Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

Having already been censured by the Wyoming state GOP for her role in the January 6th Committee, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney now faces censure from the national GOP in the party's annual meeting in Salt Lake City this weekend.

 

Republican leaders forged an agreement this week to potentially fund a challenger to Rep. Liz Cheney in Wyoming, and party members are expected to formally condemn her for her work on the Jan. 6 committee Friday, an unprecedented rebuke of an incumbent member of Congress.

As the party met in Salt Lake City this week, the leaders of the Wyoming GOP privately signed a special letter that would allow the national party to financially support Harriet Hageman, Cheney’s primary challenger. The letter officially recognizes Hageman as the presumptive nominee for the seat.

In response to the party passing the “Rule 11” resolution that could fund Cheney’s challenger, a spokesman for Cheney said: “Wyoming Party Chairman Frank Eathorne and the Republican National Committee are trying to assert their will and take away the voice of the people of Wyoming before a single vote has even been cast.”

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel also worked behind the scenes with David Bossie, a top Trump ally, to author and push a resolution that attacked Cheney’s work on the committee, called her a “destructive” force in the GOP and vowed the party would no longer support her.

“We’ve had two members engage in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse. This has gone beyond their original intent. They are not sticking up for hard-working Republicans,” McDaniel said in a joint interview with Bossie at a Salt Lake City hotel where the party is holding its winter meeting.

Bossie called it a “one-two punch” against Cheney that signaled a message from the GOP at the state and national levels.

The draft resolution passed unanimously in the GOP’s resolutions committee meeting on Thursday afternoon, and McDaniel and Bossie spoke privately in favor of it. “Once it passed, there was applause in the room,” McDaniel said of the resolutions committee. The RNC chairwoman said she expected the resolution to pass “overwhelmingly” on Friday morning when the 168 members of the committee consider it. “This isn’t a top-down situation. The members have shown tremendous support for this,” McDaniel said.

A representative for Cheney decried the party’s position, reiterating a statement she made last week that said Republicans were “hostage” to Donald Trump. She faces a difficult primary in Wyoming, where Trump endorsed against her and former aides of his are working for her opponent. Cheney, daughter of former vice president Richard B. Cheney, has largely voted with Republicans and has long held conservative views but has been vociferous and relentless in her attacks on Trump since Jan. 6.

“The leaders of the Republican Party have made themselves willing hostages to a man who admits he tried to overturn a presidential election and suggests he would pardon Jan. 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy. I’m a constitutional conservative and I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump. History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic. No matter what,” Cheney said.

 

Cheney is going out doing the right thing, but her career is effectively over. Wyoming Republicans get to pretend that she doesn't exist and the party is already supporting her replacement in Harriet Hagerman. And yes, if David Bossie is involved, this is Trump personally taking a hand in her crucifixion.

Cheney is still awful of course. She's fine with 99.9% of Trump's racism, misogyny, and bigotry, she just wants a less-terrible figurehead for the party for her foul policies. She's being sacrificed along with GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, also facing excommunication from the party.

That's not the problem. This is.

The Republican Party on Friday officially declared the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and events that led to it “legitimate political discourse,” formally rebuking two lawmakers in the party who have been most outspoken in condemning the deadly riot and the role of Donald J. Trump in spreading the election lies that fueled it.

The Republican National Committee’s overwhelming voice vote to censure Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City culminated more than a year of vacillation, which started with party leaders condemning the Capitol attack and Mr. Trump’s conduct, then shifted to downplaying and denying it.

On Friday, the party went further in a resolution slamming Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for taking part in the House investigation of the assault, saying they were participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

It was an extraordinary statement about the deadliest attack on the Capitol in 200 years, in which a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the complex, brutalizing police officers and sending lawmakers into hiding. Nine people died in connection with the attack and more than 150 officers were injured. The party passed the resolution without discussion and almost without dissent.

The Republican party just officially recognized the January 6th terrorist attack as "legitimate political discourse", folks.

 

Republicans will kill to maintain power from here on out.

 

Don't mourn Cheney and Kinzinger's destruction.

Elect more Democrats instead.

Jobapalooza, Con't

Huge, huge numbers in the January jobs report today, including massive upward revisions in the "disappointing" November and December numbers.

Payrolls rose far more than expected in January despite surging omicron cases that seemingly sent millions of workers to the sidelines, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Nonfarm payrolls surged by 467,000 for the month, while the unemployment rate edged higher to 4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Dow Jones estimate was for payroll growth of 150,000 and a 3.9% unemployment rate.

The stunning gain came a week after the White House warned that the numbers could be low due to the pandemic.

Covid cases, however, have plunged nationally in recent weeks, with the seven-day moving average down more than 50% since peaking in mid-January, according to the CDC. Most economists, while expecting January’s number to be weak, see a further rebound coming in the months ahead.

Along with the big upside surprise for January, massive revisions sent previous months considerably higher.

December, which initially was reported as a gain of 199,000, went up to 510,000. November surged to 647,000 from the previous reported 249,000. For the two months alone, the initial counts were revised up by 709,000. The revisions came as part of the annual adjustments from the BLS that saw sizeable changes for many of the months in 2021.

“The benchmark revisions helped the numbers a bit just because it moved out some of the seasonal factors that have been at work. But overall the job market is strong, particularly in the face of omicron,” said Kathy Jones, chief fixed income strategist at Charles Schwab. “It’s hard to find a weak spot in this report.”

For January, the biggest employment gains came in leisure and hospitality, which saw 151,000 hires, 108,000 of which came from bars and restaurants. Professional and business services contributed 86,000, while retail was up 61,000.

There was more good jobs news: The labor force participation rate rose to 62.2%, a 0.3 percentage point gain. That took the rate, which is closely watched by Fed officials, to its highest level since March 2020 and within 1.2 percentage points of where it was pre-pandemic.

A more encompassing level of unemployment that counts discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons dropped to 7.1%, 0.2 percentage point decline and to just above its pre-pandemic level.

The job gains brought employment back to about 1.7 million below where it was in February 2020, a month before the pandemic declaration.

 

So to recap: 

• Nearly 500k new jobs this month alone.
• Upwards revisions of more than 700k for November and December.
• Leisure/Restaurant numbers up by more than 100k.
• An entire percentage point of the American labor force came back to work.
• Under 2 million jobs to go to erase the Trump Depression's losses.

 

These are some of the best job numbers in decades, folks. Biden is doing it right. All the nonsense about "people staying home" isn't happening. 

 

The economy is roaring back. 

Joe Biden did that.

Last Call For The Vax Of Life, Con't

Yet another Republican governor has decided that if the COVID dead each week simply aren't counted anymore, that the pandemic will simply vanish and everything will be fine.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced Thursday that she will soon end public health disaster proclamations that Iowa has operated under since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly two years ago.

The shift will include pulling the plug on a state website focusing on COVID data, such as the number of Iowans testing positive for the disease, being hospitalized with it or dying from it. However, many of those statistics will continue to be available on other state and federal websites, Kelly Garcia, interim director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, said Thursday.

Reynolds, a Republican, first invoked a disaster proclamation on March 17, 2020. In the early days of the pandemic, she used such proclamations to close businesses, limit large gatherings and encourage other pandemic responses, such as limiting nonessential surgeries and — briefly — requiring masks to be worn in certain indoor settings.

Reynolds said in her statement Thursday that she will allow the current proclamation to expire on Feb. 15 at 11:59 p.m. She said it's time to reallocate state resources.

"We cannot continue to suspend duly enacted laws and treat COVID-19 as a public health emergency indefinitely," Reynolds said in a statement. "After two years, it’s no longer feasible or necessary. The flu and other infectious illnesses are part of our everyday lives, and coronavirus can be managed similarly."

Her move comes as Iowa's spike in cases and hospitalizations from the omicron variant has begun to ease. Still, 794 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Iowa as of Wednesday, while 109 patients required intensive care and 51 required ventilators.

Iowa recorded more than 150 additional COVID-19 deaths in its weekly update Wednesday, representing people who had died with the disease in previous weeks and months. The health department recorded just three additional flu deaths in its weekly flu report Jan. 28, bringing the total since last fall to 13.

 

If you get COVID and die, oh well.

 

Manage it.