Last Call For The Rent Is Too Damn High, Con't

Rent's due tomorrow, and inflation, lack of affordable housing, and massive corporate takeover of rental properties means rent is skyrocketing across the country, and millions once again face eviction into the winter cold of the omicron pandemic.

Kiara Age moved in less than a year ago and now it’s time to move again: Rent on her two-bedroom apartment in Henderson, Nev., is rising 23 percent to nearly $1,600 a month, making it impossibly out of reach for the single mother.

Age makes $15 an hour working from home as a medical biller while also caring for her 1-year-old son, because she can’t afford child care. By the time she pays rent — which takes up more than half of her salary — and buys groceries, there’s little left over.

“I am trying to figure out what I can do,” said Age, 32, who also has an 8-year-old daughter. “Rent is so high that I can’t afford anything.”

Rental prices across the country have been rising for months, but lately the increases have been sharper and more widespread, forcing millions of Americans to reassess their living situations.

Average rents rose 14 percent last year, to $1,877 a month, with cities like Austin, New York and Miami notching increases of as much as 40 percent, according to real estate firm Redfin. And Americans expect rents will continue to rise — by about 10 percent this year — according to a report released this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. At the same time, many local rent freezes and eviction moratoriums have already expired.

“Rents really shot up in the second half of 2021,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “The pandemic was kind of a pause on the economy and now that things are reopening, inflation is picking up, rents are going up and people are realizing they don’t have as much disposable income as they might have thought they had.”

Higher rent prices are also expected to be a key driver of inflation in coming months. Housing costs make up a third of the U.S. consumer price index, which is calculated based on the going rate of home rentals. But economists say there is a lag of 9 to 12 months before rising rents show up in inflation measures. As a result, even if inflation were to subside for all other components of the consumer price index, rising rents alone could keep inflation levels elevated through the year, said Frank Nothaft, chief economist at real estate data firm CoreLogic.

While the Federal Reserve’s likely interest rate increases are expected to slow soaring housing costs — already mortgage rates have been trending higher, which tends to cool the real estate market — the restraint on rental prices is expected to be much less direct and take longer to filter through.

In the meantime, the Biden administration has begun reallocating unused funds from its $46.5 billion Emergency Rental Assistance program to help residents with rent and utility payments in cities such as Washington, D.C., Houston and San Diego. President Biden has also vowed to add nearly 100,000 affordable homes over the next three years by providing low-cost funding to qualifying developers, and encouraging states and local governments to reduce zoning and financing rules for affordable housing.

The pandemic has exacerbated inequalities in many parts of life, and housing is no different. Homeowners benefited from rock-bottom interest rates and surging home prices, while renters have faced surging costs with little reprieve. And unlike markups in other categories — such as food or gas, where prices can waver in both directions — economists say annual leases and long-term mortgages make it unlikely that housing costs will come back down quickly once they rise.

Eleven million households, or 1 in 4 renters, spend more than half of their monthly income on rent, according to an analysis of 2018 census data by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, though experts say that figure is likely even higher now.

“The fact is, for too many Americans, housing is unaffordable,” said Dennis Shea, executive director of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “We have an inadequate supply of homes — for both rent and for sale — and of course the lowest income families are being hit hardest.”

In interviews with renters around the country, many said their monthly payments had recently risen or were set to go up in the coming weeks. Multiple people said that despite local rent freezes, their management companies had found ways to increase monthly dues by tacking on new “amenity fees” or charging for services like trash collection that had previously been included.

Many said they began looking for other rental options, only to find that everything around them had gone up in price, too. Some said they’re considering relocating altogether — from Austin to Richmond, or New York City to Dover, Del.

 

So millions of Americans are facing eviction, and rents that are completely unaffordable. Even with assistance from the Biden administration, state, and local programs, a whole lot of Americans are going to be out on the street in the months ahead, with nowhere to go.

 

We're looking at a major, fundamental shift in the labor market.  People can't afford to be near their jobs anymore, so they have to move further away or quit altogether and look for work in another city or state, which of course they can't afford.

 

We've managed to delay the rental disaster through 2021, but 2022 is when it all catches up with us. People can't afford rent increases of 10%, let alone 40%.

 

It's going to get bad, folks.  It's going to be the story of 2022.

School Of Hard-Right Knocks, Con't

Terrified public school educators are now auto-banning books from classrooms to prevent any whiff of controversy from "Critical Race Theory", which was the entire point of the exercise over the last six months. and it will continue until every last vestige of American history is whitewashed into oblivion in schools across the country.

An acclaimed MLK-themed novel was removed from a 10th-grade English class in North Carolina. Haywood County Superintendent Dr. Bill Nolte told Popular Information that he pulled the book, Dear Martin by Nic Stone, in a matter of hours after receiving one parent complaint. Nolte said he did not read the book — or even obtain a copy — prior to making the decision.

The 10th-grade parent, Tim Reeves, addressed the Haywood County School Board on January 10. Reeves said that his son received Dear Martin in 10th-grade English class on January 6. Reeves learned from his son that the book contained "explicit language" including the "f-word," the "s-word," and "GD." Reeves said that he was "appalled." He said the "language" and "sexual innuendos" in the book are "concerning to me as a parent."

Reeves acknowledged that his son hears "lots of language every day" but objected to its inclusion in a "textbook." Reeves suggested that providing Dear Martin to 10th graders violated the "age of consent" because "they are still adolescents."

Dear Martin "tells the story of an Ivy League-bound African American student named Justyce who becomes a victim of racial profiling." The book covers Justyce's "experiences at his mostly White prep school and the fallout from his brief detainment." In the book, Justyce's diary includes a letter to King in which Justyce explains how he sought to emulate the civil rights icon.

Stone's book was a finalist for the American Library Association's William C. Morris Award, a New York Times #1 bestseller, and was named one of TIME Magazine's top 100 young adult books of all time. Common Sense Media, a non-profit that evaluates books and other media for children, found the book was appropriate for 14-year-olds, who are typically in 9th grade. It also awarded the book 5 out of 5 stars for "overall quality."

When Reeves arrived at the School Board at the meeting, however, Nolte told him that he had removed Dear Martin from 10th grade English class.

In an interview, Nolte told Popular Information that he first heard from Reeves about his concerns "earlier that day." According to Nolte, Reeves had previously spoken to the high school principal who offered to provide an alternative text for Reeves' son. But Reeves was not satisfied and wanted the school to remove the text from the class.

Nolte said that, before making the decision to remove the book, he did not have an opportunity to "read all of it." Instead, Nolte "talked to some people who had read different sections of it" and "looked at some of the parts of it that were published online." Nolte also said he "didn't talk to the teacher at all about why she picked that text."

Nolte then concluded that "the amount of profanity and other descriptions or images in it" made Dear Martin inappropriate for a 10th-grade English class. There is no blanket prohibition on novels with profanity but Nolte said he was concerned with the frequency. "I made the best judgment I could make I feel pretty comfortable with it," Nolte concluded.

Nolte's approach appears inconsistent with the official policies of Haywood County Public Schools. Under the policy, a parent "may submit an objection in writing to the principal regarding the use of particular instructional materials." (Reeves did email the principal about his objection.) Then the principal "may establish a committee to review the objection" or make the decision themselves. Only if the principal or committee disagrees with the parent may "the decision of the committee or principal be appealed to the superintendent." In this case, Nolte says that he made the decision himself on the same day the complaint was filed. There is no indication that the principal rejected the objection or was even given the opportunity to decide.

Nolte's decision is also part of a larger trend of removing books that deal with marginalized communities based on alleged concerns about profanity.

 

When you remember the point is to cripple and destroy public education for 95% of American kids, to render it useless across the country, to shutter schools, fire teachers and educators, and sell off buildings and land and telling parents "You wanted school choice, arrange your own kids' education now, we won't do it" then all of this makes sense. In the last two years alone, public education has been gutted in America.

 

There's no whiff of recovery anytime soon. We're looking at a generation of kids without the basics of a K-12 education, even by America's dismal standards, where the "negative" parts of America's history are obliterated, as Greg Sargent warns.

We’re seeing dozens of GOP proposals to bar whole concepts from classrooms outright. The Republican governor of Virginia has debuted a mechanism for parents to rat out teachers. Bills threatening punishment of them are proliferating. Book-banning efforts are outpacing anything in recent memory.

Amid this onslaught, a proposed bill now advancing in the New Hampshire legislature deserves renewed scrutiny. It would ban the advocacy of any “doctrine” or “theory” promoting a “negative” account of U.S. history, including the notion that the United States was “founded on racism.”

Additionally, the bill describes itself as designed to ensure teachers’ “loyalty,” while prohibiting advocacy of “subversive doctrines.”

This proposal is drawing heightened attention from teachers and their representatives. With the push for constraints on teachers intensifying, they worry that if it succeeds, it could become a model in other states.

“It’s the next step in their campaign to whitewash our history by rewriting it,” Megan Tuttle, the president of the New Hampshire chapter of the National Education Association, told me in a statement.

If this passes, it will “stifle real discussion" in classrooms, Tuttle said, adding: “Then it’s only a matter of time before similar legislation has the same impact on classrooms around the country.”

 

We've already seen how easy it is to control the ignorant and weaponize them into an army of dullards, a confederacy of Confederate dunces. Imagine that being our future for decades to come.

 

That's where all this is headed.

The Big Lie, Con't

As Will Bunch points out, over the weekend in Texas, Trump all but promised a violent uprising across America if any of the state cases against him in New York, Georgia, or anywhere else result in indictments against him or his family.

 

Amid the predictable reiterations of the Big Lie that Biden’s legitimate 2020 election was stolen and his other narcissistic blather, Trump’s lengthy speech in Conroe contained three elements that marked a dangerous escalation of his post-presidential, post-Jan. 6 rhetoric. Let’s digest and analyze each of them:

— For the first time, Trump — if somehow elected again in 2024 and upon returning to the White House in January 2025 — dangled pardons before people convicted of crimes in the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill. “If I run and I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly,” he told the rally, adding: “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.” The statement raises as many questions as it answers — for example, was he including many or all of the more than 700 mostly low-level insurrectionists, or sending a message to his higher-up friends like Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows and others who could be subject to criminal probes?

But two things are clear. The first is that Trump — facing probes over Jan. 6 in Georgia and possibly from the U.S. Justice Department — is committing a form of obstruction of justice in full public view, since the future possibility of a pardon offers an incentive to stay on the ex-president’s good side and not testify against him. The other is that abusing the constitutional power of a presidential pardon — intended by the framers for grace and true clemency — to clear the jails of his political allies is banana republic-type stuff, the ultimate rock bottom made inevitable when Trump was allowed to abuse his pardon powers while in office 2017-21.

— In a sign that Trump is increasingly worried about the overlapping probes — the remarkable evidence uncovered by the House Jan. 6 Committee that will likely be referred to the Justice Department, the Fulton County grand jury investigation into Georgia election tampering, and the unrelated probe into dodgy Trump family finances in New York, he explicitly called for mob action if charges are lodged in any of these jurisdictions. Said Trump: “If these radical, vicious racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had ... in Washington D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt.”

Of course, the last time that Trump used his megaphone to summon a large crowd (”Will be wild!” he famously tweeted) was last Jan. 6, and we all remember how that “protest” turned out. Experts call Trump’s practices here “stochastic terrorism” — broad statements in the media that are meant to stoke spontaneous acts of violence, in this case to intimidate the prosecutors or even the grand jurors who are weighing charges against Trump. While his Jan. 6 exhortations were the prelude to an attempted coup, Trump’s incendiary remarks in Conroe sound like a call for a new civil war — naming both the locales and the casus belli.

— But let’s take a step back and drill down on arguably the most important and alarming word in Trump’s statement: “Racist.” At first blush, it seems to come out of left field, in the sense of what could be racist about looking into a white man’s role in an attempted coup or his cooked financial books? Except that it happens that three of the key prosecutors investigating Trump — the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney, Fani Willis, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, and new Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg — as well as the chair of the House committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, are all Black.

Thus, it’s both alarming and yet utterly predictable that Trump would toss the gasoline of racial allegations onto his flaming pile of grievances, knowing how that will play with the Confederate flag aficionados within the ex-president’s cult. In tying skin color into his call for mobs in Atlanta or New York, Trump is seeking to start a race war — no different, really, from Dylann Roof. Roof used a .45-caliber Glock handgun, while Trump uses a podium and the services of fawning right-wing cable TV networks. Sadly, the latter method could prove more effective.

What happened in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday night was not politics. A politician seeking to regain the White House might craft a narrative around Biden’s struggles with inflation or with COVID-19 and make a case — no matter how absurd, given Trump’s failings on the pandemic and elsewhere — that he could do better for the voters. But increasingly Trump is less a politician and more the leader of a politics-adjacent cult. He does not want to make America great again so much as he wants to keep Donald Trump out of prison, and the most narcissistic POTUS of all time is willing to rip the United States in two to make this happen.

Trump’s chief weapons are fear and intimidation. To save American democracy, the people tasked with getting to the bottom of a former president’s high crimes and misdemeanors — on Capitol Hill and in those key courthouses — must be ready for the violence that Trump is inciting, and must summon the courage to finish their job. My fear is that Trump’s speech in Conroe will live in infamy — but the only reason it happened at all is because we have not held Trump to account for attempting to wreck American democracy on Jan. 6 ... not yet. Now, Trump has told us in no uncertain terms how he plans to break the nation this time. We can act forcefully to stop his new insurrection and punish his past crimes — or we can sit back and let the comet of autocracy strike.

 

I've said this before. Indictments against Trump mean that the local and state prosecutors have to be ready to defend themselves from lethal violence, targeting prosecutors, judges, court staff, jails and more. It means that the law enforcement agencies attached to defend these institutions will be called upon to do so, but it also means the law enforcement agents, individually, will be called upon by Trump to allow the violence to happen.

 

Trump is straight up telling people if they are involved in the violence, that he will pardon them when President. 

 

Trump needs to be in prison, right now, for obstruction of justice. It was witnessed by the world.

 

It'll never happen, of course.

The Great Canadian Trucker War, Con't

A couple of weeks back I warned that Canadian PM Justin Trudeau's decision to require truckers entering Canada to be vaccinated could have far-reaching effects. Now we see that Canada is facing thousands of protesting truckers in the capital of Ottawa, so many that Trudeau and other politicians have been moved from the city to an undisclosed location for safety.

Thousands of protesters gathered in Canada’s capital on Saturday to protest vaccine mandates, masks and lockdowns.

Some parked on the grounds of the National War Memorial and danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, others carried signs and flags with swastikas and some used the statue of Canadian hero Terry Fox to display an anti-vaccine statement, sparking widespread condemnation.

“I am sickened to see protesters dance on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and desecrate the National War Memorial. Generations of Canadians have fought and died for our rights, including free speech, but not this. Those involved should hang their heads in shame,” tweeted Gen. Wayne Eyre, Canada’s Defense Staff chief.

Protestors compared vaccine mandates to fascism, one truck carried a Confederate flag and many carried expletive-laden signs targeting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The statue of Fox, a national hero who lost a leg to bone cancer as a youngster, then set off in 1980 on a fundraising trek across Canada, was draped with a upside down Canadian flag with a sign that said “mandate freedom.”

Trudeau retweeted a statement from The Terry Fox Foundation that said “Terry believed in science and gave his life to help others.”

Eric Simmons, from Oshawa, Ontario, said all vaccine mandates should be ended.

“They’re not effective, they’re not working. It’s not changing anything. We can’t keep living like this. People are losing their jobs because they don’t want to get the vaccine,” Simmons said.

The convoy of truckers and others prompted police to prepare for the possibility of violence and warn residents to avoid downtown. A top Parliament security official advised lawmakers to lock their doors amid reports their private homes may be targeted.

Trudeau has said Canadians are not represented by this “very troubling, small but very vocal minority of Canadians who are lashing out at science, at government, at society, at mandates and public health advice.″

The prime minister’s itinerary for the day usually says he is in Ottawa if he’s at home, but on Saturday it said “National Capital Region” amid a report he’s been moved to an undisclosed location. One of Trudeau’s kids has COVID-19 and the prime minister has been isolating and working remotely.

Canada has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and the premier of the province of Quebec who is proposing to tax the unvaccinated is popular.

Some are, in part, protesting a new rule that took effect Jan. 15 requiring truckers entering Canada be fully immunized against the coronavirus. The United States has imposed the same requirement on truckers entering that country.

The Canadian Trucking Alliance said a great number of the protesters have no connection to the trucking industry, adding they have a separate agenda to push. The alliance notes the vast majority of drivers are vaccinated.

The organizers of the protest have called for the forceful elimination of all COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates and some called for the removal of Trudeau.

 

Needless to say, things are tense in Ottawa right now. We'll see how this weekend continues, but at this point I would expect Trudeau to address the nation today or tomorrow.

Sunday Long Read: The Street Fighters

Our Sunday Long Read is NBC's Tim Hayden recounting the story he did on US skiing champion Picabo Street in 1998 for the Nagano Olympics, and the path Street has taken since then leading up to the premiere of her Peacock documentary this week ahead of the Beijing Winter Games.

This is a new story about an old story, and about a documentary film that is part highlight reel and part confessional; about a once-famous ski racer and the disorienting ecosystem of the Olympic Games. It is about public faces, fungible narratives, and family secrets, and more broadly, about the strange, flawed, and mutually mercenary relationship that always exists between writers and subjects. It is about time passing, and wounds healing. It begins almost 24 years ago, on Valentine’s Day morning of 1998, in the alpine resort of Hakuba, 30 miles from the Olympic city of Nagano, and where I was covering the Games, and specifically, Alpine skiing, for Sports Illustrated.

After breakfast that day, I walked from my little mountain condo, past vacation homes and small inns to a nearby convenience store, as I had done nearly every day. It was sunny, with cotton ball clouds, and snow was piled in colossal formations at the side of the narrow roadway, and bestride every driveway. The '98 Olympics had been even more cursed by weather than usual, with two rip-snorting blizzards and one torrential rainstorm, and this fickle weather had upended the racing schedule and become part of the story of the Games. Races had been postponed and re-scheduled multiple times, leaving athletes uncertain and unmoored (or in one high-profile instance, relieved).

On the way back to my condo, I ran into Ron Street, the then-59-year-old father of the top U.S. racer, 27-year-old Picabo Street. The family and several friends had been living in a ski home in the woods, a place called Log Haven, not far from the SI condo. Our meeting was vaguely awkward. Picabo had come to the Games just 14 months after a terrible crash and knee injury and only 12 days after a concussion but she had won a surprising gold medal in the Olympic Super-G, an event she had never won on the World Cup circuit. The downhill, her specialty, lay ahead. It was clear by then that she would be featured prominently in my weekly magazine story, which was still a significant thing in largely pre-digital 1998. Seeking some access to distinguish that piece, I had asked Picabo’s agent to let me spend some time inside Log Haven, for color. That access had been promised, and then pulled back, which happens. Shrug.

That morning I said a cautious hello to Ron, a solidly-built stonemason and ex-Marine with a salt-and-pepper beard, whose big personality and storytelling flair had made him a conduit for amplifying the (very true) Picabo narrative about a close-knit family from rural Idaho that raised one of the best American women’s downhillers in history. (There’s nothing in sportswriting quite like a colorful parent or sibling to add ballast to profiles). Ron knew that I had been trying to get embedded, and had failed. "Man, I’m sorry," he said. He had his hands in his pockets, shuffling his feet, sure signs of a source who is about to unload, with just a little nudge. Which he did.

Ron told me that things had been uneasy inside Log Haven, culminating in a family-and-friends throwdown early that morning when members of the entourage came in very late from a night of partying downtown. He was frustrated and angry, and in no small part worried about his daughter’s readiness. "There used to be just a few of us, and we could go anywhere we wanted," he said. "Now we need three cars and we’re an entourage." Classic angle: Trouble in paradise. It was, as we say in the biz, good stuff.

Two days later, under blue skies and on hillsides, cleared of powder and transformed into icy race hills, Street finished sixth in the downhill, missing a bronze by .17 seconds. We talked afterward, and she acknowledged the unrest that her father had relayed to me. "We vibrate on a high level in our family," she said. She also said that she missed a medal because — after all those crashes, "… I didn’t want to go into the fence." It was Monday midday in Japan, Sunday night back at the SI offices in New York, which meant that I was on deadline.

I wrote a story that was equal parts Street and men’s double gold medalist Hermann Maier of Austria, for whom weather delays enabled recovery from a legendary downhill crash. The magazine, dated Feb. 23, 1998, featured my friend Carl Yarbrough’s remarkable shot of an airborne Maier on the cover, and inside, another of Carl’s images, this one of Street winning the Super-G, under the headline: Street Fighting. My story paired up Maier and Street and suggested strongly that the weather had allowed Maier to heal and Team Street to come unglued. I did not dismiss Street’s assertion that caution — and not family unrest — had slowed her downhill run, but I made it the B Side, a conscious choice.

Picabo did not like the story. She wrote a book that was published in 2001, in which she suggested that I had staked out their family’s rental home in Japan and underplayed her belief that it was self-preservation that slowed her, ever so slightly, in the downhill. Fair enough. In advance of the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, I requested interviews with Picabo, and she declined. All of the above comes with the territory. She retired after those 2002 Games, and I went on, covering other skiers, which is the customary process in our worlds. That was that.

But it felt unfinished. Last Friday the documentary Picabo premiered on Peacock. Among those behind the project is Lindsey Vonn, who first idolized Street and then succeeded her as the best U.S. women’s speed skier in history (and went on to become the best speed skier, male or female, period). Also involved is Hollywood veteran and Olympic enthusiast (and former USOPC vice president) Frank Marshall. It is ostensibly the story of Street’s non-traditional upbringing, unlikely stardom and very adult struggles, but also a reckoning with scars kept hidden. (Peacock is owned by, and I am employed by NBC, so it’s inappropriate for me to offer a recommendation. But if you are new to the Picabo Street story, this will get you caught up).

The film tells of a family that lived at the base of a steep hillside in Triumph, Idaho and grew its own food, and of a little girl named after a Native American word for "Shining Waters." That was the broad-strokes narrative that followed Street onto the world stage. But the harsher backbone of the film is Street’s complex relationship with her father, a man she idolized, but whom she also describes as engaging in abusive behavior with her mother, while she and her older brother, Baba, were children, lying awake. "If you wake up to your parents fighting, you know it," Street told Vonn in the film. "There’s a certain thump on the floor, there’s a certain sound of a slap, there’s a certain velocity of voice that stays with you forever."

Baba Street, in the film, says, "An attribute about dad that a lot of people didn’t know is that he would give you the shirt off his back, he was an extremely giving person. But he also carried a lot of anger in his life."

This was the family secret that Picabo kept buried throughout a decade-long rise to the top of the ski racing world and into the homes of American Olympic television viewers. It’s the secret that she took to Nagano, and which I almost stumbled upon, but not quite.

 

How different would things have been for Street and her career if the story of 1998 had been her family issues and not her performance? Would it have changed the lives of others for better or worse? We don't know, but looking back at it, it's certainly worth considering.

Hillbilly Elegy Energy Controversy

Here in Cincy, author-turned-racist JD Vance is holding an event with Marjorie Taylor Greene, or trying to, that is if they can find a venue.

 

The management at the Landing Event Center in suburban Cincinnati didn't know much about the event that was scheduled for Sunday, the general manager told The Enquirer.

Just that a client asked to rent the Loveland, Ohio space for an event that involved "Hillbilly Elegy" author and Senate candidate J.D. Vance.

Then on Thursday, General Manager Jodi Taylor logged on to her computer. A flood of messages on social media and emails greeted her from people angry about the event. And calls started coming in.

The event was a "meet-and-greet" with J.D. Vance and controversial Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who just endorsed Vance.

The event has been moved from the Landing Event Center in Loveland to the Marriott Cincinnati Northeast in Mason.

In an email, Vance's campaign said the event was moved due to a large number of RSVPs.

The change in venues highlights the difficult situation political events create for venue owners.

After discussing it with the owners, the management felt they weren't in a position to hold the event, Taylor said. She said they didn't know it was open to the public and would have an unknown number of people, she said.

"We just chose to respect it was a very emotional topic," Taylor said. "People are passionate about what they believe. We were wrapping our heads around what was going on. We didn't know there would be a guest."

They asked Vance's campaign to find another location.

Then management posted a notice on its Facebook page.

"Due to the tremendous interest in the JD Vance presentation that was scheduled to take place here this Sunday, it has been relocated to the Marriott NE located in Deerfield Twp. We appreciate everyone's interest and concerns."

The Landing Event Center didn't want to jump into the politics, Taylor said.

"It doesn’t matter what we do," Taylor said. "We have both sides upset."

Activists are now trying to stop Greene and Vance's appearance in Mason. The Mason-Deerfield Township Democratic Club and others have shared a link encouraging people to call the Marriott, reserve seats to take up space and ask the Mason mayor to take a stand.

As of Saturday morning, the event is still a go for Mason, according to Vance's campaign.

 

Both Vance and Greene should be either hawking horse dewormer on FOX or in jail. Neither one should be an elected anything, or running for a damn thing, but here we are. They especially shouldn't be doing political events in Cincy, but, ugh.

 

And yet there's a not-zero chance both of them are in leadership positions in Congress in 2023.

Last Call For It's About Suppression, Con't

A five-judge panel on Pennsylvania's state Commonwealth Court has ruled the state's Republican-created vote-by-mail law to be unconstitutional, setting up a state Supreme Court showdown for November.

A Pennsylvania court struck down the state’s expansive mail-in voting law as unconstitutional, delivering a temporary win to state Republicans who challenged the law after former president Donald Trump falsely claimed mail-in voting resulted in election fraud.

While the two-year-old law was struck down by a majority of the five-judge panel of the Commonwealth Court, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) and the state’s Attorney General, Josh Shapiro (D), promised a swift appeal, criticizing the court’s opinion as being “based on twisted logic and faulty reasoning.”

“The administration will immediately appeal this decision to the state Supreme Court and today’s lower court ruling will have no immediate effect on mail-in voting pending a final decision on the appeal,” Wolf said Friday.

The state’s Republican-controlled legislature passed the law establishing no-excuse mail-in voting for all voters in 2019 with bipartisan support. Previously, Pennsylvania voters could cast absentee ballots if they met certain criteria.

Amid the pandemic, more than 2.6 million Pennsylvania voters cast mail-in or absentee ballots out of 6.9 million.

The court said Friday that any changes to the voting law would require a constitutional amendment.

“No-excuse mail-in voting makes the exercise of the franchise more convenient and has been used four times in the history of Pennsylvania. Approximately 1.38 million voters have expressed their interest in voting by mail permanently,” Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt wrote. “If presented to the people, a constitutional amendment to end the Article VII, Section 1 requirement of in-person voting is likely to be adopted. But a constitutional amendment must be presented to the people and adopted into our fundamental law before legislation authorizing no-excuse mail-in voting can ‘be placed upon our statute books.’ ”

In bringing the legal challenge, some Republicans in the state echoed Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and his criticism of mail-in voting, with several seeking to undo the law for which they they once voted.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Wolf pointed out the GOP reversal.

“The Republican-controlled legislature passed Act 77 with strong bipartisan support in 2019 to make voting more safe, secure, and accessible and millions of Pennsylvanians have embraced it,” Wolf said. “The simple fact is that despite near-unanimous Republican legislative support for this historic update to Pennsylvania election law, they now want to strip away mail-in voting in the service of the ‘big lie.’”

Shapiro, in his statement, stressed that the court’s ruling will not have “any immediate impact” on upcoming elections. The state is holding both gubernatorial and a U.S. Senate election this year.

The Pennsylvania Department of State also said in a statement that it disagreed with the ruling and that it is “working to file an immediate appeal” to the state’s Supreme Court, which has a 5-to-2 Democratic majority.

 

Pennsylvania Republicans overwhelming passed no-excuse by-mail absentee balloting, then declared it fraudulent, then sued to destroy the law because they argued their own law never should have passed.

That's the GOP for you. Whatever they are saying they are doing, it actually begins with voter suppression and disenfranchisement on a massive scale.

States are not engaging in trying to suppress voters whatsoever,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared last year.

Facts on the ground in Georgia tell a different story. A new data analysis by Mother Jones shows that the number of voters disenfranchised by rejected mail ballot applications skyrocketed after the GOP-controlled legislature passed sweeping new restrictions on mail voting last year. The law enacted in March 2021 shortened the time people have to request and return mail ballots, prohibited election officials from sending such applications to all voters, added new ID requirements, and dramatically curtailed the use of ballot drop boxes, among other changes.

During municipal elections in November, Georgia voters were 45 times more likely to have their mail ballot applications rejected—and ultimately not vote as a result—than in 2020. If that same rejection rate were extrapolated to the 2020 race, more than 38,000 votes would not have been cast in a presidential contest decided by just over 11,000 votes.

 

Tens of thousands of voters are being disenfranchised by new GOP-created suppression laws. They are there for a reason, to keep the most marginal voters from being counted. In the end, Republicans want fewer voters and fewer votes, to chock off democracy.

It's the only way they can win and they know it.

The Dragon Roars Loudly

China is apparently picking this week to deliver a very pointed message to President Biden over Taiwan as tensions ratchet up between Russia and the US over Ukraine.

China's ambassador to the United States issued a warning Thursday: The U.S. could face "military conflict" with China over the future status of Taiwan.

In his first one-on-one interview since assuming his post in Washington, D.C., last July, Qin Gang accused Taiwan of "walking down the road toward independence," and added, "If the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the United States, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in a military conflict."

It was an unusually direct statement about the U.S. and Taiwan. Observers say China usually speaks in more general terms, such as saying that the U.S. is "playing with fire."

Though American eyes may be focused thousands of miles away toward a threatened war in Ukraine, U.S. officials and analysts have voiced increasing concern about Taiwan's ability to defend itself. This week, 39 Chinese military aircraft flew near Taiwan, the latest of several such demonstrations. It's widely believed that the U.S. would defend Taiwan in the event of war, though no formal treaty requires it to do so.

Ambassador Qin spoke of Taiwan at his official residence Thursday, where he welcomed NPR's team to discuss U.S. relations with China and the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing. He is a veteran diplomat who previously served as the chief of foreign affairs protocol for China's President Xi Jinping.

Qin arrived in Washington last year at a time of bipartisan disappointment with China. It's widely conceded in Washington that a decades-long policy of engagement with China produced great wealth for many companies but failed to spark democratic reform. Qin told us that any ideas of "changing China" were always "an illusion."

He spoke of the upcoming Olympics with pride: "Beijing is ready." These are the second Olympic Games hosted by Beijing, with athletes and others largely living inside a secure "bubble" to protect against coronavirus infection.

A "diplomatic boycott" of the Games by U.S. officials has added tension, though only a few U.S. allies have followed suit, and U.S. athletes will compete. The U.S. announced the boycott in protest of what it terms the "ongoing genocide" of Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim minority in western China. Qin rejected such accusations as "fabrications, lies and disinformation."

He nonetheless asserted that some Uyghurs were terrorists.

"The destination for them is prisons," he said, while asserting that others had inappropriate thoughts that they were being taught to change in "vocational schools."

 

Beijing's diplomatic circumspection on Taiwan is practically an art form, this is the equivalent of plugging in a stack of amps and playing Through The Fire And Flames at max volume.

Just another ball for Biden to juggle.

The Wind For The Willow

The First Family is getting a cat to go along with the dog, so there's some normalcy back in the White House pet count after the last guy again.

 

The Biden family finally has a cat.

First lady Jill Biden's office has announced America's first family is excited to welcome a two-year-old, gray-and-white-striped feline named Willow to the White House.

Biden, a community college professor, named the cat after her hometown of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, the first lady's spokesperson Michael LaRosa said.

"A farm cat from Pennsylvania, Willow made quite an impression on Dr. Biden in 2020 when she jumped up on the stage and interrupted her remarks during a campaign stop," LaRosa said. "Seeing their immediate bond, the owner of the farm knew that Willow belonged with Dr. Biden."

Dr. Biden had said in April that the family had a female cat "waiting in the wings."

The green-eyed, short-haired tabby cat was settling in well at the White House with "her favorite toys, treats, and plenty of room to smell and explore," LaRosa said.

In December the Bidens welcomed a new dog to the family, a German Shepherd named Commander, who was four months old at the time.

 

Trump didn't have any pets, mainly because 1) he had Rudy already, and 2) animals distrust him because he's, you know, a psychopath.  It's good to see that the Bidens get along with pets.

 

The Big Lie, Con't

Arizona Republicans failed to steal the 2020 election for Trump, so they're proposing giving themselves the right to do so legally in 2024.

An arch conservative member of Arizona’s state House of Representatives has proposed a mammoth overhaul of the state’s voting procedures that would allow legislators to overturn the results of a primary or general election after months of unfounded allegations and partisan audits.

The bill, introduced by state Rep. John Fillmore (R), would substantially change the way Arizonans vote by eliminating most early and absentee voting and requiring people to vote in their home precincts, rather than at vote centers set up around the state.

Most dramatically, Fillmore’s bill would require the legislature to hold a special session after an election to review election processes and results, and to “accept or reject the election results.”

The proposal comes after President Biden became the first Democrat since former President Clinton to win Arizona’s electoral votes. He defeated former President Trump there by just under 11,000 votes, or about three-tenths of a percentage point.

Ever since, Arizona Republicans have been riven between election denialists who have pushed to investigate or overturn those results and more mainstream legislators — and Gov. Doug Ducey (R) — who have tried to move on. An audit, conducted by an inexperienced firm called Cyber Ninjas, failed to uncover evidence of fraud or miscounting.

But Fillmore said at a committee hearing Wednesday he still does not believe the reports he has seen, though he maintained his skepticism has little to do with the ultimate winner.

“I don’t care what the press says. I don’t trust ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox or anybody out there. Everybody’s lying to me and I feel like I have a couple hundred ex-wives hanging around me,” Fillmore said. “This is not a President Biden thing. This is not a the other red-headed guy thing.”

“We should have voting in my opinion in person, one day, on paper, with no electronic means and hand counting that day. We need to get back to 1958-style voting,” he added.

 

And there it is. Vote on election day in person, one day, and that's it. Eliminate all mail voting, eliminate all early voting, and give the state legislature the final say on if the vote is legitimate. If this has been in place in 2020,  Trump would have been awarded the state and chaos would have followed for sure.

Remember, the whole point was to throw the election to the House because neither Trump nor Biden would have had the 270 electoral votes and Trump would have been declared the winner. The whole point was to obfuscate, smokescreen, and gaslight the process.

Arizona Republicans want to set up the ability to do so in 2024. More GOP state legislatures will follow.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

America's economy grew at the fastest pace in nearly 40 years but I'd bet you a majority of Americans believe we're in a recession right now thanks to our broken media.

The U.S. economy grew by 5.7 percent in 2021, the fastest full-year clip since 1984, roaring back in the pandemic’s second year despite two new virus variants that rocked the country.

The growth was uneven, with a burst of government spending helping propel a fast start, even as a surge in new cases and deaths in the second half of the year created new pressures. The economy grew by 6.9 percent from October to December, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday, a sharp acceleration from 2.3 percent in the previous quarter.

In a powerful rebound from 2020, when the economy contracted by 3.4 percent — its worst result since 1946 — 2021′s strong growth created a record 6.4 million jobs. But it also brought a host of complications, helping fuel the highest inflation in 40 years and creating supply chain snarls as consumers hungry for products overwhelmed the global delivery system. To beat back rising prices, the Federal Reserve is now shifting its strategy and preparing for interest rate hikes this year, convinced it has given enough support to help the labor market and now must keep the economy from overheating further.

Although the omicron variant had begun surging by the end of 2021, economists didn’t expect to see any fallout in Thursday’s data. Rather, forecasters anticipated that the GDP report would represent a year of blockbuster growth despite the unpredictability of the pandemic economy, from labor shortages to supply chain backlogs to inflation.

Earlier in the year, economists worried that global supply chain problems would keep businesses from being able to fully stock shelves. But a rush by companies in the final months of 2021 to bolster their inventories ultimately drove GDP much higher.

Many, such as Georgia hospitality software firm Agilysys, are building up inventories to guard against disruptions in supply chains. The company, which specializes in technology such as hotel check-in systems, has increased its inventory levels by 175 percent in the past nine months to “mitigate supply chain risk,” Chief Financial Officer Dave Wood said on a recent earnings call.

But even that silver lining comes with the reminder of how parts of the economy remain extremely disrupted.

“We’re hitting on all cylinders producing goods, and that’s good,” said Ben Herzon, executive director at IHS Markit. “But it’s also bad, because the economy wasn’t really set up to produce goods at the level that it’s producing now. That’s one of the reasons we’re seeing some of the problems on the supply side.”

 

But you'd think we were in worse shape now than in the Trump Depression. 

Another Meathead Matt #MeToo Moment, Con't

The walls are closing in on accused sex trafficker GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz as another confidante is pleading guilty to criminal acts related to Gaetz's own serious federal troubles.

“Big Joe” Ellicott, a former Florida shock jock with potentially key information about the sex trafficking ring involving Rep. Matt Gaetz, has pleaded guilty in federal court, The Daily Beast has learned.

Ellicott is the long-time best friend of corrupt Florida tax official Joel Greenberg, who was Gaetz’s wingman in the underage sex operation, according to several sources with direct knowledge of their relationship. Last year, The Daily Beast revealed that Ellicott knew intimate details about the teenage girl who was paid for sex by the group—and actually texted what essentially amounted to a confession that they were scrambling to try and coverup details about their sex with a 17-year-old from the feds.

Ellicott was particularly legally exposed through his involvement with Greenberg, who ran the small Central Florida tax agency like a fiefdom where he hired his friends for no-show jobs. That appears to be what took Ellicott down.

In court documents last week, Ellicott was accused of fraud for agreeing to “pay bribes and kickbacks” to a public official and a separate drug crime: illegally selling the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder prescription medicine Adderall. On Jan. 18, Ellicott signed a plea agreement admitting to both crimes.

According to prosecutors, Ellicott was the intermediary in the kickback arrangement, carrying a $6,000 cash bribe from an unnamed tax office contractor to a Public Official—Greenberg. In exchange for the bribe, Greenberg and the contractor worked out a deal where the contractor inflated invoices for work with the tax office, pocketing the difference.

Ellicott also copped to selling a single unnamed client more than $5,000 worth of Adderall over the course of two years. The client made the payments to Ellicott’s company, “Uncle Joe’s Coins,” and transferred money via check and Venmo, according to the agreement. One $95 Venmo payment was disguised as “2 hour full body massage.”

Joe Zwick, an attorney for Ellicott, told The Daily Beast that his client has been cooperating in the sex trafficking case against Gaetz. That case is being handled by Justice Department prosecutors in Washington, D.C., and is separate from the local ongoing investigation into Greenberg and the tax office, which gave rise to the charges in Ellicott’s case.

“This investigation had nothing to do with the sex scandal, but with the unprecedented things Greenberg was doing with the tax office. The big difference is that Joel Greenberg was elected to serve the people, and Joe was not. And the fact that this was done by criminal information not an indictment is pretty telling of how the prosecutors view him in this case,” Zwick said, pointing out that Ellicott was not arrested. “Obviously they value his continued cooperation, as he does as well. We are going to set off sentencing as long as we can, and do everything we can to reduce his time.”

Zwick said a plea hearing had been set for February.

Ellicott’s plea agreement requires him to cooperate with the government in other prosecutions, including possibly testimony before the grand jury and in court. In exchange, Ellicott will not be formally charged by the grand jury, and has a shot at significantly reducing his sentence. He will also enjoy immunity from “any other federal offenses known to the U.S. Attorney’s Office” relating to the two crimes.

That immunity could be sweeping.

 

Ellicott has been cooperating and now he's getting immunity, which means he absolutely has valuable information on Gaetz. Don't be surprised if federal charges show up sooner rather than later for Gaetz.

BREAKING: Justice Breyer Bowing Out

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will retire at the end of the spring 2022 term, meaning President Joe Biden will be able to name a replacement this summer. 

 Stay tuned.

Pelosi Plays Through

 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn't going anywhere in 2022 as she announced on Tuesday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced Tuesday that she is running for reelection, citing the “crucial” need to defend American democracy through legislation on voting rights and other issues.

Pelosi, 81, has served in Congress since 1987.

“While we have made progress, much more needs to be done to improve people’s lives,” Pelosi said in a video posted to her Twitter feed. “Our democracy is at risk because of assaults on the truth, the assault on the U.S. Capitol, and the state-by-state assault on voting rights. This election is crucial. Nothing less is at stake than our democracy.”

She added: “But as we say, we don’t agonize, we organize. And that is why I am running for reelection to Congress and respectfully seek your support. I would be greatly honored by it and grateful for it.”

Pelosi has led House Democrats for 19 years through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and now President Biden. She was instrumental in ensuring the passage of the Affordable Care Act during Obama’s tenure; Democrats’ focus on preserving the law helped the party reclaim the House majority in 2018.

In 2018, Pelosi said this term would be her last as speaker, but she made no mention of her plans in the announcement Tuesday.

Pelosi, the first woman to be elected House speaker, has managed to unite the moderate and liberal factions in her party to pass legislation, while previous speakers — most notably John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) — often struggled with the fractious GOP.

In her video Tuesday, Pelosi spoke directly to the camera, with the San Francisco skyline behind her. She thanked her constituents for “giving me the privilege to represent our city and our San Francisco values in the Congress — human rights, reproductive justice, LGBTQ equality, respect for immigrants and care for each other.”

“When people ask me what are the three most important issues facing the Congress, I always say the same thing: Our children, our children, our children,” she added.

Her reelection announcement was expected, but it remains to be seen whether she will remain the Democratic leader after the current Congress.

“The Speaker is not on a shift, she’s on a mission,” Pelosi’s spokesman, Drew Hammill, said in an email when asked whether Pelosi plans to run again for speaker or minority leader.

 

I really don't understand the raging hatred against Pelosi. She's been the most effective House Speaker of my lifetime, easily, outlasting a clown car full of Republicans. The damn House office building should be named after her for crying out loud. Dems have been lucky to have her.

 

Compare her to Boehner or Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, all bumbling oafs by comparison. Pelosi beat them time after time and in McCarthy's case still is. 

Let her keep the job.

Nashville Hot Potato

With Tennessee Republicans splitting his Nashville-area congressional district into three, long-time Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper is retiring from the House after more than three decades of serving the people.

 

Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee announced Tuesday that he will not run for reelection, becoming the latest House Democrat to head for the exits as the party faces an uphill battle to retain control of the chamber in the 2022 midterms. 

"Today I am announcing that I will not run for re-election to Congress. After 32 years in office, I will be leaving Congress next year," Cooper tweeted.  

"I cannot thank the people of Nashville enough. You backed me more than almost anyone in Tennessee history," he said. 

The Tennessee Democrat is a member of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition and serves on the House Committee on Armed Services as well as the committees on Oversight and Reform and Budget. 

Cooper represents the state's Fifth Congressional District, which covers the city of Nashville as well as other counties and outlying areas. 

CNN reported in July that Republicans were considering breaking up Cooper's district, which could help them gain another crucial seat in the House. 

In an interview at the time, Cooper acknowledged that Republicans could effectively decide his political fate and warned that they may weaken Nashville's influence in Washington. 

"They couldn't beat me fairly," Cooper told CNN. "So, now they're trying to beat me by gerrymandering." 

In a longer statement released on Tuesday, Cooper said, "Despite my strength at the polls, I could not stop the General Assembly from dismembering Nashville. No one tried harder to keep our city whole. I explored every possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that now divide Nashville." 

But, he continued on to say, "there's no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but there may be a path for other worthy candidates."

 

Cooper is just the latest career Democratic elected to be driven out by gerrymandering, and while Democrats are actually coming out slightly ahead in 2020 overall, a lot of long-time Dems like Cooper, especially in Southern urban districts, are being eliminated. 

We'll see who wins those seats.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

A panel of three federal judges has tossed Alabama's GOP congressional map for eliminating one of the state's two majority Black congressional districts in favor of creating another Republican district, declaring it a direct violation of the Voting Rights Act.

A three-judge federal panel late Monday blocked Alabama's new congressional district map from going into effect, ruling that challengers were "substantially likely" to prevail in their arguments that the plan violated the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

In a 225-page decision, the judges found that Black Alabamians had "less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect the candidates of their choice to Congress." The congressional map as approved preserves a nearly 30-year plan of having a single majority-minority congressional district, the 7th in west Alabama.

"Both sets of plaintiffs ... suggest, and we agree, that as a practical reality, the evidence of racially polarized voting adduced during the preliminary injunction proceedings suggests that any remedial plan will need to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it," the three-judge panel wrote in its opinion.

In a statement Monday evening, the Alabama Attorney General's Office said it "strongly disagreed" with the court's decision and would file an appeal in the coming days.

Evan Milligan, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement Monday that the map approved by the Legislature "fails Alabama's voters of color."

"We deserve to be heard in our electoral process, rather than have our votes diluted using a map that purposefully cracks and packs Black communities," the statement said. "Today, the court recognized this harm and has ordered our elected officials to do better."

The case consolidated three separate lawsuits. All three argued that the single district constituted a racial gerrymander that prevented Black voters living outside the 7th congressional district from forming alliances with like-minded white voters and electing candidates of their choice.

"Alabama’s steadfast refusal to provide Black voters with adequate representation in Congress is a product of intentional discrimination and directly linked to the state’s history and present conditions of discrimination against Black people," said the brief in Milligan v. Merrill, one of the three cases. "The state’s intentional policy of disempowerment and discrimination has resulted in the denial of equal opportunity for Black people to participate in the political process in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the VRA."

 

So the state GOP will go back to the drawing board in order to create a new map with a second Black majority district, which will almost certainly elect a Democratic candidate and a Black one at that. Even as broken and as gutted as the VRA is in the Roberts Court era, even it was enough to convince three judges to say that Alabama Republicans were harming Black voters and diluting Black voting power in the state, which tells you just how blatantly racist the map is.

 

Democrats are starting to win the overall 2022 redistricting battle, and it's a good thing. They are playing enough hardball in states like Ohio, NC, and California that Republicans aren't actually going to come out ahead as a lot of us feared they would in the House.

That's a good thing.

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The Pentagon is putting as many as 8,500 troops on alert for possibly deployment to Europe as Russia-Ukraine border tensions are growing more dangerous by the day.

As many as 8,500 US troops have been put on heightened alert for a possible deployment to Eastern Europe as Russian troops mass on Ukraine's border, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday. 

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued the prepare to deploy orders at the direction of President Joe Biden, the latest step the US has taken to prepare for a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine that officials have warned could be imminent. 

Kirby said that the "bulk of" US troops placed on heightened alert were intended to bolster NATO's quick response force, but added they would be "postured to be ready for any other contingencies as well." 

As of Monday afternoon, no final decision to deploy the troops had been made, Kirby emphasized. 

"The United States has taken steps to heighten the readiness of its forces at home and abroad, so they are prepared to respond to a range of contingencies, including support to the NATO response force if it is activated," Kirby said. He noted the NATO Response Force "comprises around 40,000 multinational troops." 

Earlier on Monday CNN reported the Biden administration was in in the final stages of identifying specific military units it wants to send to Eastern Europe, according to multiple US and defense officials. 

Biden discussed options for bolstering US troop levels in the Baltics and Eastern Europe with his top military officials during a briefing at Camp David on Saturday, according to a senior official. 

The goal of sending military reinforcements to Eastern Europe would be to provide deterrence and to reassure allies, and there's been no suggestion US combat troops would deploy to Ukraine or take part in any combat roles. Kirby noted the US does have military advisers in Ukraine. 

Kirby would not say where the US troops might deploy, but said the US has "made it clear to the Eastern flank allies that we're prepared to bolster their capabilities if they need it." 

"In the event of NATO's activation of the NRF or a deteriorating security environment, the United States would be in a position to rapidly deploy additional brigade combat teams, logistics, medical, aviation, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, transportation and additional capabilities into Europe," Kirby said.

 

"We're bolstering NATO rapid reaction forces" is a polite way of saying that "We're not sending troops to Ukraine, but..." 

 

Putin surely will see this as a direct provocation, or will pretend it is one, and act accordingly I suspect. Still, for all the drumbeats of war definitely echoing across Europe right now, Putin still hasn't actually invaded Ukraine yet.

 

He would have by now if that was the sole point, so as I've said earlier this week, he wants something, and Biden needs to figure out what it is. 

Former US intelligence officer and Russia expert Fiona Hill has a pretty good idea of what Putin actually does want, and it's "the whole bowl of borscht".

As I have seen over two decades of observing Mr. Putin, and analyzing his moves, his actions are purposeful and his choice of this moment to throw down the gauntlet in Ukraine and Europe is very intentional. He has a personal obsession with history and anniversaries. December 2021 marked the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when Russia lost its dominant position in Europe. Mr. Putin wants to give the United States a taste of the same bitter medicine Russia had to swallow in the 1990s. He believes that the United States is currently in the same predicament as Russia was after the Soviet collapse: grievously weakened at home and in retreat abroad. He also thinks NATO is nothing more than an extension of the United States. Russian officials and commentators routinely deny any agency or independent strategic thought to other NATO members. So, when it comes to the alliance, all of Moscow’s moves are directed against Washington.

In the 1990s, the United States and NATO forced Russia to withdraw the remnants of the Soviet military from their bases in Eastern Europe, Germany and the Baltic States. Mr. Putin wants the United States to suffer in a similar way. From Russia’s perspective, America’s domestic travails after four years of Donald Trump’s disastrous presidency, as well as the rifts he created with U.S. allies and then America’s precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, signal weakness. If Russia presses hard enough, Mr. Putin hopes he can strike a new security deal with NATO and Europe to avoid an open-ended conflict, and then it will be America’s turn to leave, taking its troops and missiles with it.

Ukraine is both Russia’s target and a source of leverage against the United States. Over the last several months Mr. Putin has bogged the Biden administration down in endless tactical games that put the United States on the defensive. Russia moves forces to Ukraine’s borders, launches war games and ramps up the visceral commentary. In recent official documents, it demanded ironclad guarantees that Ukraine (and other former republics of the U.S.S.R.) will never become a member of NATO, that NATO pull back from positions taken after 1997, and also that America withdraw its own forces and weapons, including its nuclear missiles. Russian representatives assert that Moscow doesn’t “need peace at any cost” in Europe. Some Russian politicians even suggest the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against NATO targets to make sure that we know they are serious, and that we should meet Moscow’s demands.

For weeks, American officials have huddled to make sense of the official documents with Russia’s demands and the contradictory commentary, pondered how to deter Mr. Putin in Ukraine and scrambled to talk on his timeline.

All the while, Mr. Putin and his proxies have ratcheted up their statements. Kremlin officials have not just challenged the legitimacy of America’s position in Europe, they have raised questions about America’s bases in Japan and its role in the Asia-Pacific region. They have also intimated that they may ship hypersonic missiles to America’s back door in Cuba and Venezuela to revive what the Russians call the Caribbean Crisis of the 1960s.

Mr. Putin is a master of coercive inducement. He manufactures a crisis in such a way that he can win no matter what anyone else does. Threats and promises are essentially one and the same. Mr. Putin can invade Ukraine yet again, or he can leave things where they are and just consolidate the territory Russia effectively controls in Crimea and Donbas. He can stir up trouble in Japan and send hypersonic missiles to Cuba and Venezuela, or not, if things go his way in Europe.

Mr. Putin plays a longer, strategic game and knows how to prevail in the tactical scrum. He has the United States right where he wants it. His posturing and threats have set the agenda in European security debates, and have drawn our full attention. Unlike President Biden, Mr. Putin doesn’t have to worry about midterm elections or pushback from his own party or the opposition. Mr. Putin has no concerns about bad press or poor poll ratings. He isn’t part of a political party and he has crushed the Russian opposition. The Kremlin has largely silenced the local, independent press. Mr. Putin is up for re-election in 2024, but his only viable opponent, Aleksei Navalny, is locked in a penal colony outside of Moscow.

So Mr. Putin can act as he chooses, when he chooses. Barring ill health, the United States will have to contend with him for years to come. Right now, all signs indicate that Mr. Putin will lock the United States into an endless tactical game, take more chunks out of Ukraine and exploit all the frictions and fractures in NATO and the European Union. Getting out of the current crisis requires acting, not reacting. The United States needs to shape the diplomatic response and engage Russia on the West’s terms, not just Moscow’s.

 

Putin wants the old Soviet Empire back.  He just needs NATO neutralized. He figures he can outlast Biden and whomever comes after.

I sure hope he's wrong.

It's Still About Suppression, Con't

Arizona Republicans found no election fraud whatsoever, but that won't stop them from passing some of the toughest new voting restrictions in the country anyway.

Arizona Republicans have put forth two dozen bills this month that would significantly change the state's electoral processes after the GOP's unorthodox review of millions of ballots affirmed President Joe Biden's victory and turned up no proof of fraud.

Proposals introduced in the state House or the Senate would add an additional layer to the state's voter ID requirement, such as fingerprints, and stipulate the hand counting of all ballots by default. Other legislation would require that paper ballots be printed with holograms and watermarks.

Republican legislators argue that the proposals, part an ongoing surge of GOP-led election changes enacted or under consideration across the country, are necessary to enhance election security and prevent fraud.

Official counts, audits and accuracy tests have confirmed the election results in Arizona and elsewhere without finding evidence of widespread fraud, and states with Republican and Democratic leaders have certified the results as accurate. Former President Donald Trump, who continues to promote the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, was unable to prove any of the claims in court. A coalition of federal agencies involved in election security, alongside representatives of election officials from each state, said the election was "the most secure in American history."

The Legislature began its 2022 session on Jan. 12, and many of the bills have already been referred to committees for consideration. They face uncertain fates, as Republicans hold narrow majorities in the Senate, and a Republican, state Sen. Paul Boyer, said he would block bills he saw as unnecessary or problematic.

Some of the bills appear to be tied to conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that were elevated in the widely criticized ballot review state Senate Republicans orchestrated last year. Election experts said Cyber Ninjas, the company the legislators hired to examine millions of ballots in Maricopa County, had little to no experience with handling ballots, appeared to be looking for proof of conspiracy theories and misrepresented normal election processes in its final report as suggestive of fraud. Cyber Ninjas is accruing $50,000 a day in fines for refusing to respond to a court order requiring it to turn over documents related to its work.

Other bills, like one that would ban automatic voter registration from being implemented, appear to be designed to pre-empt provisions in national Democrats' election overhaul legislation, which has stalled in the Senate.

A Republican who has advanced false claims about the election, state Rep. Mark Finchem, who was outside the U.S. Capitol when rioters stormed it on Jan. 6, 2021, introduced and co-sponsored several bills, one of which would require that all ballots cast for primary and general elections be hand counted by default — a method that election experts say is unreliable and time-consuming. The state's millions of dollars' worth of ballot tabulation machines would be used only to verify hand counts.Finchem is running for state secretary of state, the office that oversees elections.

Another bill would spend $5 million create a special bureau to investigate voter fraud; still another would require voters to show voter ID cards and verify the cards with two of three methods — signatures, security codes or fingerprints.

 

So now Republicans want to make sure you need fingerprints to vote, which will of course create a public database of voters with biometric information that certainly would never be abused, hacked, or would never be prone to human error of course, and then require default hand-ballot counting, which would mean election results would take weeks to tabulate.

It gets worse, some of the requirements for paper ballot security technology simply doesn't exist.

 

Jeff Ellington, the CEO of the ballot vendor Runbeck Election Services, said he was also having trouble pricing out the proposed changes, although it was clear it would be expensive.

Runbeck supplied about 20 percent of U.S. mail ballots in 2020, Ellington said, printing 35 million ballots for jurisdictions in 22 states, including Arizona's largest county, Maricopa.

Ellington said that he had to Google some of the bill's requirements and that even some of his suppliers were befuddled by some of its requirements; he said it wasn't yet clear whether the proposed ballot design was even possible.

"Nobody's got that technology," he said of election vendors. "It's not readily available technology, because it's bank-level, Treasury-level stuff."

 

And all of this will end up costing Arizona taxpayers millions of dollars to prevent fraud that doesn't actually happen and could be caught by existing security measures.

 

The whole point of course is to make conducting elections as difficult as possible. Imagine if you had to give a retina scan at an ATM every time you made a withdrawal. Sure, it will protect your account from fraud if someone stole your card and they knew your PIN, but it would get obnoxious and burdensome quickly.

 

Now imagine having to get fingerprinted to vote.  The only thing they are doing is scaring off voters, which is the point. It's still about suppression.

Retribution Execution, Con't

 Remeber that the entire GOP is now dedicated to furthering Donald Trump's petty vengeance, and the incoming Republican administration of Glenn Youngkin in Virginia is no exception.

The top staff investigator on the House committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has been fired by the state’s new Republican attorney general from his position as the top lawyer for the University of Virginia, from which he was on leave while working on the congressional inquiry.

The office of the Virginia attorney general, Jason S. Miyares, said the firing of the investigator, Timothy J. Heaphy, was not related to the Jan. 6 investigation, but the move prompted an outcry from Democrats in the state, who accused him of taking the highly unusual action as a partisan move to further former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to undermine the committee’s work.

“This is purely payback for Jan. 6 — there is no other reason that makes any sense,” said Scott Surovell, a top Democrat in the Virginia State Senate, who said that he knew of no other similar example in recent history where a new attorney general had immediately removed a school’s top lawyer. “In our state, we normally leave those decisions to the school’s board of visitors and president.”

Victoria LaCivita, a spokeswoman for Mr. Miyares, said: “The decision had nothing to do with the Jan. 6 committee or their investigations.”

In Virginia, the attorney general oversees a range of lawyers across the state, including the top lawyers at the colleges and universities that make up the vast public higher education system. The posts are typically held by career lawyers who are rarely replaced when new attorneys general take over.

In addition to dismissing Mr. Heaphy, Mr. Miyares also had the top lawyer at George Mason University removed.

Mr. Heaphy, a Democrat who has made political donations to Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr., had been the top lawyer at the University of Virginia since 2018. He served as a United States attorney in Virginia during the Obama administration and is married to the daughter of Eric K. Shinseki, the retired chief of staff of the Army who served as President Barack Obama’s secretary of veterans affairs. In 2017, on behalf of the City of Charlottesville, he completed a highly critical report of how the police handled the white nationalist rally that turned violent and led to the death of one woman and injured dozens.

In a written statement, the University of Virginia sidestepped the issue of whether his dismissal had been motivated by politics, but made clear that it had no role in it.

“University leaders are grateful to Tim for his outstanding service to our community and disappointed to see it come to an end,” said Brian Coy, a spokesman for the university. “If you have further questions about this matter, I would check with the attorney general’s office, as this was their decision to make.”

Mr. Heaphy — who attended undergraduate and law school at the University of Virginia, who has long lived in Charlottesville and whose son attends the school — declined to address why he was dismissed, saying that he was “disappointed” that his time at the university had come to an end and that he was confident that the school would continue “to thrive in the days to come.”

In two statements released on Sunday, the attorney general’s office said the firing was unrelated to the Jan. 6 inquiry. In the first, to The Associated Press, Ms. LaCivita said that Mr. Heaphy had been a “controversial” hire and that the “decision was made after reviewing the legal decisions made over the last couple of years.”

“The attorney general wants the university counsel to return to giving legal advice based on law, and not the philosophy of a university,” she added.

In a subsequent statement, Ms. LaCivita said: “It is common practice for an incoming administration to appoint new staff that share the philosophical and legal approach of the attorney general. Every counsel serves at the pleasure of the attorney general.”

Of course it was retribution. Let's also remember that Miyares fired nearly the state's entire Civil Rights division when he took office this month too, all over the Charlottesville white supremacist riots and Trump's "very fine" people.

They're not pretending anymore. When Newt Gingrich says things like the January 6th Committee is "risking jail" once Republicans get back into power, he's not joking.

Retribution in the name of Dear Leader Trump is all that matters to them now.

Daughter Of Darkness, Done

It's looking more and more like GOP Rep. Liz Cheney's political career in Wyoming is in dire straits, as her Trump-backed primary challenger, Harriet Hageman, is gaining momentum heading into this spring's primary.

Harriet Hageman, the Donald Trump-endorsed candidate seeking to unseat Rep. Liz Cheney, won big Saturday in a straw poll of House candidates held by the Wyoming Republican State Central Committee.

The secret ballot of party activists awarded Hageman 59 votes, Cheney six, state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, two and Denton Knapp one. The vote comes eight months before the GOP primary.

“I think it’s a good sign. It’s not an endorsement, but these are the county activists” Hageman told the Star-Tribune after the vote.

The state party itself is not statutorily allowed to endorse a candidate in the primary.

The state central committee consists of three representatives from each county and members of the state party, for a total of 74 votes. Only 71, including three of Hageman’s family members, voted Saturday. The bearing of the vote on the outcome of the August primary is uncertain: There are 196,179 registered Republican voters in Wyoming as of January.

The straw poll is a indication of current party leadership’s views, not the state as a whole. Straw polls, even with a far higher number of voters, do not have an accurate track record in Wyoming in recent years.

Then candidate Cynthia Lummis lost to Sheridan County GOP Chairman Bryan Miller by a double-digit margin in a straw poll of Senate candidates held at the Wyoming Republican Party’s 2020 convention. Between 300 and 400 people voted in that poll.

Lummis went on to beat Miller in the primary by almost 50 points in the primary less than two months later.

Still, the vote highlights the hostility that many in the Wyoming Republican Party’s leadership feel toward Cheney since her much publicized break with Trump. Cheney, for her part, has called party leaders radical.

At Saturday’s meeting, Hageman’s high vote count was announced first and met with a round of applause. When Cheney’s tally was announced, a couple members in the room audibly scoffed.

“The only elections that matter are in August and November,” Jeremy Adler, a spokesperson for the Cheney campaign, said in response to the vote.

There was division in the room over the intention of the straw poll.

“This smells like an endorsement to me, said Natrona County Committeeman Joe Mcginley, who had publicly disagreed with party leaders before. “Whether that is the true intention of the state ... or not, that’s what it appears to be.”

Karl Allred, the Uinta County GOP chairman, saw it differently.

“This is not an endorsement,” he said. “This is merely asking for the opinion of the body at this time.”

 

It's certainly possible that  Cheney could survive the primary challenge and be reelected, but a December poll found Hageman ahead of Cheney 38-18% with more than a quarter of GOP primary voters undecided.  Anything's possible.

Me, I'm rooting for the Democrat if they can, you know, find one.