort of pre-Trump normality.

Of course, it's not a done deal yet. It could still be derailed, but at this point the momentum behind it seems almost guaranteed to get the deal across the finish line in the Senate. The vote to open debate on the bill was a lopsided 67-32, with even Mitch McConnell voting to move forward. With a margin like that, when the final details are unveiled, it will probably garner enough Republican votes to pass. It may even get more than that initial vote-count, as all Republican senators realize they can either vote for bridges and roads or be hit with the issue in their next campaign.

Even if it does pass the Senate, there's no guarantee it'll get to Biden's desk, though. Speaker Nancy Pelosi laid down a marker weeks ago and swore she would not bring the bipartisan infrastructure bill up for a vote in the House until the Senate also passed the companion budget reconciliation deal. When this does happen, Pelosi will move the two bills forward together, and both bills will wind up on Biden's desk at the same time. This (hopefully) will satisfy the demands of both the moderate and progressive wings of the Democratic Party. The moderates may have to hold their noses to vote for the budget reconciliation deal, but they will likely do so knowing it will be the only way the bipartisan deal will make it into law. The progressives will be doing the opposite -- voting for a bill they see as hopelessly inadequate in order to get their "everything else" bill passed as well. Such a balancing act is possible, and it is even looking more and more likely by the day.

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Is Donald Trump's stranglehold over the Republican Party fading? One can only hope....

It is indisputable that Trump's voice is fading. Banished from polite online society, Trump is now reduced to sending out an email blast every once in a while and doing interviews on far-right media outlets. This does get his message out to his base, but with a lot smaller a megaphone than he once wielded to his tens of millions of social media followers.

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It is a rare day when I devote a whole column to praising any Republican politician, but Representative Liz Cheney certainly deserves some thanks and appreciation today. She has accepted the role of de facto Republican lead on the House January 6th Select Committee, much to the consternation of most of the other members of her caucus (including everyone in GOP leadership). Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were the only two Republicans willing to honor their oath of office to the United States Constitution by accepting a seat on the committee and bringing a serious demeanor to the investigation into what went so horribly wrong.

For her valiant efforts, she is being excoriated by members of her own party. During the testimony yesterday, one of the police officers made a very salient point: "Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are being lauded as courageous heroes. And while I agree with that notion, why? Because they told the truth? Why is telling the truth hard?"

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Today the House's new January 6th Select Committee convened for the first time and held its first hearing. Today's initial hearing was all about setting the stage for what is to come, explaining why such an investigation is necessary, and countering all the Republican gaslighting that has been attempted of late by instead reminding the country of exactly what did happen that day. It was brutal -- the videos played (once again) showed an out-of-control mob hellbent on harming sworn police officers while storming the seat of democracy, in an effort to overturn an election result they didn't like. Just like we all saw with our own eyes on that dark day.

The committee purposefully called four prominent police officers who served on the front lines during the attempted insurrection. All told their firsthand stories, and all expressed their desire that the committee get to the bottom of what happened so it can never happen again. These were not the high brass or the Pentagon officials we've already heard from in much more restricted investigations (much narrower in scope), these were the guys who actually put their own lives on the line to protect not only the congressmen in both chambers, but also all the aides and staffers who work in the building every day. They had a much more visceral story to tell than their bosses, to put this another way.

Much of the day was spent pre-emptively refuting all the Republican attempts to rewrite the past into something different than what every citizen actually saw that day. This parade of nonsense includes: The insurrectionists were "just tourists." They were not armed. They weren't actually supporters of Donald Trump but instead members of Black Lives Matter or Antifa. They greeted the police with "hugs and kisses." Above and beyond all these fantasy stories, Republicans have been urging everyone to just "move on," because investigating the worst attack on the U.S. Capitol since 1814 was somehow not worth the time, to them. Their attitude, in fact, is downright cliché: "Nothing to see here... move along...."

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Last week was supposed to be Infrastructure Week. I naively believed this was possible. However, Senate Republicans then blew a big hole in that, leaving in doubt if even this week will prove to be the grand time when bipartisanship reigns once again in the Senate chamber and hands President Biden a big bipartisan gift... or not. Because so far, all the Republicans seem to be proving is that they are capable of Olympic-level stalling. They can always come up with new reasons why something can't get done. They are masters of it, in fact.

It has been almost five weeks since President Biden and a group of bipartisan senators made a big public announcement and everyone shook each other's hands. A deal had been struck! Everything had been worked out! Looking back, it seems more that they all merely agreed that "a bipartisan infrastructure deal would be a dandy thing to have," with absolutely zero actual details. Either that, or the Republicans have been negotiating in bad faith all along (for which there is abundant proof).

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It's like the Republicans all suddenly got put on double-secret probation or something. It seems to have finally dawned on them that the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus is actually real, and it is now killing off an inordinate number of their own base voters. So some of them had, as President Joe Biden said this week, their "altar call" moment.

Of course, hearing "Delta," what popped into our minds for this tectonic shift was Animal House's John Belushi asking his fellow Delts: "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!" Of course, his speech ended when his frat brother stood up and proclaimed: "I think this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part." To which Belushi responded: "And we're just the guys to do it!"

You can see why that sprang to mind this week, as not only GOP congressional leaders and governors but also Fox News stars finally began telling their followers: "Maybe it's not such a good idea to 'own the libs' by not getting vaccinated and running the risk of a gruesome death." At this point, their gesture may prove to be futile (although admittedly it is anything but stupid), but it certainly is a welcome change to see, even if it isn't universal. There are still plenty of Republicans out there telling whomever will listen that the vaccine -- which Donald Trump loves to personally claim credit for, mind you -- is some sort of nefarious plot dreamed up by Joe Biden and his Deep State. You'll recall that in Animal House the "futile gesture" turned out to be an armored car christened the "Deathmobile."

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