The Honeymoon Is Burned To The Ground

Gallup's quarterly party preference poll numbers are in for 2021, and white they showed a record-tying nine-point lead for the Democrats a year ago, in fourth quarter of last year it was a five-point Republican lead...also a record-tying number.

On average, Americans' political party preferences in 2021 looked similar to prior years, with slightly more U.S. adults identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic (46%) than identified as Republicans or leaned Republican (43%).

However, the general stability for the full-year average obscures a dramatic shift over the course of 2021, from a nine-percentage-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter to a rare five-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter.

These results are based on aggregated data from all U.S. Gallup telephone surveys in 2021, which included interviews with more than 12,000 randomly sampled U.S. adults.

Gallup asks all Americans it interviews whether they identify politically as a Republican, a Democrat or an independent. Independents are then asked whether they lean more toward the Republican or Democratic Party. The combined percentage of party identifiers and leaners gives a measure of the relative strength of the two parties politically.

Both the nine-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter and the five-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter are among the largest Gallup has measured for each party in any quarter since it began regularly measuring party identification and leaning in 1991.

The Democratic lead in the first quarter was the largest for the party since the fourth quarter of 2012, when Democrats also had a nine-point advantage. Democrats held larger, double-digit advantages in isolated quarters between 1992 and 1999 and nearly continuously between mid-2006 and early 2009.

The GOP has held as much as a five-point advantage in a total of only four quarters since 1991. The Republicans last held a five-point advantage in party identification and leaning in early 1995, after winning control of the House of Representatives for the first time since the 1950s. Republicans had a larger advantage only in the first quarter of 1991, after the U.S. victory in the Persian Gulf War led by then-President George H.W. Bush.

 

The country prefers the GOP now more than it did under Shrub and Trump. Biden got six months to fix the problem, the "Afghanistan disaster" came along (which it wasn't) and a tired, sick America is just ready to throw in the towel and let the Republican authoritarians win, being loudly and confidently wrong on everything because I guess if you're white, you figure things can't get any worse for you with the GOP in charge, right? 

The rest of us, well. We know the answer to that. But judging from the news this morning, our media betters absolutely want to blame Biden for Trump's problems, and can't wait to have a dictator in charge.

Democracy is too hard to fight for, you guys. That's where we are right now.

Last Call For The Vax Of Life, Con't

Lastly tonight, a preview of the fights ahead here in America this week from protests in Europe over vaccine mandates.

Before Covid-19, Nicolas Rimoldi had never attended a protest. 

But somewhere along the pandemic's long and tortuous road, which saw his native Switzerland imposing first one lockdown, then another, and finally introducing vaccination certificates, Rimoldi decided he had had enough. 

Now he leads Mass-Voll, one of Europe's largest youth-orientated anti-vaccine passport groups. 

Because he has chosen not to get vaccinated, student and part-time supermarket cashier Rimoldi is -- for now, at least -- locked out of much of public life. Without a vaccine certificate, he can no longer complete his degree or work in a grocery store. He is barred from eating in restaurants, attending concerts or going to the gym. 

"People without a certificate like me, we're not a part of society anymore," he said. "We're excluded. We're like less valuable humans." 

As the pandemic has moved into its third year, and the Omicron variant has sparked a new wave of cases, governments around the world are still grappling with the challenge of bringing the virus under control. Vaccines, one of the most powerful weapons in their armories, have been available for a year but a small, vocal minority of people -- such as Rimoldi -- will not take them. 

Faced with lingering pockets of vaccine hesitancy, or outright refusal, many nations are imposing ever stricter rules and restrictions on unvaccinated people, effectively making their lives more difficult in an effort to convince them to get their shots. 

In doing so, they are testing the boundary between public health and civil liberties -- and heightening tensions between those who are vaccinated and those who are not.

 

Increasingly, the answer for the unvaccinated in Europe is turning to the old revolutionary ideas of defeating the "fascists" by becoming them. 

 

As controls have tightened, groups such as Rimoldi's have become increasingly disruptive; few weekends now pass without loud protests in European cities. And anger at restrictive Covid measures has led many who previously considered themselves apolitical to join in. 

Even before the pandemic, vaccine hesitancy in Europe was strongly correlated to a populist distrust of mainstream parties and governments. One study published in the European Journal of Public Health in 2019 found "a highly significant positive association between the percentage of people in a country who voted for populist parties and the percentage who believe that vaccines are not important and not effective." 

But leaders of anti-restriction movements are presenting their campaigns as more inclusive and representative than those studies would suggest. 

"We have farmers, lawyers, artists, musicians -- the whole range of people you can imagine," Rimoldi said. Mass-Voll is aimed specifically at Swiss young people, and boasts that it has amassed more followers on Instagram than the official youth wings of any of the country's major political parties. 

Christian Fiala, the vice president of Austria's MFG party, which was formed specifically to oppose lockdowns, mask-wearing and Covid passports, told CNN: "It's really a movement which comes from the whole population."

 

And the fascist right in Europe is recruiting day and night from the unvaccinated "second-class".

The Vienna rally was organized by the far-right Freedom Party, the third biggest political party in Austria, which experts say has used the pandemic to further its anti-establishment credentials and re-establish public support after a high-profile scandal.

“STOPP Impffaschismus,” (stop vaccine fascism) one sign in Vienna read. “Kontrolliert die Grenze, nicht euer volk,” (control the border, not your people) another said — just some of the slogans mixing vaccine skepticism with right-wing ideology.

At least one “Q” sign was on display in Vienna, signaling support for QAnon, the outlandish conspiracy theory associated with some supporters of former President Donald Trump and some participants in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Similar protests and signs could be seen in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Croatia.

Freedom Party Chairman Herbert Kickl has championed the anti-vaccine movement in Austria. Kickl himself tested positive for Covid in the days before Saturday’s rally, forcing him to stay home.

“He has politically mobilized against the Covid-19 vaccines,” said Katharina T. Paul, an expert on vaccine hesitancy at the University of Vienna. “He has disseminated misinformation, to put it mildly.”

“I think he and the Freedom Party play a significant role in the mobilization of the politicalization of the vaccine,” she added. “What’s particular about Austria, especially recently, is the relationship between populism on the one hand and vaccine hesitancy on the other. This is not specific to Austria — we’ve seen it in Italy and France — but Austria does stand out.”

Austria has a long history of vaccine hesitancy, but what’s happening now is unprecedented, Paul said.

 

It's going to be another long, ugly winter.

The Great Canadian Trucker War

Canada has followed through on its threat to require all truckers incoming from the US to be vaccinated, as of this weekend, and only half of them are. With the US Supreme Court killing the OSHA vaccine mandate, it now looks like a massive trade war will be brewing on the northern border. 

 

Industry experts and leaders remained concerned about the country's supply chain as the federal government's new vaccine mandate for truck drivers came into effect Saturday following days of confusion around the rules.

The mandate, which will require Canadian truckers to quarantine if unvaccinated when crossing the border into Canada, led to a number of questions and corrections around who would be exempt and how.

Now, with the vaccine requirement in place, concerns persist about the impact this mandate will have on the North American supply chain.

"I think you probably won't see that movement … that the government's looking for," retail expert Bruce Winder told CTV News Channel on Saturday when asked if the effort will encourage truckers to get vaccinated.

The Canadian Trucking Alliance has said between 10 and 15 per cent of cross-border commercial drivers could be lost if the mandate takes effect.

American Trucking Associations has argued that a misapplied mandate would fuel a surge in driver turnover and attrition, with fleets losing as much as 37 per cent of their current workforce.

There are 120,000 Canadians and 40,000 licensed drivers in the U.S. who operate cross-border, the Canadian Trucking Alliance says, while about 70 per cent of the $648 billion in trade between the two countries moves by truck.

Under the vaccine mandate, unvaccinated or partially-vaccinated non-Canadian truckers will be turned away if they aren't able to show proof of vaccination or a valid medical exemption to the COVID-19 vaccines. The U.S. plans to have a similar mandate come into effect for drivers crossing into the country starting Jan. 22.

"I know what the government's trying to do with managing the hospital capacity, but they could find themselves with a very tough situation if Canadians rise up with inflation and food insecurity, or major manufacturers slow down, lay off people," Winder said.

The mandate throws a "major wrench" in the Canadian and North American supply chains, he added, with grocers, food producers, the auto parts industry and building materials among the sectors expected to be most affected.

If the Biden Administration keeps the mandate requiring Canadian truckers to be vaccinated, then things could get potentially very dicey in the weeks ahead.

Keep an eye on this story.

Sunday Long Read: Buggin' Out

This week's Sunday Long Read comes from The Guardian's Oliver Milman, with a story on how the effects of climate change are already showing up in insect populations in 2022, with more aggressive species of invasive insects migrating to new homes and causing major problems with the ecology.

The climate crisis is set to profoundly alter the world around us. Humans will not be the only species to suffer from the calamity. Huge waves of die-offs will be triggered across the animal kingdom as coral reefs turn ghostly white and tropical rainforests collapse. For a period, some researchers suspected that insects may be less affected, or at least more adaptable, than mammals, birds and other groups of creatures. With their large, elastic populations and their defiance of previous mass extinction events, surely insects will do better than most in the teeth of the climate emergency?

Sadly not. At 3.2C of warming, which many scientists still fear the world will get close to by the end of this century (although a flurry of promises at Cop26 have brought the expected temperature increase down to 2.4C), half of all insect species will lose more than half of their current habitable range. This is about double the proportion of vertebrates and higher even than for plants, which lack wings or legs to quickly relocate themselves. This huge contraction in livable space is being heaped on to the existing woes faced by insects from habitat loss and pesticide use. “The insects that are still hanging in there are going to get hit by climate change as well,” says Rachel Warren, a biologist at the University of East Anglia, who in 2018 published research into what combinations of temperature, rainfall and other climatic conditions each species can tolerate.

Some insects, such as dragonflies, are nimble enough to cope with the creeping change. Unfortunately, most are not. Butterflies and moths are also often quite mobile, but in different stages of their life cycle they rely on certain terrestrial conditions and particular plant foods, and so many are still vulnerable. Pollinators such as bees and flies can generally move only short distances, exacerbating an emerging food security crisis where farmers will struggle to grow certain foods not just due to a lack of pollination but because, beyond an increase of 3C or so, vast swaths of land simply becomes unsuitable for many crops. The area available to grow abundant coffee and chocolate, for example, is expected to shrivel as tropical regions surge to temperatures unseen in human history.

The climate crisis interlocks with so many other maladies – poverty, racism, social unrest, inequality, the crushing of wildlife – that it can be easy to overlook how it has viciously ensnared insects. The problem also feels more intractable. “Climate change is tricky because it’s hard to combat,” says Matt Forister, a professor of biology at the University of Nevada. “Pesticides are relatively straightforward by comparison but climate change can alter the water table, affect the predators, affect the plants. It’s multifaceted.”

Insects are under fire from the poles to the tropics. The Arctic bumblebee, Bombus polaris, is found in the northern extremities of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Russia. It is able to survive near-freezing temperatures due to dense hair that traps heat and its ability to use conical flowers, like the Arctic poppy, to magnify the sun’s rays to warm itself up. Rocketing temperatures in the Arctic, however, mean the bee is likely to become extinct by 2050. Species of alpine butterflies, dependent on just one or two high-altitude plants, are also facing severe declines as their environment transforms around them.

Further south, in the UK, glowworm numbers have collapsed by three-quarters since 2001, research has found, with the climate crisis considered the primary culprit. The larvae of the insects feed on snails that thrive in damp conditions, but a string of hot and dry summers has left the glowworms critically short of prey.

These sort of losses in Europe have challenged previous assumptions that insects in temperate climates would be able to cope with a few degrees of extra heat, unlike the mass of species crowded at the world’s tropics that are already at the upper limits of their temperature tolerance. A team of researchers from Sweden and Spain have pointed out that the vast majority of insects in temperate zones are inactive during cold periods. When just the warmer, active, months of insects’ lives were considered by the scientists, they found that species in temperate areas are also starting to bump into the ceiling of livable temperature. As Frank Johansson, an academic at Sweden’s Uppsala University, glumly puts it: “Insects in temperate zones might be as threatened by climate change as those in the tropics.”

 

We're already starting to see the complete reshuffling of insect populations worldwide, and those species that can adapt to climate change will not only survive, but thrive. But those species left behind, facing imminent extinction, could take all kinds of flowers, crops, fruits and vegetables with them as pollination becomes more and more difficult. 

As goes the insect world, so goes us.

Meet Your New Boss, Virginia

Boy, Virginia sure is lucky that they voted in a moderate Republican like Glenn Youngkin instead of awful Democrat Terry McAuliffe...oh wait, I'm being told that Youngkin's "moderate stance" didn't even survive the first hours after his inauguration on Saturday.

Governor Glenn Youngkin signed 11 executive actions on his first day in office, including orders allowing parents to opt out of mask mandates in Virginia schools, withdrawing from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and ending "the use of divisive concepts, including critical race theory, in public education."

The list of executive orders and directives Youngkin signed is as follows, per his office:

 

• Executive Order Number One delivers on his Day One promise to restore excellence in education by ending the use of divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory, in public education.
• Executive Order Number Two delivers on his Day One promise to empower Virginia parents in their children’s education and upbringing by allowing parents to make decisions on whether their child wears a mask in school.
• Executive Order Number Three delivers on his Day One promise to restore integrity and confidence in the Parole Board of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
• Executive Order Number Four delivers on his Day One promise to investigate wrongdoing in Loudoun County.
• Executive Order Number Five delivers on his Day One promise to make government work for Virginians by creating the Commonwealth Chief Transformation Officer.
• Executive Order Number Six delivers on his Day One promise to declare Virginia open for business.
• Executive Order Number Seven delivers on his Day One promise to combat and prevent human trafficking and provide support to survivors.
• Executive Order Number Eight delivers on his Day One promise to establish a commission to combat antisemitism.
• Executive Order Number Nine delivers on his Day One promise to withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
• Executive Directive Number One delivers on his fulfilling his Day One promise to jumpstart our economy by cutting job killing regulations by 25 percent.
• Executive Directive Number Two delivers on his fulfilling his Day One promise to restore individual freedoms and personal privacy by rescinding the vaccine mandate for all state employees.

Youngkin was sworn in as governor Saturday, January 15 during a noon ceremony in Richmond.

 

So the end of masks in schools and for vaccines for state employees even though Virginia has reported nearly a quarter-million new COVID-19 cases since January 1, removing the state from an important climate change compact, ending "critical race theory" which isn'y actually being taught in schools but hell if anyone in the Virginia GOP can define it other than "and oh yes, officially ordering his Attorney General to investigate Loudoun County by executive fiat.

We're not sure, we have to investigate though!

It's for the children, you see.

Not often you get to see a Republican be racist, sexist, authoritarian, climate denying, and anti-vax all in one afternoon, but that's the GOP for you.

Last Call For The National Miscount

The Trump regime's sabotage of the 2020 Census was so far-reaching that Census officials kept a long list of unprecedented interference from the White House and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, all in the service of harming blue states and making political and economic gains for Republican one-party rule states like Texas and Florida.

A newly disclosed memorandum citing “unprecedented” meddling by the Trump administration in the 2020 census and circulated among top Census Bureau officials indicates how strongly they sought to resist efforts by the administration to manipulate the count for Republican political gain.

The document was shared among three senior executives including Ron S. Jarmin, a deputy director and the agency’s day-to-day head. It was written in September 2020 as the administration was pressing the bureau to end the count weeks early so that if President Donald J. Trump lost the election in November, he could receive population estimates used to reapportion the House of Representatives before leaving office.

The memo laid out a string of instances of political interference that senior census officials planned to raise with Wilbur Ross, who was then the secretary of the Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau. The issues involved crucial technical aspects of the count, including the privacy of census respondents, the use of estimates to fill in missing population data, pressure to take shortcuts to produce population totals quickly and political pressure on a crash program that was seeking to identify and count unauthorized immigrants.

Most of those issues directly affected the population estimates used for reapportionment. In particular, the administration was adamant that — for the first time ever — the bureau separately tally the number of undocumented immigrants in each state. Mr. Trump had ordered the tally in a July 2020 presidential memorandum, saying he wanted to subtract them from House reapportionment population estimates.

The census officials’ memorandum pushed back especially forcefully, complaining of “direct engagement” by political appointees with the methods that experts were using to find and count unauthorized noncitizens.

“While the presidential memorandum may be a statement of the administration’s policy,” the memo stated, “the Census Bureau views the development of the methodology and processes as its responsibility as an independent statistical agency.”

The memorandum was among hundreds of documents that the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school obtained in a lawsuit seeking details of the Trump administration’s plans for calculating the allotment of House seats. The suit was concluded in October, but none of the documents had been made public until now.

Kenneth Prewitt, a Columbia University public-affairs scholar who ran the Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001, said in an interview that the careful bureaucratic language belied an extraordinary pushback against political interference.

“This was a very, very strong commitment to independence on their part,” he said. “They said, ‘We’re going to run the technical matters in the way we think we ought to.’”

The officials’ objections, he said, only underscored the need for legislation to shield the Census Bureau from political interference well before the 2030 census gets underway. “I’m very worried about that,” he said.

Reached by email, Mr. Ross said he neither recalled seeing the memorandum nor discussing its contents with the bureau’s executives. A spokesman for the Census Bureau, Michael C. Cook, said he could not immediately say whether census officials actually raised the issues with Mr. Ross or, if so, what his response was.

The Trump administration had long been open about its intention to change the formula for divvying up House seats among the states by excluding noncitizens from the population counts. That would leave an older and whiter population base in states with large immigrant populations, something that was presumed to work to Republican advantage.

Mr. Trump’s presidential memorandum ordering the Census Bureau to compile a list of noncitizens for that purpose prompted a far-reaching plan to scour billions of government records for hints of foreigners living here, illegally or not. The bureau proved unable to produce the noncitizen count before Mr. Trump left office, and noncitizens were counted in the allocation of House seats, just as they had been in every census since 1790.

But as the documents show, that was not for lack of effort on the part of the Commerce Department and its leader at the time.

Among other disclosures, undated documents show that Mr. Ross was enlisted to lobby 10 Republican governors whose states had been reluctant to turn over driver’s license records and lists of people enrolled in public assistance programs so that they could be screened for potential noncitizens.

 

Trump absolutely wanted a detailed list of undocumented citizens in order to supply ICE facilities with millions of detainees at immense taxpayer cost while they were slowly deported, with Republicans at every step of the way making tens of billions in a never-ending revenue stream.

 

The plan only failed because the courts stopped Trump.  I'm imagining how a ruling that only counted US citizens in the Census would have been catastrophic.

The federal courts are improving as Biden has appointed judges at a breakneck pace, but the Supreme Court is going to be a mess for the rest of my lifetime.

Unless the laws are changed ahead of 2030 the Supreme Court will eventually side with whatever horrific Republican administration is in charge, and like updating the Civil Rights act, the Voting Rights Act, the Violence Against Women Act, and more, nothing will change as long as the filibuster remains.

Ever.

Next time we won't be so lucky.

School Of Hard-Right Knocks, Con't

Once again, the goal of Republicans is to completely destroy public education, and the easiest way to do that is to make teaching so awful that nobody in their right minds would want to do it.

Florida lawmakers are debating a bill that would allow schools districts to put cameras in classrooms and microphones on teachers.

The measure was proposed by state Representative Bob Rommel, a Republican from Naples.

"I think if we can do it in a safe way to protect the privacy of students and teachers, I think we should do it," he told CBS Miami. "I haven't heard a response good or bad from any teachers, but … it's not their private space. It's our children's space, too."

But Broward Teachers Union President Anna Fusco told the station a handful of Broward County Public Schools already has them.

"That is happening right now," she said, though under limited circumstances.

According to the Broward County Public Schools website, parents of a student can request that a camera system with visual and audio capability be placed in a classroom if the student has a disability and is an individualized program in which the majority of students has a disability. That's permitted under Florida House Bill 149, which was passed in July.

"Everything that happens in the classroom is monitored, watched and heard all day. There is absolutely zero privacy for anybody, even when … the teacher needs to do a parent-conference on the phone," Fusco said.

 

The majority of us are already monitored at work, and you LIBTARDS made us put CAMERAS on HONEST COPS of course.

 

So the retaliation is they put cameras on teachers, and then they have asshole parents sift through the video so that they can "catch them in the act" and sue teachers and schools in civil court, bankrupting the system to the point where public education simply stops because there's no teachers anymore. No teachers, no unions, and the Dems lose even more support.

That was always the plan.

Bye-Bye Bibi, Baby, Con't

After months of legal wrangling over corruption and bribery charges and being booted out of office by voters, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu may finally be taking a plea deal that gets him out of politics.

Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu has for several weeks been negotiating a plea agreement with Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, according to Israeli media reports.

Why it matters: One key sticking point is whether the deal, which would require Netanyahu to plead guilty to corruption charges, would also require the former prime minister to step away from politics. Any deal would create a political firestorm in Israeli and could bring down the current government. 

That's because Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's government — which includes left-wing, centrist and right-wing parties — was formed seven months ago mainly to oust Netanyahu from power. It excluded the largest party, Likud (led by Netanyahu), because of the corruption charges. Netanyahu is the “glue” that holds the current government together. If he exits the stage, Israel could either head for new elections or a new government under new Likud leadership.

Driving the news: On Jan. 12, Israeli journalist Ben Caspit first reported about the negotiations, which were held secretly between Netanyahu’s lawyer and the attorney general.
Several other reports have followed, outlining the proposed terms of the deal. Neither Netanyahu nor the Ministry of Justice has denied them. Netanyahu hasn't commented publicly, but many of his supporters in Likud are continuing to call on him to fight. 

The allegations against Netanyahu include that he systematically demanded gifts from businesspeople worth in excess of $250,000 in total and offered regulatory benefits in exchange for favorable media coverage.

 

Netanyahu wants to walk away from all this with no real consequences, but the Attorney General wants at the minimum community service time and seven years out of politics.

We'll see where this goes.

Last Call For The No-Longer PharmaBro

Cartoon villain Big Pharma executive and federal convict Martin Shkreli received his final comeuppance today as a judge ruled that not only must he repay more than $60 million in profits that his company illegally reaped, but that he's also banned from the pharmaceutical industry for life.

Martin Shkreli must return $64.6 million in profits he and his former company reaped from jacking up the price and monopolizing the market for a lifesaving drug, a federal judge ruled Friday while also barring the provocative, imprisoned ex-CEO from the pharmaceutical industry for the rest of his life.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote’s ruling came several weeks after a seven-day bench trial in December that featured recordings of conversations that Cote said showed Shkreli continuing to exert control over the company, Vyera Pharmaceuticals LLC, from behind bars and discussing ways to thwart generic versions of its lucrative drug, Daraprim.

“Shkreli was no side player in, or a ‘remote, unrelated’ beneficiary of Vyera’s scheme,” Cote wrote in a 135-page opinion. “He was the mastermind of its illegal conduct and the person principally responsible for it throughout the years.”

The Federal Trade Commission and seven states brought the case in 2020 against the man known in the media as “Pharma Bro,” about two years after he was sentenced to prison in an unrelated securities fraud scheme.

“‘Envy, greed, lust, and hate,’ don’t just ‘separate,’ but they obviously motivated Mr. Shkreli and his partner to illegally jack up the price of a life-saving drug as Americans’ lives hung in the balance,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said, peppering the written statement with references to the Wu-Tang Clan, whose one-of-a-kind album Shkreli had to fork over to satisfy court debt.

“But Americans can rest easy because Martin Shkreli is a pharma bro no more.”

Messages seeking comment were left with Shkreli’s lawyers.

Shkreli was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals — later Vyera — when it raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after obtaining exclusive rights to the decades-old drug in 2015. It treats a rare parasitic disease that strikes pregnant women, cancer patients and AIDS patients.

Shkreli defended the decision as capitalism at work and said insurance and other programs ensured that people who need Daraprim would ultimately get it.

But the move sparked outrage from the medical community to Congress and was a rare source of bipartisan agreement on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, where Democrat Hillary Clinton called it price-gouging and future President Donald Trump, a Republican, called Shkreli “a spoiled brat.”

Shkreli eventually offered hospitals half off — still amounting to a 2,500% increase. But patients normally take most of the weekslong treatment after returning home, so they and their insurers still faced the $750-a-pill price.

Shkreli resigned as Turing’s CEO in 2015, a day after he was arrested on securities fraud charges related to two failed hedge funds he ran before getting into the pharmaceutical industry. He was convicted of lying to investors and cheating them out of millions and is serving a seven-year sentence at a federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, and is due to be released in November.

 

Don't worry about Martin, I'm sure when he gets out of prison in November that he'll already have a plan to scam tens of millions from Americans, and I can almost guarantee you that the scam will involve the words "blockchain" and "fungible".

Sure is something that even Trump thought this guy was a scumbag, and that's because in Trump's eyes, he was dumb enough to get caught.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

I mean, it was obvious that Russian President Vladimir Putin was cooking up a false flag operation to invade Ukraine, and that the Biden administration and NATO clearly knew this, but it's another thing entirely to just up and tell everybody about the damn plan.

The US has information that indicates Russia has prepositioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine, a US official told CNN on Friday, in an attempt to create a pretext for an invasion. 

The official said the US has evidence that the operatives are trained in urban warfare and in using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against Russia's own proxy forces. 

The allegation echoes a statement released by Ukraine's Ministry of Defense on Friday, which said that Russian special services are preparing provocations against Russian forces in an attempt to frame Ukraine. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan hinted at the intelligence during a briefing with reporters on Thursday. 

"Our intelligence community has developed information, which has now been downgraded, that Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating the pretext for an invasion," Sullivan said on Thursday. "We saw this playbook in 2014. They are preparing this playbook again and we will have, the administration will have, further details on what we see as this potential laying of the pretext to share with the press over the course of the next 24 hours." 

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday that "the military units of the aggressor country and its satellites receive orders to prepare for such provocations." 

The US intelligence finding comes after a week's worth of diplomatic meetings between Russian and Western officials over Russia's amassing of tens of thousands of troops along Ukraine's border. But the talks failed to achieve any breakthroughs, as Russia would not commit to de-escalating and American and NATO officials said Moscow's demands -- including that NATO never admit Ukraine into the alliance -- were non-starters. 

The US official said that the Biden administration believes Russia could be preparing for an invasion into Ukraine "that may result in widespread human rights violations and war crimes should diplomacy fail to meet their objectives."

 

Somewhere Putin is screaming at someone saying "You can't just tell people the truth like that, that's not how this works!" 

But hey, popping his balloon before it sets sail seems like a good way to prevent conflict, yes?

 

The Big Lie, Con't

As I've said several times before in The Big Lie series of posts, the entire point of GOP election lies is to weaken Democratic candidate wins and paint them as cheaters, fraudsters, and crooks in order to justify invalidating those wins and giving the offices to Republicans. In Florida a special election this week for the late Rep Alcee Hastings' seat was won overwhelmingly by Democratic candidate Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick. Her Republican challenger, Avowed racist Confederacy fan Jason Mariner, is now refusing to concede his 60-point loss and is demanding an investigation into "election fraud".

It didn't generate much in the way of national attention, but there was a congressional election this week. In Florida's 20th congressional district, voters elected Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick to succeed the late Rep. Alcee Hastings, who died in April 2021.

It was not expected to be a competitive contest — Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans in this South Florida district — and it wasn't. President Joe Biden won Florida's 20th with 77 percent support, and Cherfilus-McCormick won the special election with 79 percent support.

But as the CBS affiliate in Miami reported, the unusual part of this story was the response to the outcome from the representative-elect's Republican rival, who hedged on conceding the race.

Now they called the race, I did not win, so they say, but that does not mean that they lost either, it does not mean that we lost," said Republican Jason Mariner. Several hours before the polls even closed, Mariner filed a lawsuit alleging there is a problem with the ballots in Palm Beach and Broward Counties.

The defeated GOP candidate, who didn't quite reach 20 percent of the vote, added, "[W]e'll also have some stuff coming out that we've recently discovered."

Time will tell what's included amidst the "stuff," and Cherfilus-McCormick will be sworn in whether Mariner concedes or not, but the larger concern is that such responses will become common in Republican politics.

Donald Trump, of course, stands out as the biggest sore loser in American history — he went to breathtaking lengths to overturn the will of his own country's voters — but as regular readers may recall, he wasn't alone.

In the state of Washington, for example, the Republican who badly lost the state's gubernatorial race refused to concede, pushed bogus voter fraud claims, and "attempted to sow doubts about the election results" — despite losing by more than 545,000 votes.

 

Expect more races to be challenged like this.

 

Even worse, expect races like this to be overturned and awarded to the Republican.

 

Even far worse, expect people to simply accept the overturning as needful and just.

 

"Any Democrat win is illegitimate" is the 2022 GOP motto.

Last Call For Insurrection Investigation, Con't

I don't how many more time I will have to point this out, but yes, the Trump regime tried to steal the 2020 election and there was a national conspiracy by Republicans to do so.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump's allies sent fake certificates to the National Archives declaring that Trump won seven states that he actually lost. The documents had no impact on the outcome of the election, but they are yet another example of how Team Trump tried to subvert the Electoral College -- a key line of inquiry for the January 6 committee. 

The fake certificates were created by Trump allies in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico, who sought to replace valid presidential electors from their states with a pro-Trump slate, according to documents obtained by American Oversight. 

The documents contain the signatures of Trump supporters who claimed to be the rightful electors from seven states that President Joe Biden won. But these rogue slates of electors didn't have the backing of any elected officials in the seven states -- like a governor or secretary of state, who are involved in certifying election results -- and they served no legitimate purpose. 

The documents were first posted online in March by the government watchdog group. But they received renewed attention this week, as the January 6 committee ramps up its investigation into Trump's attempted coup, including how his allies tried to stop states from certifying Biden's victory, in part, by installing friendly slates of electors who would overturn the will of the voters. 

Politico and MSNBC were first to report on the documents this week.

As part of the Electoral College process, governors are required to sign a formal "certificate of ascertainment," verifying that the statewide winner's slate of electors are the legitimate electors. These electors then sign a second certificate, formally affirming their votes for president. 

These documents are sent to the National Archives in Washington, DC, which processes them before they are sent onto Congress, which formally counts the electoral votes on January 6. 

The real certificates, which have been posted to the National Archives website, correctly stated that Biden won the seven battleground states. They also list the legitimate group of electors from each state, rather than the rogue pro-Trump slate included on the unofficial documents. 

Some of the fake certificates with pro-Trump electors were sent to the National Archives by top officials representing the Republican Party in each state, according to the documents. 

They sent these fake certificates after Trump himself failed to block governors from signing the real certificates. Specifically, Trump encouraged Republican governors in states like Georgia and Arizona not to certify the election results, and falsely claimed the elections were fraudulent. But these GOP officials ignored Trump, followed the law, and awarded the electors to Biden. 

Installing slates of "alternate electors" was an integral part of the ill-fated plan conceived by Trump allies to usurp power on January 6 by pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to throw out the pro-Biden electors that had been chosen by voters. The idea was promoted by Trump advisers inside and outside the White House, including controversial right-wing lawyer John Eastman. 

Eastman, who has been subpoenaed by the January 6 committee, authored a memo outlining a six-step plan for Pence to overturn the election and award Trump a second term. The plan included throwing out results from seven states because they allegedly had competing electors. 

In truth, no state actually had two slates of competing electors. The pro-Trump electors were merely claiming without any authority to be electors, as documented in the fake certificates sent to the National Archives. The certificates were essentially an elaborate public relations stunt. 

The new documents weren't the only fake certificates sent to the National Archives. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, told CNN's Don Lemon that a second group called the "Sovereign Citizens of the State of Arizona" sent a rogue document to the National Archives in 2020, and she said they improperly used the Arizona state seal on their fake certificate. 

"They used this fake seal to make it look official, which is not a legal activity," Hobbs said.

 

Outright election fraud, and the conspiracy to commit it, by Trump supporters and Republican state officials in at least seven states, planned by Eastman and the Trump regime in order to "document" their "win."

Seems like a prosecutable offense to me.

And speaking of prosecutable offenses...

Stewart Rhodes — founder and leader of the extremist group Oath Keepers, whose members are accused of being key players in the Jan. 6 attack on Congress — has been indicted and arrested, officials said Thursday.

The 56-year-old, who was at the Capitol that day but has said he did not enter the building, is the most high-profile person charged in the investigation so far. He is charged with seditious conspiracy, along with 10 other Oath Keepers members or associates, officials said.

Most of those individuals were previously arrested, but one, 63-year old Edward Vallejo of Phoenix, Arizona, is also facing charges as part of the case against the Oath Keepers for the first time. Officials said Rhodes was arrested this morning in Little Elm, Texas, and Vallejo was taken into custody in Phoenix.

A federal grand jury in the District leveled the new charges focusing on what prosecutors say is a core group of Oath Keepers adherents who allegedly planned for and participated in obstructing Congress on the day lawmakers certified President Biden’s 2020 election victory.

The indictments unsealed Thursday mark the first time anyone has faced charges of seditious conspiracy for the Jan. 6 attacks, though prosecutors have long signaled they were considering using that rarely-applied section of federal law.

In interviews with The Washington Post over the past year, Rhodes — a former Army paratrooper and Yale Law graduate who has become one of the most visible figures of the far-right anti-government movement — has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

He said he was communicating with members of his group on Jan. 6, 2021 in an effort to “keep them out of trouble,” and emphasized that Oath Keepers associates who did go into the Capitol “went totally off mission.”

An attorney for Rhodes, Jonathan Moseley, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An earlier indictment charged 19 of alleged Oath Keepers adherents with conspiracy and aiding and abetting the obstruction of Congress. Two of those individuals have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with investigators. The rest have pleaded not guilty and are preparing for trials later this year.

In cases in which people have pleaded guilty, defendants acknowledged they were among a group that forced entry through the Capitol’s East Rotunda doors after marching single-file in tight formation up the steps wearing camouflage vests, helmets, goggles and Oath Keepers insignia.

Some defendants also admitted to stashing guns in a nearby Arlington, Va., hotel for possible use by what they called a “Quick Reaction Force.”

 

So yes, we're now starting to finally see the seditious conspiracy charges.

More will follow.

Ohio GOP Maps Struck Down As Unconstitutional

In a sign that Ohio isn't completely ruled by Republicans in perpetuity, the Ohio Supreme Court tossed the GOP's ridiculous two-thirds state House and state Senate supermajority maps as unconstitutional gerrymandering, and the deciding vote in the 4-3 decision was Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor.

The Ohio Supreme Court struck down GOP-drawn state House and Senate district maps as unconstitutional gerrymandering in a 4-3 decision Wednesday, sending the maps back to the drawing board.

Advocates of redistricting reform hailed the decision as a resounding victory for Ohio voters who overwhelmingly approved changes to the state constitution to limit partisan line-drawing in 2015.

“This ruling sends a clear message to lawmakers in Ohio: they may not put politics over people," said attorney Freda Levenson, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, who argued for opponents of the maps.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the Ohio Redistricting Commission – which is tasked with drawing legislative maps and dominated by Republicans – could not ignore parts of the Ohio Constitution that required them to attempt to match the statewide voting preferences of voters, according to the court's majority opinion, written by Justice Melody Stewart.

Those preferences, according to Stewart's opinion, were 54% for Republican candidates and 46% for Democratic candidates over the past decade.

“The commission is required to attempt to draw a plan in which the statewide proportion of Republican-leaning districts to Democratic-leaning districts closely corresponds to those percentages,” Stewart wrote. “Section 6 speaks not of desire but of direction: the commission shall attempt to achieve the standards of that section."

Stewart rejected the argument from commission members Senate President Matt Huffman and House Speaker Bob Cupp that the language was "aspirational" and required only if other, more technical, line-drawing requirements weren't met.

"We reject the notion that Ohio voters rallied so strongly behind an anti-gerrymandering amendment to the Ohio Constitution yet believed at the time that the amendment was toothless," Stewart wrote.

The commission must now get to work. The new plan must be adopted within 10 days, and the Ohio Supreme Court retains its authority to review any rewrites.

Feb. 2 is the current deadline to file paperwork to run for the Ohio Legislature. State lawmakers could change that filing date without moving the May 3 primary.

Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor was the key vote, breaking with her party to rule against the maps. O'Connor, a Republican, joined the court's three Democratic justices and the three GOP justices dissented.

O’Connor, who has served in statewide office for 24 years, suggested an alternative to the commission, which she called out for its partisanship.

“Having now seen firsthand that the current Ohio Redistricting Commission – comprised of statewide elected officials and partisan legislators – is seemingly unwilling to put aside partisan concerns as directed by the people’s vote, Ohioans may opt to pursue further constitutional amendment to replace the current commission with a truly independent, nonpartisan commission that more effectively distances the redistricting process from partisan politics,” O'Connor wrote in a concurring opinion.

On Sept. 16, Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission approved maps that would allow the GOP to retain its veto-proof majority in the state Legislature over the objections of the commission's two Democrats.

According to Huffman, R-Lima, the maps could give Republicans a 62-37 advantage in the House and 23-10 advantage in the Senate.

 

In other words, Republicans set up the Ohio Redistricting Commission to fail.  The Ohio Supreme Court didn't fall for it. Now the commission has to come up with better maps.

It's a pretty huge victory.