Last Call For Sinema Verite', Con't

More evidence that if President Manchin doesn't kill the Biden Build Back Better reconciliation bill in the weeks ahead, Vice President Sinema almost certainly will now that the Bipartisan Senate bill has been passed.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema took a victory lap Monday, saying the $1.2 trillion physical infrastructure bill passed by the House of Representatives is evidence her approach to bipartisan legislating is backed by the American public.

The package, which delivers key components of President Joe Biden’s agenda, makes historic investments in the nation’s deteriorating roads, bridges, airports, water systems and ports-of-entry, and will expand access to broadband internet in urban centers and far-flung areas of the state and across the nation left behind in the 21st century.

Sinema, D-Ariz., co-brokered the deal in the Senate with Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, in a process that began more than eight months ago in the basement of the Capitol, where she, Portman and staffers huddled with what she called their “nerdy” spreadsheets and a long list of goals.

Along the way, 10 Democratic and Republican senators helped the bill pass the Senate only to see it languish in the House for months as Democrats wrangled over the separate human safety-net measure that Democrats are advancing through the budget reconciliation process. That process requires just a simple majority of support in a divided Congress.

The House passed the physical infrastructure bill late Friday, clearing the way for Biden’s signature. The president is expected to sign the bill in the coming weeks.

Next Sinema will turn her attention to ensuring the money, which includes $550 billion of new funding, is spent and that the money flows quickly to entities across the U.S., she said Monday in a call with Arizona reporters.

Some projects could begin in the next couple of months.

After the holidays, Sinema said she anticipates employing the same bipartisan across-the-aisle approach with the “Gang of 10” senators to move on other key issues, from immigration reform to hiking the federal minimum wage.

The group has met several times to discuss its next round of bipartisan work, she said.  

Sinema said she is unmoved by criticism by the left wing of the Democratic Party and some moderates who have blasted her demand to scale back the budget reconciliation bill and threatened to recruit primary challengers to run against her in 2024.

Sinema's comments came after Republicans won the Virginia governor’s race and saw a surge in support in New Jersey, voting trends that signal trouble for Biden and Democrats ahead of next year’s 2022 midterm elections, when the party that holds the White House traditionally loses seats in Congress.

“The lesson that I take from (the) elections, whether they be my own or others, is that folks — they expect results,” Sinema said. “They’re less interested in the talking heads on television and the partisan talking points on cable TV. They’re less interested in the tweets. What they are interested in is who is delivering results that make a difference in their lives. And so what I pledge to you and to folks throughout Arizona is to continue to do what I’ve always done, which is just put my head down, stay focused on the work, and deliver results for Arizonans.”

On the budget reconciliation front, Sinema said she continues to work with the Biden administration, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and others to pass a package with a price tag that she helped shrink to an estimated $1.75 trillion from Democrats’ original $3.5 trillion.

“I’m looking forward to getting this done,” Sinema said. “I continue to work in good faith with President Biden and his team, as well as Sen. Schumer and all of my Democratic colleagues in both the House and Senate to find a package that we can all agree on and get this done.”

 

Sinema got 100% of what she wanted: glowing bipartisan reviews,  national news coverage, and fawning commercials from her lobbyist friends to keep her in office doing their bidding.

 

She's already running as an independent. Why wouldn't she kill the BBB plan and make it official?

Ban 'Em, Burn 'Em, Kansas Style

The screaming backlash against the Critical Race Theory boogeyman is now resulting in school districts banning books again, this time in Wichita, Kansas.

 

The Goddard school district has removed more than two dozen books from circulation in the district’s school libraries, citing national attention and challenges to the books elsewhere.

The list of books includes several well-known novels, including “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky.

It also includes “Fences,” a play by August Wilson that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1987, and “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.,” a historical look at how the white supremacist group took root in America.

Julie Cannizzo, assistant superintendent for academic affairs in Goddard, sent an email to principals and librarians last week with the list of 29 books.

“At this time, the district is not in a position to know if the books contained on this list meet our educational goals or not,” Cannizzo wrote in the email. “Additionally, we need to gain a better understanding of the processes utilized to select books for our school libraries.

“For these reasons, please do not allow any of these books to be checked out while we are in the process of gathering more information. If a book on this list is currently checked out, please do (not) allow it to be checked out again once it's returned.”

Cannizzo said in the email that the district is assembling a committee to “rate the content of the books on the list” and to review the selection process. She did not say how long the process is expected to take.

Cannizzo said Tuesday that one parent objected to language he found offensive in “The Hate U Give,” a novel about the aftermath of a police officer killing a Black teenager. The parent then submitted a list of books he questioned, and district officials agreed to halt checkouts and complete a review.

"We're not banning these books or anything like that as a district," she said. "It was just brought to our attention that that list of books may have content that's unsuitable for children."

 

We're not banning books, we're just taking them out of circulation indefinitely and making them completely unavailable until we can assess them at some indeterminate future date. 

 

It's not just Kansas, oh no. They want to literally burn books in Virginia now.

The Spotsylvania County School Board has directed staff to begin removing books that contain “sexually explicit” material from library shelves and report on the number of books that have been removed at a special called meeting next week.

The directive came after a parent raised concerns at the School Board’s meeting Monday about books available through the Riverbend High School’s digital library app.

The board also requested a report next week on the process by which books are selected for inclusion in digital and hard copy library collections at the different school levels and indicated that it will consider a division-wide library audit.

The criteria for pulling books from circulation this week is “sexually explicit,” but the board plans to refine how material is determined to be “objectionable” for a further review of library holdings.

The board voted 6–0 to order the removal. Berkeley District representative Erin Grampp was not in attendance for the vote on that issue.

Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned.

“I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said, and Twigg said he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”

 

Literally tossing these books into the fire so everyone can see them being torched. 

 

But let's be honest. In effect, we're canceling these cultural icons because white parents are very, very angry at awful mean lying Democrats.

The left’s CRT denial is intellectually dishonest. Just because grade-school students are not studying academic treatises on critical race theory does not mean it is not being taught in schools. Most of these students are also not reading Karl Marx, but if they were being instructed by teachers trained in Marxist thought to see everything through the prism of class struggle, they would be learning Marxism. Well, today children are being instructed by teachers trained in CRT to see everything through the prism of race; to believe that the United States is a systemically racist country; and to believe that society is divided into two classes — oppressors and oppressed — and that which you are is determined by the color of your skin. That is critical race theory.

Democrats are gaslighting American parents — telling them not to believe what they can see with their own eyes. Before the pandemic this might have worked. Most parents didn’t know firsthand what their children were being taught. But during last year’s lockdowns that changed. Millions of parents were stuck working from home while their kids were attending school online — which allowed parents to see for the first time what their kids were learning in the classroom. Many did not like what they saw. Nor did they like being told that the promotion of CRT is a figment of their imaginations, when in Virginia, it is right on the Department of Education’s website for all to see. So, they rose up to demand change.

Yet even after their electoral shellacking last Tuesday, Democrats are doubling down on the strategy of denigrating parents for raising legitimate concerns about their children’s education. Sorry, parents know that critical race theory is a real problem — and if Democrats continue telling parents their concerns are imaginary, they will continue to pay a price at the polls.

 

By the way, that's not a screed from the Daily Wire or Breitbart or National Review, that's Marc Theissen at the Washington Post now saying this.

And he's demonstrably wrong.

When thinking about next year’s elections, a mere 3 percent of Americans — including just 2 percent of Republicans and 5 percent of parents with kids under 18 — say schools are the most important issue to them, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

Those meager numbers suggest that while some sliver of the electorate may continue to fixate on COVID restrictions, critical race theory (CRT) and other so-called violations of “parents’ rights” — the issues that supposedly drove Democrats to defeat last week in otherwise blue Virginia — widespread school backlash would appear unlikely to define or decide the 2022 midterms.

At the same time, Democrats could face serious setbacks one year from now unless they restore faith in their economic stewardship — and unless President Biden can revive his cratering approval numbers.

The survey of 1,673 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Nov. 4 to 8, indicates that an emphasis on school curricula, particularly when it comes to lessons on race and racism, isn’t necessarily the GOP’s best bet for winning back control of Congress and state capitals next November.

As prices rise and shortages persist, the number of Americans who say the economy is the most important issue to them when thinking about the 2022 elections (31 percent) is 10 times higher than the number who say the same about schools. The number who choose health care as their most important issue, meanwhile, is four times higher (13 percent); those who say climate change (10 percent) or the coronavirus (10 percent) is three times higher. Immigration (9 percent) and changing the balance of power in Washington (8 percent) also outrank schools.

The reason schools languish near the bottom of the list is simple: 54 percent of Americans — and, more to the point, 60 percent of parents — rate schools in their area as either excellent or good. Less than a third (32 percent) of either group describe their schools as only fair or poor.

 

Dems are indeed in real trouble of another 1994/2010/2014 House blowout by the GOP, but it's not because of what Junior's learning in school.

Retribution Execution, Con't

The 13 House Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill last week have to be crucified and left by Trump for others to see, or Trump risks losing his power heading into 2022.

 

Republican Rep. Fred Upton on Monday shared a threatening voicemail he had received after voting for the bipartisan infrastructure bill last week. 

In the voicemail, which Upton played during an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on "AC360," a caller told the Michigan Republican: "I hope you die. I hope everybody in your f**king family dies," while labeling him a "f**king piece of sh*t traitor." 

Upton was one of just 13 House Republicans who voted with Democrats on Friday to pass the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill after hours of delays and debating among Democrats. The legislation, which passed the Senate in August, will deliver $550 billion in new federal investments in America's infrastructure over five years, including roads, bridges, mass transit, rail, airports, ports and waterways. 

Following the Friday vote, Upton tweeted in part, "I regret that this good, bipartisan bill became a political football in recent weeks. Our country can't afford this partisan dysfunction any longer." 

On Monday evening, he told Cooper, "I'll tell you it's a terrible way -- we have seen civility really downslide here. I'm concerned about my staff. They are taking these calls."
"These are very disturbing, adult language," he added. "To say the least, that truly is frightening." 

Upton's office said the voicemail was not an isolated incident. The calls came after GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia tweeted the phone numbers of those who had voted for the bill and later called them traitors.

 

Trump's already claimed the careers of GOP Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Anthony Gonzalez, who have already announced their respective retirements. Both of them would be facing redistricting eliminations anyway, as Ohio and New York are each losing a House seat in 2022. There will be more.

Note Greene wants to be Trump's director of political assassination. She wants Trump to see her help put these "traitors" down. That's the problem with being a tyrant, however. You can't have any enemies in your own camp, because they are a direct threat to your power.

 

Greene and her goons are almost certainly going to mount a campaign to strip the 13 Republicans of their committee assignments, which Democrats should happily accept.

Expect Upton to announce his retirement soon, or to be trounced in a primary in the spring.

Meanwhile, Trump's cultists continue to terrorize election officials around the country and they're proud of it.

In Arizona, a stay-at-home dad and part-time Lyft driver told the state’s chief election officer she would hang for treason. In Utah, a youth treatment center staffer warned Colorado’s election chief that he knew where she lived and watched her as she slept.

In Vermont, a man who says he works in construction told workers at the state election office and at Dominion Voting Systems that they were about to die.

“This might be a good time to put a f‑‑‑‑‑‑ pistol in your f‑‑‑‑‑‑ mouth and pull the trigger,” the man shouted at Vermont officials in a thick New England accent last December. “Your days are f‑‑‑‑‑‑ numbered.”

The three had much in common. All described themselves as patriots fighting a conspiracy that robbed Donald Trump of the 2020 election. They are regular consumers of far-right websites that embrace Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods. And none have been charged with a crime by the law enforcement agencies alerted to their threats.

They were among nine people who told Reuters in interviews that they made threats or left other hostile messages to election workers. In all, they are responsible for nearly two dozen harassing communications to six election officials in four states. Seven made threats explicit enough to put a reasonable person in fear of bodily harm or death, the U.S. federal standard for criminal prosecution, according to four legal experts who reviewed their messages at Reuters’ request.

These cases provide a unique perspective into how people with everyday jobs and lives have become radicalized to the point of terrorizing public officials. They are part of a broader campaign of fear waged against frontline workers of American democracy chronicled by Reuters this year. The news organization has documented nearly 800 intimidating messages to election officials in 12 states, including more than 100 that could warrant prosecution, according to legal experts.

The examination of the threats also highlights the paralysis of law enforcement in responding to this extraordinary assault on the nation’s electoral machinery. After Reuters reported the widespread intimidation in June, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a task force to investigate threats against election staff and said it would aggressively pursue such cases. But law enforcement agencies have made almost no arrests and won no convictions.

 

Expect terrorism and violence against election officials to increase dramatically the closer we get to November 2022 and especially November 2024.

 

Who's going to want to administer a free and fair election in America when the Republican losing that contest means you and your family are stalked, threatened, or even hurt?

StupidiNews!

• The Biden Administration has announced new measures to alleviate national supply chain issues as meat and food prices for Thanksgiving dinner are expected to hit record highs this year.
• International travelers are headed for American airports again after the Biden administration resumed overseas flights into the US this week for COVID-vaccinated passengers.
• The largest federal government employees' union is asking the Biden administration to delay vaccine mandates until after the new year.
• A bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers arrived in Taiwan this week in a move that is always drawing heavy criticism from Beijing ahead of a virtual US/China summit this month.
• NASA says ongoing litigation with commercial spaceflight companies Blue Origin and SpaceX has now pushed planned lunar missions to at least 2025.