Last Call For Our Mainstream GOP White Supremacist Domestic Terrorist Problem

2021 will be remembered as the year Republican political terrorist violence became expected behavior, if not completely normalized.

At a conservative rally in western Idaho last month, a young man stepped up to a microphone to ask when he could start killing Democrats.

“When do we get to use the guns?” he said as the audience applauded. “How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” The local state representative, a Republican, later called it a “fair” question.

In Ohio, the leading candidate in the Republican primary for Senate blasted out a video urging Republicans to resist the “tyranny” of a federal government that pushed them to wear masks and take F.D.A.-authorized vaccines.

“When the Gestapo show up at your front door,” the candidate, Josh Mandel, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, said in the video in September, “you know what to do.”

And in Congress, violent threats against lawmakers are on track to double this year. Republicans who break party ranks and defy former President Donald J. Trump have come to expect insults, invective and death threats — often stoked by their own colleagues and conservative activists, who have denounced them as traitors.

From congressional offices to community meeting rooms, threats of violence are becoming commonplace among a significant segment of the Republican Party. Ten months after rioters attacked the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, and after four years of a president who often spoke in violent terms about his adversaries, right-wing Republicans are talking more openly and frequently about the use of force as justifiable in opposition to those who dislodged him from power.

In Washington, where decorum and civility are still given lip service, violent or threatening language still remains uncommon, if not unheard-of, among lawmakers who spend a great deal of time in the same building. But among the most fervent conservatives, who play an outsize role in primary contests and provide the party with its activist energy, the belief that the country is at a crossroads that could require armed confrontation is no longer limited to the fringe.

Political violence has been part of the American story since the founding of the country, often entwined with racial politics and erupting in periods of great change. And elements of the left have contributed to the confrontational tenor of the country’s current politics, though Democratic leaders routinely condemn violence and violent imagery. But historians and those who study democracy say what has changed has been the embrace of violent speech by a sizable portion of one party, including some of its loudest voices inside government and most influential voices outside.

In effect, they warn, the Republican Party is mainstreaming menace as a political tool.

Omar Wasow, a political scientist at Pomona College who studies protests and race, drew a contrast between the current climate and earlier periods of turbulence and strife, like the 1960s or the run-up to the Civil War.

“What’s different about almost all those other events is that now, there’s a partisan divide around the legitimacy of our political system,” he said. “The elite endorsement of political violence from factions of the Republican Party is distinct for me from what we saw in the 1960s. Then, you didn’t have — from a president on down — politicians calling citizens to engage in violent resistance.”

In the end though, it really comes down to millions, maybe tens of millions of Republican voters asking that simple question.

When do we get to use the guns? 

The answer, I fear, is soon.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

 Reminder: I absolutely did call this one on Trump's fight with the National Archives.

 

Me, I fully expect the National Archives to be blocked by an appeals court injunction this week and for the case to go before SCOTUS.  There's no way the National Archives gets the documents to the January 6th Committee without a court fight.

 

 Well lo and behold.

A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked the release of White House records sought by a U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, granting — for now — a request from former President Donald Trump.

The administrative injunction issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit effectively bars until the end of this month the release of records that were to be turned over Friday. The appeals court set oral arguments in the case for Nov. 30.

The stay gives the court time to consider arguments in a momentous clash between the former president, whose supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, and President Joe Biden and Congress, who have pushed for a thorough investigation of the riot. It delays the House committee from reviewing records that lawmakers say could shed light on the events leading up to the insurrection and Trump's efforts to delegitimize an election he lost.

The National Archives, which holds the documents, says they include call logs, handwritten notes, and a draft executive order on “election integrity.”

Biden waived executive privilege on the documents. Trump then went to court arguing that as a former president, he still had the right to exert privilege over the records and releasing them would damage the presidency in the future.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Tuesday rejected those arguments, noting in part, “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.” She again denied an emergency motion by Trump on Wednesday.

 

This wasn't a hard call by any means. Judge Chutkan all but begged for the law to be enjoined "by court order" in her earlier denials.

 

We won't see a ruling on this into well into 2022, and Trump will appeal to SCOTUS when he loses.

Roberts and the conservatives will find a way to pay Trump back next summer with a narrow ruling that states executive privilege of a former president applies to everything by that person without an express act by Congress, which of course will never happen.

Like the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act, Roberts will scold the legislative branch for refusing to update the law, and that will be the end of that.

That remains the most likely outcome here. It's Chief Justice Roberts's specialty.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

As Attorney General Merrick Garland's Justice Department continues to either thoughtfully craft a bulletproof contempt of Congress charge for Steve Bannon (if you believe his supporters) or dragging their collective feet until the January 6th committee can be dismantled (if you believe his detractors), former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is betting on the latter, and that if Bannon can get away with refusing to cooperate, so can he.

 

The House select committee investigating January 6 is demanding former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows appear for a deposition and turn over documents Friday or risk a criminal contempt referral, according to a letter Thursday from panel Chairman Bennie Thompson. 

Meadows has been facing new pressure to cooperate with the committee after he was notified earlier Thursday that President Joe Biden will not assert executive privilege or immunity over documents and testimony requested by the panel, according to a copy obtained by CNN. The move to set a final compliance date for Meadows comes after his attorney issued a statement Thursday saying he would not cooperate with the committee until courts ruled on former President Donald Trump's claim of executive privilege. 

The committee on Thursday took its first step toward possibly referring Meadows to the Department of Justice for contempt of Congress if he fails to comply with Friday's deadline. 

"The Select Committee will view Mr. Meadows's failure to appear at the deposition, and to produce responsive documents or a privilege log indicating the specific basis for withholding any documents you believe are protected by privilege, as willful non-compliance," Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, wrote. "Such willful noncompliance with the subpoena would force the Select Committee to consider invoking the contempt of Congress procedures in 2 U.S.C. §§ 192, 194—which could result in a referral from the House of Representatives to the Department of Justice for criminal charges—as well as the possibility of having a civil action to enforce the subpoena brought against Mr. Meadows in his personal capacity."

 

We'll see what happens here, but the one think I do know is that Bannon and Meadows wouldn't be fighting these subpoenas this hard if they didn't believe they would be in legal peril if what they knew about Trump's soft coup was revealed to January 6th investigators and the country as a whole.

My fear remains a protracted court fight is exactly what Bannon and now Meadows are counting on.

Meanwhile, the latest Trump tell-all from a Beltway reporter, this time Jonathan Karl of ABC News, is on its way next week, and the major Trump info kept from the public for the book (to the detriment of the country, selling copy is more important than saving the republic, they all do it, it seems) includes the fact that Trump openly told Karl in a March 18th interview that January 6th insurrectionist terrorists chanting to hang VP Mike Pence was simply "common sense".

Jonathan Karl: "Were you worried about him during that siege? Were you worried about his safety?"

Trump: "No, I thought he was well-protected, and I had heard that he was in good shape. No. Because I had heard he was in very good shape. But, but, no, I think — "

Karl: "Because you heard those chants — that was terrible. I mean — "

Trump: "He could have — well, the people were very angry."

Karl: "They were saying 'hang Mike Pence.'"

Trump: "Because it's common sense, Jon. It's common sense that you're supposed to protect. How can you — if you know a vote is fraudulent, right? — how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress? How can you do that? And I'm telling you: 50/50, it's right down the middle for the top constitutional scholars when I speak to them. Anybody I spoke to — almost all of them at least pretty much agree, and some very much agree with me — because he's passing on a vote that he knows is fraudulent. How can you pass a vote that you know is fraudulent? Now, when I spoke to him, I really talked about all of the fraudulent things that happened during the election. I didn't talk about the main point, which is the legislatures did not approve — five states. The legislatures did not approve all of those changes that made the difference between a very easy win for me in the states, or a loss that was very close, because the losses were all very close."

 

Karl is a prime example of another Beltway access journalist who failed their duty to the country in order to sell a book and make millions, but the real danger is how Trump casually threw Pence, someone Trump considered a traitor to him, to his cultists. He wouldn't have batted an eye if Pence had been hurt or worse.

 

And we're rocketing towards a 2024 election theft that will be the last free election in our lifetimes.

StupidiNews!

• US Olympic gold medal gymnast Suni Lee is reporting she was attacked by pepper spray in a racist incident in Los Angeles last month.
• Researchers at Northwestern University say trials in mice of a new stem cell treatment to reverse paralysis are promising enough to seek FDA approval for human trials next year. 
• President Biden and Chinese President Xi are expected to address other Pacific Rim nations Friday in a virtual summit of leaders over trade, military, and climate change issues.
• The Pentagon is warning that Russia may be seeking to send troops into Ukraine as US officials briefed EU allies this week as Moscow continues border troop and tank buildup.
• Researchers say much more risk assessment and vulnerability studies are needed before the world considers Arctic outposts made possible by melting ice caps and warming climate.
  

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

The question for the Republicans trying to take the Glenn Youngkin path to Trumpism without the Trump is how long they can avoid the "without the Trump" part.

Donald Trump is expected to maintain a prolific schedule of campaign rallies to boost Republicans in next year's midterms. But on the heels of Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin's victory in Virginia -- accomplished without a single Trump cameo -- some of the former President's aides and allies warn there could be parts of the country where he may now be encouraged to keep his distance. 

The "stay away strategy," as one aide described it, would involve Trump steering clear of states or districts where a confluence of factors -- such as his popularity and the demographic makeup -- could mean his presence might sabotage Republican chances. 

"There are absolutely places he shouldn't go. I wouldn't put him in Maryland, New Hampshire, or Arizona," said a person close to Trump. Despite the former President previously campaigning in those states for his own campaigns or other candidates, this person suggested Trump harm GOP Senate or gubernatorial hopefuls if he were to make appearances next year. 

The approach assumes an unusual level of deference from the prideful ex-President, who has long insisted his support is the most essential ingredient in any Republican candidate's quest for victory. Trump has relished his position atop the GOP since leaving office and has spent much of the past week huddling with aides and outside advisers at Mar-a-Lago to discuss his involvement in 2022 and where he should be most active on the ground. Trump has already endorsed Republican primary challengers and incumbents at national and statewide levels in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Wyoming, Ohio, Alaska, Texas and several other states. 

It also poses a challenge to candidates who determine it would be best for them if Trump focused his attention elsewhere, but do not wish to run afoul of the former President by asking. 

"They will have to make a strong case and it can't be, 'I just don't want him around,' because at the end of the day many of these guys are running on his policies," said the person close to Trump, adding that it's "a delicate balance that certain candidates are going to have to dance, but the whole point of elections is to be strategic and to win, not to appease a former President."

 

Hard truth time again, folks.

 

They're not going to be able to do both. 

 

Trump is cunning, but he cannot keep his raging malignant narcissism in check. The more stories like this that the press runs, that Trump is a liability to 2022 Republicans in general elections, the more rage Trump will burn with. You won't be able to keep him out of Arizona, for example, or Wisconsin, or Georgia. He's gonna show up, he's gonna do rallies, and he's going to remind everyone why he's a loser.

He'll burn down the party rather than stay home, and we all know it. It's the one thing Dems truly have going for them in the elections ahead.

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

As I told you previously, as I warned you about for months, the most likely outcome of the infrastructure bill was House progressives folding and passing the Senate bill into law, and then President Manchin and VP Sinema killing the Build Back Better plan slowly. We're well into phase two of that plan.

Red-hot inflation data validates the instinct of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to punt President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda until next year — potentially killing a quick deal on the $1.75 trillion package, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.

Why it matters: The data released Wednesday set the president and White House staff scrambling. Slowing down work on the massive tax-and-spending plan is against the fervent desire of the administration and House progressives. 

With a limited number of legislative days left in the year, Manchin is content to focus on the issues that need to be addressed, Axios is told. They include funding the government, raising the debt ceiling and passing the National Defense Authorization Act. Manchin, like a group of House moderates, also wants to see a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the true cost of each of Biden’s proposed programs, as well as the tax proposals to fund them.

The big picture: Progressives have long worried that after centrists got their $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, they'd find excuses not to move on the budget reconciliation package. It includes billions to expand the social safety net and fight climate change, among other Democratic priorities. 

Business groups also are stepping up their attacks on the package, warning congressional Democrats about its overall costs, potential effects on inflation and $800 billion in corporate tax increases.

Manchin still hasn't agreed to the specifics of Biden's plan to spend $555 billion to combat climate change. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer convened a call today with senators who participated in COP26, where they discussed how climate provisions in both bills were well received in Glasgow. During the call, the senators also strategized about how to get Manchin to agree to Biden's climate provisions — a recognition they have more work to do.

Driving the news: Prices rose 0.9% from last month for an annual inflation rate of 6.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The president labeled it "worrisome, even though wages are going up." He told a crowd in Baltimore: "[O]n the good side, we're seeing the highest growth rate in decades, the fastest decrease in unemployment ... since 1950."

White House chief of staff Ron Klain tried to couch Biden's spending plan as a long-term strategy to lower inflation. "What it does is it makes sure that our federal spending meets the things that families really need: bringing down the cost of child care, bringing down the cost of drugs, bringing down the cost of elder care, bringing down the cost of preschool, cutting taxes for middle-class families," he told CNN's Jake Tapper:

Between the lines: Manchin has been warning about inflation since the summer. He's argued Congress should take a “strategic pause” on the bigger package until Congress had more time to assess the effects of the nearly $5 trillion COVID stimulus spending in 2020 and earlier this year. His statements on Wednesday amounted to an I-told-you-so. 

“By all accounts, the threat posed by record inflation to the American people is not ‘transitory’ and is instead getting worse,” Manchin said. “From the grocery store to the gas pump, Americans know the inflation tax is real and D.C. can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day.”

 

Here's the hard truth.

 

Manchin has been calling the shots on this since July, folks. 

He's got the bill he wants, and now he can keep the BBB plan in the basement and torture it for months. He had the most hard and soft leverage in the fight, and the most willingness to use that leverage to accomplish his own goals.

It's time to ask Manchin what his future plans are, because he definitely has them. He's the Democratic version of John McCain, and McCain had his national ambitions too.

Just saying.

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

Five Thirty Eight's Hakeem Jefferson and Michael Tesler dive into why racist White Republicans will vote for Black Republican candidates over any Democrat whatsoever, and yeah, tribal loyalty in the Trump cult is definitely a thing if you haven't been keeping up with, I dunno, the last 5 years of politics.

Can white voters who back a Black candidate still hold racist beliefs and views?

That question has come to the fore in the wake of Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial victory in the blueish state of Virginia. Conservatives were quick to counter claims that Youngkin’s win represented the effectiveness of stoking racial fears with results from Virginia’s down-ballot election for lieutenant governor — a contest where the Republican candidate, Winsome Sears, made history by becoming the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, for example, emphatically mocked the notion that “voters called white supremacists elected a Black Lt. Gov.” Conservative commentators on Fox News and Twitter, including Sears herself, also used the historic victory as an ostensible shield against accusations of Republican racism.

But supporting a Black candidate hardly precludes voters from harboring racist beliefs and motivations. Republicans are increasingly more likely than Democrats to hold prejudiced views of minorities, so Black Republicans like Sears often draw especially strong support from white Americans with otherwise anti-Black views simply because they draw most of their support from Republican voters.

A clear example of this was in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, when Ben Carson made a bid to become the GOP’s first African American presidential nominee. Support for Carson was positively correlated with the belief that Black Americans have too much influence on U.S. politics, according to data from Washington University in St. Louis’s American Panel Survey (TAPS) in late 2015.

Whites who thought African Americans had “far too little” influence disliked Carson and preferred Hillary Clinton by 60 percentage points in a hypothetical general election matchup. Meanwhile, Carson was very popular among whites who were most concerned about African Americans having “too much” influence in politics. So much so that whites who thought African Americans have “far too much” influence preferred Carson to Clinton by 45 points.

Again, much of that relationship is down to partisanship — Republicans are more likely to hold prejudiced views and also more likely to support a Republican candidate. But that’s the point: For many white GOP voters, anti-Black views don’t seem to get in the way of supporting a Black Republican.

You can see a similar pattern in the January 2016 American National Election Studies Pilot Study. Carson received more favorable evaluations among the sizable minority (40 percent) of overtly prejudiced whites who agreed with the racist stereotype that “most African Americans are more violent than most whites.” This group rated Carson significantly more favorably on a 0-100 scale than the white moderate Republican presidential candidate, Jeb Bush (52 to 39, respectively). Then-candidate Donald Trump was the only politician in the survey who was rated higher than Carson among overtly prejudiced whites.1

The contrast between how prejudiced whites rated Carson and Obama is rather revealing, as well. The sharp negative relationship between support for Obama and the endorsement of anti-Black stereotypes is consistent with several studies showing that prejudice was an unusually strong predictor of opposition to Obama from the 2008 election through the end of his presidency. These patterns also fit well with other political science research showing that racially prejudiced whites tend to be more opposed to Black Democrats than to white Democrats.

To make sense of why racially prejudiced white Americans are willing to support some Black candidates, it is worth considering why they so strongly oppose Black Democrats in the first place. Given the racialized nature of the two-party system in the United States, most Black political candidates are Democrats who embrace liberal positions on issues of race and justice. When asked whether they would support such a candidate, research shows that racially prejudiced white voters worry that these candidates will represent the interests of Black Americans, both because of a shared African American identity and because Democrats are perceived as the party more supportive of Black interests. So, it makes sense that racially resentful white Americans oppose candidates like Obama, as his racial identity and partisanship signaled to voters that he was more supportive of Black interests than prior presidents.

Put another way: Racially prejudiced white voters are not opposed to Black candidates simply because they are Black, but because they believe that most Black candidates will fight for “those people” and not “people like us.”

 

Yep.

 

It's the "those people" rule again.

It's why white voters, especially white women, abandoned Hillary Clinton in 2016 and a big part of why Trump won.

Racist Republicans love candidates that will fight for white folk and actuvely hurt Black and brown folk. Trump and Carson were the candidates who were best seen as making these racist views not only permissible, but possible as US policy.

They saw Hillary as a race traitor, more interested in helping Black America than white America. Winsome Sears on the other hand is a Black former Marine and small businesswoman openly posing with a rifle in her arms, and she won easily. (Same went for Jenean Hampton here in KY in 2015).

Permission to be racist is what they want, and you don't get much more permission to be a racist than "Well I voted for Virginia/Kentucky's first Black woman Lieutenant Governor and she won, so we're clearly not racists, YOU ARE, LIBTARD!"

That's it. That's what they want, that's what they got. Useful idiots serving the cause of white supremacy by bowing down to it, no matter how many of their own they hurt. A Black woman advancing the cause of white America? That's how it should be, to the Trump cultists.

They couldn't be happier.

StupidiNews!

• As Americans observe Veteran's Day, the Pentagon is allowing the public to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for the first time in 96 years to commemorate the Tomb's centennial.
• New Jersey state Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney has conceded last week's race to Republican Ed Durr in a close race.
• US climate envoy John Kerry and China have issued a joint agreement to lower emissions and protect forests at this year's COP26 Glasgow climate summit.
• US Secretary of State Tony Blinken says America and its allies would "take action" if China directed military action towards Taiwan.
• As federal vaccine mandate rules continue to face court battles, the Biden administration says that private sector and local government mandates have lowered the number of unvaccinated by 40%.
  

Last Call For Sinema Verite', Con't

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some projects could begin in the next couple of months.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

Ban 'Em, Burn 'Em, Kansas Style

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

And he's demonstrably wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Retribution Execution, Con't

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

StupidiNews!

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

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Team Trump is in absolute panic mode over the National Archives turning over Trump regime documents to the January 6th Committee this week and are now in the "throw things at the wall to see what falls into the gears to gum them up" phase of legal battling.

If you blinked you missed it.

Former President Donald Trump filed an emergency request to a federal judge late Monday night to prevent the National Archives from sending sensitive records to Jan. 6 committee investigators by Friday. And just after midnight, Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected it, contending the request itself was legally defective and “premature.”

The unusual exchange, which happened in a span of two hours, comes as Chutkan is already considering an earlier request by Trump to prevent Congress from peering into his White House’s records about his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Trump sued to block the National Archives from turning the records over last month, after President Joe Biden declined to assert executive privilege on his behalf. The Archives indicated it would turn the papers over to lawmakers by Friday, unless a court intervened.

Chutkan heard arguments in the suit last week and promised to rule quickly on Trump’s initial emergency request. But she seemed inclined to reject it, questioning the legal basis for a former president to claim executive privilege over records when the sitting president and Congress disagree.

The National Archives has indicated that Trump is seeking to block at least 750 pages out of an initial 1,500 unearthed in response to the Jan. 6 committee’s request for records about the former president’s effort to overturn the election. Many of those papers are culled from the files of senior Trump aides like Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller and Patrick Philbin. They also include call and visitor logs.

Trump’s attorney, Jesse Binnall, issued his second request Monday night, asking Chutkan to approve an “administrative stay” of her own ruling even before she issued it. That way, Binnall argued, Trump would have a chance to appeal her decision before the Archives began delivering hundreds of pages to congressional investigators.

Binnall also warned Chutkan that if she didn’t rule on Trump’s first request by Wednesday, he would go immediately to the appeals court and ask it to step in. He noted that Thursday is Veterans Day and that the National Archives plans to send Trump’s papers to Congress at 6 p.m. Friday.

“This case should be decided after thorough but expeditious consideration pursuant to America’s judicial review process, both before this Court and on appeal, not by a race against the clock,” Binnall wrote.

But the request baffled legal experts, who said judges have no power to preemptively block rulings they haven’t issued yet. They noted Chutkan is already moving on an urgent timeline to consider Trump’s initial request and that it was odd for the former president to threaten to go to the appeals court before seeing Chutkan’s decision.

 

Me, I fully expect the National Archives to be blocked by an appeals court injunction this week and for the case to go before SCOTUS.  There's no way the National Archives gets the documents to the January 6th Committee without a court fight.

We'll see how it shakes out, but I expect Trump's appointed judges will eventually save Trump from himself again.

The Rent Is Too Damn High, Con't

Tons of local ordinances were voted on last week, including a rent control vote that passed overwhelmingly in St. Paul. Within a day of the vote passing, limiting rent increases in the city to 3% a year, developers called city hall to tell the city that planned new apartment units would be placed on hold indefinitely and that they would look to the outer Twin Cities suburbs to build.

 

Less than 24 hours after St. Paul voters approved one of the country's most stringent rent control policies, Nicolle Goodman's phone started to ring. Developers were calling to tell the city's director of planning and economic development they were placing projects on hold, putting hundreds of new housing units at risk.

"We don't want our equity goals to be at odds with our growth goals," Goodman said in a presentation to the City Council Wednesday. "The ordinance as written may actually put those goals at odds."

Voters' decision Tuesday to cap annual rent increases at 3% sent developers into a frenzy, prompting some with stakes in Minnesota's capital city to pause projects or reconsider sites for future housing.

Unlike most cities with rent control, St. Paul will not exempt new construction, which opponents argue will force lenders and developers to look outside the city for spots where they feel more confident that they will recoup investments and earn profits.

"We, like everybody else, are re-evaluating what — if any — future business activity we'll be doing in St. Paul," said Jim Stolpestad, who has worked on developments in St. Paul for 30 years as founder of Exeter, the company behind major projects like Grand Avenue's revamped retail corridor and new luxury apartments in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood.

It's a sobering prospect as major redevelopments, including the Hillcrest Golf Club and Boys Totem Town sites, enter critical planning stages. At the Highland Bridge site, where construction is well underway, Ryan Companies was scheduled to submit three building plans to the city this week — but Tony Barranco, Ryan's north region president, said Wednesday those reviews have been postponed indefinitely in light of the referendum's outcome.

Ryan Companies warned before Election Day that the rent control ordinance could prevent them from finding investors for the 760 affordable housing units the city pledged to bring to the former Ford site.

"If our banking partners won't loan us dollars to build the buildings that are planned as market rate because they can more safely lend their dollars elsewhere, we will not be able to build the market rate projects" that help subsidize affordable housing, Barranco said.

Supporters of rent control, led by a grassroots coalition that petitioned to put the ordinance on the ballot, say developers are making empty threats.

"This happens in every city where new regulations are passed … because they want to scare the city into changing the ordinance," said Tram Hoang, campaign manager for Housing Equity Now St. Paul, which led the ballot measure push

Ramsey County Commissioner Trista MatasCastillo, who voted for rent control, said she believes St. Paul's population and need for development will ultimately win out.

"I don't think development will stall," she said. "But there will be some kinks that need to get worked out."

 

I think this is the most likely outcome, but understand that the problem with affordable housing is that when you add to the supply of it, it lowers the value of existing housing.

There are people who will fight that with every fiber of their being. Not all of them are housing developers, either.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

As expected, the House January 6th Committee has issued another round of Trump regime subpoenas, including ones for former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Trump coup memo author/lawyer John Eastman.

The House select committee investigating the deadly January 6 riot on Capitol Hill announced Monday it is issuing six additional subpoenas to top Trump campaign associates as it continues to seek testimony and documents from key witnesses in the sweeping probe. 

With this round of subpoenas, the committee is targeting top individuals from former President Trump's reelection campaign who the panel says were involved in promoting the lie that the presidential election was stolen. 

The six subpoenas are going to:

• Trump 2020 campaign manager William Stepien
• Former senior adviser to the campaign Jason Miller
• John Eastman, an attorney who helped craft Trump's argument that the election was stolen
• Michael Flynn, who was involved in meeting about how the Trump campaign wanted to promote the lie that the election was stolen
• Angela McCallum, national executive assistant to former President Trump's 2020 reelection campaign
• Bernard Kerik, who participated in a meeting at the Willard Hotel centered around overturing election results.

All six individuals are being asked to supply the committee with documents on November 23, with depositions scheduled spanning the last week of November into mid December. 

"In the days before the January 6th attack, the former President's closest allies and advisors drove a campaign of misinformation about the election and planned ways to stop the count of Electoral College votes," Select Committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson said in a statement. "The Select Committee needs to know every detail about their efforts to overturn the election, including who they were talking to in the White House and in Congress, what connections they had with rallies that escalated into a riot, and who paid for it all."

Thompson added: "The Select Committee expects all witnesses to cooperate with our investigation as we work to get answers for the American people, recommend changes to our laws that will strengthen our democracy, and help ensure nothing like January 6th ever happens again." 

I absolutely want to see Flynn and Kerik refuse to cooperate and end up back in the clink.

The real villain here though is John Eastman, the legal eagle behind the coup itself. Everyone else was executing Eastman's plan, which is why he's so eager to deny it.

Still, the elephant in the room remains Steve Bannon, referred for criminal prosecution for refusing to cooperate with the January 6th Committee and still a free man, with AG Merrick Garland simply saying that it's a "criminal matter".

It's criminal that Bannon isn't in a steel box right now.