Bridge to Nowhere: West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin who holds the 50^th vote to pass President Biden’s  $2.2 trillion social safety net, climate, and tax bill, dropped the bomb on Fox News yesterday that he can’t muster himself to vote in favor.

  “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,” Manchin said on “Fox News Sunday,” citing concerns about mounding up the national debt. “I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there. This is a no.”

  That could well be the end of President Biden’s aggressive domestic agenda. Manchin and Biden have been negotiating for months and only last week the President said, “We will bridge our differences and advance the Build Back Better plan.” But Manchin seemed to suggest yesterday that further negotiations would be useless.

  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki described Manchin’s announcement as “a sudden and inexplicable reversal” and “a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.” 

  An angry Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said on CNN yesterday that the bill should be put up for a vote anyway, allowing Manchin to embarrass himself with a public “no.” Sanders said, “If he doesn’t have the courage to do the right thing for the working families of West Virginia and America, let him vote no in front of the whole world.”

  Tim Tankersley writes for The NY Times, “President Biden’s plan to stuff nearly every long-held Democratic priority into his signature domestic policy bill has buckled under the weight of its ambitions, with the final senator needed to push it over the finish line balking at its scope, its cost and its clever financing.”

The Omicron Wave: The Radio City Rockettes have cancelled the remainder of their Christmas dance performances as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus rips through the population. Across the country, schools and universities are closing down again. Harvard and Stanford announced they will start the spring semester with remote learning.

  Saturday Night Live cancelled its live show and aired a broadcast cobbled together with taped skits. The NBA postponed five games yesterday.

  Some scientific projections say the US could be developing half a million Covid cases a day by the end of January — possibly even a million. Yesterday was 133,000.

  White House COVID coordinator Jeff Zients said yesterday, “For the unvaccinated, you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.”

  With more than 807,000 Americans already dead of the virus, the anti-vaccination strain in the population remains strong. The Marine Corps has discharged 103 members for refusing the vaccine and failing to present a proper medical excuse. The Air Force discharged 27 and the Navy said it will start throwing sailors overboard.

  More than 12,000 members of the military have claimed religious exemption and so far none have been granted it.

  From Washington, State Senator Doug Ericksen, 52, who had accused Gov. Jay Inslee of being a “national leader in authoritarian government” for requiring government employees to be vaccinated, died of Covid in Florida after having been diagnosed while in El Salvador.

A Mighty Wind: More than 200 people are listed as dead following the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year. At least 52 people are still missing as several central towns and provinces deal with downed, power outages, and shortages of food and water. 

  At its worst, the typhoon blew at 121 mph with gusts of up to 168. Many of those killed were hit by falling trees or walls, drowned in floods, or were buried in landslides. 

The Spin Rack: Los Angeles Rapper Drakeo the Ruler died yesterday of stab wounds sustained at the Once Upon a Time in L.A. Festival. The 28 year old had been acquitted of a 2016 murder and had said there were people out to kill him. — Jury deliberations are set to begin today for Elizabeth Holmes, the entrepreneur accused of defrauding investors of fortunes in her blood-testing startup Theranos. “She chose fraud over business failure. She chose to be dishonest with her investors and patients,” Assistant US Attorney Jeff Schenk told the jury last week. — Hamtramck, Michigan, once known as “Little Warsaw,” is set to swear in an entirely Muslim government on January 2^nd.

Political Dictionary: Colorado’s right wing member of Congress Lauren Boebert, who posted a Christmas picture of her entire family bearing assault rifles, tweeted, “My pronoun is ‘Patriot.’” Another user answered, “It’s a noun. So is ‘idiot’”.

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