Last Call For The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

For months now, WV Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has been threatening "consequences" if he didn't get his pound of flesh in exchange for allowing Biden's Climate Change legislation to pass the Senate. 

The deal he made with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was that Democrats would use budget reconciliation to pass energy legislation that Manchin wanted, including a new pipeline through West Virginia.

But then last week we found out that Senate Republicans aren't going to give Manchin his pipeline. 

 

It's true, Republicans don't want to give Manchin another Democratic win. But a Republican win, where Manchin bails on the party, gets his pipeline for WV as part of must-pass budget negotiations, and his sub-Biden approval numbers back in his home state skyrocket again?

 

Manchin may take that deal.

 

The other theory is that he's bluffing, and there's plenty of evidence for that, too.

We'll see.

 

Today, we find out Manchin is dropping that legislation from must-pass budget legislation.completely, and folding his hand. The latter was true, he was bluffing, and he got nothing.

Senate Democrats on Tuesday cleared the way for a key vote to take up a government funding extension to succeed after West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin dropped a request to include in the stop-gap bill a controversial proposal on permitting reform that had come under sharp criticism from Republicans and liberals.

The vote had been on the verge of failing due to the inclusion of the measure, but now will likely have the support needed for the funding bill to move forward.

Senators released the legislative text of the stop-gap funding bill overnight – a measure that would fund the government through December 16.

In addition to money to keep government agencies afloat, it provides around $12 billion for Ukraine as it continues to face Russian military attack, and would require the Pentagon to report on how US dollars have been spent there. The aid to Ukraine is a bipartisan priority.

The continuing resolution also would extend an expiring FDA user fee program for five years.

Manchin’s permitting proposal would expedite the permitting and environmental review process for energy projects – including a major pipeline that would cross through Manchin’s home state of West Virginia. Senate Democratic leaders had been pushing to pass it along with government funding as a result of a deal cut to secure Manchin’s support for Democrats’ controversial Inflation Reduction Act – a key priority for the party – which passed over the summer.

But Republicans had been warning they will vote against the effort to tie permitting reform to the funding extension, in part because they don’t want to reward Manchin over his support for the Inflation Reduction Act.

Lawmakers are expected to pass a short-term funding extension by week’s end and avert a shutdown but they are up against the clock with funding set to expire on Friday at midnight.

The timing of the fight continues a pattern by Capitol Hill leaders in recent years of negotiating until the last minute to fund the federal government, leaving virtually no room for error in a series of events where any one senator could slow the process down beyond the deadline.

 

In the end, Manchin overplayed his party switch card against Democrats stabbing him in the back. Instead, his Republican colleagues stabbed him in the front.

 

It's still possible that this was a double-agent move where Manchin switches parties anyway, Manchin really is dumb enough to do that, but I'm pretty sure today is the day Joe Manchin learned that there are 99 other US senators besides Joe Manchin.

 

The only person who got played here was Manchin himself.

 

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Putin's Pipe-Lying Problem

So, let's set the stage this week for the next phase of the war in Ukraine. There's two big events this week that cover where we're going after Putin's mobilization call-up last week. First, we need a preterxt to war for the newly minted conscripts to fight for, and that's being handled by laughable shams of "referendums" where Ukrainians in occupied Donbas region cities are being forced at gunpoint to "vote for independence from Ukraine" and to join Russia.

 

White House officials are watching closely and preparing their potential response Monday as four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine continued to vote in referendums that are being effectively carried out at gunpoint and have been dismissed by the West as a sham.

With the results of the Russian-organized voting expected to be announced as soon as Tuesday, US officials anticipate Russia could move quickly to annex the four areas, potentially within days. Doing so would prompt a swift response from the US, which has pledged not to recognize the results, one official said.

The US is not currently expected to respond until Russia has moved to annex the regions, the official said, and whether Russia ultimately attempts to do so remains to be seen.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in recent days that Russia has already decided in advance what will happen after these referendums are finished, stating that by “the end of the month, Russia’s intention will be to formalize the annexation of the four regions into the Russian Federation.”

As they monitor the referendums, top Biden administration officials have become more vocal in recent days about warnings they have delivered in private to Russian officials about the potential use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

“Russia understands very well what the US would do in response to the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine because we have spelled it out for them,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a television interview Sunday, though he declined to characterize who received those warnings or what the consequences would be.

 

And of course the vote will "show" that Ukraine wants to be part of Russia again, and so we have casus belli manufactured out of nothing, a perfect old school tactic for the social media age.

But the other part of the war in Ukraine is the war against the EU, and Russia made a huge move on that this weekend as well.

European countries on Tuesday raced to investigate unexplained leaks in two Russian gas pipelines running under the Baltic Sea near Sweden and Denmark, infrastructure at the heart of an energy crisis since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Experts and also Russia, which built the network, said the possibility of sabotage could not be ruled out.

Sweden’s Maritime Authority issued a warning about two leaks in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, shortly after a leak on the nearby Nord Stream 2 pipeline was discovered that had prompted Denmark to restrict shipping in a five nautical mile radius.

Both pipelines have been flashpoints in an escalating energy war between European capitals and Moscow that has pummeled major Western economies, sent gas prices soaring and sparked a hunt for alternative energy supplies.

“There are some indications that it is deliberate damage,” said a European security source, while adding it was still too early to draw conclusions. “You have to ask: Who would profit?”

Russia also said the leak in the Russian network was cause for concern and sabotage was one possible cause. “No option can be ruled out right now,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Neither pipeline was pumping gas to Europe at the time the leaks were found, amid the dispute over the war in Ukraine, but the incidents will scupper any remaining expectations that Europe could receive gas via Nord Stream 1 before winter.

“The destruction that occurred on the same day simultaneously on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system is unprecedented,” said network operator Nord Stream AG. “It is not yet possible to estimate the timing of the restoration of the gas transport infrastructure.”

 

Russia is claiming this was a NATO operation to keep EU countries in line, but wouldn't you know it that the price of Russian energy exports went up significantly this week, giving Russia a windfall of money right when Moscow is girding for war, and it has the effect of further destabilizing EU economies in order to keep them out of any Ukraine operations.

 

Funny how that all ends up working in Russia favor in the months ahead.

 

So yeah, gonna be an ugly fall and a worse winter in Ukraine, all while the EU has an energy crisis.

It's a dangerous game, but one Putin seems bound and determined to play.

The Law In Texas, Con't

A reminder that Texas Republican Attorney General is still under federal investigation for bribery and corruption and under indictment for securities fraud, he's also been named as part of a lawsuit against the state's bounty hunter abortion law, and he's dodging process servers like a pro after seven years.

 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fled his home in a truck driven by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, to avoid being served a subpoena Monday, according to an affidavit filed in federal court.

Ernesto Martin Herrera, a process server, was attempting to serve the state’s top attorney with a subpoena for a federal court hearing Tuesday in a lawsuit from nonprofits that want to help Texans pay for abortions out of state.

When Herrera arrived at Paxton’s home in McKinney on Monday morning, he told a woman who identified herself as Angela that he was trying to deliver legal documents to the attorney general. She told him that Paxton was on the phone and unable to come to the door. Herrera said he would wait.

Nearly an hour later, a black Chevrolet Tahoe pulled into the driveway, and 20 minutes after that, Ken Paxton exited the house.

“I walked up the driveway approaching Mr. Paxton and called him by his name. As soon as he saw me and heard me call his name out, he turned around and RAN back inside the house through the same door in the garage,” Herrera wrote in the sworn affidavit.

Angela Paxton then exited the house, got inside a Chevrolet truck in the driveway, started it and opened the doors.

“A few minutes later I saw Mr. Paxton RAN from the door inside the garage towards the rear door behind the driver side,” Herrera wrote. “I approached the truck, and loudly called him by his name and stated that I had court documents for him. Mr. Paxton ignored me and kept heading for the truck.”

Herrera eventually placed the subpoenas on the ground near the truck and told him he was serving him with a subpoena. Both cars drove away, leaving the documents on the ground.

On Twitter, the attorney general said his sudden departure was motivated by concerns for his family's safety.

"It’s clear that the media wants to drum up another controversy involving my work as Attorney General, so they’re attacking me for having the audacity to avoid a stranger lingering outside my home and showing concern about the safety and well-being of my family," he wrote in a tweet.

 

If you tried to dodge lawsuits, investigations, and indictments the way Kex Paxton does, you'd already be in jail. But Paxton has made sure he'll never be tried for his securities fraud indictment, the case being "rescheduled" time and again by Republican-appointed judges as Paxton uses his office to shield himself from the law his office is supposed to enforce.

There's no better example of what corrupt, permanent one-party GOP rules means to America, and how Republican officials will blatantly flout the law in state after state once the Roberts' Court gives them the power to institute perpetual corruption.

And here we have him dodging a process server with his wife driving him to "safety from an attacking stranger". Just corruption all the way through.

And he'll still win in November, as such he'll need that StupidiTag™ going forward...

Last Call For The Nice Italian Fascist, Con't

With a big win in Italian elections on Sunday, right-wing Italian nationalist Giorgia Meloni is expected to be named the country's next Prime Minister, and as I warned about last week, the first thing to go will be most of Italy's refugee and immigration policies.

For years, Giorgia Meloni has railed against Italy’s migration policies, calling them overly lenient and saying they risk turning the country into the “refugee camp of Europe.”

Now that she is Italy’s presumed next prime minister, migration is one of the areas where Meloni can most easily bring in sweeping change.

“The smart approach is: You come to my house according to my rules,” Meloni, of the far-right Fratelli d’Italia party, said earlier this month in an interview with The Washington Post.

Her ideas, taken together, figure to significantly tighten the doors to one of the European Union’s front-line destinations for undocumented immigrants.

While in other areas — like spending and foreign policy — Meloni would be more constrained by Europe, E.U. countries have plenty of leeway to handle their external borders, and she has long made it clear that halting flows of people across the Mediterranean is one of her priorities.

But that doesn’t mean it will be complication-free.

Efforts to block humanitarian rescue vessels from docking at Italian ports could prompt legal challenges. And if Meloni chokes off pathways to Italy, the volume of crossings would probably increase to other Mediterranean countries such as Spain — as happened three years ago when Italy was briefly led by an anti-immigration, populist government.

“You can do stuff relatively quickly [on migration] that is draconian, symbolic and sends a clear message: We’re here, we’re doing something. But there’s trouble in store,” said Andrew Geddes, director of the Migration Policy Center at the European University Institute in Florence.

“When you stop the crossings and divert them [elsewhere], that is where you get into conflict with the E.U.,” he said. “It will breathe life into an old conflict.”

 

The previous conservative government tried this, and got sued to kingdom come and back. We'll see if Meloni is this dumb.

Dudebro Defector Drafted?

You know the funny thing about life is in the end, you get exactly what you deserve good and hard.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted former NSA contractor Edward Snowden Russian citizenship, according to an official decree published on the Russian government portal Monday.

Snowden, who admitted to leaking information about US surveillance programs to the press, has been in Russia since 2013. He is facing espionage charges and up to 30 years in prison in the US.

In November 2020 Snowden and his wife applied for Russian citizenship. He had been already given permanent residency in Russia.

 

This of course means Snowden is now eligible to be called up to fight for Russia on the front lines in Ukraine.

Good luck with that, Ed.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions, Con't

Long-time friend of ZVTS and generally awesome human Steve M. asks:

 

If "partisanship," with no party label attached, is the reason unlikable Republicans are competitive in races against more likable Democrats, then where are the examples of the opposite phenomenon? Where are voters embracing Democratic jerks rather than nice, likable Republicans in competitive races? 

And of course, that's the point. The examples of the "most extreme Democrats" are usually The Squad, and while they sure love to be spoilers in the House, Nancy Pelosi has got them handled, and the examples of their "extremism" is "Palestinians are actual human beings that deserve rights" and "We shouldn't spend $650 billion on the Pentagon." 

Whereas Republican extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Thomas Massie really don't think we should spend money on anything, and that anyone who isn't a white, straight, "Christian" male maybe shouldn't have any rights at all. Oh, and they are going to impeach Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, most if not all of Biden's cabinet, and then demand resignations while shutting down the government until they win.

The difference, as Steve M. says down the page:

 

But Republicans also seem to have much more party loyalty than Democrats. It's not hard to see why: Their favorite media sources have engaged in pure cheerleading for their party (and relentless demonization of the other party) for decades. The rest of the media is described as "liberal," but it's always ready to shiv a Democrat. (Was there a single positive news story published about Joe Biden between the fall of Afghanistan and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act?) The entire political world hits the fainitng couch when a prominent Democrat issues a blanket condemnation of Republicans, while Republican politicians call Democrats treasonous Marxist America-haters every day.

So it's not surprising that Republican jerks can be competitive. They're Republicans. There's simply more Republican partisanship than Democratic partisanship.

 

Which is true, OH-9 is the best current example of this. Kaptur has been redistricted out of her Democratic stronghold and into a Republican one, and she should have been a guaranteed loss, excep for in the primaries, Republicans ran the most extreme candidate possible in J.R. Majewski, a January 6th terrorist, election denier, and now military service liar.

Kaptur on the other hand is pulling a Sherrod Brown to stay in Congress.

Being a brand name in northern Ohio helps Kaptur a lot. She's been a recognizable and present figure here for four decades. 

But she says being a midwestern Democrat in a party increasingly run with big city sensibilities on both coasts is a growing challenge for her. 

"What coastal people, God bless them, don't understand, is that we lost our middle class," Kaptur said. 

"We lost so many people who've worked hard all their lives, including in many of these small towns. I understand that. We feel their pain. We went through it together." 

Kaptur is relying on voters like Joe Stallbaum, a member of the sheet metal workers Local 33 Toledo district, a union that endorsed both Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and Kaptur this year. 

Stallbaum has been working on a massive renovation of Toledo's convention center for nearly two years and says helping revitalize his hometown fills him with pride. But he also says a lot of his friends and colleagues still feel forgotten. 

"I think there should be a lot more focus on working class people and what we do," he explained. "It just seems like we always get left behind." 

A second-generation construction worker, Stallbaum says he watched a lot of his fellow union members abandon the Democratic Party in favor of Trump in 2016 and other Republicans since then. With union households making up close to 20% of the vote, it helps explain Democrats' struggles in Ohio and other parts of the Rust Belt. 

But Stallbaum believes that Kaptur is different than the national Democratic Party -- she's someone who appreciates and understands blue collar workers. 

"I always felt that Marcy listened to working class people. That's one of the things I like about her. I think she's very approachable. She doesn't seem distant to me. I feel I could have reached out to her anytime I had wanted to." 

A longtime Kaptur supporter, he plans to vote for her again. 

"She's never given me a reason not to support her. Everything she's always done is for Toledo and for our region," he said. "I trust her."

You might think telling Democratic voters in Ohio that coastal Democrats don't give a shit about them, but that she does, is insulting and even a bit racist, and it is.

The alternative is a guy who lied about being in Afghanistan, whose response is "It was classified, I'm a hero", and is sworn to destroy protections for the free press in America.

I'm hoping people side with Kaptur.

Facebookwitter

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

The CBS News analysis of the 2022 elections still have the GOP picking up the House, but by a narrower margin than ever, just 10 seats.

The Republicans have a lead. But it keeps shrinking.

While they're still in a very good position to capture a House majority, that majority looks narrower today than it ever has, having ticked down for the second straight month to 223 seats in our model estimate. Republicans were at 226 in August and 230 in July.

Voters are engaged because they think the stakes are so high — for many, bigger than just affecting their pocketbooks.

Two-thirds of voters feel their rights and freedoms are very much at stake in this election — more so even than say their financial well being is.

And each side feels if the opposition gained control of Congress, people like them would have fewer rights and freedoms than they do now.

Voters believe by two to one that a Republican Congress would lead to women getting fewer rights and freedoms than they have now, rather than more rights.

By more than four to one, if Republicans win, voters think any change in rights for LGBTQ people would see them getting fewer rights, not more.

Voters feel that on balance, men and people of faith are more apt to gain rights rather than lose them if Republicans win — but many also feel things would stay the same.

Democrats' lead on the abortion issue is a little bigger now, while Republicans haven't grown their support among voters prioritizing the economy since last month.

Republicans have the same lead they did in August among voters who say the economy and inflation are "very important" to their vote.

Democrats now have a slightly larger lead among those saying abortion is very important than they did in August.

Why? One possible reason: people who say abortion is very important to their vote tend to think Democrats are talking about the issue — more so than other topics. That may be satisfying their need to hear about it.

 

The main differences between the parties right now are that Republicans don't see civil rights as rights, whereas Democrats do. Republicans feel that women's rights to their own bodies and LGBTQ+ rights somehow infringe upon their freedom, and must be ended. They feel the same way about anti-discrimination rights for Black and brown and Asian folk, as well as adherents of the Jewish and Muslim faiths.

Civil rights are a positive addition for Democrats, and they are a negative subtraction for Republicans.

That's really the core of it.

Pick a side.

Sunday Long Read: A Zodiac Thriller

This week's Sunday Long Read is Aaron Gell's tale in LA Magazine about the 53-year-old Zodiac Killer mystery, with a dogged amateur sleuth's evidence pointing to a new suspect, and the woman who discovered her father may not have been the man she thought he was.

 

The Hawaiian rainforest where Gloria Doerr has lived since 2017 is a sort of magnet, she says, for people who are running away from something. But even there, in the shadow of an active volcano, sometimes things catch up with you.

For Doerr, 70, it happened this past April. She was spending a tranquil afternoon at home when she learned that her late father, Paul Alfred Doerr, had been linked to one of the most notorious murder sprees of the twentieth century. Her son had stumbled on a podcast interview with Paul’s accuser, Jarett Kobek. An internationally best-selling novelist based in Los Angeles, Kobek had written a whole book, How to Find Zodiac, about how her Dad might just have been the maniac who more than fifty years earlier had terrorized the Bay Area with a string of cold-blooded and seemingly random killings.

By the time she’d finished listening to the podcast, Doerr, a retired real estate agent, was in shock. If this writer had only bothered to pick up the phone and call her before lodging his accusation, she would happily have told him that her father, who died of a heart attack in 2007, while far from perfect, to put it mildly, could be a charming, quirky, and voraciously curious man—a member of Mensa and an early proponent of organic foods.

In the following days, Gloria mentioned the situation to a few close friends, who thought she might have a libel case. She even reached out to an attorney. Though she was reluctant to pay $17.95 for the book, a friend ordered her a copy.

Paul Doerr is hardly the only suspect in the case—far from it. Among the rogue’s gallery of other presumptive Zodiacs are a house painter, a former schoolteacher, a sports car dealer, a theater operator, and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. “There are probably 50 or 100 suspects named every year,” sighs Richard Grinell, the former postman who runs the website Zodiac Ciphers and has been following the case for a decade. In October, a self-described “national task force of seasoned investigators” called the Case Breakers pointed to a brand new Zodiac suspect. Their theory was quickly debunked, but not before Fox News picked up the story, leading to hundreds of credulous media reports.

Gloria’s father, in other words, was in good company.

The killer, who is linked to a series of late-1960s attacks in the Bay Area, employed a shifting MO: Often he shot his victims, but on one especially macabre occasion, clad in an executioner’s hood, he tied them up and used a knife. Though he mostly attacked young couples around Vallejo, he also murdered a cab driver in San Francisco. Officially, he is believed to have killed just five and severely injured two, but his modest body count has been far outstripped by his well-tended mystique, bolstered by a sinister handle and a practice of firing off letters to the media and other authorities, often including mysterious ciphers and signed with a crosshairs logo.

Perhaps his greatest cultural contribution, if one can call it that, is having popularized a tone of smug superiority that attention-hungry outcasts, both fictional and real—from Hannibal Lecter and the Riddler to the aforementioned Ted Kaczynski and a substantial subset of 4Chan dwellers—have sought to emulate ever since. Meanwhile, his cryptic puzzles brought a seductive element of interactivity to crime-solving (a married couple decoded his first cipher over breakfast in 1969) and prefigured the citizen-sleuth movement along with its twisted progeny, 9/11 trutherism and QAnon. That might explain why his modest murder spree managed to inspire so much media coverage, including documentaries, a David Fincher film, a bottomless podcast playlist, an array of websites and forums, and enough paperbacks to stock a small, very grisly library.

And now, a new book had been added to the shelf, and Gloria’s father was the main character.

 

Gell covers the tale of how Jared Kobek and Gloria Doerr met and a lot more. It's a solid true crime read.

And maybe a mystery solved at last.

Last Call For Iran, Iran, So Far Away Con't

The largest protests against the Iranian government in more than a dozen years have spread to a number of Iranian cities as the repressive crackdowns of the government of hard-liner President Ebrahim Raisi have triggered a massive response in return.

 

The largest anti-government protests in Iran since 2009 gathered strength on Saturday, spreading to as many as 80 cities, even as the authorities escalated a crackdown that has reportedly killed at least 50 people and brought the arrests of dozens of prominent activists and journalists, according to rights groups and news media reports.

Internet access — especially on cellphone apps widely used for communication — continued to be disrupted or fully blocked, affecting Iranians’ ability to communicate with one another and the outside world. News from Iran has trickled out with many hours of delay.

While the 2009 protests erupted over an election widely condemned as fraudulent, the current demonstrations seemed focused on the Iranian security forces, with reports of vicious beatings of security officers and firebombings of the local headquarters of the notorious morality police.

In many cities, including Tehran, the capital, security forces responded by opening fire on the crowds. On Boulevard Ferdous and at the Shahrak Ekbatan apartment complex in Tehran, officers fired at windows; in the city of Rasht, they threw tear gas into apartments, according to witnesses and videos on social media.

Iranian state media said Friday that at least 35 people had been killed in the unrest, but human rights groups said on Saturday that the number is likely to be much higher. A previous death toll of 17 issued by the state news media included at least five members of the security services.

The videos posted online and the scale of the response from the authorities are difficult to independently verify, but video and photographs sent by witnesses known to The New York Times were broadly in line with the images being posted widely online.

Deep resentments and anger have been building for months, analysts say, particularly among young Iranians, in response to a crackdown ordered by the country’s hard-line president, Ebrahim Raisi, that has targeted women.

That comes on top of a litany of complaints over the years over corruption, mismanagement of the economy, inept handling of Covid and widespread political repression. The problems have persisted under Mr. Raisi, who came to power in an election in which any potential contenders were eliminated before the vote, particularly those from the reformist faction.

During the tenure of Mr. Raisi’s predecessor, the moderate Hassan Rouhani, the morality police had been discouraged from enforcing Iran’s often draconian laws against women, particularly the requirement that they wear the hijab in public in the “proper” fashion. But Iran’s powerful supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is now said to be resting in bed after emergency surgery, engineered the ascent of Mr. Raisi, eliminating an important outlet for the frustrations of Iran’s younger generation.

Those frustrations are now boiling over. The small Kurdish city of Oshnavieh reportedly fell to protesters when local security forces retreated after days of intense fighting, the editor of a Kurdish news site said.

“Since last night, Oshnavieh has been governed by the people,” a Kurdish official, Hussein Yazdanpana, said in an interview, adding that women had thrown off their mandatory head scarves in celebration.

“The liberation has far-reaching consequences for other cities,” he said, describing the town as a gateway to other Kurdish areas of Iran.

Ammar Golie, an Iranian Kurd based in Germany who edits the news site NNS Roj, has been in regular contact with residents of Oshnavieh, which is in West Azerbaijan Province and has a population of 40,000 ethnic Kurds. He said the residents had set up roadblocks at the gateway to the city’s only two roads.

Videos posted on social media show large crowds marching in the streets of Oshnavieh, many wearing traditional Kurdish garb, and chanting, “Freedom.” Another video shows intense gunfights over control of the city’s Police Headquarters.

Mr. Golie said local contacts had told him that an army battalion and a unit of the Revolutionary Guards Corps from the nearest city, Oroumiyeh, had been deployed to crush the protests and take Oshnavieh back.

“We are expecting blood to be spilled,” Mr. Golie said. “It’s an extremely tense situation.”

The nationwide uprising was ignited by the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of the morality police on Sept. 16. Ms. Amini was arrested on accusations of violating the hijab mandate. Women have led the past week’s demonstrations, some ripping off their head scarves, waving them and burning them as men have cheered them on.

For seven days and nights, Iranians have taken to the streets, facing bullets, tear gas, beatings and arrests to send a message to the clerics who have led the nation for 43 years. They have chanted for an end to the Islamic Republic’s rule, according to witnesses and videos shared on social media.

 

You mean a government willing to use "religious freedoms" in order to control women and ethnic and religious minorities in a theocratic police state may not be able to maintain popularity for long without having to constantly resort to lethal force?

 

There's a lesson here for those to choose to learn it.

Dems Playing The Money Game

And they're finally playing it to win, dropping $60 million to help Democrats in state legislature fights, where we've seen that Republican domination has only led to misery and fascism.

A Democratic-aligned group is investing nearly $60 million in state legislative races in five states, a significant sum in an often overlooked political arena where Democrats have struggled for decades.

The group, the States Project, said it was focusing on flipping a single seat in the Arizona State Senate that could swing it to Democratic control and on winning back both chambers of the Michigan and Pennsylvania Legislatures. The group also aims to defend Democratic majorities in Maine and Nevada.

The large infusion of cash from the States Project amounts to a recognition of the critical role that state legislatures play in American politics, orchestrating policy on abortion access, what can be taught in schools and other issues that animate voters. In every state except Minnesota, Virginia and Alaska, a single party controls both chambers.

Next year, the Supreme Court could give the legislative bodies yet more power if it endorses a theory, often called independent state legislature doctrine, that would give state legislatures nearly unchecked authority over elections. Left-leaning groups like the States Project argue that state legislative contests this year in several key battlegrounds could have an outsize impact on future elections.

“The alarm bells are ringing in our state legislatures,” said Adam Pritzker, a founder of the States Project and a Democratic donor. “With the rise of the Tea Party and the balance of power dramatically shifting toward the right, the rest of us have been asleep at the wheel for too long at the state level. And now, this threat is truly off the charts.”

The $60 million investment represents all of the States Project’s spending for the 2022 election cycle. The group estimates that it has already contributed about half of the money to candidates and legislative caucuses.

While Democrats have historically been outgunned by Republicans at the state legislative level, in part because of gerrymandered districts created after the Tea Party wave of 2010, they have ramped up their spending over the past few years and are coming closer to parity this year.

On the television airwaves, Republican candidates and outside groups have spent roughly $39 million, while Democrats have spent roughly $35 million, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. In Pennsylvania and Arizona, Republicans have spent nearly $1 million more than Democrats on ads since July.

 

The time for this fight was in 2010 and 2014, we'd be in far better shape as a functioning representative democracy if the people representing us weren't violent, racist white supremacy conspiracy theorists with theocratic delusions. 

And yet we elect the people who are like us as a whole. The problem remains that white America wants to go back to the supremacy era of the 50's (1950's, 1850's, 1750's, take your pick) and at this point it's going to be incredibly hard to stop them.

But we can do it.

Vote.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Arizona, Con't

Just six weeks before midterm elections, a state Judge has lifted a Roe-era injunction on Arizona's Civil War-era abortion ban and it will be allowed to take effect, criminalizing the procedure across the state.

An Arizona law that bans abortions in nearly all circumstances can again be enforced after a Pima County judge lifted an injunction that had left the pre-statehood law dormant for nearly five decades.

That decision Friday was immediately praised by abortion foes and lamented by abortion rights advocates — and it stands to be a potentially galvanizing force just ahead of November's midterm elections.

Republican state Attorney General Mark Brnovich asked the court to rule on the injunction after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision that legalized abortion across the country.

The court's decision earlier this year, in the Mississippi case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, put the question of abortion policy back in the hands of states.

Arizona had conflicting laws on the books, leading to the court challenge and confusion among abortion providers about what was legal and what was not.

The Friday ruling by Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson provides clarity in allowing enforcement of the old law, which bans abortions in all cases except when necessary to save the pregnant person's life.

But abortion rights advocates are likely to appeal, meaning the state of abortion law in Arizona is still far from settled. Providers expressed shock, outrage and enduring confusion over the ruling, which came a day before another abortion law was set to go into effect.

“Today’s ruling by the Pima County Superior Court has the practical and deplorable result of sending Arizonans back nearly 150 years," Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona, said in a statement. "No archaic law should dictate our reproductive freedom and how we live our lives today."

The basic provisions of the law were first codified by the first territorial Legislature of Arizona in 1864: It mandates two to five years in prison for anyone who provides an abortion or the means for an abortion. The state adopted the law with streamlined language in 1901; it remains on the books today as ARS 13-3603.

"We applaud the court for upholding the will of the legislature and providing clarity and uniformity on this important issue," Brnovich said in a statement Friday. "I have and will continue to protect the most vulnerable Arizonans."

The abortion fight will definitely be on the ballot in Arizona, where women will have to decide whether or not they want a law written before women and Black folk even had the right to vote rule their lives.

2018 was a 49-49% split among white women, and Democrats did very well. But if 2022 is another year where white women vote majority Republican again though, it's going to be bad.

Vote like your country depends on it, because it does.

Last Call Fof The Bad Batch

What should have been an easy win for House Republicans in Ohio in another unconstitutional district that they gerrymandered specifically to get rid of long-time Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur has seemingly blown up n their faces thanks to their terrible candidate to replace her, secessionist and serial liar J.R. Majewski.

House Republicans have withdrawn their advertising for Ohio Republican J.R. Majewski, a MAGA-aligned candidate who was at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riots, Axios has learned.

What's happening: The National Republican Congressional Committee withdrew about $1 million in ad reservations for the district, according to a GOP source familiar with its strategy, all but surrendering the seat to Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur.

Why it matters: Kaptur's redrawn district — which backed Trump by three points in 2020 — once looked like an easy pickup for House Republicans. The GOP is now at risk of squandering another race because Republican primary voters nominated an extreme candidate.

Details: Majewski, an Air Force veteran, has been under fire for sympathizing with the QAnon conspiracy theory movement and saying that every state that backed Trump in 2020 should secede from the United States. 

The AP reported this week that Majewski misrepresented his military service, inaccurately claiming he was deployed to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. In reality, he spent six months loading planes at an air base in Qatar. 

The AP wrote: "His post-military career has been defined by exaggerations, conspiracy theories, talk of violent action against the U.S. government and occasional financial duress."

Zoom in: Democrats have been relentlessly hammering Majewski on television over his extremist views. "He broke through police barricades at the Capitol, then blamed police for the riot. Now he wants to break our country apart," one Kaptur ad says. "He's not just radical, he's dangerous!"

 

Majewski lied about his military service, he lied about his direct involvement in the January 6th terrorist attack, and he has no business being a free man walking the streets, let alone in the House. Even this Republican party is giving up on him because what they hate most isn't Democrats, Democrats serve as targets and useful enemies they can focus on. 

 

Seeing his campaign come apart in real time, Majewski tried to save his ass with a lame press conference earlier today.

 

Majewski had a press conference on Friday to address allegations raised by the AP piece -- and, according to Toledo Blade reporter Luke Ramseth, he said that he could not provide details about his purported deployments to Afghanistan because they were classified.

"The orders and military records that I have been able to obtain from my personal files shows that all of my deployments are listed as classified," he said.

However, Majewski claimed that he flew into "multiple bases" in Afghanistan, although he provided no specifics. He also said he had pictures of himself in Afghanistan, although he only said he might share them.

What's more, Majewski issued threats to sue the Associated Press, and said that in Congress he would push for new laws to make it a crime to "besmirch veterans" such as himself.

With six weeks left of Majewski's stupid lies and threats to the media and Kaptur ads to wreck this idiot, I'm betting that Kaptur pulls this off and keeps her seat.

And Dems get one step closer to keeping the House.

The Jackson, Hole Con't

The most corrupt, most broken Republican state government in America continues to get worse as the nation's poorest state, Mississippi, deals with twin scandals of welfare money embezzlement and state capital Jackson's wrecked water system, and this is coming from someone who has lived in KY for the last 16 years.

First up, the state welfare director that oversaw the slush fund is pleading guilty to both state and federal charges and cooperating with prosecutors.

 

Former welfare agency director John Davis is set to plead guilty on Thursday to two federal charges and 18 state counts of fraud or conspiracy related to his role in the Mississippi welfare scandal, according to separate federal and state court filings.

The new federal charges pertain to welfare funds Davis allegedly helped funnel to the companies of retired professional wrestler Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr., son of famed WWE wrestler Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase. Davis and Teddy DiBiase Jr. had developed a close relationship during Davis’ term as welfare director from 2016 to 2019, as Mississippi Today has reported in its investigative series “The Backchannel.”

Davis instructed two nonprofits receiving tens of millions in welfare funds from his department to pay Teddy DiBiase Jr. under what the federal court filing called “sham contracts” to deliver personal development courses to state employees and a program for inner-city youth, “regardless of whether any work had been performed and knowing that no work would ever be performed.”

Davis, who had not previously faced federal charges for his role in the welfare scandal, is the latest defendant to plead guilty and agree to aid prosecutors. In April, Nancy and Zach New pleaded guilty to state charges in the welfare case as well as to separate federal fraud charges they faced related to public school funding. The News are cooperating with federal investigators, who continue to probe the welfare scheme and who else may have been involved.

The federal bill of information unsealed Wednesday, to which Davis is set to plead guilty, also describes four unnamed co-conspirators in the scheme. Based on the incorporation dates provided in the filing for the co-conspirators’ affiliated organizations or companies, Mississippi Today identified three of the alleged co-conspirators as Nancy New, director of Mississippi Community Education Center; Christi Webb, director of Family Resource Center of North Mississippi; and Teddy DiBiase Jr., owner of Priceless Ventures, LLC and Familiae Orientem, LLC.

A fourth unnamed co-conspirator, a resident of Hinds County, is unidentifiable in the filing.

Davis and the three alleged co-conspirators are each facing civil charges in an ongoing lawsuit Mississippi Department of Human Services is bringing in an attempt to recoup welfare money from people who received it improperly.

“As a result of the actions of DAVIS, the Co-Conspirators, and others, millions of dollars in federal safety-net funds were diverted from needy families and low-income individuals in Mississippi,” the federal filing reads.

 

The Brett Favre stuff is only $3-4 million of the $77 million stolen. A lot of people are going to jail on this one, folks.

And many more people need to go to jail over Jackson's broken water supply. 

 

A class action lawsuit was filed in federal court Monday seeking $5 million in damages related to Jackson's ongoing water crisis.

The lawsuit alleges the city of Jackson's water supply has been neglected for decades, culminating in its complete shutdown in August 2022. Before the water supply failure, the lawsuit states Jackson's water was not fit for human consumption due to high levels of lead and other contaminants.

The plaintiffs claim they were poisoned by lead and other contaminants in Jackson's drinking water.

"This didn't start a couple weeks ago. This started years ago," said lead plaintiff Priscilla Sterling.

The lawsuit names the city of Jackson, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, former mayor Tony Yarber, former public works directors Kishia Powell, Robert Miller and Jerriot Smash; Siemens Corporation, Siemens Industry, Inc., and Trilogy Engineering Services LLC as defendants.

 

Meanwhile, House Democrats want to get Jackson the money they need, as state Republicans wasted, spent elsewhere, or outright stole the money to keep the water system going.

 

House appropriators are considering sending as much as $200 million to address the drinking water crisis in Jackson, Miss., as part of the stop-gap spending measure to fund the government past Sept. 30.

Documents obtained by POLITICO show draft language that would deliver the money directly from EPA to the city, bypassing the Republican-controlled state government. Democrats, including Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), have accused the state of withholding resources from the majority Black state capital.

The numbers: Thompson told POLITICO he is pushing for $200 million in emergency funds for a first phase to address the dilapidated water infrastructure in Jackson.

Jackson’s 150,000 residents were without drinking water for weeks this summer after flooding on the Pearl River caused the system’s water pressure to drop precipitously. The city has also issued a series of boil water orders throughout the year due to dangerous water quality.

Jackson’s water system, which was built in 1914, is in a dire state of disrepair, according to a 2020 EPA review. The total cost for upgrading it is unclear, but estimates have ranged as high as $1 billion. The city has not completed a long-term plan for addressing its problems. Thompson said $200 million is “what appears to be reasonable” now, in the absence of a plan.

 

Keep in mind that the victims in both of these scandals are some of Mississippi's poorest Black communities. It's 2022, and Republican environmental and economic racism continues in full swing across red state after red state.

It has all my life, and it will continue well after we're all gone.

Like A House Afire, Con't

The latest Cook Political Report analysis of the House has Republicans at 212 and Dems at 192, with 31 tossups, 22 Dem seats and 9 GOP seats. Republicans only have to pick up 6 of those 22 Dem toss-ups to win the House back.

Every Dem win of those 9 GOP toss-ups will be critical, including Cincinnati's competitive district, OH-1. Dems can keep the House, but it's going to require some heavy lifting.

It's a far better picture than even last month or in June, when Republicans were expected to pick up 40+ seats as opposed to the 15-20 now.

Dems can win this, but they're going to have to get some very close wins in those toss-up districts.

Republicans are still favored, but nowhere near as much as they were. That's progress.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead Goes Through Michigan

Michigan GOP Attorney General candidate Matt DePrano wants to outlaw Plan B contraceptive medication in the state, apparently wanting to prosecute possession and sales and treating it like hard drugs like fentanyl. 

At an event last month, Michigan attorney general candidate Matt DePerno (R) said that Plan B is no different than fentanyl and should be banned in Michigan.

“You gotta figure out how to ban the pill from the state,” DePerno said in audio, taken from a conversation at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas last month and provided by a Democratic source on the condition of anonymity. When asked about ideas on how to ban the contraceptive, DePerno said: “But you have to stop it at the border. It would be no different than fentanyl. The state has to ban it, and it should be banned. But it’s just an issue of how do you enforce it; how do you make sure that it stops? That’s your problem.”

Plan B is a form of emergency contraception to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex. The pill, also known as the “morning-after pill”, has nothing to do with the United States’ borders or fentanyl. It is a legal and safe medication that millions of people use.

Since the 1970s, Americans have had a constitutional right to contraception. Married couples were guaranteed the right in the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court decision. And unmarried people have the right through the 1971 Eisenstadt v. Baird decision.

“If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child,” wrote Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in the majority opinion for the Baird case.

Now that abortion is no longer a constitutional right for all Americans, the Republican Party is trying to diminish American rights even further with talks of banning contraception and revisiting the right to gay marriage.

 

Which anyone who has read ZVTS for even a couple of months would have figured out, that Republicans were never going to stop at ending Roe. They are coming for all of it, the entire civil rights and women's rights eras, and dropping us back in 1950, and in more than a few cases, in 1850 or even 1750.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It.