Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Once again, if you or I announced publicly that we would not comply with a subpoena, we'd have county sheriffs, skip tracers, and US marshals saying hello. Donald Trump's kids on the other hand, well, I guess somehow they're immune to things.

Former President Trump’s eldest son and daughter have refused to comply with subpoenas issued by the New York State attorney general’s office as it conducts a civil investigation into the way the family real estate business valued its holdings.

“A dispute has arisen between the OAG and the Individual Trump Parties regarding the Subpoenas,” a document filed Monday said.

The document, filed jointly by New York Attorney General Letitia James and an attorney for the Trump Organization, said Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump will now be named as respondents in James’ ongoing inquiry, which parallels a criminal investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump will file motions to quash the subpoenas as soon as Monday, the filing indicated.

The former president and his company have denied wrongdoing and have attacked the investigation as political.

The ongoing criminal investigation has so far resulted in indictments against the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg on tax charges.

 

Keep in mind that Tish James has subpoenaed Donald Trump himself last year, and Trump has been ignoring that subpoena too. And yes, these are civil trials, where the state of New York has a lot of power to compel compliance. So far, it hasn't resulted in any action other than legal wrangling.

Of course, the elephant in the room would be the near instantaneous spate of domestic terrorism attacks caused by a Trump arrest, possibly killing thousands or more.

 

Nobody it seems is actually discussing that...

The Big Lie, Con't

A year into the Biden presidency, and the big news remains that a majority of Trump voters still believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump, and that a hefty portion of these Trump voters believe that violence is justified to "protect American values".

 

One year after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Americans are deeply pessimistic about the future of democracy.

A new NPR/Ipsos poll finds that 64% of Americans believe U.S. democracy is "in crisis and at risk of failing." That sentiment is felt most acutely by Republicans: Two-thirds of GOP respondents agree with the verifiably false claim that "voter fraud helped Joe Biden win the 2020 election" — a key pillar of the "Big Lie" that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

Fewer than half of Republicans say they are willing to accept the results of the 2020 election — a number that has remained virtually unchanged since we asked the same question last January.

"There is really a sort of dual reality through which partisans are approaching not only what happened a year ago on Jan. 6, but also generally with our presidential election and our democracy," said Mallory Newall, a vice president at Ipsos, which conducted the poll.

"It is Republicans that are driving this belief that there was major fraudulent voting and it changed the results in the election," Newall said.

Nearly two-thirds of poll respondents agree that U.S. democracy is "more at risk" now than it was a year ago. Among Republicans, that number climbs to 4 in 5.

Overall, 70% of poll respondents agree that the country is in crisis and at risk of failing.

The country can't even decide what to call the assault on the Capitol. Only 6% of poll respondents say it was "a reasonable protest" — but there is little agreement on a better description. More than half of Democrats say the Jan. 6 assault was an "attempted coup or insurrection," while Republicans are more likely to describe it as a "riot that got out of control."

Americans are bitterly divided over the events that led to Jan. 6, as well.

"I think the Democrats rigged the election," said Stephen Weber, a Republican from Woonsocket, R.I. "And who the hell would vote for Biden?"

More than 81 million people voted for Biden, compared with more than 74 million for Trump. Biden won with 306 electoral votes to 232 for Trump.

But Weber is skeptical. In a follow-up interview, Weber said he doesn't trust mail-in voting and doesn't believe that Democratic lawmakers have the country's best interests at heart.

"They want to change it to something else. We don't want it changed," he said.

Democrats also expressed dismay about the state of democracy — but for very different reasons. In follow-up interviews, they voiced concern about voting restrictions passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures in the wake of the 2020 election. And they struggled to make sense of the persistent belief in the fiction that Trump won.

"When Trump first came out with his 'big lie,' it just never occurred to me that so many Republicans would jump on board," said Susan Leonard of Lyme, N.H.

"It's like a group mental illness has hit these people," said Leonard. "I cannot believe this is happening in our country. I'm scared, I really am."

 

We're looking at tens of millions of Americans who believe that the 2020 election was somehow magically stolen from Trump, and tens of millions who believe violence is the answer to resolving that problem.

The poll found that support for false claims about election fraud and the Jan. 6 attack have been remarkably stable over time.

For example, one-third of Trump voters say the attack on the Capitol was actually carried out by "opponents of Donald Trump, including antifa and government agents" — a baseless conspiracy theory that has been promoted by conservative media since the attack, even though it has been debunked.

"They probably had some antifa people, or they paid those people to do that and try to say that it was Trump's people," said Krissy Cripps, a Republican from Carterville, Ill., in a follow-up interview. Cripps said without evidence that the Democratic National Committee was likely responsible for the false flag operation.

Claims of major fraud that affected the results of the election have also been widely disproved. But large numbers of Republican voters remain unmoved.

Heidi Kravitz remembers watching Trump's lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, at a news conference shortly after the election.

"He had a stack of papers as evidence," said Kravitz, a Republican from Salem, Ore., in a follow-up interview. "And I was just like, 'OK, well, then why don't we at least check that?' Like if there's nothing to hide and if it is not true, then why don't we just check it?"

 

It will be a miracle if we go through this year without another insurrectionist attack on the country.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

As both President Biden and Donald Trump line up dueling press events for January 6th on Friday, the investigation by the House continues, and it's clear that even Trump's own children pleaded with their father to stop the violence that he stoked that day nearly one year ago.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot has received “firsthand testimony” that President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, twice asked him to intervene, Rep. Liz Cheney said. Trump was watching the riot unfold on television while sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office at the time. “We have firsthand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence,” Cheney, the vice chair of the committee and one of two Republican members on the panel, said on ABC’s This Week.

"The president could have at any moment, walked those very few steps into the briefing room, gone on live television, and told his supporters who were assaulting the Capitol to stop," Rep. Liz Cheney says of former Pres. Trump's actions on Jan. 6. https://t.co/zo7wSq6hc1 pic.twitter.com/sUYg0wGKsi

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 2, 2022

As far as Cheney is concerned, Trump could have taken clear steps to make sure the violence didn’t get out of hand that day but he chose not to act. “We know, as you know well, that the briefing room at the White House is just a mere few steps from the Oval Office,” Cheney said. “The president could have at any moment, walked those very few steps into the briefing room, gone on live television, and told his supporters who were assaulting the Capitol to stop.” Instead, Cheney said, Trump did nothing. “He could have told them to stand down. He could have told them to go home—and he failed to do so,” Cheney added. “It’s hard to imagine a more significant and more serious dereliction of duty than that.”

“The Republican Party has to make a choice. We can either be loyal to our Constitution or loyal to Donald Trump, but we cannot be both,” GOP Rep. Liz Cheney tells @GStephanopoulos. https://t.co/RhbkmuCrEO pic.twitter.com/B9OLaDxdY2

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 2, 2022

His failure to act shows Trump should never be allowed near the Oval Office again. “Any man who would watch television as police officers were being beaten, as his supporters were invading the Capitol of the United States, is clearly unfit for future office,” Cheney said. The way in which Trump refused to tell his supporters to stop the riot shows “he cannot be trusted,” she added. Republicans now have a choice to make. “We can either be loyal to our Constitution or loyal to Donald Trump, but we cannot be both,” Cheney said.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said on CNN that the panel had received “significant testimony” that the White House “had been told to do something” and ignored the pleas. “The only thing I can say, it’s highly unusual for anyone in charge of anything to watch what’s going on and do nothing,” Thompson said.

 

It is significant that a member of Trump's own party is saying that Trump himself is unfit to hold future office, even if it is 100% self-serving in Cheney's case.  It also happens to be 100% true.

We'll see where this week goes, but since the GOP is already trying to sweep the investigation under the rug, claiming that Americans simply don't care about the insurrection, and using that the rehabilitate their image, if we don't see federal changes soon, my prediction is they get away with it, and that's the end of things in 2022 and 2024.

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

And I see in the new year that Sen. Joe Manchin realized over the holidays that he'll be painted as the bad guy on the Build Back Better plan unless he can string Biden out for another six months minimum to say "well there's no time left now" and so he's getting a head start on 2022.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is open to reengaging on the climate and child care provisions in President Biden's Build Back Better agenda if the White House removes the enhanced child tax credit from the $1.75 trillion package — or dramatically lowers the income caps for eligible families, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.

Why it matters: The holdback senator's engagement on specifics indicates negotiations between him and the White House could get back on track, even after Manchin declared he was a “no” on the package on Dec. 19. 

The senator’s concerns with the size and the scope of the package remain. His belief that it could cost more than $4 trillion over 10 years extends beyond the CTC issue, and he continues to tell colleagues he’s concerned about the inflationary effects of so much government spending, Axios is told. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its next Consumer Price Index on Jan. 12. Last month's reading put inflation at 6.8% for the year — fueling Manchin's opposition.

The big picture: Manchin and top White House aides traded recriminations after their negotiations fell apart — but President Biden and the senator subsequently spoke by phone late in the evening of Dec. 19. 

They agreed to continue to talk, and Manchin stayed in touch with senior White House officials over the holidays. The week before Christmas, reports emerged about how close he and Biden were on a potential deal. 

The details included a $1.8 trillion offer from Manchin that contained money for universal preschool and green tax credits but nothing for the child tax credit, which provides families up to $3,600 per child per year.Families who make up to $400,000 had been receiving some CTC payments under the program that ended Jan. 1.

Between the lines: One possible solution to the stalemate would be to remove the CTC from the Build Back Better legislation, which the Senate plans to pass with only Democratic votes.

 

Manchin got quite the earful over the last two weeks from the folks back home since he announced he was killing the BBB, and it's brought him back to the table. 

We'll see for how long.

Spoilers: He'll have another complaint later this month...

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

In a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, nearly a third of all Americans, including 40% of Republicans, agree that it can be "justified for citizens to take violent action against the government".

Overall, 62 percent of respondents said violence was never justified, and four percent either had no opinion or answered "justified" but "said in a follow-up question that they did not think violence was justified."

Of those who said that violent actions could be merited, 22 percent said that such actions could be justified by the government violating or taking away people’s rights or freedoms, and 15 percent cited a potential military takeover or collapse of democracy.

Overall, the percentage of people who said violence against the government was at times justified has increased in recent years.

In October 2015, 23 percent of people said it was justified, compared to 16 percent in both January 2011 and April 2010 and 13 percent in April 1995, according to the researchers.

The Washington Post-University of Maryland poll also showed that 19 percent of respondents thought that the legal consequences for people who broke into the U.S. Capitol were too harsh, and 51 percent said they were not harsh enough. Another 28 percent said the punishments had been fair, and 3 percent had no opinion.

But the poll also showed a wide partisan divide over former President Trump's responsibility for the events of Jan. 6. Among Democrats, 92 percent said Trump bears a "great deal" or a "good amount" of blame for the attack, compared to 27 percent of Republicans.

 

As we come up on the anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, it's important to note that the people behind it are still walking around free.

 

Until that changes, expect more attacks.

Sunday Long Read: Rage Junkies

2022 is picking up where 2021 left off, as NY Times reporter Sarah Lyall recounts in our Sunday Long Read heading into the new year, and year three of the pandemic means the Rage of the Mildly Inconvenienced has turned everyone into a ticking time bomb.

 

Nerves at the grocery store were already frayed, in the way of these things as the pandemic slouches toward its third year, when the customer arrived. He wanted Cambozola, a type of blue cheese. He had been cooped up for a long time. He scoured the dairy area; nothing. He flagged down an employee who also did not see the cheese. He demanded that she hunt in the back and look it up on the store computer. No luck.

And then he lost it, just another out-of-control member of the great chorus of American consumer outrage, 2021 style.

“Have you seen a man in his 60s have a full temper tantrum because we don’t have the expensive imported cheese he wants?” said the employee, Anna Luna, who described the mood at the store, in Minnesota, as “angry, confused and fearful.”

“You’re looking at someone and thinking, ‘I don’t think this is about the cheese.’”

It is a strange, uncertain moment, especially with Omicron tearing through the country. Things feel broken. The pandemic seems like a Möbius strip of bad news. Companies keep postponing back-to-the-office dates. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keeps changing its rules. Political discord has calcified into political hatred. And when people have to meet each other in transactional settings — in stores, on airplanes, over the phone on customer-service calls — they are, in the words of Ms. Luna, “devolving into children.”

Perhaps you have felt it yourself, your emotions at war with your better nature. A surge of anger when you enter your local pharmacy, suffering from Covid-y symptoms, only to find that it is out of thermometers, never mind antigen tests. A burst of annoyance at the elaborate rules around vaccine cards and IDs at restaurants — rules you yourself agree with! — because you have to wait outside, and it is cold, and you left your wallet in the car.

A feeling of nearly homicidal rage at the credit card company representative who has just informed you that, having failed to correctly answer the security questions, you have been locked out of your own account. (Note to self: Adopting a tone of haughty sarcasm is not a good way to solve this problem.)

“People are just — I hate to say it because there are a lot of really nice people — but when they’re mean, they’re a heck of a lot meaner,” said Sue Miller, who works in a nonprofit trade association in Madison, Wis. “It’s like, instead of saying, ‘This really inconvenienced me,’ they say, ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ It’s a different scale of mean.”

The meanness of the public has forced many public-facing industries to rethink what used to be an article of faith: that the customer is always right. If employees are now having to take on many unexpected roles — therapist, cop, conflict-resolution negotiator — then workplace managers are acting as security guards and bouncers to protect their employees.

 

First, having worked in retail, food service, and customer service, the customer is never "always right".  Some are coming to you because they expect reasonable service, and some are understanding, but a lot of people have decided that it's okay to go completely apeshit on waitstaff, bartenders, ticket agents, flight crews, hotel staff, and health care staff, along with schools, banks, and yes, your local IT folks at work. (Yes, we know it's a pain in the ass when you can't work from home correctly or efficiently because of technical issues.)

Second, the sense of entitlement, rage, and even tyranny that some Americans subject folks making minimum wage, or far less than minimum wage, to is unacceptable. We're human beings here, folks. We all have basic rights. Your missing extra pickle or out-of-stock soda is not a national emergency. Resolve in 2022 to treat people better than you treated them in 2021. That's all I ask.

HoliDaze: Ukraine In The Membrane

Happy New Year!

Also basically all our 2021 problems are still going in 2022, including the Russian invasion force on the border with Ukraine, as Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to make sure NATO and the west take all their things and leave the former Soviet Republics like Ukraine to a new Putin-controlled Soviet empire. Only one thing, President Joe Biden isn't budging.

 

President Joe Biden plans to speak with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday to express support amid Russia’s military buildup near the countries’ shared border, a White House official said Friday.

Biden also intends to review plans for diplomatic moves aimed “to help de-escalate the situation in the region,” the official said.

“I’m not going to negotiate here in public,” Biden told reporters in Delaware on Friday afternoon. “But we made it clear [Russian President Vladimir Putin] cannot, I’ll emphasize, cannot invade Ukraine.”

U.S. and Russian officials are set to hold security talks on Jan. 10 to discuss the Russia-Ukraine tensions and other issues.

On Thursday, Biden in a 50-minute phone call urged Putin to lower those tensions. He warned the U.S. was prepared to “respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

“I made it clear to President Putin that we will have severe sanctions, we will increase our presence in Europe, with NATO allies,” Biden said on Friday.

Asked if he sensed that Putin was less likely to invade Ukraine after their talk, Biden said, “Well, [what] I got the sense of is that he’s agreed that we would have three major conferences in Europe” next month.

“He laid out some of his concerns about NATO and the United States and Europe, we laid out ours,” Biden said. “I made it clear that they only could work if he de-escalated.”

“I always expect to negotiate and make progress,” Biden added.

A Kremlin aide reportedly said after the phone call with Biden that Putin “outlined in detail the basic principles laid down by Russia in the security proposals and emphasized that we will seek to ensure Russia’s security.”

 

Both sides know Putin wants a new Soviet empire. Both sides know Putin won't allow Ukraine to join NATO. Both sides know that Biden won't allow Putin to invade Kyiv. There's got to be a solution there that can fix all three problems, and that's what direct bi-lateral talks between national leaders are for.

 

So why not just have Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy say "We're never going to join NATO, so go away Vlad!" That will solve the problem, right?

Russia has already invaded Ukraine once, is the problem. They're still there in the Donbass.

 

We'll see what happens.

Zandar's 2022 Predictions

Well, it's time. Here are my ten predictions for 2022. As usual I hope I'm wrong on some of them, but I fear I won't be. Either way, here's hoping that you have a good year ahead.

1) Democrats keep the Senate in 2022.  I can't in good faith call the House at this point. But I do know that as Mitch McConnell has proven, keeping the Senate when you have the White House means there's a lot you can do, and Biden has gotten a record number of federal judiciary appointments.  The next Supreme Court justice could happen at any time, as we've seen. Without the House, things would be terrible. But without the Senate, it'll be catastrophic.

2) Nancy Pelosi steps down as House Democratic Leader. I hate to say it, even after the long years she has proven that she has been the most effective House leader the Democrats have seen in my lifetime, but I think she steps down in 2022 and will not run as Speaker or House Minority Leader in 2023. 

3) Donald Trump is indicted in the state of New York. Don't ask me about the federal charges, but I honestly believe NY AG Tish James is going to try to prosecute Donald Trump, and it's going to be one of the most fateful chapters in our modern political history.

4) COVID-19 deaths will surpass 1.2 million total in the US.  The good news here is that 2022 will thankfully have fewer deaths than 2020 or 2021, but not by much. We'll still have to contend with a very bad winter, but if we can get past that, I think there's finally some hope.

5) The Supreme Court will gut/overturn Roe v. Wade. At this point the writing is on the courtroom wall. Roe is dead, and individual states will move to either regulate safe abortion out of existence, criminalize it with heavy penalties for women, doctors, and health care professionals, make crossing state lines to get a abortion elsewhere illegal, ban it altogether, or all of the above. It won't end abortion, just safe ones. It will change America for a generation.

6) The Supreme Court will also gut executive agencies.  This will be a massive win for corporations, but the bottom line is agencies like OSHA, FDA, CDC, SEC, EPA, you name it, it will be essentially turned off. I don't know what all will be stricken down, but it's going to be a huge mess when it happens. This too will change America for a generation.

7) The Dow will finish the year above 36,000.  I mean that's where it ended the year, so what I basically mean is I'm not predicting a recession, yay! I hope I'm right. If I'm correct on some of these previous predictions, well, things can go badly quickly.

8) Marvel films will make another billion in 2022.  Since it seems movie-watching in theaters is now officially back as of December, May's Doctor Strange sequel, July's Thor: Love and Thunder, and November's Black Panther 2 should easily gross a billion combined, if not more.

Which brings me to my one "out there" prediction at number nine...

Just kidding.

9)  GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy is booted from the House GOP leadership. I don't know who will lead the House GOP in 2023, but I can guarantee you it won't be McCarthy. And I think things will be so bad he'll make his plans known, like Pelosi, that he's "stepping down". The difference is with McCarthy, it won't be a choice.

and finally...

10) ZVTS will roll on for another year. It's because of you guys, you know this, and we'll sail into year 14 and then some. I want to honestly thank you, the readers. When I started this back in 2008, I had no idea where the country would go. I made the journey along with you, and I'm glad you're here, new or old.

Take care of yourselves, folks. You never know.

 

HoliDaze: Breaking: Bad News Comes In Threes

Harry Reid and John Madden both passed this week, and I am very, very sad to report it, but Betty White passed today at age 99.

Betty White, TV's perennial Golden Girl, has died. She was 99.

"Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever," her agent and close friend Jeff Witjas tells PEOPLE in a statement on Friday. "I will miss her terribly and so will the animal world that she loved so much. I don't think Betty ever feared passing because she always wanted to be with her most beloved husband Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again."

White was gearing up to celebrate her 100th birthday on Jan. 17. Ahead of her centennial year, in January, White opened up to PEOPLE about how she was feeling about turning 100 years old.

"I'm so lucky to be in such good health and feel so good at this age," said the veteran actress. "It's amazing."

According to White, being "born a cockeyed optimist" was the key to her upbeat nature. "I got it from my mom, and that never changed," she said. "I always find the positive."

Of course, the iconic actress also cracked a joke about the secret to her long life, telling PEOPLE: "I try to avoid anything green. I think it's working."

A warm and popular presence on the small screen, White's career dated back to the early days of the medium and spanned decades. Long before her hilarious turns on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the '70s and The Golden Girls in the '80s, in 1952 she appeared in the I Love Lucy-like Life with Elizabeth, a show she also produced.

In 2010, at age 87, she enjoyed an award-laden resurgence, when, after starring on a Snickers commercial during the Super Bowl, polls and petitions overwhelmingly named her the public's choice to host Saturday Night Live, emcee various awards shows and even be a sergeant's date at a Marine Corps ball.

After that, she went on to star and steal scenes on the TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland, even scoring an Emmy nomination — her 17th, including seven wins. In May 2012 she also debuted on the NBC comedy reality show Betty White's Off Their Rockers, a kind of geriatric Punk'd. As always, she proved a favorite.

 

People called Milton Berle "Mr. Television" but the medium's true avatar was Betty White. For more than 70 years she dominated the American landscape. She was a presence on stage, screen, and everything in between. Nobody, but nobody did it like Betty, and nobody ever will.

Here's to you, Betty.

Zandar's 2021 Prediction Scorecard

It's that time of year again where I look back at what I thought 2021 was going to be like, and I was, for better or worse, more accurate than a coin flip. Yay! Let's run down the list:

1) Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on January 20th. 

 

Correct and Thank God, but we know now just how close we came to this not happening, and if we don't punish the monsters responsible for nearly pulling off a coup, it will be much worse next time. 

 

2) Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock will win the Georgia runoffs and Mitch McConnell will be relegated to Senate Minority Leader.

 

Correct. Thanks, Donald Trump!

3) Even if Dems get the Senate back, the filibuster and the current size of SCOTUS will remain.

 

Correct. This was near certain with a 50-50 Senate including Manchin and Sinema.

4) The total US death toll from COVID-19 will surpass 1 million Americans by the end of the year.

 

Half-point: And only because it was 825K and not quite a million, but my reasoning that the anti-vax idiots would martyr themselves was correct.

5) The Roberts Court will allow states to regulate abortion out of existence.

 

Correct.  It's happening in Texas right now.

6) Donald Trump will not be indicted. 

 

Correct. He was not. 

7) Hunter Biden will be indicted. 

 

My first real miss of the year, Incorrect.

8)  No movie will break $100 million at the box office in 2021.  

 

Incorrect, as Spider-Man No Way Home made over a billion, but I was mostly right up until December. I wish I was wrong, because it means movie theaters are back to normal in the era of highly transmissible Omicron.

 

9) The Dow Jones will be under 25,000 by the end of the year. 

 

Incorrect, but we do have a serious inflation problem. However, the DJIA was up a whopping 18%+ for the year under Biden.

10) ZVTS will make it through 2021.

Correct, if I'm writing this and you're reading this, I'm right.

Total score: 6.5 out of ten.

Not my best year, but not my worst, either.  2022 predictions will be up later tonight.

HoliDaze: School Of Hard-Right Knocks

I honestly can't believe anyone in America would want to be a public schoolteacher in 2021. Every single day you have a bullseye on your back, even in states like California.

This fall, a pair of middle school teachers from the Salinas Valley traveled to Palm Springs for the California Teachers Association’s annual LGBTQ+ Issues Conference. There, on a Saturday afternoon, Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki spoke to a few dozen people about a subject they knew well: the difficulty of running a GSA, or gay-straight alliance, in a socially conservative community.

Speaking about recruiting students, Baraki said, “When we were doing our virtual learning — we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren’t doing schoolwork. One of them was Googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus.”

Shortly after the October conference, a surreptitious recording of the presentation was handed to a conservative writer known for asserting that transgender adolescents are part of a dangerous “craze.” She published a story Nov. 18 headlined “How Activist Teachers Recruit Kids,” criticizing Caldeira and Baraki for actions they had seen as proper: keeping club members’ identities confidential from parents and finding a couple of potential members by viewing their online activity in class.

One day after the article came out, Caldeira and Baraki’s presentation on the difficulties of running their GSA would prove prophetic: Leaders of the Spreckels Union School District suspended the club. Four days later, the district opened an investigation and placed the teachers on administrative leave.

The controversy has roiled the small district south of Salinas and east of Monterey, alarming advocates for LGBTQ youth and marking one of a number of recent incidents in which influential conservative voices have forced the hands of local officials.

The episode raises broader questions about educators’ growing ability to monitor what students do online, which accelerated during the pandemic, and about what responsibility schools have to provide safe spaces such as gay-straight alliances for LGBTQ students who may not have support from peers and parents.

Caldeira and Baraki, who said they have received violent threats since the story went viral in some circles, said they are worried about their students. Both teach at Buena Vista Middle School, which has an enrollment of around 360.

“Can you imagine? Seriously, we have kids in our club right now who are out at school, (but) they’re not out at home. The only two teachers that they have ever spoken to have been taken away,” said Caldeira, her voice and hands shaking as she spoke at a Monterey coffee shop in her first interview since the district suspended the GSA. “I’m sure they’re terrified, because where are they going to go, and who are they going to talk to, you know?”

Caldeira said the club — called UBU (You Be You) — had for more than six years allowed students to ask questions they might not be ready to bring up with their families.

“Our conversations were always student-led, which is why they frequently surrounded LGBTQ topics. Because the kids have questions,” she said. “Their parents think we start that conversation, but we don’t. TikTok starts it, Snapchat starts it, Instagram starts it or their classmates start it, and then we just try to answer the questions as honestly and fairly as we can.”

The district has launched a third-party investigation into the actions of the teachers. Officials declined to be interviewed by The Chronicle, but Superintendent Eric Tarallo, school board President Steve McDougall and Buena Vista Principal Kate Pagaran released a statement Nov. 19 apologizing to parents, while promising that the district would exert tighter control over student clubs and bar teachers from “monitoring students’ online activity for any non-academic purposes.”

At the school board’s Dec. 15 meeting, member Michael Scott said, “I am hopeful a third-party investigation will provide a clearer picture of the circumstances surrounding the UBU club and how it was run, that any subsequent action should be responsive to the values, beliefs and priorities of the Spreckels community.”

The Palm Springs presentation by Caldeira and Baraki was similar in many ways to talks they’ve given for four or five years, they said. For an hour and 15 minutes, they spoke informally to about 40 people.

Caldeira, who in 2017 won an award for her work with special-needs students, said she requested the presentation not be recorded. “We do deal with middle schoolers,” she said, “and it can be sensitive content at times.”

But the secret audio made its way to Abigail Shrier, author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” which has been criticized as unscientific and inflammatory. On Nov. 18, she published the first of four stories about the Spreckels teachers on her Substack newsletter, The Truth Fairy, where she has argued that transgender women “are not women” and that gender-affirming school policies abuse parents’ rights.

Shrier focused heavily on Baraki’s comment about seeing a student’s Google search for “Trans Day of Visibility,” characterizing this as “surveillance” of potential recruits into the GSA.

The Chronicle could not obtain audio of the presentation, but Caldeira confirmed she and Baraki had been accurately quoted by Shrier. However, she said many of the comments were misconstrued and taken out of context.

 

Observations:

 

One, cancel culture, quite literally. The right sure does love destroying people for "wrongthink" and it's why they project so much onto the left.

Two, public schoolteachers in 2021 are targets. Republicans want public schoolteachers gone because they want public schools gone. Let's not overlook this.

Three, the only thing the right wants more than destroying teachers is destroying LGBTQ+ kids, who shouldn't exist in their worldview. At all.

Four, your local MAGA Cultists are taking over your neighborhood school board, city council, county commission, and sheriff's office while you "skip voting this year".

Republicans across America are pressing local jurisdictions and state lawmakers to make typically sleepy school board races into politicized, partisan elections in an attempt to gain more statewide control and swing them to victory in the 2022 midterms.

Tennessee lawmakers in October approved a measure that allows school board candidates to list their party affiliation on the ballot. Arizona and Missouri legislators are weighing similar proposals. And GOP lawmakers in Florida will push a measure in an upcoming legislative session that would pave the way for partisan school board races statewide, potentially creating new primary elections that could further inflame the debate about how to teach kids.

The issue is about to spread to other states: The center-right American Enterprise Institute is urging conservatives to “strongly consider” allowing partisan affiliations to appear on ballots next to school board candidates’ names, as part of broader efforts to boost voter turnout for the contests. A coalition of conservative leaders — including representatives of Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute and Kenneth Marcus, the Education Department civil rights chief under former Secretary Betsy DeVos — have separately called for on-cycle school board elections as part of sweeping efforts to “end critical race theory in schools.”

In Florida, school boards are among the last elected officials who blocked policies of Gov. Ron DeSantis. If Republicans succeed in pushing the state to strip school board elections of their nonpartisan status and gain more representation on school boards, they could break the last holdouts who regularly defy the governor.

“We’re out there trying to elect good conservatives that will follow essentially the governor’s mission as it relates to education,” said Sen. Joe Gruters (R-Sarasota), the state Senate’s education chair who also leads the Republican Party of Florida.

“When you have a leader like DeSantis come out and say that there should be no lockdowns, if you have a Republican elected official, you would think they would probably give him the consideration and probably go along with what he asked.

The latest attempts for making school board races partisan affairs come as education has been thrust into the spotlight amid the pandemic and the high profile victory of Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, who campaigned on a promise to give parents more say in their kids’ education. It also comes as other crucial battleground issues are bubbling up in education, including classroom lessons on history and race — a subject that has emerged as a boogeyman for GOP policymakers in numerous states who are condemning efforts to teach young people about the nation’s history of discrimination.

With all of these policies converging, there have been clear disconnects among state and local leaders, and even parents, over how to educate their children. Republicans are openly embracing parental rights as a key factor shaping policy in D.C. and many statehouses — seen in proposals to strengthen protections for parents against schools.

“There’s a major underestimation nationwide, even on the political side, that these parents are really frustrated,” said Bridget Ziegler, a Sarasota County school board member who is also the wife of the Florida GOP vice chair.

 

The surburban moms who ditched Trump in 2018 are back with a vengeance, because all of them know better than every educator in the state what their child really needs, and they are on the front lines of fascism, leading the way.

 

The wildfire is already out of control, and we need everyone involved.

 

Run for local office if you have the resources, I beg of you.

HoliDaze: Breaking: Ghislaine Maxwell Found Guilty

The former UK socialite and confidante of Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell faced decades in prison on charges of sex trafficking a minor and multiple conspiracy charges, and today a federal jury found Maxwell guilty on 5 of 6 of the federal charges against her, meaning she faces up to 65 years in prison.

 

A jury in a New York federal court has found Ghislaine Maxwell guilty on five of six counts related to her role in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of minor girls between 1994 and 2004. 

Maxwell, 60, was found guilty of five federal charges: sex trafficking of a minor, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and three related counts of conspiracy. 

She was acquitted on the charge of enticing a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts.
Maxwell faces up to 65 years in prison. 

"The road to justice has been far too long. But, today, justice has been done," US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. "I want to commend the bravery of the girls -- now grown women -- who stepped out of the shadows and into the courtroom. Their courage and willingness to face their abuser made this case, and today's result, possible." 

The jury, which was made up of six women and six men deliberated for about 40 hours, across parts of six days.

 

I honestly thought this was headed for a hung jury and years of trials. No doubt Maxwell will want her conviction overturned ala Bill Cosby by a higher court, but these are federal, not state charges, and Maxwell is basically looking at the rest of her life in a brown jumpsuit anticipating pudding day for the week.

We'll see where this goes, but remember, both Maxwell and Epstein rubbed elbows with a number of very powerful people in US and UK politics.

HoliDaze: A Pair Of Legends Pass

Two very notable deaths this week, first, football broadcasting legend John Madden passed today at age 85.

John Madden, the NFL coach, broadcaster and namesake for the billion-dollar video game franchise, died unexpectedly Tuesday. He was 85 years old.

The legendary coach helmed the Oakland Raiders from 1969 to 1978, winning a Super Bowl over the Minnesota Vikings in January 1977. But he became as known for what he did after leaving the game in just his early 40s, when he ascended to the broadcast booth and later lent his name to the most successful sports video game franchise of all time.

He is survived by his wife, Virginia, and sons Mike and Joe, as well as several grandchildren.

"On behalf of the entire NFL family, we extend our condolences to Virginia, Mike, Joe and their families," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. "We all know him as the Hall of Fame coach of the Oakland Raiders and broadcaster who worked for every network, but more than anything, he was a devoted husband, father and grandfather."

"Nobody loved football more than Coach. He was football. He was an incredible sounding board to me and so many others," Goodell continued. "There will never be another John Madden, and we will forever be indebted to him for all he did to make football and the NFL what it is today." 

 

Certainly I grew up with Madden's marquee game calling, particularly watching his Detroit Lions Thanksgiving games at my grandparents' house, and watching CBS's Super Bowl broadcasts as well as playing Madden NFL on consoles in the 90's and 00's.  It just wasn't the same without him once he retired.

And speaking of things never being the same since he retired, that brings us to our other extremely notable passing this evening, former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

 

Harry Reid, who rose from abject poverty in rural Nevada to become one of the most influential state and national leaders, died on Tuesday, sources confirmed to The Nevada Independent. He was 82.

Additional details were not immediately available.

Reid was thought to be nearing the end of his life when he underwent surgery in 2018 for pancreatic cancer, which has one of the lowest survival rates. Last summer, however, Reid announced that he underwent an experimental surgery and was declared in “complete remission” and cancer-free.

Over more than three decades of service in Congress, Reid earned a reputation for fighting relentlessly to protect his home state and everyday Americans. As Senate Democratic leader for a dozen years, he played an instrumental role in passing the Affordable Care Act and shepherding through Congress pivotal economic recovery legislation in the wake of the Great Recession.

Reid also spent considerable time focusing on water, energy and public lands, issues at the forefront of a state that was undergoing rapid growth. In 2020, Reid said more than half of his congressional papers dealt, in some form, with the environment.

A savvy dealmaker and sometimes polarizing figure who made as many enemies as he did friends, Reid still earned the respect of colleagues in both parties — sometimes turning former enemies to friends. Soft-spoken with a sharp tongue, Reid compelled those around him to listen.

Reid took a no-holds-barred approach to politics, directly calling bankers to bail out the faltering CityCenter project on the Las Vegas Strip and falsely claiming Mitt Romney hadn’t paid his taxes in 10 years.

He helped Nevada punch above its weight on the national political stage by advocating that the state hold the first-in-the-West caucus in the nation in 2008, a move that has left Nevada’s presidential nominating contest just behind those in Iowa and New Hampshire. The caucus has brought droves of presidential contenders through the state every four years for the last four election cycles, elevating the state’s profile nationally.

He also turned the Nevada State Democratic Party into a well-oiled political operation — nicknamed the Reid Machine — responsible for securing numerous Democratic victories in close races over the last decade.

 

Everyone talks about all the fights Reid lost to Mitch McConnell, but frankly Reid was a Democratic player well after he left the Senate stage, and he won some critical legislative battles for Obama, including Obamacare and the nuclear option on appointing judges.

 

Oh, and Reid himself was an amateur boxer, who later became Nevada Gaming Commissioner, survived a Vegas mob car bomb attempt, and even had a movie role in Traffic.

Both of these men defined the roles they filled, and both will be missed.

Here's to you, Madden and Reid.

HoliDaze: The Vax Of Life

New guidance from CDC head Dr. Rochelle Walensky now recommends shorter COVID-19 isolation and quarantine protocols as the Omicron variant is infectious, but within a far shorter window than previously believed.

U.S. health officials on Monday cut isolation restrictions for Americans who catch the coronavirus from 10 to five days, and similarly shortened the time that close contacts need to quarantine.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said the guidance is in keeping with growing evidence that people with the coronavirus are most infectious in the two days before and three days after symptoms develop.

The decision also was driven by a recent surge in COVID-19 cases, propelled by the omicron variant.

Early research suggests omicron may cause milder illnesses than earlier versions of the coronavirus. But the sheer number of people becoming infected — and therefore having to isolate or quarantine — threatens to crush the ability of hospitals, airlines and other businesses to stay open, experts say.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the country is about to see a lot of omicron cases.

“Not all of those cases are going to be severe. In fact many are going to be asymptomatic,” she told The Associated Press on Monday. “We want to make sure there is a mechanism by which we can safely continue to keep society functioning while following the science.”

Last week, the agency loosened rules that previously called on health care workers to stay out of work for 10 days if they test positive. The new recommendations said workers could go back to work after seven days if they test negative and don’t have symptoms. And the agency said isolation time could be cut to five days, or even fewer, if there are severe staffing shortages.

Now, the CDC is changing the isolation and quarantine guidance for the general public to be even less stringent.

The change is aimed at people who are not experiencing symptoms. People with symptoms during isolation, or who develop symptoms during quarantine, are encouraged to stay home.

The CDC’s isolation and quarantine guidance has confused the public, and the new recommendations are “happening at a time when more people are testing positive for the first time and looking for guidance,” said Lindsay Wiley, an American University public health law expert.

Nevertheless, the guidance continues to be complex.

 

It's confusing only if you're not paying attention. As we learn more about COVID-19, the CDC guidance should change along with the virus, and what we know about it. That's what "following the science" actually means, folks.  When confronted with new data, the response changes to the new data. Literally science.

Oh, and the data means less hassle for those who are sick.

But still people will complain.

HoliDaze: Insurrection Investigation

The Guardian's Hugo Lowell determines that Rep. Bennie Johnson and the January 6th Committee are now laser-focused on Trump's role in the insurrectionist coup attempt at the beginning of this year, mainly in his marching orders given in the 24 hours leading up to the terrorist attack on the US Capitol.

Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, has said the panel will open an inquiry into Donald Trump’s phone call seeking to stop Joe Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January hours before the insurrection.

The chairman said the select committee intended to scrutinize the phone call – revealed last month by the Guardian – should they prevail in their legal effort to obtain Trump White House records over the former president’s objections of executive privilege.

“That’s right,” Thompson said when asked by the Guardian whether the select committee would look into Trump’s phone call, and suggested House investigators had already started to consider ways to investigate Trump’s demand that Biden not be certified as president on 6 January.

Thompson said the select committee could not ask the National Archives for records about specific calls, but noted “if we say we want all White House calls made on January 5 and 6, if he made it on a White House phone, then obviously we would look at it there.”

The Guardian reported last month that Trump, according to multiple sources, called lieutenants based at the Willard hotel in Washington DC from the White House in the late hours of 5 January and sought ways to stop Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January.

Trump first told the lieutenants his vice-president, Mike Pence, was reluctant to go along with the plan to commandeer his ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress in a way that would allow Trump to retain the presidency for a second term, the sources said.

But as Trump relayed to them the situation with Pence, the sources said, on at least one call, he pressed his lieutenants about how to stop Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January in a scheme to get alternate slates of electors for Trump sent to Congress.

The former president’s remarks came as part of wider discussions he had with the lieutenants at the Willard – a team led by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn and Trump strategist Steve Bannon – about delaying the certification, the sources said.

House investigators in recent months have pursued an initial investigation into Trump’s contacts with lieutenants at the Willard, issuing a flurry of subpoenas compelling documents and testimony to crucial witnesses, including Bannon and Eastman.

But Thompson said that the select committee would now also investigate both the contents of Trump’s phone calls to the Willard and the White House’s potential involvement, in a move certain to intensify the pressure on the former president’s inner circle.

“If we get the information that we requested,” Thompson said of the select committee’s demands for records from the Trump White House and Trump aides, “those calls potentially will be reflected to the Willard hotel and whomever.”

A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment about what else such a line of inquiry might involve. But a subpoena to Giuliani, the lead Trump lawyer at the Willard, is understood to be in the offing, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The Guardian reported that the night before the Capitol attack, Trump called the lawyers and non-lawyers at the Willard separately, because Giuliani did not want to have non-lawyers participate on sensitive calls and jeopardize claims to attorney-client privilege.

It was not clear whether Giulaini might invoke attorney-client privilege as a way to escape cooperating with the investigation in the event of a subpoena, but Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee, noted the protection does not confer broad immunity.

“The attorney-client privilege does not operate to shield participants in a crime from an investigation into a crime,” Raskin said. “If it did, then all you would have to do to rob a bank is bring a lawyer with you, and be asking for advice along the way.”

 

So we finally bring Rudy Giuliani into the mix, and as Marcy Wheeler reminds us, Roger Stone is definitely a part of this mess too. 

The reason I raise Stone is that the repeated reports from Joshua James to Oath Keeper field commander Mike Simmons about a VIP disgruntled about his shoddy treatment — a VIP that is almost certainly Stone — show there was a direct tie from the Willard to one of several militias who were instrumental in breaching the Capitol from multiple points.

Particularly given the confirmation that the government believes he was lying, I’d like to point to some redacted references to a VIP that Joshua James was guarding who was bitching that he wasn’t getting VIP treatment.



This is likely Roger Stone. That’s true because — as Dan Friedman reported — James was “guarding” Stone that day (and Simmons guarded Stone the previous day), the name seems to fit, and Stone has publicly complained about his treatment that day.

 

So all of this is connected, all of this was planned, all of this is a criminal conspiracy with the intent of overthrowing Joe Biden's duly-elected presidency, and if it isn't punished before the 2022 midterms, it will absolutely happen again, only on a massive scale.