The Fires Of Alexandria

They've come for abortion, for LGBTQ+ equality, for civil rights, for voting rights, for public education, now the GOP is coming to destroy your county library branch. 

 

In early November, an email from a citizen dropped into the inbox of Judge Ron Cunningham, the silver-haired head chair of the governing body of Llano County in Texas’s picturesque Hill Country. The subject line read “Pornographic Filth at the Llano Public Libraries.”

“It came to my attention a few weeks ago that pornographic filth has been discovered at the Llano library,” wrote Bonnie Wallace, a 54-year-old local church volunteer. “I’m not advocating for any book to be censored but to be RELOCATED to the ADULT section. … It is the only way I can think of to prohibit censorship of books I do agree with, mainly the Bible, if more radicals come to town and want to use the fact that we censored these books against us.”

Wallace had attached an Excel spreadsheet of about 60 books she found objectionable, including those about transgender teens, sex education and race, including such notable works as “Between the World and Me,” by author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, an exploration of the country’s history written as a letter to his adolescent son. Not long after, the county’s chief librarian sent the list to Suzette Baker, head of one of the library’s three branches.

“She told me to look at pulling the books off the shelf and possibly putting them behind the counter. I told them that was censorship,” Baker said.

Wallace’s list was the opening salvo in a censorship battle that is unlikely to end well for proponents of free speech in this county of 21,000 nestled in rolling hills of mesquite trees and cactus northwest of Austin.

Leaders have taken works as seemingly innocuous as the popular children’s picture book “In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak off the shelves, closed library board meetings to the public and named Wallace the vice chair of a new library board stacked with conservative appointees — some of whom did not even have library cards.

With these actions, Llano joins a growing number of communities across America where conservatives have mounted challenges to books and other content related to race, sex, gender and other subjects they deem inappropriate. A movement that started in schools has rapidly expanded to public libraries, accounting for 37 percent of book challenges last year, according to the American Library Association. Conservative activists in several states, including Texas, Montana and Louisiana have joined forces with like-minded officials to dissolve libraries’ governing bodies, rewrite or delete censorship protections, and remove books outside of official challenge procedures.

“The danger is that we start to have information and books that only address one viewpoint that are okayed by just one certain group,” said Mary Woodward, president-elect of the Texas Library Association.

“We lose that diversity of thought and diversity of ideas libraries are known for — and only represent one viewpoint that is the loudest,” said Woodward, noting that there have been an estimated 17 challenges leveled at public libraries in Texas recently and that she expects many more.

Leila Green Little, a parent and board member of the Llano County Library System Foundation, said her anti-censorship group obtained dozens of emails from country officials that reveal the outsize influence a small but vocal group of conservative Christian and tea party activists wielded over the county commissioners to reshape the library system to their own ideals.

In one of the emails, which were obtained through a public records request and shared with The Washington Post, Cunningham seemed to question whether public libraries were even necessary.

“The board also needs to recognize that the county is not mandated by law to provide a public library,” Cunningham wrote to Wallace in January.

 

Indeed, here in Kentucky, the latest GOP-controlled state legislative session has handed complete control of non-partisan county library boards solely to elected, partisan county judge-executives, who would determine board members. And any project more than $1 million would require Kentucky's county fiscal courts, who could simply block all new library projects.

We're now officially in the era of "Do we really need libraries when Google is available?"

And uneducated populace is easier to control, of course.  That's the point.

Sunday Long Read: The Right-Wing Slime Machine

Millions upon millions are being spent by a Republican dark money group with one purpose and one purpose only: to attack every single nominee Joe Biden has put forth that requires Senate approval, with the goal to do whatever it takes to convince at least one Democrat to sink them...because one Democratic senator is all it takes. 

During the autos-da-fé that now pass for Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate, it’s common for supporters of a nominee to dismiss attacks from the opposing party as mere partisanship. But, during the recent hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, Andrew C. McCarthy—a Republican former federal prosecutor and a prominent legal commentator at National Review—took the unusual step of denouncing an attack from his own side. When Republican senators, including Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn, began accusing Jackson of having been a dangerously lenient judge toward sex offenders, McCarthy wrote a column calling the charge “meritless to the point of demagoguery.” He didn’t like Jackson’s judicial philosophy, but “the implication that she has a soft spot for ‘sex offenders’ who ‘prey on children’ . . . is a smear.”

In the end, the attacks failed to diminish public support for Jackson, and her poised responses to questioning helped secure her nomination, by a vote of 53–47. But the fierce campaign against her was concerning, in part because it was spearheaded by a new conservative dark-money group that was created in 2020: the American Accountability Foundation. An explicit purpose of the A.A.F.—a politically active, tax-exempt nonprofit charity that doesn’t disclose its backers—is to prevent the approval of all Biden Administration nominees.

While the hearings were taking place, the A.A.F. publicly took credit for uncovering a note in the Harvard Law Review in which, they claimed, Jackson had “argued that America’s judicial system is too hard on sexual offenders.” The group also tweeted that she had a “soft-on-sex-offender” record during her eight years as a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. As the Washington Post and other outlets stated, Jackson’s sentencing history on such cases was well within the judicial mainstream, and in line with a half-dozen judges appointed by the Trump Administration. When Jackson defended herself on this point during the hearings, the A.A.F. said, on Twitter, that she was “lying.” The group’s allegation—reminiscent of the QAnon conspiracy, which claims that liberal élites are abusing and trafficking children—rippled through conservative circles. Tucker Carlson repeated the accusation on his Fox News program while a chyron declared “jackson lenient in child sex cases.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist representative from Georgia, called Jackson “pro-pedophile.”

Mudslinging is hardly new to American politics. In 1800, a campaign surrogate for Thomas Jefferson called Jefferson’s opponent, John Adams, “hermaphroditical”; Adams’s supporters predicted that if Jefferson were elected President he would unleash a reign of “murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest.” Neither the Democratic nor Republican Party is above reproach when it comes to engaging in calumny, and since at least 1987, when President Ronald Reagan unsuccessfully nominated Robert Bork to be a Justice, the fights over Supreme Court nominees have been especially nasty. Yet the A.A.F.’s approach represents a new escalation in partisan warfare, and underscores the growing role that secret spending has played in deepening the polarization in Washington.

Rather than attack a single candidate or nominee, the A.A.F. aims to thwart the entire Biden slate. The obstructionism, like the Republican blockade of Biden’s legislative agenda in Congress, is the end in itself. The group hosts a Web site, bidennoms.com, that displays the photographs of Administration nominees it has targeted, as though they were hunting trophies. And the A.A.F. hasn’t just undermined nominees for Cabinet and Court seats—the kinds of prominent people whose records are usually well known and well defended. It’s also gone after relatively obscure, sub-Cabinet-level political appointees, whose public profiles can be easily distorted and who have little entrenched support. The A.A.F., which is run by conservative white men, has particularly focussed on blocking women and people of color. As of last month, more than a third of the twenty-nine candidates it had publicly attacked were people of color, and nearly sixty per cent were women.

Among the nominees the group boasts of having successfully derailed are Saule Omarova, a nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, and Sarah Bloom Raskin, whom Biden named to be the vice-chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board. David Chipman, whom the President wanted to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and David Weil, Biden’s choice for the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor, both saw their nominations founder in the wake of A.A.F. attacks. Currently, the group is waging a negative campaign against Lisa Cook, who, if confirmed, would become the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

Tom Jones, the A.A.F.’s founder and executive director, is a longtime Beltway operative specializing in opposition research. Records show that over the years he has worked for several of the most conservative Republicans to have served in the Senate, including Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin; Ted Cruz, of Texas; Jim DeMint, of South Carolina; and John Ensign, of Nevada, for whom Jones was briefly a legislative director. In 2016, Jones ran the opposition-research effort for Cruz’s failed Presidential campaign. When I asked Jones for an interview, through the A.A.F.’s online portal, he replied, “Ms. Meyers . . . Go pound sand.” Citing an article that I had written debunking attacks on Bloom Raskin from moneyed interests, including the A.A.F., he said, “You are a liberal hack masquerading as an investigative journalist—and not a very good one.” Jones subsequently posted this comment on his group’s Twitter account, along with my e-mail address and cell-phone number.

A decade ago, Bill Dauster, a Democrat who is now the chief counsel to the Senate Budget Committee, helped Jones organize a bipartisan Torah study group for Jewish congressional staffers. Dauster recalls him as “soft-spoken and cordial,” and finds it hard to reconcile the man he knew with Jones’s current persona. “I find what he appears to have done quite distasteful,” he said.

In interviews with right-wing media outlets, Jones hasn’t been shy about his intentions. Last April, he told Fox News, which called A.A.F.’s tactics “controversial,” that his group wants to “take a big handful of sand and throw it in the gears of the Biden Administration,” making it “as difficult as possible” for the President and his allies on Capitol Hill “to implement their agenda.” When asked why his group was bothering to attack sub-Cabinet-level appointees, he explained that people in “that second tier are really the folks who are going to do the day-to-day work implementing the agenda.”

Last year, an A.A.F. member infiltrated a Zoom training session for congressional staffers about the ethics rules surrounding earmarks—pet spending projects that lawmakers write into the federal budget. The infiltrator asked leading questions during the meeting and then posted a recording of it online. The attempted sting backfired: nothing incriminating was said, and the A.A.F.’s underhanded tactics became the story. Evan Hollander, then the spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, told The Hill that, “for a group that purports to concern itself with ethics, using fake identities, misrepresenting themselves as Congressional staff and surreptitiously recording meetings is hypocritical in the extreme.”

Jones made no apologies. He told Fox News, “I’m never doing anything illegal. But just because it’s impolite to log into an earmark-training seminar and offend the morals of Capitol Hill staff, that’s not going to stop me from doing it.” He added, “If I’ve got to trail someone on the ground to find out what they’re doing, I’m totally going to do it. Because people who are making decisions need to have this information—they need to understand who they are trusting with the reins of government. And sometimes that means we will use unorthodox methods.” 

 

And once again, the target is to create whatever is needed to cause enough of an uproar to sink a Biden appointee, and again, all they have to do is swing one Democratic senator for whatever reason.

Last Call For Moose Lady Blues

With the death of long-time Alaska GOP cash sponge Rep. Don Young, Sarah Palin is the by far most well-known name running for his spot in a crowd of dozens of comers, but that doesn't mean she's going to win.

The Matanuska-Susitna Valley, a lush patch of the state where the lakes are fed by glacial meltwater, is where Sarah Palin launched her political career three decades ago. In the heart of the state’s conservative movement, she rose from city council member to small-town mayor, before beating a sitting Republican governor and becoming the GOP nominee for vice president in 2008.

But to construction contractor Jesse Sumner, who was born and raised in the valley and in 2018 was elected to the local borough assembly on a platform of fiscal conservatism and gun rights, that’s all a distant memory overshadowed by what he sees as years of political neglect. Now, as Palin seeks a comeback in a run for Alaska’s only U.S. House seat, she won’t be getting his support.

“I think maybe she left us behind somewhere on the way to fame,” said Sumner, who has supported the candidacy of one of Palin’s opponents since last fall and is not changing his plans. He complained that Palin — who has spent much of the past decade as a right-wing celebrity, bouncing between reality TV, cable news punditry and the Trump movement — hasn’t been involved in Alaska politics since leaving office in 2009.

When she did show up at a Republican fundraiser last year, “everybody was surprised to see her there,” Sumner said.

Such sentiments, which voters and activists across the state shared in recent interviews, loom over Palin’s campaign for an open seat. It’s the first time in five decades that Republican Rep. Don Young, who died last month, won’t be on the ballot. The top four vote-getters in June’s nonpartisan primary will move on to a special election in August under a recently implemented ranked-choice voting system. Nearly 50 candidates have entered the race.

But none are as well-known outside Alaska as Palin, making the race a test of power of national political celebrity in a state where local relationships and reputations have long been crucial. She announced her campaign on April 1, two weeks after Young’s death, filing the paperwork to run minutes before the state’s deadline.

The campaign has also become a barometer of the influence of former president Donald Trump. Years before Trump was elected president, Palin embodied a similar brand of combative politics that fired up far right voters and alarmed many in GOP leadership. She supported him in 2016 and he has endorsed her this year, even as many key Republicans in the state have gone in a different direction.

When asked about Palin’s candidacy, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski (daughter to Frank Murkowski, the governor Palin once defeated) touted the other four dozen candidates and said she couldn’t name the last time she saw Palin in Alaska, because it had been “years.” Murkowski also faces reelection this year, with Trump backing her main rival, Kelly Tshibaka.

Palin’s campaign did not grant requests for an interview with her. The campaign provided a written statement from an unnamed campaign adviser saying Palin “believes that America is at a tipping point and that the hard-working men and women of Alaska deserve a champion in Washington to fight for them against the destructive policies of the far left.” The statement echoed Trump in mentioning “fake news” and disdaining “Washington elites.”

But there are few signs of a detailed policy platform from Palin. Her campaign statement said she wants to help Alaskans “lead the next energy renaissance.” Her campaign website is thin on specifics and, instead, showcases photos of her in fishing bibs, horseback riding, and at Trump rallies. Her Twitter feed touts endorsements from national Republican figures such as former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.

Palin may still be crafting her strategy and message with only seven weeks until the primary, but University of Alaska Fairbanks political science professor Amy Lovecraft said the House campaign is surprisingly quiet in terms of advertising and events. She attributes that to the scramble caused by Young’s sudden death and adapting to the new nonpartisan primary format. Plus, she said, candidates with high name recognition may be biding their time, assuming they will make it through the first round.

“The people who think they have the best shot at Young’s seat may be saving their money for a knockdown, drag-out election later,” Lovecraft said.

 

Between this and endorsing J.D. Vance in Ohio's Senate race (and Herschel Walker in Georgia's Senate race), Donald Trump is larding the galley with real losers. We'll see if any of them can get past a primary.

Last Call For Time For Some Traffic Problems On The Border, Con't

The backlash over Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott's new truck inspection regime on incoming trucks from Mexico was so massive this week that Abbott has now dropped the program completely.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday repealed his traffic-clogging immigration order that backed up commercial trucks at the U.S.-Mexico border, after a week of intensifying backlash and fears of deepening economic losses.

The Republican governor dropped his new rules that had required all commercial trucks from Mexico to undergo extra inspections to curb the flow of migrants and drugs and ratcheted up a fight with the Biden administration over immigration policy.

Some truckers reported waiting more than 30 hours to cross. Others blocked one of the world’s busiest trade bridges in protest.

Abbott, who is up for reelection in November and has made the border his top issue, fully lifted the inspections after reaching agreements with neighboring Mexican states that he says outline new commitments to border security. The last one was signed Friday with the governor of Tamaulipas, who this week said the inspections were overzealous and created havoc.

When Abbott first ordered the inspections, he did not say lifting them was conditional on such arrangements with Mexico.

Pressure was building on Abbott to retreat as gridlock on the border worsened and frustration mounted. The American Trucking Association called the inspections “wholly flawed, redundant and adding considerable weight on an already strained supply chain.”

The U.S.-Mexico border is crucial to the U.S. economy and more of it is in Texas — roughly 1,200 miles (1,931 kilometers) — than any other state. The United States last year imported $390.7 billion worth of goods from Mexico, second only to China.

Abbott began the inspections after the Biden administration said pandemic-related restrictions on claiming asylum at the border would be lifted May 23. He called the inspections a “zero tolerance policy for unsafe vehicles” smuggling migrants. He said Texas would take several steps in response to the end of the asylum restrictions, which is expected to lead to an increase in migrants coming to the border.

State troopers inspected more than 6,000 commercial vehicles over the past week, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Nearly one in four trucks were pulled off the road for what the agency described as serious violations that included defective tires and brakes.

The agency made no mention of the inspections turning up migrants or drugs.

 

So the inspections failed to turn up any drugs or human trafficking that the Feds missed, which was ostensibly the whole point of the exercise, but it instead forced three Mexican governors into unenforceable agreements and cost the country at least $150,000,000 and probably closer to several billion in economic damage, all of which he can now blame on Biden.

Let's see, there's a legal term for someone who forces change in government policy through damage or disruption to systems, isn't there?

Oh right, terrorism.

This was a terrorist attack that cost billions.

Greg Abbott should be in a cell awaiting trial.

The Big Lie, Con't

Another hard reminder that Republicans besides Trump and his White House flunkies were actively working to overthrow the election, and that includes multiple sitting GOP members of Congress. That includes Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee and Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy, who actively plotted with Trump WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to declare Trump the winner fraudulently leading up to January 6th, 2021.

In the weeks between the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, almost 100 text messages from two staunch GOP allies of then-President Donald Trump reveal an aggressive attempt to lobby, encourage and eventually warn the White House over its efforts to overturn the election, according to messages obtained by the House select committee and reviewed by CNN.

The texts, which have not been previously reported, were sent by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The text exchanges show that both members of Congress initially supported legal challenges to the election but ultimately came to sour on the effort and the tactics deployed by Trump and his team. 

"We're driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic," Roy texted Meadows on January 1. That text was first released in December by the House select committee and described as being written by a House Freedom Caucus member. Roy's authorship has not been previously reported. 

When situated in the overall timeline of events between the election and January 6, the series of texts from Lee and Roy provide new details about how two Trump allies went from fierce advocates of the former President's push to overturn Joe Biden's win to disheartened bystanders. By January 3, Lee was texting Meadows that the effort "could all backfire badly." 

But shortly after the election, both men were encouraging Trump to keep fighting.
In a series of texts to Meadows on November 7, Lee offered his "unequivocal support for you to exhaust every legal and constitutional remedy at your disposal to restore Americans faith in our elections." 

Lee went on: "This fight is about the fundamental fairness and integrity of our election system. The nation is depending upon your continued resolve. Stay strong and keep fighting Mr. President." 

Also on November 7, Roy wrote to Meadows, "We need ammo. We need fraud examples. We need it this weekend." 

In a statement to CNN, Lee's communications director, Lee Lonsberry, said, "I'd like to highlight that Senator Lee has been fully transparent," pointing to how Lee had called for an investigation into claims of fraud in the 2020 election but ultimately recognized Biden as president-elect and voted to certify the electoral results on January 6. 

 

The heart of the conspiracy here consisted of the pleas by Lee, Roy, and several other Republicans for Trump to get alternate slates of electors in order to make the election theft workable, and to use the chaos of January 6th as cover to initiate the plan to steal the White House.

 

The slates of electors didn't arrive in time, and when they were created, they were ludicrously illegitimate. 

The problem now is Trump has his own slate of GOP Secretaries of State who will steal the electoral votes for him in 2024. Lee, Roy, Trump, and the rest of the GOP were unable to steal the election in 2020 because states didn't play ball.

In 2024, they'll declare Trump the winner before the voting even happens.

 

The Great Debate Debate Debate

The Republican party is packing up from any future presidential debates and is going home.

The Republican National Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates, saying the group that has run the debates for decades was biased and refused to enact reforms.

"We are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people," the committee's chairperson, Ronna McDaniel, said in a statement.

The RNC's action requires Republican candidates to agree in writing to appear only in primary and general election debates sanctioned by the committee.

The nonprofit commission, founded in 1987 to codify the debates as a permanent part of presidential elections, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It was unclear what format future RNC-backed debates would take or whether they would take place as often as in recent decades.

The move, which followed months of wrangling between the RNC and the commission, will potentially deprive voters of seeing Republican and Democratic candidates on the same stage.

Millions of Americans usually watch the presidential debates, and many viewers say they help them make up their minds about whom to vote for, according to research by the Pew Research Center.

The Democratic National Committee, the RNC's counterpart for President Joe Biden's party, accused Republicans of trying to hide from voters.

"Voters can count on hearing from President Biden and Vice President (Kamala) Harris, who are proud of their records," DNC chairperson Jaime Harrison said in a statement.

 

It's true, and Democrats need to be blasting Republicans for the next two years over this.  As Steve M. says, if Democrats don't strike now on this, Republicans will set up their own actually biased FOX News, Newsmax, and OANN debate "moderators" and force Democrats into playing their game.

And I think they should say now that they intend to continue working with the Commission on Presidential Debates, because the CPD has been the gold standard since 1987. As I said in January, the Democratic nominee should agree to debate the Republican and also encourage participation by the better-known minor candidates, and should go ahead with the debate, along with just the Green and Libertarian candidates if necessary, if (when) the Republican doesn't show up. Make Trump or DeSantis look like the one who's afraid to debate.

But as I also said in January, Democrats won't do this. Out of fear that they'll look like debate dodgers, they'll allow themselves to be dragged into the GOP's process and ultimately agree to it.

I hope I'm wrong about that.

 

 I think DNC chair Jaime Harrison is smart enough not to fall for this.  We'll see.

Last Call For Ad-Vance Notice

 It looks like Donald Trump will be endorsing J.D. Vance in Ohio's Senate Primary after all, and now the question is this late in the game, with the primary less than 3 weeks away, will it be enough to get Vance out of his single-digit poll showing?

Former President Trump is planning to endorse J.D. Vance in Ohio's crowded senate GOP primary, according to three sources with knowledge of his decision.

In recent days, Trump began calling donors and advisers to get their opinion endorsing on the “Hillbilly Elegy” author, but he held off under intense pressure from the rival Republican campaigns of Josh Mandel and Jane Timken, the sources said.

"The Mandel people hit the roof," one Republican with knowledge of the discussions told NBC News, noting that Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan tried to dissuade Trump on behalf of Mandel, whom the congressman supports.

The May 3 primary is winner take all — meaning the candidate with the plurality wins.

Though Trump's press shop had already written up an endorsement of Vance, a source close to Mandel’s campaign said Thursday that it threw up a last-minute obstacle for the former president to consider: an internal Republican poll conducted by his campaign showing Mandel in front with 33 percent of the vote, followed by Matt Dolan and Mike Gibbons tied at 15 percent. Vance and Jane Timken were tied at 9 percent in the Mandel poll.

The poll showed that, even with Trump's endorsement, Vance rose to 15 percent support but was still in a three-way tie for second with Mandel marginally in the lead at 19 percent — a sign that Trump's endorsement had weight but was not determinative.

 

Trump will be in Ohio on April 23, in which case it's now no longer a mystery as to who he is going to endorse.

So yeah, it's going to be fun times in Ohio.

 

 

Tech Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself, Con't

 After buying a decent-sized chunk of Twitter last month, megabillionaire Elon Musk discovered that being the largest shareholder of a social media company that you're already in trouble for using to your advantage to manipulate your company stocks with has headaches of its own. Offered a seat on Twitter's board of directors, Musk walked away from a background check and the fine print of realizing he couldn't use Twitter to play stock games if he was bound to the company like that.

So now, Musk says he'll just buy the whole company and make his own rules.

Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share in a filing published Thursday, saying the social media company needs to be transformed privately, a little over a week after first revealing a 9.2% stake in the company. Musk’s offer values Twitter at about $43 billion.

“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk wrote in a letter sent to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor and disclosed in a securities filing.

According to Musk, the social media company needs to go private because it can “neither thrive nor serve” free speech in its current state.

“As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced,” he wrote. “My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”

Twitter shares jumped more than 6% in premarket trading after closing at $45.85 a share on Wednesday. Musk tapped Morgan Stanley as a financial advisor, according to the filing.

“The Twitter Board of Directors will carefully review the proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the Company and all Twitter stockholders,” the company said in a statement Thursday in response to the offer. CNBC’s David Faber reported on “Squawk on the Street” that Twitter’s board will meet at 10 a.m. to evaluate the bid, per people familiar.

The news comes just days after Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal warned investors of “distractions ahead.”

Musk first disclosed his stake in the social media giant on April 4. He later landed a seat on the company’s board of directors before reversing those plans.

The Tesla CEO has previously criticized the social media giant publicly, polling people on Twitter last month about whether the company abides by free speech principles. He also said he was considering building a new social media platform.

Shares of Twitter have seesawed in recent weeks amid the news from Musk, but are up 6% this year and 18.5% since the start of the month.

 

Understand that while I said that thought Musk was getting a deal with his 10% of the company and a seat on the board to manipulate the social media platform, Musk is clearly willing to buy the whole platform, take it private, and make it answerable to nobody but Elon Musk himself. Doing that with a global social media platform is wildly disturbing and unethical considering Musk's behavior on Twitter over the years, using it to goose stock prices where he makes billions and pays "wipe my ass" chicken feed in SEC fines.

 

With the entire structure of Twitter at his command, he could make it do whatever he wanted.

 

You know, like bring Donald Trump back and ban anyone he didn't like. The terms and conditions of Twitter usage would be "Screw you, I'm Elon Musk." Accountability would be zero, he could start charging all users instead of just Twitter Blue accounts, he could rename the service "Musktown" and more importantly, he'd have full control over every word on the platform.

If you're like me and believe that no one person should have that kind of power, well, we'll see what Twitter's board says.

The Highway To Gilead Starts Here In Kentucky

Kentucky Republicans have beaten all other states to the punch in ending abortion, overriding Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's veto (reminder that KY only requires simple majorities to override, so anything that passes the KY House and Senate can become law) and the law takes effect immediately. The road to Gilead has just become a highway to hell.

Kentucky's Republican-controlled General Assembly on Wednesday voted to override Gov. Andy Beshear's veto of an "omnibus" abortion bill that opponents say is so broad it will shut down access in the state.

And because it contains an emergency provision, House Bill 3 will become law as soon as it gets the signature of Senate President Robert Stivers, expected later Wednesday.

Opponents said Wednesday they would immediately head to federal court asking a judge to block House Bill 3.

Final passage of HB 3 makes Kentucky the first state to end all access to abortion, opponents said.

"Make no mistake, the Kentucky legislature's sole goal with this law is to shut down health centers and completely eliminate abortion access in this state," leaders with Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.

Supporters of HB 3, including Rep. Nancy Tate, R-Brandenburg, have said it's to protect women's health and expand rights of parents of minors who get abortions.

Lawyers for opponents said they would ask a judge in U.S. District Court in Louisville to block enforcement of the law while their challenge is pending.

But in the meantime, HB 3 likely would mean at least a temporary disruption in abortion services, they said.

Kentucky has two abortion providers, EMW Women's Surgical Center and Planned Parenthood, both in Louisville.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing EMW, said its lawyers would file a lawsuit challenging the law Wednesday evening. Planned Parenthood said it would file its challenge early Thursday morning.

Opponents of the bill spent most of the day at the Capitol Wednesday protesting and could be heard shouting "Bans off our bodies!" as the House first voted to override the veto, followed several hours later by the Senate.

 

Reminder as to what the law now does:

HB 3 includes multiple new restrictions on abortion including:

• A ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
• A ban on medication by mail used to terminate early pregnancies.
• New restrictions for girls under 18 seeking abortions, including those asking a judge's permission for the procedure when a parent is not available or unlikely to approve because of abuse or neglect.
• A requirement that fetal remains be disposed of by burial or cremation, which could add hundreds of dollars of costs to the procedure.
• A requirement that the Cabinet for Health and Family Services create an extensive system to certify and oversee anyone who manufactures, ships or dispenses the two-drug regimen to end a pregnancy.
• A requirement that the state set up a complaint portal online and list all health workers who provide abortions or abortion medication. It would allow anonymous complaints and require the state to investigate all of them.

 

In other words, the law is specifically designed to drive the last two abortion clinics out of business with massive regulatory burdens, including making costs of the procedure run into the thousands of dollars with no medical insurance coverage (that's already illegal here), a brand new state regulatory authority created by the Health Cabinet to track and catalog every abortion for a 7-year period and a convenient state-run website to allow people to openly target every abortion clinic health worker in the state. And that's not including the criminal penalties for any health worker who violates any of this.

In other words, since precisely none of that structure has been set up by the state yet or by the clinics, all legal abortion procedures have to basically stop as of right now in Kentucky.

We'll see what a federal judge says, but as of right now, abortion is de facto illegal in the state.

Welcome to Gilead.

I told you.

Last Call For Time For Some Traffic Problems On The Border

Former GOP New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's infamous "Time for some traffic problems" in Fort Lee email kicked off the Bridgegate scandal in 2014. Now 8 years later, GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is doing the same thing with all truck traffic entering the country through the state from Mexico, in an effort to cause massive problems for Joe Biden and for America.

 

A new Texas policy to have state officials inspect every truck entering from Mexico has prompted a massive protest among drivers, backing up cargo for miles and leaving loads of fruit, vegetables and other material sitting idle for days.

Freight operators are panicking about the ramifications of the delays, as much of the United States’ produce this time of year is imported from Mexico. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) last week said the “enhanced safety inspections” of all commercial vehicles were necessary because he alleged federal officials were not stopping drugs and criminals from entering the United States. Now, trucking officials say, little is entering the country at all.

“This isn’t a regional issue, or that the city of Laredo is not getting their produce at grocery stores,” said John Esparza, president of the Texas Trucking Association. “We are seeing delays that will be felt across the country. There are a half a dozen divisions of trucking [affected]. There’s the refrigerated segment of trucking, there’s household goods, forestry, fuel tankers, commodities for trade goods — this is about General Motors, Ford and everything coming out of Mexico, our trade partner.”

Strawberries, asparagus, avocados, tomatoes and other spring favorites are sitting in lines of refrigerated trucks many miles long as growers and shippers scramble to reroute and grocers hustle to find products from elsewhere to avoid empty shelves.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that Abbott’s “unnecessary and redundant” inspections of trucks at ports of entry between Texas and Mexico have disrupted food and automobile supply chains, delayed manufacturing, impacted jobs and further raised prices for American families. She said trucks are facing lengthy delays exceeding 5 hours at some border crossings and commercial traffic has dropped by as much as 60 percent.

“The continuous flow of legitimate trade and travel and Customs and Border Protection’s ability to do its job should not be obstructed,” Psaki said. “Governor Abbott’s actions are impacting people’s jobs and the livelihoods of hardworking American families.”

Abbott last week moved to impose the new border restrictions, alleging that the Biden administration had “open-border policies” that “paved the way for dangerous cartels and deadly drugs to pour into the United States.”

He said Texas “will immediately begin taking unprecedented action to do what no state has done in American history to secure our border,” which means each truck will be inspected by the Texas Department of Public Safety for human trafficking, weapons, drugs and other contraband.

The governor’s plan to have state officials scrutinize each truck means that up to 80 percent of perishable fruits and vegetables have been unable to cross since Friday, said Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas.

This is causing losses of millions of dollars a day for employers and employees who have been idled, he said, with customers unable to load product from their Texas suppliers. It also means transportation shortages are increasing as available trucks are stuck waiting in line to cross the border, all of which will continue to drive up the price of produce at American grocery stores.

“These trucks are already inspected by Customs and Border Protection — scanned and X-rayed and drug-dog sniffed,” Jungmeyer said. “These new inspections are redundant. At numerous ports of entry, Laredo, Pharr, Eagle Pass and others, Mexican drivers are starting to protest.”

Abbott’s office did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

The line for trucks to cross at the Pharr bridge has been reported at up to 7 or 8 miles long, said Rod Sbragia, vice chair of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas and director of sales and marketing for Tricar Sales, a grower and shipper of Mexican produce. He said somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 trucks stand nose to tail waiting for entry. Refrigerated trucks, he said, have about six or seven days of fuel to run their refrigeration units. After that, spoilage is certain.

 

Which of course is the point. Abbott and the GOP are gleefully causing supply chain disruptions, empty shelves, and higher food costs for stores and restaurants, not to mention parts shipments for cars and trucks, clothing, and everything else. He's deliberately hurting truckers and shipping companies in an effort to drive them out of business, too.

Greg Abbott is going to try to seriously damage the economy, and then blame Biden for it. Given the flap over gas prices and inflation in general, Abbott's going to get away with it, too.

Republicans hate America so much that they are deliberately hurting millions of people in order to cause political harm to the Democrats, and they don't care how many suffer in their wake.

Besides, the Texas inspections aren't stopping drugs or human trafficking at all.

Case in point. Texas’ safety troopers have removed 646 trucks from service out of 2,685 inspected so far. But not because they found dangerous drugs or humans hidden in compartments or among the goods being hauled from Mexico.

Nope. The taxpayer-funded troopers instead are taking trucks out of service for violations that include “burned-out headlights or taillights, defective brakes or flawed tires,” according to The Wall Street Journal and other media reports.

Abbott, who’s made drug and immigration crackdowns top issues of his reelection campaign, has said that “cartels use vehicles, many of them dangerous commercial trucks, to smuggle immigrants, deadly fentanyl and other illegal cargo into Texas.”

That may be the case. But are Abbott and his people dumb enough to think the cartels would actually continue to use commercial trucks after he made a huge public circus out of his operation?

The governor and his people are, of course, mum now about the fact that their inspections have produced no drugs nor humans being smuggled into the country inside those trucks.

 

If these inspections were actually about completing Abbott's stated goal of "finding human trafficking or illegal drugs" then we'd be hearing it all over the news. Instead, Abbott is doing this all for show, with the added benefit of causing food shortages and inflation hikes on Mexican produce and food imported. Texans will be hurt first.

We'll see how long this keeps up.

Private (Slush Fund) Benjamin

As I said earlier today, there are some Democrats that are corrupt, but not the entire party like the GOP. Unfortunately, the bad Democrats that are absolutely corrupt are real doozies.

Lt. Gov. Brian A. Benjamin of New York resigned on Tuesday, hours after federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment implicating him in a brazen scheme to enrich his political campaigns with illegal donations.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who selected Mr. Benjamin to be her lieutenant governor less than a year ago, announced that he was stepping down immediately “while the legal process plays out.”

“It is clear to both of us that he cannot continue to serve as lieutenant governor,” she wrote in a statement Tuesday evening.

The five-count indictment charging Mr. Benjamin said that while he was a state senator, he had conspired to direct $50,000 in state funds to a Harlem real estate developer’s charity. In exchange, the developer gathered thousands of dollars in illegal contributions to Mr. Benjamin’s 2020 Senate campaign and his unsuccessful 2021 bid for New York City comptroller, the indictment said.

Mr. Benjamin, who pleaded not guilty on Tuesday, was also accused of offering to help the developer, Gerald Migdol, obtain a zoning variance if he made a $15,000 donation to a separate fund for State Senate Democrats. The developer was arrested on federal charges in November and pleaded not guilty at the time.

“This is a simple story of corruption,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a news conference before Mr. Benjamin’s resignation. “Taxpayer money for campaign contributions. A quid pro quo. This for that. That’s bribery, plain and simple.”

The resignation of Mr. Benjamin could prove to be a serious political liability for Ms. Hochul, who took office last year after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo resigned in disgrace. Although she was not implicated in any of the allegations against Mr. Benjamin, the indictment of her handpicked No. 2 threatened to undercut Ms. Hochul’s vow to turn the page on an era of scandal in Albany.

The indictment — the result of an investigation by federal prosecutors, the F.B.I. and New York City’s Department of Investigation — accuses Mr. Benjamin of engaging in a “series of lies and deceptions to cover up the scheme,” including falsifying campaign donation forms, misleading city authorities and giving false information as part of a background check to become lieutenant governor last year.

Mr. Benjamin entered his not guilty plea at a brief appearance in Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan, and was released on a $250,000 bond under terms that require him to get special permission to travel to Albany. He left the courthouse without comment.

Ms. Hochul can select a new lieutenant governor in the coming weeks, but it will be far more difficult to replace Mr. Benjamin on the Democratic primary ballot in June. Because he was designated as the Democratic Party’s nominee for lieutenant governor, election rules stipulate that his name can only be removed at this point if he were to move out of the state, die or seek another office.

Mr. Benjamin said last week that he had been cooperating with investigators, after news outlets, including The New York Times, reported details of the investigation. Accompanied by his lawyers, he met with prosecutors last week, according to a person who was briefed on the meeting and not authorized to discuss it, and his top aides were privately reassuring allies that he expected to be cleared of any wrongdoing.

 

So there's a really good chance that Benjamin's bribery scandal leaves him on the ticket, something Republicans are going to have a field day with in November, and it might very well put a racist asshole like Rep.Lee Zeldin in the Governor's Mansion come 2023.

Dems, do better. Please. The country can't afford more Republicans.

The Wrath Of Ravnsborg

By one vote, South Dakota's state House has impeached state Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg over his fatal accident that killed a pedestrian in 2020.

The South Dakota House on Tuesday impeached state Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg over a 2020 car crash in which he killed a pedestrian but initially said he might have struck a deer or another large animal.

Ravnsborg, a Republican, is the first official to be impeached in South Dakota history. He will at least temporarily be removed from office pending the historic Senate trial, where it takes a two-thirds majority to convict on impeachment charges. The Senate must wait at least 20 days to hold its trial, but has not yet set a date.

Ravnsborg pleaded no contest last year to a pair of traffic misdemeanors in the crash, including making an illegal lane change. He has cast Joseph Boever’s death as a tragic accident.

In narrowly voting to impeach the state’s top prosecutor, the Republican-controlled House charged Ravnsborg with committing crimes that caused someone’s death, making “numerous misrepresentations” to law enforcement officers after the crash and using his office to navigate the criminal investigation. A Senate conviction would mean Ravnsborg would be barred from holding any state office in the future.

“When we’re dealing with the life of one of your citizens, I think that weighed heavily on everyone,” said Republican Rep. Will Mortenson, who introduced the articles of impeachment.

Ravnsborg said in a statement he is looking forward to the Senate trial, “where I believe I will be vindicated.”

Meanwhile, Tim Bormann, the attorney general’s chief of staff, said his staff would “professionally dedicate ourselves” to their work while Ranvsborg is forced to take a leave.

Ravnsborg, who took office in 2019, was returning home from a Republican dinner in September 2020 when he struck and killed Boever, who was walking along a rural highway. A sheriff who responded after Ravnsborg called 911 initially reported it as a collision with an animal. Ravnsborg has said he did not realize he hit a man until he returned the next day and found the body.

The Highway Patrol concluded that Ravnsborg’s car crossed completely onto the highway shoulder before hitting Boever, and criminal investigators said later that they didn’t believe some of Ravnsborg’s statements.

The House rejected the recommendation of a GOP-backed majority report from a special investigative committee, which argued that anything wrong he did was not part of his official duties “in office.” But even Republican lawmakers who argued his actions did not meet constitutional grounds for impeachment said Ravnsborg should resign.

“He should have stepped down, should have done the honorable thing,” said House Speaker Spencer Gosch, who oversaw the House investigation and voted against impeachment.

 

Observations:

 

1. Jason Ravnsborg killed a man.
2. He should be in jail for vehicular manslaughter, because he killed a man. 
3. He should, at the bare minimum, resign from public office.
4. That public office is Attorney General, resignation here is a requirement.
5. He lied to the cops about it. I know prosecutors lie to cops all the time, but he's AG.
6. So yes, he now deserves impeachment, removal, and disbarment from public office.
7. He won't be convicted and removed because Republicans are the party of corruption.
8. Resignation months ago would have saved the state GOP a lot of hassle, apparently.
9. But Ravnsborg is going to make people remove him.
10. Finally, he's not running for reelection in November but he still can in the future.

 

 Republican make laws that don't apply to them, enforced selectively by them, and in every case used to enrich them. Some Democrats do that too, but not the entire party.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead, Con't

Abortion is now illegal in Oklahoma, and Republicans gleefully plan to make sure it's illegal everywhere.

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt on Tuesday signed a bill into law that makes performing an abortion illegal in the state, with an exception only in the case of a medical emergency. 

"As governor, I represent all 4 million Oklahomans and they overwhelmingly support protecting life in the state of Oklahoma. We want Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the country. We want to outlaw abortion in the state of Oklahoma," the governor said. 

Senate Bill 612, which cleared the state Senate last year and the House earlier this month, makes performing an abortion or attempting to perform one a felony punishable by a maximum fine of $100,000 or a maximum of 10 years in state prison, or both. The law does not provide exceptions in cases of rape and incest. 

Under the measure, the woman would not be criminally charged or convicted for the death of her "unborn child." The legislation does not prohibit the use, sale, prescription or administration of contraceptives. 

The governor was joined at the signing by members of the Oklahoma legislature, faith leaders from across the state, as well as representatives from anti-abortion advocacy groups.
"I know this bill will be challenged immediately by liberal activists from the coast, who always seem to want to come in and dictate, and mandate, and challenge our way of life here in the state of Oklahoma. The most important thing is to take a stand and protect the unborn and protect life in the state of Oklahoma," Stitt added. 

Stitt's signature on the legislation made Oklahoma the latest Republican-led state to approve new restrictions on abortion access in recent weeks. Last month, Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed into law a ban on most abortions in the state after 15 weeks, similar to a Mississippi law that's before the US Supreme Court, and South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem has signed legislation that further restricts access to medication abortions in the state.

 

That third paragraph, where the mother won't be charged, and use of contraceptives won't be a crime, is not in this bill, true.

 

Those will be in the next bill, after the SCOTUS ruling that destroys Roe. 

I've been running this series of posts for years, and traveling down this road you can see the outskirts of Gilead in the distance.

We don't have much farther to travel, and much further to fall.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Con't

NYPD are looking for a suspect who used a smoke device to cover their shooting of multiple people at the 36th Street Station in Brooklyn.

Eight people were shot and eight others were injured in a mass shooting in a Brooklyn subway during Tuesday morning rush hour, according to FDNY spokesperson Amanda Farinacci.

A preliminary investigation shows a possible smoke device was detonated, according to a senior law enforcement official. The NYPD said afterward that there are no active explosive devices.

The attack occurred at about 8:30 a.m. when the Fire Department of New York was called to the 36th Street subway station in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood for a report of smoke.

A male suspect possibly wearing a gas mask and orange construction vest fled the scene, police said, citing a preliminary report.

First responders encountered gunshot victims throughout the subway station and others who had been injured in the ensuing chaos, though it's not clear how the others were injured. Authorities haven't released detailed information on how the shooting unfolded yet.

The mass shooting comes amid a rise in shootings in New York over the past two years and a particular rise in violence on the subway that has become a focus of Mayor Eric Adams' administration. There have been 617 crime complaints so far this year on the transit system, a 68% increase from this point last year, NYPD data shows.

The incident is the second mass shooting, defined as at least four people shot, in Brooklyn this year and the fourth in New York State, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The first Brooklyn mass shooting of the year was on January 13 at a Brooklyn event hall.

 

Here's hoping they catch the bastard, but the planning here may signify a terrorist attack of some sort. We'll let the authorities find out for sure. 

Here's what I do know: firearms outnumber people in this country, and more will die every day.

It's A Gas Gas Gas, Con't

As highway robbery by energy companies continue, pushing up prices everywhere, the Biden administration is finally realizing that if they're not seen actively trying to lower the cost of fuel now, voters are going to raise the cost of being a Democrat in November.

President Biden will announce plans for the Environmental Protection Agency to allow a blended form of gasoline that uses ethanol, known as E15, to be sold this summer — a measure long resisted by some energy and environmental groups that could help deliver short-term relief at the pump.

The administration will do this by having the EPA issue an emergency waiver for the summer sale of E15. Typically, E15 cannot be sold in most of the country between June 1 and Sept. 15 because of air pollution rules. The White House has argued that the use of E15 can shave 10 cents off each gallon of gasoline. E15 is currently sold in 30 states at more than 2,300 gas stations, the Energy Department has said, but that is just a fraction of the more than 150,000 gas stations in the United States.

The news will come during a day the president is set to visit the Poet ethanol plant near Des Moines as the administration pushes Congress to approve new energy subsidies aimed at reducing U.S. dependence on foreign fossil fuels.

The flurry of activity around gas prices will come just hours after the federal government is scheduled to release an inflation report that could show prices rising by as much as 8 percent relative to last year, despite the Biden administration’s months-long efforts to bring inflation down. High prices have emerged as a nettlesome political problem for the White House, lowering Biden’s popularity even as the United States sees a boom in job growth and economic output.

 

That CPI inflation report came in at 8.5% inflation, with gasoline up a third from last year. The hope is that this is peak inflation for this cycle, but who knows the answer to that.

Biden's at least taking action.  Republicans will attack him anyway.