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Brooks and Capehart on voting rights legislation and partisanship Jan 14, 2022 6:35 PM EST
NATIONAL PUBLIC TELEVISION
New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including Democrats' push for voting rights legislation, partisanship and President Biden’s handling of key issues within his party.
The Full Transcript Judy Woodruff: This week, Democrats renewed their push for voting rights legislation, the Supreme Court ruled on vaccine mandates, and new data showed inflation at its highest rate in nearly 40 years.
For a deeper look at all this, we turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. That is New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, columnist for The Washington Post.
Very good to see both of you.
Jonathan Capehart: Thank you.
Judy Woodruff: Thank you for joining us on this Friday night. Let's start with voting rights.
David, it hasn't been a good week for the Democrats, despite the fact that President Biden went to Atlanta, made, I think it's fair to say, his strongest remarks yet on why voting rights matter.
What was your take on what he had to say?
David Brooks: I thought 80 percent of it was fine, a very good speech is.
There were some rhetorical flourishes at the end that went over the top and they were too partisan. If we're going to have a clean election and a fair election and a properly certified election, we're going to need Democrats and Republican officials across the country to do their job.
And, in 2020, most Republicans did their job. And to make this a partisan issue and to have, to me, supercharged rhetoric about, are you on the side of Abraham Lincoln or are you on the side of Jefferson Davis, that offended a lot of Republicans, made them extremely angry, and I think it makes it harder for the Republican officials who are going to do a good job to be in their party.
My friend and colleague Tom Friedman wrote a column advocating for a Biden-Liz Cheney ticket in 2024. And I don't think he meant that literally. But what he pointed to the fact was, in Israel, they — there was a broad coalition that said, we cannot have Bibi Netanyahu as prime minister again.
And so they formed a broad coalition to make that happen. If we're going to prevent Donald Trump from being president again, we need a broad coalition. And I thought this speech was unhelpful, especially coming from a man who said he's going to unify the country.
So, most of the speech was good, but those rhetorical flourishes, partisan, I think, detract.
Judy Woodruff: Jonathan, too much partisanship in what the president had to say?
Jonathan Capehart: I don't think so, Judy. In fact, what David calls rhetorical flourishes and over the top, I thought was probably the most powerful part of the president's speech.
Remember, President Biden, to my mind, is never more clear, passionate, focused and determined than when he is talking about what he calls the soul of America, started with his campaign talking about Charlottesville, talking in his run against Donald Trump about who we are as a people.
And I think a lot of people make a mistake in terms of focusing in on the politics of this speech, and not understanding that it's as much political as it is moral for this president.
And we can focus in on what happened in the 2020 election, but the fire that's coming from the president, the fire that is coming from millions of Americans has to do with what Republicans in particular have been doing in states since the 2020 election.
For a lot of people, what is happening at the state and local level in terms of not just voter suppression, but voter subversion, is what is animating this entire debate.
And so for people to be upset because the president drew a very stark and clear line in the sand that you are either with, as he said, Dr. King, in terms of opening up the promise of America to everyone, or George Wallace, who was about holding on to power for power's sake, and holding it in the hands of an elite few, particularly a white male elite few, this is where we are right now.
And the last thing I will say on this is, after four years of a president who took a blowtorch to the American presidency, to the Constitution, to our values, to the peaceful transfer of power, to decency in general, for people to be upset with President Biden for fighting for American values and for American democracy, it's a little hard for me to take them seriously.
Judy Woodruff: What about that, David? Because what we have seen Republicans doing in a number of states is cutting back on early voting, the number of days, cutting back on things like mail-in — the ability to do mail-in voting. What about that?
David Brooks: Yes. Well, I'm not here to defend that. And I certainly have not been defending it lo these many months.
But I do think rhetoric like comparing Republicans to Bull Connor and Jefferson Davis is not helpful. It's not 1861 anymore. I even think the trope that he has that, well, the Georgia law is Jim Crow 2 is also not helpful.
The Georgia law was a big step backward. And I would condemn it in the strongest terms. And I agree with Jonathan about 80 percent. But the Georgia law, it's compared — I have read an article — an analysis recently comparing it to the New York law. And there are some parts where Georgia makes it easier, some where New York makes it easier.
And the — it's true that Georgia is going backwards and New York is going forward. So I don't want to justify that. But the overheated rhetoric, I think, has the effect of making this just a Republican-vs.-Democratic issue. And it should not be a Republican-vs.-Democratic issue.
It should be a Republican and Democrats on one side and the cult of Trump on the other side. And making that clear, I think, is the right thing — the right way to approach this.
Jonathan Capehart: Well, I mean, all I can say is, we can polite ourselves to oblivion. And, at some point, it is imperative that the president state clearly what's at stake here.
And when it comes to Georgia, let's keep in mind, Georgia didn't institute its new laws, propose them and pass them into law until after Georgia voters voted for President Biden to make him the next president of the United States and after they elected two Democrats from that state.
So, this is what we're talking about here. And what — 19 — what is it, the stat I'm looking for? Nineteen states have passed 34 restrictive laws in 2021 alone. So, that is what's animating this entire discussion.
Judy Woodruff: David, I want to ask you about… Go ahead, David. Go ahead.
David Brooks: Yes, maybe I will get to what we're going to.
But we have an ethical responsibility here to make sure we actually effectively repulse what's being — happening. And (AUDIO GAP) is now in a position where nothing's probably going to happen in Washington, because they couldn't get Sinema and Manchin to sign off on the filibuster changes.
So it's likely that we will have no voting rights bills this year. And so we have to figure out ways to actually pass things. And I think alienating the center is probably not the way to go.
Now, in retrospect, as I look at the Biden presidency, and especially the terrible events, in my view, of not having these voting rights bills, it seems clear to me the whole Biden presidency, and, on Inauguration Day, they should have sat down with Manchin and Sinema and said, where can we go from here, and what can we do together?
That is to say, they should have started at the center and gone outward. Instead, they started at the left and went centrist. And I — that's looking like an unfortunate strategy both on voting rights and on Build Back Better.
Judy Woodruff: Well, that brings up what Sinema had to say, Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Jonathan, in her speech on the Senate floor this week, where they need — they need her, they need Senator Manchin to go along with any change in the Senate rules, in the filibuster.
But she essentially argued that it's more important to work on partisanship than it is to do something about voting rights.
Jonathan Capehart: Sure. And her speech could have been delivered from fantasyland, this idea that the Republicans who sit there now have any interest in working with Democrats on this issue in particular.
In 2006, the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized unanimously in the Senate. Republican President George W. Bush had a South Lawn signing ceremony with Reverend Al Sharpton sitting in the front row. That was when voting rights was bipartisan. All the Republicans in the Senate voted for it. As the president pointed out in his speech in Atlanta, 16 of those senators still serve.
And yet 16 of those senators won't even vote to allow those two voting rights bills to even be debated. They don't have to vote for them, but why shouldn't they debate them? Why shouldn't the American people at least get to hear what's in those bills, what's wrong with those bills, where could there be areas of compromise?
And when it comes to Senator Manchin, at least he worked with Republicans. They had three bites at the apple on the Freedom to Vote Act. And Senator Manchin gave Republicans, after talking to them, many of the things that they wanted, including voter I.D. And yet no Republican voted to allow that bill to even be debated.
So, for Senator Sinema to say, look, we have to work with Republicans, and I will only do this if there's bipartisanship, well, where's it going to come from, because it's not it's happening now?
David Brooks: Yes, well, I mean, her argument is not an implausible argument. And it's not really about these two particular pieces of legislation.
Her argument is that if the — if we change the filibuster rules, and the majority party basically gets to control the Senate, and never has to work with the minority party, that would be bad for the country and bad for the Senate, because you basically have sort of one-party rule.
And that's not an implausible argument. Whether she's right to not pursue a carve-out for voting rights, I think that's a mistake. I wish they — she would do a carve-out just for voting rights to get this issue off the table.
But her defense of the filibuster is the traditional defense of the filibuster. And, in my view, having covered this issue for a long time, in my view, almost every effort to reduce the filibuster over the course, whether on judges or anything else, has had long-term negative effects.
So I wish we had had a carve-out, but then kept the filibuster. But now we're seemingly getting nothing.
Judy Woodruff: Jonathan, do you want to — do you want to…
Jonathan Capehart: Yes, real quickly.
All anyone right now is asking for is a carve-out for voting rights. And for Senator Sinema to go to the floor and say, no, I'm not for a carve-out for voting rights because of what it might do to the Senate as a body flies in the face of what she did earlier this month in terms of voting for a carve-out to raise the debt ceiling, which is something that needed to be done and absolutely had to be done.
So, why aren't voting rights considered to be something that absolutely has to be done, and it absolutely needs — there absolutely needs to be a carve-out in the filibuster to make it happen? That's my problem with Senator Sinema.
David Brooks: Jonathan and I are in violent agreement on this subject.
(LAUGHTER)
Judy Woodruff: Is that what you call it? All right, well, we have only got about 30 seconds left. So, there's no time to ask you about the Supreme Court decision the vaccine mandate and inflation.
But I promise you we're going to come back to that next Friday. (LAUGHTER)
Judy Woodruff: You have got a whole week to think about it. Thank you both, Jonathan Capehart, David Brooks. We appreciate it. Have a good weekend.
Mike Pence was vice president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Now that the anniversary of Jan. 6 has come and gone, some of us who lived through that tragic day in 2021 are getting a clearer picture of what was and is at stake. On Jan. 6, an angry mob ransacked the Capitol, largely to try to get Congress and me, as the president of the Senate, to use federal authority to overturn results of the presidential election that had been certified by all 50 states.
Lives were lost and many were injured, but thanks to the selfless and courageous work of law enforcement, the Capitol was secured, and Congress was able to reconvene the very same day and complete its work under the Constitution and laws of the United States.
The 2024 Presidential Campaign Has Begun January 14, 2022 at 9:01 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 72 Comments
Politico: “Presidential campaigns do not start in any definitive way. The 2024 race had ‘already begun’ last June, or was it March, or even before the last election, back in the fall of 2020. Turn up at a Lincoln Day dinner in Portsmouth or Des Moines, and you’ll feast on a smorgasbord of ‘flirts with,’ ‘teases,’ ‘kicks the tires’ and other ‘unofficial starts’ to a presidential campaign.
“But every four years, there is a moment when the two political parties and the news media decide to stop daydreaming about the next one and jump right in. And sometime during this week’s pundit wish-casting about the Democratic 2024 ticket and the GOP’s threatened debate boycott, between the deconstruction of Mike Pompeo’s weight loss and the run-up to Donald Trump’s first rally of the year, on Saturday, it happened.
“Ten months before the 2022 midterm elections, Washington’s head is firmly in 2024. The proximate cause of the shift in perspective, as so often happens, is Trump.”
DirecTV to Drop One America News January 14, 2022 at 8:57 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 32 Comments
“DirecTV, one of the largest U.S. pay-TV providers, plans to drop One America News Network, dealing a major blow to the conservative channel that’s been criticized for spreading misinformation and had a loyal fan in former President Donald Trump,” Bloomberg reports.
Now it turns out that the Japanese bad batch experience is not necessarily an outlier.
German pathologists presented an analysis of the coronavirus "vaccine" during a shocking press conference in September. A clip of the conference, which has been translated exclusively for RAIR Foundation USA, reveals foreign objects in the vaccine, as well as in the blood of those who have taken the vaccine.
Some of the foreign objects were described as "accurately constructed" and also — shockingly — worms that were hatched from eggs.
This article contains horrifying pictures of some of the "objects." These tests were done on "leftover" samples, meaning the bulk of them had been injected into uninformed arms.
More testing is needed.
What if we assume less than good intentions by parties involved in the jab's creation? What if this is the all-time biggest medical experiment on the human race? Would they really not try different formulas in different quantifiable groups? I'll bet the vaccine passports include the lot number from which the bearer's jab came.
Those thoughts notwithstanding, there is enough evidence to realize that the quality of any single jab cannot be guaranteed, even if mounting concerns about the content of the injection were set aside. This variable alone should exempt anyone from involuntary participation in the jab program. Due to a variety of factors, the jabbed are woefully uninformed about risk prior to participation. Considering that getting jabbed is an irrevocable decision, this is just not right.
If you include natural immunity, we are already at herd level. It's time to stop the mandates. We need more testing on the content and manufacturing of these products. This illness is only 2.5 years old (that we know of) and has mutated substantially from its first appearance. The unvaxxed are being told to get a jab they don't want, is risky, and is designed to counter a disease that basically no longer exists. More importantly, there is no way the jab, including its delivery system, could have been properly tested in the lifetime of a five-year-old.
We need to learn more before we risk butchering the immune systems, fertility, heart function, and survival of our children.
Fauci Hitler!
He has been identified as a Chinese assassinationist. Genocide by chemical castration.
The Supreme Court just made an incredible power grab.
So, there’s a looming Supreme Court threat to the viability of federal regulations as the ongoing bread-and-butter means of passing laws that span virtually every aspect of American life, from workplace safety and environmental protection to financial regulation and national child welfare. And these government actors aren’t elected or susceptible to losing their jobs at the ballot box. If a new threat to human health arises that affects workers by the millions, then Congress better have predicted the specific threat in the legislation enabling an agency to deal with it — or get its act together and pass actual emergency legislation under Article I. Of course, the horrors and unknowns of Covid-19 belie the feasibility of this option. The court is essentially saying, “Unless the states step in to address the next epic pandemic, you’re on your own, folks.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurring opinion lays out the conservatives’ theory well, even tying it expressly to the non-delegation doctrine. When the federal government acts, he explained, “[i]t must … act consistently with the Constitution’s separation of powers. And when it comes to that obligation, this Court has established at least one firm rule. ‘We expect Congress to speak clearly’ if it wishes to assign to an executive agency decisions ‘of vast economic and political significance.’” For this proposition, Gorsuch cites a decision from 2019 and one from 2021 — both recent, and both issued in an era of modern conservative-leaning jurists dominating the court. Gorsuch notes that “[w]e sometimes call this the major questions doctrine.”
To be clear, the so-called major questions doctrine was made up by the Supreme Court. It’s not in the Constitution. But Gorsuch added that “the major questions doctrine is closely related to what is sometimes called the nondelegation doctrine.” A wolf in sheep-like clothing.
Since 1984, the operative doctrine for reviewing agency regulations was not the major questions doctrine. Instead, it’s set forth in a landmark case called Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. Under that decision, the Supreme Court resisted the power to rewrite regulations by judicial fiat, instead holding that so long as Congress gives the agency rulemaking power by statute, the agency can reasonably exercise its discretion to fill in the gaps of the legislation by issuing rules. If the agency does this, courts should defer to the policymaking judgment of the agency, on the theory that they have more relevant substantive expertise than federal judges. For example, the public is undoubtedly better served by experts at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission making rules about reactor safety and security than unelected generalists in black robes.
The conservatives’ major questions doctrine puts that power solidly in the judicial branch, handing it ultimately to Supreme Court justices who can now decide which laws they like and don’t like with virtually no oversight or constraints. This amounts to a constitutional power-grab. But not by agencies. It’s by the Supreme Court itself.
The regulations of workplace safety was destroy by the conservative majority in the United States Supreme Court.
Opinion | The Supreme Court Just Made an Incredible Power Grab
The ruling striking down Biden’s vaccine mandate threatens decades of statutory authority to let agencies write important regulations.
Protesters in New York City rally against vaccine mandates last November. | Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
Opinion by KIMBERLY WEHLE
01/14/2022 05:00 PM EST
Kimberly Wehle is a professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
Thursday’s Supreme Court decision blocking the federal government’s mandate that large businesses require vaccinations or tests of their employees is being seen as a blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. It is certainly that, despite the court’s split decision allowing the same mandate to remain in force for medical facilities that accept money under the Social Security Act.
But the biggest loser coming out of these decisions is not the president’s reputation as a problem solver but decades of constitutionally established power-sharing between the legislative and executive branches. And the winner, if that’s the right term, is the Supreme Court itself, which has executed an unprecedented power grab and masked it as an act of judicial restraint.
How did the court’s conservative 6-3 majority pull this off?
Here’s the key passage with the court’s unsigned opinion: “Although Covid– 19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most. Covid–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather.” Because the statute gives the Occupational Safety and Health Administration authority to enact standards “reasonably necessary or appropriate to provide safe or healthful employment,” it reasoned, and Covid-19 doesn’t just spread in the workplace, OSHA acted outside its lane of authority. The vaccine-or-test mandate “draws no distinctions based on industry or risk of exposure to Covid-19,” and thus cannot be enforced. “[M]ost lifeguards and lineman face the same regulations as do medics and meatpackers,” for example.
The logical flaw in the majority’s reasoning is that this line-drawing isn’t required by the actual 1970 law (the Occupational Safety and Health Act) that established OSHA. Back in 1979, the Court recognized in Industrial Union Department v. American Petroleum Institute that OSHA has “broad authority … to promulgate different kinds of standards.” Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissenting opinion thus explained: “The Standard falls within the core of the agency’s mission to ‘protect employees’ from ‘grave danger’ that comes from ‘new hazards’ or exposure to harmful agents,” as set forth in the relevant part of the OSH Act.
What the majority is really saying, then, is that it doesn’t like how much power Congress gave to OSHA in the first place. The question of whether Congress can delegate its lawmaking powers to executive branch agencies has been debated for decades. But since the 1930s, the court has basically allowed Congress to give agencies rulemaking power under Article I’s “Necessary and Proper” clause, in part on the theory that courts lack the kind of expertise that agencies have. Moreover, even though they are not elected, agency employees answer to someone who is accountable to voters: the president.
I worked in the construction industry for my entire career, and OSHA regulations provided work place safety regulations.
The Supreme court's decision has gutted everything.
The goal of destroying the government regulatory apparatus that makes America a first-world country is shared by Republicans from Bannon to Utah Sen. Mitt Romney to Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney to Chief Justice John Roberts and every conservative in between. And it's one of the most radical agendas any political faction has ever advanced. If you want to know why all the Republicans backed Donald Trump even when they knew he was monumentally unfit, this was it. They got their court and their dream is about to come true. Unfortunately, it's a nightmare for the rest of us.
Rep McCarthy astutely points out that democrats want Americans to show their vaccine card to eat in a restaurant but not show an ID to vote for the most powerful job in the world.
With the door slammed shut this week on federal legislation to create new protections for access to voting, Democrats face an electoral landscape in which they will need to spend heavily to register and mobilize voters if they are to overcome the hodgepodge of new voting restrictions enacted by Republicans across the country.
Democrats rode record turnout to win the presidency and control of the Senate in 2020 after embracing policies that made it easier to vote with absentee ballots during the pandemic. But Republican-controlled state legislatures have since enacted a range of measures that undo those policies, erect new barriers to voting and remove some of the guardrails that halted former President Donald J. Trump’s drive to overturn the election.
Now, Democrats’ best chance for counteracting the new state laws is gone after Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, declared her opposition on Thursday to President Biden’s push to lift the filibuster to pass the party’s two voting access bills.
That failure infuriated Democrats and left them contemplating a long and arduous year of organizing for the midterm elections, where they already face headwinds from Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings, inflation, congressional redistricting and the persistent pandemic.
Democratic officials and activists now say they are resigned to having to spend and organize their way around the new voting restrictions — a prospect many view with hard-earned skepticism, citing the difficulty of educating masses of voters on how to comply with the new rules.
They say it would require them to compensate by spending tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars more on voter-registration and turnout programs — funds that might otherwise have gone to promoting Democratic candidates.
“All these voter protection measures are not cheap,” said Raymond Paultre, executive director of the Florida Alliance, a statewide network of progressive donors. “This is going to draw a lot of resources away from candidates, campaigns and organizations.”
Republicans, whose decades-long push to curtail voting access was put into overdrive by Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud following his defeat, are planning a renewed push to implement new restrictions during this year’s state legislative sessions.
They are also pushing to recruit thousands of Trump supporters as election workers come November.
The bottom line, Democrats say, is that in many Republican-run states, voting in 2022 may be more difficult — and more charged — than it has been in generations, especially if the coronavirus pandemic does not subside.
The stakes are highest in key battleground states where governors and top election officials on the ballot in November will determine the ease of voting in the 2024 presidential contest.
A conservative judge in Wisconsin has banned the use of drop boxes for absentee ballots.
In Wisconsin on Thursday, a judge in Waukesha County, the largest county in the state among those run by Republicans, ruled that drop boxes for absentee ballots are illegal statewide — a reversal of longstanding practice, and a ban set to take effect in municipal primary elections on Feb. 15.
The ruling by Michael O. Bohren, a circuit court judge, invalidated years of guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission allowing municipalities to collect absentee ballots in drop boxes before Election Day.
Judge Bohren, who routinely attests to his bona fides as a conservative, was appointed to the bench in 2000 by former Gov. Tommy Thompson, a Republican, and presides over a courtroom displaying portraits of a handful of American presidents, all of them Republicans except for George Washington. He declined to be interviewed.
His decision, if not reversed on appeal, could also forbid Wisconsinites to turn in ballots other than their own and jeopardize city-sponsored ballot-collection events like Democracy in the Park in Madison, in which city workers gathered 17,000 early votes in public parks in the weeks before the 2020 election.
“When you try to suppress the vote, somebody is going to be at the losing end of things,” said Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, a Democrat who faces a difficult re-election this fall. “Those people are the people of Wisconsin.”
The federal voting rights legislation also would have contained funding for election administration processes, including automatic voter registration. Without it, election officials say they will be hamstrung in training staff members and buying needed equipment, running the risk of disruptions. Hundreds of officials from 39 states sent a letter to Mr. Biden on Thursday asking for $5 billion to buy and fortify election infrastructure for the next decade. The letter was organized by a group largely funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief
Despite that need, at least 12 states have passed laws preventing nongovernmental groups from financing election administration — a wide-reaching legislative response to false right-wing suspicions that $350 million donated for that purpose by another organization with ties to Mr. Zuckerberg was used to increase Democratic turnout. (The money mainly covered administrative expenses, including safety gear for poll workers, and was distributed to both Republican and Democratic jurisdictions.)
Some Democrats and civil rights leaders say they fear that the failure of Democrats in Washington to enact a federal voting law could depress turnout among Black voters — the same voters the party will spend the coming months working to organize.
“Voting rights is seen by Black voters as a proxy battle about Black issues,” said Mr. Paultre, in Florida. “The Democratic Party is going to be blamed.”
In Texas, whose March 1 primary will be the first of the midterms, some results of the sweeping new voting law passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature last year are already clear. In populous counties such as Harris, Bexar, Williamson and Travis, as many as half of absentee ballot applications have been rejected so far because voters did not comply with new requirements, such as providing a driver’s license number or a partial Social Security number.
In Harris County — the state’s largest, which includes Houston — roughly 16 percent of ballot applications have been rejected because of the new rules, a sevenfold increase over 2018, according to Isabel Longoria, a Democrat who is the county’s elections administrator. About one in 10 applications did not satisfy the new identification requirements, she said.
In Travis County, home to Austin, about half of applications received have been rejected because of the new rules, officials said. “We’re now seeing the real-life actual effect of the law, and, ladies and gentlemen, it is voter suppression,” said Dana DeBeauvoir, a Democrat who oversees elections there as county clerk.
Both counties have received far fewer absentee ballot applications than in 2018. Officials attributed the drop to a new rule barring election officials from sending ballot applications unrequested.
With the Texas primary fast approaching, election officials are growing increasingly worried about their ability to recruit poll workers. A variety of criminal penalties enacted in the state’s new voting law, they said, raise the risk that an honest mistake could land a low-paid worker in jail.
Republicans, whose most avid voters remain animated by Mr. Trump’s false stolen-election claims, have had no such trouble recruiting election workers. For Virginia’s November election, Republicans placed volunteers at 96 percent of precincts, up from 37 percent for the 2020 election, according to John Fredericks, a conservative talk-radio host who was Mr. Trump’s Virginia state chairman in 2020 and was a booster of the new Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin.
Unless the Democratic party gets the people out to vote, the cryptofascist party of Trump will destroy the American dream.
Who wins......WHO FUCKING CARES!!!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
A must read for all those anti CRT idiots who IMHO have no clue on what it is,,,,,especially rat who dislikes it because it is a theory!!!!!!!!! LOLOLOLOL
At my school, students are often permitted to participate in short workshops on current controversial topics. The one we did on CRT lasted 75 minutes. For students who wish to deepen their understanding of CRT, a semester-long elective — completely optional — is offered during senior year. Material on CRT is by no means replacing instruction in math, science or other core subjects in our curriculum.
When we discussed CRT in our short workshop, we were taught the basic premise of critical race theory — that the underlying cause of racism within our country is institutional oppression built into American government and law. This structural racism shows up in systems such as the electoral college, which allowed slaveholding states disproportionate representation, and the prison-industrial complex, which upholds forced labor to this day. Yes, we discussed White privilege, the fact that because of systems planted hundreds of years ago, White-identifying people have been given unfair advantages over their non-White counterparts. But this discussion in no way resembled the chaos described by anti-CRT activists who argue that the concept of White privilege will lead to widespread resentment of White people. Were we taught that all White people are nothing but racist bigots? No. Were we taught that all White people should feel guilty about events in the past they could not control? No. Were students taught to hate their White friends and teachers?
The strength of Biden's support will determine whether Democrats maintain threadbare majorities in Congress beyond this year or whether they will cede lawmaking authority to a Republican Party largely controlled by former President Donald Trump. Already, Republicans in several state legislatures have taken advantage of Democratic divisions in Washington to enact far-reaching changes to state election laws, abortion rights and public health measures in line with Trump's wishes.
If Biden cannot unify his party and reinvigorate his political coalition, the GOP at the state and federal levels will almost certainly grow more emboldened, and the red wave that shaped a handful of state elections last year could fundamentally shift the balance of power across America in November's midterm elections.
For now, virtually none of the groups that fueled Biden's 2020 victory are happy.
The author of the CRT piece. who certainly writes better than me and most slurpers here!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!
(Daniel Fishel for The Washington Post) By Christiane Calixte Yesterday at 1:02 p.m. EST
Christiane Calixte is a junior at the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn. 0:00/6:04 Listen to Christiane Calixte read her essay. As a Black high school junior, I have to say: The backlash I’ve seen against the teaching of critical race theory is unbelievable. Opinions to start the day, in your inbox. Sign up.
In most schools, as has been well established, critical race theory — an approach to analyzing the intersection of race, history and the law, generally reserved for higher education — isn’t even being taught. And yet, since January 2021, according to Education Week, more than 30 states “have introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism” in K-12 schools. These policies are no joke. One Tennessee high school teacher, Matthew Hawn, lost his job after showing his students a four-minute video of a poet performing a piece about White privilege. In Texas, James Whitfield was pushed out of his job as a high school principal after accusations that he was promoting CRT.
It's being reported thay Biden plans to revive his anti police agenda to coincide with Feb black history month. Is anyone surprised? It's become highly unpopular. So naturally he will embrace it.
Never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up. -Barack Hussein
Anonymous Myballs said... Access to voting has never been greater than it is now
Why do you keep posting such abject bullshit opinions????? You saying so does not change Eliminating drop boxes and limiting early voting and difficulty obtaining ballots makes your statement bullshit!!!!!
out of nearly five million cast. The new law will, in particular, curtail ballot access for voters in booming urban and suburban counties, home to many Democrats. Another provision makes it a crime to offer water to voters waiting in lines, which tend to be longer in densely populated communities.
Below is The Times’s analysis of the law, including the specific provisions and some struck-through language from the state’s previous voting legislation. Here are the most significant changes to voting in the state, as written into the new law:
Voters will now have less time to request absentee ballots. There are strict new ID requirements for absentee ballots. It’s now illegal for election officials to mail out absentee ballot applications to all voters. Drop boxes still exist … but barely. Mobile voting centers (think an R.V. where you can vote) are essentially banned. Early voting is expanded in a lot of small counties, but probably not in more populous ones. Offering food or water to voters waiting in line now risks misdemeanor charges. If you go to the wrong polling place, it will be (even) harder to vote. If election problems arise, a common occurrence, it is now more difficult to extend voting hours. With a mix of changes to vote-counting, high-turnout elections will probably mean a long wait for results. Election officials can no longer accept third-party funding (a measure that nods to right-wing conspiracy theories). With an eye toward voter fraud, the state attorney general will manage an election hotline. The Republican-controlled legislature has more control over the State Election Board. The secretary of state is removed as a voting member of the State Election Board. The G.O.P.-led legislature is empowered to suspend county election officials. Runoff elections will happen faster — and could become harder to manage.
Hundreds of Trump Voters Are Dying Every Day January 15, 2022 at 7:57 am EST By Taegan Goddard 2 Comments
Donald McNeil Jr.: “As of this week, about 1,800 Americans a day are dying of Covid; the C.D.C. expects that number to rise above 2,600.
“Virtually all are adults. If 95 percent were unvaccinated and we assume that 75 percent of those were Trump supporters, that’s 1,300 to 1,900 of his voters being subtracted from the rolls every single day.
Donald Trump lost Arizona by a mere 10,000 votes. He lost Georgia by 12,000, He lost Wisconsin by 21,000. He lost Nevada by 33,000.
“Right now, about 60 Arizonans, 36 Georgians, 34 Wisconsinites and 14 Nevadans are dying of Covid each day. Seventy five percent of 95 percent of that would be minus 103 Trump voters per day — just in those four swing states. Week after week. That adds up.
GOP Candidates Weigh How Closely to Run with Trump January 15, 2022 at 7:27 am EST By Taegan Goddard 3 Comments
Associated Press: “Dissent from Trump’s election lie within the GOP remains rare. From Ohio to Georgia and Arizona, candidates running for Senate, governor and attorney general have fully embraced Trump’s falsehoods as they have tried to win over his endorsement, deflect his fury or win over his base.
“In the short term, such positioning may help Republican candidates come out on top in primary fields that are often crowded. But there are concerns that it could hurt the party in the fall, especially among suburban voters who have become increasingly decisive in recent campaigns. The further to the right that Republicans go now, the easier it could become for their Democratic rivals to portray them as extreme in a general election.
Warm up Your Home With These Great Wood-Burning Stoves" "Wood-burning stoves can help save you money on your heating bill, and burning wood as a heat source can be easier on the environment than gas or coal. "
Keep posting your tripe, goat fucker....just because you cannot afford to heat your home with modern equipment.....does not mean it is an environmentally good way to do so.....BTW.....the only by product of natural gas burning is co2 and water.....can't be much easier than that so your cite is BULLSHIT, just like you!!!!!!!
Honest, decent, truth telling Reverend said... Reply to Ch at 10:10 PM: The Brooks/Capehart interview, in which they do not always agree, and do agree on an important point, is indeed informative.
I must have missed it in the avalanche of shit posted by the POS "pastor"
Who did they pick ?
I'm going with Green Bay
What a FANTASTIC MORNING !!!
I see the Eleven percenters are going into overdrive
I love the smell of far-left liberal desperation in the morning .
Roger Stone https://gab.com/RogerJStoneJr/posts/107625240065126938
my poor wife has nightmares about this every night the predawn hours in which 29 FBI agent stormed my home to arrest me for completely fabricated charges of Russian collusion. Now the same cocksuckers are trying to pull the same shit again trying me without any evidence whatsoever to the events of January 6. I will fight them to the end.
Fuck Roger stone......he should have thought about his wife before getting his Nixon tattoo and supporting the loser trump.....Seems to me he will soon be in the middle of the Oath Keepers sedition charges as they claim they were protecting him which makes it highly probable he was in on the riots!!!!!!!!!
A document issued issued Jan 6 by the US Health and Human Services tells hospitals they are no longer required to report daily COVID-19 deaths to the federal government starting Feb 2.
Story broken by @DataDrivenMD
Joe is taking care of Covid deaths and removing it from 2022 election debate
I wonder if anyone will ask at his "press conference"
or will he just read who to call and have answers to their pre-arranged "questions"
January 15, 2022 at 7:57 am EST By Taegan Goddard 296 Comments
Donald McNeil Jr.: “As of this week, about 1,800 Americans a day are dying of Covid; the C.D.C. expects that number to rise above 2,600.”
“Virtually all are adults. If 95 percent were unvaccinated and we assume that 75 percent of those were Trump supporters, that’s 1,300 to 1,900 of his voters being subtracted from the rolls every single day.“
“Donald Trump lost Arizona by a mere 10,000 votes. He lost Georgia by 12,000, He lost Wisconsin by 21,000. He lost Nevada by 33,000.”
“Right now, about 60 Arizonans, 36 Georgians, 34 Wisconsinites and 14 Nevadans are dying of Covid each day. Seventy five percent of 95 percent of that would be minus 103 Trump voters per day — just in those four swing states.
and why is Biden getting rid of Covid death counts ?
Because it's easier than actually doing anything about it, which he promised countless times. The "man" is a prolific liar.
A prolific liar who has epically failed at the job of president by every objective measure. And it's this epic failure that has prompted the left to demand the codification of voter/ballot fraud into law. When you fail as totally and completely as the democrats and Biden have failed, there's only one way to maintain a grip on power. You have to seize it.
What would Groucho say? Would you rather belong to a club that had the proprietor of a porn shop as a member? Or Marjorie Taylor Greene?
By Charles Bethea
January 15, 2022
In the spring of 2006, Charles T. Craton III, a businessman in northwestern Georgia, best known for his work on Chick-fil-A’s “Eat Mor Chikin” campaign, opened Entice Adult Superstore. “I did expect there to be controversy,” Craton later told the Rome News-Tribune. But, he went on, “you’d have thought I killed the Lindbergh baby, sunk the Lusitania, and started World War II.” There had never been a porn shop in Floyd County—although, as Craton had discovered, no ordinance barred them. The county commission subsequently passed one; Craton unsuccessfully challenged it. But he was allowed to stay open as long as he changed the store’s name to Entice Couples Boutique and promised that no more than thirty-five per cent of his inventory would be dildos and other “adult novelties.”
By that time, Craton had been expelled from the Coosa Country Club, in Rome, which is in Georgia’s Fourteenth Congressional District. The club offered Craton several reasons for his expulsion in addition to his ownership of Entice. A Coosa member is said to have resigned “because of a known pornographer”—Craton—among the membership, and because Craton’s wife allegedly appeared on a “pornographic Web site.” All this, the club maintained, endangered “the good order, welfare and character of the Club.”
Craton, who had been a Coosa member for four years, sued the club for five million dollars. “This is me standing my ground against the moral elitists of Rome, Georgia,” he told the News-Tribune. His lawsuit noted that he had “conducted himself, at all times, on and off the club premises, as a gentleman.” Craton also published an open letter in the paper, addressed to “The Members of Coosa Country Club,” in which he referred to “felony crimes” and “public drunkenness” by fellow-members, and mentioned “illegal gambling in the men’s locker room.” The letter went on, “If the Coosa Country Club Board is going to conduct witch hunts, then for God’s sake, let’s find all the witches.” It concluded, “Once we investigate who all the witches are, there won’t be any members left.”
The suit was dismissed before Craton could tell his Coosa stories to a jury. “Private clubs are the last bastion of legal prejudice,” he told the News-Tribune, after the decision. He built himself a house with a view of the club’s eighth hole.
VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER
“We called it the ‘porn hole,’ ” a former club member, who believed that Craton had got a raw deal, said recently. The club’s “moral hypocrisy,” as the former member put it, was on view again this month, when Coosa welcomed Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
As of this week, about 1,800 Americans a day are dying of Covid; the C.D.C. expects that number to rise above 2,600.
Virtually all are adults. If 95 percent were unvaccinated and we assume that 75 percent of those were Trump supporters, that’s 1,300 to 1,900 of his voters being subtracted from the rolls every single day.
Trumpets are dying unnecessarily because of false information from.
President Joe Biden is reportedly planning to push his police reform agenda via an executive order as early as this month.
The executive actions are still being finalized, according to NBC News, but are expected to be rolled out at the start of Black History Month in February as the administration tries to achieve policy goals leading up to the president’s State of the Union address in March.
The Left Controls Almost Everything, So Why Are They So Afraid?
Perhaps they know their strength is something of a charade, it’s unstable, it’s not organic, it’s coerced. When it collapses, they fear it will collapse like a house of cards.
I wouldn't vote for him because I don't agree with him on most issues but he could rescue the Republican party from Trump and ...... Axios
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday called the Jan. 6 Capitol riot an attempt to "overturn results of the presidential election that had been certified by all 50 states."
Why it matters: Though the former vice president's op-ed in the Washington Post focuses on rebutting filibuster reforms, these are also the most public statements Pence has made about the post-election narrative and the attack as an effort to interfere with President Biden's victory.
Pence's remarks come one day before former President Trump is set to hold a rally in Arizona. The 45th president had originally planned to hold a Jan. 6 anniversary press conference, but he canceled it the day before.
"Now that the anniversary of Jan. 6 has come and gone, some of us who lived through that tragic day in 2021 are getting a clearer picture of what was and is at stake," Pence wrote in the Post.
"On Jan. 6, an angry mob ransacked the Capitol, largely to try to get Congress and me, as the president of the Senate, to use federal authority to overturn" the election results.
Of note: Some people in and around Pence's office have been cooperative as the House Jan. 6 select committee focuses on what former President Trump was doing during the more than three hours the Capitol was under attack, sources familiar with the testimony told Axios.
Driving the news: Pence called Biden's and Democrats' push to end the filibuster a "power grab," arguing that the "notion that Congress would break the filibuster rule to pass a law equaling a wholesale takeover of elections by the federal government is inconsistent with our nation’s history and an affront to our Constitution’s structure."
"With this anniversary passed, I call on my former colleagues in the Senate to do as you did before: Uphold the right of states to conduct and certify elections," the former vice president wrote.
About the author: Carlton Larson is the Martin Luther King Jr. professor of law at UC Davis School of Law.
On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted 11 members of the so-called Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy. Such charges are exceptionally rare—and, quite obviously, extremely serious. If convicted, these defendants could face up to 20 years in prison.
And yet many Americans think that the charges should have been even more serious: treason against the United States. Although that’s not an implausible argument, the Justice Department made the right decision. Treason prosecutions would have introduced significant legal complexity, while doing very little to increase sentences. Seditious-conspiracy charges, by contrast, are perfectly pitched to the gravity of the offenses, and given the substantial evidence laid out in the indictments, should be relatively straightforward to prove.
Seditious conspiracy is defined as “conspir[ing] to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States … or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States.” In the past 30 years, there have been only four sets of indictments for this offense. Most notably, the Justice Department successfully convicted Omar Abdel-Rahman of seditious conspiracy for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But the most recent seditious-conspiracy prosecution—of Michigan militia members in the early 2010s—was a fiasco. A judge dismissed the seditious-conspiracy charges, finding them unsupported by the evidence.
Hey ass hole....the only thing that annoys me is your stupidity and failure to think on your own....As long as you can live in that paradigm, its no skin off my ass knowing that!!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
A document issued issued Jan 6 by the US Health and Human Services tells hospitals they are no longer required to report daily COVID-19 deaths to the federal government starting Feb 2.
The “new normal” requires recognizing that SARS-CoV-2 is but one of several circulating respiratory viruses that include influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and more. COVID-19 must now be considered among the risks posed by all respiratory viral illnesses combined. Many of the measures to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (eg, ventilation) will also reduce transmission of other respiratory viruses. Thus, policy makers should retire previous public health categorizations, including deaths from pneumonia and influenza or pneumonia, influenza, and COVID-19, and focus on a new category: the aggregate risk of all respiratory virus infections.
Jimmy Carter invented the Misery Index – the combined unemployment rate plus inflation rate – in order to flog his 1976 opponent, Jerry Ford, about the head. As most often happens with Democrats, his own policies led to even more misery and he ended up beating Ford’s misery score by a full 2 percentage points, topping the misery index at 22%.
Now cometh Joe Biden with his bag of magic beans. So far his official score is 10.9%. At the time he took the reins, so to speak, the misery index was under 7% and unemployment was on the decline. Joey beat that by 4 points after just one year in office. And mind you, since the Carter misery years the government has done its level best to keep the two indices artificially low.
First, our bureaucratic betters removed several key measures from the CPI “market basket” during the Obama years. It no longer reflects increases in food or energy. While they are still tracked in other indices, the number most quoted does not include them because they are considered too “volatile” – well yes, isn’t that the point? That type of volatility is likely to create great misery. Likewise the food index does not reflect the inflation due to the incredible shrinking packaging size of many consumer food products.
Likewise the unemployment rate does not include anyone who hasn’t looked for work within the last 4 weeks – the “discouraged” job seeker - they are completely ignored. Thus the Labor Participation Rate hangs near historically low levels with both discouraged wage seekers and lay-abouts, willing to survive on government “stimulus” handouts, excluded from the calculation.
They say that history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, rather it rhymes. We are witnessing that in real time. The kids are too young to recognize it but those of us who danced to disco in leisure suits sure do. Stagflation isn’t a state of mind, it’s true misery. And the Brandon Administration has done everything in their power to Make America Miserable Again.
Some of us thought we’d NEVER again see a President as bad as Jimmy Carter, but Joey Biden has managed to top Jimmy’s incompetency in just a quarter of the time.
When you're reduced to targeting your political opponents as 'domestic terrorists' using federal law enforcement as your personal STASI to destroy them, then you've failed and failed epically and miserably.
One can indict a ham sandwich. Seditious conspiracy is extremely difficult to prove. But Garland had to throw some red meat to the rabid left. If convicted is a big IF.
A federal grand jury indicted Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby on Thursday after she lied about her financial status to purchase two properties in Florida.
The progressive official, whose reported annual salary is near $240,000, was charged with perjury and making false statements about her financial situation during COVID-19 to obtain premature access to her city retirement savings. Mosby was awarded at least $90,000 from that savings under a CARES Act provision that allowed government employees to dip into their retirement accounts if they were struggling to make ends meet. Despite claiming she was facing dire financial straits in Baltimore, Mosby used the money she withdrew to purchase vacation homes in Kissimmee near Disney World and Long Boat Key.
86 comments:
BEFORE YOU START WASTING TIME ON THIS THREAD TOPIC, CONSIDER THIS:
Brooks and Capehart on voting rights legislation and partisanship
Jan 14, 2022 6:35 PM EST
NATIONAL PUBLIC TELEVISION
New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including Democrats' push for voting rights legislation, partisanship and President Biden’s handling of key issues within his party.
The Full Transcript
Judy Woodruff:
This week, Democrats renewed their push for voting rights legislation, the Supreme Court ruled on vaccine mandates, and new data showed inflation at its highest rate in nearly 40 years.
For a deeper look at all this, we turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. That is New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, columnist for The Washington Post.
Very good to see both of you.
Jonathan Capehart:
Thank you.
Judy Woodruff:
Thank you for joining us on this Friday night.
Let's start with voting rights.
David, it hasn't been a good week for the Democrats, despite the fact that President Biden went to Atlanta, made, I think it's fair to say, his strongest remarks yet on why voting rights matter.
What was your take on what he had to say?
David Brooks:
I thought 80 percent of it was fine, a very good speech is.
There were some rhetorical flourishes at the end that went over the top and they were too partisan. If we're going to have a clean election and a fair election and a properly certified election, we're going to need Democrats and Republican officials across the country to do their job.
And, in 2020, most Republicans did their job. And to make this a partisan issue and to have, to me, supercharged rhetoric about, are you on the side of Abraham Lincoln or are you on the side of Jefferson Davis, that offended a lot of Republicans, made them extremely angry, and I think it makes it harder for the Republican officials who are going to do a good job to be in their party.
My friend and colleague Tom Friedman wrote a column advocating for a Biden-Liz Cheney ticket in 2024. And I don't think he meant that literally. But what he pointed to the fact was, in Israel, they — there was a broad coalition that said, we cannot have Bibi Netanyahu as prime minister again.
And so they formed a broad coalition to make that happen. If we're going to prevent Donald Trump from being president again, we need a broad coalition. And I thought this speech was unhelpful, especially coming from a man who said he's going to unify the country.
So, most of the speech was good, but those rhetorical flourishes, partisan, I think, detract.
Judy Woodruff:
Jonathan, too much partisanship in what the president had to say?
Jonathan Capehart:
I don't think so, Judy. In fact, what David calls rhetorical flourishes and over the top, I thought was probably the most powerful part of the president's speech.
Remember, President Biden, to my mind, is never more clear, passionate, focused and determined than when he is talking about what he calls the soul of America, started with his campaign talking about Charlottesville, talking in his run against Donald Trump about who we are as a people.
And I think a lot of people make a mistake in terms of focusing in on the politics of this speech, and not understanding that it's as much political as it is moral for this president.
And we can focus in on what happened in the 2020 election, but the fire that's coming from the president, the fire that is coming from millions of Americans has to do with what Republicans in particular have been doing in states since the 2020 election.
For a lot of people, what is happening at the state and local level in terms of not just voter suppression, but voter subversion, is what is animating this entire debate.
And so for people to be upset because the president drew a very stark and clear line in the sand that you are either with, as he said, Dr. King, in terms of opening up the promise of America to everyone, or George Wallace, who was about holding on to power for power's sake, and holding it in the hands of an elite few, particularly a white male elite few, this is where we are right now.
And the last thing I will say on this is, after four years of a president who took a blowtorch to the American presidency, to the Constitution, to our values, to the peaceful transfer of power, to decency in general, for people to be upset with President Biden for fighting for American values and for American democracy, it's a little hard for me to take them seriously.
Judy Woodruff:
What about that, David?
Because what we have seen Republicans doing in a number of states is cutting back on early voting, the number of days, cutting back on things like mail-in — the ability to do mail-in voting. What about that?
David Brooks:
Yes. Well, I'm not here to defend that. And I certainly have not been defending it lo these many months.
But I do think rhetoric like comparing Republicans to Bull Connor and Jefferson Davis is not helpful. It's not 1861 anymore. I even think the trope that he has that, well, the Georgia law is Jim Crow 2 is also not helpful.
The Georgia law was a big step backward. And I would condemn it in the strongest terms. And I agree with Jonathan about 80 percent. But the Georgia law, it's compared — I have read an article — an analysis recently comparing it to the New York law. And there are some parts where Georgia makes it easier, some where New York makes it easier.
And the — it's true that Georgia is going backwards and New York is going forward. So I don't want to justify that. But the overheated rhetoric, I think, has the effect of making this just a Republican-vs.-Democratic issue. And it should not be a Republican-vs.-Democratic issue.
It should be a Republican and Democrats on one side and the cult of Trump on the other side. And making that clear, I think, is the right thing — the right way to approach this.
Judy Woodruff:
Jonathan?
Jonathan Capehart:
Well, I mean, all I can say is, we can polite ourselves to oblivion. And, at some point, it is imperative that the president state clearly what's at stake here.
And when it comes to Georgia, let's keep in mind, Georgia didn't institute its new laws, propose them and pass them into law until after Georgia voters voted for President Biden to make him the next president of the United States and after they elected two Democrats from that state.
So, this is what we're talking about here. And what — 19 — what is it, the stat I'm looking for? Nineteen states have passed 34 restrictive laws in 2021 alone. So, that is what's animating this entire discussion.
Judy Woodruff:
David, I want to ask you about…
Go ahead, David. Go ahead.
David Brooks:
Yes, maybe I will get to what we're going to.
But we have an ethical responsibility here to make sure we actually effectively repulse what's being — happening. And (AUDIO GAP) is now in a position where nothing's probably going to happen in Washington, because they couldn't get Sinema and Manchin to sign off on the filibuster changes.
So it's likely that we will have no voting rights bills this year. And so we have to figure out ways to actually pass things. And I think alienating the center is probably not the way to go.
Now, in retrospect, as I look at the Biden presidency, and especially the terrible events, in my view, of not having these voting rights bills, it seems clear to me the whole Biden presidency, and, on Inauguration Day, they should have sat down with Manchin and Sinema and said, where can we go from here, and what can we do together?
That is to say, they should have started at the center and gone outward. Instead, they started at the left and went centrist. And I — that's looking like an unfortunate strategy both on voting rights and on Build Back Better.
Judy Woodruff:
Well, that brings up what Sinema had to say, Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Jonathan, in her speech on the Senate floor this week, where they need — they need her, they need Senator Manchin to go along with any change in the Senate rules, in the filibuster.
But she essentially argued that it's more important to work on partisanship than it is to do something about voting rights.
Jonathan Capehart:
Sure.
And her speech could have been delivered from fantasyland, this idea that the Republicans who sit there now have any interest in working with Democrats on this issue in particular.
In 2006, the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized unanimously in the Senate. Republican President George W. Bush had a South Lawn signing ceremony with Reverend Al Sharpton sitting in the front row. That was when voting rights was bipartisan. All the Republicans in the Senate voted for it. As the president pointed out in his speech in Atlanta, 16 of those senators still serve.
And yet 16 of those senators won't even vote to allow those two voting rights bills to even be debated. They don't have to vote for them, but why shouldn't they debate them? Why shouldn't the American people at least get to hear what's in those bills, what's wrong with those bills, where could there be areas of compromise?
And when it comes to Senator Manchin, at least he worked with Republicans. They had three bites at the apple on the Freedom to Vote Act. And Senator Manchin gave Republicans, after talking to them, many of the things that they wanted, including voter I.D. And yet no Republican voted to allow that bill to even be debated.
So, for Senator Sinema to say, look, we have to work with Republicans, and I will only do this if there's bipartisanship, well, where's it going to come from, because it's not it's happening now?
Judy Woodruff:
David?
David Brooks:
Yes, well, I mean, her argument is not an implausible argument. And it's not really about these two particular pieces of legislation.
Her argument is that if the — if we change the filibuster rules, and the majority party basically gets to control the Senate, and never has to work with the minority party, that would be bad for the country and bad for the Senate, because you basically have sort of one-party rule.
And that's not an implausible argument. Whether she's right to not pursue a carve-out for voting rights, I think that's a mistake. I wish they — she would do a carve-out just for voting rights to get this issue off the table.
But her defense of the filibuster is the traditional defense of the filibuster. And, in my view, having covered this issue for a long time, in my view, almost every effort to reduce the filibuster over the course, whether on judges or anything else, has had long-term negative effects.
So I wish we had had a carve-out, but then kept the filibuster. But now we're seemingly getting nothing.
Judy Woodruff:
Jonathan, do you want to — do you want to…
Jonathan Capehart:
Yes, real quickly.
All anyone right now is asking for is a carve-out for voting rights. And for Senator Sinema to go to the floor and say, no, I'm not for a carve-out for voting rights because of what it might do to the Senate as a body flies in the face of what she did earlier this month in terms of voting for a carve-out to raise the debt ceiling, which is something that needed to be done and absolutely had to be done.
So, why aren't voting rights considered to be something that absolutely has to be done, and it absolutely needs — there absolutely needs to be a carve-out in the filibuster to make it happen? That's my problem with Senator Sinema.
David Brooks:
Jonathan and I are in violent agreement on this subject.
(LAUGHTER)
Judy Woodruff:
Is that what you call it?
All right, well, we have only got about 30 seconds left. So, there's no time to ask you about the Supreme Court decision the vaccine mandate and inflation.
But I promise you we're going to come back to that next Friday.
(LAUGHTER)
Judy Woodruff:
You have got a whole week to think about it.
Thank you both, Jonathan Capehart, David Brooks. We appreciate it. Have a good weekend.
Mike Pence was vice president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Now that the anniversary of Jan. 6 has come and gone, some of us who lived through that tragic day in 2021 are getting a clearer picture of what was and is at stake. On Jan. 6, an angry mob ransacked the Capitol, largely to try to get Congress and me, as the president of the Senate, to use federal authority to overturn results of the presidential election that had been certified by all 50 states.
Lives were lost and many were injured, but thanks to the selfless and courageous work of law enforcement, the Capitol was secured, and Congress was able to reconvene the very same day and complete its work under the Constitution and laws of the United States.
Thank You Scott.
I see sports triggered Alky and James.
The 2024 Presidential Campaign Has Begun
January 14, 2022 at 9:01 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 72 Comments
Politico: “Presidential campaigns do not start in any definitive way. The 2024 race had ‘already begun’ last June, or was it March, or even before the last election, back in the fall of 2020. Turn up at a Lincoln Day dinner in Portsmouth or Des Moines, and you’ll feast on a smorgasbord of ‘flirts with,’ ‘teases,’ ‘kicks the tires’ and other ‘unofficial starts’ to a presidential campaign.
“But every four years, there is a moment when the two political parties and the news media decide to stop daydreaming about the next one and jump right in. And sometime during this week’s pundit wish-casting about the Democratic 2024 ticket and the GOP’s threatened debate boycott, between the deconstruction of Mike Pompeo’s weight loss and the run-up to Donald Trump’s first rally of the year, on Saturday, it happened.
“Ten months before the 2022 midterm elections, Washington’s head is firmly in 2024. The proximate cause of the shift in perspective, as so often happens, is Trump.”
DirecTV to Drop One America News
January 14, 2022 at 8:57 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 32 Comments
“DirecTV, one of the largest U.S. pay-TV providers, plans to drop One America News Network, dealing a major blow to the conservative channel that’s been criticized for spreading misinformation and had a loyal fan in former President Donald Trump,” Bloomberg reports.
Reverend...
Can I ask you two serious questions?
Why the fuck do you believe anyone should care about what David Brooks or Jonathan Capehart have to say about anything, much less voting rights?
Do you actually have an opinion of your own, or is it just whatever it is that journalist tell you to believe?
Production is questionable
Now it turns out that the Japanese bad batch experience is not necessarily an outlier.
German pathologists presented an analysis of the coronavirus "vaccine" during a shocking press conference in September. A clip of the conference, which has been translated exclusively for RAIR Foundation USA, reveals foreign objects in the vaccine, as well as in the blood of those who have taken the vaccine.
Some of the foreign objects were described as "accurately constructed" and also — shockingly — worms that were hatched from eggs.
This article contains horrifying pictures of some of the "objects." These tests were done on "leftover" samples, meaning the bulk of them had been injected into uninformed arms.
More testing is needed.
What if we assume less than good intentions by parties involved in the jab's creation? What if this is the all-time biggest medical experiment on the human race? Would they really not try different formulas in different quantifiable groups? I'll bet the vaccine passports include the lot number from which the bearer's jab came.
Those thoughts notwithstanding, there is enough evidence to realize that the quality of any single jab cannot be guaranteed, even if mounting concerns about the content of the injection were set aside. This variable alone should exempt anyone from involuntary participation in the jab program. Due to a variety of factors, the jabbed are woefully uninformed about risk prior to participation. Considering that getting jabbed is an irrevocable decision, this is just not right.
If you include natural immunity, we are already at herd level. It's time to stop the mandates. We need more testing on the content and manufacturing of these products. This illness is only 2.5 years old (that we know of) and has mutated substantially from its first appearance. The unvaxxed are being told to get a jab they don't want, is risky, and is designed to counter a disease that basically no longer exists. More importantly, there is no way the jab, including its delivery system, could have been properly tested in the lifetime of a five-year-old.
We need to learn more before we risk butchering the immune systems, fertility, heart function, and survival of our children.
Fauci Hitler!
He has been identified as a Chinese assassinationist. Genocide by chemical castration.
James never has an opinion of his own. I have put forth this question as well. This is why he gets so little respect here.
The Supreme Court just made an incredible power grab.
So, there’s a looming Supreme Court threat to the viability of federal regulations as the ongoing bread-and-butter means of passing laws that span virtually every aspect of American life, from workplace safety and environmental protection to financial regulation and national child welfare. And these government actors aren’t elected or susceptible to losing their jobs at the ballot box. If a new threat to human health arises that affects workers by the millions, then Congress better have predicted the specific threat in the legislation enabling an agency to deal with it — or get its act together and pass actual emergency legislation under Article I. Of course, the horrors and unknowns of Covid-19 belie the feasibility of this option. The court is essentially saying, “Unless the states step in to address the next epic pandemic, you’re on your own, folks.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurring opinion lays out the conservatives’ theory well, even tying it expressly to the non-delegation doctrine. When the federal government acts, he explained, “[i]t must … act consistently with the Constitution’s separation of powers. And when it comes to that obligation, this Court has established at least one firm rule. ‘We expect Congress to speak clearly’ if it wishes to assign to an executive agency decisions ‘of vast economic and political significance.’” For this proposition, Gorsuch cites a decision from 2019 and one from 2021 — both recent, and both issued in an era of modern conservative-leaning jurists dominating the court. Gorsuch notes that “[w]e sometimes call this the major questions doctrine.”
To be clear, the so-called major questions doctrine was made up by the Supreme Court. It’s not in the Constitution. But Gorsuch added that “the major questions doctrine is closely related to what is sometimes called the nondelegation doctrine.” A wolf in sheep-like clothing.
Since 1984, the operative doctrine for reviewing agency regulations was not the major questions doctrine. Instead, it’s set forth in a landmark case called Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. Under that decision, the Supreme Court resisted the power to rewrite regulations by judicial fiat, instead holding that so long as Congress gives the agency rulemaking power by statute, the agency can reasonably exercise its discretion to fill in the gaps of the legislation by issuing rules. If the agency does this, courts should defer to the policymaking judgment of the agency, on the theory that they have more relevant substantive expertise than federal judges. For example, the public is undoubtedly better served by experts at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission making rules about reactor safety and security than unelected generalists in black robes.
The conservatives’ major questions doctrine puts that power solidly in the judicial branch, handing it ultimately to Supreme Court justices who can now decide which laws they like and don’t like with virtually no oversight or constraints. This amounts to a constitutional power-grab. But not by agencies. It’s by the Supreme Court itself.
The regulations of workplace safety was destroy by the conservative majority in the United States Supreme Court.
Opinion | The Supreme Court Just Made an Incredible Power Grab
The ruling striking down Biden’s vaccine mandate threatens decades of statutory authority to let agencies write important regulations.
Protesters in New York City rally against vaccine mandates last November. | Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
Opinion by KIMBERLY WEHLE
01/14/2022 05:00 PM EST
Kimberly Wehle is a professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
Thursday’s Supreme Court decision blocking the federal government’s mandate that large businesses require vaccinations or tests of their employees is being seen as a blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. It is certainly that, despite the court’s split decision allowing the same mandate to remain in force for medical facilities that accept money under the Social Security Act.
But the biggest loser coming out of these decisions is not the president’s reputation as a problem solver but decades of constitutionally established power-sharing between the legislative and executive branches. And the winner, if that’s the right term, is the Supreme Court itself, which has executed an unprecedented power grab and masked it as an act of judicial restraint.
How did the court’s conservative 6-3 majority pull this off?
Here’s the key passage with the court’s unsigned opinion: “Although Covid– 19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most. Covid–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather.” Because the statute gives the Occupational Safety and Health Administration authority to enact standards “reasonably necessary or appropriate to provide safe or healthful employment,” it reasoned, and Covid-19 doesn’t just spread in the workplace, OSHA acted outside its lane of authority. The vaccine-or-test mandate “draws no distinctions based on industry or risk of exposure to Covid-19,” and thus cannot be enforced. “[M]ost lifeguards and lineman face the same regulations as do medics and meatpackers,” for example.
The logical flaw in the majority’s reasoning is that this line-drawing isn’t required by the actual 1970 law (the Occupational Safety and Health Act) that established OSHA. Back in 1979, the Court recognized in Industrial Union Department v. American Petroleum Institute that OSHA has “broad authority … to promulgate different kinds of standards.” Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissenting opinion thus explained: “The Standard falls within the core of the agency’s mission to ‘protect employees’ from ‘grave danger’ that comes from ‘new hazards’ or exposure to harmful agents,” as set forth in the relevant part of the OSH Act.
What the majority is really saying, then, is that it doesn’t like how much power Congress gave to OSHA in the first place. The question of whether Congress can delegate its lawmaking powers to executive branch agencies has been debated for decades. But since the 1930s, the court has basically allowed Congress to give agencies rulemaking power under Article I’s “Necessary and Proper” clause, in part on the theory that courts lack the kind of expertise that agencies have. Moreover, even though they are not elected, agency employees answer to someone who is accountable to voters: the president.
I worked in the construction industry for my entire career, and OSHA regulations provided work place safety regulations.
The Supreme court's decision has gutted everything.
The goal of destroying the government regulatory apparatus that makes America a first-world country is shared by Republicans from Bannon to Utah Sen. Mitt Romney to Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney to Chief Justice John Roberts and every conservative in between. And it's one of the most radical agendas any political faction has ever advanced. If you want to know why all the Republicans backed Donald Trump even when they knew he was monumentally unfit, this was it. They got their court and their dream is about to come true. Unfortunately, it's a nightmare for the rest of us.
More accurately, the moderate and conservative majority.
Or put another way, the entire court except the liberals.
Rep McCarthy astutely points out that democrats want Americans to show their vaccine card to eat in a restaurant but not show an ID to vote for the most powerful job in the world.
Things that make you go hmmmm......
With the door slammed shut this week on federal legislation to create new protections for access to voting, Democrats face an electoral landscape in which they will need to spend heavily to register and mobilize voters if they are to overcome the hodgepodge of new voting restrictions enacted by Republicans across the country.
Democrats rode record turnout to win the presidency and control of the Senate in 2020 after embracing policies that made it easier to vote with absentee ballots during the pandemic. But Republican-controlled state legislatures have since enacted a range of measures that undo those policies, erect new barriers to voting and remove some of the guardrails that halted former President Donald J. Trump’s drive to overturn the election.
Now, Democrats’ best chance for counteracting the new state laws is gone after Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, declared her opposition on Thursday to President Biden’s push to lift the filibuster to pass the party’s two voting access bills.
That failure infuriated Democrats and left them contemplating a long and arduous year of organizing for the midterm elections, where they already face headwinds from Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings, inflation, congressional redistricting and the persistent pandemic.
Democratic officials and activists now say they are resigned to having to spend and organize their way around the new voting restrictions — a prospect many view with hard-earned skepticism, citing the difficulty of educating masses of voters on how to comply with the new rules.
They say it would require them to compensate by spending tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars more on voter-registration and turnout programs — funds that might otherwise have gone to promoting Democratic candidates.
“All these voter protection measures are not cheap,” said Raymond Paultre, executive director of the Florida Alliance, a statewide network of progressive donors. “This is going to draw a lot of resources away from candidates, campaigns and organizations.”
Republicans, whose decades-long push to curtail voting access was put into overdrive by Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud following his defeat, are planning a renewed push to implement new restrictions during this year’s state legislative sessions.
They are also pushing to recruit thousands of Trump supporters as election workers come November.
The bottom line, Democrats say, is that in many Republican-run states, voting in 2022 may be more difficult — and more charged — than it has been in generations, especially if the coronavirus pandemic does not subside.
The stakes are highest in key battleground states where governors and top election officials on the ballot in November will determine the ease of voting in the 2024 presidential contest.
A conservative judge in Wisconsin has banned the use of drop boxes for absentee ballots.
In Wisconsin on Thursday, a judge in Waukesha County, the largest county in the state among those run by Republicans, ruled that drop boxes for absentee ballots are illegal statewide — a reversal of longstanding practice, and a ban set to take effect in municipal primary elections on Feb. 15.
The ruling by Michael O. Bohren, a circuit court judge, invalidated years of guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission allowing municipalities to collect absentee ballots in drop boxes before Election Day.
Judge Bohren, who routinely attests to his bona fides as a conservative, was appointed to the bench in 2000 by former Gov. Tommy Thompson, a Republican, and presides over a courtroom displaying portraits of a handful of American presidents, all of them Republicans except for George Washington. He declined to be interviewed.
His decision, if not reversed on appeal, could also forbid Wisconsinites to turn in ballots other than their own and jeopardize city-sponsored ballot-collection events like Democracy in the Park in Madison, in which city workers gathered 17,000 early votes in public parks in the weeks before the 2020 election.
“When you try to suppress the vote, somebody is going to be at the losing end of things,” said Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, a Democrat who faces a difficult re-election this fall. “Those people are the people of Wisconsin.”
The federal voting rights legislation also would have contained funding for election administration processes, including automatic voter registration. Without it, election officials say they will be hamstrung in training staff members and buying needed equipment, running the risk of disruptions. Hundreds of officials from 39 states sent a letter to Mr. Biden on Thursday asking for $5 billion to buy and fortify election infrastructure for the next decade. The letter was organized by a group largely funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief
Despite that need, at least 12 states have passed laws preventing nongovernmental groups from financing election administration — a wide-reaching legislative response to false right-wing suspicions that $350 million donated for that purpose by another organization with ties to Mr. Zuckerberg was used to increase Democratic turnout. (The money mainly covered administrative expenses, including safety gear for poll workers, and was distributed to both Republican and Democratic jurisdictions.)
Some Democrats and civil rights leaders say they fear that the failure of Democrats in Washington to enact a federal voting law could depress turnout among Black voters — the same voters the party will spend the coming months working to organize.
“Voting rights is seen by Black voters as a proxy battle about Black issues,” said Mr. Paultre, in Florida. “The Democratic Party is going to be blamed.”
In Texas, whose March 1 primary will be the first of the midterms, some results of the sweeping new voting law passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature last year are already clear. In populous counties such as Harris, Bexar, Williamson and Travis, as many as half of absentee ballot applications have been rejected so far because voters did not comply with new requirements, such as providing a driver’s license number or a partial Social Security number.
In Harris County — the state’s largest, which includes Houston — roughly 16 percent of ballot applications have been rejected because of the new rules, a sevenfold increase over 2018, according to Isabel Longoria, a Democrat who is the county’s elections administrator. About one in 10 applications did not satisfy the new identification requirements, she said.
In Travis County, home to Austin, about half of applications received have been rejected because of the new rules, officials said. “We’re now seeing the real-life actual effect of the law, and, ladies and gentlemen, it is voter suppression,” said Dana DeBeauvoir, a Democrat who oversees elections there as county clerk.
Both counties have received far fewer absentee ballot applications than in 2018. Officials attributed the drop to a new rule barring election officials from sending ballot applications unrequested.
With the Texas primary fast approaching, election officials are growing increasingly worried about their ability to recruit poll workers. A variety of criminal penalties enacted in the state’s new voting law, they said, raise the risk that an honest mistake could land a low-paid worker in jail.
Republicans, whose most avid voters remain animated by Mr. Trump’s false stolen-election claims, have had no such trouble recruiting election workers. For Virginia’s November election, Republicans placed volunteers at 96 percent of precincts, up from 37 percent for the 2020 election, according to John Fredericks, a conservative talk-radio host who was Mr. Trump’s Virginia state chairman in 2020 and was a booster of the new Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin.
Unless the Democratic party gets the people out to vote, the cryptofascist party of Trump will destroy the American dream.
Who wins......WHO FUCKING CARES!!!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
A must read for all those anti CRT idiots who IMHO have no clue on what it is,,,,,especially rat who dislikes it because it is a theory!!!!!!!!! LOLOLOLOL
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/14/high-school-critical-race-theory-message-to-protesters/
At my school, students are often permitted to participate in short workshops on current controversial topics. The one we did on CRT lasted 75 minutes. For students who wish to deepen their understanding of CRT, a semester-long elective — completely optional — is offered during senior year. Material on CRT is by no means replacing instruction in math, science or other core subjects in our curriculum.
When we discussed CRT in our short workshop, we were taught the basic premise of critical race theory — that the underlying cause of racism within our country is institutional oppression built into American government and law. This structural racism shows up in systems such as the electoral college, which allowed slaveholding states disproportionate representation, and the prison-industrial complex, which upholds forced labor to this day.
Yes, we discussed White privilege, the fact that because of systems planted hundreds of years ago, White-identifying people have been given unfair advantages over their non-White counterparts. But this discussion in no way resembled the chaos described by anti-CRT activists who argue that the concept of White privilege will lead to widespread resentment of White people.
Were we taught that all White people are nothing but racist bigots? No. Were we taught that all White people should feel guilty about events in the past they could not control? No. Were students taught to hate their White friends and teachers?
The strength of Biden's support will determine whether Democrats maintain threadbare majorities in Congress beyond this year or whether they will cede lawmaking authority to a Republican Party largely controlled by former President Donald Trump. Already, Republicans in several state legislatures have taken advantage of Democratic divisions in Washington to enact far-reaching changes to state election laws, abortion rights and public health measures in line with Trump's wishes.
If Biden cannot unify his party and reinvigorate his political coalition, the GOP at the state and federal levels will almost certainly grow more emboldened, and the red wave that shaped a handful of state elections last year could fundamentally shift the balance of power across America in November's midterm elections.
For now, virtually none of the groups that fueled Biden's 2020 victory are happy.
The author of the CRT piece. who certainly writes better than me and most slurpers here!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!
(Daniel Fishel for The Washington Post)
By Christiane Calixte
Yesterday at 1:02 p.m. EST
Christiane Calixte is a junior at the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn.
0:00/6:04
Listen to Christiane Calixte read her essay.
As a Black high school junior, I have to say: The backlash I’ve seen against the teaching of critical race theory is unbelievable.
Opinions to start the day, in your inbox. Sign up.
In most schools, as has been well established, critical race theory — an approach to analyzing the intersection of race, history and the law, generally reserved for higher education — isn’t even being taught. And yet, since January 2021, according to Education Week, more than 30 states “have introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism” in K-12 schools.
These policies are no joke.
One Tennessee high school teacher, Matthew Hawn, lost his job after showing his students a four-minute video of a poet performing a piece about White privilege. In Texas, James Whitfield was pushed out of his job as a high school principal after accusations that he was promoting CRT.
Access to voting has never been greater than it is now. Neither is risk of election fraud. We should all support free and fair elections.
It's being reported thay Biden plans to revive his anti police agenda to coincide with Feb black history month. Is anyone surprised? It's become highly unpopular. So naturally he will embrace it.
Never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up.
-Barack Hussein
Anonymous Myballs said...
Access to voting has never been greater than it is now
Why do you keep posting such abject bullshit opinions????? You saying so does not change Eliminating drop boxes and limiting early voting and difficulty obtaining ballots makes your statement bullshit!!!!!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/us/politics/georgia-voting-law-annotated.html
out of nearly five million cast. The new law will, in particular, curtail ballot access for voters in booming urban and suburban counties, home to many Democrats. Another provision makes it a crime to offer water to voters waiting in lines, which tend to be longer in densely populated communities.
Below is The Times’s analysis of the law, including the specific provisions and some struck-through language from the state’s previous voting legislation.
Here are the most significant changes to voting in the state, as written into the new law:
Voters will now have less time to request absentee ballots.
There are strict new ID requirements for absentee ballots.
It’s now illegal for election officials to mail out absentee ballot applications to all voters.
Drop boxes still exist … but barely.
Mobile voting centers (think an R.V. where you can vote) are essentially banned.
Early voting is expanded in a lot of small counties, but probably not in more populous ones.
Offering food or water to voters waiting in line now risks misdemeanor charges.
If you go to the wrong polling place, it will be (even) harder to vote.
If election problems arise, a common occurrence, it is now more difficult to extend voting hours.
With a mix of changes to vote-counting, high-turnout elections will probably mean a long wait for results.
Election officials can no longer accept third-party funding (a measure that nods to right-wing conspiracy theories).
With an eye toward voter fraud, the state attorney general will manage an election hotline.
The Republican-controlled legislature has more control over the State Election Board.
The secretary of state is removed as a voting member of the State Election Board.
The G.O.P.-led legislature is empowered to suspend county election officials.
Runoff elections will happen faster — and could become harder to manage.
Hundreds of Trump Voters Are Dying Every Day
January 15, 2022 at 7:57 am EST By Taegan Goddard 2 Comments
Donald McNeil Jr.:
“As of this week, about 1,800 Americans a day are dying of Covid; the C.D.C. expects that number to rise above 2,600.
“Virtually all are adults. If 95 percent were unvaccinated and we assume that 75 percent of those were Trump supporters, that’s 1,300 to 1,900 of his voters being subtracted from the rolls every single day.
Donald Trump lost Arizona by a mere 10,000 votes. He lost Georgia by 12,000, He lost Wisconsin by 21,000. He lost Nevada by 33,000.
“Right now, about 60 Arizonans, 36 Georgians, 34 Wisconsinites and 14 Nevadans are dying of Covid each day. Seventy five percent of 95 percent of that would be minus 103 Trump voters per day — just in those four swing states. Week after week. That adds up.
GOP Candidates Weigh How Closely to Run with Trump
January 15, 2022 at 7:27 am EST By Taegan Goddard 3 Comments
Associated Press:
“Dissent from Trump’s election lie within the GOP remains rare. From Ohio to Georgia and Arizona, candidates running for Senate, governor and attorney general have fully embraced Trump’s falsehoods as they have tried to win over his endorsement, deflect his fury or win over his base.
“In the short term, such positioning may help Republican candidates come out on top in primary fields that are often crowded. But there are concerns that it could hurt the party in the fall, especially among suburban voters who have become increasingly decisive in recent campaigns. The further to the right that Republicans go now, the easier it could become for their Democratic rivals to portray them as extreme in a general election.
What a sissy bitch.
"The Supreme court's decision has gutted everything."
Reply to Ch at 10:10 PM:
The Brooks/Capehart interview, in which they do not always agree, and do agree on an important point, is indeed informative.
It is not YOUR usual propaganda.
That's why you and others here resent it so much.
Warm up Your Home With These Great Wood-Burning Stoves"
"Wood-burning stoves can help save you money on your heating bill, and burning wood as a heat source can be easier on the environment than gas or coal. "
MSN.
Keep posting your tripe, goat fucker....just because you cannot afford to heat your home with modern equipment.....does not mean it is an environmentally good way to do so.....BTW.....the only by product of natural gas burning is co2 and water.....can't be much easier than that so your cite is BULLSHIT, just like you!!!!!!!
Honest, decent, truth telling Reverend said...
Reply to Ch at 10:10 PM:
The Brooks/Capehart interview, in which they do not always agree, and do agree on an important point, is indeed informative.
I must have missed it in the avalanche of shit posted by the POS "pastor"
Who did they pick ?
I'm going with Green Bay
What a FANTASTIC MORNING !!!
I see the Eleven percenters are going into overdrive
I love the smell of far-left liberal desperation in the morning .
ROFLMFAO !!!
Catturd
https://gab.com/Catturd/posts/107626424058534705
I bet the Democrat party couldn't wait to hide the basement dummy this weekend.
very angry, very old man
someone must have denied him his ice cream
Roger Stone
https://gab.com/RogerJStoneJr/posts/107625240065126938
my poor wife has nightmares about this every night the predawn hours in which 29 FBI agent stormed my home to arrest me for completely fabricated charges of Russian collusion. Now the same cocksuckers are trying to pull the same shit again trying me without any evidence whatsoever to the events of January 6. I will fight them to the end.
Joe Biden's brownshirts
1984
I'm going with Green Bay
BWAAAAAAAAA!!!!! Call someone who gives a flying fuck.....asshole!!!!!!
Fuck Roger stone......he should have thought about his wife before getting his Nixon tattoo and supporting the loser trump.....Seems to me he will soon be in the middle of the Oath Keepers sedition charges as they claim they were protecting him which makes it highly probable he was in on the riots!!!!!!!!!
Andre Damon
DOCUMENTS:
https://twitter.com/Andre__Damon/status/1482069977826009092
BREAKING
US Government to end daily COVID death reporting
A document issued issued Jan 6 by the US Health and Human Services tells hospitals they are no longer required to report daily COVID-19 deaths to the federal government starting Feb 2.
Story broken by @DataDrivenMD
Joe is taking care of Covid deaths and removing it from 2022 election debate
I wonder if anyone will ask at his "press conference"
or will he just read who to call and have answers to their pre-arranged "questions"
What a puppet president and press
1984
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
Dr. Fauci said The China Virus which he funded with US Tax Dollars is her to stay.
James's Going Daddy.
I agree, Green Bay is my pick too.
Hundreds of Trump Voters Are Dying Every Day
January 15, 2022 at 7:57 am EST By Taegan Goddard 296 Comments
Donald McNeil Jr.: “As of this week, about 1,800 Americans a day are dying of Covid; the C.D.C. expects that number to rise above 2,600.”
“Virtually all are adults. If 95 percent were unvaccinated and we assume that 75 percent of those were Trump supporters, that’s 1,300 to 1,900 of his voters being subtracted from the rolls every single day.“
“Donald Trump lost Arizona by a mere 10,000 votes. He lost Georgia by 12,000, He lost Wisconsin by 21,000. He lost Nevada by 33,000.”
“Right now, about 60 Arizonans, 36 Georgians, 34 Wisconsinites and 14 Nevadans are dying of Covid each day. Seventy five percent of 95 percent of that would be minus 103 Trump voters per day — just in those four swing states.
“Virtually all are adults. If 95 percent were unvaccinated and we assume that 75 percent of those were Trump supporters
FACT CHECK - FALSE
and why is Biden getting rid of Covid death counts ?
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
* and why is the CDC changing to FROM Covid instead of WITH Covid ?
2 years too late
except for political "science"
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
* are the tests in the mail ?
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!
and why is Biden getting rid of Covid death counts ?
Because it's easier than actually doing anything about it, which he promised countless times. The "man" is a prolific liar.
A prolific liar who has epically failed at the job of president by every objective measure. And it's this epic failure that has prompted the left to demand the codification of voter/ballot fraud into law. When you fail as totally and completely as the democrats and Biden have failed, there's only one way to maintain a grip on power. You have to seize it.
VEEP THOUGHTS BY KAMALA HARRIS:
https://youtu.be/Tr-mfXT-VH0
Direct TV banned porn etc.
What would Groucho say? Would you rather belong to a club that had the proprietor of a porn shop as a member? Or Marjorie Taylor Greene?
By Charles Bethea
January 15, 2022
In the spring of 2006, Charles T. Craton III, a businessman in northwestern Georgia, best known for his work on Chick-fil-A’s “Eat Mor Chikin” campaign, opened Entice Adult Superstore. “I did expect there to be controversy,” Craton later told the Rome News-Tribune. But, he went on, “you’d have thought I killed the Lindbergh baby, sunk the Lusitania, and started World War II.” There had never been a porn shop in Floyd County—although, as Craton had discovered, no ordinance barred them. The county commission subsequently passed one; Craton unsuccessfully challenged it. But he was allowed to stay open as long as he changed the store’s name to Entice Couples Boutique and promised that no more than thirty-five per cent of his inventory would be dildos and other “adult novelties.”
By that time, Craton had been expelled from the Coosa Country Club, in Rome, which is in Georgia’s Fourteenth Congressional District. The club offered Craton several reasons for his expulsion in addition to his ownership of Entice. A Coosa member is said to have resigned “because of a known pornographer”—Craton—among the membership, and because Craton’s wife allegedly appeared on a “pornographic Web site.” All this, the club maintained, endangered “the good order, welfare and character of the Club.”
Craton, who had been a Coosa member for four years, sued the club for five million dollars. “This is me standing my ground against the moral elitists of Rome, Georgia,” he told the News-Tribune. His lawsuit noted that he had “conducted himself, at all times, on and off the club premises, as a gentleman.” Craton also published an open letter in the paper, addressed to “The Members of Coosa Country Club,” in which he referred to “felony crimes” and “public drunkenness” by fellow-members, and mentioned “illegal gambling in the men’s locker room.” The letter went on, “If the Coosa Country Club Board is going to conduct witch hunts, then for God’s sake, let’s find all the witches.” It concluded, “Once we investigate who all the witches are, there won’t be any members left.”
The suit was dismissed before Craton could tell his Coosa stories to a jury. “Private clubs are the last bastion of legal prejudice,” he told the News-Tribune, after the decision. He built himself a house with a view of the club’s eighth hole.
VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER
“We called it the ‘porn hole,’ ” a former club member, who believed that Craton had got a raw deal, said recently. The club’s “moral hypocrisy,” as the former member put it, was on view again this month, when Coosa welcomed Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/24/teeing-up-with-qanon
As of this week, about 1,800 Americans a day are dying of Covid; the C.D.C. expects that number to rise above 2,600.
Virtually all are adults. If 95 percent were unvaccinated and we assume that 75 percent of those were Trump supporters, that’s 1,300 to 1,900 of his voters being subtracted from the rolls every single day.
Trumpets are dying unnecessarily because of false information from.
Scott Johnson Powerline
LMAO:
President Joe Biden is reportedly planning to push his police reform agenda via an executive order as early as this month.
The executive actions are still being finalized, according to NBC News, but are expected to be rolled out at the start of Black History Month in February as the administration tries to achieve policy goals leading up to the president’s State of the Union address in March.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-planning-executive-orders-on-police-reform-report
Hilarious.
Trumpets are dying unnecessarily because of false information from...
...The CDC.
ttps://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-planning-executive-orders-on-police-reform-report
Hilarious.
Even funnier asshole is you thinking this is news.......BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
The Left Controls Almost Everything, So Why Are They So Afraid?
Perhaps they know their strength is something of a charade, it’s unstable, it’s not organic, it’s coerced. When it collapses, they fear it will collapse like a house of cards.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/01/the-left-controls-almost-everything-so-why-are-they-so-afraid/
I wouldn't vote for him because I don't agree with him on most issues but he could rescue the Republican party from Trump and
...... Axios
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday called the Jan. 6 Capitol riot an attempt to "overturn results of the presidential election that had been certified by all 50 states."
Why it matters: Though the former vice president's op-ed in the Washington Post focuses on rebutting filibuster reforms, these are also the most public statements Pence has made about the post-election narrative and the attack as an effort to interfere with President Biden's victory.
Pence's remarks come one day before former President Trump is set to hold a rally in Arizona. The 45th president had originally planned to hold a Jan. 6 anniversary press conference, but he canceled it the day before.
"Now that the anniversary of Jan. 6 has come and gone, some of us who lived through that tragic day in 2021 are getting a clearer picture of what was and is at stake," Pence wrote in the Post.
"On Jan. 6, an angry mob ransacked the Capitol, largely to try to get Congress and me, as the president of the Senate, to use federal authority to overturn" the election results.
Of note: Some people in and around Pence's office have been cooperative as the House Jan. 6 select committee focuses on what former President Trump was doing during the more than three hours the Capitol was under attack, sources familiar with the testimony told Axios.
Driving the news: Pence called Biden's and Democrats' push to end the filibuster a "power grab," arguing that the "notion that Congress would break the filibuster rule to pass a law equaling a wholesale takeover of elections by the federal government is inconsistent with our nation’s history and an affront to our Constitution’s structure."
"With this anniversary passed, I call on my former colleagues in the Senate to do as you did before: Uphold the right of states to conduct and certify elections," the former vice president wrote.
https://www.axios.com/pence-jan-6-insurrection-filibuster-aeb07be7-84bf-4ddd-ae8f-b749fcc03154.html
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/01/the-left-controls-almost-everything-so-why-are-they-so-afraid/
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! Still cannot think for your self asshole??????? Why are you so afraid of voters???????
I'm glad it annoys you BWAA.
Inauguration celebrations are underway in Richmond to welcome Republican Glenn Youngkin as the next governor of Virginia.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/youngkin-inauguration-virginia-republican-sworn-in-governor
Heh.
The no sedition talking point is dead
About the author: Carlton Larson is the Martin Luther King Jr. professor of law at UC Davis School of Law.
On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted 11 members of the so-called Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy. Such charges are exceptionally rare—and, quite obviously, extremely serious. If convicted, these defendants could face up to 20 years in prison.
And yet many Americans think that the charges should have been even more serious: treason against the United States. Although that’s not an implausible argument, the Justice Department made the right decision. Treason prosecutions would have introduced significant legal complexity, while doing very little to increase sentences. Seditious-conspiracy charges, by contrast, are perfectly pitched to the gravity of the offenses, and given the substantial evidence laid out in the indictments, should be relatively straightforward to prove.
Seditious conspiracy is defined as “conspir[ing] to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States … or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States.” In the past 30 years, there have been only four sets of indictments for this offense. Most notably, the Justice Department successfully convicted Omar Abdel-Rahman of seditious conspiracy for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But the most recent seditious-conspiracy prosecution—of Michigan militia members in the early 2010s—was a fiasco. A judge dismissed the seditious-conspiracy charges, finding them unsupported by the evidence.
IMO they are domestic terrorists.
Hey ass hole....the only thing that annoys me is your stupidity and failure to think on your own....As long as you can live in that paradigm, its no skin off my ass knowing that!!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
Thanks to Brandon, we now have anti-theft devices on meat in the supermarket:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJF28RCX0AEtllI?format=jpg&name=medium
But let's focus on made-up sedition conspiracy charges to cover for Slow Joe's epic failure.
Like a BOSS:
Washington Post editor Eugene Robinson called
@GovRonDeSantis anti-lockdown stance "outrageous to say the least, & frankly it is criminal.”
@RuthlessPodcast
asked the Gov for his reaction.
DeSantis: “I’m not worried about what some corporate shill from Amazon is saying about me.”
https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1482359513705558019?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1482359513705558019%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fdougp-3137%2F2022%2F01%2F15%2Fgov-ron-desantis-response-to-wapo-writer-editor-calling-his-covid-response-criminal-is-perfection%2F
rrb said...
Trumpets are dying unnecessarily because of false information from...
...The CDC.
FACT CHECK - TRUE
and an evil Dr. Fauci
But let's focus on made-up sedition conspiracy charges to cover for Slow Joe's epic failure.
Biden's "justice" department knows to go after. Parents, grandparents, real journalists and political enemies.
But definitely not Hunter
Got to protect "artists"
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Mid-terms coming up!
🚨BREAKING🚨
US Government to end daily COVID death reporting
A document issued issued Jan 6 by the US Health and Human Services tells hospitals they are no longer required to report daily COVID-19 deaths to the federal government starting Feb 2.
https://twitter.com/Andre__Damon/status/1482069977826009092
The “new normal” requires recognizing that SARS-CoV-2 is but one of several circulating respiratory viruses that include influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and more. COVID-19 must now be considered among the risks posed by all respiratory viral illnesses combined. Many of the measures to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (eg, ventilation) will also reduce transmission of other respiratory viruses. Thus, policy makers should retire previous public health categorizations, including deaths from pneumonia and influenza or pneumonia, influenza, and COVID-19, and focus on a new category: the aggregate risk of all respiratory virus infections.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2787944
Mid terms a-comin', so the bullshit needs to be cranked up to 11.
Jimmy Carter invented the Misery Index – the combined unemployment rate plus inflation rate – in order to flog his 1976 opponent, Jerry Ford, about the head. As most often happens with Democrats, his own policies led to even more misery and he ended up beating Ford’s misery score by a full 2 percentage points, topping the misery index at 22%.
Now cometh Joe Biden with his bag of magic beans. So far his official score is 10.9%. At the time he took the reins, so to speak, the misery index was under 7% and unemployment was on the decline. Joey beat that by 4 points after just one year in office. And mind you, since the Carter misery years the government has done its level best to keep the two indices artificially low.
First, our bureaucratic betters removed several key measures from the CPI “market basket” during the Obama years. It no longer reflects increases in food or energy. While they are still tracked in other indices, the number most quoted does not include them because they are considered too “volatile” – well yes, isn’t that the point? That type of volatility is likely to create great misery. Likewise the food index does not reflect the inflation due to the incredible shrinking packaging size of many consumer food products.
Likewise the unemployment rate does not include anyone who hasn’t looked for work within the last 4 weeks – the “discouraged” job seeker - they are completely ignored. Thus the Labor Participation Rate hangs near historically low levels with both discouraged wage seekers and lay-abouts, willing to survive on government “stimulus” handouts, excluded from the calculation.
They say that history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, rather it rhymes. We are witnessing that in real time. The kids are too young to recognize it but those of us who danced to disco in leisure suits sure do. Stagflation isn’t a state of mind, it’s true misery. And the Brandon Administration has done everything in their power to Make America Miserable Again.
Some of us thought we’d NEVER again see a President as bad as Jimmy Carter, but Joey Biden has managed to top Jimmy’s incompetency in just a quarter of the time.
http://www.michellesmirror.com/2022/01/lets-make-america-miserable-again.html#.YeMDhtXMKM9
But, but, but 'sedition!' or something.
When you're reduced to targeting your political opponents as 'domestic terrorists' using federal law enforcement as your personal STASI to destroy them, then you've failed and failed epically and miserably.
Biden Epic fail on China Virus funded by Dr. Fauci, leads to the science.
Always Political Science , just stop count the deaths .
Problem solved.
One can indict a ham sandwich. Seditious conspiracy is extremely difficult to prove. But Garland had to throw some red meat to the rabid left. If convicted is a big IF.
Remember this racist twat?
A federal grand jury indicted Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby on Thursday after she lied about her financial status to purchase two properties in Florida.
The progressive official, whose reported annual salary is near $240,000, was charged with perjury and making false statements about her financial situation during COVID-19 to obtain premature access to her city retirement savings. Mosby was awarded at least $90,000 from that savings under a CARES Act provision that allowed government employees to dip into their retirement accounts if they were struggling to make ends meet. Despite claiming she was facing dire financial straits in Baltimore, Mosby used the money she withdrew to purchase vacation homes in Kissimmee near Disney World and Long Boat Key.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/14/kamala-harris-backed-states-attorney-indicted-for-pretending-to-be-poor-so-she-could-exploit-covid-help-to-buy-vacation-homes/
She deserves nothing less than to be completely and utterly ruined.
Fauci had become much too toxic. Biden should replace him. Butvhe won't because he never does the right thing.
Hi, Dennis, hope you are well.
Even if one could indict a ham sandwich, it would be impossible to convict it of conspiracy to commit sedition.
On the other hand...
James, the other day you where cheering the Biden stock market and the wealth being earned by shareholders.
Care to tell us why your titanic shift?
Either James doesn't understand my point or he's bring deliberately obtuse. Either way, he's only here to troll. Nothing more.
Exactly, right Myballsinthewoodsagain.
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