Presenting, Not Lamenting, The Zients King

The Biden White House is moving extremely quickly on replacing outgoing Chief of Staff Ron Klain, and former WH COVID response czar/Midterm shuffle transition aide Jeff Zients is the person for the job.

President Biden will name Jeff Zients to serve as his next chief of staff, turning to a management consultant who oversaw the administration’s coronavirus response to replace Ron Klain, who is expected to leave in the coming weeks, according to four people familiar with the decision.

Zients left the White House in April after steering the administration’s pandemic response and leading the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history. He returned to the White House in the fall to help Klain prepare for staff turnover after the midterms — a project that was ultimately limited in scope, as few senior staff members have left across the administration. But, in recent weeks, Klain has assigned him different projects, which some viewed as preparing Zients for the top role, people familiar with the arrangement said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

Zients takes over the top job as Biden is entering a new and challenging stretch of his presidency: Republicans have already launched a barrage of investigations into the administration and the business dealings of the president’s son. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the handling of classified documents found at Biden’s personal office and Wilmington, Del., home. And Biden is preparing to launch his reelection bid.

Zients comes into the job with a vastly different profile than Klain: His first government job was during the Obama administration, and he has spent most of his career in the private sector. He has only ever worked in the executive branch. His personal Twitter account has no posts.

But colleagues have praised Zients as a master implementer who engenders deep loyalty from the people he oversees.

As Biden ramps up his political activity, some Democrats said they expect the structure of the chief of staff role to change, with Biden’s political advisers, including Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed, taking on even more prominence in the building.

They compared the arrangement to that of the Obama White House, when Jack Lew served as chief of staff in 2012 and focused on keeping the federal government running, while David Plouffe, a political strategist, came into the White House from 2011 to 2013 as a senior adviser to oversee the reelection campaign. Democrats say Dunn, a senior adviser, will serve in a Plouffe-like role.

 

So the message being sent here is that Zients is a fighter and will be free to take on the House GOP Circus of the Damned, while Anita Dunn will run Biden's 2024 campaign.

Having said that, Zients will certainly find himself a giant target of House Republicans, both for his new role and for his runningCOVID-19 response last year. Let's hope he's as much of a combatant as he is a manager, because Kevin McCarthy's clown crew is definitely going to try to drag him into hearing after hearing.

We'll see how he fares, but it looks like this has been in the works for a while now, and he's had time to prepare for the sheer magnitude of the job ahead, and the stakes that are in play, starting with the GOP trying to default on America's debt and pitch us headfirst into a depression with millions of job losses and untold misery.

No pressure, Jeff...

Last Call For Documenting Both Sides

With news that a voluntary Justice Department search of President Biden's Delaware residence turned up more classified documents from when Biden was a Delaware senator, the effort to paint Biden's full cooperation as worse than Trump's year-plus long cavalcade of lies, mistruths, and efforts to illegally keep hundreds of documents is underway in our "liberal" press, and the latest polling is showing that it's working as intended.

Strong majorities of Americans believe that both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump acted inappropriately when it came to their handling of classified documents, but in weighing their severity, a plurality of the public believes Trump's actions were more serious, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds.

Over three-quarters of the public, 77%, feel that Trump acted inappropriately in the way he handled classified files, while 64%, say the same of Biden. Condemnation expectedly aligns along party lines, with 96% of Democrats saying that Trump's handling of classified documents was not appropriate compared to 47% of Republicans.

More than eight in 10 independents (83%), believe that Trump's behavior was inappropriate, per the ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel.

Reaction to Biden's actions on this matter similarly varies by party, with 89% of Republicans saying that Biden's handling of classified documents was not appropriate compared to 38% of Democrats and two-thirds of independents (66%).

Both Biden and Trump are under heavy scrutiny due to the discovery of classified files located amid personal items or in unsecured facilities, instead of housed at the National Archives where they belong, though there are key differences in each case.

Earlier this month, reports revealed that a small number of such documents were found in November at an office Biden kept in Washington, D.C. More documents have since been found in his Wilmington, Delaware, home.

The White House maintains that aides immediately contacted the Archives upon learning of the Biden documents and are cooperating fully with the Department of Justice. Trump, on the other hand, faces allegations from the DOJ of obstruction of justice, after his team allegedly left out key details and made multiple unfounded or false claims with investigators during initial efforts to retrieve classified documents stored in his Mar-a-Lago home.

Both now face special counsel investigations appointed by the Justice Department.

The poll was conducted before the Saturday revelation that DOJ investigators found additional classified documents after a consensual FBI search of Biden's Delaware home.

 

As a result, the Villagers have already declared Biden's 2024 run dead and buried, and are openly speculating on whether or not That Horrible Cackling Bitch Kamala Harris™ will even bother to run.

 

Republicans seem to think this is a plot to force Biden out of office and are counting the days before his resignation...after his inevitable impeachment.

A lot of people have decided that Biden and Harris are done.

I'm not one of them, of course. Biden followed the law.

Trump still hasn't.

That's the difference.

 

Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

Kids have to be taught to hate, and kids have to be taught to shoot, too. Of course the Virginia elementary school teacher shot by a first-grade MAGA kid who brought one of his family's many, many firearms to school had her pleas that the kid was a time bomb ignored.

 

The Virginia teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student repeatedly asked administrators for help with the boy but officials downplayed educators’ warnings about his behavior, including dismissing his threat to light a teacher on fire and watch her die, according to messages from teachers obtained by The Washington Post.

The previously unreported incidents raise fresh questions about how Richneck Elementary School in Newport News handled the troubled student before police say he shot Abigail Zwerner as she taught her first-grade class earlier this month. Authorities have called the shooting “intentional” but are still investigating the motive.

Many parents are already outraged over Richneck officials’ management of events before the shooting. Newport News Superintendent George Parker III has said school officials got a tip the boy had a gun that day and searched his backpack, but that staffers never found the weapon before authorities say the 6-year-old shot Zwerner. Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said his department was not contacted about the report that the boy had a weapon before the shooting.

Police and school officials have repeatedly declined to answer questions about the boy’s disciplinary issues or worrisome behaviors the 6-year-old may have exhibited and how school officials responded, citing the child’s age and the ongoing law enforcement investigation. The boy’s family said in a statement he has an “acute disability,” but James Ellenson, an attorney for the family, declined to comment on accounts of the boy’s behavior or how it was handled by the school.

School district spokeswoman Michelle Price said in a phone interview late Friday that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law protecting students’ privacy, prohibits her from releasing information related to the 6-year-old.

“I cannot share any information in a child’s educational record,” she said. “A lot of what you’re asking is part of the child’s educational record, and it’s also a matter of an ongoing police investigation and an internal school investigation. Unfortunately, some of these details I’m not even privy to.”

Screenshots of a conversation held online between school employees and Parker shortly after the shooting show educators claiming that Zwerner raised alarms about the 6-year-old and sought assistance during the school year.

“she had asked for help,” one staffer wrote in that chat, referring to Zwerner.

“several times,” came another message.

“Yes she did.”

“two hours prior”

“all year.”

The messages, which were provided to The Post by the spouse of a Richneck Elementary schoolteacher, do not detail what specific assistance Zwerner sought, or to whom she directed her requests. Zwerner and her family have not returned repeated messages from The Washington Post.

 

Again, this battle was lost ten years ago at Sandy Hook. If anything, guns in schools are far more prevalent today, because America fucking refuses to do anything about it, and anything we try gets blocked by the gun fetishists.

 

Even at the cost of kids' lives.

 

They all want to be Kyle Rittenhouse. They all want to kill liberals and get away with murder in "self-defense". 

And they won't be stopped by asking nicely.

Sunday Long Read: Charlie And The Great Class Excavator

This week's Sunday Long Read comes from the NY Times's Rob Lieber, who brings us yet another colossal Millennial con, the story of how 30-year-old Charlie Javice took the mighty JP Morgan Chase to the cleaners for $175 million dollar investment in her entirely fake college financial planning empire.

When JPMorgan Chase paid $175 million to acquire a college financial planning company called Frank in September 2021, it heralded the “unique opportunity for deeper engagement” with the five million students Frank worked with at more than 6,000 American institutions of higher education.

Then last month, the biggest bank in the country did something extraordinary: It said it had been conned.

In a lawsuit, JPMorgan claimed that Frank’s young founder, Charlie Javice, had engaged in an elaborate scheme to stuff that list of five million customers with fakery.

“To cash in, Javice decided to lie,” the suit said. “Including lying about Frank’s success, Frank’s size and the depth of Frank’s market penetration.” Ms. Javice, through her lawyer, has said the bank’s claims are untrue.

JPMorgan’s legal filing reads like pulp nonfiction, with jaw-dropping accusations. Among them: that Ms. Javice and Olivier Amar, Frank’s chief growth and acquisition officer, faked their customer list and hired a data science professor to help pull the wool over the eyes of the bank’s due-diligence team.

What JPMorgan mostly left out, however, is the story of how Ms. Javice found herself in a nine-figure negotiation with the bank in the first place.

When Frank was born, in 2016, Ms. Javice was 24 years old, displayed great media savvy and claimed to have real-world experience with financial aid and the struggle to pay for college. “It’s grueling, it’s emotional,” she told The Daily Pennsylvanian, a student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania, adding that her mother would frequently cry while talking to financial aid officers.

Ms. Javice’s personal story — and pledge to cut through the painful thicket of government forms, jargon and regulations surrounding the aid process — must have made compelling reading for angel investors and venture capitalists. Especially those who have little firsthand knowledge of how financial aid actually works.

By promising to help users file financial aid forms more quickly and easily — and deliver billions in savings to teenagers who needed help — her business plan had the halo of doing well while doing good. It eventually added a dot-org web address for good measure.

“I thought it would be an advocacy organization,” said Carly Gillis, who was Frank’s director of content and community for several months in 2018. “A real David and Goliath story.”

At least some of its good deeds, however, may never have been done or were at least highly exaggerated. When many people were still home during the pandemic, Frank started offering “amazing prices” for online classes that earned “real college credits.” This past week, however, schools that appeared on Frank’s website with hundreds of supposedly available courses expressed confusion in interviews about their presence on the site during that period. At one school, nobody had ever even heard of the company.

Ms. Javice’s story is an archetypal tale of late-stage start-up hustle culture — a teenage prodigy turned Ivy League social enterprise maven and shape-shifting savior of higher education.

Or so she would have the world believe.

 

Now, this is a story of nine-figure fraud and corporate greed on a fantastic level, all made possible by a completely broken higher education system that preys on the least wealthy and most needful of us.

 

But I can't be completely furious with Javice, as she absolutely fucked JP Morgan Chase over for $175 big ones, and it couldn't have happened to a shittier bank (except maybe Wells Fargo.) 

I'm really kind of cool with that.

Last Call For Klain Jumpers

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain is out, as the Biden Administration goes from historic accomplishments to a war footing with the House GOP Circus of the Damned.

 

Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff who has steered President Biden’s administration through two years of triumphs and setbacks, is expected to step down in coming weeks in the most significant changing of the guard since Mr. Biden took office two years ago.

Mr. Klain has been telling colleagues privately since the November midterm elections that after a grueling, nonstop stretch at Mr. Biden’s side going back to the 2020 campaign, he is ready to move on, according to senior administration officials, and a search for a replacement has been underway.

The officials, who discussed internal matters on condition of anonymity, would not say whether a successor has already been picked or when the decision would be announced, but indicated that it would come at some point after the president outlined his agenda for the coming year in his State of the Union address on Feb. 7. Mr. Klain likely would stay around for a transition period to help the next chief settle into the corner office that has been his command post for many crises and legislative battles.

His resignation would be a striking moment of turnover at the top of an administration that has been relatively stable through the first half of Mr. Biden’s term, and Mr. Klain takes pride that he has lasted longer than any other Democratic president’s first chief of staff in more than half a century. But with Mr. Biden expected to announce by spring that he is running for re-election, advisers predict more moves as some aides shift from the White House to the campaign.

The departure would also come at a time when the White House faces a widening array of political and legal threats from a newly appointed special counsel investigating the improper handling of classified documents and a flurry of other inquiries by the newly installed Republican majority in the House. The next chief of staff will be charged with managing the defense of Mr. Biden’s White House and any counterattack as the 2024 election approaches.

Among the possible choices to replace Mr. Klain mentioned by senior officials are Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh; former Gov. Jack A. Markell of Delaware, now serving as ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden; Steven J. Ricchetti, the counselor to the president; Jeffrey D. Zients, the administration’s former coronavirus response coordinator; Susan Rice, the White House domestic policy adviser; and Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture.

Neither Mr. Klain nor any of those named as possible candidates to succeed him had any immediate comment on Saturday in response to messages. Ms. Dunn has flatly ruled out taking the job in conversations with colleagues.

Mr. Klain has been a singularly important figure in Mr. Biden’s administration. Having worked for Mr. Biden off and on for more than three decades, admirers say that Mr. Klain channels the president as few others can. He is seen as so influential that Republicans derisively call him a virtual prime minister and Democrats blame him when they are disappointed in a decision.

For all the crossfire, Mr. Klain helped rack up an impressive string of legislative victories, including a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan, a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure program, the largest investment in combating climate change in history and measures to expand benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, lower prescription drug costs for seniors, spur development in the semiconductor industry and create a minimum 15 percent tax rate for major corporations.

Mr. Klain also helped oversee the distribution of vaccines that have curbed if not ended the Covid-19 pandemic and the enactment of a plan to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars of student loan debt for millions of Americans. And he set the tone for the White House message to the world through an active Twitter account that he used to promote victories and jab critics.

On Friday, for instance, he chided Republicans for their approach to federal spending. “How extreme is the House GOP plan to cut Social Security and Medicare?” he wrote. “So extreme that even Donald Trump is saying, ‘Hey, that’s too extreme for me!’”

 

Two observations: One, Klain was spectacular at the job, or maybe I've just lived in politics in an era where the list of former White House Chiefs of Staff included James Baker, Leon Panetta, Andy Card, Rahm Emmanuel, Reince Priebus, John Kelly, and Mark Meadows.

Certainly Klain has done the best job since Obama's second term maestro, Denis McDonough, who doesn't nearly get enough credit considering who came after him (he was Obama's former head of the NSC and was largely responsible for the Iran containment strategy which Trump and his chuds wrecked) but he'll go down as the Man Who Got Shit Done, especially on infrastructure and the environment.

The question is who will step up in his place, now that the next 23 months plus will be nothing but investigations by Kevin McCarthy's clowns?

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

His name was Tyre Nichols, and he was beaten so badly at a January 7th traffic stop by five Memphis PD officers that he died three days later. The assault was of such a brutal nature that the Memphis PD fired all five officers on Friday.

 

The Memphis Police Department has terminated five police officers in connection with the death of Tyre Nichols, who passed away in a hospital after being arrested by police earlier this month, according to a post from the department’s verified Twitter account.

“The egregious nature of this incident is not a reflection of the good work our officers perform, with integrity every day,” Police chief Cerleyn “CJ” Davis said in a statement.

Investigators working on an internal review of the arrest found the officers violated policies for use of force, duty to intervene and duty to render aid, the chief said.

Nichols’ family voiced its approval of the terminations, according to a statement from their attorneys.

“We join Tyre’s family in supporting the Department’s decision to terminate the five officers who brutalized him, ultimately causing his death. This is the first step towards achieving justice for Tyre and his family,” attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci said. “They must also be held accountable for robbing this man of his life and his son of a father.”

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is looking into whether the officers’ actions were criminal in nature.

“Due to the ongoing criminal investigation, the Memphis Police Association will not comment on the termination of officers in the Tyre Nichols case,” the union representing the officers said. “The citizens of Memphis, and more importantly, the family of Mr. Nichols deserve to know the complete account of the events leading up to his death and what may have contributed to it.”

Also, the Department of Justice and FBI have opened a civil rights investigation.

 

The city is expected to release footage of the police body cameras on Tuesday.

 

Years after George Floyd was killed by police, we still have cops ending the lives of Black folk for the crime of being Black folk. Unarmed Black people are still dying in the streets. Officers rarely face consequences for their murderous actions.

 

What makes this case a bit different is all five officers involved in Nichols's death are Black as well. I can understand wanting to protect your own neighborhood and joining the police force, in fact more police departments need Black officers from Black neighborhoods nationwide, but it also means the "us versus them" mentality you'll find in any PD squad room means you'll have Black officers still killing Black citizens. It's a special kind of hell, a job that makes you kill your own.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

SInema Verite', Con't

It's a long road to 2024 and keeping the Senate will be a massive challenge, but Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego says he's coming for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, and the sparks will fly.

 

Arizona Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego on Monday plans to launch a challenge against Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, CBS News has learned.

Gallego, an outspoken liberal Democrat, has long been critical of Sinema, who dropped her party identification as a Democrat to be an independent just after the party won the Senate last year. The Arizona senator still aligns herself with the Senate Democratic caucus, though.

Sinema said at the time that she changed her party affiliation because she "never fit neatly into any party box", but the label switch prompted an immediate backlash from many Democrats, including Gallego.

Democratic sources close to Gallego say the Marine veteran plans to launch his Senate campaign with a video, in both Spanish and English on Monday and then launch a national media tour to promote his announcement.

 

Sinema meanwhile continues to hang out at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where's she's hobnobbing with Sen. Joe Manchin and having a good laugh over blocking the filibuster for the last two years.

 

Sens. Kirsten Sinema (I-Az.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) high-fived over their efforts to block Senate filibuster reform on stage at a panel with other U.S. lawmakers and governors in Davos, Switzerland.

Sinema was touting the duo’s accomplishments as a moderating force in the Senate — which included blocking changes to the filibuster — when Manchin chimed in.

“We still don’t agree on getting rid of the filibuster,” Manchin said before they turned to each other and high-fived.

The lawmakers’ intransigence on the filibuster effectively blocked key Democratic legislative priorities, such as voting rights reforms and codifying abortion rights, over the past two years. Sinema, who left the Democratic Party to become an independent last month, used the outing at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting to take a victory lap.

“While some would say that there were reluctant folks working in Congress in the last two years,” she said, gesturing at herself and Manchin, “I would actually say that was the basis for the productivity for some incredible achievements that made a difference for the American people in the last two years.”

Sinema was apparently jabbing back at fellow panelist Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker (D), who had knocked the senators for their pushback to some of President Biden’s agenda. 

 

Whoever wins the Dem primary will almost certainly draw a match against Kari Lake, and frankly this is a seat Dems cannot afford to lose. The reality is that a three way match may actually break Gallego's way.

But that's a long way off. We've battles to fight right now, and that includes Manchin and Sinema.

 

Last Call For The Road To Gilead Goes Through Kansas

If you thought Kansas's vote back in August to affirm the right to an abortion in the state, the "leave abortion to the states" Republicans in a post-Roe America are now "leave abortion to individual states and cities to ban" fans.

 

A Wichita Republican has introduced legislation that would allow local governments to issue their own restrictions and regulations of abortion — even though state constitution guarantees a right to abortion and bars most restrictions on the procedure.

Sen. Chase Blasi, a first year senator who was Senate President Ty Masterson’s chief of staff until last year, introduced the bill in the Senate Federal and State affairs committee Thursday.

The bill is one of the first abortion bills filed since Kansans overwhelmingly voted in August to retain a state-level right to an abortion in the state’s constitution.

A 2019 ruling in the Hodes case from the Kansas Supreme Court says that a woman’s right to an abortion can only be restricted in extremely rare circumstances under the highest judicial bar of strict scrutiny.

Blasi’s bill does not change that but it does seek to repeal an existing state law that bars local governments from regulating abortion. Blasi said he had not discussed possible restrictions with local officials in Wichita, and acknowledged that any restrictions would likely face a legal challenge.

“I’m hearing a lot from my constituents who believe we should continue to do more to help the unborn,” Blasi said. “Ultimately the question becomes what is allowed under the Hodes decision.”

“The Supreme Court should give more clarity because it’s so vague. It’s hard to understand exactly what is allowed or not allowed under Hodes. So absolutely, if local governments in conversations with constituents decide to adopt new policies and if they go through the court system the courts will have to decide.”

Sen. Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat, said legislation like Blasi’s ignores voters’ message in August to leave abortion rights alone.

“As many of us suspected, this issue will keep coming back and keep coming back,” Holscher said. “General citizens feel like, okay, that issue’s been settled.”

Blasi said he was also working on legislation aimed at expanding adoption options in Kansas.

While Blasi said he had not discussed his proposal with leadership, Republican and anti-abortion leaders in Kansas have discussed an interest in providing additional funding for anti-abortion pregnancy centers as well as seeking clarity from the Kansas Supreme Court on what abortion restrictions are and are not permissible.

Litigation over local policies would provide an avenue for that without dragging the state back into court.

In a statement Anamare Rebori-Simmons, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, called the bill a blatant disregard of the will of the people.

“Abortion rights won in a landslide, including in the home county of the bill’s sponsor. Politicians serve as the voice of the people in the legislature, and Republican lawmakers should know better than to silence those they represent,” Rebori-Simmons said.

 

The problem here is Kansas Republicans have a veto-proof margin in both the state House and state Senate, meaning they could override any veto from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Expect a form of this legislation to pass into law, and for the court fights in Kansas to begin in earnest.

As with Florida's constitutional amendment to restore voting to felons, the real fight was what hoops Republicans in the state legislature can add to make the process impossible.

The right to bodily autonomy will never be "settled law" to Republicans until it is eliminated nationally and criminalized federally.

Shutdown Countdown, Armageddon Edition, Con't

House GOP "moderates" are making it clear that there will be trillions in cuts to social programs, education, infrastructure and health care or they will crash the economy and throw us into a depression.

 

House Republicans from swing districts are flatly rejecting the White House’s position that there be no negotiations with Congress over raising the national debt ceiling, insisting that they won’t bend to the Democrats’ take-it-or-leave-it approach to avoid the first-ever debt default with no conditions attached.

The Republicans, many of whom hail from districts that President Joe Biden won or narrowly lost and are seen as the most likely to break ranks with their party’s leadership, said they are not willing to back a “clean” debt ceiling increase, insisting there must be some fiscal agreement first. That view is in line with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is calling for negotiations with the White House before a possible default occurs later this year.

But the White House and Senate Democratic leaders, wary of the ferocious fiscal fights with the House GOP that dogged then-President Barack Obama, see little upside in giving in to any of the GOP demands to impose spending cuts on domestic programs, believing instead that McCarthy and Republicans will cave facing the prospect of a looming default and with no viable legislative alternative.

The White House is badly miscalculating, Republicans say.

“I don’t think that a clean debt ceiling is in order, and I certainly don’t think that a default is in order,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate whose Pennsylvania district Biden carried, told CNN, indicating he planned to engage in bipartisan talks next week over a compromise proposal when lawmakers return to Washington.

The early back-and-forth underscores how Washington is heading into a period of deep uncertainty with global ramifications – with a newly empowered House GOP majority eager to use its leverage in the debt limit fight to enact priorities that otherwise would be ignored by the Democrats running the Senate and the White House. Some congressional sources in both parties believe that McCarthy may ultimately be jammed by the Senate and forced to vote on a bipartisan compromise crafted in that chamber, though that scenario would take weeks if not months to play out.

o work around McCarthy, Democrats would need to win over some potential GOP swing votes to sign on to a “discharge petition,” which could force a House floor vote if six Republicans signed on to the effort with the 212 Democrats currently in the chamber.

Republicans insist there’s little chance of that tactic succeeding at the moment – especially if it’s to force a vote on a clean debt ceiling increase with no other conditions or concessions.

“I’m not in favor of Biden’s no-negotiating strategy, and I’m not inclined to help,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican whose Nebraska district Biden carried, indicating Republicans campaigned against government spending and inflation. “The GOP can’t demand the moon, and Biden can’t refuse to negotiate. There needs to be give-and-take on both sides.”

Bacon said there needs to be “good faith” talks with the White House and some “commitment for fiscal restraint” before he would even consider signing onto a discharge petition.

 

The problem is there is no Republican "good faith" effort.  It's trillions in cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, schools, roads, bridges, food stamps, health care, you name it, House Republicans are going to get rid of it.

The second Biden gives in to these terrorists, America will collapse.  Luckily, the White House and Democrats have a couple months to go around and say "Look, these guys are going to crash the economy, cost us millions, maybe tens of million of jobs, wipe out benefit programs that you've earned and paid for, and for what?"

We'll see where we go on this, but we're at the point where both parties believe they have already won the argument, and that's just not true.

 

The Supreme Court Hot Dog Stand, Con't

The Dobbs leaker is a total mystery, folks!

 

The Supreme Court on Thursday announced that it has been unable to identify the person who leaked an unpublished draft of an opinion indicating the court was poised to roll back abortion rights.

In an unsigned statement, the court said that all leads had been followed up and forensic analysis performed, but "the team has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence."

But the attached report suggested the court was not watertight, with some employees admitting they had talked to spouses about the draft opinion and how the justices had voted.

Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley, who is in charge of the investigation, said that 97 court employees were interviewed and all denied being the leaker. She said it was unlikely the court's information technology systems were compromised.

The report indicated that the justices were not scrutinized as part of the investigation.

"No one confessed to publicly disclosing the document and none of the available forensic and other evidence provided a basis for identifying any individual as the source of the document," Curley wrote.

 

I guess we'll never know who took the decision from the hot dog stand.

 

 

Of course they're not going to ask Justice Alito or Clarence Thomas's wife, Ginny about this. That might produce an actual fuckin' suspect.

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Alabama's new GOP Secretary of State Wes Allen was one of the few 2020 election deniers that won his race as the state's top election official, and his first act is pulling the Yellowhammer State out of a bipartisan national compact to share voter roll information.

 

On his first day in office on Monday, Allen terminated Alabama’s membership in the Electronic Registration Information Center, a consortium of roughly 30 states that share data about their voter rolls to keep them up to date, citing concerns about data privacy.

“I made a promise to the people of Alabama that ending our state’s relationship with the ERIC organization would be my first official act as Secretary of State,” he said.

Allen’s quick move, fueled by right-wing conspiracies about ERIC that spread last year, alarmed election administration professionals.

“Anything that makes elections more secure is a target for the election deniers, and the attacks on ERIC are just another tactic in this effort,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, an organization that works closely with election administrators.

Becker, who is a non-voting member of ERIC’s board after helping spearhead its launch a decade ago, attributed the decision to the lies about election administration spread by election deniers.

Allen first promised he would leave ERIC on the campaign trail last year, shortly after the conservative website Gateway Pundit published a series of stories falsely tying ERIC to George Soros, the progressive-leaning billionaire. Those stories, which called ERIC a “left wing voter registration drive disguised as voter roll clean up,” spread among Republicans who were already fanning other conspiracies about election administration, helping turn ERIC into a target of far-right organizations. Allen himself referred to Soros in explaining his hostility to ERIC in early 2022.

ERIC is financially supported by its member states, including many staunchly red ones that are governed by Republicans, such as South Carolina and Texas, as well as many blue states. The current chair of ERIC, Mandi Grandjean, is the deputy assistant secretary of state of Ohio under Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Trump-endorsed Republican.

John Merrill, Alabama’s outgoing secretary of state whom Allen replaced, and a Republican known for his own poor record on voting rights—he threatened to go after hundreds voters who mistakenly thought they could vote in a partisan runoff, failed to inform voters of their rights, and lashed out at critics of the state’s voting rights record—steadfastly defended ERIC throughout 2022.

“This continued narrative of ERIC being a George Soros system is untrue. ERIC was not founded nor funded by George Soros, and to claim otherwise is either dishonest or misinformed,” Merrill said in November. Becker echoed that characterization on Wednesday. “Putting aside the nature of those attacks, it’s just 100 percent false,” he said.

Tammy Patrick, the CEO of Election Center, a national organization that represents election administrators, stressed that ERIC was built to meet the practical needs of officials from both parties. “From its inception ERIC has been a bipartisan effort,” she told Bolts on Wednesday. “The policies and functionality were all created taking into account the perspectives of election administrators from across the political spectrum.

 

Increasingly, Secretaries of States in red state offices are being elected to destroy election integrity, not to protect it. The eventuality is that state elections will be so one sided in both candidate qualifications and vote qualifications that Republican legislatures will simply take over the state's "broken" election system and just declare GOP candidates to win, all the time.

At the very least, so few people will vote that Republicans will win anyway, and that's the point.

Jacinda Rescinded, Or, Totally Out Of Petrol

New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern is resigning ahead of election season in the country, saying she no longer is "the right person to lead".

“I’m leaving, because with such a privileged role comes responsibility. The responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple,” she said.

Her term as prime minister will conclude no later than 7 February, but she will continue as an MP until the election later this year.

“I am human, politicians are human. We give all that we can for as long as we can. And then it’s time. And for me, it’s time,” she said. Ardern said she had reflected over the summer break on whether she had the energy to continue in the role, and had concluded she did not.

Ardern became the world’s youngest female head of government when she was elected prime minister in 2017 at age 37. She has led New Zealand through the Covid-19 pandemic, and major disasters including the terror attack on two mosques in Christchurch, and the White Island volcanic eruption.

“This has been the most fulfilling five and a half years of my life. But it’s also had its challenges – amongst an agenda focused on housing, child poverty and climate change, we encountered a … domestic terror event, a major natural disaster, a global pandemic, and an economic crisis,” she said.

Asked how she would like New Zealanders to remember her leadership, Ardern said “as someone who always tried to be kind.”

“I hope I leave New Zealanders with a belief that you can be kind, but strong, empathetic but decisive, optimistic but focused. And that you can be your own kind of leader – one who knows when it’s time to go,” Ardern said.

Over the past year, Ardern has faced a significant increase in threats of violence, particularly from conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine groups infuriated by the country’s vaccine mandates and Covid-19 lockdowns. She said, however, that the increased risk associated with the job were not behind her decision to step down.

“I don’t want to leave the impression that the adversity you face in politics is the reason that people exit. Yes, it does have an impact. We are humans after all, but that was not the basis of my decision,” she said.

Ardern said she had no future plans, other than to spend more time with her family.

She thanked her partner, Clarke Gayford, and daughter Neve, whom she gave birth to while holding office, as “the ones that have sacrificed the most out of all of us”.

“To Neve: mum is looking forward to being there when you start school this year. And to Clarke – let’s finally get married.”

The prime minister’s announcement comes as New Zealand enters a closely-fought election year, with the date of the vote announced for 14 October. Polling over recent months had placed the Ardern-led Labour party slightly behind the opposition National.

 

People quit jobs all the time.  This one just happened to be Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Ardern is going to face a lot of ruthless attacks for admitting this, because national leaders aren't supposed to just up and quit on their people like this. But you know what? She's doing the right thing for her, and that makes it the right thing for New Zealand.

 

Having said that, her popularity at home was cratering, big time. 

Bring it on,” Jacinda Ardern told a cheering crowd in early November, addressing party members at Labour’s last conference before the next election. It was a battle-cry for a party and leader who know there’s a tough fight ahead.

In the weeks that followed, political headwinds accelerated: projections of a recession, stubbornly high inflation, national fears over crime, grim polling and enduring pockets of anti-government conspiracists dominated the news cycle. The last year and a half have been brutal for the progressive leader, who has slipped from near-unprecedented levels of popularity to some of the lowest polling of her political career.

The last polls of 2022 had Labour at about 33%, compared with the centre-right National party’s 38-39%. Those results are among the lowest of Ardern’s leadership, representing a turn back toward the bleak polling the Labour party was mired in when she first took over in 2017.

 

Hopefully the country will be able to move on and continue recovery, but it's going to do so without Ardern.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to keep Florida safe from several horrible things, including masks, vaccines, and Black history.

 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is proposing legislation to permanently ban Covid health measures aimed at mitigating the virus in the state.

The legislation would prohibit vaccine and mask requirements in schools, mask requirements at businesses and the so-called vaccine passports showing proof of vaccinations. It would also bar employers from hiring or firing employees based on whether they have been vaccinated, and would prohibit the firing or de-licensing of medical professionals who might disagree on Covid protocols.

“When the world lost its mind, Florida was a refuge of sanity, serving strongly as freedom’s linchpin,” DeSantis said in a press release. “These measures will ensure Florida remains this way and will provide landmark protections for free speech for medical practitioners.”

DeSantis has been a vocal opponent of pandemic health measures despite his initial support for vaccines, which he once called lifesaving, in 2021.

 

Yes, free speech must be defended when the topic is vaccines, but not Black history.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has rejected a College Board request to approve an African-American Studies course in his state on the grounds that the course violates state law, according to a report. The Advanced Placement (AP) program, of which a pilot has been launched, was reportedly rejected by DeSantis’ administration in a letter to the College Board from the Florida Department of Education’s Office of Articulation.

The rejection letter dated Jan. 12 said “as presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value,” according to National Review. The letter reportedly added: “in the future, should College Board be willing to come back to the table with lawful, historically accurate content, FDOE will always be willing to reopen the discussion. DeSantis’ controversial “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” signed into law last April, aimed in part to combat the teaching of critical race theory in Florida.

 

Stanley Kurtz over at NRO is all but ecstatic, of course.

On January 12, however, the administration of Florida governor Ron DeSantis wrote a letter to the College Board informing it that Florida was rejecting its request for state approval of APAAS. The letter, from the Florida Department of Education’s Office of Articulation, goes on to state that, “as presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” At the same time, the letter notes that “in the future, should College Board be willing to come back to the table with lawful, historically accurate content, FDOE will always be willing to reopen the discussion.” In short, DeSantis has decided that APAAS does in fact violate Florida’s Stop WOKE Act by attempting to persuade students of at least some tenets of CRT.

 

As far as I know, this is the first time that any state has refused to approve a College Board Advanced Placement course of any kind. While there were serious expressions of concern by some states during the 2014 controversy over the College Board’s leftist revision of its AP U.S. history course, no state or school district actually refused to approve the course. So this is a bold and unprecedented move by DeSantis.

DeSantis’s refusal to approve APAAS is entirely justified. Although the College Board has pointedly declined to release the APAAS curriculum, I obtained a copy and wrote about it in September. There I argued that APAAS proselytizes for a socialist transformation of the United States, that it directly runs afoul of new state laws barring CRT, and that to approve APAAS would be to gut those laws.

 

AP level Black history "significantly lacks educational value."

 

Never forget what DeSantis an his ilk think of us.

 

How many more red states will ban AP Black History classes? 

Destroy a people's history, outlaw it, and you destroy and outlaw a people.

But Black Lives Matter, Ron. So does Black history.

Last Call For Throwing The Book At Them

North Dakota Republicans, ever the bastion of "freedom of speech and expression", are now considering throwing librarians in jail who refuse to enforce the state's proposed bans of LGBTQ+ material.

 

Books containing “sexually explicit” content — including depictions of sexual or gender identity — would be banned from North Dakota public libraries under legislation that state lawmakers began considering Tuesday.

The GOP-dominated state House Judiciary Committee heard arguments but did not take a vote on the measure, which applies to visual depictions of “sexually explicit” content and proposes up to 30 days imprisonment for librarians who refuse to remove the offending books.

The proposal comes amid a national wave of Republican-backed laws to ban books that feature LGBTQ subject matter — though usually those bills have been limited to school libraries, not public ones.

Supporters of the bill said it would preserve children’s innocence and reduce their exposure to pornography.

But critics said the measure is “steeped in discrimination” and would allow government censorship of material that is not actually obscene.

House Majority Leader Mike Lefor, of Dickinson, introduced the bill and said public libraries currently contain books that have “disturbing and disgusting” content, including ones that describe virginity as a silly label and assert that gender is fluid.

Lefor argued that a child’s exposure to such content has been associated with addiction, poor self esteem, devalued intimacy, increasing divorce rates, unprotected sex among young people and poor well-being — though did he did not offer any evidence to support such claims.

Stark County resident Autumn Richard also spoke in favor of the bill, giving examples of explicit content in the graphic novel “Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human” and the kids’ comic book “Sex Is a Funny Word” — both available in public libraries.

Richard argued the books might have beneficial knowledge about contraceptives, body image and abusive relationships, but many sections provide information that she said was harmful for minors.

Though supporters of North Dakota’s bill repeatedly called the sexual content “obscene,” opponents said the material in question is not actually considered legally obscene.

“Nearly 50 years ago, the (U.S.) Supreme Court set the high constitutional bar that defines obscenity,” said Cody Schuler, an advocacy manager at the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota, who testified against the bill.

Obscenity is a narrow, well-defined category of unprotected speech that excludes any work with serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value, Schuler said. Few, if any, books have been deemed obscene, and the standard for restraining a library’s ability to distribute a book are even more stringent, Schuler added.

The definition of pornography is also subjective, opponents of the bill said.

Library Director Christine Kujawa at Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library said the library has a book with two little hamsters on the cover. At the end of the book, the hamsters get married, and they are both male.

“It’s a cute book,” Kujawa said — but it would be considered pornography under the bill because the book includes gender identity.

Facing criminal charges for keeping books on shelves is “something I never thought I would have to consider during my career as a librarian,” Kujawa added.

 

Frankly, not only do I expect the Roberts Court to strike down obscenity laws and "leave those up to states" but I expect North Dakota won't have any libraries soon anyway, so this won't be a problem anymore. 

Right?

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

In a post-January 6th world, white supremacist domestic terrorism groups have no problem operating in the open in America, saying the racist part out loud for all to see...and to fear.

 

The leader of a New England neo-Nazi group and a second man are accused of hanging a hateful banner over Route 1 in New Hampshire this summer, an act that the attorney general says violates the state's Civil Rights Act.

The charges stem from actions of the National Social Club-131 (NSC-131) members on July 30, 2022. NSC-131 is a neo-Nazi group with chapters in New England, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office alleged Tuesday that Christopher Hood, the leader of NSC-131, and Leo Anthony Cullinan were among members who hung the banner, which read "keep New England white," from an overpass over Route 1 in Portsmouth. Doing so involved trespassing on public property, investigators said.

"The only reasonable interpretation is that the slogan and group’s intention was to discourage people of color from residing in or visiting and making them feel unwelcome and unsafe in the New England region, New Hampshire, and Portsmouth," the complaint read.

The motivation, paired with the fact that the banner was hung from a highway overpass and interfered with the lawful activities of others, raises it to the level of a potential Civil Rights Violation, prosecutors said.

Hood and Collinan were each charged with violating the New Hampshire Civil Rights Act via civil complaint. The group itself, NSC-131, could also be held liable for violating the Civil Rights Act, prosecutors said, noting that authorities continue to try to identify the members involved in the incident.

Each violation can carry a penalty of up to $5,000. If found in violation, the court can also restrain the defendant from committing future violations of the Civil Rights Act and other hate-motivated conduct for three years. The complaint is looking for $10,000 in fines against Hood and a $5,000 fine against Collinan.

 

Neo-Nazi groups openly hanging white supremacist signs from bridges is bad enough. History tells us that maybe they start hanging other strange fruit from highway overpasses next.

Fines and probation are going to stop these assholes the next time they decide to "make a statement".