Last Call For The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

The more you realize that the GOP is the party of white supremacy, and that everyone still involved with supporting the party is a white supremacist, full stop, the more the actions of the GOP make sense. And as much as candidates like Glenn Youngkin in Virginia try to convince voters that he's not in the party of white supremacists, the actual, avowed white supremacists keep showing up at his campaign events to support him.

A routine campaign stop for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin turned chaotic on Saturday night after the candidate's team was forced to boot a local Republican leader and apparent white nationalist from the event, causing a scene that a spokesperson called "antithetical" to the Republican hopeful's message.

The incident happened just before Youngkin was slated to give a stump speech to a crowd of "Latinos for Youngkin" at a local restaurant, when campaign officials approached a man, named Fredy Burgos, who was wearing both a red pro-Trump hat emblazoned with "Build the Wall" and a pin promoting white nationalist and Unite the Right rally attendee Nicholas Fuentes.

Burgos is a longtime far-right activist and former local Republican party official who made waves during the Trump years with a series of bombastic statements that earned him plenty of enemies in local conservative circles. The Washington Post, reporting on a 2018 drive to oust him from his post on the Fairfax County Republican Party committee, wrote that he was a "verbal bomb-thrower whose attacks against Muslims, immigrants and others have turned off moderates."

He even appeared alongside several of Fuentes' white nationalist followers — known online as Groypers — at a Loudoun County School Board meeting recently, which has become a local flashpoint in the nationwide right-wing campaign to ban anti-racist lessons in public schools.

As Saturday's Youngkin event was getting underway, Burgos, who sported a thick mustache and vintage suit vest for the occasion, made a short-lived walk around the inside of the venue, only to be forced out after Salon inquired about his pin and associations.

Notably, Burgos said he only became a Youngkin supporter recently, after Virginia state Senator-turned-"toxic [Youngkin] surrogate" Amanda Chase lost her bid to Youngkin. Prior to the loss, she had taken to calling herself "Trump in heels."

Despite Burgos being booted from the event Saturday, he told Salon he remains a steadfast supporter of the candidate and that he hopes to appear at future rallies.

"I'm a supporter of the ticket," Burgos told Salon after being removed from the "Latinos for Youngkin" event. "They are concerned about the [Build the Wall] hat. I think that they have a problem thinking that other people may have a problem with the hat."

 

Burgos will be back at Youngkin's rallies, because Youngkin needs the votes of Burgos and other Virginia white supremacists. You'd better 100% believe that if Youngkin wins, he'll be implementing the GOP agenda against women, Black folk, LGBTQ+, Latino, and reality.

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

President Manchin continues to slash the Build Back Better plan, this week demanding an end to extending the child tax credit for the vast majority of American families.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has told the White House the child tax credit must include a firm work requirement and family income cap in the $60,000 range, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.

Why it matters: While Manchin’s demands would dramatically weaken one of President Biden’s signature programs to help working families, they also would reduce the package’s overall costs.That would make it easier for the pivotal senator to support a final package, potentially higher than Manchin's previous $1.5 trillion top line. 

At the same time, progressives would have a hard time accepting the changes Manchin is demanding.They'd also fundamentally alter a program the president funded for one year in the $1.9 COVID-19 relief package passed in March. 

Manchin's office declined to comment on Axios' report.

The big picture: Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) held a call with House centrist lawmakers last Wednesday in which the senators detailed some of their specific concerns about Biden’s $3.5 trillion social spending plan. They also discussed the White House’s decision to link the package to approval of the separate $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill — a demand of House progressives. 

Sinema told lawmakers she will not vote for the social spending plan until the House passes the infrastructure bill, according to Reuters. Neither Manchin nor Sinema endorsed Biden's compromise price for the social spending plan in the $1.9 trillion to $2.2 trillion range. Manchin also continues to privately tell colleagues the president’s Clean Electricity Performance Program, a cornerstone of Democrats' plan to achieve zero-carbon electricity, is a non-starter.

Go deeper: While Manchin has previously indicated he wanted progressive to pick one of Biden's three programs to help working families, he now seems more favorably disposed to policies that target families with young children in need. In addition to the pared-back CTC, Manchin is open to Biden's $450 billion plan to subsidize day care and offer free universal preschool, the people familiar with the matter told Axios. Manchin, however, wants to impose stricter income caps on the day care subsidies while keeping preschool free for everyone, as it already is in West Virginia. 

The senator is less interested in the $225 billion to $450 billion paid family leave proposal or $400 billion for a new program to provide elder care, according to people familiar with the matter.

 

So right now we have a single US senator (or two) making the decisions for 100% of Americans, and the trajectory is permanently in a downward spiral. Every week Manchin and Sinema make a new demand, Democrats "scramble" to cut the bill, and then the goalposts get moved the following week.

The point of course, and I have been telling you guys this for months now, is for the pair to kill both bills in a way that they can blame Joe Biden and "progressives". They're getting closer and closer to that point with every massive cut to the bill. Eventually the response from Rep. Pramila Jayapal is going to be "Fuck Joe Manchin" and the game ends with the "moderates" scoring a decisive and historic win, and we all get nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Now, here's the truly perverse part.

No matter how much Manchin and/or Sinema pare down the Build Back Better plan, no Republican will vote for it, no Republican will allow cloture on it, and no Republican will pay a price for blocking the bill during the final vote. They are the real villains here.

The Democrats though? They will be decimated, just like in 2010 and 2014. The end result will be most likely be Republican control of Congress.

Change my mind, please, because we're heading for the abyss here and there's little chance of coming back in my lifetime if we crumple here.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

 It's good to know GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger isn't ruling out a January 6th Commission subpoena for Donald Trump, but nobody honestly things that will happen, for reasons I've stated multiple times in the past.

 

A Republican on the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol on Sunday did not rule out issuing a subpoena for former President Donald Trump as it seeks to obtain information from his allies. 

"I don't know. I think if I had that answer now, I'd probably go in, you know, and not be able to see all the pieces," Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" when asked if the committee could do a thorough investigation without subpoenaing Trump. "If we subpoena all of a sudden the former president, we know that's going to become kind of a circus so that's not necessarily something we want to do up front. But if he has pieces of information we need, we certainly will." 

The House has issued subpoenas to allies of the former President, including former administration official Kash Patel and former chief of staff Mark Meadows. The committee announced last week it was moving forward to hold Trump ally Steve Bannon in criminal contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena. 

Asked Friday what his message is to those who defy subpoenas from the January 6 select committee, President Joe Biden told CNN's Kaitlan Collins, "I hope that the committee goes after them and holds them accountable." 

"I do, yes," Biden said when asked if he thinks they should be prosecuted by the Department of Justice. 

But DOJ spokesperson Anthony Coley said Friday that the department will "make its own independent decisions in all prosecutions based solely on the facts and the law. Period. Full stop."

 

Trump certainly possesses information, but the Commission will never subpoena him. The second he does, his domestic terrorist cultists will immediately try to harm or kill people across the country in a mass orgy of violence. 

Should they do it anyway?  Of course. Trump needs to be dragged in front of the cameras and fried like a cheese curd. But it won't happen.

People will be hurt or killed if he does. It really is that simple.

 

StupidiNews!

• Security forces in Haiti continue to investigate 16 kidnapped American and one Canadian Christian missionaries attributed to gang members in Port-au-Prince over the weekend.
• Former Trump Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Clark may be facing disbarment and criminal charges for his role in Trump's "soft coup" in 2020.
• US oil futures have topped $85 a barrel as skyrocketing demand for the global economy re-emerging from the pandemic has driven prices to their highest level in nearly a decade.
• Continuing military tensions between India and China over a key Himalayas pass show no sign of resolution as Beijing is demanding Delhi withdraw troops from the area.
• Discovery of fecal remains from nearly 3,000 years ago reveals Iron age Europeans consumed beer, blue cheese, and plenty of cereal grains.