Last Call For The Road To Gilead, Con't

This will change the moment we get a GOP president again, but the FDA is approving abortion pills on a permanent basis for use up to ten weeks of pregnancy for women. The larger issue: the second we get a GOP Congress and a GOP president, this goes away in a post-Roe world, and abortion medicine has already been criminalized in 19 states.

 

The federal government on Thursday permanently lifted a major restriction on access to abortion pills. It will allow patients to receive the medication by mail instead of requiring them to obtain the pills in person from specially certified health providers.

The decision, by the Food and Drug Administration, comes as the Supreme Court is considering whether to roll back abortion rights or even overturn its landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that made abortion legal nationwide.

The F.D.A.’s action means that medication abortion, an increasingly common method authorized in the United States for pregnancies up to 10 weeks’ gestation, will become more available to women who find it difficult to travel to an abortion provider or prefer to terminate a pregnancy in the privacy of their homes. It allows patients to have a telemedicine appointment with a provider who can prescribe abortion pills and send them to the patient by mail.

Earlier this year, for the duration of the pandemic, the F.D.A. temporarily lifted the in-person requirement on mifepristone, the first of two drugs used to end a pregnancy. The decision to make this change permanent is likely to deepen the already polarizing divisions between conservative and liberal states on abortion. In 19 states, mostly in the South and the Midwest, telemedicine visits for medication abortion are banned, and these and other conservative states can be expected to pass other laws to further curtail access to abortion pills.

Yet other states, like California and New York, which have taken steps in recent years to further solidify abortion rights, are expected to increase the availability of the method and provide opportunities for women in states with restrictions to obtain abortion pills by traveling to a state that allows them.

“It’s really significant,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University. “Telehealth abortions are much easier for both providers and patients, and even in states that want to do it, there have been limits on how available it is.”

So far this year, presumably in anticipation of such a decision, six states banned the mailing of pills, seven states passed laws requiring pills to be obtained in person from a provider, and four states passed laws to set the limit on medication abortion at earlier than 10 weeks’ gestation, said Elizabeth Nash, the interim associate director of state issues for the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.

The current practice is that women who live in states that don’t allow telemedicine for abortion must travel to a state that does — although they don’t have to visit a clinic. They may be in any location within that state for their telehealth visit, even a car, and may receive the pills at any address in the state.

But legal experts said they expected supporters of abortion rights to try to find ways to make the pills available without requiring a patient to travel, including possibly filing legal challenges to state laws banning telemedicine for abortion.

In data released last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 42 percent of all abortions — and 54 percent of abortions before 10 weeks — occurred with medication in 2019, the most recent year for which C.D.C. data is available. (The report represents most of the country, but does not include data from California, Maryland and New Hampshire.)

In 2020, some states, including Indiana, Kansas and Minnesota, the method accounts for a majority of abortions, according to state health department reports.

 

This will be criminalized in as many states as possible in the months ahead. Remember, the point is to drive women into second-class citizenship again, and making them dependent on neckbearded incels for anything approaching rights.

This is a good thing the FDA did here, unalloyed, but it will be regulated or criminalized out of existence, along with a lot of other things we're currently taking for granted as "rights".

You only have rights as far as five Supreme Court justices say you do, and that has been the case all your life.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

The Atlantic's Ed Yong, who has been covering COVID for two years now, warns us that COVID Omicron will be the worst wave of the disease yet, and with tens of millions of American simply bored or wary or masking, social distancing, and vaccines, hundreds of thousands are going to die this winter as Republicans and Trump Cultists fail the country again.

Omicron’s main threat is its shocking speed, as my colleague Sarah Zhang has reported. In South Africa, every infected person has been passing the virus on to 3–3.5 other people—at least twice the pace at which Delta spread in the summer. Similarly, British data suggest that Omicron is twice as good at spreading within households as Delta. That might be because the new variant is inherently more transmissible than its predecessors, or because it is specifically better at moving through vaccinated populations. Either way, it has already overtaken Delta as the dominant variant in South Africa. Soon, it will likely do the same in Scotland and Denmark. Even the U.S., which has much poorer genomic surveillance than those other countries, has detected Omicron in 35 states. “I think that a large Omicron wave is baked in,” Bedford told me. “That’s going to happen.”

More positively, Omicron cases have thus far been relatively mild. This pattern has fueled the widespread claim that the variant might be less severe, or even that its rapid spread could be a welcome development. “People are saying ‘Let it rip’ and ‘It’ll help us build more immunity,’ that this is the exit wave and everything’s going to be fine and rosy after,” Richard Lessells, an infectious-disease physician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, told me. “I have no confidence in that.”

To begin with, as he and others told me, that argument overlooks a key dynamic: Omicron might not actually be intrinsically milder. In South Africa and the United Kingdom, it has mostly infected younger people, whose bouts of COVID-19 tend to be less severe. And in places with lots of prior immunity, it might have caused few hospitalizations or deaths simply because it has mostly infected hosts with some protection, as Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University, explained in a Twitter thread. That pattern could change once it reaches more vulnerable communities. (The widespread notion that viruses naturally evolve to become less virulent is mistaken, as the virologist Andrew Pekosz of Johns Hopkins University clarified in The New York Times.) Also, deaths and hospitalizations are not the only fates that matter. Supposedly “mild” bouts of COVID-19 have led to cases of long COVID, in which people struggle with debilitating symptoms for months (or even years), while struggling to get care or disability benefits.

And even if Omicron is milder, greater transmissibility will likely trump that reduced virulence. Omicron is spreading so quickly that a small proportion of severe cases could still flood hospitals. To avert that scenario, the variant would need to be substantially milder than Delta—especially because hospitals are already at a breaking point. Two years of trauma have pushed droves of health-care workers, including many of the most experienced and committed, to quit their job. The remaining staff is ever more exhausted and demoralized, and “exceptionally high numbers” can’t work because they got breakthrough Delta infections and had to be separated from vulnerable patients, John Lowe told me. This pattern will only worsen as Omicron spreads, if the large clusters among South African health-care workers are any indication. “In the West, we’ve painted ourselves into a corner because most countries have huge Delta waves and most of them are stretched to the limit of their health-care systems,” Emma Hodcroft, an epidemiologist at the University of Bern, in Switzerland, told me. “What happens if those waves get even bigger with Omicron?”

The Omicron wave won’t completely topple America’s wall of immunity but will seep into its many cracks and weaknesses. It will find the 39 percent of Americans who are still not fully vaccinated (including 28 percent of adults and 13 percent of over-65s). It will find other biologically vulnerable people, including elderly and immunocompromised individuals whose immune systems weren’t sufficiently girded by the vaccines. It will find the socially vulnerable people who face repeated exposures, either because their “essential” jobs leave them with no choice or because they live in epidemic-prone settings, such as prisons and nursing homes. Omicron is poised to speedily recap all the inequities that the U.S. has experienced in the pandemic thus far.

Here, then, is the problem: People who are unlikely to be hospitalized by Omicron might still feel reasonably protected, but they can spread the virus to those who are more vulnerable, quickly enough to seriously batter an already collapsing health-care system that will then struggle to care for anyone—vaccinated, boosted, or otherwise. The collective threat is substantially greater than the individual one. And the U.S. is ill-poised to meet it.

 

Yong's theory is that this is a bipartisan failure, when it's clearly not. It is Trump's fault, it is the GOP's fault, it is the fault of Republican state legislatures and Republican governors destroying protections and criminalizing precautions and the Right-Wing Noise Machine cheering them on while screaming THE VACCINE WILL MAKE YOUR DICK FALL OFF to tens of millions.

 

But sadly, the result remains the same. Another pandemic wave will kill hundreds of thousands, and most of America will wonder why the disease won't go away while doing nothing to prevent it, because that's somebody else's job.

Sinema Verite, Con't

As President Joe Manchin finally enters into talks about getting possible filibuster reform rules for voting rights legislation through the Senate, Vice President Kyrsten Sinema stepped in Wednesday night to effectively kill any hope of either passing.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) is doubling down on her support for the 60-vote legislative filibuster, throwing a wrench into a frantic, last-ditch effort to get a deal to change the Senate's rules before the end of the year.

Her statement on the topic comes as a group of Democratic negotiators tasked with leading the discussions have been holding a flurry of behind-the-scenes talks about how to change the rules and break the stalemate on long-stalled voting rights legislation.

But while Sinema is making it clear that she supports voting and election reform bills that have been blocked by GOP senators, she is also standing by her support for keeping the 60-vote legislative filibuster and warning against a carve-out from the rule for voting rights.

John LaBombard, a spokesman for Sinema, said that she "continues to support the Senate's 60-vote threshold" which she believes would "protect the country from repeated radical reversals in federal policy which would cement uncertainty, deepen divisions, and further erode Americans’ confidence in our government."

"Senator Sinema has asked those who want to weaken or eliminate the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation which she supports, if it would be good for our country to do so," LaBombard said, if a weakened filibuster was then used to pass "nationwide voter-ID law, nationwide restrictions on vote-by-mail, or other voting restrictions currently passing in some states extended nationwide."

Sinema's statement comes as Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Angus King (I-Maine), who is a member of the Democratic caucus, have been holding talks for weeks to try to come up with a plan to change the Senate's rules that could win over all 50 Senate Democrats.

The discussions have hit new urgency as Democrats are facing the growing chance that they reach the end of the year with President Biden's Build Back Better (BBB) bill in limbo, and without a clear path forward on voting rights legislation, despite activists and many senators viewing it as a top priority.

Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is also getting pressure from within the caucus to move voting rights legislation. But because 10 GOP senators are not expected to support a bill, the only way for it to get through the Senate is with a rules change on the filibuster.

 

You have to admit it's a great scam: Manchin "relents" and then Sinema plays the bad guy for a while, then they switch off a couple of weeks later. They've been doing this for six months now, and there's no reason to believe that anything else is going to pass the Senate. This will continue until Dems charge Trump Republicans with federal crimes and make Manchin and Sinema's nuclear option of switching caucuses untenable.

 

 

I repeat…

the games being played by Sinema & Manchin are only viable in a scenario where defection to the GOP is an option.

If the GOP was in serious legal jeopardy, w/cascading indictments & a serious hit to their fundraising,

defection wouldn’t be a threat. S&M would chill

— Pam Keith, Esq. (@PamKeithFL) December 16, 2021

They'll get away with it until that happens.

StupidiNews!

• Broward County, Florida's Parkland school district has reached a $26 million settlement with the victims and families of the 17 killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February 2018.
• The House Transportation committee has found that Donald Trump's multi-million dollar loan from the federal government to buy the now sold DC Old Post Office was a massive mess.
• Canada is the latest country to issue international travel warnings as COVID Omicron continues to spread across the globe.
• Sen. Ron Wyden has blocked legislation to ban US imports of Chinese goods made with Uyghur detainee labor after Sen. Marco Rubio objected to Wyden' child tax credit amendment.
• Internet security experts are scrambling to plug a major exploit in the latest patch of logging utility Log4J, used by thousands of companies on the internet.
  

Last Call For Climate Of Disaster, Kentucky Edition

As President Biden tours the massive damage here in Kentucky, here's a reminder that the sheer cost of clean-up from Saturday's tornado outbreak here in the Bluegrass state is going to run in the hundreds of millions of dollars at the minimum, if not billions.

Kentucky’s recovery from last weekend’s historic tornado outbreak will take “months if not years,” and cost “hundreds of millions of dollars,” according to public officials and experts who are still assessing the full scale of the loss and damage.

“Tens of thousands are still dealing with water, gas, or power outages. Families are in shock and grief over the loss of loved ones,” said Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday. “Rebuilding the areas of Kentucky leveled by this storm will take months, if not years, to complete.”

On Monday, Gov. Andy Beshear said he expected the price tag of a full recovery to be “in the hundreds of millions of dollars at least.”

But the exact amount won’t be known for a while, as government officials and emergency workers continue to focus on searches for the more than 100 who are still missing and providing shelter, food and medical attention to those who have been displaced. The death toll in Kentucky remains at 74.

McConnell reported that at Fort Campbell, FEMA has already supplied 61 generators, 74,000 meals, 135,000 liters of water and thousands of cots and blankets.

“Kentucky will come back from this bigger and better than ever before,” McConnell said. “I will make sure the Senate provides all the assistance we can to make that a reality.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told NPR that food, water, communications and shelter were the primary needs of Kentucky residents following his visit to the state.

“We have been going family to family, individual to individual to learn what has happened to each individual and what we can do about it,” Mayorkas said. But he cautioned that several of the hardest hit portions of western Kentucky will require patience for long-term rebuilding efforts.

“Homes need to be rebuilt, schools need to be operating once again, businesses need to be rebuilt and restarted. It really means building a community from the ground up,” he said.

 

It's mildly perverse that McConnell is promising aid, he's not the Senate Majority Leader at all and really has no say in what legislation comes up, but he could sure block aid if he wanted to. At least for his state, he won't. That would be too much even for him to keep his job.

 

He'll block billions for the rest of the country though, count on that. 

He'll also block any climate change and coal plant regulation, so we'll get to repeat this dance until it kills enough people for us to vote people like him out of the Senate, I guess.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

We have a pretty good idea why former Trump WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows stopped cooperating with the January 6th Committee and is now facing a Contempt of Congress charge: he was right in the middle of Trump's organized coup to steal the 2020 election. David Corn:

As Trump’s brownshirts stormed the citadel of American democracy, Meadows received a flow of messages and cries for help from people inside the Capitol, including legislators. One text informed him, “We are under siege here at the Capitol.” Another read, “They have breached the Capitol.” And another: “Mark, protesters are literally storming the Capitol. Breaking windows on doors. Rushing in. Is Trump going to say something?” A fourth exclaimed, “There’s an armed standoff at the House Chamber door.” A fifth: “We are all helpless.”

Dozens—dozens—of texts, including some from Trump administration officials, pleaded for action. “POTUS has to come out firmly and tell protesters to dissipate. Someone is going to get killed.” “Mark, he needs to stop this. Now.” “TELL THEM TO GO HOME.” “POTUS needs to calm this sh*t down.” Donald Trump Jr. texted Meadows, “He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP.” Meadows replied, “I’m pushing hard. I agree.” But when Trump took no such steps, Trump Jr. texted Meadows repeatedly. In one message, he urged, “We need an Oval Office address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.”

Fox News hosts also pushed Meadows for action from Trump. Laura Ingraham texted, “Mark, the President needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.” Brian Kilmeade beseeched, “Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished.” And Sean Hannity sent a message: “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.”

What a dramatic afternoon. Meadows was being besieged by lawmakers, fellow Trump officials, the stars of Fox News, and the president’s eldest son. Why would he leave all this out of his book? It’s gripping. It’s suspenseful. And why not reveal to his readers how he reacted to these pleas and what he did—or didn’t do—in response?

Meadows in the book presents no information to counter the impression Trump purposefully dawdled to see if the riot might work to his advantage and forestall the certification of Biden’s win. He does not address the various reports that cast Trump in a dark light: that Trump was practically giddy as he watched the violence on television, that when House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy urged Trump to intervene to halt the rampaging, he replied, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

Meadows is hiding what happened in the White House on January 6. It’s no wonder he does not want to testify. Trump’s failure to act that day—to heed all those pleas—is also Meadows’ failure.

This book is disinformation. Meadows peddles Trump’s propaganda. “I knew he didn’t lose,” Meadows declares of Trump and the 2020 election. How did he know this? The “excitement of the people” at Trump’s campaign rallies had been “palpable.” He says he had “spoken with dozens of peoples during those rallies” and they were “thrilled to be together.” (They were also “some of the kindest, most generous people I had ever met.”)

He accuses unnamed Democrats of conspiring before Election Day to use fraudulent votes to lock in a Biden victory—without providing any evidence of this plot. He claims there were “thousands of allegations of widespread fraud.” He writes that Trump only raised “legitimate concerns about the way our elections are run,” not bizarre rumors or speculation. And he maintains that Democrats—again, unnamed—had a plan not only to rig the election but to cover up their skullduggery: they used allies within the media to deride Trump claims of ballot fraud as nothing but unhinged conspiracy theories. And, Meadows contends, the media had been preparing for this moment for years by branding Trump and his supporters as crazy and paranoid. “[I]t became clear that the media’s plan—the ‘long con’—had worked,” he writes. “Soon, anyone who had questions about the election was labeled a nutcase.” Get it? The media had been painting Trump and his crew as kooks so that when the Dems steal the election and the Trumpers protest, no one will believe them. That was diabolical.

With his book, Meadows is conning the public. He won’t testify before Congress, but he’s peddling this collection of untruths and non-truths, rehashing Trump’s I-was-robbed swill for his audience of Trump die-hards. Still, Meadows is holding back on them. He’s not telling them—and the world—what he and their champion did on perhaps the most consequential day of Trump’s presidency. Perhaps that’s to be expected. The texts hint at negligence and malfeasance. And what Trump fan is going to pay $28 for that?

 

Meadows went from cooperation to contempt in under two weeks, but the information he did turn over was absolutely damning and contradicts the book he put out earlier. The combination was untenable and he's now on the outside looking in. Besides, at this point the January 6th Committee doesn't need him any longer. 

I just hope we're able to get these charges done before the Committee is forced to disband.  It will have to stop at the end of next year regardless of whether it's restarted again in January 2023.

The Big Lie Comes To Your Door

Trump Big Lie Cultists are conducting their own "audit" of voters, armed with voter registration information, going door-to-door in order to "check" to make sure there's not millions of illegal voters in your attic.

Across the country, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory internet is manifesting itself into knocks at the door. Individual election deniers and grassroots groups are canvassing for election fraud in states lost or even won by former president Donald Trump in 2020, including New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, and Nebraska. Despite 60-plus court losses and countless official audits and recounts confirming the 2020 election results, many of Trump’s supporters are still so convinced of his lies that they’ve turned to this kind of vigilantism.

It’s all part of a broader effort by Trump supporters — emboldened and given tacit support by Republican Party leaders — to deny the 2020 election results at all costs and cast doubt on elections going forward. When a contractor working on the Arizona Senate’s partisan and farcical “audit” proposed a similar door-knocking scheme last spring, the Justice Department warned that it could violate federal laws on voter intimidation. The Senate backed off, but volunteers did the canvass anyway and put out a sloppy report alleging all kinds of fraud without evidence to back it up. Though reporters quickly debunked their claims — including finding a house on the alleged “vacant” property gracing the report’s cover — the Arizona canvass results went viral on right-wing social media and have inspired copycats.

A member of the far-right Three Percenters militant group is helping lead the canvassing effort in Colorado, where a leader suggested volunteers carrying firearms could help secure the group as they went door-to-door, according to the Colorado Times Recorder. The Utah Voter Verification Project is requiring its volunteer canvassers to sign NDAs before they canvass and has instructed them to record their interactions with voters, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The sheriff’s office in Buffalo County, Nebraska, posted on Facebook on Nov. 4, warning about similar canvassing efforts and telling voters that the canvassers were not official or affiliated with the county.

The New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group claims to be nonpartisan. Its founder, Marylyn Todd, a 37-year-old from Nashua, told BuzzFeed News in an interview that she is registered as an independent. Todd claimed in a Facebook message that “many” of their canvassers voted for President Joe Biden, but would not name them or connect them with BuzzFeed News. Todd also said that she has expanded canvassing across the state, focusing on towns where the group believes there is the most potential fraud, but she declined to name the towns they’ve visited. The group, she said, “is just trying to get to the bottom of the truth, nothing more, nothing less.”

Members of the group credit Dean, whose last name Todd declined to provide, with creating the app they use to track down voters. (Dean did not respond to questions messaged to his Telegram account nor to questions Todd said she shared with him via email.) The app is designed with a free site that Democrats have used in the past to canvass voters before an election. The app shows canvassers where to find nearby voters, as well as their addresses, whether they voted in 2020, if they voted in person or absentee, and whether they registered to vote same-day. The app asks canvassers to confirm that information and, if they find any discrepancies, to get voters to sign an affidavit and mail it to a P.O. box.

Todd said they are sharing those affidavits with members of the state legislature, “many” of whom are interested in their findings, but declined to provide names. She described affidavits the group collected from two households alleging election misconduct, but declined to share any names or details that could be fact-checked, citing the affiants’ privacy. The Trump campaign used affidavits as part of its failed legal strategy to challenge the 2020 election and held up the sworn statements to try to add some legitimacy to its bogus fraud claims, but, as the Washington Post noted at the time, many of those affidavits were never filed in court and the ones that were filed were often thrown out.

 

So let's call this what it is: mass voter intimidation of Democratic voters on a multi-state scale, of tens, if not hundreds of thousands or more of registered Democrats, with the intent of these assholes trying to accuse Biden voters of fraud.

That's the entire point.

It's a message that if you are a registered Democrat, Trump Cultists know who you are, and know where you live.

It should be ludicrously illegal, but it's not.

Therein lies the problem.

StupidiNews!

• The World Health Organization is warning that COVID Omicron variant is the fastest-spreading variant of the disease so far, and that countries need to take social distancing seriously.
• Members of a German anti-vaccine terrorist group were arrested this week in a plot to assassinate the Prime Minister of the German state of Saxony over COVID lockdowns.
• A federal judge has thrown out Donald Trump's legal case to block release of his tax returns to Congress, citing that Trump's defense gave no valid reason to stop the release.
• All but two House Republicans, January 6th Committee members Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, voted against contempt charges for former Trump WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows last night.
• OSHA officials are now investigating Amazon over last weekend's tornado disaster where warehouse workers were told they would be fired if they left the work floor to seek shelter.
  

Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

The Associated Press deep a deep dive on all potential cases of voter fraud in the five battleground states that the Trump regime swears were all stolen from him, and found at most 475 out of 300,000+ votes that Biden won by in those states, which is of course, nowhere near enough to swing anything to Trump's column.

An Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by former President Donald Trump has found fewer than 475 — a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election.

Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral College votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president. The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states.

The cases could not throw the outcome into question even if all the potentially fraudulent votes were for Biden, which they were not, and even if those ballots were actually counted, which in most cases they were not.

The review also showed no collusion intended to rig the voting. Virtually every case was based on an individual acting alone to cast additional ballots.

The findings build on a mountain of other evidence that the election wasn’t rigged, including verification of the results by Republican governors.

The AP review, a process that took months and encompassed more than 300 local election offices, is one the most comprehensive examinations of suspected voter fraud in last year’s presidential election. It relies on information collected at the local level, where officials must reconcile their ballots and account for discrepancies, and includes a handful of separate cases cited by secretaries of state and state attorneys general.

 

The closest Trump got was in Arizona, where there were 198 possibly suspicious votes and Biden's margin was over ten thousand, meaning it wasn't even 2% of what Trump needed. 

Anyone who tells you that the 2020 election was stolen is at this point lying on purpose, and needs to be called out on it.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

According to Rolling Stone's Hunter Walker, the January 6th Committee has not one but two golden geese, and they're laying 24-karat eggs full of evidence to use against Trump and his fellow coup-coup birds.

 

Two key organizers of the main Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C. are coming in from the cold.

Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence are set to testify next week before the House select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The pair will deliver testimony and turn over documents, including text messages, that indicate the extensive involvement members of Congress and the Trump administration had in planning the House challenge to certifying Biden’s election and rally near the White House where Donald Trump spoke — efforts that ultimately contributed to a massive and violent attack on the Capitol.

Among the documents the couple is providing are conversations they had with staffers and members of Congress as they planned the main rally that took place on the White House Ellipse that day. Stockton described these discussions as largely logistical and focused on planning the members’ participation in objections to the electoral certification on the House floor and various events that were staged to protest against the election. They include Instagram messages Lawrence exchanged with Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) as she tried to get him to speak at the Ellipse rally. Cawthorn, whose office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, ultimately appeared onstage at that event.

“We’re turning it all over and we’ll let the cards fall where they may,” Stockton says.

It’s the latest revelation from the couple, veteran activists who have spent the better part of a decade specializing in staging political stunts while working for conservative activist groups, Republican campaigns, and Trump’s on-again-off-again strategist Steve Bannon. Stockton and Lawrence were members of the team that led the nationwide “March for Trump” bus tour, which ended with the Jan. 6 rally at the White House Ellipse. In recent weeks, Stockton and Lawrence have participated in an extensive series of interviews with Rolling Stone revealing what they knew about the day.

The pair were the sources for a story that was published in late October, when they said members of Congress were involved in planning Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and the Jan. 6 Ellipse rally. They claimed one of these lawmakers, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), suggested the possibility Trump could get them a “blanket pardon” in an unrelated ongoing investigation if they helped protest the election. (Gosar later suggested that story was “categorically false and defamatory.”) Stockton and Lawrence also say they were told that Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had communicated with the organizers and was warned about concerns of potential violence.

Nothing in the documents viewed by Rolling Stone or the couple’s statements revealed any planning for, or coordination with, the violent attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters.

Stockton and Lawrence spoke to Rolling Stone on the condition of anonymity for that story due to the ongoing investigation. Now, after receiving a subpoena from the committee, they decided to come forward and testify publicly — in Congress and in the press. The couple say they believe the public deserve answers about what went down on Jan. 6.

“The people and the history books deserve a real account of what happened,” Stockton explains. Lawrence puts it more bluntly: “Violent shit happened,” she says. “We want to get to the bottom of that.”

 

Having said all that, let's remember that Stockton and Lawrence are not the heroes here, but villains solely motivated by the self-interest of not going to prison for decades.

Behind those noble sentiments about why they’re cooperating with the committee is a hard reality: Stockton and Lawrence are running out of options.

On Nov. 22, the committee subpoenaed the pair, demanding they deliver depositions and turn over documents related to their involvement in the rally and communications with members of Trump’s team. Stockton is scheduled to testify on Tuesday, and Lawrence is due up the following day. The duo are keenly aware that Bannon, Meadows, and others who have declined to cooperate with the committee are facing federal charges for contempt of Congress. “We’ve seen what’s happened with Bannon, and we don’t have the resources that a Steve Bannon has,” Stockton says, referencing Bannon’s multimillion dollar fortune. “Our options are, in a lot of ways, limited.”

Stockton and Lawrence have spent the past few weeks on the move, switching between their R.V. and various hotels and hideouts. Apart from Louis, a greyhound-beagle mix who has accompanied them back and forth across the country, the couple have few of their old friends left. The legal drama and infighting have left them cut off from political work; Stockton is keeping them afloat with what he describes as “a variety of side hustles.”

Being caught between those on the right they think might want to silence them and a Democrat-led committee that’s hit them with subpoenas and potentially large legal bills has left them with what Stockton labels “a sense of paranoia.” The couple have packed their things up and switched locations in the middle of the night at least once when they became suspicious of a group of “paramilitary-looking” young men. When they first made contact with the committee, the meeting, they say, was a disaster that left them with real questions about who they could trust. They’ve spent most of the past few months on the run.

It’s been a long, stressful time for Stockton and Lawrence, a pair who were once rising stars in the extended MAGA universe and now find themselves looking constantly over their shoulders. For a lot of people who end up in such a tight spot, it’s tough to look back and pinpoint the moment things started to go wrong. For these two, that question has a fairly straightforward answer.

 

It's a pretty long story here, and it's important to keep in mind that these two were definitely part of a insurrectionist coup to overthrow President Joe Biden's election.

But these two may be the key to bringing all of these bastards down.

Let's hope so.

Worked To Death In Kentucky

"You'll work yourself to death or you'll die trying" is too much even for the most over-the-top trillion-dollar corporate villain, but Saturday in Kentucky, well there you have it.

As a catastrophic tornado approached this city Friday, employees of a candle factory — which would later be destroyed — heard the warning sirens and wanted to leave the building. But at least five workers said supervisors warned employees that they would be fired if they left their shifts early.

For hours, as word of the coming storm spread, as many as 15 workers beseeched managers to let them take shelter at their own homes, only to have their requests rebuffed, the workers said.

Fearing for their safety, some left during their shifts regardless of the repercussions.

At least eight people died in the Mayfield Consumer Products factory, which makes scented candles. The facility was leveled, and all that is left is rubble. Photos and videos of its widespread mangled remains have become symbols of the enormous destructive power of Friday’s tornado system.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday that 74 people were confirmed dead in the state.

McKayla Emery, 21, said in an interview from her hospital bed that workers first asked to leave shortly after tornado sirens sounded outside the factory around 5:30 p.m.

Employees congregated in bathrooms and inside hallways, but the real tornado wouldn’t arrive for several more hours. After employees decided that the immediate danger had passed, several began asking to go home, the workers said.

“People had questioned if they could leave or go home,” said Emery, who preferred to stay at work and make extra money. Overtime pay was available, but it wasn’t clear whether those who stayed were offered additional pay.

Supervisors and team leaders told employees that leaving would probably jeopardize their jobs, the employees said.

“If you leave, you’re more than likely to be fired,” Emery said she overheard managers tell four workers standing near her who wanted to leave. “I heard that with my own ears.”

 

So people stayed in order to save their job.

And then they died for it.

Nothing more American, right?

 

StupidiNews!

• The death toll from Saturday's tornado outbreak has risen to 74, with hundreds still missing across four Midwest states, as President Biden will tour the damage on Tuesday.
• The US Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to New York's vaccine mandate, with Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissenting.
• Norway is the latest EU country to enter a partial lockdown as COVID Omicron rips through Europe, officials in the country say cases could hit 300,000 per day in January.
• Donald Trump says he "expects to win" as he appeals his court loss over executive documents, a lower court said this week that Trump presented "no basis" to block the documents' release.
• Nine Minnesota hospital systems published a joint letter last weekend informing people that their ICU beds are full, and that COVID is overwhelming the state without more vaccinations.
  

Last Call For The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

With Christmas coming up and Congress about to go on break for several weeks, President Manchin is about to make his final move to kill the Biden Build Back Better move.

Sen. Joe Manchin, the most pivotal swing vote in the Senate, indicated on Monday that a significant amount of work remains to be done to earn his support for President Joe Biden's sweeping social safety net expansion, potentially delivering a fatal blow to Democratic leaders' hopes of getting the bill passed in the Senate before Christmas. 

In a critical moment for the party's agenda, Manchin is set to speak with Biden on Monday afternoon as the President tries to secure his support for the plan. But the senator, whose vote is essential to its passage, is raising serious concerns, citing issues with the proposal's reliance on temporary programs and renewing long-standing concerns over inflation that only intensified after a report last week showed a key inflation measure surging to a 39-year high. 

Manchin's comments suggest he needs to see wholesale changes to the bill, a process that could take weeks or even potentially months if he holds firm. But Democratic leaders have been racing to get the long-awaited bill done before Christmas even though the final proposal is still being written and vetted by the Senate parliamentarian.

The West Virginia Democrat, who has already accused his party of using "budget gimmicks" in drafting the plan, is now objecting to the way that Democrats are structuring the legislation, which he argues hides the true cost by relying on temporary spending that will likely become permanent. 

In a key warning sign, Manchin told CNN the bill should not rely on temporary spending that lawmakers will face pressure to extend. "I don't think that's a fair evaluation of saying we are going to spend X amount of dollars but then we are going to have to depend on coming back and finding more money ... I'm concerned about paying down debt too," he said. 

Manchin said the bill should be "within the limits of what we can afford" — and argued that lawmakers should evaluate how much it would cost to extend temporary programs in the bill for 10 years to be "transparent" about the actual price tag of the bill. Extending the programs would drive up price tag.

 

So expect even more cuts to the BBB bill, probably enough so that progressives tell Manchin to go Manchin himself, which ends the bill.

Which was the plan all along.

It's Still Nancy's World, You're Just In It

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may stay on after 2022 elections after all, in what should be a surprise to nobody, as she's been the most effective House Speaker (of either party) and House Democratic leader in general for decades.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi will stay until at least after the midterm elections, extending her nearly 20-year run as the House's top Democrat after she turns 82 and, perhaps, beyond. 

She is planning to file and run for reelection in her San Francisco district next year -- at least for now -- in keeping with her pattern of deciding about staying in Congress after the elections, when she likely will have won an 18th full term. 

And sources familiar with Pelosi's thinking say she isn't ruling out the possibility of trying to stay in leadership after 2022, despite her original vow to leave as the top House Democrat. She'll devote much of next year to raising money for Democrats as they try to hold their narrow majority, those sources tell CNN, adding to the nearly $1 billion her office calculates she has already raised for Democrats in her time as leader. 

The months of tortuous negotiations over President Joe Biden's legislative initiatives are inspiring a contradictory mix of emotions. Many House Democrats are more eager than ever to see the California Democrat go and give way to younger leadership. But even many of those same lawmakers are terrified that, without her, they will be consumed by squabbling instead of fighting back against House Republicans at a moment when the fundamentals of American democracy appear to be on the line. 

"Where do we go from here?" one member said, expressing the stress. "I don't know." 

In a series of interviews with key aides and more than two dozen House Democratic members -- across age, ideology and geography, and including Pelosi supporters and critics alike -- a portrait emerges of a leader who still commands respect, and no small measure of fear, within her caucus. (Many of those members requested anonymity to speak frankly with CNN and did not want to anger Pelosi or be seen feeding a narrative about Democratic infighting.) She shepherded Biden's Covid-19 rescue plan last spring and his massive infrastructure plan this fall, and then delivered the most transformative social spending program in generations through her chamber. Each one could be a capstone to an already historic career. 

For all the critics, I have to say, who do you think should replace her right now, or in 2023?  Steny Hoyer, maybe, but that's about it. Those who have tried have failed to make the case to the caucus that she should go.

Pelosi is still the best at her job, and I don't understand the hate.

Ukraine On The Membrane, Con't

Bemoaning the loss of the Soviet Empire, Russian President Vladimir Putin calls the collapse the "disintegration" of Russian history, and is almost certainly a warning to the G7 nations and Ukraine that Russia will have that empire back one way or another.

 

President Vladimir Putin has lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago as the demise of what he called "historical Russia" and said the economic crisis that followed was so bad he was forced to moonlight as a taxi driver.

Putin's comments, released by state TV on Sunday, are likely to further fuel speculation about his foreign policy intentions among critics, who accuse him of planning to recreate the Soviet Union and of contemplating an attack on Ukraine, a notion the Kremlin has dismissed as fear-mongering.

"It was a disintegration of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union," Putin said of the 1991 breakup, in comments aired on Sunday as part of a documentary film called "Russia. New History", the RIA state news agency reported.

"We turned into a completely different country. And what had been built up over 1,000 years was largely lost," said Putin, saying 25 million Russian people in newly independent countries suddenly found themselves cut off from Russia, part of what he called "a major humanitarian tragedy".

Putin also described for the first time how he was affected personally by the tough economic times that followed the Soviet collapse, when Russia suffered double-digit inflation.

"Sometimes (I) had to moonlight and drive a taxi. It is unpleasant to talk about this but, unfortunately, this also took place," the president said.

Putin, who served in the Soviet-era KGB, has previously called the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was ruled from Moscow, as the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century, but his new comments show how he viewed it specifically as a setback for Russian power.

Ukraine was one of 15 Soviet republics and Putin used a lengthy article published on the Kremlin website this year to set out why he believed Russia's southern neighbour and its people were an integral part of Russian history and culture. This view is rejected by Kyiv as a politically motivated and over-simplified version of history.

 

Putin pining for the old days of the Soviet empire, when he has thousands of troops and vehicles on the Ukraine border, and Ukraine's president is accusing Russia of a coup, is no accident.  It's preparing the country for recreating that empire, starting with Kyiv.

Whatever the G7 said to Putin over the weekend, he certainly doesn't seem to care.