Last Call For Full Court Pressed, Con't

Increasingly, Republicans have decided that they no longer need, want, or will tolerate a free press, and getting rid of news networks, newspapers, magazines, news radio and cable news in favor of internet propaganda mills to reach the echo chamber faithful is all they will require, or will allow. The news outlets are discovering just how expendable they will be in a GOP fascist state, as NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben explains.

I went to Wisconsin in June to report on how abortion rights are affecting the Senate and governor primaries – the idea was to do one story on the Democrats and one on the Republicans.

Long story short: I heard back from the Democrats but not the Republicans. Phone calls, emails, Facebook messages – I didn't hear back from anyone. The top Republican governor candidates posted no events, though their social media showed they were out, talking to voters.

And so, when I happened to catch the top two GOP governor candidates walking in an Oconomowoc Fourth of July parade, I ran to the end of the route to catch them.

I found former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch greeting supporters. A staffer who then stepped between us told me they knew I had been reaching out and that I should contact a communications staffer, to whom I had already reached out. He would get back to me, she assured me.

He did not. And a day later, at a publicly-advertised meet-and-greet for governor candidate Kevin Nicholson, a staffer told me I wouldn't be allowed to even get tape of Nicholson greeting attendees.

As standalone anecdotes, these might not be a huge deal. However, they are also a part of a trend of Republican candidates ignoring or actively avoiding legacy media — particularly national outlets.

The phenomenon is impossible to quantify, but many Republican candidates are showing that they don't want – or need – to get their messages out via legacy media outlets. That can reduce the scrutiny they face while running for public office, hampering voters' ability to make informed choices.

A large group of reporters was kept out of a rally this spring for Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania. CBS's Robert Costa confronted a man who was blocking press from entry.

"If you're with the campaign, we can have a dialogue," Costa said.

"No dialogue," the man responded.

In addition, reporters have been frustrated by getting extremely limited access to other Republicans running for public office, like Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, and Alaska congressional candidate Sarah Palin.

And the Republican National Committee voted unanimously this year to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates ahead of 2024. Chair Ronna McDaniel said the party would find other platforms for debating.

Recently, the Florida GOP allowed conservative outlets into the party's Sunshine Summit, but barred many mainstream reporters, including Dave Weigel, author of the Washington Post's campaign newsletter, "The Trailer."

"You have one person from the campaign tweeting a photo from inside the room and talking about how great the view is that the journalists can't see," he said. "Spokespeople who are not answering my basic questions, like, 'Is there a recording of this event?' are taking the time to make fun of reporters for going there."

Indeed, Gov. Ron DeSantis' spokeswoman Christina Pushaw taunted reporters on Twitter afterward.

"It has come to my attention that some liberal media activists are mad because they aren't allowed into #SunshineSummit this weekend," she wrote. "My message to them is to try crying about it."

 

Dear political beat reporters: Republicans consider you an enemy that needs to be destroyed.

 

They want to put you in prison for "lying" about them, which consists of factually true things and verbatim words by said Republicans that they don't like to hear.

 

And if the GOP gets control in 2022 and 2024, you will be imprisoned, sued out of existence, and worse.

 

Folks in the Village better wake up. I know Upton Sinclair famously wrote that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it", lord knows access journalism falls into this category, but if you guys don't start actually treating Republicans as enemies of democracy, you won't be a part of what comes after when they take over.

I guarantee you that Trump or DeSantis or even Pence won't give any of you the time of day, and the White House press room will look like CPAC for a reason.

You're not in the club, as George Carlin also famously said.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

This weekend in Dallas is the Conservative Political Action Conference, aka CPAC, aka The America First Fascism Rally Experience Featuring Viktor Orban.

Stoking the culture wars is nothing new for CPAC. But with dark, militant speeches — and literal demonization of the MAGA movement’s political opponents — the conservative convention in Dallas this week menaced America with what seemed to be thinly veiled calls for violence, all while seeking to whitewash the political mayhem of Jan. 6, casting Capitol Hill rioters as victims of a “Democratic Gulag.”

From Hungarian authoritarian Victor Orbán to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to right-wing extremist Jack Posobiec, Conservative Political Action Committee speakers urged an us-versus-them confrontation, seemingly unbound from the constraints of electoral politics.

Bannon, now the host of the “War Room” podcast, brought his bellicose message to CPAC, appearing as the headline speaker at the convention’s Friday night ball. “We are at war,” Bannon told the MAGA faithful. “We are in a political and ideological war.” Repeating the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, Bannon insisted that Joe Biden is an “illegitimate imposter.” Calling on Republicans to send “shock troops” to Washington, Bannon promised the crowd they had an opportunity to “shatter the Democratic party as a national political institution.” He alleged that the party has been overrun by “radical, cultural Marxists” and “groomers” who “want to destroy the Republic.” Bannon insisted the GOP must pursue absolute victory over “power-mad and lawless” Democrats, asserting: “There can be no half measures anymore.”

Orbán — the Hungarian strongman fond of Nazi-style rhetoric against race mixing — received standing ovations for his stark address to the MAGA faithful on Thrusday. Orbán described European parliament and the federal government in Washington as “the two fronts in the battle being fought for Western civilization,” warning, “today, we hold neither of them, yet we need them both.” Orbán called on CPAC attendees and the far-right in Europe to forge a global movement. “We should unite our forces,” Orbán said, to “take back” Washington and Brussels.

On Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz, laying on a thick Texas accent for the home-state crowd, inveighed against what he called the “power hungry, abusive totalitarian nitwits” of the Biden administration and the Democratically controlled Congress. Cruz likened his service in the Senate to that of a gladiator: “It’s like the old Roman Colosseum where you slam on a breastplate and you grab a battle axe and you go fight the barbarians,” he said of his Democrat colleagues. “As they say in the military world,” Cruz continued, “it is a target-rich environment.”

Cruz then suggested that more than elections may be needed for conservatives to take back Washington from those he called “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” Cruz told the crowd, “We’re on the cusp of something extraordinary in this country … And each of you are the vanguard. You are the dangerous radicals. Like the men who signed the Declaration of Independence … like those who died at the Alamo, you are the courageous heroes,” he insisted, “fighting for liberty in our country.”

While CPAC has banned a few overt white nationalists from its ranks (including the noxious, Hitler-praising livestreamer Nick Fuentes) it welcomed to its stage Jack Posobiec, the Pizzagate conspiracy theorist recently denounced as a hate extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center for his ties to “white nationalists, antigovernment extremists, members of the Proud Boys, and neo-Nazis.” Posobiec took his turn in the spotlight to promote the New Right (effectively the latest rebranding of the hateful “alt-right”). And he, too, painted the coming conflicts of the culture war in militaristic terms: “Are you ready for new ideas to actually take the fight to the front lines,” he asked, “because that’s where we live and we’re not stopping.”

It could be tempting to dismiss such bombast from Cruz and Posobiec as empty rhetoric. But Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for governor in Arizona, directly threatened confrontation with the federal government over immigration at the Southern border should she win office in November.

“We have an invasion at the border,” Lake insisted, referring to undocumented immigrants and refugees. Lake then vowed that, after being sworn in, she would mount a military response, even lacking approval from the Biden administration: “As soon as my hand comes off the Bible, we’re going to send the Arizona National Guard troops to the border,” Lake said. Insisting on the “sovereignty” of the states, she insisted: “We will take the fight to the federal government. We’re not going to be victims of what they’re doing to us.”

The rhetoric of revolution and frontline confrontation went hand-in-hand with other speakers and presenters who cast the American left as demonic, evil, and destructive — in other words the kind of enemies who deserve to be dealt with harshly.

In between speeches, CPAC promoted a documentary, hosted by chair Matt Schlapp, called The Culture Killers, which inveighs against a “great desecration” perpetrated by the left. ”Anything that’s good, anything that’s holy, anything that’s truthful is being attacked,” Schlapp insisted on video. The documentary describes America as “under siege from an enemy within,” with one voice insisting, over images of burning cars, “There is no end. These people will never stop, until you stop ’em.”

 

I figure even if we win, we're in for years of terrorist attacks, mass shootings, vehicle attacks running into crowds, probably some bombings as well. We're looking at monthly, if not weekly attacks where racist terrorists target Black and brown neighborhoods and churches, Jewish neighborhoods and synagogues, Muslim neighborhoods and mosques. Democrats and their voters will be targets on a regular basis and thousands will die.

We're already seeing these attacks. The Buffalo shooting targeting a Black neighborhood's grocery store. The Highland Park July 4th parade shooting targeting a Jewish neighborhood. And now, Muslim men are being assassinated in Albuquerque.

On Friday afternoon, Naeem Hussain attended the funeral service for two Muslim men who were killed in the past two weeks. He joined other mourners afterward, sharing a meal, at the Islamic Center of New Mexico. Then he left.

Several hours later, a little before midnight, Naeem Hussain was shot to death in a parking lot of an organization that offers services for refugees and asylum seekers near San Mateo and Copper NE, according to the Islamic Center’s spokesman.

His death was the latest in what police suspect is a string of homicides targeting Muslim men based on their race and religion.

“Now, people are beginning to panic,” said Tahir Gauba, the director of public affairs with the Islamic Center of New Mexico, who added that he had been fielding phone calls all day about the death.

The two men who were buried Friday — 41-year-old Aftab Hussein and 27-year-old Muhammad Afzaal Hussain — were shot near their homes on July 26 and Aug. 1, respectively. Police say they were ambushed.

On Saturday, an Albuquerque Police Department spokesman said the recent homicides have led detectives to try to determine whether the Nov. 7 fatal shooting of Mohammad Ahmadi, 62, is also related. Ahmadi was killed behind a halal market he owned with his brother. An APD official had previously said that there was a “strong possibility” that all three of the prior homicides were related.

Gauba said the Muslim community — especially the student population who live near the area where two most recent shootings happened — is feeling very afraid. He said Naeem Hussain is from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Right now it is really tough to deal with it,” Gauba said. “I mean especially right after the funeral, the same day, that thing happened again. So it’s just really crazy.”

If we lose in November, and especially if we lose in 2024, the terrorists will primarily consist of local and state police, National Guard, and federal agencies and tens of thousands will die.

You may somehow not think that we're still not in a shooting war here in the US.

I am here to tell you that the right absolutely is engaging in this scenario. They are no longer content with just scaring the barbarians. They are here to start killing the barbarians.

We're the barbarians to them, only worth killing and terrorizing so we leave or die and they can have their white nationalist "Christian" theocratic ethnostate.

Never forget that.

Sunday Long Read: Border Line Insanity

Our Sunday Long Read comes to us from Gaby Del Valle at The Verge, with the story of how relentless surveillance of the Arizona-Mexico border by Homeland Security, the Border Patrol, Arizona police and the US Air Force isn't deterring migrants at all, the end results of billions in technology, equipment, materiel and trained agents mean it's just finding new and novel ways of the United States killing them in the desert.

 

It's unlikely the hikers knew they were being watched. They had tried to blend in: all 11 were wearing camouflage with the intention of vanishing into the desert scrub. They were on a remote mountain trail on the outskirts of Ajo, Arizona, a former mining town of about 3,000 people just a few dozen miles north of the Mexican border. It was a warm November morning, still early enough in the day that the sun must have felt good on their skin — the air is cold up in the mountains, colder still in the dry desert winter, though the heat always finds you eventually. The sky was bright and endless, punctuated by just a few clouds. But even if the migrants looked closely, there’s no way they could have noticed the MQ-9 Predator B drone stalking them from 20,000 feet above.

Nearly 150 miles away at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, the migrants were on display. Two Customs and Border Protection agents tracked the group from a cramped shipping container on base that was being used as a temporary ground control station. Each agent sat before five monitors: the pilot flew the drone while the camera operator focused on tracking the group’s movements. The 11 migrants appeared as small figures on a pair of screens, bright white smudges moving across a gray background. Their clothing may have helped them blend in with the cholla cacti and spiky ocotillo plants of the Sonoran Desert, but it couldn’t fool the Predator’s infrared camera. They had been betrayed by their own body heat.

The migrants must have noticed the helicopter first: an EC-120 Colibrí, Spanish for “hummingbird.” Then came a pair of Border Patrol agents on foot. “On your tail, there’s another group of two, probably about 50 yards behind you,” the camera operator in Tucson told one of the ground agents by radio.

Then he turned to me and explained what we were looking at. “That’s the agent,” he said, pointing at a vaguely person-shaped silhouette on one of the screens. He had to raise his voice so I could hear him over the endless hum of the servers that took up half the 16-by-20-foot room. “He just apprehended that guy, and that’s the group right there.” We watched as one member of the group tried to wrestle the Border Patrol agent. The others walked toward him, ready to give up.

From the shipping container, it was impossible to know anything about the group aside from what was visible on-screen. They could have been from Guatemala or El Salvador or Mexico or anywhere else. They could have been asylum seekers or drug runners or neither. Maybe it was their first time trekking through the desert; maybe it was their fifth. Maybe they were headed for Phoenix or Boston or for one of those tiny towns that have become Central American enclaves through the availability of agricultural jobs and word of mouth. These details were irrelevant to the CBP drone operators watching the migrants from Tucson, the Border Patrol agents tracking them through the mountains, and the crew following along in the helicopter. Their job was to find and apprehend anyone crossing the border illegally, no matter who they were.

The agents on the ground would get more details: names, ages, nationalities. After that, the specifics would matter a little. If the hikers were carrying drugs, they’d be prosecuted. If they had been deported before, they could be charged with illegal reentry. But if this was their first time — if they were crossing the border for work or to reunite with family on the other side or because they were in danger in their country — they’d likely be sent back to Mexico, regardless of where they had come from. There would be no hearing before an immigration judge, no chance to plead their case. And if the migrants were really desperate, they might try to cross again. Maybe they’d choose a different route. If they were with a smuggler, he’d know which trails to take to avoid the network of hidden cameras and underground sensors that CBP has scattered throughout the desert — but that route would likely be more remote and more treacherous than the one they were already on. All the surveillance technology in the world won’t stop people from trying to cross the border; it’s an obstacle, not, as Customs and Border Protection would have you believe, a deterrent.

Every unauthorized crossing is a justification for more drones in the air and boots on the ground, but none of that will stop people from coming. It just means more migrants are dying.

President Joe Biden promised that “not another foot of wall” would be built if he was elected president. Instead, his administration would use “high-tech capacity” to secure the border. Drones, cameras, and sensors would be more effective and more humane than a physical barrier, he claimed. What Biden’s promises ignored, however, is that the federal government has spent billions on border surveillance technology for the past three decades — and that despite these efforts and aside from a brief lull in crossings early in the pandemic, the number of unauthorized border crossings has gone up year after year. Since the ’90s, the question hasn’t been whether to fund border technology but how to get more of it. The fact that some migrants still make it across the border undetected — or that they attempt the journey at all — isn’t seen as a failure of technology or policy. Instead, it is used to justify more surveillance, more spending, and more manpower.

I first traveled to Arizona to meet with groups that wanted Biden to not only reverse Trump’s policies and halt construction but also to tear the wall down. The wall, they said, was an ecological and humanitarian catastrophe; leaving it up wasn’t an option. Early on in Biden’s presidency, it seemed like such things were possible: in his first few months in office, he had sent a comprehensive immigration reform bill to Congress and ended Trump-era policies like the Muslim ban and Remain in Mexico. His administration had created an exemption process to Title 42, a public health policy implemented in March 2020 that lets Border Patrol agents quickly send migrants back to Mexico without a hearing. It seemed like the Biden administration would end the policy altogether last summer.

When I first started reporting this story in the spring of 2021, there was a feeling of cautious optimism in the air — a feeling that, with the right prodding, Biden would usher in a more welcoming immigration system. By the time I first visited Arizona last summer, that feeling was mostly gone. Migrant deaths in the desert were on the rise for the second consecutive year, and no one in the federal government seemed to be doing anything about it. The previous summer had been the hottest and driest in the state’s history — and the deadliest for migrants in a decade. The Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office recovered remains of 227 suspected border crossers in the desert in 2020, and the summer of 2021 was on track to be just as fatal. By the time I arrived in Tucson, there were 137 known migrant deaths that year. Another 10 sets of human remains were recovered in the nine days I spent in Arizona.

There were a few theories as to why migrant deaths in Arizona had reached the highest rate since 2010. Some speculated that the border wall had pushed border crossers into more isolated, dangerous terrain. Advocates suggested that Title 42 was encouraging repeat attempts across the border, often through more remote paths. Greg Hess, the chief medical examiner for Pima County, said two consecutive years of record-breaking summer heat was likely a contributing factor. Triple-digit temperatures made the difficult, often fatal journey through the Sonoran Desert that much more so. Maybe it was policy. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was both. The common denominator in all these explanations was the inhospitality of the desert, the ruggedness of the landscape.

 

The US border with Mexico has been a failure all of my life. Democrats have failed to build any sort of fair or humane system because they don't want to deal with it. But a humane immigration system in the US will never happen with Republicans able to stop it, either.

And as climate change gets worse, as the border region becomes more and more inhospitable and deadly, more people fleeing South and Central America will die.

Should Arizona Republican candidate Kari Lake win, she will put armed National Guard troops on the border with orders to shoot to kill, and dare Biden to stop her.

It will get worse before it gets any better.

Last Call For Ridin' With Biden, Con't

Despite my serious and considerable doubts that either Kyrsten Sinema would blow up the Inflation Reduction Act budget reconciliation legislation from the right, or that Bernie Sanders would blow it up from the left, or that Joe Manchin would super double secret probation blow it up from the moon anyhow, Senate Democrats got the votes started tonight and passed the first hurdle.

 

A divided Senate voted Saturday to start debating Democrats’ election-year economic bill, boosting the sprawling collection of President Joe Biden’s priorities on climate, energy, health and taxes past its initial test as it starts moving through Congress.

In a preview of votes expected on a mountain of amendments, united Democrats pushed the legislation through the evenly divided chamber by 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie and overcoming unanimous Republican opposition. The package, a dwindled version of earlier multitrillion-dollar measures that Democrats failed to advance, has become a partisan battleground over inflation, gasoline prices and other issues that polls show are driving voters.

The House, where Democrats have a slender majority, could give it final approval next Friday when lawmakers plan to return to Washington.

The vote came after the Senate parliamentarian gave a thumbs-up to most of Democrats’ revised 755-page bill. But Elizabeth MacDonough, the chamber’s nonpartisan rules arbiter, said Democrats had to drop a significant part of their plan for curbing drug prices.

MacDonough said Democrats violated Senate budget rules with language imposing hefty penalties on drug makers who boost their prices beyond inflation in the private insurance market. Those were the bill’s chief pricing protections for the roughly 180 million people whose health coverage comes from private insurance, either through work or bought on their own.

Other pharmaceutical provisions were left intact, including giving Medicare the power to negotiate what it pays for drugs for its 64 million elderly recipients, a longtime Democratic aspiration. Penalties on manufacturers for exceeding inflation would apply to drugs sold to Medicare, and there is a $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap on drug costs and free vaccines for Medicare beneficiaries.

“The time is now to move forward with a big, bold package for the American people,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “This historic bill will reduce inflation, lower costs, fight climate change. It’s time to move this nation forward.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Democrats “are misreading the American people’s outrage as a mandate for yet another reckless taxing and spending spree.” He said Democrats “have already robbed American families once through inflation and now their solution is to rob American families yet a second time.”

Saturday’s vote capped a startling 10-day period that saw Democrats resurrect top components of Biden’s agenda that had seemed dead. In rapid-fire deals with Democrats’ two most unpredictable senators — first conservative Joe Manchin of West Virginia, then Arizona centrist Kyrsten Sinema — Schumer pieced together a package that would give the party an achievement against the backdrop of this fall’s congressional elections.

A White House statement said the legislation “would help tackle today’s most pressing economic challenges, make our economy stronger for decades to come, and position the United States to be the world’s leader in clean energy.”

Assuming Democrats fight off a nonstop “vote-a-rama” of amendments — many designed by Republicans to derail the measure — they should be able to muscle the measure through the Senate.

“What will vote-a-rama be like? It will be like hell,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said of the approaching GOP amendments. He said that in supporting the Democratic bill, Manchin and Sinema “are empowering legislation that will make the average person’s life more difficult” by forcing up energy costs with tax increases and making it harder for companies to hire workers.

 

There's still time to sink the bill with poison pill amendments, so we're nowhere out of the woods yet.  I still think there's a disaster coming, as do some of you.

 

But for now, the bill is now one step closer to becoming law.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Indiana, Con't

Indiana GOP Gov. Eric Holcomb signed into law a near total abortion ban in the state, with only very limited exceptions for rape or incest, making the Hoosier State the ninth state to put such an effectively complete ban on the healthcare procedure into effect on September 30.

Indiana lawmakers passed and the governor signed a near-total ban on abortion on Friday, overcoming division among Republicans and protests from Democrats to become the first state to draw up and approve sweeping new limits on the procedure since Roe v. Wade was struck down in June.

The law’s passage came just three days after voters in Kansas, another conservative Midwestern state, overwhelmingly rejected an amendment that would have stripped abortion rights protections from their State Constitution, a result seen nationally as a sign of unease with abortion bans. And it came despite some Indiana Republicans opposing the measure for going too far, and others voting no because of its exceptions.

The end of Roe was the culmination of decades of work by conservatives, opening the door for states to severely restrict abortion or ban it entirely. Some states prepared in advance with abortion bans that were triggered by the fall of Roe. Lawmakers in other conservative states said they would consider more restrictions.

But, at least in the first weeks since that decision, Republicans have moved slowly and have struggled to speak with a unified voice on what comes next. Lawmakers in South Carolina and West Virginia have weighed but taken no final action on proposed bans. Officials in Iowa, Florida, Nebraska and other conservative states have so far not taken legislative action. And especially in the last few weeks, some Republican politicians have recalibrated their messaging on the issue.

“West Virginia tried it, and they stepped back from the ledge. Kansas tried it, and the voters resoundingly rejected it,” State Representative Justin Moed, a Democrat from Indianapolis, said on the House floor before voting against the bill. “Why is that? Because up until now it has just been a theory. It was easy for people to say they were pro-life. It was easy to see things so black and white. But now, that theory has become reality, and the consequences of the views are more real.”

The Indiana bill — which bans abortion from conception except in some cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormality or when the pregnant woman faces risk of death or certain severe health risks — was signed into law within minutes of its final passage late Friday night by Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican who had encouraged legislators to consider new abortion limits during a special session that he called.

“These actions followed long days of hearings filled with sobering and personal testimony from citizens and elected representatives on this emotional and complex topic,” Mr. Holcomb said in a statement. “Ultimately, those voices shaped and informed the final contents of the legislation and its carefully negotiated exceptions to address some of the unthinkable circumstances a woman or unborn child might face.”

Beyond those limited exceptions, the new law will end legal abortion in Indiana next month. The procedure is currently allowed at up to 22 weeks of pregnancy. Some Republicans have indicated that they expect the law to be challenged in court.

“If this isn’t a government issue — protecting life — I don’t know what is,” said Representative John Young, a Republican who supported the measure. He added: “I know the exceptions are not enough for some and too much for others, but it’s a good balance.”

The law’s passage came after two weeks of emotional testimony and bitter debates in the Statehouse. Even though Republicans hold commanding majorities in both chambers, the bill’s fate did not always seem secure. When a Senate committee considered an initial version of the bill last week, no one showed up to testify in support of it: The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana called it a “cruel, dangerous bill,” Indiana Right to Life described it as “weak and troubling,” and a parade of residents with differing views on abortion all urged lawmakers to reject it.

The debate was supercharged by the case of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had traveled to Indiana for an abortion after she was raped. The abortion provider in that case, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, became a target of some on the right.

Abortion rights protesters were a regular presence at the Statehouse during the session, sometimes chanting “Let us vote!” or “Church and state!” so loudly from the hallway that it could be difficult to hear lawmakers. Several Democrats invoked the vote in Kansas, in which 59 percent of voters decided to preserve abortion rights, as an example of the political risk Republicans were taking. Democrats suggested putting the issue to a nonbinding statewide vote in Indiana, which Republicans rejected.

“Judging by the results I saw in Kansas the other day,” said Representative Phil GiaQuinta, a Democrat who opposed the Indiana bill, “independents, Democrats and Republicans by their votes demonstrated what is most important to them, and me, and that is our personal freedoms and liberty.”

Todd Huston, the Republican speaker of the Indiana House, said he was pleased with the final version of the law. But asked about the protests in Indianapolis and the vote in Kansas, he acknowledged that many disagreed.

“We’ve talked about the fact that voters have an opportunity to vote, and if they’re displeased, they’ll have that opportunity both in November and in future years,” Mr. Huston said.

 

If you don't like the total abortion ban, vote them out!

Vote them out of a state legislature where anti-choice, women as property Republicans have a majority of state House seats with 20-point locks and another 15% with merely double digit margins, and the state Senate is even more gerrymandered.

Vote them out when Democrats would need to win by 18-22 points just to break even.

The only debate in a one-party fascist state like Indiana is how quickly the fascism happens in taking rights away from women, Black and brown folk, LGBTQ+ folk, the state's Jewish and Muslim populations, and more.

Job-A-Palooza, Con't

The "Are we in a recession?" nonsense was ended thunderously in the negative with Friday's spectacular July jobs report.

 

America’s employers added a stunning 528,000 jobs last month despite raging inflation and anxiety about a possible recession, restoring all of the positions lost in the coronavirus recession. Unemployment fell to 3.5%, the lowest level since the pandemic struck in early 2020.

There were 130,000 more jobs created in July than there were in June, and the most since February.

The red-hot jobs numbers from the Labor Department on Friday arrive amid a growing consensus that the economy is losing momentum. The U.S. economy shrank in the first two quarters of 2022 — an informal definition of recession. But most economists believe the strong jobs market has kept the economy from slipping into a downturn.

Friday’s surprisingly strong report will undoubtedly intensify the debate over whether America is in a recession or not.

“Recession – what recession?” wrote Brian Coulton, chief economist at Fitch Ratings, after the numbers came out. “The U.S. economy is creating new jobs at an annual rate of 6 million – that’s three times faster than what we normally see historically in a good year. ‘’

Economists had expected only 250,000 new jobs in July.

 

GDP may have slowed down, but jobs are roaring ahead. Is it possible that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell might actually know what they are doing? 

We'll see.

Sinema Verite', Con't

With the Inflation Reduction Act having gotten past Joe Manchin, this week is Kyrsten Sinema's turn, and as expected, her price is to remove all the tax hikes on billionaires and corporations.

Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, announced on Thursday evening that she would support moving forward with her party’s climate, tax and health care package, clearing the way for a major piece of President Biden’s domestic agenda to move through the Senate in the coming days.

To win Ms. Sinema’s support, Democratic leaders agreed to drop a $14 billion tax increase on some wealthy hedge fund managers and private equity executives that she had opposed, change the structure of a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations, and include drought money to benefit Arizona.

Ms. Sinema said she was ready to move forward with the package, provided that the Senate’s top rules official signed off on it.

Ms. Sinema had been the final holdout on the package after Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, struck a deal with top Democrats last week that resurrected a plan that had appeared to have collapsed.

  

Sinema got her price: preserving tax cuts for the billionaires that fund her, preserving tax cuts for some corporations (manufacturers) and securing billions for Arizona's catastrophic drought, as Phoenix remains the least sustainable city in the US.

Ms. Sinema insisted on the removal of a provision that would have limited the preferential tax treatment of income earned by some wealthy hedge fund managers and private equity executives. Democrats instead added a new 1 percent excise tax that companies would have to pay on the amount of stock that they repurchase, said one Democratic official, who disclosed details of the plan on the condition of anonymity.

That provision, the official said, would ensure that the package still reduces the federal deficit by as much as $300 billion, the same amount Democrats aimed for with the original deal and a key priority for Mr. Manchin.

Democrats also agreed to a request by Ms. Sinema to include billions of dollars to combat droughts, according to officials briefed on the emerging plan, something that is crucial to Arizona as it suffers from a devastating megadrought. They were expected to restructure the 15 percent minimum tax on corporations to make it less burdensome on manufacturers. Earlier this week, business leaders in Arizona appealed directly to Ms. Sinema to simplify that proposal, which was included in part because she had resisted increasing tax rates as part of the plan.

“Manufacturers remain concerned that this bill will stifle new cures and therapies,” Jay Timmons, the president and chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers, said on Twitter, even while praising the removal of certain tax provisions. He added, “We remain skeptical and will be reviewing the revised legislation carefully.”

 

Look, this is a win for Dems. It's an "Art of the Possible", "Don't let the Perfect become the enemy of the Good", "Don't ask how the Sausage is made" win. 

 

Besides, there's a huge chunk of sausage left in, and it's pretty tasty. 

 

The new agreement with Sinema includes a new 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks that will bring in $73 billion, far more than the $14 billion raised by the carried interest provision, according to a Democrat familiar with the deal.

 

Now if this is true, then this is actually a very good deal. Sinema can certainly keep the Bernie wing of the Democrats happy with that provision, because its a good provision.

 

Still a long road to go with a test vote on Saturday. Still could fall apart, still could run into issues in the House.

 

We'll see.

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Attorney General Merrick Garland today announced federal prosecutions of the four current and former Louisville police officers involved in the police murder of Breonna Taylor.

The U.S. Justice Department said Thursday federal charges have been filed against four former and current Louisville police officers in the apartment raid that killed Breonna Taylor in 2020.

The Justice Department on Thursday charged the four Louisville Metro Police officers -- Joshua Jaynes, Kyle Meaney, Kelly Goodlet, and Brett Hankison -- with civil rights offenses, unlawful conspiracy, unconstitutional use of force and obstruction of justice.

Jaynes, who was fired in January 2021 for lying on the search warrant that led to the raid that killed Taylor, is already in FBI custody, his attorney, Thomas Clay, told the Louisville Courier-Journal.

During a press conference Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the federal civil rights charges are for the officers' alleged falsification of the affidavit used to get the search warrant on Taylor's apartment. Her apartment was targeted by mistake.

"The federal charges announced today allege that members of the place-based investigations unit falsified the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant of Ms. Taylor's home, that this act violated federal civil rights laws and that those violations resulted in Ms. Taylor's death," Garland said at the Justice Department.

 

Hopefully this means all four of these monsters will be caged.

 

Breonna Taylor was murdered by LMPD.

 

Remember her name.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

Republicans targeting teachers as "groomers" and other disgusting attacks on education itself has resulted in a "catastrophic" teacher shortage, especially in red states controlled by Republicans. This is of course being done on purpose, as Republicans are trying to get rid of public education anyway.

Rural school districts in Texas are switching to four-day weeks this fall due to lack of staff. Florida is asking veterans with no teaching background to enter classrooms. Arizona is allowing college students to step in and instruct children.

The teacher shortage in America has hit crisis levels — and school officials everywhere are scrambling to ensure that, as students return to classrooms, someone will be there to educate them.

“I have never seen it this bad,” Dan Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association, said of the teacher shortage. “Right now it’s number one on the list of issues that are concerning school districts ... necessity is the mother of invention, and hard-pressed districts are going to have to come up with some solutions.”

It is hard to know exactly how many U.S. classrooms are short of teachers for the 2022-2023 school year; no national database precisely tracks the issue. But state- and district-level reports have emerged across the country detailing staffing gaps that stretch from the hundreds to the thousands — and remain wide open as summer winds rapidly to a close.

The Nevada State Education Association estimated that roughly 3,000 teaching jobs remained unfilled across the state’s 17 school districts as of early August. In a January report, the Illinois Association of Regional School Superintendents found that 88 percent of school districts statewide were having “problems with teacher shortages” — while 2,040 teacher openings were either empty or filled with a “less than qualified” hire. And in the Houston area, the largest five school districts are all reporting that between 200 and 1,000 teaching positions remain open.

Carlton Jenkins, superintendent of the Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin, said teachers are so scarce that superintendents across the country have developed a whisper network to alert each other when educators move between states.

“We’re at a point right now, where if I have people who want to move to California, I call up and give a reference very quick,” he said. “And if someone is coming from another place — say, Minnesota — I have superintendent colleagues in Minnesota, they call and say, ‘Hey, I have teachers coming your way.’ ”

Why are America’s schools so short-staffed? Experts point to a confluence of factors including pandemic-induced teacher exhaustion, low pay and some educators’ sense that politicians and parents — and sometimes their own school board members — have little respect for their profession amid an escalating educational culture war that has seen many districts and states pass policies and laws restricting what teachers can say about U.S. history, race, racism, gender and sexual orientation, as well as LGBTQ issues.

“The political situation in the United States, combined with legitimate aftereffects of covid, has created this shortage,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “This shortage is contrived.”

 

Republicans are driving teachers out of the profession, along with librarians, professors, instructors and educators. Republicans want angry parents and taxpayers to see how much of a "failure" schools and libraries and colleges are so that they can justify shutting them down.

 

If all the voters are uneducated, obnoxious Dunning-Kruger buffoons, they elect the same to run the country. Republicans want to keep 75% of non-college voters and they can win election after election by convincing stupid people to remain stupid. 

And in a lot of states, it's working.

Josh Hawley's Scandal-navian Adventures

While reductive fools like Kentucky's own GOP Sen. Rand Paul had the grace to vote "Present" in yesterday's 95-1 Senate vote ratifying NATO membership for Sweden and Finland, the lone "No" vote was Missouri dipstick GOP Sen. Josh Hawley, and even his own caucus is happy letting him since in the corner with the dunce cap on to stew in his "principled loss".

The resolution backs Finland and Sweden joining NATO. The House approved a resolution in a bipartisan 394-18 vote last month that formally supported the two Nordic countries joining the military alliance. All opposition in the House came from the Republican Party.

Hawley’s vote against the resolution did not come as a surprise. He had announced his intent to vote against the resolution earlier this week, outlining his opposition in an op-ed published by The National Interest.

He said he does not believe the U.S. should expand its security commitments in Europe, because America’s “greatest foreign adversary” is China.

Hawley argued that growing the country’s security commitments in Europe would make Americans less safe.

“Finland and Sweden want to join the Atlantic Alliance to head off further Russian aggression in Europe. That is entirely understandable given their location and security needs. But America’s greatest foreign adversary doesn’t loom over Europe. It looms in Asia,” Hawley wrote.

“I am talking of course about the People’s Republic of China. And when it comes to Chinese imperialism, the American people should know the truth: the United States is not ready to resist it. Expanding American security commitments in Europe now would only make that problem worse—and America, less safe,” he added.

The Missouri Republican elaborated on his stance in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, arguing that adding Finland and Sweden to NATO is not in the national security interest of the U.S.

“Finland and Sweden want to expand NATO because it is in their national security interest to do so, and fair enough. The question that should properly be before us, however, is, is it in the United States’s interests to do so? Because that’s what American foreign policy is supposed to be about, I thought,” Hawley said.

“Expanding NATO will require more United States forces in Europe, more manpower, more firepower, more resources, more spending. And not just now but over the long haul. But our greatest foreign adversary is not in Europe. Our greatest foreign adversary is in Asia. And when it comes to countering that adversary, we are behind the game. I’m talking, of course, about China. The communist government of Beijing has adopted a policy of imperialism,” he added.

Paul voted “present” on the resolution shortly after the Senate defeated his amendment to the measure in a 10-87 vote. Nine Republicans joined him in supporting the addition.

The amendment sought to emphasize that Article 5 of the NATO treaty does not supersede Congress’s control over declaring war.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday delivered remarks in support of the resolution and wished those opposed to the measure “good luck” in finding a “defensible excuse” for their “no” votes.

“If any senator is looking for a defensible excuse to vote ‘no,’ I wish them good luck. This is a slam dunk for national security that deserves unanimous bipartisan support,” McConnell said.

“There’s just no question that admitting these robust democratic countries with modern economies and capable interoperable militaries will only strengthen the most successful military alliance in human history,” he added.

 

Even if Hawley is right about China being a bigger threat than Russia right now (which he's ludicrously not, given the fact that Russia is in an open shooting war with Ukraine and has been for six months, I thought that American exceptionalism meant that we could do more than one thing, given the fact we spend more than the total GDP of Switzerland on just the friggin' Pentagon every year.

No, when even Mitch thinks your position is indefensible given the fact the US has ratified Albania, Croatia, and in the last five years, North Macedonia, and Montenegro joining NATO, Hawley knows he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

So he should sit down and shut the hell up.

Last Call For Can't Win For Losing

A gentle reminder that even when they have a big night in primaries and in Kansas's defense of abortion rights, while Republicans can lose, Democrats can never, ever win in the Village press.

On the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 attacks at the U.S. Capitol, Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, took to Twitter not just to condemn that day’s violence but also to warn that the dark forces behind it were still very much alive and still a threat to the future of American democracy.

“We know that those who wanted to topple our democracy haven’t given up and they have moved their assault to state capitols and legislatures across the country,” Mr. Cooper wrote. “Governors must help lead the way in standing up for the truth, protecting our democracy and making sure that it’s the vote of the people that decides elections.”

The governor was right to sound the alarm. So it is deeply troubling to see Mr. Cooper and the organization he chairs — the Democratic Governors Association — support and finance a cynical political strategy to support pro-Trump candidates in Republican primaries, on the theory that they would be easier for Democrats to beat in the fall general election.

Anyone who proclaims concern about the future of democracy shouldn’t come within a whiff of these democracy-denying candidates, let alone help them win votes. But Mr. Cooper and other Democratic Party groups have been elevating Big Lie proponents over their moderate Republican opponents all year, making a mockery of the American political system.

It is a terrible approach on two counts. First, it’s profoundly irresponsible: What if these election deniers actually win? And second, if Democrats believe that democracy is in danger and they need Republican support to save it — or at least a reality-based G.O.P. in our two-party system — then they have weakened their standing as defenders of democracy by aligning with those who would thwart it.

Maryland provides a vivid example of this foolishness. There, Mr. Cooper’s group threw its money, an estimated $2 million, toward ads boosting the candidacy of Dan Cox, a pro-Trumper who attended the rally leading up to the Jan. 6 riot and still preaches that Mr. Trump was cheated out of the presidency. The association reasoned that Democrats would stand a better chance of beating Mr. Cox in the general election than a moderate Republican like Kelly Shultz, the candidate backed by the popular outgoing governor, Larry Hogan. So far, this bizarre strategy has paid off. Mr. Cox won the primary.

The Democratic governors are not alone in their cynicism. In Michigan, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee bought a television ad highlighting the close relationship between Mr. Trump and a pro-Trumper named John Gibbs who was seeking to oust a popular moderate, Representative Peter Meijer. Mr. Meijer was among the handful of Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump following the Capitol insurrection.

The basic playbook goes like this: On their face, the ads and mailers — the ad in Michigan reminds voters that Mr. Gibbs was “handpicked” by Mr. Trump — are framed as an attack and a warning. But its messaging, the Meijer camp believes, raised Mr. Gibbs’s appeal among the district’s conservative voters and gave him name recognition he could not otherwise afford. Mr. Meijer lost by roughly fewer than 4,000 votes on Tuesday to Mr. Gibbs.

Democrats have made similar moves in Colorado, Pennsylvania and California, where a Democratic super PAC funded an ad criticizing the bona fides of David Valadao, another of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach. Mr. Valadao narrowly defeated a right-wing candidate in June’s primary. Overall, the results have been mixed. The most extreme candidates in Colorado’s Republican primaries for Senate, governor and in the hotly contested 8th Congressional District did not win in June, despite millions of dollars spent by Democrats earlier this summer on TV ads, mailers and text messages seeking that outcome. In Illinois, however, Democrats were able to help a far-right Republican candidate for governor win his primary over a more moderate opponent backed by the G.O.P. establishment.

 

Democrats get ravaged in the press if they play hardball in defense of keeping the country out of the hands of the people who want to reduce people who look like me to chattel, and the people who have vaginas to mere brood mares.

 

What the Village wants are good Republicans, and barring the non-existence of good Republicans because what Republican primary voters want are Nazis, they thing the Village wants even more are Democrats who let Republicans win. 

I said weeks ago that it was risky, but now I know these monsters would have won their primaries anyway.

Dems however can never, ever win.

Like A Kansas Tornado, Con't

As part of several state primary contests, Kansans went to the polls yesterday for the country's first post-Dobbs abortion vote on whether or not protections in the state's constitution for abortion rights should be removed. Overwhelmingly turning out to vote, Kansas voted no by a double-digit landslide.

The right to an abortion will remain in the Kansas Constitution. 

 

In the first ballot test of abortion rights in a post-Roe America, Kansas voters turned out in historic numbers to overwhelmingly reject a constitutional amendment that would have opened the door for state lawmakers to further restrict or ban abortions across the state. 

 

The Associated Press called the race at 9:40 p.m central. The vote “no” campaign led 59 % to 41 % after all precincts in the state had reported.

The vote stands as a major win for abortion rights advocates, preserving access in a red state as the procedure is banned or severely restricted in much of the region. It wasn’t just urban counties, like Democratic-leaning Wyandotte County, that turned out to protect abortion rights. Rural counties like Osage, Franklin and Lyon also favored vote “no” by significant margins.

Shortly after 10 p.m., Iman Alsaden, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood Great Plains, said she was still processing the vote. 

 

“I am sort of speechless. I’m so proud to be a provider in this community. I’m so proud that I get to serve this community. I moved here two years ago from Chicago with the intention of providing abortion care in a place where there were not a lot of providers,” Alsaden said. “It’s sort of unbelievable. I’m so proud to be able go to work tomorrow and talk to my staff and give everyone a hug.” 

 

The vote upholds a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court ruling that, in response to an attempt to ban a common second trimester abortion procedure, said Kansans had a right to bodily autonomy and therefore the right to terminate a pregnancy.

The movement against the amendment succeeded in turning a wide swath of no voters out, despite the amendment’s placement on a primary ballot many assumed would favor conservatives because of the greater number of GOP primaries. They were able to keep margins to stay competitive in rural counties, keeping the loss margin in western Kansas smaller than anticipated. 

 

Secretary of State Scott Schwab said early in the evening that anecdotal evidence indicated the turnout could match the 2008 presidential race— 63.3%.

The first real test of whether or not protecting the right to an abortion matters, and doing so won, motivating presidential election year levels of turnout in a midterm year August vote.

"Astonishing" doesn't begin to describe it.

Three things:

One, voters clearly want to keep rights enshrined to them. Having the Supreme Court try to remove them isn't going to go over well in states where voters are actually given a choice.

Two, Democrats need to be running on abortion in every state, even red ones.  You know, like Kansas. Voters care about it and will vote to defend it.

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center to overturn Roe, abortion access has become salient among key voting groups, including the population most impacted by abortion restrictions – women between the ages of 18 and 49. Among this population, there has been a fourteen percentage point increase in the share who say abortion will be “very important” to their 2022 midterm vote (59% in February to 73% in July). In addition, six in ten women voters between 18 and 49 now say they are “more motivated” to vote because of the Supreme Court’s decision (up 19 percentage points from May when the question was asked about a scenario in which Roe was overturned based on a leaked draft opinion). The vast majority (88%) of the more motivated group of women voters between 18 and 49 say they plan on voting for candidates who will protect access to abortions. 

While abortion is a motivating issue for some groups of voters, the issue still trails inflation and gas prices (74%) as the top voting issue overall. Abortion ranks alongside other top tier issues include gun control (57%), an issue on which Congress just recently passed legislation, and health care and prescription drug costs (55%), an issue that has been debated for the past several months and has gotten recent attention by Democratic lawmakers. With inflation and gas prices as the top issue overall, and for most voting groups, it is perhaps unsurprising that the share of adults who are worried about affording household expenses has increased since the beginning of the pandemic and over the past four months in particular, with the largest increases in affording basic living expenses like food (up 14 percentage points), utilities (up 12 percentage points), and mortgage or rent (up 8 percentage points). In the past two years, the share who are worried about being able to afford gas or other transportation costs has nearly doubled, growing from 40% in February 2020 to 76% in July 2022. 

Two-thirds of the public (65%) disapprove of the Supreme Court decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center that overturned Roe and allows individual states to decide the legality of abortion access within each state. In addition, most adults (61%) – including majorities of Democrats, independents, women between the ages of 18 and 49, and about half of those living in states with pre-Roe abortion bans or trigger laws – say want the laws in their state to guarantee access to abortion. About a quarter of the public, including more than half of Republicans (54%) say they want the laws in their states to ban abortions.

 

Yes, voters care about inflation, but a majority of voters, especially women under 50, will vote for it. Run on it, Dems.

Three, state polling was absolutely wrong. Again.

In this May article, Kansas was listed at roughly even (+1) in net support for abortion rights. You can check the polling estimates for each state. https://t.co/Ci8iaUYZnm

— The Upshot (@UpshotNYT) August 3, 2022

 

Only off by 18 points, guys.  Good job!

Voting Running The Gauntlet

Understand that Republicans are massing armies of "poll watchers" in multiple swing states in order to intimidate, challenge, and disenfranchise thousands and thousands of young, Black and brown voters in key precincts, with the aim of "stopping the steal" in November.

 

The Republican National Committee has been relying on a stable of the party’s most prolific spreaders of false stolen-election theories to pilot a sweeping “election integrity” operation to recruit and coach thousands of poll workers in eight battleground states, according to new recordings of organizing summits held this spring in Florida and Pennsylvania obtained by POLITICO.

On the tapes, RNC National Election Integrity Director Josh Findlay repeatedly characterizes the committee’s role as supporting in-state coalitions — delivering staff, organization and “muscle” in key states to the person they identify as the quarterback of the effort to create a permanent workforce: Conservative elections attorney Cleta Mitchell, who was a central figure in former President Donald Trump’s legal strategy to overturn the 2020 election.

“Cleta Mitchell, she’s like the best election and election law expert out there. We’re not going to tell her what to do,” Findlay told a March 31 Pennsylvania session organized by Mitchell.

Publicly, the RNC has insisted its goal is to ensure there are enough trained poll workers to protect the electoral process and ensure partisan parity at polling centers. The recordings, however, indicated that the RNC is relying heavily on people who have spread false or unproven claims of irregularities and conspiracies. The recordings feature Findlay speaking at a number of Mitchell’s “Election Integrity Network” summits, which her group has hosted in battleground states including Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The RNC is just “part of the team,” he told a Florida summit the same month.

While Republicans have said the aim of their “election integrity” effort is to ensure there are well-trained poll workers during the next election, the recordings also feature Mitchell speaking openly about the need to challenge efforts by nonprofit groups aligned with Democrats to create a “new American majority” of young voters, people of color and unmarried women.

“It’s a place the left sees as a great target of opportunity, and we have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she said, referring to Democratic efforts to register voters from traditionally underrepresented voting blocs.

Mitchell was on Trump’s post-election phone call directing a Georgia elections official to “find” him 11,700 votes after losing the state, and is she among those currently under subpoena in a criminal investigation by the Fulton County district attorney. Days after the 2020 election, she was exploring ways to keep Trump in power via a slate of fake electors from several battleground states. White House call logs show she is also among a handful of individuals with whom Trump spoke on Jan. 6, 2021, the day the Capitol was attacked, and she is suing to block the House Jan. 6 committee from obtaining her full phone records.

Mitchell, in a response to POLITICO, said her comments about the “new American majority” were referring to an executive order by the Biden administration directing federal agencies to help citizens register to vote and to educate them on how to do so. The effort amounts to turning “every federal agency into a Democratic turnout machine — using our tax dollars in the process,” said Mitchell.

 

This is why they want to eliminate early voting, eliminate voting places, eliminate mail voting, and eliminate voting drop boxes: to force anyone who does want to vote in urban areas to run the gauntlet of screaming assholes demanding identification, again and again, bogging down lines of voters, already slowed down by Republicans strategically eliminating voting machines in Black precincts. 

 

They want local news stories of "voter fraud" and "urban violence at polling places" to scare off other voters too. They sure won't touch my polling place, a senior citizens' center in Kentucky. It never takes me more than 20 minutes to vote, and when I was able to vote by mail in 2020, it was the easiest thing in the world. 

In 2022 they want people to spend an entire day waiting in line, and then accuse them of cheating.

If you can vote early in your state, do it.

All this is planned disenfranchisement and harassment, and it's going to be on a scale unheard of in November. The Roberts Court certainly isn't going to help. Democratic candidates are going to lose millions of votes in November as a result.

We have to vote in numbers they can't stop.

Last Call For A Text(ing) Book Coverup

OK, now it's definitely a widespread Trump regime coverup of the January 6th text messages that entails deletion of evidence by the US Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and now the Pentagon.

The Defense Department wiped the phones of top departing DOD and Army officials at the end of the Trump administration, deleting any texts from key witnesses to events surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, according to court filings. 

The acknowledgment that the phones from the Pentagon officials had been wiped was first revealed in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit American Oversight brought against the Defense Department and the Army. The watchdog group is seeking January 6 records from former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, among other prominent Pentagon officials -- having filed initial FOIA requests just a few days after the Capitol attack. 

Miller, Patel and McCarthy have all been viewed as crucial witnesses for understanding government's response to the January 6 Capitol assault and former President Donald Trump's reaction to the breach. All three were involved in the Defense Department's response to sending National Guard troops to the US Capitol as the riot was unfolding. There is no suggestion that the officials themselves erased the records. 

The government's assertion in the filings that the officials' text messages from that day were not preserved is the latest blow to the efforts to bring transparency to the events of January 6. It comes as the Department of Homeland Security is also under fire for the apparent loss of messages from the Secret Service that day. 

Miller declined to comment. Patel and McCarthy did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Defense Department did not immediately respond to CNN's request. The US Army Public Affairs media relations chief, Col. Cathy Wilkinson, said in a statement that, "It is our policy not to comment on ongoing litigation." 

American Oversight is now calling for a "cross-agency investigation" by the Justice Department to investigate destruction of the materials.

"It's just astounding to believe that the agency did not understand the importance of preserving its records -- particularly [with regards] to the top officials that might have captured: what they were doing, when they were doing it, why they were doing, it on that day," Heather Sawyer, American Oversight's executive director, told CNN. 

Like I said, these messages aren't lost. The warrants needed to find these texts have almost certainly been issued, and the forensic work to recover them is already underway, if not already done. A shitload of Trump regime officials need to be cooling their heels in federal prison.

I think a lot of people are going to be very surprised at just how big the list is going to be when the indictments start. Including me.

Plan Fails First Contact With OpFor

After nearly a week of wall-to-wall bad press, Senate Republicans are scrambling to reverse their filibuster of legislation to help military veterans suffering from health problems stemming from exposure to burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq, something so incomprehensibly petty and cruel that it got Jon Stewart off his famous "Both sides are garbage" stance in order to repeatedly blast Mitch and friends.

Senate Republicans are reversing course on a veterans health care bill, signaling they’ll now help it quickly move to President Joe Biden’s desk after weathering several days of intense criticism for delaying the legislation last week.

Republicans insist their decision to hold up the bill, which expands health care for veterans exposed to toxic substances while on active duty, was unrelated to the deal on party-line legislation that top Democrats struck last week. The GOP blocked the bill hours after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced an agreement on a health care, climate and tax package — angering Republicans who thought the Democrats-only plan would be much narrower.

Regardless of their reasoning, the GOP was quickly forced to play defense against both Democrats and veterans’ advocates who were caught off-guard by Republican delaying tactics after the party greenlit a nearly identical bill in June.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to respond to a question Monday about why the legislation was held up.

“It will pass this week,” he said.

Other Republicans in Senate leadership struck a similar tone. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told POLITICO he would “expect it to pass” and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), McConnell’s No. 2, echoed that at “some point this is going to pass and it will pass big.”

Republicans say they blocked the bill because of concerns spearheaded by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) over what the retiring senator called a “budgetary gimmick” — language that he argued could allow certain funds to be used for programs unrelated to veterans’ health care. That language was in the bill when it initially passed the Senate in an 84-14 vote, before a technical snag forced the chamber to vote on it again.

“This stuff got drug out, but remember why it got drug out. When they passed it over here the first time, they did it wrong,“ Thune said, adding it was Democrats who “screwed up the first time.”

Schumer is expected to force another vote on the veterans bill this week, vowing Monday that he would bring it up “in the coming days.”

“We’re going to give Senate Republicans another chance to do the right thing,” he said.

The New York Democrat will likely give Republicans an off-ramp by granting Toomey a vote on his proposed amendment, which the Pennsylvania Republican and many of his colleagues say he’s been requesting for months.

 

All I have to say is that the filibuster and the subsequent widely-played roasting of the GOP by Stewart and veterans' groups must have tested very, very badly in red state polling, enough so that the Senate GOP didn't want to face weeks of August recess back home explaining why this bill wasn't law yet.

 

And in the last couple of weeks, the Democrats have beaten Mitch McConnell like a rented mule.

Republicans actually have a shame/human decency factor that does exist if enough of their military-age male base turns on them.  Who knew?