Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

Having already been censured by the Wyoming state GOP for her role in the January 6th Committee, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney now faces censure from the national GOP in the party's annual meeting in Salt Lake City this weekend.

 

Republican leaders forged an agreement this week to potentially fund a challenger to Rep. Liz Cheney in Wyoming, and party members are expected to formally condemn her for her work on the Jan. 6 committee Friday, an unprecedented rebuke of an incumbent member of Congress.

As the party met in Salt Lake City this week, the leaders of the Wyoming GOP privately signed a special letter that would allow the national party to financially support Harriet Hageman, Cheney’s primary challenger. The letter officially recognizes Hageman as the presumptive nominee for the seat.

In response to the party passing the “Rule 11” resolution that could fund Cheney’s challenger, a spokesman for Cheney said: “Wyoming Party Chairman Frank Eathorne and the Republican National Committee are trying to assert their will and take away the voice of the people of Wyoming before a single vote has even been cast.”

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel also worked behind the scenes with David Bossie, a top Trump ally, to author and push a resolution that attacked Cheney’s work on the committee, called her a “destructive” force in the GOP and vowed the party would no longer support her.

“We’ve had two members engage in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse. This has gone beyond their original intent. They are not sticking up for hard-working Republicans,” McDaniel said in a joint interview with Bossie at a Salt Lake City hotel where the party is holding its winter meeting.

Bossie called it a “one-two punch” against Cheney that signaled a message from the GOP at the state and national levels.

The draft resolution passed unanimously in the GOP’s resolutions committee meeting on Thursday afternoon, and McDaniel and Bossie spoke privately in favor of it. “Once it passed, there was applause in the room,” McDaniel said of the resolutions committee. The RNC chairwoman said she expected the resolution to pass “overwhelmingly” on Friday morning when the 168 members of the committee consider it. “This isn’t a top-down situation. The members have shown tremendous support for this,” McDaniel said.

A representative for Cheney decried the party’s position, reiterating a statement she made last week that said Republicans were “hostage” to Donald Trump. She faces a difficult primary in Wyoming, where Trump endorsed against her and former aides of his are working for her opponent. Cheney, daughter of former vice president Richard B. Cheney, has largely voted with Republicans and has long held conservative views but has been vociferous and relentless in her attacks on Trump since Jan. 6.

“The leaders of the Republican Party have made themselves willing hostages to a man who admits he tried to overturn a presidential election and suggests he would pardon Jan. 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy. I’m a constitutional conservative and I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump. History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic. No matter what,” Cheney said.

 

Cheney is going out doing the right thing, but her career is effectively over. Wyoming Republicans get to pretend that she doesn't exist and the party is already supporting her replacement in Harriet Hagerman. And yes, if David Bossie is involved, this is Trump personally taking a hand in her crucifixion.

Cheney is still awful of course. She's fine with 99.9% of Trump's racism, misogyny, and bigotry, she just wants a less-terrible figurehead for the party for her foul policies. She's being sacrificed along with GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, also facing excommunication from the party.

That's not the problem. This is.

The Republican Party on Friday officially declared the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and events that led to it “legitimate political discourse,” formally rebuking two lawmakers in the party who have been most outspoken in condemning the deadly riot and the role of Donald J. Trump in spreading the election lies that fueled it.

The Republican National Committee’s overwhelming voice vote to censure Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City culminated more than a year of vacillation, which started with party leaders condemning the Capitol attack and Mr. Trump’s conduct, then shifted to downplaying and denying it.

On Friday, the party went further in a resolution slamming Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for taking part in the House investigation of the assault, saying they were participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

It was an extraordinary statement about the deadliest attack on the Capitol in 200 years, in which a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the complex, brutalizing police officers and sending lawmakers into hiding. Nine people died in connection with the attack and more than 150 officers were injured. The party passed the resolution without discussion and almost without dissent.

The Republican party just officially recognized the January 6th terrorist attack as "legitimate political discourse", folks.

 

Republicans will kill to maintain power from here on out.

 

Don't mourn Cheney and Kinzinger's destruction.

Elect more Democrats instead.

Jobapalooza, Con't

Huge, huge numbers in the January jobs report today, including massive upward revisions in the "disappointing" November and December numbers.

Payrolls rose far more than expected in January despite surging omicron cases that seemingly sent millions of workers to the sidelines, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Nonfarm payrolls surged by 467,000 for the month, while the unemployment rate edged higher to 4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Dow Jones estimate was for payroll growth of 150,000 and a 3.9% unemployment rate.

The stunning gain came a week after the White House warned that the numbers could be low due to the pandemic.

Covid cases, however, have plunged nationally in recent weeks, with the seven-day moving average down more than 50% since peaking in mid-January, according to the CDC. Most economists, while expecting January’s number to be weak, see a further rebound coming in the months ahead.

Along with the big upside surprise for January, massive revisions sent previous months considerably higher.

December, which initially was reported as a gain of 199,000, went up to 510,000. November surged to 647,000 from the previous reported 249,000. For the two months alone, the initial counts were revised up by 709,000. The revisions came as part of the annual adjustments from the BLS that saw sizeable changes for many of the months in 2021.

“The benchmark revisions helped the numbers a bit just because it moved out some of the seasonal factors that have been at work. But overall the job market is strong, particularly in the face of omicron,” said Kathy Jones, chief fixed income strategist at Charles Schwab. “It’s hard to find a weak spot in this report.”

For January, the biggest employment gains came in leisure and hospitality, which saw 151,000 hires, 108,000 of which came from bars and restaurants. Professional and business services contributed 86,000, while retail was up 61,000.

There was more good jobs news: The labor force participation rate rose to 62.2%, a 0.3 percentage point gain. That took the rate, which is closely watched by Fed officials, to its highest level since March 2020 and within 1.2 percentage points of where it was pre-pandemic.

A more encompassing level of unemployment that counts discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons dropped to 7.1%, 0.2 percentage point decline and to just above its pre-pandemic level.

The job gains brought employment back to about 1.7 million below where it was in February 2020, a month before the pandemic declaration.

 

So to recap: 

• Nearly 500k new jobs this month alone.
• Upwards revisions of more than 700k for November and December.
• Leisure/Restaurant numbers up by more than 100k.
• An entire percentage point of the American labor force came back to work.
• Under 2 million jobs to go to erase the Trump Depression's losses.

 

These are some of the best job numbers in decades, folks. Biden is doing it right. All the nonsense about "people staying home" isn't happening. 

 

The economy is roaring back. 

Joe Biden did that.

Last Call For The Vax Of Life, Con't

Yet another Republican governor has decided that if the COVID dead each week simply aren't counted anymore, that the pandemic will simply vanish and everything will be fine.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced Thursday that she will soon end public health disaster proclamations that Iowa has operated under since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly two years ago.

The shift will include pulling the plug on a state website focusing on COVID data, such as the number of Iowans testing positive for the disease, being hospitalized with it or dying from it. However, many of those statistics will continue to be available on other state and federal websites, Kelly Garcia, interim director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, said Thursday.

Reynolds, a Republican, first invoked a disaster proclamation on March 17, 2020. In the early days of the pandemic, she used such proclamations to close businesses, limit large gatherings and encourage other pandemic responses, such as limiting nonessential surgeries and — briefly — requiring masks to be worn in certain indoor settings.

Reynolds said in her statement Thursday that she will allow the current proclamation to expire on Feb. 15 at 11:59 p.m. She said it's time to reallocate state resources.

"We cannot continue to suspend duly enacted laws and treat COVID-19 as a public health emergency indefinitely," Reynolds said in a statement. "After two years, it’s no longer feasible or necessary. The flu and other infectious illnesses are part of our everyday lives, and coronavirus can be managed similarly."

Her move comes as Iowa's spike in cases and hospitalizations from the omicron variant has begun to ease. Still, 794 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Iowa as of Wednesday, while 109 patients required intensive care and 51 required ventilators.

Iowa recorded more than 150 additional COVID-19 deaths in its weekly update Wednesday, representing people who had died with the disease in previous weeks and months. The health department recorded just three additional flu deaths in its weekly flu report Jan. 28, bringing the total since last fall to 13.

 

If you get COVID and die, oh well.

 

Manage it.

 

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The Biden administration policy of announcing Russia's false flag efforts ahead of time has got to be really annoying to Putin, as it seems Washington has caught his disinformation squad red-handed once again trying to start a pretext for military invasion.

The United States has acquired intelligence about a Russian plan to fabricate a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine using a faked video that would build on recent disinformation campaigns, according to senior administration officials and others briefed on the material.

The plan — which the United States hopes to spoil by making public — involves staging and filming a fabricated attack by the Ukrainian military either on Russian territory or against Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine.

Russia, the officials said, intended to use the video to accuse Ukraine of genocide against Russian-speaking people. It would then use the outrage over the video to justify an attack or have separatist leaders in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine invite a Russian intervention.

Officials would not release any direct evidence of the Russian plan or how they learned of it, saying to do so would compromise their sources and methods. But both a recent Russian disinformation campaign focused on false accusations of genocide and the recent political actions being taken in the Russian parliament to recognize breakaway governments in Ukraine lent credence to the intelligence.

If carried out, the Russian operation would be an expansion of a propaganda theme that American intelligence officials and outside experts have said Moscow has been pushing on social media, conspiracy sites and with state-controlled media since November.

The video was intended to be elaborate, officials said, with plans for graphic images of the staged, corpse-strewn aftermath of an explosion and footage of destroyed locations. They said the video was also set to include faked Ukrainian military equipment, Turkish-made drones and actors playing Russian-speaking mourners.

American officials would not say who in Russia precisely was planning the operation, but a senior administration official said that “Russian intelligence is intimately involved in this effort.”

A British government official said that they had done their own analysis on the intelligence and had high confidence that Russia was planning to engineer a pretext to blame Ukraine for an attack. The details of the intelligence, the official said, are “credible and extremely concerning.”

While it is not clear that senior Russian officials approved the operation, it was far along in the planning and the United States had high confidence that it was under serious consideration, officials said. Russian officials had found corpses to use in the video, discussed actors to play mourners and plotted how to make military equipment in the video appear Ukrainian or NATO-supplied.

While the plan sounded far-fetched, American officials said they believed it could have worked to provide a spark for a Russian military operation — an outcome they said they hoped would be made less likely by exposing the effort publicly.

The highlights of the intelligence have been declassified, in hopes of both derailing the plan and convincing allies of the seriousness of the Russian planning. The officials interviewed for this article requested anonymity to discuss declassified but sensitive intelligence before it was released publicly.

 

It's an exceedingly simple, yet effective plan, but that also means like disarming a tripwire, it can be taken down easily once you're aware of its presence. Contrary to popular belief, the Biden administration doesn't want a shooting war in Ukraine. 

Let's hope it stays that way.

The Night The Lights Went Out In Texas, Again

With a brutal winter storm on the way towards the Lone Star State today, and state leaders having done precisely nothing since last February's lethal power outage debacle, Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott is once again advising Texans that they are on their own when it comes to power, heat, water, and light this week.

With freezing weather expected to hit a large portion of Texas this week, Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday tried to assure Texans that the state is better prepared this year than last, but said there could be local power outages throughout the state.

“Either ice on power lines ... could cause a power line to go down, or it could be ice on trees that causes a tree to fall on power lines,” Abbott said.

This week’s cold front could be the first significant test of the state’s main power grid since last February’s freeze left millions of Texans without power for days in subfreezing temperatures. Hundreds of people died because of that storm.

“No one can guarantee there won’t be [power outages],” Abbott said Tuesday, just over two months after he promised the lights would stay on this winter.

Abbott and other officials at the press conference warned that the winter storm could cause “treacherous” driving conditions due to snow and ice.

Two hours before Abbott’s Tuesday news conference, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s main power grid, held a conference call with dozens of entities in the Texas power system and told them that gas suppliers have already begun notifying electricity generation companies that some of their expected gas supply will not arrive this week during the freezing weather, according to people on the call who requested anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the call publicly.

The Texas natural gas system’s ability to perform in the cold has been in question since last February, when the winter storm caused power outages and equipment failures that choked off much of the fuel supply to many electricity generators when they needed it most to produce electricity.

After last year’s storm, state lawmakers did not require natural gas companies — which fuel a majority of electricity generation in Texas — to prepare their equipment for the extreme cold before this winter. Meanwhile, lawmakers required most power generation companies to be prepared by this winter.

During the year’s first cold snap over New Year’s weekend, natural gas production in the state’s top energy-producing region dropped by about 20% as parts of Texas briefly experienced freezing weather. A couple weeks later as another cold front approached Texas, subsidiaries for a major pipeline company threatened to cut off natural gas supply to the state’s largest power generator over an ongoing financial dispute stemming from the February 2021 winter storm.

When asked about the natural gas supply Tuesday, Abbott said “there might be some reduction in the generation of natural gas. We can still maintain power grid integrity even if there is a loss of some level of production of natural gas.”

Abbott said gas producers have “taken steps to ensure that we’re going to have the natural gas that we need.

An ERCOT spokesperson said the grid operator has “planned and prepared” for a drop in natural gas this week.

The natural gas industry has not made significant upgrades since last winter, Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, said in December. But Staples said the industry has been preparing for winter weather for years.

 

Sure, Jan. And tens of thousands are already without power ac the ice storm falls.

 

Texas is a third world, failed state.

Go Ahead And Mark Zucker, Burned

Turns out that not only did CNN's investigation into Chris Cuomo turn up evidence of his sexual misconduct, the same investigation also turned up sexual misconduct on the part of CNN head Jeff Zucker, who has now immediately resigned from the cable news network in disgrace as a result.

Jeff Zucker resigned on Wednesday as the president of CNN and the chairman of WarnerMedia’s news and sports division, writing in a memo that he had failed to disclose to the company a romantic relationship with another senior executive at CNN.

Mr. Zucker, 56, is among the most powerful leaders in the American media and television industries. The abrupt end of his nine-year tenure immediately throws into flux the direction of CNN and its parent company, WarnerMedia, which is expected to be acquired later this year by Discovery Inc. in one of the nation’s largest media mergers.

In a memo to colleagues that was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Zucker wrote that his relationship came up during a network investigation into the conduct of Chris Cuomo, the CNN anchor who was fired in December over his involvement in the political affairs of his brother, former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo of New York.

“As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years,” Mr. Zucker wrote. “I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years. I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong.”

“As a result, I am resigning today,” he wrote.

Mr. Zucker was referring to Allison Gollust, CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer and one of the highest-ranking leaders of the network, who is closely involved in major business and communications decisions.

Ms. Gollust said in a statement on Wednesday that she was remaining in her role at CNN.

“Jeff and I have been close friends and professional partners for over 20 years,” she wrote. “Recently, our relationship changed during Covid. I regret that we didn’t disclose it at the right time. I’m incredibly proud of my time at CNN and look forward to continuing the great work we do everyday.”

Both Mr. Zucker and Ms. Gollust are divorced.

In a memo to WarnerMedia employees, Jason Kilar, the company’s chief executive, acknowledged that he had accepted Mr. Zucker’s resignation, adding, “We will be announcing an interim leadership plan shortly.”

 

The fact that it took two months after Cuomo's ouster for the hammer to fall on Zucker, well.

 

Make of that what you will.

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

As Russia beefs up its border forces with Ukraine ahead of conflict and possible sanctions against Moscow and 3,000 US troops in Eastern Europe are now on high alert, Republicans here in the States are suddenly very interested in seeing President Biden take Vladimir Putin's position that Ukraine should drop any hope of NATO membership.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is calling on the Biden administration to drop longstanding U.S. support for Ukraine's eventual membership in NATO, arguing that a binding commitment to defend the country would undermine efforts to counter China.

Why it matters: Hawley is staking out a position increasingly supported by the Republican base but historically at odds with the mainstream GOP consensus still backed by his Senate colleagues.

Context: Former President George W. Bush and all NATO leaders agreed at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine and Georgia "will become" members of the alliance — though no specific roadmap was offered at the time. 

Russia, which vigorously opposed the accession of either former Soviet republic, went on to invade Georgia later that year, and Ukraine in 2014. As Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens to renew his invasion of Ukraine with a massive military buildup on its borders, he is demanding legal guarantees that the country will never be allowed into NATO. NATO has no plans to admit Ukraine any time soon but has refused to allow Putin to set limitations on its foundational "open-door policy."

Driving the news: Ahead of a pair of all-member Ukraine briefings for the House and Senate on Thursday, Hawley is asking for "clarity" from Secretary of State Antony Blinken on how Ukraine's future membership in NATO would serve U.S. interests, according to a letter obtained by Axios. 

Hawley said he supports sending assistance that Ukraine needs to defend itself, but contends that the U.S. interest "is not so strong" to warrant going to war with Russia.
Biden himself has ruled out sending troops to Ukraine but plans to deploy forces to eastern Europe to bolster NATO's defenses — a position overwhelmingly supported by Senate Republicans.

What they're saying: "Such a deployment can only detract from the U.S. military’s ability to ready and modernize forces to deter China in the Indo-Pacific," Hawley writes, arguing that "Americans’ security and prosperity rest upon our ability" to curtail Beijing's dominance. 

"But those opportunity costs pale in comparison to what would be expected — indeed, required — of the United States, were NATO actually to admit Ukraine as a member."
Pointing to the failure of NATO member states to spend 2% of their GDP on defense, Hawley called on Biden to rethink "basic assumptions" about U.S. foreign policy that have been "collapsed" by the rise of China.

 

Yeah, that's the GOP argument: NATO membership for Ukraine -- or for the United States mind you -- is pointless because of China.  It's a dumb argument even for a dim bulb like Hawley.

This is nothing new of course. Trump said for years that the US would be better off without NATO.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

We're now to the point where the whitewashing of history by screaming "CRITICAL RACE THEORY!!!!" every five seconds in order to "protect" kids from being made to feel "uncomfortable" about the origins of American slavery has reached the point where the First Amendment is being dismantled in the name of America's armed forces.

A Tennessee state legislator introduced a joint resolution to "reprimand" the Associated Press (AP) for publishing an article highlighting racism within the military's ranks, saying the outlet "engaged in the lowest form of yellow journalism."

The bill, reported by a CBS/ABC-affiliate, was proposed by Republican state Rep. Bud Hulsey, who objected to an AP story that ran back in May, entitled "Deep-rooted racism, discrimination permeate US military."

In the article, AP reporters Kat Stafford, James Laporta, Aaron Morrison and Helen Wieffering interviewed "current and former enlistees and officers in nearly every branch of the armed services" who "described a deep-rooted culture of racism and discrimination that stubbornly festers, despite repeated efforts to eradicate it."

Additionally, the AP found that the military "processed more than 750 complaints of discrimination by race or ethnicity from service members in the fiscal year 2020 alone."

Hulsey's resolution contends that because the AP found 750 complaints – when there are 425,000 members of the active-duty military – racism in the ranks, by his accounting, is "uncommon and not a largescale problem."

The "allegations that members of the U.S. military are racist and that the military itself accepts a culture of discrimination are not only blatantly false," the resolution reads, "but an insult to the brave men and women who combat racism and discrimination at home and around the globe."

It also adds that "the AP has engaged in the lowest form of yellow journalism and should be held accountable by the American public and their elected officials."

The publication, for its part, has firmly stood by the article in question. Kat Stafford, one of its authors, tweeted weeks ago that she and her colleagues "spent nearly a year interviewing dozens of service members and experts – some of whom could not speak publicly out of fear of retribution. We poured over copious documents & FOIAs. We did our homework. No matter how much one tries [to] deny it, racism does exist."

 

The one thing that white Christian Republicans will not tolerate is the notion that systemic racism still exists in 2022 in the glorious, perfect land of God's America. Racism is a "barbarous relic of the past" that can't exist because America is the greatest country in world history. The notion that racism is still alive not only offends them, they turn to the punitive powers of the state to harm those who point out racism is in fact alive and well.

The GOP would rather pass legislation officially reprimanding a news organization's reporting on racism than actually dealing with the systemic racism in place. That's what it means to be a Republican in 2022.

And let's remember, a large majority of Christian Republicans believe they are the most persecuted group in US history. 48% of Republicans believe Christians are persecuted, more than any group in the US: Black folk, Muslims, LGBTQ+, everyone. They believe Black Americans are the least persecuted group in America, only 27% believe Black folk are persecuted.

So yes, using the power of the state to punish the messenger is exactly on brand for them. It's authoritarian and theocratic, as well as racist and furthering white supremacy's power.

The most American thing imaginable.

North Of The Border, Con't

Federal agents raided the home of a Homeland Security border official this week in Michigan, and there are a hell of a lot of questions flying around as to why.

Federal agents have raided the house of a high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official as part of an unspecified investigation, The Detroit News has learned.

Neighbors and law enforcement officials confirmed the raid happened Friday at the home of Homeland Security Special Agent in Charge Vance Callender, who oversees operations in Michigan and Ohio. The search involved approximately 15 agents and lasted about six hours at a pea-green, Colonial-style home, east of downtown Royal Oak, according to an eyewitness.

News of the search has spread widely within the region's federal law enforcement community, raising questions about the conduct of a high-ranking federal official tasked with helping protect the nation's border with Canada. Callender heads a department that also investigates a wide range of crimes, including sex trafficking and child pornography, and enforces immigration and customs laws.

“First, it is important to emphasize that some rumors online about Special Agent-in-Charge Callender may be sensational; yet they are untrue," his lawyer, Nick Oberheiden, wrote in an email to The Detroit News. "With respect to allegations of an investigation, we refrain from further comments at this point — out of respect for SAC Callender’s credentials and his position.”

It is unclear what prompted the search, and Callender, 49, has not been charged with wrongdoing. He could not be reached for comment and a spokeswoman with Immigration and Customs Enforcement would not discuss Callender's job status.

“As public servants working for a law enforcement agency, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) takes allegations of misconduct very seriously," the spokeswoman said.

"Any allegations of misconduct are appropriately investigated, and any employee, regardless of rank or seniority, who has committed provable misconduct, will be held accountable. Where necessary, ICE works with federal and/or state and local law enforcement who may investigate such allegations. Per agency protocol, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) will also review the allegations.”

Callender has spent 26 years in law enforcement and overseen Homeland Security operations in Michigan and Ohio since January 2020. He previously served as the department's operations chief for Europe, Canada and Mexico. Most recently, Callender was tapped to coordinate Operation Allies Welcome, a department effort to resettle Afghan refugees. The operation is headquartered at Fort McCoy, a U.S. Army base in Wisconsin.

 

To recap, Mitch Callender is a career law enforcement professional who was in charge of major Homeland Security operations on the Canadian border. For all these federal agencies to be involved, the potential for wrongdoing must be sky high.

Feds don't raid the homes of career Homeland Security agents without a very, very good reason.

I suspect we'll have that reason soon.

Last Call For Follow The Money, Con't

Following the 2022 cash from corporate America and dark money donors finds that the bulk of political donations are going to the GOP, which has tens of millions on hand in 2022 more than they did in 2020, but it doesn't mean Dems are getting destroyed, either. Dems are having a record year in fact, especially at the national House and Senate fundraising levels, it just means Republicans have an even larger haul.

Major Republican organizations focused on winning back control of the House and the Senate ended last year with significantly more money than their Democratic counterparts, a reversal of past fortunes that suggests shifting momentum ahead of the midterm elections.

The new fundraising totals, revealed Monday in filings to the Federal Election Commission, showed both parties holding record amounts for the off-year of the congressional cycle. But the growth in the Republican cash hoard compared with the 2020 and 2018 cycles outstripped Democratic gains, as GOP donors, particularly those who give seven- and eight-figure checks, leaned into the effort to take back control of the House and the Senate this fall.

The Republican Party’s campaign committees for the House and the Senate, along with the super PACs affiliated with Republican House and Senate leadership, reported nearly $220 million in combined cash on hand on Dec. 31. By contrast, the corresponding Democratic organizations reported $176 million in cash reserves.

The same Democratic groups had nearly $161 million in cash on hand at this point in the 2020 cycle, about $50 million more than the corresponding Republican groups.

The disclosures come as Republican leaders have become increasingly confident about taking back control of the House and Democrats have begun to criticize each other publicly about the strategy for winning over voters. Some Democratic leaders say worries about the election environment and the sidelining of former president Donald Trump as a unifying target have diminished donor enthusiasm on their side.

“When you are a Democrat, you are raising money for a very-likely loss, so that is hard to get around,” said David Brock, the founder of American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC that supports Democratic candidates. “And in 2018 and 2020, there was a good chunk of anti-Trump money that is not coming back unless he is the nominee again.”

But several other Democrats said the relative drop-off is less important than the eye-popping amounts of money that both parties have been able to harness. President Biden’s party, they say, will have enough money down the stretch. They also noted that cash-on-hand figures for the end of the year are just a single snapshot of time, which does not take into account spending last year or fundraising that is in the pipeline for later this year.

“House Democrats’ record-breaking fundraising shows we’re ready to compete across the battleground and make sure voters know just how dangerous Republicans’ extremist agenda is,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Chris Taylor said in a statement.

A clear bright spot for Democrats came at the national party level, which funds field operations in the states that can benefit House and Senate campaigns. With Biden in the White House, the Democratic National Committee ended last year with $65 million in cash, compared with just $10 million at the start of 2020 and $6.6 million at the start of 2018.

The Republican National Committee reported $56 million in cash at the end of 2021.

Democrats also took solace in the strong fundraising for some of their 2022 candidates, which does not show up in the filings for party committees and their corresponding outside groups. Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) reported collecting $9.8 million in the last three months of the year, compared with $5.4 million for former football star Herschel Walker, who has been endorsed by Trump as the Republican candidate for his seat.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) raised about $9 million in the same period, compared with $1.4 million for finance executive Blake Masters and $800,000 for Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who are competing for the Republican nomination.

“While Republicans put forward flawed candidates that are locked in vicious primaries, this record-breaking fundraising quarter for Democrats shows the power of our grass roots support,” said Jazmin Vargas, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The DSCC ended the year with $23.7 million in cash on hand, compared with $32.8 million for its counterpart, the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

 

In other words, DNC chair Jaime Harrison, DCCC head Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, and DSCC head Sen. Gary Peters are all pulling in record hauls. They are raising hundreds of millions, which is what the Dems need. They are getting the job done.

 

The issue of course is that the GOP has even more cash on hand. Raising the cash is one thing, making it work, well, Dems have had issues with that in the past (look at Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who raised tens of millions and got destroyed in 2014.)  Money? Dems can do that. Win with that money? We will see.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Black History Month here in America begins with an awful reminder that violent racism is the default for the country and that it has been for centuries.

A growing number of historically black colleges and universities have had to lock down or postpone classes due to bomb threats on the first day of Black History Month. 

At least 13 HBCUs reported bomb threats Tuesday. At least one of them, Howard University, also received a bomb threat Monday. 

Coppin State University 

Someone called the Baltimore university and said there was a bomb on campus, Coppin State University spokesperson Angela Galeano told CNN. 

The threat was immediately reported to campus police, Galeano said. 

A message on the university's website said all classes would be online Tuesday. 

"If you are on campus, please, shelter in place, and wait for further instructions," the message said. "Emergency officials are evaluating the campus and we will provide updates, as soon as possible."

Mississippi Valley State University 

The university said a bomb threat was received through its guardhouse early Tuesday morning. 

"MVSU is currently on lockdown, and campus police are conducting a complete investigation," a university Facebook post reads. 

"School officials are working with local emergency personnel to investigate and determine the extent of the threat." 

Classes will be remote Tuesday, and the university is asking all on-campus students to stay in their residence halls. Only essential staff will be allowed on campus, MVSU said.

Alcorn State University 

The university in Lorman, Mississippi, received "an anonymous bomb threat," Alcorn State posted on its website Tuesday. 

"We are advising all students to shelter in place," the message said. "Faculty and staff should not report to work until further notice."

 

There were bomb threats at another dozen or more HBCU's today, and there were several yesterday as well. No devices have been found, but that's not the point. White supremacist terrorism directed at Black colleges and universities is the point and it's working.

There's no reason to believe these threats will stop, or that anyone will be punished for them. They can come from anywhere.

This is what Black History Month means to white supremacists: open season on Black terror, as America itself has been built on Black terror and blood for decades. 

Black Lives Still Matter.

The Big Lie, Con't

Yes, Donald Trump absolutely wanted to send in local and state police, Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and/or the US military to seize voting machines in several key states in order to declare the 2020 election fraudulent, and to then declare victory.

Six weeks after Election Day, with his hold on power slipping, President Donald J. Trump directed his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to make a remarkable call. Mr. Trump wanted him to ask the Department of Homeland Security if it could legally take control of voting machines in key swing states, three people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Giuliani did so, calling the department’s deputy secretary, who said he lacked the authority to audit or impound the machines.

Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Giuliani to make that inquiry after rejecting a separate effort by his outside advisers to have the Pentagon take control of the machines. And the outreach to the Department of Homeland Security came not long after Mr. Trump, in an Oval Office meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr, raised the possibility of whether the Justice Department could seize the machines, a previously undisclosed suggestion that Mr. Barr immediately shot down.

The new accounts show that Mr. Trump was more directly involved than previously known in exploring proposals to use his national security agencies to seize voting machines as he grasped unsuccessfully for evidence of fraud that would help him reverse his defeat in the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the episodes.

The existence of proposals to use at least three federal departments to assist Mr. Trump’s attempt to stay in power has been publicly known. The proposals involving the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security were codified by advisers in the form of draft executive orders.

But the new accounts provide fresh insight into how the former president considered and to some degree pushed the plans, which would have taken the United States into uncharted territory by using federal authority to seize control of the voting systems run by states on baseless grounds of widespread voting fraud.

The people familiar with the matter were briefed on the events by participants or had firsthand knowledge of them.

The accounts about the voting machines emerged after a weekend when Mr. Trump declared at a rally in Texas that he might pardon people charged in connection with the storming of the Capitol last Jan. 6 if he were re-elected. In a statement issued after the rally, Mr. Trump also suggested that his vice president, Mike Pence, could have personally “overturned the election” by refusing to count delegates to the Electoral College who had vowed to cast their votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The new information helps to flesh out how the draft executive orders to seize voting machines came into existence and points in particular to the key role played by a retired Army colonel named Phil Waldron.

According to people familiar with the accounts, Mr. Waldron, shortly after the election, began telling associates that he had found irregularities in vote results that he felt were suggestive of fraud. He then came up with the idea of having a federal agency like the military or the Department of Homeland Security confiscate the machines to preserve evidence.

Mr. Waldron first proposed the notion of the Pentagon’s involvement to Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, whom he says he served with in the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The plans were among an array of options that were placed before Mr. Trump in the tumultuous days and weeks that followed the election, developed by an ad hoc group of lawyers like Sidney Powell and other allies including Mr. Flynn and Mr. Waldron. That group often found itself at odds with Mr. Giuliani and his longtime associate Bernard Kerik, as well as with Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, and his team.

Around the same time that Mr. Trump brought up the possibility of having the Justice Department seize the voting machines, for example, he also tried to persuade state lawmakers in contested states like Michigan and Pennsylvania to use local law enforcement agencies to take control of them, people familiar with the matter said. The state lawmakers refused to go along with the plan.

Once again the only reason we're not in a Trump authoritarian regime right now is because his people got cold feet: Mike Pence huddling in his office, Rudy Giuliani screaming on the phones, Bill Barr being stonefaced at Justice, Chris Miller at the Pentagon, all of these folks too cowardly to pull the trigger.

We have a democracy still because Trump surrounded himself with spineless hacks. 

The next time America falls into the abyss.

Last Call For The Rent Is Too Damn High, Con't

Rent's due tomorrow, and inflation, lack of affordable housing, and massive corporate takeover of rental properties means rent is skyrocketing across the country, and millions once again face eviction into the winter cold of the omicron pandemic.

Kiara Age moved in less than a year ago and now it’s time to move again: Rent on her two-bedroom apartment in Henderson, Nev., is rising 23 percent to nearly $1,600 a month, making it impossibly out of reach for the single mother.

Age makes $15 an hour working from home as a medical biller while also caring for her 1-year-old son, because she can’t afford child care. By the time she pays rent — which takes up more than half of her salary — and buys groceries, there’s little left over.

“I am trying to figure out what I can do,” said Age, 32, who also has an 8-year-old daughter. “Rent is so high that I can’t afford anything.”

Rental prices across the country have been rising for months, but lately the increases have been sharper and more widespread, forcing millions of Americans to reassess their living situations.

Average rents rose 14 percent last year, to $1,877 a month, with cities like Austin, New York and Miami notching increases of as much as 40 percent, according to real estate firm Redfin. And Americans expect rents will continue to rise — by about 10 percent this year — according to a report released this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. At the same time, many local rent freezes and eviction moratoriums have already expired.

“Rents really shot up in the second half of 2021,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “The pandemic was kind of a pause on the economy and now that things are reopening, inflation is picking up, rents are going up and people are realizing they don’t have as much disposable income as they might have thought they had.”

Higher rent prices are also expected to be a key driver of inflation in coming months. Housing costs make up a third of the U.S. consumer price index, which is calculated based on the going rate of home rentals. But economists say there is a lag of 9 to 12 months before rising rents show up in inflation measures. As a result, even if inflation were to subside for all other components of the consumer price index, rising rents alone could keep inflation levels elevated through the year, said Frank Nothaft, chief economist at real estate data firm CoreLogic.

While the Federal Reserve’s likely interest rate increases are expected to slow soaring housing costs — already mortgage rates have been trending higher, which tends to cool the real estate market — the restraint on rental prices is expected to be much less direct and take longer to filter through.

In the meantime, the Biden administration has begun reallocating unused funds from its $46.5 billion Emergency Rental Assistance program to help residents with rent and utility payments in cities such as Washington, D.C., Houston and San Diego. President Biden has also vowed to add nearly 100,000 affordable homes over the next three years by providing low-cost funding to qualifying developers, and encouraging states and local governments to reduce zoning and financing rules for affordable housing.

The pandemic has exacerbated inequalities in many parts of life, and housing is no different. Homeowners benefited from rock-bottom interest rates and surging home prices, while renters have faced surging costs with little reprieve. And unlike markups in other categories — such as food or gas, where prices can waver in both directions — economists say annual leases and long-term mortgages make it unlikely that housing costs will come back down quickly once they rise.

Eleven million households, or 1 in 4 renters, spend more than half of their monthly income on rent, according to an analysis of 2018 census data by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, though experts say that figure is likely even higher now.

“The fact is, for too many Americans, housing is unaffordable,” said Dennis Shea, executive director of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “We have an inadequate supply of homes — for both rent and for sale — and of course the lowest income families are being hit hardest.”

In interviews with renters around the country, many said their monthly payments had recently risen or were set to go up in the coming weeks. Multiple people said that despite local rent freezes, their management companies had found ways to increase monthly dues by tacking on new “amenity fees” or charging for services like trash collection that had previously been included.

Many said they began looking for other rental options, only to find that everything around them had gone up in price, too. Some said they’re considering relocating altogether — from Austin to Richmond, or New York City to Dover, Del.

 

So millions of Americans are facing eviction, and rents that are completely unaffordable. Even with assistance from the Biden administration, state, and local programs, a whole lot of Americans are going to be out on the street in the months ahead, with nowhere to go.

 

We're looking at a major, fundamental shift in the labor market.  People can't afford to be near their jobs anymore, so they have to move further away or quit altogether and look for work in another city or state, which of course they can't afford.

 

We've managed to delay the rental disaster through 2021, but 2022 is when it all catches up with us. People can't afford rent increases of 10%, let alone 40%.

 

It's going to get bad, folks.  It's going to be the story of 2022.

School Of Hard-Right Knocks, Con't

Terrified public school educators are now auto-banning books from classrooms to prevent any whiff of controversy from "Critical Race Theory", which was the entire point of the exercise over the last six months. and it will continue until every last vestige of American history is whitewashed into oblivion in schools across the country.

An acclaimed MLK-themed novel was removed from a 10th-grade English class in North Carolina. Haywood County Superintendent Dr. Bill Nolte told Popular Information that he pulled the book, Dear Martin by Nic Stone, in a matter of hours after receiving one parent complaint. Nolte said he did not read the book — or even obtain a copy — prior to making the decision.

The 10th-grade parent, Tim Reeves, addressed the Haywood County School Board on January 10. Reeves said that his son received Dear Martin in 10th-grade English class on January 6. Reeves learned from his son that the book contained "explicit language" including the "f-word," the "s-word," and "GD." Reeves said that he was "appalled." He said the "language" and "sexual innuendos" in the book are "concerning to me as a parent."

Reeves acknowledged that his son hears "lots of language every day" but objected to its inclusion in a "textbook." Reeves suggested that providing Dear Martin to 10th graders violated the "age of consent" because "they are still adolescents."

Dear Martin "tells the story of an Ivy League-bound African American student named Justyce who becomes a victim of racial profiling." The book covers Justyce's "experiences at his mostly White prep school and the fallout from his brief detainment." In the book, Justyce's diary includes a letter to King in which Justyce explains how he sought to emulate the civil rights icon.

Stone's book was a finalist for the American Library Association's William C. Morris Award, a New York Times #1 bestseller, and was named one of TIME Magazine's top 100 young adult books of all time. Common Sense Media, a non-profit that evaluates books and other media for children, found the book was appropriate for 14-year-olds, who are typically in 9th grade. It also awarded the book 5 out of 5 stars for "overall quality."

When Reeves arrived at the School Board at the meeting, however, Nolte told him that he had removed Dear Martin from 10th grade English class.

In an interview, Nolte told Popular Information that he first heard from Reeves about his concerns "earlier that day." According to Nolte, Reeves had previously spoken to the high school principal who offered to provide an alternative text for Reeves' son. But Reeves was not satisfied and wanted the school to remove the text from the class.

Nolte said that, before making the decision to remove the book, he did not have an opportunity to "read all of it." Instead, Nolte "talked to some people who had read different sections of it" and "looked at some of the parts of it that were published online." Nolte also said he "didn't talk to the teacher at all about why she picked that text."

Nolte then concluded that "the amount of profanity and other descriptions or images in it" made Dear Martin inappropriate for a 10th-grade English class. There is no blanket prohibition on novels with profanity but Nolte said he was concerned with the frequency. "I made the best judgment I could make I feel pretty comfortable with it," Nolte concluded.

Nolte's approach appears inconsistent with the official policies of Haywood County Public Schools. Under the policy, a parent "may submit an objection in writing to the principal regarding the use of particular instructional materials." (Reeves did email the principal about his objection.) Then the principal "may establish a committee to review the objection" or make the decision themselves. Only if the principal or committee disagrees with the parent may "the decision of the committee or principal be appealed to the superintendent." In this case, Nolte says that he made the decision himself on the same day the complaint was filed. There is no indication that the principal rejected the objection or was even given the opportunity to decide.

Nolte's decision is also part of a larger trend of removing books that deal with marginalized communities based on alleged concerns about profanity.

 

When you remember the point is to cripple and destroy public education for 95% of American kids, to render it useless across the country, to shutter schools, fire teachers and educators, and sell off buildings and land and telling parents "You wanted school choice, arrange your own kids' education now, we won't do it" then all of this makes sense. In the last two years alone, public education has been gutted in America.

 

There's no whiff of recovery anytime soon. We're looking at a generation of kids without the basics of a K-12 education, even by America's dismal standards, where the "negative" parts of America's history are obliterated, as Greg Sargent warns.

We’re seeing dozens of GOP proposals to bar whole concepts from classrooms outright. The Republican governor of Virginia has debuted a mechanism for parents to rat out teachers. Bills threatening punishment of them are proliferating. Book-banning efforts are outpacing anything in recent memory.

Amid this onslaught, a proposed bill now advancing in the New Hampshire legislature deserves renewed scrutiny. It would ban the advocacy of any “doctrine” or “theory” promoting a “negative” account of U.S. history, including the notion that the United States was “founded on racism.”

Additionally, the bill describes itself as designed to ensure teachers’ “loyalty,” while prohibiting advocacy of “subversive doctrines.”

This proposal is drawing heightened attention from teachers and their representatives. With the push for constraints on teachers intensifying, they worry that if it succeeds, it could become a model in other states.

“It’s the next step in their campaign to whitewash our history by rewriting it,” Megan Tuttle, the president of the New Hampshire chapter of the National Education Association, told me in a statement.

If this passes, it will “stifle real discussion" in classrooms, Tuttle said, adding: “Then it’s only a matter of time before similar legislation has the same impact on classrooms around the country.”

 

We've already seen how easy it is to control the ignorant and weaponize them into an army of dullards, a confederacy of Confederate dunces. Imagine that being our future for decades to come.

 

That's where all this is headed.

The Big Lie, Con't

As Will Bunch points out, over the weekend in Texas, Trump all but promised a violent uprising across America if any of the state cases against him in New York, Georgia, or anywhere else result in indictments against him or his family.

 

Amid the predictable reiterations of the Big Lie that Biden’s legitimate 2020 election was stolen and his other narcissistic blather, Trump’s lengthy speech in Conroe contained three elements that marked a dangerous escalation of his post-presidential, post-Jan. 6 rhetoric. Let’s digest and analyze each of them:

— For the first time, Trump — if somehow elected again in 2024 and upon returning to the White House in January 2025 — dangled pardons before people convicted of crimes in the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill. “If I run and I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly,” he told the rally, adding: “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.” The statement raises as many questions as it answers — for example, was he including many or all of the more than 700 mostly low-level insurrectionists, or sending a message to his higher-up friends like Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows and others who could be subject to criminal probes?

But two things are clear. The first is that Trump — facing probes over Jan. 6 in Georgia and possibly from the U.S. Justice Department — is committing a form of obstruction of justice in full public view, since the future possibility of a pardon offers an incentive to stay on the ex-president’s good side and not testify against him. The other is that abusing the constitutional power of a presidential pardon — intended by the framers for grace and true clemency — to clear the jails of his political allies is banana republic-type stuff, the ultimate rock bottom made inevitable when Trump was allowed to abuse his pardon powers while in office 2017-21.

— In a sign that Trump is increasingly worried about the overlapping probes — the remarkable evidence uncovered by the House Jan. 6 Committee that will likely be referred to the Justice Department, the Fulton County grand jury investigation into Georgia election tampering, and the unrelated probe into dodgy Trump family finances in New York, he explicitly called for mob action if charges are lodged in any of these jurisdictions. Said Trump: “If these radical, vicious racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had ... in Washington D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt.”

Of course, the last time that Trump used his megaphone to summon a large crowd (”Will be wild!” he famously tweeted) was last Jan. 6, and we all remember how that “protest” turned out. Experts call Trump’s practices here “stochastic terrorism” — broad statements in the media that are meant to stoke spontaneous acts of violence, in this case to intimidate the prosecutors or even the grand jurors who are weighing charges against Trump. While his Jan. 6 exhortations were the prelude to an attempted coup, Trump’s incendiary remarks in Conroe sound like a call for a new civil war — naming both the locales and the casus belli.

— But let’s take a step back and drill down on arguably the most important and alarming word in Trump’s statement: “Racist.” At first blush, it seems to come out of left field, in the sense of what could be racist about looking into a white man’s role in an attempted coup or his cooked financial books? Except that it happens that three of the key prosecutors investigating Trump — the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney, Fani Willis, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, and new Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg — as well as the chair of the House committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, are all Black.

Thus, it’s both alarming and yet utterly predictable that Trump would toss the gasoline of racial allegations onto his flaming pile of grievances, knowing how that will play with the Confederate flag aficionados within the ex-president’s cult. In tying skin color into his call for mobs in Atlanta or New York, Trump is seeking to start a race war — no different, really, from Dylann Roof. Roof used a .45-caliber Glock handgun, while Trump uses a podium and the services of fawning right-wing cable TV networks. Sadly, the latter method could prove more effective.

What happened in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday night was not politics. A politician seeking to regain the White House might craft a narrative around Biden’s struggles with inflation or with COVID-19 and make a case — no matter how absurd, given Trump’s failings on the pandemic and elsewhere — that he could do better for the voters. But increasingly Trump is less a politician and more the leader of a politics-adjacent cult. He does not want to make America great again so much as he wants to keep Donald Trump out of prison, and the most narcissistic POTUS of all time is willing to rip the United States in two to make this happen.

Trump’s chief weapons are fear and intimidation. To save American democracy, the people tasked with getting to the bottom of a former president’s high crimes and misdemeanors — on Capitol Hill and in those key courthouses — must be ready for the violence that Trump is inciting, and must summon the courage to finish their job. My fear is that Trump’s speech in Conroe will live in infamy — but the only reason it happened at all is because we have not held Trump to account for attempting to wreck American democracy on Jan. 6 ... not yet. Now, Trump has told us in no uncertain terms how he plans to break the nation this time. We can act forcefully to stop his new insurrection and punish his past crimes — or we can sit back and let the comet of autocracy strike.

 

I've said this before. Indictments against Trump mean that the local and state prosecutors have to be ready to defend themselves from lethal violence, targeting prosecutors, judges, court staff, jails and more. It means that the law enforcement agencies attached to defend these institutions will be called upon to do so, but it also means the law enforcement agents, individually, will be called upon by Trump to allow the violence to happen.

 

Trump is straight up telling people if they are involved in the violence, that he will pardon them when President. 

 

Trump needs to be in prison, right now, for obstruction of justice. It was witnessed by the world.

 

It'll never happen, of course.