Last Call For Mean Greene's Machine

House GOP embarrassment and racist conspiracy crank Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is being condemned by House GOP minority leader Kevin McCarthy, but McCarthy refuses to actually do anything about her because of "The Squad" on the Democratic side, and Rep. Ilhan Omar in particular. Omar's previous anti-Semitic remarks earned her a deserved drubbing by Jewish members of Congress on both sides, but the difference is Omar apologized when it was pointed out to her. Greene is even worse, and racist on top of that, so if McCarthy won't yank her off committees, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer will.

House Democratic leaders are gearing up to vote Thursday on legislation stripping Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of her committee spots — unless Republican leaders do it first.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) spoke with his counterpart, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), about Greene's fate Wednesday morning, with Hoyer suggesting afterwards that the GOP leader is not ready to remove the controversial conservative firebrand from a pair of top committees.

"I spoke to Leader McCarthy this morning, and it is clear there is no alternative to holding a Floor vote on the resolution to remove Rep. Greene from her committee assignments," Hoyer said in a statement. "The Rules Committee will meet this afternoon, and the House will vote on the resolution tomorrow."

The proposal, sponsored by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), would remove Greene from two plum committee assignments — Budget, and Education and Labor — for the remainder of this Congress.

McCarthy, the House Republican leader, had huddled with Greene in his office in the Capitol on Tuesday evening. Afterwards, McCarthy hosted a second meeting with the GOP Steering and Policy Committee to discuss Greene's fate. No decisions were made, but leaders are expected to meet again on Wednesday, and the full Republican conference also has a planned gathering at 4 p.m, when the topic is sure to be a major focus.

Hoyer has already spoken with McCarthy about Greene at least once this week. Democratic leaders remain in the dark about how McCarthy will proceed, according to a Democratic leadership aide, but they're insisting that GOP leaders remove Greene from both committees, or Democrats will take that step themselves by moving the Wasserman Schultz bill.

Technically this is Steny Hoyer's wheelhouse as House Majority Leader, and while the avowed centrist has been in the House Dem leadership for decades along with Pelosi now, he knows when to swing a big bat, and this is the time.

McCarthy can either do it quietly, or Hoyer can do it publicly. It's McCarthy's choice.

 

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

A decent three-in-five Americans feel confident with Joe Biden in the White House, a figure that includes more than a quarter of Republicans, in Quinnipiac University's latest poll.

Two weeks into the presidency of Joe Biden, a majority of Americans say, 61 - 34 percent, that they are generally optimistic about the next four years with Biden as president, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea- ack) University national poll of 1,075 adults released today. However, there are sharp divisions by party identification.

Democrats say 90 - 7 percent and independents say 62 - 35 percent that they are optimistic. Republicans say 65 - 27 percent that they are pessimistic.

Despite an overall majority being optimistic, 69 percent of Americans say they are either very dissatisfied (46 percent) or somewhat dissatisfied (23 percent) with the way things are going in the nation today. Twenty-nine percent say they are very satisfied (6 percent) or somewhat satisfied (23 percent) with the way things are going in the nation today.

A majority (56 - 35 percent) say Biden is doing more to unite the country than to divide it.

"Amid a palpable uncertainty about the months and even years ahead, there is a sense that President Biden is the man for the moment. And that moment can't come too soon," said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy.

Americans were asked about several issues the United States is confronting right now and whether they think these issues are a crisis, a problem but not a crisis, or not a problem at all. Of the six issues, the coronavirus pandemic is the only one with a clear majority considering it a crisis.

• Coronavirus Pandemic: 68 percent say crisis, 25 percent problem but not a crisis, 6 percent not a problem at all;
• The State of Nation's Economy: 45 percent say crisis, 46 percent problem but not a crisis, 7 percent not a problem at all;
• The State of Nation's Democracy: 45 percent say crisis, 43 percent problem but not a crisis, 9 percent not a problem at all;
• Climate Change: 43 percent say crisis, 33 percent problem but not a crisis, 21 percent not a problem at all;
• Racial Inequality: 41 percent say crisis, 42 percent problem but not a crisis, 14 percent not a problem at all;
• People Believing in Conspiracy Theories: 34 percent say crisis, 41 percent problem but not a crisis, 21 percent not a problem at all. 

President Biden receives a positive job approval rating with Americans approving 49 - 36 percent of the way he's handling his job. Sixteen percent didn't offer an opinion.

"The Biden numbers are solid but not spectacular as the country tries to coalesce around a new administration that faces the dual challenge of daunting economic struggles and comforting a COVID-weary public," said Malloy.

On his handling of the response to the coronavirus, Americans approve 61 - 29 percent.

 

Biden's starting off as well as any post-Trump Democrat could be, frankly.  Sixteen percent say they have no opinion of his job so far, but that will change if Biden signs big bills into law...or doesn't get to sign them because the Senate GOP blocked them.

Luckily, it looks like Biden and the Dems are going to deliver, and soon.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

There's still plenty of white supremacist domestic terrorists out there, and they are itching for even more lethal violence after the January 6th coup on the US Capitol. Their only goal is to bring down the Biden administration, or die trying.

Hours after the attack on the Capitol ended, a group calling itself the Last Sons of Liberty posted a brief video to Parler, the social media platform, that appeared to show members of the organization directly participating in the uprising. Footage showed someone with a shaky smartphone charging past the metal barricades surrounding the building. Other clips show rioters physically battling with baton-wielding police on the white marble steps just outside the Capitol.

Before Parler went offline — its operations halted at least temporarily when Amazon refused to continue to host the network — the Last Sons posted numerous statements indicating that group members had joined the mob that swarmed the Capitol and had no regrets about the chaos and violence that unfolded on Jan. 6. The Last Sons also did some quick math: The government had suffered only one fatality, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, 42, who was reportedly bludgeoned in the head with a fire extinguisher. But the rioters had lost four people, including Ashli Babbitt, the 35-year-old Air Force veteran who was shot by an officer as she tried to storm the building.

In a series of posts, the Last Sons said her death should be “avenged” and appeared to call for the murder of three more cops.

The group is part of the Boogaloo movement — a decentralized, very online successor to the ­­militia movement of the ’80s and ’90s —­ whose adherents are fixated on attacking law enforcement and violently toppling the U.S. government. Researchers say the movement began coalescing online in 2019 as people — mostly young men — angry with what they perceived to be increasing government repression, found each other on Facebook groups and in private chats. In movement vernacular, Boogaloo refers to an inevitable and imminent armed revolt, and members often call themselves Boogaloo Bois, boogs, or goons.

In the weeks since Jan. 6, an array of extremist groups have been named as participants in the Capitol invasion. The Proud Boys. QAnon believers. White nationalists. The Oath Keepers. But the Boogaloo Bois are notable for the depth of their commitment to the overthrow of the U.S. government and the jaw-dropping criminal histories of many members.

Mike Dunn, a 20-year-old from a small town on Virginia’s rural southern edge, is the commander of the Last Sons. “I really feel we’re looking at the possibility — stronger than any time since, say, the 1860s — of armed insurrection,” Dunn said in an interview with ProPublica and FRONTLINE a few days after the assault on the Capitol. Although Dunn didn’t directly participate, he said members of his Boogaloo faction helped fire up the crowd and “may” have penetrated the building.

“It was a chance to mess with the federal government again,” he said. “They weren’t there for MAGA. They weren’t there for Trump.”

Dunn added that he’s “willing to die in the streets” while battling law enforcement or security forces.

In its short existence, the Boogaloo movement has proven to be a magnet for current or former military service members who have used their combat skills and firearms expertise to advance the Boogaloo cause. Before becoming one of the faces of the movement, Dunn did a brief stint in the U.S. Marines, a career he says was cut short by a heart condition, and worked as a Virginia state prison guard.

Through interviews, extensive study of social media and a review of court records, some previously unreported, ProPublica and FRONTLINE identified more than 20 Boogaloo Bois or sympathizers who’ve served in the armed forces. Over the past 18 months, 13 of them have been arrested on charges ranging from the possession of illegal automatic weapons to the manufacture of explosives to murder.

Most of the individuals identified by the news organizations became involved with the movement after leaving the military. At least four are accused of committing Boogaloo-related crimes while employed by one of the military branches.

Examples of the nexus between the group and the military abound.

Last year, an FBI task force in San Francisco opened a domestic terror investigation into Aaron Horrocks, a 39-year-old former Marine Corps reservist. Horrocks spent eight years in the Reserve before leaving the Corps in 2017.

The bureau became alarmed in September 2020, when agents received a tip that Horrocks, who lives in Pleasanton, California, was “planning an imminent violent attack on government or law enforcement,” according to a petition to seize the man’s firearms, which was filed in state court in October. The investigation, which has not previously been reported, links Horrocks to the Boogaloo movement. He has not been charged.

Again, these are the same assholes, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the Molon Labe folks, the sovereign citizens, the white supremacists, that I've been warning about on this blog for years now. They have military or law enforcement training (or both), they hate the US government, and they are willing to kill and die to destroy it.

They came the closest they ever have so far with Donald Trump's help last month. They have contacts in current military and law enforcement circles. They have shown the ability to coordinate using social media and the internet. They are extremely dangerous.

And they absolutely will try again.

StupidiNews!

• Capitol Police office Brian Sicknick lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda after being slain in the Capitol insurrection on January 6th, President Biden and VP Harris paid their respects Tuesday.
• Trump attorney Lin Wood is under investigation in Georgia for possible voter fraud as Wood had previously stated that he moved to South Carolina in April with the intent of residing there.
• After last weekend's successful military coup, police in Myanmar have filed charges against ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi and say she will be detained until February 15th.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she is increasing security for members of Congress who are traveling in the wake of last month's Capitol terrorist attack.
• For a second time in seven weeks a SpaceX Starship prototype rocket has crashed on landing as one of the pair of Raptor rocket engines failed to reignite, tipping the rocket over.
  

Last Call For Trial Of The Century 2.0

If I'm reading this right, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham is warning Democrats not to call a single witness in Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, because if they do, he'll make sure that the FBI is also called and that they will present weeks of testimony about how the January 6th attack on the US Capitol was completely premeditated by Trump's cultists (but somehow this will clear Trump's name).

 

Graham told Fox News’ Trey Gowdy on Monday that a “Pandora’s box” and “a can of worms” would be opened if just one witness was brought forward in the Senate trial of Trump, set to begin next week.

The House last month impeached Trump over the violence that left five people dead.

Graham, a former fierce critic of Trump who after the 2016 election became one of his most loyal defenders, warned that calling witnesses could mean a monthslong trial “and that would be bad for the country.” Graham and other Republicans have argued it is time to “move on” from the insurrection for the good of the U.S.

“If you open up that can of worms (by calling witnesses), we’ll want the FBI to come in and tell us about how people actually pre-planned these attacks and what happened with the security footprint at the Capitol,” the South Carolina Republican continued, parroting a right-wing talking point that the attack was planned well before Trump urged his supporters at a pre-riot rally to march to the Capitol.

Graham did not mention that Trump ― even before the election ― whipped his supporters into a lie-fueled frenzy about voter fraud.

“You open up Pandora’s box if you call one witness,” Graham said. “I hope we don’t call any and we vote and get this trial over next week when it starts.”

 

I again admit to being genuinely confused by this defense strategy. If indeed the plan by Graham is to have the FBI come in and spell out how the January 6th attack was planned weeks in advance, it'll only take one major witness to then say "and yes, Donald Trump was part of this from the beginning" and he's toast.

It's like the defense laying out a RICO case by showing there was indeed a conspiracy, but then saying "Well the mafia don didn't have anything to do with it" and half of the jurors are made mobsters saying "I don't see anything wrong here."

Yes, there's a 99% chance Trump will be acquitted anyway, because the same GOP enablers are afraid that Trump's domestic terrorist cult will show up and empty both barrels into their faces and their families.

But it still has to be done.

These Disunited States, Con't

South Dakota wants to opt out of federal control and nullify President Biden's executive orders, banking on the Roberts Court to somehow overturn 150 years of precedent over the Supremacy Clause.

A bill introduced into the South Dakota House of Representatives seeks to give the state’s attorney general the authority to review executive orders issued by the president of the United States.

Introduced by new member Rep. Aaron Aylward of Harrisburg, HB 1194 outlines a process of review for any presidential orders that have not been approved and signed into law by the U.S. Congress.

This process begins with a review by the Executive Council of the Legislative Research Board, followed by a referral from the Council to the attorney general and the governor. Once the referral has been made, the attorney general may examine the order to determine whether the state can seek an exemption or declare it unconstitutional.

The bill takes a broad view, stating that no executive order may be implemented “that restricts a person’s rights.”

The proposed bill would also allow the attorney general to block implementation of any order deemed unconstitutional if the order refers to:

• A pandemic or other public health emergency
• The regulation of natural resources
• The regulation of the agricultural industry
• The regulation of land use
• The regulation of the financial sector through the imposition of environmental, social, or governance standards
• The regulation of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms

So we're not even pretending anymore, South Dakota Republicans are going to make the Biden administration challenge this in court and argue that he can't make them do anything by executive order.

It's weird how we only have these nullification problems with Democratic presidents. 

The Coup-Coup Birds Come Home To Roost, Con't

So it turns out that many of the US Capitol terrorists didn't even vote at all in the 2020 election, for their god-emperor Trump, or for anyone else for that matter.

They were there to "Stop the Steal" and to keep the President they revered in office, yet records show that some of the rioters who stormed the US Capitol did not vote in the very election they were protesting. 

One was Donovan Crowl, an ex-Marine who charged toward a Capitol entrance in paramilitary garb on January 6 as the Pro-Trump crowd chanted "who's our President?"
Federal authorities later identified Crowl, 50, as a member of a self-styled militia organization in his home state of Ohio and affiliated with the extremist group the Oath Keepers. His mother told CNN that he previously told her "they were going to overtake the government if they...tried to take Trump's presidency from him." She said he had become increasingly angry during the Obama administration and that she was aware of his support for former President Donald Trump. 

Despite these apparent pro-Trump views, a county election official in Ohio told CNN that he registered in 2013 but "never voted nor responded to any of our confirmation notices to keep him registered," so he was removed from the voter rolls at the end of 2020 and the state said he was not registered in Ohio. A county clerk in Illinois, where Crowl was once registered, also confirmed he was not an active voter anywhere in the state.

Crowl was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of destruction of government property and conspiracy for allegedly coordinating with others to plan their attack. He remains in custody after a judge said, "The suggestion to release him to a residence with nine firearms is a non-starter." In an interview cited by the government, Crowl told the New Yorker that he had peaceful intentions and claimed he had protected the police. Crowl's attorney did not provide a comment about his client's voting record. 

Many involved in the insurrection professed to be motivated by patriotism, falsely declaring that Trump was the rightful winner of the election. Yet at least eight of the people who are now facing criminal charges for their involvement in the events at the Capitol did not vote in the November 2020 presidential election, according to an analysis of voting records from the states where protestors were arrested and those states where public records show they have lived. They came from states around the country and ranged in age from 21 to 65. 

To determine who voted in November, CNN obtained voting records for more than 80 of the initial arrestees. Most voted in the presidential election, and while many were registered Republicans, a handful were registered as Democrats in those jurisdictions that provided party information -- though who someone votes for is not publicly disclosed. Public access to voter history records varies by state, and CNN was unable to view the records of some of those charged. 

Among those who didn't vote were a 65-year-old Georgia man who, according to government documents, was found in his van with a fully-loaded pistol and ammunition, and a Louisiana man who publicly bragged about spending nearly two hours inside the Capitol after attending Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally. Another was a 21-year-old woman from Missouri who prosecutors say shared a video on Snapchat that showed her parading around with a piece of a wooden sign from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. And a Florida man previously convicted of attempted murder who was accused by the government of refusing to leave the Capitol likely did not have the option to cast a ballot because of his unpaid court fines.

They didn't even bother to vote.

I'd say America needs a better class of villain, but we don't really deserve it. This is a trash country, filled with tens of millions of trash people, and the rest of us are trying not to drown in refuse every damn day.

StupidiNews!

• Republican Senators say that while Monday's meeting with the Biden White House was a "Very good exchange" they say no deal has been reached on new COVID-19 relief legislation.
• The Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery, established by the CARES Act, is looking into several Republicans including Ted Cruz to probe their roles in assigning small business aid.
• Dozens of former George W. Bush administration officials say they are leaving the Republican party, calling the current GOP incarnation a "cult" dedicated to Donald Trump.
• House Democrats have given House GOP minority leader Kevin McCarthy 72 hours to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green from her committee assignments, or she will be stripped.
• A new report finds that 70% of "civic" public groups on Facebook or "toxic or violent", something that the social media company knew since August of 2020.
  

Last Call For The Winter Of Our Discontent

The New York Times has put together a definitive timeline of the events between Election Day and Inauguration Day, and how Donald Trump was enabled and encouraged to bring a coup against the United States government, Joe Biden, and the American people. It's a coup he will continue to defend in his Senate impeachment trial this week, and there's near absolute certainty that he will be acquitted by the GOP not out of merit, but out of cowardice and fear of the monsters Trump has unleashed.

A New York Times examination of the 77 democracy-bending days between election and inauguration shows how, with conspiratorial belief rife in a country ravaged by pandemic, a lie that Mr. Trump had been grooming for years finally overwhelmed the Republican Party and, as brake after brake fell away, was propelled forward by new and more radical lawyers, political organizers, financiers and the surround-sound right-wing media.

In the aftermath of that broken afternoon at the Capitol, a picture has emerged of entropic forces coming together on Trump’s behalf in an ad hoc, yet calamitous, crash of rage and denial.

But interviews with central players, and documents including previously unreported emails, videos and social media posts scattered across the web, tell a more encompassing story of a more coordinated campaign.

Across those 77 days, the forces of disorder were summoned and directed by the departing president, who wielded the power derived from his near-infallible status among the party faithful in one final norm-defying act of a reality-denying presidency.

Throughout, he was enabled by influential Republicans motivated by ambition, fear or a misplaced belief that he would not go too far.

In the Senate, he got early room to maneuver from the majority leader, Mitch McConnell. As he sought the president’s help in Georgia runoffs that could cost him his own grip on power, Mr. McConnell heeded misplaced assurances from White House aides like Jared Kushner that Mr. Trump would eventually accede to reality, people close to the senator told The Times. Mr. McConnell’s later recognition of Mr. Biden’s victory would not be enough to dissuade 14 Republican senators from joining the president’s last-ditch bid to nullify millions of Americans’ votes.

Likewise, during the campaign, Attorney General William P. Barr had echoed some of Mr. Trump’s complaints of voter fraud. But privately the president was chafing at Mr. Barr’s resistance to his more authoritarian impulses — including his idea to end birthright citizenship in a legally dubious pre-election executive order. And when Mr. Barr informed Mr. Trump in a tense Oval Office session that the Justice Department’s fraud investigations had run dry, the president dismissed the department as derelict before finding other officials there who would view things his way.

For every lawyer on Mr. Trump’s team who quietly pulled back, there was one ready to push forward with propagandistic suits that skated the lines of legal ethics and reason. That included not only Mr. Giuliani and lawyers like Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, but also the vast majority of Republican attorneys general, whose dead-on-arrival Supreme Court lawsuit seeking to discount 20 million votes was secretly drafted by lawyers close to the White House, The Times found.

As traditional Republican donors withdrew, a new class of Trump-era benefactors rose to finance data analysts and sleuths to come up with fodder for the stolen-election narrative. Their ranks included the founder of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, and the former Overstock.com chief executive Patrick Byrne, who warned of “fake ballots” and voting-machine manipulation from China on One America News Network and Newsmax, which were finding ratings in their willingness to go further than Fox in embracing the fiction that Mr. Trump had won.

As Mr. Trump’s official election campaign wound down, a new, highly organized campaign stepped into the breach to turn his demagogic fury into a movement of its own, reminding key lawmakers at key times of the cost of denying the will of the president and his followers. Called Women for America First, it had ties to Mr. Trump and former White House aides then seeking presidential pardons, among them Stephen K. Bannon and Michael T. Flynn.

As it crossed the country spreading the new gospel of a stolen election in Trump-red buses, the group helped build an acutely Trumpian coalition that included sitting and incoming members of Congress, rank-and-file voters and the “de-platformed” extremists and conspiracy theorists promoted on its home page — including the white nationalist Jared Taylor, prominent QAnon proponents and the Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.

With each passing day the lie grew, finally managing to do what the political process and the courts would not: upend the peaceful transfer of power that for 224 years had been the bedrock of American democracy.

 

Everyone on the GOP side either capitulated or miscalculated. It almost led to a violent terrorist massacre of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. It is not just Donald Trump who needs to be held accountable, but the people who allowed this travesty to get this far.

Every single one of them must be made to pay.

Vaccination Nation

The people refusing the vaccine out of choice are misguided at best and dangerous superspreaders at worst, but the people preventing other people from getting the vaccine by blocking vaccine sites are about as morally repugnant as you can get, and apparently here in 2021 we have to put up with this utter nonsense now.

Dodger Stadium’s mass COVID-19 vaccination site was shut down Saturday afternoon as about 50 protesters gathered at the entrance, stalling hundreds of motorists who had been waiting in line for hours.

The Los Angeles Fire Department closed the entrance to the stadium — one of the largest vaccination sites in the country — for about an hour starting just before 2 p.m. as a precaution, officials said.

The demonstrators included members of anti-vaccine and far-right groups. While some carried signs decrying the COVID-19 vaccine and shouting for people not to get the shots, there were no incidents of violence.

“This is completely wrong,” said German Jaquez, who drove from his home in La Verne and had been waiting for an hour for his vaccination when the stadium’s gates were closed. He said some of the protesters were telling people in line that the coronavirus is not real and that the vaccination is dangerous.

“This is the wrong message,” Jaquez said. “I’ve been waiting for weeks to get an appointment. I am a dentist; I am taking a big risk being around patients. I want to be safe for my patients and for my family. The vaccine is the only way to beat the virus.”

A fire department official said the vaccination site reopened a few minutes before 3 p.m. The site is usually open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

A post on social media described the demonstration as the “SCAMDEMIC PROTEST/MARCH.” It advised participants to “please refrain from wearing Trump/MAGA attire as we want our statement to resonate with the sheeple. No flags but informational signs only.

“This is a sharing information protest and march against everything COVID, Vaccine, PCR Tests, Lockdowns, Masks, Fauci, Gates, Newsom, China, digital tracking, etc.”

A live-streamed video of the gathering shows a group of protesters walking on a sidewalk as cars navigate cone-lined lanes toward the stadium, which served as a COVID-19 testing site for months.

Several of the protesters carried signs that read “Save Your Soul TURN BACK NOW,” “CNN IS LYING TO YOU,” “RECALL GAVIN NEWSOM,” and “TAKE OFF YOUR MASK,” and others handed out pamphlets to motorists who had their windows down.

Some cars blared their horns as they drove by and protesters spoke through bullhorns.

“Turn back while you can,” one man said. “You’re a lab rat.”

Public officials swiftly weighed in expressing their frustrations.

Deputy Mayor Jeff Gorell, who oversees public safety for Garcetti, tweeted a Times article about the closure, writing “Its back open, but ..” and adding a face palm emoji.

The Dodger Stadium incident marks the latest of several protests by small groups opposed to basic coronavirus safety measures such as mask wearing.

Following local demonstrations by anti-mask groups at shopping malls, grocery stores and homeless encampments, the Los Angeles City Council earlier this month bolstered restrictions and subjected some violators to financial penalties.

  

At this point I expect abortion clinic style harassment to continue and even for vaccination sites to be attacked by domestic terrorists. it's inevitable, frankly.

I hope security is going to be increased, but that's going to slow down vaccinations as well. But that's the hell we're living in, apparently.

Susan Collins Holding The Football

I suppose it's a sign of a return to wretched normalcy: a group of Republican senators led by Maine's Susan Collins has proposed a counteroffer to the Biden admin's COVID-19 relief plan, and of course it's less than one-tenth of the proposed Democratic spending plan.

A group of Senate Republicans is requesting a meeting with President Joe Biden to begin bipartisan negotiations on the next coronavirus relief bill, even as Democratic leaders are prepared this week to go down a path that could pass a new $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package with all Democratic votes.

In a letter to Biden sent on Sunday, 10 Senate Republicans informed the president that they are working on a counterproposal focusing on spending $160 billion on vaccines, testing, treatment and personal protective equipment. Led by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the senators said that if Biden signs off on their framework, “we believe that this plan could be approved quickly by Congress with bipartisan support.”

“In the spirit of bipartisanship and unity, we have developed a COVID-19 relief framework that builds on prior COVID assistance laws, all of which passed with bipartisan support,” the senators wrote to Biden. “We request the opportunity to meet with you to discuss our proposal in greater detail and how we can work together to meet the needs of the American people during this persistent pandemic.”

The letter is a clear attempt to head off Democratic efforts to pursue budget reconciliation as the pathway to the next round of coronavirus aid. This week, Democrats in both chambers are planning to pass budget resolutions allowing the party to approve Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus plan without GOP votes.

Still, that path has little room for error: All 50 Senate Democrats would need to be on board, and House leaders could afford few defections. And Republicans in a bipartisan negotiating group have urged Biden to squash the effort to move forward without them, though Democrats are skeptical they will ever come on board with the large spending plan they say is needed to revive the economy.

The Biden administration said it would see what the Senate Republicans had to offer. “We’ve received the letter and we certainly will be reviewing it over the course of the day,” Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Deese elaborated on NBC's "Meet the Press": "We've been engaging with members of Congress from both parties and both houses over the course of the last week or two. We’ll continue to do that as we go forward. And the president has said repeatedly he is open to ideas, wherever they may come, that we could improve upon the approach to actually tackling this crisis. What he's uncompromising about is the need to move with speed on a comprehensive approach here."

The Republican senators will release more details of their plan Monday, according to a Republican aide. Sunday’s letter indicated it will also extend unemployment benefits that expire in March, match Biden’s request for nutrition assistance and send a new round of payments to “those families who need assistance the most, including their dependent children and adults.” It will also address child care, small business aid and school funding.

 

Again, this is the whole "We're the ones in charge now, here's what we'll let you have" plan from the Obama days. Obama fell for it and it cost the Dems the House and in a catastrophic 2010 midterm, followed by the Senate in a 2014 midterm disaster where turnout was the lowest in generations...and then the White House in 2016.

The phenomenal gall of these bastards.

No, Biden should ignore this, and Schumer and Pelosi should press on and get 100% of what they proposed through budget reconciliation, and Dems should have a good laugh. If they fall for this, which will turn into a delay of months followed by no bill because the GOP will yank the football away, Dems will be right back to where they are now, only after having wasted 60 or 90 days or more.

Nope.

Screw 'em and take the win, guys.

StupidiNews!

• A major winter Nor'easter could drop 18-24 inches of snow in New York City and into New England over the next 48 hours.
• Several Myanmar civilian leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi, have been detained by military forces in what appears to be an apparent coup.
• Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the city's teachers' unions will delay resumption of in-person classes for at least a day as the two sides work out COVID-19 safety issues for educators.
• Donald Trump has named new impeachment lawyers Doug Schoen and Bruce Castor after Trump's entire impeachment defense team quit over the weekend.
• Researchers have finally figured out why the wombat has cubical poop, due to flexible, efficient intestines that remove nearly all the water from the wombat's waste.
  

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

As CNN polling guru Harry Enten reminds us, the GOP belongs wholly to Donald Trump even after -- and maybe directly because of -- his failed coup attempt in January.  The party is still under his near total control, and the vast majority of Republicans expect Trump to run in 2024 and win.

 

 

Donald Trump is no longer president. He no longer has the megaphone of Twitter. 

But make no mistake: This is still Trump's Republican Party. 

You see it in the actions of Republican state and local parties trying to punish those who went against Trump. You see this in a majority of congressional Republicans voting to uphold an objection to Pennsylvania's electoral votes for President Joe Biden. 

And more than that, you see it in the polling, which indicates that Trump's in a historically strong primary position for an ex-president. Indeed, he's polling tremendously well among Republicans in the context for any future presidential nominee. 

Republican leaders go against Trump at their potential electoral peril. It's not that other Republicans can't beat Trump. We'll have to wait and see on that. Rather, it's that he could be a very big voice over the next four years. 

After the US Capitol insurrection on January 6, Trump's still cruising in a potential 2024 primary. A majority of Republicans (57%) said in an Ipsos KnowledgePanel poll that he should be the 2024 nominee. 

Against named opponents, Trump easily leads the field. Among those who either voted for Trump in 2020 or are Republicans, Trump's averaging about half the primary vote. No one else is even close. 

Trump pulling in half the vote may seem low given that Trump won over 90% of the vote in the 2020 primaries. 

His position, though, is extremely unusual for a president who just lost a general election. As I've noted previously, ex-presidents usually don't lead future primary fields. Most party voters are happy to see their presidents glide into the sunset. 

The three presidents who lost their chance at another term in the polling era (Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992) were all lagging behind in early primary polling following their loss. Ford was in second place, Carter was in third place and Bush was in fourth place. None of them commanded anywhere near half the primary vote. 

How well Trump is doing puts extreme pressure on Republicans within the party to adhere to any of the ex-president's doctrine. These members of Congress and other elected (and unelected) officials know that Trump is by far the most powerful politician within the party among the base.

 

There's a hell of a lot that will happen between now and 2024, I guarantee it. But I'm not sure enough will happen to keep Trump from being the candidate again four years from now.  And let's remember, should Trump actually be convicted or die from old age or disease, the GOP will only end up finding an even nastier authoritarian monster to run the party.

We still have a long, long fight ahead of us. January 2021 felt like it took another decade off my life.

It only gets harder from here.

The Coup-Coup Birds Come Home To Roost, Con't

The FBI is finally realizing the scope and scale of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, the evidence pointing towards hundreds of terrorists in a conspiracy to kidnap and murder members of Congress in order to install Donald Trump in a second term.

When die-hard supporters of President Donald Trump showed up at rally point “Cowboy” in Louisville on the morning of Jan. 5, they found the shopping mall’s parking lot was closed to cars, so they assembled their 50 or so vehicles outside a nearby Kohl’s department store. Hundreds of miles away in Columbia, S.C., at a mall designated rally point “Rebel,” other Trump supporters gathered to form another caravan to Washington. A similar meetup — dubbed “Minuteman” — was planned for Springfield, Mass.

That same day, FBI personnel in Norfolk were increasingly alarmed by the online conversations they were seeing, including warlike talk around the convoys headed to the nation’s capital. One map posted online described the rally points, declaring them a “MAGA Cavalry To Connect Patriot Caravans to StopTheSteal in D.C.” Another map showed the U.S. Congress, indicating tunnels connecting different parts of the complex. The map was headlined, “CREATE PERIMETER,” according to the FBI report, which was reviewed by The Washington Post.

“Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in,” read one posting, according to the report.

FBI agents around the country are working to unravel the various motives, relationships, goals and actions of the hundreds of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Some inside the bureau have described the Capitol riot investigation as their biggest case since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and a top priority of the agents’ work is to determine the extent to which that violence and chaos was preplanned and coordinated.

Investigators caution there is an important legal distinction between gathering like-minded people for a political rally — which is protected by the First Amendment — and organizing an armed assault on the seat of American government. The task now is to distinguish which people belong in each category, and who played key roles in committing or coordinating the violence.

Video and court filings, for instance, describe how several groups of men that include alleged members of the Proud Boys appear to engage in concerted action, converging on the West Front of the Capitol just before 1 p.m., near the Peace Monument at First Street NW and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Different factions of the crowd appear to coalesce, move forward and chant under the direction of different leaders before charging at startled police staffing a pedestrian gate, all in the matter of a few minutes.

An indictment Friday night charged a member of the Proud Boys, Dominic Pezzola, 43, of Rochester, N.Y., with conspiracy, saying his actions showed “planning, determination, and coordination.” Another alleged member of the Proud Boys, William Pepe, 31, of Beacon, N.Y., also was charged with conspiracy.

Minutes before the crowd surge, at 12:45 p.m., police received the first report of a pipe bomb behind the Republican National Committee headquarters at the opposite, southeast side of the U.S. Capitol campus. The device and another discovered shortly afterward at Democratic National Committee headquarters included end caps, wiring, timers and explosive powder, investigators have said.

Some law enforcement officials have suggested the pipe bombs may have been a deliberate distraction meant to siphon law enforcement away from the Capitol building at the crucial moment.

The FBI is also trying to determine how many people went to Washington seeking to engage in violence, even if they weren’t part of any formal organization. Some of those in the Louisville caravan said they were animated by the belief that the election was stolen, according to interviews they gave to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Much of the discussion of potential violence occurred at TheDonald.win, where Trump’s supporters talked about the upcoming rally, sometimes in graphic terms, according to people familiar with the FBI investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open matter.

After the riot, a statement posted on the website said moderators “had been struggling for some time to address a flood of racist and violent content that appeared to be coming primarily from a small group of extremists who were often brigading from other sites,” leading to inquiries from the FBI.

One of the comments cited in the FBI memo declared Trump supporters should go to Washington and get “violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die.”

Some had been preparing for conflict for weeks.

 

Once again, this was a coordinated terrorist attack on the US Capitol. The evidence is overwhelming. And growing amounts of that evidence point to direct involvement by the Trump regime.

 

In the week leading up to the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., that exploded into an attack on the Capitol, a top Trump campaign fundraiser issued a directive to a woman who had been overseeing planning for the event.

“Get the budget and vendors breakdown to me and Justin,” Caroline Wren wrote to Cindy Chafian, a self-described “constitutional conservative,” in a Dec. 28 text message obtained by ProPublica.

Wren was no ordinary event planner. She served as a deputy to Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, at Trump Victory, a joint presidential fundraising committee during the 2020 campaign. The Justin mentioned in her text was Justin Caporale, a former top aide to first lady Melania Trump, whose production company helped put on the event at the Ellipse.

Text messages and an event-planning memo obtained by ProPublica, along with an interview with Chafian, indicate that Wren, a Washington insider with a low public profile, played an extensive role in managing operations for the event. The records show that Wren oversaw logistics, budgeting, funding and messaging for the Jan. 6 rally that featured President Donald Trump.

Chafian told ProPublica that Wren and others had pushed her aside as plans intensified, including as a late effort was made to get Trump to speak at the event.

On Dec. 29, after receiving the budget, Wren instructed Chafian, via text, to hold off on printing event-related slogans “until we decide what the messaging is and we have no clue on timing because it all depends on the votes that day so we won’t know timing for a few more days.” The “timing” appears to be a reference to Congress’ Jan. 6 vote to certify the election results.

Wren’s services were enlisted by a major donor to Trump’s presidential campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported Saturday that Julie Jenkins Fancelli, the heiress to Publix Super Markets, committed some $300,000 to fund the Jan. 6 rally.

The funding commitment by Fancelli, who Federal Election Commission records show has donated more than $1 million to Trump Victory, the president’s campaign and the Republican National Committee since 2018, was facilitated by the right-wing conspiracy peddler Alex Jones, the Journal reported. Chafian told ProPublica that she herself had been directed by Jones to Wren, who, she was told, had ties to a wealthy donor who wanted to support the January affair. Chafian said the donor is a woman but wouldn’t disclose her name, citing a confidentiality agreement.

Fancelli hasn’t responded to messages left at numbers listed for her.

The Associated Press had previously reported that Wren was listed as a “VIP Advisor” in an attachment to a National Park Service permit for the Jan. 6 event issued to Women for America First, a pro-Trump nonprofit run by the mother-daughter duo Amy and Kylie Jane Kremer. Chafian had worked on and off with Women for America First since October 2019.

But that title gives little indication of the scope of Wren’s role in managing the “March to Save America” event, where the president would tell thousands of supporters to walk to the Capitol and “demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated,” the records show.

A guidance memo provided to VIP attendees of the Jan. 6 rally further establishes Wren’s centrality to the event. She is listed, along with three other people, as one of the primary points of contact for the demonstration. The Kremers, whose nonprofit was attached to the event, are not mentioned at all.

Wren hasn’t responded to requests for comment about the role she played in organizing the Jan. 6 rally. In a statement to the Journal, she said her role in the event was to “assist many others in providing and arranging for a professionally produced event at the Ellipse.” She was last paid by the Trump campaign on Nov. 15, a campaign spokesman said, adding that the campaign “did not organize, operate or finance the event” and any former staffers who worked on the event “did not do so at the direction of the Trump campaign.”

 

In other words, all of this was planned from the top, to get Donald Trump to the event so that he would light the final fuse on the Capitol assault. The Trump regime knew what was coming, donors knew what was coming, the terrorists knew what was coming, and the Capitol Police had no clue, and all of that was part of the plan.

In fact, the Capitol Police were left high and dry deliberately, because we now know that Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller ordered the DC National Guard not to interfere with the US Capitol terrorists.

In testimony before the House last week, Capitol Police and D.C. National Guard officials acknowledged that by Jan. 4 they understood that "… the January 6th event would not be like any of the previous protests held in 2020. We knew that militia groups and white supremacist organizations would be attending. We also knew that some of these participants were intending to bring firearms and other weapons to the event. We knew that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target."

On that same day, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller issued a memo to the secretary of the Army placing some extremely unusual limits on National Guard forces for that event. It's not a to-do list. It's a list of thou shalt nots. A long list. A list that says guard forces can't arrest any of the pro-Trump protesters, or search them, or even touch them. And that's just for starters.

The full memo shows that the D.C. Guard did receive a request from D.C. government for guard presence during the Jan. 6 event. Miller responds promptly to go ahead, so long as the soldiers are given no weapons, no body armor, and no helmets. They can bring agents like pepper spray or flashbangs. They can't share any gear with Capitol Police or Metro D.C. Police. They can't … really do much of anything.

When initial reports indicate that the handful of National Guard forces that were deployed to D.C. on that day were dedicated to directing traffic several blocks away from the area of the Trump rally, it may simply be because that's the only thing they could find for them to do considering the restrictions that were given. It's clear that these restrictions would have absolutely prevented any guard forces from trying to protect any location. 

And it nearly worked because the Trump regime deliberately blinded law enforcement to Trump's right-wing cultist allies. 

As racial justice protests erupted nationwide last year, President Donald J. Trump, struggling to find a winning campaign theme, hit on a message that he stressed over and over: The real domestic threat to the United States emanated from the radical left, even though law enforcement authorities had long since concluded it came from the far right.

It was a message that was quickly embraced and amplified by his attorney general and his top homeland security officials, who translated it into a shift in criminal justice and national security priorities even as Mr. Trump was beginning to openly stoke the outrage that months later would culminate in the storming of the Capitol by right-wing extremists.

Mr. Trump’s efforts to focus his administration on the antifa movement and leftist groups did not stop the Justice Department and the F.B.I. from pursuing cases of right-wing extremism. They broke up a kidnapping plot, for example, targeting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat.

But the effect of his direction was nonetheless substantial, according to interviews with current and former officials, diverting key portions of the federal law enforcement and domestic security agencies at a time when the threat from the far right was building ominously.

In late spring and early summer, as the racial justice demonstrations intensified, Justice Department officials began shifting federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents from investigations into violent white supremacists to focus on cases involving rioters or anarchists, including those who might be associated with the antifa movement. One Justice Department prosecutor was sufficiently concerned about an excessive focus on antifa that the official went to the department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, telling his office that politics might have played a part.

Federal prosecutors and agents felt pressure to uncover a left-wing extremist criminal conspiracy that never materialized, according to two people who worked on Justice Department efforts to counter domestic terrorism. They were told to do so even though the F.B.I., in particular, had increasingly expressed concern about the threat from white supremacists, long the top domestic terrorism threat, and well-organized far-right extremist groups that had allied themselves with the president.

White House and Justice Department officials stifled internal efforts to publicly promote concerns about the far-right threat, with aides to Mr. Trump seeking to suppress the phrase “domestic terrorism” in internal discussions, according to a former official at the Department of Homeland Security.

Requests for funding to bolster the number of analysts who search social media posts for warnings of potential violent extremism were denied by top homeland security officials, limiting the department’s ability to spot developing threats like the post-Election Day anger among far-right groups over Mr. Trump’s loss.

The scale and intensity of the threat developing on the right became stunningly clear on Jan. 6, when news broadcasts and social media were flooded with images of far-right militias, followers of the QAnon conspiracy movement and white supremacists storming the Capitol.

Militias and other dangerous elements of the far right saw “an ally in the White House,” said Mary McCord, a former Justice Department official who teaches at Georgetown University and focuses on domestic terrorism. “That has, I think, allowed them to grow and recruit and try to mainstream their opinions, which is why I think you end up seeing what we saw” at the Capitol.

 

We can and should draw a line from Trump to the militias to the US Capitol terrorist attack.

 

It came within one brave man leading the mob away from the House Chamber of turning into a massacre and a very possible coup. 

Remember that. Remember how close we came to a firefight in the well of the House. How close we came to losing dozens of members of Congress, perhaps enough to allow the seditionists in the GOP to install Trump.

And never forget.

Sunday Long Read: One Step Away

For millions of Americans, a lost job or a major illness can be a serious financial problem. For the increasingly fragile Black middle-class, one bad roll of the dice is absolute disaster and a near-guaranteed fall into long-term poverty.

 

Among Dee’s friends, talking about money is considered impolite. But that’s not really what stops her. “Most of my peers are white,” she says, “and I get very angry about the systemic inequality evident in our situations, and their seeming obliviousness to it.”

Dee’s family has been middle-class and college-educated going back three generations, “since Black people reasonably could be,” she says. Her maternal grandparents were the children of sharecroppers in the South, migrated north as adults, got graduate degrees, and, unlike millions of Black Americans who were unable to secure mortgages at the time due to racist housing covenants and lending practices, bought a home.

Homeownership was, and remains, the beating heart of wealth accumulation for the American middle class. Our society privileges homeowners in everything from the tax code to the availability of home equity lines to membership requirements for neighborhood associations. You buy a place, that place grows in value, and either you trade up to a bigger place or you keep it until you can pass it down to your kids or your kids get the money from its sale. Stability gives birth to even more stability.

That’s not what happened with Dee’s family. “My grandparents were bludgeoned every time the economy took a downturn,” Dee recalls, in part because of the legacy of redlining and the devaluation of property in Black neighborhoods. “They ended up losing their house. They had enough to live on, but no wealth.” The same happened to her parents. She says they were “destroyed” by the 2008 housing crisis, which disproportionately affected Black homeowners, many of whom, because of longstanding discriminatory lending practices, believed subprime mortgages were the best financing option available to them. Dee’s grandparents managed to make ends meet, but their retirement savings were drastically diminished, and they’ll eventually require some subsidization from Dee.

But Dee, 41, has been struggling for years to find something approximating financial security in her own life. She lives in the Hudson Valley, north of New York City, with her partner and two kids. She and her partner make around $200,000 a year. At more than three times the national median household income, this sounds like a big number, but every month, they found their resources depleted. Before the pandemic, they were allocating most of their money toward their mortgage, child care, and student loans. They’d been putting money into their kids’ 529 college savings accounts, but otherwise the focus has been on credit card and student loan debt, which they’ve just started to be able to actually pay off. These days, they’re no longer paying expensive child care bills, but there’s a real threat that Dee’s partner’s job could disappear at any moment, at which point they would immediately start drowning in debt.

Dee describes herself as frustrated and so very, very angry. “Having everything ‘right’ and still living with precarity, literally living paycheck to paycheck, is deeply upsetting,” she says. Which is why her extra income is going toward her kids’ college savings: to prevent them starting their lives already behind, the way she feels she did. The hole Dee dug in search of middle-class stability for her family is so deep that she’d realistically need to double, even triple her income to pull herself out and have enough to stabilize her parents as well.

She doesn’t have a ton of hope that will happen. “I live in America,” she says. “There is no support for middle-class families, and there is no targeted support for those who have suffered from systemic racism. It’s getting harder and harder to maintain a middle-class life.”

Dee’s story is illustrative of just how different the hollowing of the middle class can feel, depending on your race and family history. Unlike many white middle-class Americans who find themselves bewildered by the prospect of going financially backward from their parents, Dee watched as her family’s best-laid plans for a steady, middle-class future were foiled, again and again, by economic catastrophes in which losses were disproportionately absorbed by Black Americans.

As economists William Darity Jr., Fenaba Addo, and Imari Smith recently explained, “for Black Americans, the issue may not be restoring its middle class, but constructing a robust middle class in the first place.” For families like Dee’s, the stability of the middle class has always been a mirage. And you can’t hollow out what’s never actually existed.

 

And for Black America, that's been true. There's always the risk that you lose it all, because you have to bet it all to get ahead. Every door you come to has a higher and higher price, one that isn't true for tens of millions of white Americans. 

 

One wrong move in a system that rigged specifically to see you fail, and more often than not, you fail.

 

You don't always come back.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.