Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

The latest CNN poll finds that the Big Lie is getting more and more effective as time goes on, and that nearly three-quarters of Republican voters now believe 2022 elections will be fraudulent.

An increasing majority of Americans lack confidence that elections in America today reflected the will of the people, and about half think it likely that a future election in the United States will be overturned for partisan reasons, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. 

In the new poll, 56% of respondents said they have little or no confidence that American elections reflect the will of the people, up from 52% who felt that way in September and 40% in January 2021. Almost three-quarters of Republicans were now skeptical that elections are representative (74%), as were 59% of independents, and only a third of Democrats (32%). The results reflected a significant decline in confidence over the past year among both independents (45% lacked confidence in January 2021) and Democrats (9% felt that way a year ago). 

At the same time, there's been a shift in the partisan dynamic driving concerns about the possibility of an overturned future election. While the 50% overall who considered such a prospect at least somewhat likely was similar to the 51% who felt that way in September, Democrats were now more apt to see an overturned election in the future than Republicans. In the new poll, 56% of Democrats saw it as likely vs. 48% of Republicans. In September, 57% of Republicans thought that was likely while just 49% of Democrats agreed. 

More broadly, fewer now said that American democracy is under attack than did late last summer (52% now vs. 56% in September), and the share who said the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, represented a crisis for democracy stood at 28%, down from 36% shortly after the attack last year. 

The poll's findings come as the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack has issued new subpoenas to key members of former President Donald Trump's inner circle as it investigates the origins of the attack. 

Most Americans saw the January 6 attack on the Capitol as a problem for democracy (28% said it's a crisis, 37% a major problem, and another 20% called it a minor problem), and 54% said not enough has been done to penalize those who rioted at the Capitol. 

Republicans in particular, though, have shifted in their views of the attack over the past year. While 15% of Republicans said in January 2021 the storming of the Capitol was not a problem, 27% felt that way now. Likewise, while 38% of Republicans a year ago said enough had been done to penalize rioters, 71% felt that way now. 

A plurality of all Americans saw the select committee's work as a fair attempt to determine what happened on January 6 (44%), while about a third saw it as a one-sided effort to blame Trump (36%) and 20% said they hadn't heard enough about it to say. About three-quarters of Democrats (76%) said it was a fair investigation, while two-thirds of Republicans (67%) dubbed it a one-sided effort to blame Trump. 

Still, those who said the January 6 attack was a problem for democracy were not very likely to see the select committee's work as a path to helping protect American democracy. Overall, 47% said that the attack was a problem and that the panel's work was unlikely to result in changes that would help protect democracy, while 37% said protective changes were the likely outcome.

 

All of these numbers are terrible, and count me as one of the many Democrats who believe Republican losses in 2022 will be overturned by state courts or legislatures later this year.  It's going to be bad, folks.

Keep an eye on this.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Kentucky, Con't

Kentucky Republicans in the General Assembly are putting together their major abortion restriction bill in anticipation of the Supreme Court gutting Roe v Wade later this year, with a raft of new restrictions that will make safe abortion all but impossible in the state.

 

A Republican lawmaker has filed a far-reaching bill that would impose more layers of regulation on abortion in Kentucky, including new restrictions on medication used to terminate an early pregnancy.

It also bans shipment of such medication by mail or other carrier, which is allowed in many states under a recent federal rule change lifting a requirement for an in-person medical visit.

And it puts the Kentucky Board of Pharmacy in charge of enforcing a lengthy list of rules around distribution of the medication, with fines reaching $5 million for pharmacies and others who violate a rule requiring they be certified.

Of the 4,104 abortions performed in Kentucky, about half were medication procedures, according to the state Annual Abortion Report for 2020, the most recent report available.

House Bill 3, filed Wednesday by Rep. Nancy Tate, R-Brandenburg, includes most of the provisions she outlined during a December hearing when she said she planned to file an "omnibus" abortion bill.

But Tate's goal isn't to eliminate abortion access in Kentucky, she said in a news release from the House GOP.

"This bill isn't about ending abortion," Tate said. "... Our goal is to ensure the procedure is the result of a fully informed, educated choice that takes into consideration the health and safety of both the unborn child and his or her mother."

But Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates of Kentucky immediately blasted HB 3 as a "dangerous attack on reproductive care" based on "junk science and misinformation that endangers the health of pregnant people."

 

Here's what the bill would do:

• It imposes new restrictions on medication abortions generally provided up to the 10th week of pregnancy, including rules for doctors and pharmacists. It requires an in-person visit with a physician, rather than telehealth, and also requires that a patient be counseled that the termination, which consists of taking medication several days apart, can be reversed, a medically unproven claim.
• It requires the state pharmacy board to create a new program to oversee the distribution of abortion drugs and oversee a new certification process for pharmacies, physicians, manufacturers and distributors who administer or provide the drugs.
• It also charges the pharmacy board with enforcing certification requirements with violations resulting in a fine of no less than $5 million for pharmacies, manufacturers and distributors and a fine of $250,000 for physicians. It also requires the board to create a complaint portal on its website which lists the names of all physicians certified to prescribe medication to induce abortions and pharmacies, manufacturers and distributors certified to supply it.
• It requires physicians who prescribe abortion drugs to maintain hospital admitting privileges at a nearby hospital or have a written contract with a physician who has such privileges.
• It adds new restrictions on the "judicial bypass" in which a girl under 18 can seek permission from a judge for an abortion in cases where getting permission from a parent is not possible or might put the girl in danger. Tate referred to the judicial bypass as a "loophole," and said her bill would require more strenuous efforts to obtain permission from parents.
• It puts new, extensive reporting requirements on abortion providers, which would involve notifying state health officials of any complication or adverse event following an abortion. It also requires the provider to report the patient's reason for the abortion, if known.
• It requires that parents can have a say in how fetal remains from an abortion may be disposed of and bans disposal of fetal remains as medical waste, instead requiring cremation or burial by a licensed establishment.
• It imposes new restrictions on medication abortions generally provided up to the 10th week of pregnancy, including rules for doctors and pharmacists. It requires an in-person visit with a physician, rather than telehealth, and also requires that a patient be counseled that the termination, which consists of taking medication several days apart, can be reversed, a medically unproven claim.
• It requires the state pharmacy board to create a new program to oversee the distribution of abortion drugs and oversee a new certification process for pharmacies, physicians, manufacturers and distributors who administer or provide the drugs.
• It also charges the pharmacy board with enforcing certification requirements with violations resulting in a fine of no less than $5 million for pharmacies, manufacturers and distributors and a fine of $250,000 for physicians. It also requires the board to create a complaint portal on its website which lists the names of all physicians certified to prescribe medication to induce abortions and pharmacies, manufacturers and distributors certified to supply it.
• It requires physicians who prescribe abortion drugs to maintain hospital admitting privileges at a nearby hospital or have a written contract with a physician who has such privileges.
• It adds new restrictions on the "judicial bypass" in which a girl under 18 can seek permission from a judge for an abortion in cases where getting permission from a parent is not possible or might put the girl in danger. Tate referred to the judicial bypass as a "loophole," and said her bill would require more strenuous efforts to obtain permission from parents.
• It puts new, extensive reporting requirements on abortion providers, which would involve notifying state health officials of any complication or adverse event following an abortion. It also requires the provider to report the patient's reason for the abortion, if known.
• It requires that parents can have a say in how fetal remains from an abortion may be disposed of and bans disposal of fetal remains as medical waste, instead requiring cremation or burial by a licensed establishment.

 

Keep in mind there is now only one abortion clinic left in the entire state, and if Roe v. Wade is overturned completely, the state's 2019 complete abortion ban will go into effect.  Finally, keep in mind voters will go to the polls in November to decide whether or not women have a constitutional right to an abortion at all in Kentucky.

Abortion will all but be impossible here in the state by summer.

I take that back. Safe, legal abortion will be impossible here, and in two dozen other states, by the end of the year.  In Texas, legal abortions are down by almost two-thirds already as the Supreme Court refuses to block the state's unconstitutional bounty law.

That's because in a few months, that law will no longer be unconstitutional, and everyone knows it. We're headed for a very dark period of American history by the end of this SCOTUS term.

The road to Gilead winds on.

But What About Real America, Con't

Another red state Democrat complaining that the national Democratic party doesn't care enough about the HEARTLAND and it's getting tedious at this point to see Dems slagging themselves.

 

"I honestly don't think the Democratic Party can be a majority party unless we start appealing to Middle America a lot more. I'm talking about the area between the two mountain ranges, the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains. And if we're able to do that, I think it will provide success," Tester, who is also a farmer, told David Axelrod on an episode of CNN's "The Axe Files" podcast released on Thursday.

The comments from Tester come as Democrats seek to hold on to their majorities in Congress in the 2022 midterm elections and amid low approval ratings for both Congress and President Joe Biden. Failures on key issues on Biden's agenda, including passing voting rights legislation, also have Democrats rethinking their strategy for the upcoming elections. The President's approval rating is 42%, with 55% disapproving, according to CNN's average of six recent national polls.

Democrats hold a narrow majority in Congress, where the Senate is split 50-50 and Vice President Kamala Harris' power to cast a tie-breaking vote gives them the advantage. Democrats have struggled among rural American voters in the polls while Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have found solid footing among rural Americans. CNN exit polls from the 2020 presidential election found that among rural voters, 42% voted for Biden and 57% voted for Trump.

Tester, who was critical of Democrats' messaging and appeal to rural Americans following the 2020 presidential election, also told Axelrod rural Americans view the Democratic Party as "toxic."

"It's toxic. The national Democratic brand in, I think in rural America generally, is toxic, and it's because, quite frankly, we don't show up," he said when asked how his Montana neighbors view the Democratic Party. "I'm talking about national Democrats. We're not willing to go places we're not wanted and answer questions."

He continued, "I think it's critically important if you're going to win, you've got to go to those places, as miserable as it might be, you still go. You still contact the people, and you still let people know that you're a human being and you have a view for this, a vision for this country."

 

To recap:

 

• White rural Americans don't want to hear what Democrats have to say.
• When Democrats show up in White Rural America, they are attacked. 
• Visits to White Rural America are loudly called pandering.
• Democrats are told by White Rural Americans not to bother to visit.

 

This is the fault of Democrats, somehow.

 

When someone refuses to respect you as a human being, let alone vote for you, you're wasting your time dealing with them.  There is no point...and your limited time and resources are coming at the direct expense of the people who did vote for you, and are counting on you to actually fix their problems.

Look, nobody did more for White Rural America than Joe Biden in the last 12 months, passing a massive infrastructure bill, a child tax credit, more stimulus for COVID relief and an economic policy that put back more than six million jobs nationally, and that was greeted with a loud raspberry from anyone in a red district. They took the money, and then the Republicans who voted against every part of that then took credit for it.

You can spend all the time on Earth explaining to people, but if they refuse to listen, eventually you give up on them and help who you can.

 

Remember, Trump's farm tariffs wrecked White Rural America. They voted 75%+ to reelect him even through he destroyed their livelihoods.

They made their choices and still continue to do so. Now that the consequences are here, I feel no sympathy towards saving them when I have my own damn problems.

You cannot have reasonable conversations with fanatics who want to see you dead.

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The era of the Big Lie means more and more Democratic lawmakers (and even a few Republican holdouts) are facing increasing numbers of terrorist threats from enraged Trump cultists who want to harm or even kill those not loyal to Dear Leader.

 

Early one morning in November 2019, Representative Rodney Davis, Republican of Illinois, received a profanity-laden voice mail message at his office in which the caller identified himself as a trained sharpshooter and said he wanted to blow the congressman’s head off.

Two years earlier, Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, received a similar voice mail message from an irate man who falsely accused her of threatening President Donald J. Trump’s life. “If you do it again, you’re dead,” he said, punctuating the statement with expletives and a racial epithet against Ms. Waters, who is Black.

Across the country, the office of Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, received a profane call from a man who said that someone should “put a bullet” in her skull, before leaving his name and phone number.

The cases were part of a New York Times review of more than 75 indictments of people charged with threatening lawmakers since 2016. The flurry of cases shed light on a chilling trend: In recent years, and particularly since the beginning of Mr. Trump’s presidency, a growing number of Americans have taken ideological grievance and political outrage to a new level, lodging concrete threats of violence against members of Congress.


The threats have come in almost every conceivable combination: Republicans threatening Democrats, Democrats threatening Republicans, Republicans threatening Republicans. Many of them, the review showed, were fueled by forces that have long dominated politics, including deep partisan divisions and a media landscape that stokes resentment.

But they surged during Mr. Trump’s time in office and in its aftermath, as the former president’s own violent language fueled a mainstreaming of menacing political speech and lawmakers used charged words and imagery to describe the stakes of the political moment. Far-right members of Congress have hinted that their followers should be prepared to take up arms and fight to save the country, and in one case even posted a video depicting explicitly violent acts against Democrats.

A plurality of the cases reviewed by The Times, more than a third, involved Republican or pro-Trump individuals threatening Democrats or Republicans they found insufficiently loyal to the former president, with upticks around Mr. Trump’s first impeachment and, later, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol last year. In some cases leading up to Congress’s official count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, callers left messages with lawmakers in both parties warning them to keep Mr. Trump in office or face violence.

Nearly a quarter of the cases were Democrats threatening Republicans. Many of those threats were driven by anger over lawmakers’ support for Mr. Trump and his policies, including Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, as well as the drive to confirm one of his Supreme Court nominees, Brett M. Kavanaugh.

 

Yes, the reason why the era of the Big Lie continues is because the media watchdogs like the NY Times are careful to indict Democrats and their voters along with the Trump cultists, and declare everyone to be equally responsible for the threats against lawmakers.

That's not actually true of course, but the Times says it is.

It's not "both sides" folks. Democratic voters weren't responsible for the January 6th terrorist attack. Trump and his cultists were, 100%.

A team of scholars, faith leaders and advocates unveiled an exhaustive new report Wednesday (Feb. 9) that documents in painstaking detail the role Christian nationalism played in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and calling it an unsettling preview of things to come.

Christian nationalism was used to “bolster, justify and intensify the January 6 attack on the Capitol,” said Amanda Tyler, head of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, which sponsored the report along with the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Tyler’s group is behind an initiative called Christians Against Christian Nationalism.

The organizations touted the report as “the most comprehensive account to date of Christian nationalism and its role in the January 6 insurrection,” compiled using “videos, statements, and images from the attack and its precursor events.”

The report, written chiefly by Andrew L. Seidel, an author and director of strategic response at the Freedom From Religion Foundation, details Christian nationalist rhetoric and symbols that cropped up at events that preceded the insurrection, such as the Million MAGA March and Jericho Marches that took place in Washington in Dec. 2020 and Jan. 2021.

Christian nationalist symbols and references, Seidel writes, were ubiquitous at those gatherings, as well as the insurrection itself: flags with superimposed American flags over Christian symbols; “An Appeal to Heaven” banners; prayers recited by members of the extremist group Proud Boys shortly before the attack or by others as they stormed the Capitol.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Seidel highlighted what he called the preponderance of “openly militant” rhetoric that conflated religion and violence. He pointed to William McCall Calhoun Jr., a Georgia lawyer who reportedly claimed on social media that he was among those who “kicked in Nancy Pelosi’s office door” on Jan. 6. (Calhoun later claimed in an interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution that he did not personally enter any office.)

“God is on Trump’s side. God is not on the Democrats’ side,” Calhoun allegedly wrote in a social media post. “And if patriots have to kill 60 million of these communists, it is God’s will. Think ethnic cleansing but it’s anti-communist cleansing.”

 

Both sides did not create this assault on the US government.

More GOP Kayfabe, Con't

Kayfabe is the term for pro wrestling drama, the scripted anger between two wrestlers, and it's also an integral part of US politics as well. The latest example of this is the "feud" this week between Donald Trump (himself an inductee into the WWE Hall of Fame) and GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, which is about as real as, well, pro wrestling.

Former President Trump slammed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday after the top Senate Republican criticized the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) censure of Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and its characterization of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot as “legitimate political discourse.”

“Mitch McConnell does not speak for the Republican Party, and does not represent the views of the vast majority of its voters. He did nothing to fight for his constituents and stop the most fraudulent election in American history,” Trump said in a statement, resurfacing his baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

“If Mitch would have fought for the election, like the Democrats would have if in the same position, we would not be discussing any of the above today, and our Country would be STRONG and PROUD instead of weak and embarrassed,” Trump added.

Trump has frequently attacked McConnell for acknowledging President Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 election and rejecting the former president’s claims that widespread fraud tainted the outcome of the vote.

His latest remarks came a day after McConnell pushed back against the RNC’s censure of Cheney and Kinzinger for their roles on the select committee investigating the Capitol riot. McConnell also criticized the party’s censure resolution for apparently referring to the attack on the Capitol as “legitimate political discourse.”

“We saw it happen,” McConnell said. “It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has rejected the notion that the resolution’s inclusion of the phrase “legitimate political discourse” referred to those who committed acts of violence during the Jan. 6 riot. Rather, she has argued that it was intended to refer to those who engaged in peaceful protests.

In a op-ed published on the conservative website Townhall on Tuesday, McDaniel noted that she has “repeatedly condemned the violence that occurred at the Capitol on January 6th” and blamed the news media for misconstruing the text of the censure resolution.

 

Again, this is all staged. Trump needs McConnell, and McConnell needs Trump. They throw brickbats at each other because it's good drama, and the Republican rubes who vote for them eat it up. 

Don't buy it for a second.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Donald Trump admitted to "accidentally" taking more than a dozen boxes full of documents that should have been turned over to the National Archives via the Presidential Records Act this week, and while Trump plans on returning them someday (I guess) the National Archives is quite put out by this and wants the Justice Department to investigate Trump.

The National Archives and Records Administration has asked the Justice Department to examine whether former President Donald Trump’s handling of White House records violated federal law, two administration officials told NBC News.

One official said it's unclear whether the Justice Department would take up the request, saying it’s all very preliminary. The Washington Post first reported the National Archives’ request.

The Justice Department and the National Archives declined requests for comment. A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The National Archives said Monday that Trump had to return 15 boxes of documents that were improperly taken from the White House.

In mid-January, the National Archives "arranged for the transport from the Trump Mar-a-Lago property in Florida to the National Archives of 15 boxes that contained Presidential records, following discussions with President Trump’s representatives in 2021,” the agency said in a statement.

Among the items Trump had to return were correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that Trump has described as “beautiful letters,” two sources told The Post, as well as a handwritten letter that former President Barack Obama had left behind in the Oval Office for his successor. NBC News hasn’t independently confirmed the contents of the boxes.

The National Archives said items covered under the Presidential Records Act should have been turned over at the end of the Trump administration. The act mandates that all presidential records must be properly preserved by each administration so a complete set of records is transferred to the National Archives at the end of the administration, the agency’s archivist said.

 

Judging from the last year under AG Merrick Garland, I'm not even positive that the DoJ will even bother with this. It's a clear violation of the Presidential Records Act, in fact it's multiple violations of it, and you'd think that would at least prompt an investigation since some of the documents were apparently classified.

We'll see.

Last Call For Chappelle Shows You Out Of Town

Ohio native comedian and problematic quasi-incel Dave Chappelle decided to use his power of influence to help a small town in the state get rid of that nasty affordable housing stuff, because who needs affordable housing, right?

Oberer Homes can move forward with a new development in Yellow Springs, but without an affordable housing component initially promised to the village, after council voted against the village’s own plan Monday night.

The village and Oberer had worked together to produce a plan that would include duplexes and affordable housing along with single-family homes in a 53-acre area along Spillan Road at the south edge of town.

The village initially asked for the development to advance affordable housing in the village, including an area that the village would later be able to develop into affordable housing, as well as more duplexes and townhomes.

But Monday night, after complaints from numerous residents, village council voted 2-2 with one abstention on the revised “planned unit development” zoning.

That means the zoning reverts to what was previously approved, with 143 single-family homes on the lot, with the homes starting at about $300,000, according to village documents. The village annexed about 34 acres of the land into the village last summer.

The development that council voted on Monday night would have included 64 single-family homes, 52 duplexes and 24 townhomes with an additional 1.75 acres to be donated to the community for affordable housing to be built later.

Multiple Yellow Springs villagers, including entertainer Dave Chappelle, got involved against the project. Chappelle even threatened to pull his business interests from the village, which include a plan for a restaurant called “Firehouse Eatery” and comedy club called “Live from YS.” Chappelle’s company, Iron Table Holdings LLC, bought the former Miami Twp. fire station at 225 Corry St. in December.

Chappelle repeated his threat again on Monday night in the city council meeting.

“I am not bluffing,” he said. “I will take it all off the table.”

 

And so he won, killing the village's own plan and pricing out the people who live there, who will not be able to afford to do so.

Maybe it's unfair to pick on Chappelle, he's a rich millionaire, and destroying affordable housing is exactly what rich millionaires do. Nobody wants their property values to decrease in America because it keeps out those people.

But to see arguably one of the most famous Black comedians of our era do this to his own hometown, and threaten to pull his business from the village is a dick move, and frankly I'm sick of him.

Understand though that this battle is being won by the rich in basically every city and state in America.

It's A Gas, Gas Gas, Con't

Senate Dems want to suspend the federal gasoline tax for the rest of 2022 in order to lower prices at the pump expected to top $4 a gallon this summer.

 

Two Senate Democrats up for reelection proposed a bill on Wednesday to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax through the end of 2022, as millions of Americans grapple with the economic impacts of surging oil prices.

The Gas Prices Relief Act from Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., would suspend the $18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax through Jan. 1, 2023, according to a summary of the proposal shared with ABC News.

The senators, who are both on the ballot in November, released the proposal at a time when gas is roughly $3.45 a gallon nationwide, about $1 more expensive than a year ago, according to AAA.

"Arizonans are paying some of the highest prices for gas we have seen in years and it's putting a strain on families who need to fill up the tank to get to work and school," Kelly said in a statement. "This bill will lower gas prices by suspending the federal gas tax through the end of the year to help Arizona families struggling with high costs for everything from gas to groceries."

"We need to continue to think creatively about how we can find new ways to bring down costs, and this bill would do exactly that, making a tangible difference for workers and families," Hassan said in a statement.

At least four other Democrats, Sens. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, and Raphael Warnock of Georgia have already signed on as co-sponsors of the measure. (Cortez Masto and Warnock, like Hassan and Kelly, are up for reelection in the fall.)

With inflation at a nearly 40-year high and Americans frustrated about the rising cost of many staples, Republicans have seized on the issue of gas prices as they try to retake the House and Senate in the midterms, pointing to the Biden administration's economic agenda.

According to Gallup, just 33% of Americans are satisfied with the state of the economy -- a 10-point drop from 2021 -- and just 27% are satisfied with the nation's energy policies.

Around the country, Democratic and Republican governors have proposed their own changes to state gas taxes ahead of the summer -- by either freezing state gas tax collection or stopping planned increases from taking effect.

 

This is such a slam dunk that you have to wonder why it wasn't done earlier, and the answer is "Because it's paying for the infrastructure bill."  The other reason is that Mitch McConnell will want his pound of flesh for allowing this to pass a filibuster, and we don't know what that is yet.

This will probably pass, especially since Republican will be more than happy to attack Democrats for not permanently repealing the gas tax later this year.

The Prince Of Darkness Strikes Back

America's favorite mercenary Bond villain, Erik Prince, has had his latest evil scheme exposed by the NY Times. Prince apparently was using his conservative connections to his sister Betsy DeVos, Trump's former Education Secretary, to raise money for a secret intel operation to spy on Trump's political enemies.

During the summer of 2018, as Richard Seddon, a former British spy, was trying to launch a new venture to use undercover agents to infiltrate progressive groups, Democratic campaigns and other opponents of President Donald J. Trump, he turned for help to a longtime friend and former colleague: Erik Prince, the private military contractor.

Mr. Prince took on the role of celebrity pitchman, according to interviews and documents, raising money for Mr. Seddon’s spying operation, which was aimed at gathering dirt that could discredit politicians and activists in several states. After Mr. Prince and Mr. Seddon met in August 2018 with Susan Gore, a Wyoming heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune, Ms. Gore became the project’s main benefactor.

Mr. Prince’s role in the effort, which has not been previously disclosed, sheds further light on how a group of ultraconservative Republicans employed spycraft to try to manipulate the American political landscape. Mr. Prince — a former C.I.A. contractor who is best known as the founder of the private military firm Blackwater and whose sister, Betsy DeVos, was Mr. Trump’s education secretary — has drawn scrutiny over the years for Blackwater’s record of violence around the world and his subsequent ventures training and arming foreign forces.

His willingness to support Mr. Seddon’s operation is fresh evidence of his engagement in political espionage projects at home during a period when he was an informal adviser to Trump administration officials.

Mr. Seddon’s recruitment of Mr. Prince to help him secure funding is just one of the new details about Mr. Seddon’s operation revealed in documents obtained by The Times and interviews with people familiar with his plans. They provide additional insight into the ambition of the operation to use undercover operatives to target Republicans seen as insufficiently conservative, as well as to, as one document describes it, “research, penetrate and infiltrate the radical left networks.”

The Times previously reported that, in 2016 and 2017, Mr. Prince recruited Mr. Seddon to join the conservative group Project Veritas to teach espionage skills to its operatives and manage its undercover operations. Mr. Prince also allowed Project Veritas to use his family’s Wyoming ranch for training. Mr. Seddon launched his privately funded spying effort after leaving Project Veritas in 2018.

It is unclear how many potential donors Mr. Prince might have approached for money for Mr. Seddon’s venture besides Ms. Gore. Separately, Ms. Gore unsuccessfully tried to raise money for the project from Foster Friess, a billionaire Wyoming businessman, during a January 2019 meeting, three people said.

During the 2018 meeting with Ms. Gore, according to one person familiar with it, Mr. Prince and Mr. Seddon said the goal of the private spying operation was to gather dirt both on Democrats and “RINOs” — slang in conservative circles for “Republicans in name only.” The plan was to begin in Wyoming, they said, and expand operations from there.

Over two years, Mr. Seddon’s undercover operatives also developed networks in Colorado and Arizona, and made thousands of dollars in campaign donations posing as Democrats, both to the Democratic National Committee and individual campaigns. Funneling money surreptitiously to campaigns through other donors — known as straw man donations — would violate federal campaign finance laws.

Mr. Prince is separately under investigation by the Justice Department on unrelated matters, according to people familiar with the case. The scope of that investigation is unclear.

 

The DoJ has been a little busy investigating Prince's ties to Trump's illegal Saudi and UAE donors having already nabbed George Nader, the Lebanese fixer behind that little deal.  But this is yet more campaign finance felony level stuff, and Prince needs to be spending a couple of decades in a box somewhere looking forward to pudding night.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

Senate Republicans are trying really, really hard to pretend that Donald Trump doesn't exist and that he's not the leader of the GOP so that they can get reelected in November, but Trump keeps making that hard with his continuing campaign to crucify those left in the party who aren't loyal.

 

In interviews on Monday evening, GOP senators lashed out at their own national party's overwhelming vote to censure Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for working on the House's investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. They warned that alienating a portion of the party for being overly anti-Trump is not a political winner heading into the midterms, a sharp message from sitting members that goes far beyond criticism already aired by a handful of GOP pundits.

Several Republican senators took more direct action: Both Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) were in communication with RNC chair Ronna McDaniel about the censure, with Graham calling her and Romney texting his niece.

“A very unfortunate decision by the RNC and a very unfortunate statement put out as well. Nothing could be further from the truth than to consider the attack on the seat of democracy as legitimate political discourse,” Romney said in an interview. Graham said the party is going in the “wrong direction” when it’s not talking about taking back control of Congress.

The RNC is supposed to be a unifying organization within the party. But its passage of a resolution censuring Cheney and Kinzinger for the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” is having the opposite effect — reopening divisions between the large pro-Trump wing of the party, the smaller anti-Trump wing and the rest of a GOP still trying to find its way amid a favorable midterm cycle.

The intrigue will continue to play out later this week, with internal discussions in the House over the censure and future of Cheney and Kinzinger in the party.

The RNC “did say in their resolution that the job was to win elections. I agree with that. But then they go on to engage in actions that make that more challenging,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who is close to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “I don’t think you can kick out of the party everybody you disagree with. Or it’s going to be a minority party.”

McConnell, who has defended Cheney in the past, said he would address the matter on Tuesday at his usual press conference. Several members of his leadership team expressed their concern about GOP infighting. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, the No. 5 GOP leader, said it shouldn’t be the job of the RNC to censure individual members of Congress: “I wish they wouldn’t. I would leave it up to the states.”

“We’ve got a lot of issues that we should be focusing on besides censuring two members of Congress because they have a different opinion,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who serves on McConnell’s leadership team. “I thought: Free speech for everybody.”

 

This is Mitch and the Senate GOP yelling "Don't make me pull this car over" while in the front passenger seat. Trump's been driving this clown car for nearly seven years now and nobody cares to listen to them anymore.

 

It's Trump's party and it will be for the foreseeable future. 

What Senate Republicans are afraid of is Trump turning on them next.

Vermont Does The Rights Thing By Women

As the clock ticks down to SCOTUS gutting Roe and states being allowed to end safe abortion services for tens of millions, Vermont is expected to put the question of a right to abortion to voters and to enshrine that right in the state's constitution.

Vermont legislators will vote Tuesday on a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to abortion and contraception, the first amendment of its kind anywhere in the United States.

If passed, the proposed amendment, known as Proposition 5, will head to Gov. Phil Scott (R), who is required to give public notice of the measure before it appears on the ballot in November. Scott has signaled his support for Proposition 5. And voters in Vermont, where 70 percent of people say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, are expected to approve it.

The proposal is part of a wave of abortion rights legislation to emerge in Democratic states this year, ahead of a key Supreme Court ruling on abortion expected this summer. The Supreme Court case, which involves a Mississippi law that bans abortion at 15 weeks, could overturn or significantly weaken Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that has guaranteed the right to abortion for almost 50 years.

Fifteen states have passed laws protecting the right to abortion, including, most recently, New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed the Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act in January. Other states, such as Florida, have privacy laws in their state constitutions, which courts have interpreted to protect the right to abortion. But no other state has enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution.

At a moment when antiabortion legislators across the Southeast and Midwest are proposing dramatic rollbacks of abortion rights, abortion rights advocates are thrilled to see a state moving in the opposite direction.

“We are hoping to be a model for other states to follow,” said Lucy Leriche, vice president of Vermont Public Policy at Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. “In states all over the country, politicians are moving to take away reproductive rights, specifically abortion rights, and we could be an example of another way.”

 

State Republicans in the legislature are unhappy to say the least.

Republican lawmakers and lobbyists in Vermont have called the amendment “extreme.” By adding this amendment to the state constitution, said Republican state Rep. Anne Donahue, legislators are making the assumption that public opinion on abortion won’t change.

“We as human beings have made a lot of mistakes at times when we thought we were doing the right thing,” said Donahue, who cited the Supreme Court’s prior rulings on segregation and eugenics. “When we start putting a current belief in the constitution, I think we’re playing with fire.”

Donahue and other Republicans have cited concerns with certain language in the proposed amendment. Proposition 5 guarantees the right to “reproductive autonomy,” a term Donahue said is too vague, opening the door for future courts to interpret the amendment more broadly than legislators intended.

 

Yes, it might be interpreted to mean that women have control over their own reproductive organs. 

Perish the thought.

Another Supreme Disappointment, Con't

I mentioned last week that a federal court declaring Alabama's congressional redistricting by the GOP to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act for basically removing one of the two of the state's majority Black districts at least meant the VRA still existed. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court noticed and promptly killed it again, with the five Federalist Society assholes putting the redraw on hold.

The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated an Alabama congressional map that a lower court had said diluted the power of Black voters, suggesting that the court was poised to become more skeptical of challenges to voting maps based on claims of race discrimination.

The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the court’s three liberal members in dissent.

The Supreme Court’s brief order, which included no reasoning, was provisional, staying a lower court’s decision while the case moves forward. The justices said they would hear Alabama’s appeal of the lower court’s ruling, but they did not say when.

Both the stay and the decision to hear the case indicated that the court is open to weakening the role race may play in drawing voting districts for federal elections, setting up a major new test of the Voting Rights Act in a court that has gradually limited the reach of the law in other contexts.

The dispute in Alabama is part of a pitched redistricting battle playing out across the country, with Democrats and Republicans alike challenging electoral districts as unlawful gerrymanders. Those challenges have mostly been filed in state courts, meaning the Supreme Court is unlikely to intervene.

Civil rights leaders and some Democrats say the redistricting process often disadvantages growing minority communities. Republican state officials say the Constitution allows only a limited role for the consideration of race in drawing voting districts.

If the court follows its usual practices, it will schedule arguments in the Alabama case for the fall and issue a decision months later, meaning that the 2022 election would be conducted using the challenged map.

Alabama has seven congressional districts and its voting-age population is about 27 percent Black. In the challenged map, Black voters are in the majority in one district. The lower court, relying on the Voting Rights Act, had ordered the State Legislature to create a second district in which Black voters could elect a representative of their choice.

In a concurring opinion on Monday, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., said that “the stay order does not make or signal any change to voting rights law.” It was necessary, he wrote, because the lower court had acted too soon before a coming election.

“When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties and voters, among others.”

 

'Obvious racism is bad unless it happens in an election year, in which case disenfranchisement is 100% acceptable" is a shit argument even for Justice Kegstand the Beer-Lover, but this is how SCOTUS works now.  So yes, Republicans can just do whatever they want in redistricting. SCOTUS will cover them. 

Good to know!

Last Call For Hillbilly Epitaph

Over the river in Ohio, "Democrats don't know how to talk to rural America" mascot and now Republican Trump cultist and author JD Vance is running into his own ugly past, and it's leaving him stranded in the middle of the road where his fate is seemingly to get wrecked by oncoming traffic in the Ohio GOP primary in a few months.

 

Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance “needs a course correction ASAP” — and that’s according to the well-funded super PAC supporting him.

A 98-page PowerPoint presentation produced by Tony Fabrizio, who has been polling for the pro-Vance Protect Ohio Values super PAC since last year, paints a dire picture of the candidate’s prospects. According to the slide deck, Vance has seen a “precipitous decline” in Ohio’s GOP Senate primary since last fall, when a pair of outside groups backing a rival began a multimillion-dollar TV advertising blitz using five-year-old footage of Vance attacking former President Donald Trump.

“Driving his negatives is the perception that he is anti-Trump. This has only grown since” November, said the presentation, which is based on polling data of 800 likely primary voters conducted Jan. 18-20.

The Senate race in Ohio is a high-profile example of how Trump is dominating Republican down-ballot primaries, and how his support is seen as make-or-break for those seeking the party’s nomination. Vance refashioned himself as a Trump supporter long ago, but his past comments are sticking to him. Meanwhile, Republican candidates are welding themselves to the former president and aggressively seeking out his endorsement; last spring, a handful of the Ohio Republican candidates met with Trump for an “Apprentice”-style boardroom audition for his support.

Vance, a venture capitalist and the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” has been working to make inroads with both Trump supporters and Trump himself: Last year, Vance and his main financial benefactor, tech billionaire Peter Thiel, quietly met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida.

Fabrizio, who is also a longtime Trump pollster, wrote that Vance is “now underwater with strong Trump” supporters “and very conservative voters, groups needed to win a GOP primary.” He added that Vance’s “association as a Never Trumper has only grown since November” and that “being anti-Trump is the #1 reason voters do not like Vance.”

Several months out from the May 3 primary, the presentation says that “consideration of Vance has fallen most dramatically with those on the right: conservatives and strong approvers of Trump,” and that the “perception” of Vance “as a moderate or even as a liberal continues to steadily grow.”

“The groups where Vance has improved are those we don’t want him doing better with: Trump disapprovers and moderate/liberals,” Fabrizio wrote.

Vance’s decline follows a $2 million-plus TV ad campaign from the Club for Growth and USA Freedom Fund, outside groups that are backing Vance rival Josh Mandel, which have portrayed Vance as an anti-Trump figure. The commercials, which use footage from 2016, show Vance describing himself as a “Never Trump guy” and calling Trump an “idiot,” “noxious” and “offensive,” appear to have made a dent. According to the slide deck, “anti-Trump is by far the top thing the 50% of voters who have seen an ad about Vance remember.”

Still, the polling paints the picture of a close, crowded race. The survey shows Mandel, a former state treasurer who unsuccessfully ran for Senate in 2012, out ahead with 15 percent. He is followed closely in the results by self-funding investment banker Mike Gibbons, with 14 percent, former state GOP Chair Jane Timken with 13 percent, business owner Bernie Moreno with 11 percent, and Vance at 9 percent. (Moreno dropped out of the primary last week, several weeks after the poll was taken.)

 

It's not a question of if a nutjob racist, bigoted, white supremacist terrorist sympathizer tries to replace Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman, it's "which one".  Increasingly, that person is looking like it may actually not be Vance, but that leaves plenty of assholes like Josh Mandel to run for the seat. 

Having said that, Donald Trump hates Josh Mandel. It's still possible that Trump saves Vance by giving him the endorsement, put at this point, Trump hasn't made his choice yet.

We'll see.

The Great Canadian Trucker War, Con't

After a third weekend of protests by Canadian Trumpists blocking highways and roads in Canada's capital of Ottawa, Mayor Jim Watson has had enough and has declared a state of emergency, setting the stage for  local, provincial and federal police to step in.

The mayor of Canada’s capital declared a state of emergency Sunday and a former U.S. ambassador to Canada said groups in the U.S. must stop interfering in the domestic affairs of America’s neighbor as protesters opposed to COVID-19 restrictions continued to paralyze Ottawa’s downtown.

Mayor Jim Watson said the declaration highlights the need for support from other jurisdictions and levels of government. It gives the city some additional powers around procurement and how it delivers services, which could help purchase equipment required by frontline workers and first responders.

Thousands of protesters descended in Ottawa again on the weekend, joining a hundred who remained since last weekend. Residents of Ottawa are furious at the nonstop blaring of horns, traffic disruption and harassment and fear no end is in sight after the police chief called it a “siege” that he could not manage.

The “freedom truck convoy” has attracted support from many U.S. Republicans including former President Donald Trump, who called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “far left lunatic” who has “destroyed Canada with insane Covid mandates.”

“Canada US relations used to be mainly about solving technical issues. Today Canada is unfortunately experiencing radical US politicians involving themselves in Canadian domestic issues. Trump and his followers are a threat not just to the US but to all democracies,” Bruce Heyman, a former U.S. ambassador under President Barack Obama, tweeted.

Heyman said “under no circumstances should any group in the USA fund disruptive activities in Canada. Period. Full stop.”

After crowdfunding site GoFundMe said it would refund or redirect to charities the vast majority of the millions raised by demonstrators protesting in the Canadian capital, prominent U.S. Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis complained.

But GoFundMe had already changed its mind and said it would be issuing refunds to all. The site said it cut off funding for the organizers because it had determined the effort violated the site’s terms of service due to unlawful activity.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has called it an occupation.

 

Hopefully order will be restored in the city, I suspect that the last holdouts however may turn to violence. We'll see how this story ends, but I'm honestly surprised it took this long for Watson and the city to respond.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

Another governor is ending school mask mandates across the state having arbitrarily decided that the pandemic is "over", only this time it's a Democratic governor in New Jersey's Phil Murphy.

Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, a Democrat who has imposed some of the nation’s most stringent pandemic-related mandates, will no longer require students and school employees to wear masks, signaling a deliberate shift toward treating the coronavirus as a part of daily life.

Mr. Murphy, the vice chairman of the National Governors Association, said on Sunday that he would officially announce the elimination of the mandate on Monday afternoon. The new policy will take effect the second week of March, two years after New York and New Jersey became early epicenters of a virus that has since mutated and resurged, killing more than 900,000 people nationwide.

The debate over mask wearing in schools has proved one of the most divisive issues in the pandemic, embroiling parents, school boards, teachers and elected officials in caustic clashes over academic loss, protecting public health and individual choice.

Mr. Murphy’s move follows a decision last month by the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Wolf, to rescind his state’s school mask mandate. The Democratic governors of New York and Connecticut also said last week that they were re-evaluating school mask mandates that are soon set to expire.

An average of 78 New Jersey residents died each day from Covid-19 in the last week, contributing to a daily nationwide death toll of 2,600, a per capita rate that far exceeds those of other wealthy nations.

But new cases of the highly contagious Omicron variant are plummeting in New Jersey and across the country.

Last week, after meeting with President Biden at the White House during an annual governors conference, Mr. Murphy suggested it was time to reconsider how to manage the virus. “The overwhelming sentiment on both sides of the aisle,” he said on Wednesday, “is we want to get to a place where we can live with this thing in as normal a fashion as possible.”

Deaths are still above 2,500 per day from the virus and we're above 900,000 total deaths and counting, with tens of millions suffering from Long COVID symptoms of fatigue, memory loss, chronic pain, heart and lung problems and more, but both Republicans and Democrats have decided that this is the new normal.

 

Most of all the behavior of White House staffers on the pandemic hasn't changed at all from the Trump era.

President Joe Biden’s top science adviser, Eric Lander, bullied and demeaned his subordinates and violated the White House’s workplace policy, an internal White House investigation recently concluded, according to interviews and an audio recording obtained by POLITICO.

The two-month investigation found “credible evidence” that Lander — a Cabinet member and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy who the White House touts as a key player in the pandemic response — was “bullying” toward his then-general counsel, Rachel Wallace, according to a recorded January briefing on the investigation’s findings.

Christian Peele, the White House’s deputy director of management and administration for personnel, said that the investigation also concluded that there was “credible evidence of disrespectful interactions with staff by Dr. Lander and OSTP leadership,” according to the roughly 20-minute briefing, which included a representative of the White House Counsel’s office.

There was also “credible evidence” that Lander had spoken “harshly and disrespectfully to colleagues in front of other colleagues,” Peele said, according to the recording. “The investigation found credible evidence of instances of multiple women having complained to other staff about negative interactions with Dr. Lander, where he spoke to them in a demeaning or abrasive way in front of other staff,” Peele said in the recording.


In an office of roughly 140 people, 14 current and former OSTP staffers who worked under Lander this past year shared similar descriptions of a toxic work environment where they say Lander frequently bullied, cut off and dismissed subordinates. Nine of those current and former OSTP staffers said Lander yelled and sometimes made people feel humiliated in front of their peers. Most were granted anonymity because they feared retaliation from Lander.

The behavior is at odds with Biden's Day-1 warning to his political appointees that anyone who disrespected their colleagues would be fired “On the spot. No ifs, ands or buts.”

This is the sort of idiotic nonsense that we used to hear about Trtump's pandemic response team. To see the exact sort of foolishness play out under Biden is just damning.

 

Live with the lethal virus, folks.

 

That's the Democratic platform in 2022.