From Frankfort To Hickman

Kentucky Republicans are redistricting the state's six congressional districts this week as the 2022 General Assembly gets underway in Frankfort, and the first order of business is to make sure GOP Rep. Andy Barr never has a Democratic challenge again.

The Kentucky General Assembly approved new redistricting maps Saturday, mere days after its Republican leaders introduced their plans to redraw the boundaries for the state's legislative and congressional seats.

Redistricting happens every 10 years to reflect shifts in population, and this is the first time the GOP has fully controlled that process in Kentucky.

The Kentucky House of Representatives and Senate usually don't meet on weekends, but they did Saturday to pass this set of maps. Leading House Republicans unveiled their proposal just before the new year, while the Senate's GOP leadership waited to release their redistricting plans until the state's annual lawmaking session began this week.

The bills lawmakers approved Saturday and sent to Gov. Andy Beshear's desk included new maps for the state House and Senate as well as for the commonwealth's six congressional seats. The General Assembly also passed legislation that changes the Kentucky Supreme Court's districts for the first time in decades.

Leading Republican lawmakers have said they made sure these new maps meet all legal and constitutional requirements for redistricting.

It's possible, however, that someone could try to challenge the new redistricting plans in court.

The first redistricting plan that got final passage Saturday was the Senate GOP's redrawn map for Kentucky's congressional districts.

The House gave that proposal the last approval it needed in a 65-25 vote Saturday morning.

The new congressional map doesn't chop up Kentucky's 3rd Congressional District, represented by Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth, as some people feared it might. That district still will include most of Jefferson County, except for an eastern and southeastern swath that now will be represented by Rep. Brett Guthrie's 2nd Congressional District.

The particularly controversial part of the new map is Rep. James Comer's reshaped 1st Congressional District, which will stretch further northeast and take Franklin County — the home of the Democrat-friendly state capital of Frankfort — out of Rep. Andy Barr's 6th Congressional District. That's expected to make Barr's seat safer.

Rep. Derrick Graham, D-Frankfort, criticized that shift in Franklin County's representation to Comer's district, which is primarily based in Western Kentucky.

"What it does to Franklin County is wrong," Graham said Saturday. "Franklin County was and is and always will be a part of Central Kentucky, both geographically and in spirit. ... Franklin County shares a lot of bonds with Western Kentucky, but we should not share a congressman."

So yeah, expect 5-1 US House delegations in favor of the GOP here long into the future. 

 

At the state level, the KY GOP is making sure that it can keep their three-quarters super majority in both chambers in perpetuity, too. They only need 50% + 1 to override a Beshear veto, but...why not grab all the power you can? Worked for Ohio's GOP, after all.

 

The Senate signed off on the House's redistricting plan Saturday in a 23-10 vote, with a few Republicans joining the chamber's Democrats in opposition.

The House already had approved that bill earlier in the week on a mostly party-line vote, as Democrats repeated their objections that the maps were unfairly drawn to split urban areas and further help Republican candidates.

Democrats and the League of Women Voters of Kentucky have heavily criticized the House map. Common complaints have been that it unnecessarily splits some of Kentucky's biggest counties into different districts and targets women by pitting two sets of incumbent women against each other in Jefferson County.

Top Republicans have defended their plan, with House Speaker David Osborne recently saying he believes they achieved their goal of drawing "a thoughtful map that complied with every legal and constitutional requirement."

The House gave the Kentucky Senate's redrawn districts the final approval they needed in a 67-23 vote.

When the Senate passed the new map for its chamber earlier in the week, the Republican plan actually got the support of most Senate Democrats, none of whom will have to run against each other in the same district.

One criticism some people have raised is the way this map splits a few of the state's biggest counties into different districts.

Rep. Patti Minter, D-Bowling Green, said Saturday her home county of Warren had to be divvied up because it has gained so many residents in recent years, but she argued it should only have been cracked into two districts, not the three that make up its territory in this map.

 

Right now the KY GOP has 75 of 100 state House seats, and 30 or 38 Senate seats.  The news plan will probably make it closer to 80-20 in the House and 32-6 in the Senate, meaning that there's absolutely no chance Democrats will ever be in power again in my lifetime, and that the GOP can pass whatever laws they want and override any possible veto from any future Democratic governor easily, and never have to pay a political price for it.

One party rule for good here, folks. Not a fun place to be in the years ahead.

Last Call For Meanwhile In Kazakhstan, Con't

 Me, on Kazhakstan's unrest on Thursday:

 

We'll see where this lands, but behind all of this is a Russian president who wants a new Soviet Union. Don't be surprised if Moscow steps in to "bring order" back to the country as they did in Ukraine.  

 

And 48 hours later, I hate to once again be right about something.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Saturday discussed restoring "order" in Kazakhstan following days of violence and unrest, as several high-profile officials were detained on suspicion of treason. 

Tokayev told Putin the situation in his country was "progressing on the way to stabilization" and expressed his "appreciation" for the deployment of a Russia-led military bloc to Kazakhstan to try and control violence on the streets, the Kremlin said in a statement on Saturday. 

Meanwhile, former head of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee Karim Massimov and some other unnamed officials have been detained on suspicion of treason, the country's National Security Committee announced, according to state media Khabar 24 on Saturday.

 

And just like that, President Tokayev is literally inviting Russian troops onto his soil to "restore order".

 

Thing is, these Russian troops aren't leaving for a long, long time. 

As for the "traitors" being rounded up, well it's not like Kazakhstan is going to need a national security  anything for much longer anyway, since that job will got to Moscow very soon.

Looks like Vlad is getting his old neighborhood watch together. Kyiv's sweating, that's for sure. If Putin wanted to make it clear what's in store for Ukraine in the days ahead, he just made a hell of a test case.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

The Guardian's Hugo Lowell continues his reporting on the January 6th Committee with information that the investigation is now focusing on Donald Trump and his lackeys being part of a criminal conspiracy as well as obstruction of justice.

 

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is examining whether Donald Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January that connected the White House’s scheme to stop Joe Biden’s certification with the insurrection, say two senior sources familiar with the matter.

The committee’s new focus on the potential for a conspiracy marks an aggressive escalation in its inquiry as it confronts evidence that suggests the former president potentially engaged in criminal conduct egregious enough to warrant a referral to the justice department.

House investigators are interested in whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy after communications turned over by Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and others suggested the White House coordinated efforts to stop Biden’s certification, the sources said.

The select committee has several thousand messages, among which include some that suggest the Trump White House briefed a number of House Republicans on its plan for then-vice president Mike Pence to abuse his ceremonial role and not certify Biden’s win, the sources said.

The fact that the select committee has messages suggesting the Trump White House directed Republican members of Congress to execute a scheme to stop Biden’s certification is significant as it could give rise to the panel considering referrals for potential crimes, the sources said.

Members and counsel on the select committee are examining in the first instance whether in seeking to stop the certification, Trump and his aides violated the federal law that prohibits obstruction of a congressional proceeding – the joint session on 6 January – the sources said.

The select committee believes, the sources said, that Trump may be culpable for an obstruction charge given he failed for hours to intervene to stop the violence at the Capitol perpetrated by his supporters in his name.

But the select committee is also looking at whether Trump oversaw an unlawful conspiracy that involved coordination between the “political elements” of the White House plan communicated to Republican lawmakers and extremist groups that stormed the Capitol, the sources said. 

 

We also learned this week that the Committee wants to talk to two people specifically as part of that raft of messages pointing to a criminal conspiracy: FOX News host Sean Hannity, whose cooperation is being requested after messages between him and Mark Meadows advising Trump how to act on January 6th were made public, and former VP Mike Pence himself, who is at the center of the conspiracy to try to steal Biden's win through decertification of electors and throwing it to the House delegations to decide in Trump favor.

As far as Hannity goes, the fact that he hasn't immediately been fired or even suspended, or that he hasn't announced a "previously planned vacation"is proof enough that FOX News is the propaganda arm of the Trumpists (if not the Trumpists being the long-term political arm of the far right media monsters.)  Hannity is even more awful than Tucker Carlson is, while Carlson is still an unrepentant racist authoritarian who cozies up to dictators like Putin and Viktor Orban in Hungary, Hannity is the thin patina of respectability in the FOX stable of hosts, and with the direct ear of basically all the major Trump players, including Trump himself.

As for Mike Pence? I honestly think he's running scenarios through his head where he emerges as the "reformed" face of Trumpism and is a "hero" respected by voters of all camps and creeds who will consider his "service" to the country by refusing Trump's orders to make him history's good guy, the way Gerald Ford was portrayed. And remember, for all Ford's "heroism" and pardoning of Nixon, his reward was a loss to Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

We do seem to be getting closer to the point where Donald Trump is going to be referred for criminal prosecution, and then it's all Merrick Garland from there.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

Again, predicting the Supreme Court is a mug's game, but if the questions are any indication from Friday, well, as Vox's Ian Millihiser points out, the Biden administration vaccine mandate is pretty much toast.

Benjamin Flowers is Ohio’s solicitor general, and he was supposed to be at the Supreme Court on Friday to ask the justices to nullify a Biden administration rule requiring most workers to either be vaccinated against Covid-19 or to be regularly tested for the disease.

But Flowers had to argue his case over the phone. The reason why? He himself has Covid, and therefore could not enter the justices’ workplace and risk endangering them and their staff.

It’s an elegant metaphor for the kind of see-no-evil approach to Covid-19 that Flowers, and several other lawyers arguing against policies from President Joe Biden’s administration, would impose on the nation. Flowers would have the justices block one of Biden’s most significant efforts to halt a potentially deadly disease that, as Justice Stephen Breyer noted multiple times during Friday’s arguments, is infecting about three-quarters of a million Americans every day this week.

And yet, if Friday’s argument in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor is any sign, there will almost certainly be at least five votes on the Supreme Court to block the workplace Covid rule, which applies to employers with 100 or more employees.

Meanwhile, in separate case Biden v. Missouri, the Court considered a rule requiring health providers that accept Medicare and Medicaid funds to be vaccinated. This oral argument was less of a bloodbath for the government, and it seems possible that this more limited rule for health providers will be upheld.

But the oral argument in the first case, NFIB, suggests that the Court’s 6-3 conservative majority is inclined to hand down a very broad decision — one that won’t simply hobble many of the Biden administration’s efforts to quell a pandemic that has killed nearly 830,000 Americans, but that could also fundamentally rework the balance of power between elected federal officials and an unelected judiciary.

Both the NFIB case and the Missouri case involve very broadly worded laws, enacted by Congress, which give federal agencies sweeping authority to protect the health and safety of workers or Medicare patients. But all six of the Court’s Republican appointees appeared uncomfortable with letting these agencies — and especially the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) — fully exercise the power Congress has given them.

Multiple justices appeared eager to impose new restrictions on Congress’s ability to delegate authority to federal agencies. Indeed, the Court could easily give itself a sweeping new power to veto agency regulations that a majority of the justices disapprove of.

A majority of the Court, in other words, appeared much more bothered by the implications of letting the Biden administration fight the pandemic than they are bothered by the many deaths caused by the pandemic itself.

If the Court does wind up drastically shrinking the federal government’s authority, that won’t exactly be a surprise. The Court’s been signaling that it is eager to transfer power from federal agencies to the judiciary since shortly after then-President Donald Trump replaced the relatively moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy with hardline conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

But, while the Court has foreshadowed the most likely result in the NFIB case for quite a while, that does not mean that a decision striking down OSHA’s vaccinate-or-test rule would be any less profound. NFIB is likely to be a turning point in the right-wing Roberts Court’s relationship with the elected branches — and it could permanently disable the federal government’s ability to address crises like the Covid-19 pandemic in the future.

 

Again, I've been warning about this for a while now. What the Roberts Court appears ready to do is to absolutely hamstring federal agencies and give nearly all of the regulatory and rule-making power to Congress, where Senate Republicans can simply block regulations from ever being made, and the rest can be delegated to the states.

Outside of State, Justice, and the Pentagon, the rest of the Executive branch is about to get torn to shreds, with entire agencies possibly rendered powerless. Mostly though, it's about making sure government can't work for the American people, and that the GOP's long-term authoritarianism is codified.

But Zandar, you say, if the GOP wants an authoritarian government, why cripple the executive? The answer, as I said, is the Senate. Democrats aren't going to get rid of the filibuster, and the Senate will always have at least 41 Republicans in any possible future scenario. A broad ruling that destroys regulatory authority in the executive means that the Senate can block any attempts to legislate that regulatory power, too.

As I've been saying, by July 4th, it's going to be painfully clear how bad things are going to be in the years ahead.

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Today the three white men convicted last year in Georgia of the brutal murder of unarmed Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery were sentenced in court today, and the judge did not hesitate to hand down the maximum sentences.

Three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery were sentenced Friday to life in prison, with a judge denying any chance of parole for the father and son who armed themselves and initiated the deadly pursuit of the 25-year-old Black man.

Greg and Travis McMichael grabbed guns and chased Arbery in a pickup truck after spotting him running in their neighborhood outside the Georgia port city of Brunswick. Neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan joined the pursuit and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael blasting Arbery with a shotgun.

In November, a jury convicted all three defendants of murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and attempted false imprisonment.

Murder carries a mandatory life sentence under Georgia law. The trial judge ordered both McMichaels to serve life without parole. Bryan was granted a chance of parole, but must first serve at least 30 years in prison.

The Feb. 23, 2020, killing became part of a larger national reckoning on racial injustice when the video was posted online two months later.

 

The three still face a federal hate crimes trial as well.

 

Justice was never an option with one trial for a broken system, but accountability I will take. 

Black Lives Still Matter.

Jobapalooza, Con't

A huge miss on jobs numbers, but pretty good news on everything else in the December 2021 jobs report.

The U.S. economy added far fewer jobs than expected in December just as the nation was grappling with a massive surge in Covid cases, the Labor Department said Friday.

Nonfarm payrolls grew by 199,000, while the unemployment rate fell to 3.9%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That compared to the Dow Jones estimate of 422,000 for the payrolls number and 4.1% for the unemployment rate.


Stock market futures edged lower following the report, while bond yields were in positive territory though off their highs of the morning.

Job creation was highest in leisure and hospitality, a key recovery sector, which added 53,000. Professional and business services contributed 43,000 while manufacturing added 26,000.

The unemployment rate was a fresh pandemic-era low and near the 50-year low of 3.5% in February 2020. That decline came even though the labor force participation rate was unchanged at 61.9% amid an ongoing labor shortage in the U.S.

A more encompassing measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons slid to 7.3%, down 0.4 percentage points. Though the overall jobless rates fell, unemployment for Blacks spiked during the month, rising to 7.1% from 6.5%. The rate for women 20 years and older fell sharply, to 3.1% from 3.7%.

"The new year is off to a rocky start," wrote Nick Bunker, economic research director at job placement site Indeed. "These less than stellar numbers were recorded before the omicron variant started to spread significantly in the United States. Hopefully the current wave of the pandemic will lead to limited labor market damage. The labor market is still recovering, but a more sustainable comeback is only possible in a post-pandemic environment."

Average hourly earnings rose more than expected as the U.S. sees its fastest inflation pace in nearly 40 years. Wages rose 0.6% for the month and were up 4.7% year over year. That compares to respective estimates of 0.4% and 4.2%.

While the establishment survey showed much lower than expected job gains, the household count told a different story, with a gain of 651,000. There also were upward revisions for prior months, with the final October tally pushed up to 648,000, an increase of 102,000, while November's disappointing report gained 39,000 in its first revision to 249,000.

 

So unemployment is back under 4%, and we still added 200,000 jobs in December, with wages up 4.7% for the year. The bad news, inflation was up by almost twice that, so yeah, Americans felt that in their pocketbooks for sure, and it's definitely hurting Biden's poll numbers.

We'll see where we go in 2022. The broad forecasts are for the economy to cool off from "hurtling towards the stars" to just "pretty good" and to lower inflation along with it. If that happens, things will improve for average Americans and oh yeah, for the Democrats.

Because you know what? 2021 was actually a great year economically.

 

6.4 million jobs created in one year: a new record

Unemployment rate drop from 6.2% to 3.9%: a new record

This was the greatest jobs growth year in modern American history, and it’s not even close.

— Jesse Lee (@JesseLee46) January 7, 2022

 

But remember, the GOP wants you to think the economy is miserable, and it's just not. As I mentioned above, inflation sucks, but also 6.4 million jobs since Biden took office, so the miss this month actually is a drop in the bucket in the year that was 2021.

Keep that in mind.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

A year after the January 6th insurrection, we have to remember that not only was the attack on the US Capitol building going on, but that there were multiple pipe bombs found in Washington DC that day as well. We still don;t know who was behind the attempted bombings, but we now know that one of the potential victims was VP Harris herself.

Then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was inside Democratic National Committee headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021, when a pipe bomb was discovered outside the building, according to four people familiar with her movements that day.

Capitol Police began investigating the pipe bomb at 1:07 p.m., according to an official Capitol Police timeline of events obtained by POLITICO. The timeline says that Capitol Police and the Secret Service evacuated an unnamed “protectee” at approximately 1:14 p.m, seven minutes later. The four people, among them a White House official and a former law enforcement official, confirmed that Harris was the Secret Service protectee identified in the timeline, which has circulated on Capitol Hill.

Harris’ presence inside the building while a bomb was right outside raises sobering questions about her security that day. It also raises the chilling prospect that the riots could have been far more destructive than they already were, with the incoming vice president's life directly endangered. Federal law enforcement officials have faced harsh criticism for failing to anticipate the chaotic scene around the Electoral College certification one year ago, despite receiving a host of warnings about possible chaos.

The DNC bomb threat was neutralized at 4:36 p.m., according to the timeline. Another pipe bomb discovered at the RNC was neutralized at 3:33 p.m. No suspects have been arrested so far in relation to the bombs.

The FBI has described both bombs as “viable” and said they “could have been detonated, resulting in serious injury or death.” Authorities say both bombs were placed by a single suspect the night before the Capitol attack. The RNC bomb was placed in an alley behind the building, and the DNC bomb was placed near a park bench. The FBI recently issued a new call for help seeking the suspected pipe bomber, who was captured on video in the vicinity of the DNC and RNC buildings.

Harris’ DNC evacuation on Jan. 6, as authorities raced to respond to the bomb threat, has not been previously reported. She occasionally used party headquarters to conduct nongovernment business as the vice presidential nominee and later in advance of the Jan. 20, 2021, inauguration — a standard practice for elected officials in both parties. Aides had previously declined to reveal her location during the attack, citing security reasons.

Harris alluded to her absence from the Capitol during the breach as she delivered televised remarks Thursday, though she was cryptic about her location.

“I had left, but my thoughts immediately turned not only to my colleagues, but to my staff who had been forced to seek refuge in our office, converting filing cabinets into barricades,” she said.

 

So the timeline of the investigation now includes the fact that if the viable bomb had been detonated when VP Harris was nearby, it could have been lethal.

It would have been an assassination.

All of the January 6th criminals have to be brought to justice, including the masterminds like Trump. But that also means the identity of the pipe bomber has to be discovered, and the person has to face justice as well.

Last Call For The Vax Of Life

The ban on Biden's federal OSHA vaccine mandate rules will remain here in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee after the 6th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling blocking employer vaccine mandate rules.

A federal appeals court has declined to lift a ban in three states on President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for workers who contract with the federal government.

The ruling comes after a nationwide ban on the mandate for federal contractors was imposed by a federal judge in Georgia last month.

A judge in Louisville, Kentucky, blocked the Biden rule in November for that state and two others: Tennessee and Ohio.

A panel of the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld the injunction for the three states in a 2-1 ruling Wednesday.

“This ensures, while the case continues to proceed, that federal contractors in Kentucky aren’t subject to the Biden Administration’s unlawful mandate,” Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican who filed the suit challenging the mandate, said in an emailed statement Thursday. Cameron said in a release last year that federal contractors accounted for about one-fifth of the country’s labor force and $9 billion in contracts in 2021.

 

This was largely expected, as two Trump-appointed judges agreed with KY GOP AG Cameron that the mandates were unconstitutional. 

The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments tomorrow on the OSHA vaccine mandate rules.

In the midst of the latest surge in omicron COVID-19 cases, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Friday on whether the Biden administration can force private-sector firms to vaccinate or test tens of millions of employees.

The court is expected to make a decision swiftly that could freeze the vax-or-test mandates on businesses with more than 100 workers — and the threat of fines — or let the Biden plan be implemented, legal experts say. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, which regulates workplace safety, has said it could begin fining businesses that fail to comply with the mandates on Jan. 10.

Employers “are waiting to see the outcome in the courts,” Wendell Young IV, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, which represents 35,000 Pennsylvania union members, said last week.

John S. Ho, co-chair of OSHA-Workplace Safety Practice at Cozen O’Connor, said that companies should be developing a “roster of vaccination status” of employees to show OSHA “good faith” in complying with the mandates.

“You should have that roster in place by Jan. 10,” he said. But Ho also is advising companies to take a “wait-and-see approach” on implementing the vaccination mandates that could lead some employees to quit.

A firm can be fined $13,600 per violation. OSHA is expected to mostly enforce the mandate through employee complaints. “It’s a politically charged issue. There is no way to avoid that,” Ho said.

The Biden administration says the emergency rules could save the lives of 6,500 workers and prevent 250,000 hospitalizations in the next six months as COVID-19 presents a “grave danger” to employees where they work. The Inquirer estimates that 1.8 million Philly-area workers fall under the mandates. Nationally, two out of three employers fall under it, representing about 80 million workers.

Firms, business trade associations, and 27 states say that the Biden administration has exceeded its authority at the workplace safety agency with the mandates that appear designed to boost vaccination rates and that many workers remain unpersuaded in vaccine benefits.

The case has made it to the U.S. Supreme Court in lightning speed. OSHA announced the mandates in early November and they were immediately challenged in court. On Nov. 12, the appeals court in New Orleans stayed, or froze, the mandates, saying that they were “staggeringly overbroad.” The ruling added that they raised issues of the government’s “virtually unlimited power to control individual conduct under the guise of a workplace regulation.”

Meanwhile, mandate cases filed nationwide were consolidated in the appeals court in Cincinnati. A panel of judges there lifted the stay on Dec. 17. “COVID has continued to spread, mutate, kill and block the safe return of American workers to jobs. To protect workers, OSHA can and must be able to respond to dangers as they evolve,” the court said in its decision. 

So while the nationwide ban has been stayed, the 6th Circuit ban remains in place for Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. We'll see what the Roberts Court has to say, but my guess is that the vaccine mandate will not survive, and that a real danger remains that a broad ruling against executive branch regulatory agencies like OSHA could suddenly cripple the American workplace nationwide.

More tomorrow.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

President Biden did not pull his punches this morning with a much-welcomed strident defense of American democracy against Donald Trump's coup attempt.

President Joe Biden on Thursday marked the first anniversary of the January 6 insurrection by forcefully calling out former President Donald Trump for attempting to undo American democracy, saying such an insurrection must never happen again.

Biden vowed to defend the nation's founding ideals from the threats posed by the violent mob that stormed the Capitol one year ago and the prevailing lies that Trump and his allies continue to repeat about the 2020 election. An animated Biden made one of the most passionate addresses of his still-young presidency as he harkened back to critical moments from the nation's past, casting the assault as a living symbol of the inflection point in American history he so often speaks about. 

"For the first time in our history, a President had not just lost an election. He tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob reached the Capitol," Biden said in a speech from the US Capitol that lasted just under 30 minutes. "But they failed. They failed. And on this day of remembrance, we must make sure that such an attack never, never happens again." 

In a direct shot at Trump, Biden added, "His bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution, he can't accept he lost." 

Biden has typically avoided speaking directly about his predecessor since taking office, and pointedly did not say his name on Thursday -- instead making more than a dozen references to "the former President." 

But the President's blistering speech nonetheless confronted Trump's election lies and post-presidency behavior, accusing him of spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election, refusing to accept defeat and holding him accountable for inciting a violent mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol. 

"A former President of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He's done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interest as more important than his country's interest and America's interest," Biden said. 

Biden again emphasized the core message of his 2020 presidential campaign and the reason why he ran against Trump: "We are in a battle for the soul of America." 

The President warned democracy and the "promise of America" is at risk and called on the American public to "stand for the rule of law, to preserve the flame of democracy." 

He called for protecting voting rights across the nation and blasted Trump and his supporters for attempting to "suppress your vote and subvert our elections." 

"It's wrong. It's undemocratic. And frankly it's un-American," Biden said.

 

I know that "This is the Joe Biden I voted for" is somewhat anodyne if not banal, but in this case it's sincere. It's also the most animated and even angry that I've seen Biden, a whole "A wise person fears the wrath of  the gentle" situation, and believe his impassioned defense.

On anyone other than Biden (or Obama) it would have come across as posturing. From Biden, this was sincerity, and it showed as truthful anger.

We need more of this right now, and the will to bring justice for once. I will repeat this as well, that we know Trump planned a coup, that multiple Republicans still in Congress were suborned into the plot, that state election officials were threatened to go along, and that the singular reason we're all in the Biden era right now is because Mike Pence was too much of a coward to go along.

The guardrails not only have to be restored on the road to democracy, we need barrier walls and other protections to make sure we don't veer off again.

Meanwhile In Kazakhstan

Protests over the weekend in several cities in Kazahkstan over a major rise in fuel and gas prices has led to mass unrest and the resignation of parliament and the prime minister. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is cracking down on protests across the nation.

Protesters in Kazakhstan’s largest city stormed the presidential residence and the mayor’s office on Wednesday and set both buildings on fire, according to new reports, as demonstrations sparked by a rise in fuel prices in the Central Asian nation escalated sharply.

Police fired on some protesters at the presidential palace before fleeing. They have clashed repeatedly with demonstrators in recent days, deploying water cannons in the freezing weather, tear gas and concussion grenades.

The government resigned in response to the unrest and the president vowed to take harsh measures to quell it. In possibly the first of those efforts, Kazakh news sites became inaccessible late in the day, and the global watchdog organization Netblocks said the country was experiencing a pervasive internet blackout.

Although the protests began over a near-doubling of prices for a type of liquefied gas that is widely used as vehicle fuel, the size and rapid spread of the unrest suggest they reflect wider discontent in the country that has been under the rule of the same party since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Kazakhstan, the ninth-largest country in the world, borders Russia to the north and China to the east and has extensive oil reserves that make it strategically and economically important. Despite those reserves and mineral wealth, discontent over poor living conditions is strong in some parts of the country. Many Kazakhs also chafe at the dominance of the ruling party, which holds more than 80% of the seats in parliament.

Hours after thousands of demonstrators gathered outside the presidential residence in Almaty, Russia’s Tass news agency reported that it was on fire and that demonstrators, some wielding firearms, were trying to break into it. Police fled from the residence after shooting at demonstrators, according to the report, which was filed from Kazakhstan.

Many of the demonstrators who converged on the mayoral office carried clubs and shields, according to earlier reports in Kazakh media. Tass later said the building was engulfed in flames.

Protesters also broke into the Almaty office of the Russia-based Mir television and radio company and destroyed some equipment, the broadcaster said. It later reported that a crowd broke into the Almaty building of the Kazakh national broadcaster.

The protests began Sunday in Zhanaozen, a city in the west where resentment of the government was strong in the wake of a 2011 oil-worker strike in which police fatally shot at least 15 people. They spread across the country in the following days and on Tuesday large demonstrations broke out in the capital, Nur-Sultan, and in Almaty, the country’s largest city and former capital.

The protests appear to have no identifiable leader or demands.

In a televised statement to the nation on Wednesday, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said that “we intend to act with maximum severity regarding law-breakers.”

Tokayev said police have died in clashes with demonstrators, but there were no immediate casualty figures for police or civilians.

In the statement, he also promised to make political reforms and announced that he was assuming the leadership of the national security council. The latter is potentially significant because the council had been headed by Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was president from 1991 until he resigned in 2019.

Nazarbayev dominated Kazakhstan’s politics and his rule was marked by a moderate cult of personality. Critics say he effectively instituted a clan system in government.

After the demonstrations spread to Almaty and the capital, the government announced its resignation, but Tokayev said the ministers would remain in their roles until a new Cabinet is formed, making it uncertain whether the resignation will have significant effect.

 

We'll see where this lands, but behind all of this is a Russian president who wants a new Soviet Union. Don't be surprised if Moscow steps in to "bring order" back to the country as they did in Ukraine. 

Russia and its allies pledged to send troops to help quell protests in Kazakhstan that posed the biggest threat to the central Asian country’s leadership for decades.

Dozens of anti-government protesters were killed by security forces, police said Thursday, after President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered an “anti-terrorist operation” to put down the demonstrations. Banks were ordered temporarily shut for the day Thursday. Tokayev imposed a state of emergency nationwide and internet access was cut in much of the country.

Thousands of protesters had taken to the streets around the country in recent days, seizing government buildings and killing several law-enforcement officials after fuel-price rises unleashed a wave of popular anger over falling living standards.

Sending what Russia and the handful of other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization called “peacekeeping forces” was a dramatic move by the Kremlin-led bloc to shore up a longtime ally in the region in the face of public protests. There was no immediate word on the size of the deployment, which followed reports of Kazakh security forces surrendering to demonstrators and a late-night appeal from Tokayev.

Prices for uranium surged almost 8% amid the unrest in the world’s largest supplier of the nuclear fuel. Kazakh bonds and the tenge slipped. There was no sign of disruption to oil output, the central Asia’s country biggest export, however.

Kazakhstan’s central bank suspended operations of the nation’s banks and the stock exchange, according to spokesman Olzhas Ramazanov. For now, the halt is planned only for Thursday, he said. Tokayev ordered price controls on key fuels and banned exports of some farm products for 180 days to stem inflation, Interfax reported.

Oh, and as Columbo would say, "Just one more thing..."

Almost a fifth of Bitcoin's hashrate (essentially mining and verifying transactions) is/was in Kazakhstan, where there are now power and internet outages, fuel shortages, and street protests. pic.twitter.com/i7eFdzIzZr

— JacobSilverman.shill (@SilvermanJacob) January 6, 2022

 

Nothing in politics exists in a vacuum. Putin is upping the stakes on Ukraine via Kazakhstan. Suddenly Russian troops are all over the world's largest uranium mines and crypto mines are both a "friendly" reminder that sanctions against Russia could escalate very quickly...

StupidiNews!

• On the one-year anniversary of the terrorist insurrection on the US Capitol, former president Jimmy Carter is warning that America's democracy "now teeters on the brink"
• Donald Trump says that the "MAGA Nation should rise up and oppose" COVID vaccination mandates and school closures across the country.
• President Biden and Vice President Harris will give remarks today observing the Capitol Police lost one year ago, asking Americans to be guided by the "light of truth".
• US Attorney General Merrick Garland says that the Justice Department will go after January 6th insurrection perpetrators "at any level".
• Facebook parent company Meta is dropping plans to develop its own VR software and will use Google Android in its virtual meeting applications.

Last Call For School Of Hard-Right Knocks, Con't

Republicans are convinced that the Virginia playbook will work for them all over the country, and are ready to launch hundreds of bills designed to codify the white backlash against Black Lives Matter and American History itself by declaring all of it to be "critical race theory" and banning the entire thing from schools, colleges, and workplaces.

Missouri state Rep. Brian Seitz has one clear priority for the 2022 legislative session: “Shut down” critical race theory in his state. He intends to do that by passing a bill that would forbid public school teachers from discussing critical race theory, an examination of how race and racism permeates American society.

In South Carolina, a bill lawmakers may consider in coming months would require K-12 public schools to post online detailed lists of instruction materials and curriculum. Another bill would go a step further by banning any state-funded entity like colleges, private contractors and nonprofit organizations from promoting “certain discriminatory concepts.”

And in Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is urging the GOP-led state Legislature to pass a measure that would allow parents to sue school districts that teach lessons rooted in critical race theory.

Attacking the study of racism in the United States emerged as a leading culture war cause for Republicans in 2021. But state lawmakers have only just begun focusing on the issue, which promises to dominate red-state legislatures across the country this year.

Legislators in at least a dozen Republican-controlled statehouses — including in Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio — plan to push dozens of bills in upcoming legislative sessions that aim to halt teachings about race and society and give parents more say in what’s discussed in classrooms.

There’s a clear power incentive: Republicans are amped up by the party’s November election sweep in Virginia, where education was a top issue, and intend to campaign on such bills leading up to the midterms.

“There is a huge red wave coming,” Seitz, a pastor and business owner, said in an interview. “Virginia is just a microcosm of the rest of the United States.”

Critical race theory is an analytical framework originally developed by legal scholars examining how race and racism have become ingrained in American law and institutions since slavery and Jim Crow. Many conservatives began using critical race theory as shorthand for a broader critique of how race and social issues are being taught in the K-12 education system.

Their criticism centers on the belief that white students are being told that they are oppressors because of their race. In turn, history lessons about the the founding of the nation that adopt some of the tenets of critical race theory promote discrimination against white students and depict students of color as victims, they argue.

Yet most public school officials across the country say they do not teach any curriculum based on the theory, even in districts and states where lawmakers are seeking to ban the practice. Some Democrats and other critics say the anti-critical race theory push is motivated by a deep fear among white conservatives about changing racial awareness in the U.S. and an unwillingness to grapple with how the legacy of slavery manifests today.

A major question is what sort of long-term impact these bills will have — whether they will end up being mostly symbolic acts to energize GOP campaigns or actually permanently transform what millions of students are taught.

Academics are concerned about the “chilling effect” these bills will have on teachers as Republican lawmakers “race to outdo each other to pass the most extreme legislation,” said Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Acadia University who has been tracking these bills. He’s worried about teachers already making changes to courses and readings to avoid potential backlash from parents and in advance of any legislation being enacted.

Sachs said he believes people are “not taking the scale of this threat seriously” and it’s a mistake to dismiss parents’ concerns by denying that teachers are not changing the ways they teach about the persistence of systemic racism in the U.S. He pointed to former Virginia Gov. Terry McCauliffe’s comments during the 2021 gubernatorial race as the wrong approach. McAuliffe said that outrage over the theory is a “made up, racist dog whistle” that has never been taught in Virginia schools.

“One better response is to highlight how dangerous and extreme some of these bills are and the terrible consequences when teachers operate in a climate of fear,” he said.

 

No offense to Professor Sachs there, but you'd better believe that there are tens of millions of GOP voters who want teachers to operate in a climate of fear of parents and the state.  The GOP won Virginia because outraged white parents who didn't bother to vote in off-year elections did, and Democrats stayed home.

That won't be as much of a case this year, obviously. But Republican voters are going to show up. Once again it's a question of if Democratic voters will even be able to vote in many counties and precincts at all.

House Of Pain, 2022 Edition

According to Cook Political Report's House maestro, Dave Wasserman, Democrats managed to make out slightly better than in 2020 when it comes to House districts, because Republicans really can't gerrymander things more than they did in 2012.

The surprising good news for Democrats: on the current trajectory, there will be a few more Biden-won districts after redistricting than there are now — producing a congressional map slightly less biased in the GOP's favor than the last decade's. The bad news for Democrats: if President Biden's approval ratings are still mired in the low-to-mid 40s in November, that won't be enough to save their razor-thin House majority (currently 221 to 212 seats).

The start of 2022 is an ideal time to take stock of the nation's cartographic makeover. New district lines are either complete or are awaiting certification in 34 states totaling 293 seats — more than two-thirds of the House (this includes the six states with only one seat).

A Cook Political Report with Amy Walter analysis finds that in the completed states, Biden would have carried 161 of 293 districts over Donald Trump in 2020, an uptick from 157 of 292 districts in those states under the current lines (nationwide, Biden carried 224 of 435 seats). And if Democrats were to aggressively gerrymander New York or courts strike down GOP-drawn maps in North Carolina and/or Ohio, the outlook would get even better for Democrats.

However, the partisan distribution of seats before/after redistricting is only one way to gauge the process. Because Democrats currently possess the lion's share of marginal seats, estimating the practical effect of new lines in 2022 still points towards a wash or a slight GOP gain.

As we've written all cycle, redistricting was never going to be the GOP bonanza depicted in some sky-is-falling narratives on the left. Yes, Republicans wield the authority to redraw 187 seats compared to 75 for Democrats. But that's less lopsided than in 2011, when Republicans had nearly a five-to-one advantage. And many GOP-controlled states are already gerrymandered, limiting Republicans' ability to wring them for additional gains.

In Texas, Republican mapmakers' main objective was to shore up their own vulnerable incumbents, not seize a lot more Democratic seats. Republicans passed on going nuclear in Indiana and Iowa, and for parochial reasons appear unlikely to dismantle remaining Democratic seats in Kansas, Kentucky and Missouri. In fact, so far Republicans have only gone on offense in Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio — all of which face court scrutiny.

Meanwhile, Democrats unabashedly gerrymandered Illinois, New Mexico and Oregon. They scored highly favorable maps from commissions in California and New Jersey, and to a lesser extent Michigan. Republicans' only mild commission "wins?" Arizona and Montana. And five states where the GOP had exclusive authority back in 2011 — Louisiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin — are now under split or commission control.

 

So no, despite my pessimism, Democrats have persevered and held up aggaingst gerrymandering.

But that still leaves a lot more factors to deal with in 2022, and nearly all are in the GOP's favor. 2022 can definitely be saved, but it's going to require a lot of work, work that needs to start now that these new districts are being approved.

The Big Lie, Con't

Donald Trump just found out that because he's not the guy in the Oval Office anymore, that the media is under no contract or law to cover his vile, anti-democratic authoritarian bleating. His big January 6th anniversary speech for tomorrow has been canceled because he's being starved of attention...finally.

 

Former President Trump is scrapping a planned news conference on the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The former president had planned to use the Thursday news conference at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., as counterprogramming for a scheduled prayer service at the Capitol to commemorate the events of Jan. 6.

In a statement, Trump blamed the House select committee charged with investigating the Jan. 6 riot for the cancellation. He said he would instead touch on many of the themes he had planned to discuss at the news conference during a rally in Arizona set for Jan. 15.

“In light of the total bias and dishonesty of the January 6th Unselect Committee of Democrats, two failed Republicans, and the Fake News Media, I am canceling the January 6th Press Conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, and instead will discuss many of those important topics at my rally on Saturday, January 15th, in Arizona – It will be a big crowd!” he said.

 

The WIN THE MORNING 2.0 team posits that GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham and FOX news host Laura Ingraham got to Trump and changed his mind.

Before Donald Trump canceled his planned Jan. 6 press conference, several key allies — including hardline Fox News host Laura Ingraham and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — made clear they thought it was a bad idea to invite the national media to Mar-a-Lago to mark the deadly riot.

Why it matters: Trump would have inevitably used his press conference Thursday to portray the rioters as political prisoners, whitewash their actions that day and lie about a "stolen election." Divisions had widened between the former president and congressional Republican leaders over how to handle the anniversary. Trump — like his most fervent allies — wanted to go on offense.

Congressional leaders wanted to narrowly condemn the rioters, avoid criticizing Trump or assigning any responsibility to him and quickly pivot to attacking Democrats over their handling of the Jan. 6 investigation.

 

I'm not saying that Trump being talked out of a self-aggrandizing tirade carried on national TV is a breakthrough, but it's also clear that a lot of Republicans saw this as ludicrously damaging to their re-election chances, too. They are right to believe that the biggest single obstacle to regaining control of the House and Senate is in fact Trump's big fat mouth.

Besides, Trump will make an ass of himself next week, on Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. It could very well be a situation where the GOP wished Trump had vomited up his stored bile on the 6th instead.

StupidiNews!

• Updating guidance on Covid Omicron, the CDC says that those quarantining themselves because of the virus should continue to wear masks even after leaving quarantine due to the virus's fast spread.
• Senate Republicans say they are open to the idea of passing electoral counting reform laws to prevent another possible January 6th scenario, but voting rights legislation remains off the table.
• Toyota has finally surpassed GM as US auto sales leader in 2021, ending General Motors nearly century long domination of American auto sales.
• Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott is suing the Biden administration over federal mandates to vaccinate the state's National Guard against Covid-19.
• Digital scanning of the mummy of Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep I suggests he was around 35 when he died, and that priests later repaired damage to his mummy by tomb raiders 3000 years ago.