@1:

But that sort of leads to a follow-up question: how many renters who would qualify for the assistance even know about it or HOW to apply? I would imagine many of them are pretty low-income and that a good percentage may not have internet or cable access, where presumably the government would be most likely to advertise the program?

I'd rather see Jayapal "slam" the SCOTUS for ending the moratorium, since that's what they did.

the Progressive Caucus knew that ban was limited when it was passed under President Sociopath, and knew the CDC-ordered extension was a short-term fix that could only live as long as it took to move through the courts. which is what happened.

embrace reality. the GQP haven't stacked the courts for nothing.

Moratoriums are inherently temporary.

Not having internet is unlikely for most renters. If they have a job, they likely have internet or could use it at work. People give up cars before giving up their mobile phones - especially in this town.
What other excuses can you come up with COMTE in your quest to be the most patronizing liberal the world has ever known?

$86 BILLION in rental assistance that was doled out to the states has not been released to those who need it. WTF are the states doing with that money? There should be NO EVICTIONS OR FORECLOSURES UNTIL EVERY CENT OF THAT MONEY HAS BEEN GIVEN TO THOSE WHO NEED IT.

Biden claiming there is nothing he can do is 100% bullshit.
Was also watching film of him and his VP saying they would eliminate the filibuster to get shit done. But now Biden's 100% against it.

This is why the shit show that is this country never gets better. Every time someone gets in power they fuck over everyone by refusing to do what they said they would do (oh other than Trump who clearly meant he would destroy everything and kill everyone when he told everyone he would make America great again).

And COVID is now raging through the population worse than it was at the height of the pandemic last year, but hey, now when you get it if you're vaccinated you won't die, you'll just get sick and have disabling health issues for the rest of your life. Yay unvaccinated assholes! And all the while DeathSantis keeps saying that the surge in Florida is just "media hysteria." Will Floridians care when all of their children die? Or do they not care as much as DeathSantis doesn't because children can't vote?

@5: YOU are calling someone ELSE patronizing? That is fucking rich.

well here we Go America
nyt:

re N.Y.C. to Require Vaccine
Proof* for Indoor Dining and Fitness

The requirement also applies to workers at those places, and it will start this month.

New York City will become the first U.S. city to require proof of vaccination for a variety of activities for workers and customers — indoor dining, gyms and performances — to put pressure on people to get vaccinated, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday morning.

The program, similar to mandates issued in France and Italy last month, will start later this month, and after a transition period, enforcement will begin in mid-September, when schools are expected to reopen and more workers could return to offices in Manhattan.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/03/world/covid-delta-variant-vaccine

this will likely not sit Well
with those seeking to
Kill off the Citizenry.

sorry 'boutchyur Feelies but
crimea Fawking River

*what's
the Penalty
for Fake vaxcerts?

well other than Covid
for the Masses?

@7 re @5

the
dunggdropp
requires a certain
amount of Abuse to
get its Day up and going

kinda
Sad

and yet a Reminder
of a third of America
for More of the same.

Nice summary, Rich! Love the song at the end.

Fix the date on your COVID hospitalization blurb. Should be April 2021.

@10: Libraries

@9

He's like dogshit on the sidewalk--unsightly and best to avoid.

@1 I personally think the main problem is that because the money goes directly to your landlord, applying for the rental assistance basically directly tells your landlord that you're having financial difficulty. Landlords and property managers love coming up with pretexts to boot out financially unstable tenants in favor of better off ones, so I could very much understand the reluctance to apply for the "free money" even if you qualify and could use it.

I bet the take rate would have been a lot higher if they'd come up with a way that renters could have used that money without their landlords knowing about it, although I don't know exactly how that would have worked.

"Progressives Slam Biden." Rich (or whoever writes the headline), you are now solidly in Fox territory. They constantly run headlines "X Slams Y Over Z." The fact that X is unhappy is not news; Fox is trying to create their own news with the headline. It's another version of "Many people are saying..." and we don't need that shit anymore. Please do better.

@15: That's a more applicable theory than no access to the internet.

@6: "Biden claiming there is nothing he can do is 100% bull[]."

I should think you take solace in the separation between the executive and the other branches of government and the limited uses of executive power, especially after that last guy. Also, Biden is not one to be without the facts before making such a statement.

@15 if so that's a really piss poor excuse for not applying for rent assistance. There would also be widespread abuse if you just distributed funds to renters with no obligation to actually you know pay their rent. At best if could be like a student loan where it's issued to the end user but co-issued to the landlord so the renter is unable to cash the check and use it for something else. Honestly though if rental assistance is there people need to suck up their pride or whatever else is holding them back and go get it. All these excuses aren't going to solve the problem just kick it down the road. At some point the moritorium was always going to expire.

Democrats continue to be idiots - they're still stuck in holier than though mode, they still suck at messaging, they still suck at optics.

Put the shit up for vote whether or not you're going to win/lose, whether SCOTUS or any other courts will overturn it. Dems need to make everyone accountable. Give future candidates ammunition to use on those who fail to do what's right. If they had any idea on how to message, they'd use it non-stop, just like Repubs do.

Right now, we have President Manchin and VP Sinema running the country, and Dems don't hold them accountable by forcing them to vote. Same with the House. I've heard all the excuses about trying to keep them happy and getting what they can by kowtowing to them - the same excuses for trying to keep Repubs happy. When are they ever going to learn? (that's rhetorical - they will NEVER learn).

For fuck sakes, it sucks that Dems are so shitty at politics.

Is there a phone app for the vaccinated that is universally accepted (at least locally) in lieu of the vaccination card?

(I don't know if there was a standard size for the card, but mine is large and unwieldy)

@20, I'd revise that to say that the country is being run by Manchin, Sinema, and Repubs. As always, when Dems are in power, they're not really in power. Because they have no fucking idea how to wield it.

@21: Sizing the image into a note in the iPhone Notes app works well.

The Democrats are not shitty at politics. The Democrats refuse to behave like Republicans. This country used to function, even having Republicans put socialist programs in place like Social Security, Medicare, etc. Now we have an entirely non-functioning government because Republicans do nothing but obstruct and destroy and Democrats live in a dream world where they believe they can return to a time when there was a semi-functional government and people on both sides worked together to get things done.

The entire government, every single person involved, is shitty at politics. This country went completely off the rails when it allowed Trump in the White House with his family of grifters as his "staff." The fact that Trump, all congressional members who voted against Biden being the president, and all of the terrorists who participated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on 1/5/202 are not all in prison or dead is proof positive this so-called farce we pretended was some sort of democracy is over.

We used to fear nuclear war. Instant death via evaporation in a nuclear holocaust would be preferable to what people are going to have to live through in the next 50 or 100 years (if life survives that long). It is going to be a long, excruciating, horrifying, slow, prolonged death march to the end. And no one, neither Democrat, Republican (or anyone else) is going to do one goddamn thing to stop it from happening.

@15: "...applying for the rental assistance basically directly tells your landlord that you're having financial difficulty."

Wouldn't not paying the rent already signal that? I think it would - applying for assistance would tell them something they already know.

@21 taking a photo is acceptable, though how that's proof of vaccination any more than a card that is in no way distinguishable from a fake is beyond me. I have a photo of mine if needed at a business and my card is in a safe place until I put in a plastic cover on a lanyard when I go to my doctors' appointments.

@21 also if you participated in v-safe when you got vaccinated, you can use that as proof.

@21 actually i mis-spoke, v-safe states it cannot be used as an official record of being vaccinated.

The company that also does airport clearances has an app they have developed that shows a QR code for vax status. NY has its own app but will prob be harder for something regional like that to catch on nationwide when this inevitably spreads to other cities.

https://www.reuters.com/world/the-great-reboot/airport-security-app-clear-looks-score-with-us-vaccine-passport-2021-05-03/

@24 xina, agree, but I think it's semantics about being "shitty at politics" - "living in a dream world" (amongst other things) is what I mean by "shitty at politics".

Yes, the entire political system is beyond broken, and we're headed towards a hellscape dystopia, but I think my point stands about Dems not doing nearly enough screaming about it as everything goes to shit.

Biden's still referring to Repubs as his "friends". Hey Biden, they're fucking nazi's, not your "friends".

@26 xina, thanks for the photo tip.

Also, you can get a digital copy of your COVID vaccination certificate online at:
https://myirmobile.com/. You'll need to select your state and enter some ID verification information.

@25, Rent is normally people's top financial priority, so when they're financially stressed by the cost of rent they cut back on other stuff or borrow money or start racking up credit card debt before they actually stop paying rent. There's plenty of people who qualify for the rent assistance who are currently making rent.

Most poor people are already doing some amount of truth-stretching when it comes to what their landlords think their income is. The rule of thumb is that landlords usually want your income to be about 3 times the rental amount, which is simply impossible for a lot of people. Applying for the rent assistance means you're telling your landlord that you don't meet that income criteria, and so unless you've got a very clear-cut situation where your income dropped because of the pandemic but is definitely going to come back, a lot of folks are leery of sharing that information.

@36 ST2, I get why it's more challenging for Dems than it is for Repubs. And a lot of that is inherent in the Repub political platform.

But, as a party, either Dems will keep doing all the same that got us to this moment in history - or they'll start putting things up for votes just to hold those accountable and calling things as they are - SCOTUS is a political arm of our government, Republicans are horrible people doing horrible things. They will continuously call out Trump and Republicans for killing over half a million Americans. They will on a daily basis call out the corruption, the gerrymandering, how elections are currently corrupted by Repubs - there's dozens of points that Dems could drive home day after day just like Repubs do.

Again, we all know that Dems will continue on the same path that has lead us here. And people will keep making excuses for it.

@34, I'm a middle of the road progressive liberal.

You and the daily TS writing staff are righteous assholes. We mostly agree on stuff when you're not too busy making an ass of yourself, but that recent lengthy take-down of you by another commenter was spot-on. Go re-read it.

Republicans are nazis (do I really have to explain to you that I don't mean that literally?).

None of those things are mutually exclusive.

@38, I meant to say the TS writing staff are LWNJ righteous assholes.

While I tend to agree in a more general sense with left-leanings, people like the TS writing staff scare the shit out of me as much as RWNJ's. It's not just the politics, it's their way of thinking that leads to very dangerous and scary outcomes.

@43 Wait...wut? Which sockpuppet did you come from?
Don't think you'll finish your countdown before you get your dumb ass booted (again).

But what the hell... I gots plenty o' popcorn... tell me another story oh puppet of socks...