The Democrats' Complete Power Outage

Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman is right: Republicans use every ounce of power given them to destroy Democrats and their voting coalition. Democrats meanwhile twiddle the goddamn thumbs and apologize to Republican voters.

Democrats look like they’re the ones with the greater share of political power in America today, holding both the White House and Congress. So why do they so often seem weak and ineffectual, while Republicans ruthlessly employ every shred of power they have?

You could hardly have asked for a more vivid illustration than what’s happening right now. In Congress, a couple of key Democrats, especially Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), proclaimed their intention to sabotage the party’s agenda if it isn’t drastically pared back, lest anyone think it’s too “partisan.” They could unshackle themselves from the filibuster and actually do what they were elected to do, but they choose not to.

Meanwhile, Republican-run states are rushing to create a far-right dystopia where every customer at your local supermarket is packing heat, school boards and election boards are run by QAnon lunatics, mob rule is valorized and institutionalized, voting rights are dramatically restricted, and abortion is outlawed.

And they’re doing it with the help of a conservative Supreme Court majority that barely bothers to pretend that it cares about precedent, the Constitution, the law or anything other than remaking America to conform to its ideological agenda.

We’re seeing what a profound difference there is in how Democrats and Republicans view power. When Democrats have it, they’re often apologetic, uncertain and hesitant to use it any way that anyone might object to. Republicans, on the other hand, will squeeze it and stretch it as far as they can. They aren’t reluctant, and they aren’t afraid of a backlash. Whatever they can do, they will do.

Think of how the two parties react when presented with an obstacle to getting what they want. Democrats often issue statements of regret: We’d like to move forward, but what can we do? This is how democracy works.

Republicans, on the other hand, react to obstacles by getting creative. They search for loopholes, they engineer procedural workarounds, they devise innovative ways to seize and wield control. When they come up with an idea and someone says, “That’s madness — no one has ever dared try something like that before,” they know they’re on the right track.

There’s a line of jurisprudence establishing the right to abortion? What if we outlaw the procedure, but pull a switcheroo by putting enforcement in the hands of millions of potential vigilantes so you can’t sue the government to overturn the law? Does that sound cynical and crazy? Don’t worry, we’ve got five votes on the Supreme Court who’ll give it the rubber stamp.

That’s the kind of creative use of power Democrats don’t even contemplate. Think back to the decision that led directly to this latest stage in the assault on abortion, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused to allow President Barack Obama’s nominee to be considered for a Supreme Court vacancy, holding it open for nearly a year so it could be filled by a Republican president.

McConnell didn’t worry about how many stern editorials condemned his action. He didn’t care about whether polls showed that if you asked them the right way, the public would disagree with what he was doing, because he knew that they were barely paying attention.

Critically, nearly all of his Republican Senate colleagues got on board with the strategy. They didn’t care that what they were doing wouldn’t be seen as sufficiently “bipartisan.” They wanted that seat, and they were going to get it. Now they have it — and two more, thanks to the fact that Donald Trump was elected in 2016 winning a minority of the vote — and they’re damn sure going to use it.

You can trace the roots of these differing conceptions of power very far back, but the most critical moment was the 2000 election controversy in Florida, not only for the tactical chasm that separated the parties throughout that battle, but for the way it ended. Five conservatives on the Supreme Court simply handed George W. Bush the presidency, not because it was what the Constitution demanded or even because there was a remotely persuasive legal argument for it, but because the outcome itself was what they wanted.

They could do it, so they did. Republicans learned a vital lesson: If you have the power to get what you want, use it. Don’t worry that you’ll pay some karmic price down the road, because you probably won’t.

 

Republicans tell Democratic voters how they will be harmed, persecuted, even killed if they don't join the "winning" side, warnings of retribution and destruction are daily occurrences for the GOP.  Democrats meanwhile apologize for governing the country as a whole and constantly ask how they can make things easier for the voters who increasingly want to see them swinging from the gallows or shot dead, tied to a firing squad post.

One side will do anything it takes to win, up to and including disinformation to kill its own supporters just to drum up constant, inchoate rage.

Our side vows to bring cookies.

 

It's been like this for the entire run of Zandar Versus the Stupid, and indeed for my entire adult lifetime, going back to Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America when I was a college freshman.

 

When we tried to use power in 2010, for the Affordable Care Act, it cost us 80 House seats and a dozen Senate seats over two midterm elections, not to mention half the state legislatures.  The backlash of white supremacy against a party that gave us a Black president continues to this day and will do so for the rest of my life, and right now, that backlash is winning.

If Trump was even slightly more competent, the GOP would still have total control of America. We got extraordinarily lucky, and we're acting like it's business as usual with filibuster footsie and squealing about national debt, while Republicans are openly talking about putting Democrats in cages and graves.

It's war. Open war. And if the Democrats don't win, we're all doomed.

It's long past time we started fighting like it.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

Deliberate misinformation on COVID by the Republican party continues to cause lethal damage across the country to real people, but it's also causing the Biden administration lots of political damage as well. Like it or not, Joe Biden is President, and when things are bad, people blame the guy in the Oval Office, as Cook Political Report's Amy Walter explains.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been watching focus groups. Two of those groups included independent-leaning voters who don't align themselves strongly with either party. One other group was comprised of so-called Democratic "surge" voters; people who vote infrequently or only in presidential elections. In other words, these are the swing voters that we will be watching closely in the midterm elections.

At this point, however, listening to these voters is helpful not for predicting the outcome of the 2022 election, but for understanding how they are processing the world around them. They are often much less interested in the topics and policies that get chewed over on Twitter or cable TV. Many times they also see those issues very differently than we assume they do.

My main takeaway was the prominence of COVID as their dominant concern. When asked about how they felt about the state of the country, almost all of them replied with a pessimistic comment. And, that negativity was almost universally centered around issues of the virus and the vaccine.

They are "overwhelmed" with the deluge of conflicting information they are getting about the virus from the news media, friends and Facebook.

"First, they tell you to get the shot. Then you get it," said a woman from Chicago. "But people are dying who got the shot. [I'm] scared to get it but you want to get it, because some places want proof."

A man from Columbus, Ohio echoed these concerns about vaccines, saying there's "too much information out there — especially on social media that's what leading to the confusion about whether it's safe or not safe."

"There's so much information out there about COVID it's crazy," said another woman from Florida.

They are frustrated that more than a year later — and with vaccines available to all — we are still battling this virus.

"I'm disappointed," said a woman from Texas, "I thought we'd be in a better place with vaccines. I think we could be in a better spot than we are."

Another woman in this group echoed her concerns: "I wish it had been gone by now. I wish that COVID had been extinguished. I wish that people had listened to science. I wish COVID was over."

A number worried about a fall/winter where we are once again shutting down schools and the economy.

One man from suburban Chicago lamented that he and his family are finally in a good spot financially, and couldn't afford another year like 2020. A woman from Dallas said that as a gig-worker, "another lockdown worries me."

And, they are upset about the polarization over and politicization of vaccines. Many described strained relationships with family members and friends over the issue.

"I don't understand how vaccines got to be such a political issue," said one woman.

 

Again, the deliberate disinformation is being spread across social media and cable TV on purpose with the intent of hurting as many people as possible so that people blame Biden and the Democrats, and meaning Republicans can retake power.  It became a political issue because at every juncture, Republicans and their allies made it a political issue, and they had no problem with thousands of Americans paying a fatal price for GOP political ambitions.

 

It works and continues to work. Americans continue to refuse the vaccine in the name of political tribalism and Trump cultism, and they die for it. God help me, I don't know how to beat people who are willing to slaughter as many thousands as it takes to win. I can only protect myself.

Last Call For Kabuki Politics

Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga is resigning as the country reels from COVID delta, a stagnant economy, and a sub-30% approval rating for his government, with the choice of resignation or a no-confidence vote no doubt being offered. 

 

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said in a surprise move on Friday he would step down, setting the stage for a new premier after a one-year tenure marred by an unpopular COVID-19 response and sinking public support.

Suga, who took over after Shinzo Abe resigned last September citing ill health, has seen his approval ratings drop below 30% as the nation struggles with its worst wave of COVID-19 infections ahead of a general election this year.

Suga did not capitalise on his last major achievement - hosting the Olympics, which were postponed months before he took office as coronavirus cases surged.

His decision not to seek reelection as ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) president this month means the party will choose a new leader, who will become prime minister.

There is no clear frontrunner, but the popular minister in charge of Japan's vaccination rollout, Taro Kono, intends to run, broadcaster TBS said on Friday without citing sources. Former foreign minister Fumio Kishida has already thrown his hat in the ring.

Before Abe's record eight-year tenure, Japan had gone through six prime ministers in as many years, including Abe's own troubled first one-year term.

Tokyo stocks jumped on news of Suga's decision, with the benchmark Nikkei (.N225) rising 2% and the broader Topix (.TOPX) hitting its highest levels since 1991.

"I want to focus on coronavirus response, so I told the LDP executive meeting that I've decided not to run in the party leadership race," Suga told reporters. "I judged that I cannot juggle both and I should concentrate on either of them."

He said he would hold a news conference as early as next week.

Suga's abrupt resignation ended a rollercoaster week in which he pulled out all the stops to save his job, including suggestions he would sack his long-term party ally, as well as plans to dissolve parliament and reshuffle party executive and his cabinet.

He is expected to stay on until his successor is chosen in the party election slated for Sept. 29. The winner, assured of being premier due to the LDP's majority in the lower house of parliament, must call the general election by Nov. 28.

Suga has been an important ally for U.S. President Joe Biden in pushing back against China's increasingly assertive behavior and he was the first foreign leader Biden welcomed in person at the White House in April. read more

A State Department spokesperson said Biden was grateful for Suga’s leadership and partnership on shared challenges, including COVID-19, climate change, North Korea, China, and preserving peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

"The U.S.-Japan alliance is and will remain ironclad, not just between our governments, but our people," the spokesperson said.

Really can't underestimate the importance of Suga being the first foreign head of state to visit the Biden White House for an official visit with President Biden, and for Suga to then resign as Biden faces his own growing domestic problems. Biden did this to emphasize Japan as a counter to China's ambitions. Somehow I think China believes it can continue to do whatever it damn well pleases after the events of the last few weeks.

That's not going to be good in the short or the long run.

Klep-Trump-Cracy Update, September 2021 Edition

With The Former Guy gone, we're still finding out examples where Trump officials engaged in open grift and pay-for-play with the goal of enriching their Orange Emperor at the expense of our closest international neighbors.

 

Kelly Craft, who was appointed to two ambassadorships under President Donald Trump, directed government business to Trump’s hotel in Washington while in office, emails released by the State Department show.

In November 2018, Craft — then the U.S. ambassador to Canada — received an email about an upcoming conference in Washington for ambassadors and other chiefs of mission. The email included a list of five recommended hotels in Washington that had blocks of rooms set aside for conference attendees, along with specially negotiated rates between $119 and $181 per night.

Craft apparently ignored those recommendations.

“Is this a meeting I should attend? If so, I would prefer the TRUMP HOTEL,” Craft wrote after forwarding the email to a staffer, referring to the Trump International Hotel, which was owned by Trump’s company and in a building leased from the federal government.

The staffer replied that the conference was one Craft would “definitely” want to attend.

“I’ll make reservations at the Trump Intl Hotel,” the staffer added.

Craft’s emails were obtained from the State Department by the nonprofit legal watchdog group American Oversight through a records request under the Freedom of Information Act, and they were reported earlier Thursday by Forbes. The watchdog group accused Craft of using her position as an American diplomat “to line the president’s pockets” and said it was “an example of the casual corruption that permeated the Trump administration and undermines confidence in the United States.”

“Ambassador Craft’s apparent eagerness to direct business to a Trump-owned hotel sends a signal that U.S. foreign policy is pay-to-play,” American Oversight spokesman Jack Patterson said in a statement.

Craft could not be reached for comment Thursday.

It was not the first time Craft showed an affinity for the hotel owned by Trump’s company. According to the emails, Craft stayed at the Trump International Hotel multiple times while in Washington. On Jan. 8, 2018, a staffer sent a “friendly reminder” for Craft to provide the name and contact details for the Trump hotel manager “so that I could arrange a suite for you” later that month.

In April 2018, the obtained emails showed Craft had a reservation at the Trump hotel to catch an event with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

In June 2018, Craft was scheduled to attend a conference at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., about 10 miles away from the Trump hotel in Washington. According to the emails, a staffer asked Craft in May if she would be interested “in a boutique hotel near the Gaylord” for the conference.

“Let’s keep TRUMP Hotel,” Craft replied from her BlackBerry device.

On June 18, 2018, Craft and her husband, Joe Craft, were expected to check in to the Trump hotel in Washington for a three-night stay, according to an internal hotel “VIP Arrivals” list obtained by The Washington Post. The list, which allowed hotel staff to recognize important guests, listed the Crafts as repeat customers paying a “high rate,” and as gold-level members of the company’s Trump Card rewards program.

Separately, The Post obtained government receipts showing more than $3,500 in spending by the State Department or its employees at the Trump International Hotel in Washington during Trump’s term. None of those receipts referenced a stay by Craft, but they give a sense of the rates that the Trump hotel charged the State Department: In those cases, it was between $175 and $251 per night.

During Trump’s term, millions of government and GOP dollars flowed to his properties, and high-ranking Republican officials and newsmakers could often be seen at his luxury hotel in Washington, less than a mile from the White House. Even after leaving office, Trump has continued to direct taxpayer dollars to his businesses, in May charging the Secret Service nearly $10,200 for agents’ rooms at his Florida resort.

Trump appointed Craft to two ambassadorships while in office: as ambassador to Canada in 2017 and as ambassador to the United Nations in 2019. Craft has since continued to tout her connections to the Trump administration and to praise the former president as she reportedly eyes a run for Kentucky governor.

Yes, Craft is from right here in Kentucky, and if you think the fact she's corrupt as hell in the name of Donald Trump is going to in any way hurt her chances of being the state's next governor, you're out of your mind. Republican primary voters here in Kentucky expect GOP politicians to serve Donald Trump as his vassals. That's what ambassadors are supposed to do, you see.

No doubt Trump will reward her with an endorsement, which is how American politics works these days.

And that's the point. Politics of open vassal states to the high lord.

The Vax Of Life, Local Edition

Here in Kentucky we're now topping 5,400 new cases of COVID-19 daily, and there seems to be no end in sight. Hospitals in the state, especially in the rural west and east, are facing critical staffing, supply, and oxygen shortages as ICU beds increasingly maxed out due to unvaccinated COVID patients.

Officials with Kentucky hospitals and nursing homes appealed for help Thursday from state lawmakers to fight the coronavirus pandemic that is overwhelming their facilities.

The officials primarily raised concerns about staffing shortages. A nursing home official said the closure of some nursing homes in the state is possible without help, noting that a nursing home in Oldham County already has closed because of COVID-19.

State legislators are preparing for a special session on COVID-19 that could begin early next week. Gov. Andy Beshear has said he wants to call a special session soon due to a recent Kentucky Supreme Court decision last month that said COVID-19 emergency measures need legislative approval, not just the governor’s say.

Members of the legislature’s Health and Welfare committees heard nearly three hours of testimony Thursday on steps to deal with the pandemic.

Senate Health and Welfare Chair Ralph Alvarado, R-Winchester, told the hospital and nursing home officials that they can expect funding to help retain and recruit nurses, aides, respiratory therapists and EMS personnel.

Alvarado, a physician, also said the legislature will look at expanding what paramedics can do in hospitals, proving more rapid testing of COVID-19 for hospitals and nursing homes, finding ways to administer more treatment for the virus, helping certain health-related boards to recruit retired people to help, and extending liability protection.

Nancy Galvagni, president of the Kentucky Hospital Association, gave the lawmakers some grim statistics about Kentucky hospitals and the pandemic.

She said COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state are at a record high, growing from just over 500 patients at the end of July to 2,267 on Sept. 1.

COVID-19 patients are now occupying one-half of all intensive care unit beds in the state, she said, adding that as of Wednesday, there were only 135 open and staffed ICU beds statewide.

Many hospitals are postponing medically necessary procedures, such as knee replacements, hernia repairs and certain cancer treatments, said Galvagni.

 

Kentucky Republicans can do whatever they want to, as they can simply override any Beshear veto with a simple majority in both the state House and Senate, and control two-thirds of the House and nearly 75% of the Senate. The question is what the KY GOP will decide on doing. They control 100% of the state's COVID response now, and they passed the very laws making that the case.

Meanwhile more than 10% of Kentucky school districts have already closed at least one day this year after being overwhelmed by COVID in the first weeks of the 2021 school year. And nobody's wearing masks here.

Nobody.

 

At Thursday's meeting, testimony also focused on masks in child care centers, vaccines and immunity to COVID-19 as lawmakers continued to map out ideas for the possible session.

Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Paducah, led the child care discussion, saying he's working on a proposed bill to clarify how child care centers would operate "as we move forward with the pandemic."

While the bill is a "work in progress," Carroll said he anticipates proposing changes that include giving families and day care owners more control over operations at centers.

Most were closed temporarily at the start of the pandemic under emergency orders by the Beshear administration and, when allowed to reopen, did so with strict requirements on capacity, staffing, masks and other measures.

Much of the child care discussion focused on current state rules requiring masks for children age 2 or older in child care programs.

Carroll brought as a witness Jennifer Washburn, owner of iKids child care center in Benton, who said masks present a problem for younger children at her center.

The children, especially 2-year-olds, take off the masks, throw them away, take masks off other children or chew on or play with them, Washburn said.

"Teacher are continually struggling with keeping the masks on the faces of our toddlers, our 2-year-olds," she said. "It has become increasingly more difficult to become the enforcer, especially of our 2s and 3s, of mask wearing."

Carroll, CEO of Easterseals West Kentucky, oversees a child care center and said he questions the benefit of requiring masks for the youngest children.

"The children simply aren't wearing them properly, and they take them off throughout the day,"' Carroll said.

A few members on the committee appeared to share Carroll's concerns about masks, including Rep. Danny Bentley, R-Russell.

Bentley, a pharmacist, questioned whether masks are effective against microscopic viruses and whether they can actually spread COVID-19 by accumulating germs.

"Most of masks are made in China," Bentley said. "Are we guaranteeing these masks are pure?

 

So nothing will be done, and everyone will blame Beshear, and he'll be replaced by a lunatic Republican in 2023, but by then there won't be a lot of things in Kentucky, like working hospitals, open schools, civil rights, or women's bodily autonomy, or bridges, so really it's all for the best.

StupidiNews!

• Dozens are dead in the Northeast after remnants of Hurricane Ida flooded NYC, New Jersey, and New England.
• Six Germans have been charged by Dresden police in connection with a major 2020 museum heist, including stealing the famous Dresden White Diamond.
• Social media mobile app WhatsApp is facing a record 225-million-euro fine from Ireland over privacy violations, WhatsApp says it will appeal to the Hague.
• Israel is blasting US State Department plans to reopen the American consulate in Jerusalem closed by the Trump regime in the course of moving the US Embassy to Tel Aviv.
• Astronomers have discovered a new stellar object that appears to be a dual-system star that "ate" its neutron star sibling, and then exploded.
  

Last Call For The Good Package, Con't

Remember, only Democrats can kill the $3.5 billion infrastructure package and Republicans don't have to lift a finger, because Democrats will do it for them willingly.

 

Key moderate Senator Joe Manchin said fellow Democrats should “hit the pause button” on a $3.5 trillion package incorporating the bulk of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda -- presenting a clear challenge to the effort by party leaders to get the tax-and-spending plan through the evenly divided Senate in the coming weeks.

The West Virginia Democrat, who often splits with his party and works with Republicans, said this week that “runaway inflation” along with national security uncertainty after the troubled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan necessitates a go-slow approach and possible rethinking of the plan.

“Hit the pause button,” Manchin said at a Wednesday event hosted by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce. “Let’s sit back. Let’s see what happens. We have so much on our plate. We really have an awful lot. I think that would be the prudent, wise thing to do.”

Manchin’s comments come as Democratic leaders and committee chairs in the Senate and House are working out the specifics of the economic package, with a goal of moving it through Congress in the weeks after lawmakers return from an extended August recess. Manchin is a linchpin vote because Republicans are united in opposition. All members of the Senate Democratic caucus would have to back the measure in order for it to get the 51 votes needed to pass, with Vice President Kamala Harris providing the tie-breaking vote.

The spending package also is facing obstacles in the House. Democrats can only afford three defections in that chamber if Republicans are united in opposition, and some moderate Democrats also are balking at the size of the package being drawn up.
Infrastructure Call

Manchin also called on the Democratic-majority House to pass within a few weeks a Senate-passed $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised progressives in the chamber that she will marry that legislation with the much bigger Democrat-only tax-and-spending package, although moderates have been promised an infrastructure vote by late September.

Manchin last month voted with other Senate Democrats to help pass a fiscal blueprint that could help enable the broader economic bill to pass the Senate without any GOP support, by short-circuiting the filibuster. However, even then, he didn’t commit to whether he would back a bill as big as $3.5 trillion with inflation rising and the federal debt soaring.

 

Of course, Manchin is bargaining because he has leverage. Sinema will eventually want her cut too, but Manchin has struck first blood.

Instead of rushing to spend trillions on new government programs and additional stimulus funding, Congress should hit a strategic pause on the budget-reconciliation legislation. A pause is warranted because it will provide more clarity on the trajectory of the pandemic, and it will allow us to determine whether inflation is transitory or not. While some have suggested this reconciliation legislation must be passed now, I believe that making budgetary decisions under artificial political deadlines never leads to good policy or sound decisions. I have always said if I can’t explain it, I can’t vote for it, and I can’t explain why my Democratic colleagues are rushing to spend $3.5 trillion.

Another reason to pause: We must allow for a complete reporting and analysis of the implications a multitrillion-dollar bill will have for this generation and the next. Such a strategic pause will allow every member of Congress to use the transparent committee process to debate: What should we fund, and what can we simply not afford?

I, for one, won’t support a $3.5 trillion bill, or anywhere near that level of additional spending, without greater clarity about why Congress chooses to ignore the serious effects inflation and debt have on existing government programs. This is even more important now as the Social Security and Medicare Trustees have sounded the alarm that these life-saving programs will be insolvent and benefits could start to be reduced as soon as 2026 for Medicare and 2033, a year earlier than previously projected, for Social Security.

Establishing an artificial $3.5 trillion spending number and then reverse-engineering the partisan social priorities that should be funded isn’t how you make good policy. Undoubtedly some will argue that bold social-policy action must be taken now. While I share the belief that we should help those who need it the most, we must also be honest about the present economic reality.

 

The only question is how much will be stripped before the bill passes, if at all.

I Recall Gavin, Con't

After polls for the recall of California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom narrowed to even this time last month, Democrats in the Golden State have gotten on the ball and the numbers are looking at lot better ahead of the September 14 special election.

Fewer than 4 in 10 California voters support removing Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) from office in this month’s recall election, according to a new poll of likely voters released just over a week before ballots are due to be returned.

Just 39 percent of likely voters told pollsters at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) they would vote to recall Newsom, while 58 percent said they would vote against the recall. Those figures are in line with earlier PPIC polls in March and May, which showed Newsom surviving by roughly the same margin.

About 4 in 5 Republicans will vote to recall Newsom. But the overwhelming majority of Democrats, 90 percent, say they will vote to keep him — and so do a plurality, 49 percent, of independent voters.

Newsom’s campaign has long staked its fortunes on labeling the recall a naked power grab fueled by Republicans and supporters of former President Trump. The poll offers a data point to back up what Democratic strategists around the state have been saying for weeks: that Newsom’s message has woken up Democratic voters to the prospects that a Republican who receives just a tiny fraction of the vote could replace their governor.

Three-quarters of likely Democratic voters say the outcome of the recall election is very important to them, higher than the 67 percent of Republican voters who said the same.

Republican voters remain more enthusiastic about voting in the recall election than their Democratic counterparts, but the sheer advantage Democrats have in a state where their party’s voters outnumber the GOP by a nearly two-to-one margin may be sufficient to overcome any kind of enthusiasm gap.

A survey of ballots that have actually been returned shows a similarly strong turnout among Democratic voters: Of the more than 4.6 million ballots that have been returned, Democrats account for 2.5 million, or 54 percent — a higher share than the 47 percent they make up on the voter rolls, according to Political Data Inc., a California-based firm.

 

Dems still need to press through the entire election period on this, but I feel a lot better about Newsom keeping his job than I did a month ago.

The Road To Gilead, Texas Con't

Roe v Wade is dead, abortions are as of right now, impossible to get safely in Texas, and dozens more states will follow the Road to Gilead.

 

The Supreme Court late Wednesday declined to halt a Texas law banning abortions as early as six weeks of pregnancy, allowing the nation's most restrictive measure to remain in effect.

The court ruled 5-4 against providing relief to abortion providers, who asked the Supreme Court on Monday to put the law, which outlaws most abortions in the state, on hold. Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices were in dissent.

The high court failed to act before the law took effect earlier Wednesday, and abortion providers in Texas informed women they would no longer offer the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy in compliance with the law. Then, nearly 24 hours later, the high court rejected the request from abortion rights supporters to block the law.

In its opinion, the majority acknowledged the abortion providers "have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue," but said their request to the court presents "complex and novel" procedural questions that prevented them from meeting their burden.

While the high court refused to stop the law while the legal fight continues, the majority said its decision "is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas's law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts."

The decision from the Supreme Court is a significant victory for anti-abortion advocates, who are looking to the high court's expanded 6-3 conservative majority — with three justices appointed by former President Trump — to chip away at Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision that established a woman's right to an abortion. The court is poised to hear this fall a case involving Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban, and a decision upholding that measure could clear the way for more restrictive abortion laws.

In a blistering dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the court's order "stunning" and said the law is a "breathtaking act of defiance — of the Constitution, of this court's precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas."

"Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand," she wrote.

The Texas law is the most restrictive abortion measure in the country, as it bars the procedure after six weeks into a pregnancy, which is before many women know they're pregnant. The coalition of abortion clinics and abortion rights supporters that sought the Supreme Court's intervention argued it defied the high court's precedents, under which states cannot outlaw abortions before fetal viability, which generally occurs around 24 weeks.

In the final hours Tuesday before the law took effect, Whole Woman's Health, which operates four clinics in Texas and is a plaintiff in the case, reported having full waiting rooms of patients seeking abortions. But as of Wednesday, the clinics would only provide the procedures if ultrasounds do not show cardiac activity in compliance with the law, Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman's Health, told reporters.

 

A majority of the Supreme Court refused to even implement the basic legal principle of precedent for Roe. Roe is dead. The right to a woman's bodily autonomy is gone, and it can be freely taken by a state. And as I said yesterday, even if SCOTUS rules against Texas tomorrow, every clinic in the state will close, every patient will be doxxed, and every health care worker, clinic escort, and donor will be sued by unlimited individuals at a maximum penalty of $10k per suit, bankrupted and destroyed.

The law was designed to do this. And it worked.

More like it will be coming.

Your rights depend on which state you live in if you are a woman, full stop.

We warned you this was coming.

But, her emails.

Gilead is here.

StupidiNews!

• Texas is the latest state to allow open carry of firearms without training or licensing, Texas police say it will make it much harder to do their job.
• Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell is throwing cold water on the idea of impeaching Joe Biden, warning that removing him from office "will not happen".
• A high school student in North Carolina was shot and killed Wednesday by another student, who is in custody, the second schools shooting in the state so far this week.
• The Justice Department is reportedly readying a massive antitrust lawsuit against Google over its internet advertising business, critics say the company has a near-monopoly on ads in some cases.
• SEC Chairman Gary Gensler says that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will be "part of a public policy framework" of federal regulation within five to ten years.
  

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The sequel to January 6th is happening later this month, another planned right-wing white supremacist domestic terrorist assault on the US Capitol to "demand justice" for those previously arrested for attacking the Capitol in January.

 

Far right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are planning to attend a rally later this month at the U.S. Capitol that is designed to demand “justice” for the hundreds of people who have been charged in connection with January’s insurrection, according to three people familiar with intelligence gathered by federal officials.

As a result, U.S. Capitol Police have been discussing in recent weeks whether the large perimeter fence that was erected outside the Capitol after January’s riot will need to be put back up, the people said.

The officials have been discussing security plans that involve reconstructing the fence as well as another plan that does not involve a fence, the people said. They were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The planned Sept. 18 rally at the Capitol comes as a jittery Washington has seen a series of troubling one-off incidents — including, most recently, a man who parked a pickup truck near the Library of Congress and said he had a bomb and detonator. Among the most concerning events: A series of unexploded pipe bombs placed around the U.S. Capitol ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection remain unexplained and no suspect has been charged.

On Capitol Hill, the politics around fencing in the iconic building and its grounds were extremely difficult for lawmakers after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Many said they disliked closing off access, even as they acknowledged the increased level of security it provided.

The decision on whether or not to erect the fence again will likely be considered by the Capitol Police Board, according to a House aide familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it. No decisions have been made. The board consists of the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper of the U.S. Senate, and the Architect of the Capitol.

The deadly riot overwhelmed the police force that was left badly prepared by intelligence failures and has resulted in internal reviews about why law enforcement agencies weren’t better equippped. More than 100 police officers were injured and the rioters did more than $1 million in damage.

The planned presence of the extremist groups is concerning because, while members and associates of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys make up just a fraction of the nearly 600 people who have been charged so far in the riot, they are facing some of the most serious charges brought so far.

Those charges include allegations that they conspired to block the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory. Several Oath Keepers have pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and are cooperating with investigators in the case against their fellow extremists, who authorities say came to Washington ready for violence and willing to do whatever it took to stop the certification of the Electoral College vote.

As officials prepare for this month’s rally, Yogananda Pittman, the Capitol Police official who led intelligence operations for the agency when the rioters descended on the building, has been put back in charge of intelligence.

In a statement to the AP, Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said the department was “closely monitoring September 18 and we are planning accordingly.”

“After January 6, we made Department-wide changes to the way we gather and share intelligence internally and externally. I am confident the work we are doing now will make sure our officers have what they need to keep everyone safe,” Manger said.

Still, law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned about the rally and the potential for violence. The Metropolitan Police Department will activate its entire force for that day and has put specialized riot officers on standby, law enforcement officials said.

 

Put up the fences, activate the DC National Guard, and surround the rally with a couple thousand armed troops. You want to act like insurrectionists?

Fine, put them down like it's an armed insurrection. America has enough experience with doing that over the last 400 years, put it to good use for once.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

We've reached the point where local health officials are openly being harassed and attacked at COVID vaccine clinic events by the GOP Death Cult.

Dr. John Cowan cut a lonely figure at a recent Republican rally in northwest Georgia.

Not only because a few months earlier he had lost a GOP primary to Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman serving as the event’s headliner, but because he was offering conservative activists coronavirus vaccines. And there were no takers in the crowd of hundreds.

As Cowan roamed the open-air pavilion trying to drum up interest, Greene and other Republicans on stage railed against mask mandates and vaccine requirements. The Floyd Medical Center staffers working the mobile clinic outside the rally, he said, were targeted with “snide” remarks from attendees. Not a single shot was administered.

The hostility toward the vaccination effort was no isolated incident. Dr. Kathleen Toomey, the state’s top health official, said for the first time this week that Georgians aligned with the anti-vaccination movement disrupted several recent inoculation drives — and forced one to shut down entirely.

“It’s wrong. It’s absolutely wrong,” Toomey said. “These people are giving their lives to help others, to help us in the state. We in Georgia could do better. We should be thanking these individuals who are trying to get lifesaving vaccines to our state.”

The harassment represents a new front in the state’s fight against a lethal fourth wave of COVID-19 that’s pushing infections and hospitalizations to levels not seen in Georgia since January peaks.

Even as officials struggle with inoculation rates among the nation’s lowest, these reports of concerted efforts to derail vaccination drives sparked worry among public health experts and spurred outrage among politicians.

“Public health officials are getting booed in places, they’re getting harassed, when this should be a time to come together,” said Dr. Carlos Del Rio, an Emory University infectious disease specialist.

Toomey said she only recently became aware of the disruptions. Her office said public health staff have been “harassed, yelled at, threatened and demeaned by some of the very members of the public they were trying to help.”

In one South Georgia county, residents protesting the vaccinations tracked down public health employees and bombarded them with hostile messages and misinformation about the vaccine.

And a mobile vaccination event in an unspecified North Georgia county was canceled after an “organized” group of people showed up to harass and name-call public health workers, said Nancy Nydam, a spokeswoman for Toomey.

“Aside from feeling threatened themselves, staff realized no one would want to come to that location for a vaccination under those circumstances, so they packed up and left,” she said.

 

Just like the anti-choice assholes, they will eventually start hurting and even killing health care workers who provide the vaccine in dangerous GOP-controlled Death Cult zones. This is escalating fast and the violence is completely designed to stop all vaccine efforts in rural areas, where people will die, and them blame Biden for it.

More importantly though the GOP is doing this on purpose to raise the chance that health care workers quit. They want them out. They want people to suffer as a result and to say "See, this is all Joe Biden's fault, you'd better vote for us."

Health care workers "sided" with the Democrats on vaccines.

They have to be punished, just like any other industry group that "sides" with the Democrats.

 

 

 

The Road To Gilead, Texas

With Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito choosing to pass on blocking Texas's insane anti-choice law that literally allows civil bounties for suing Texas women who receive reproductive health care in any state after just six weeks of pregnancy, the odious law takes affect today, and the era of Roe v Wade is all but over. 

A Texas law that bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy went into effect Wednesday, as a midnight deadline for the Supreme Court to stop it came and went without action.

The court could still grant a request from abortion providers to halt the law, one of the nation’s most restrictive. But for now, abortion providers in Texas, including Planned Parenthood and Whole Woman’s Health, said they will no longer terminate pregnancies more than six weeks from a woman’s last period.

Providers said the law effectively eliminates the guarantee in Roe v. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court decisions that women have a right to end their pregnancies before viability, and that states may not impose undue burdens on that decision.

As longtime opponents of abortion claimed Wednesday as “a historic and hopeful day,” abortion-rights advocates and providers decried the impact of the new law on the women they serve.

“It’s just really unclear what the future will hold for women in Texas,” said Kathy Kleinfeld, the director at Houston Women’s Reproductive Services. “I really don’t know. I don’t feel pessimistic. I don’t feel optimistic. I’m just right in the middle, cautiously waiting.”

Human Coalition Action Texas Legislative Director Chelsey Youman, who backed the bill, praised Texas as “the first state to successfully protect the most vulnerable among us, preborn children … Human beings are worthy of protection at all phases of development.”

Federal judges across the country have cited Roe and other precedents to block six-week bans in other states before they took effect.

The lawsuits that stopped those laws targeted government officials who would enforce the bans, which proponents dub “heartbeat bills” because they say that is when a doctor can first detect a fetal heartbeat. Doctors opposed to the bills dispute that description, saying the fluttering that is detected cannot exist outside the womb.

The Texas law was designed to make it more difficult for abortion rights advocates to win such pre-enforcement injunctions. The statute empowers individuals, instead of state government officials, to bring legal action against those who help women seeking a prohibited abortion.

Lawyers for abortion providers told the Supreme Court that the statute, known by its bill number, S.B. 8, would “immediately and catastrophically reduce abortion access” in Texas and probably force more clinics to close. The law is unconstitutional, they say, because it conflicts with the court precedents that prevent states from banning abortion before a fetus would be viable outside the womb, usually around 22 to 24 weeks.

About 85 to 90 percent of people who obtain abortions in Texas are at least six weeks into pregnancy, meaning this law would prohibit nearly all abortions in the state.

“Patients will have to travel out of state — in the middle of a pandemic — to receive constitutionally guaranteed health care. And many will not have the means to do so,” Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), said in a statement. “It’s cruel, unconscionable, and unlawful.”

 

But for the first time in my lifetime, the Supreme Court isn't lifting a finger to stop a state law that clearly ends abortion access in the state because it drafts residents of any state as bounty hunters to sue women, clinics, and health care providers into oblivion in civil court.

 

The legal argument is insidious.

 

In response Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction to act against the law at this point, and that any legal challenges would have to wait until someone actually brought a civil action against an abortion provider or someone who aids the woman.

“This Court cannot expunge the law itself. Rather, it can enjoin only enforcement of the law,” he wrote in his brief to the court, which did not mention Roe. But in the Texas case, he noted, government officials “explicitly do not enforce the law.”

The abortion providers, Paxton wrote, “have not shown that they will be personally harmed by a bill that may never be enforced against them by anyone.” 

 

Abortion is now illegal in Texas in 95% of instances.  And even if the law was blocked and found unconstitutional, Texas clinics will all close, so that number will be effectively 100%. By the time this grinds through the courts, there will be zero legal abortion health care providers in a state with 14 million women.

Expect a score of other states to institute Texas's law by spring, before the Roberts Court strikes down Roe in June.

A full third of American women will have no access to abortion whatsoever in 12 months.

Gilead is here.

StupidiNews!

•  Two senior FDA vaccine officials are retiring, the Biden administration says it will fill the roles "quickly" in order for the FDA to continue its work.
• The Caldor wildfire continues to scorch thousands of acres in California, with evacuations of tens of thousands from the Lake Tahoe area on Tuesday.
• New Zealanders are emerging back outdoors as the nation's COVID-19 lockdowns have been lifted, but schools and offices remain closed across the country.
• President Joe Biden defended America's exit from Afghanistan, saying it saved US lives and billions of dollars.
• Disgraced biotech wunderkind and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison on fraud charges as jury selection begins this week for Holmes's trial.

Last Call For The Good Package, Con't

Corporate lobbyists in DC are doing everything they can to burn down the $3.5 billion Good Package, because of the corporate tax hikes and regulatory improvements. They don't want a piece of the pie, they want to bury the whole deal.

 

“We’re doing it in every way you can imagine,” said Aric Newhouse, the senior vice president for policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, when asked about the group’s lobbying. He added that the tax increases Democrats have pursued would mean “manufacturing families will suffer, jobs will be lost.”

Disney, Pfizer and Exxon declined to comment. Jessica Boulanger, a spokeswoman for the Business Roundtable, said in a statement it is engaged in “a significant, multifaceted campaign” to stop tax hikes and would “continue to ramp up our efforts in the coming weeks.”

Brian Newell, a spokesman for PhRMA, stressed that the group supports general pricing reforms — just not the ideas Democrats are pursuing. “The industry is willing to come to the table and do its fair share to help deliver real relief to patients at the pharmacy, not empty promises that will do more harm than good,” he said in a statement.

The raft of lobbying arrives as lawmakers begin to translate Biden’s broader economic vision into legislation. Democratic leaders have said their reconciliation measure can expand Medicare coverage, offer universal prekindergarten, provide new help to low-income families, and invest substantial sums toward fighting climate change.

Hoping to give Biden a win, Democrats have aimed to send the package to his desk as soon as September. Their race to enact legislation has set off a mad dash on Capitol Hill, a process that is sure to test the president’s political influence — and the durability of Democrats’ narrow, potent and fractious majorities in both chambers of Congress.

In a sign of the obstacles Democrats face, the Chamber of Commerce last week took a firm stand against the package, promising to do “everything we can” to prevent Congress from adopting it in full. The group’s president and chief executive, Suzanne Clark, issued the statement hours after the House adopted the $3.5 trillion budget that enabled Democrats to begin crafting tax and spending provisions — an approach, she said, that would “halt America’s fragile economic recovery.”

The Chamber’s opposition marked a major shift in tone from earlier this summer, when the business lobby locked arms with Democrats to help advance another centerpiece of Biden’s economic agenda. The group threw its full weight behind a bipartisan Senate package to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections, arguing that the roughly $1 trillion in fixes were long overdue.

Once the Senate adopted the package, however, the Chamber turned up the pressure on the House. Last week, for example, it unleashed widely viewed ads on Facebook praising the nine moderate Democrats who had threatened to block the party’s budget unless they could first secure a House vote on infrastructure spending. Democrats ultimately resolved their internal stalemate, paving the way for both packages to proceed this month, but not before the Chamber sought to highlight the party’s internal divisions in ads that together received millions of views.

The Chamber declined to comment about its plans, including the behind-the-scenes work to assemble a coalition. Neil Bradley, the group’s executive vice president, blasted Democrats for pursuing a bill “that proposes to fundamentally rewrite the rules of the road across virtually every major industrial sector.”

 

The big issue of course is that one of the main revenue components of the Good Package is reversing the Trump corporate tax cuts. These corporate types will burn the package to the ground and the Dems along with it in order to stop it.

 

We'll see who wins.