February 2, 2021

Rob Portman has done more damage to America than Marjorie Taylor Greene

Rob Portman, a long-serving senator from Ohio, is Greene’s antithesis. Over many decades in Washington, he has developed a reputation as a sober and serious policy wonk. His decision to retire next year has been greeted with predictable hand wringing. A Wall Street Journal columnist lamented: “He is a rightly respected figure. He tries to advance serious legislation. He doesn’t spend all his time talking on television.”

Yet if we are to apportion responsibility for the Republican Party’s descent into irrationality and authoritarianism, I would argue that Portman is far more to blame than Greene. That’s because there are a lot more Portmans than Greenes in Congress. Greene’s kookiness resonates with many GOP voters (30 percent of Republicans expressed a positive view of QAnon in a recent poll), but there are only a few House members who are as flaky as she is. However, the House and especially the Senate are full of Portman types: long-serving, mainstream Republicans who pride themselves on being practical problem-solvers — but who did not lift a finger to stop the takeover of their party by the lunatic fringe.

Portman announced in October 2016 that he could no longer support Donald Trump after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which the GOP presidential candidate bragged about assaulting women. Yet after Trump won, Portman did support him. He compiled one of the most pro-Trump voting records in Congress, voting with the president’s positions 88.3 percent of the time. That’s actually higher than Trump lickspittles Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).

Portman is now critical of President Biden for pursuing a $1.9 trillion economic relief package without any Republican support. (Portman favors a much smaller alternative advanced by 10 Republicans.) Yet Trump pushed his most ambitious pieces of legislation — a $1.5 trillion tax cut and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act — without making any attempt to win Democratic support. And both times Portman voted for the GOP legislation. Portman also supported the outrageous Republican decision not to grant a hearing to President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee in an election year while approving Trump’s nominee right before the 2020 election on a party-line vote. Republicans such as Portman use calls for “unity” as a code word for Democratic concessions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/01/rob-portman-has-done-more-damage-america-than-marjorie-taylor-greene/

January 28, 2021

Indivisible's Ezra Levin lays out their plans under the Biden administration

On her show tonight, Rachel Maddow had Ezra Levin on and talked about how important Indivisible's grassroots efforts have been, particularly their speaking out at town halls, to help stop the GOP attempt to repeal Obamacare in 2017. She asked how their tactics will change now that Democrats are in power.

Ezra Levin said he is "super excited" about the "incredible opportunity" of having Dems in control because it means we can get great stuff done, not just stopping "bad stuff." But he said their grassroots tactics won't change, it will continue to involve "constituent power." They will continue using grassroots constituent coalitions to pressure their local congressional representatives, but this time it will be to "get stuff done."

To explain, he gave the story of when FDR came into the White House in 1933 with big Dem majorities in the House and Senate. Civil rights activist and labor leader A. Philip Randolph came into FDR's oval office and asked him to do some things important to labor. FDR said, "Fine, I agree. Now go out and make me do it!"

Ezra Levin said just winning those seats is not what makes change. it's the grassroots push on these representatives that makes change. He said the same Indivisible grassroots groups that stopped the GOP will now approach their Dem representatives and say, "we got you in office, this is what we want you to do now...."

He basically said now is not the time to relax, but rather to stomp on the gas while we have this opportunity. It is that grassroots pressure that our representatives desperately need, so they can point to it to justify why action is needed. So don't just walk away from the fight now. Your energy is needed now more than ever. Now, instead of resistance, we will be providing the push our representatives need to get important things done to make our lives better.

January 27, 2021

Proximity to power: What the West Wing office layout says about the Biden administration

It's an adage in any high-pressure office: proximity is power. Nowhere is that more true than the West Wing.

President Joe Biden begins his term with a team of seasoned Washington operators whose placement inside the building provides clues to who will be close at hand in moments of crisis and who is most likely to encounter the President when he's working from his office.

Unlike his predecessor, who professed a love for governing by chaos and whose aides were constantly jockeying for face-time, Biden appears more likely to go by-the-book. Officials say his meetings are run more traditionally, with a set list of attendees and usually an agenda.

And the door to the Oval Office won't be kept open for aides to drop in, as in the Trump-era. Traditional gatekeepers such as the chief of staff and an executive assistant will have the kind of control over Biden's schedule that didn't exist during periods of President Donald Trump's tenure.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/25/politics/west-wing-offices-biden/index.html

January 26, 2021

Ug, the Senate clerk spread covid handing out pens at the signing!

Senators were supposed to keep the pen she handed them or put it in a used pen box on the table after signing the impeachment trial oath book. At 2:47 PM EST One Senator (looked like Lindsey Graham, used his left hand to sign) handed his pen back to the clerk instead. She took the pen and put it in the box for him, but did not sanitize her hands after that. She used her now contaminated hands to continue handing out now contaminated pens.







Kinda defeats the purpose of giving each Senator their own pen to avoid spreading covid!

January 23, 2021

Biden administration weighs turning over Trump tax returns to House Democrats

House Democrats have renewed their long-stalled demand for Donald Trump’s federal tax records, but the Biden administration has not decided whether it will drop its predecessor’s objections and release the Treasury Department records to investigators, Justice Department attorneys told a federal judge Friday.

U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden declined Friday to lift a stay on a pending House lawsuit. Instead, the judge agreed to give Treasury and Justice Department officials two weeks to report back to him, acknowledging that President Biden’s team was just settling in after the inauguration this week.

McFadden also kept in place an order requiring the government to give the former president’s lawyers 72 hours’ notice before releasing his tax return information to allow them to file a request to block the release.

Speaking for the Justice Department, attorney James J. Gilligan said the agency has so far not been able to confer with new Treasury Department leaders, “so we still have no idea whether any decision has been reached .?.?. whether any decision is imminent .?.?. or even .?.?. under active consideration.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/trump-taxes-house-lawsuit/2021/01/22/4f4df442-5cf1-11eb-8bcf-3877871c819d_story.html

January 21, 2021

'That's Cesar Chavez!': Bust of civil rights icon behind President Biden stirs excitement

Darryl Morin, national president of the advocacy group Forward Latino, jumped from his chair when he saw it on TV — a bust of the civil and labor rights leader Cesar Chavez just behind President Joe Biden as he signed executive orders.

"I literally jumped out of my chair and yelled: 'That's Cesar Chavez! Cesar Chavez!'" said Morin, whose group has taken on civil rights and anti-discrimination causes in behalf of Latinos.

The bust, created by Paul Suarez 25 years ago, quickly attracted attention on social media.

It rested on a console among family photos behind Biden as he sat at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office and signed a slew of executive orders, several of them about racial equity and combating the Covid-19 pandemic, which has been brutal to the farmworkers whom Chavez championed. Biden is also sending to Congress an immigration bill that would give farmworkers temporary legal status if they pass criminal background checks and have worked in the agriculture field for four of the last five years.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cesar-chavez-bust-behind-president-joe-biden-oval-office-stirs-n1255082

January 20, 2021

Jim Acosta notices more disappeared White House items...

https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1351699303572647937

January 18, 2021

Joe's got this.

January 17, 2021

The 15 most notable lies of Donald Trump's presidency

[snip]

The most dangerous lie: The coronavirus was under control.

This was more like a family of lies than a single lie. But each one -- the lie that the virus was equivalent to the flu; the lie that the situation was "totally under control"; the lie that the virus was "disappearing" -- suggested to Americans that they didn't have to change much about their usual behavior.

[snip]

The most depressing lie: Trump won the election

Trump's long White House campaign against verifiable reality has culminated with his lie that he is the true winner of the 2020 presidential election he clearly, certifiably and fairly lost.

To many of us, it's ludicrous nonsense. But to millions of deluded Americans, it's the truth. And it has now gotten people killed.

The nation's truth problem, clearly, isn't just a Trump problem. With this last blizzard of deception and the Capitol insurrection it fomented, Trump has shown us, once more, just how detached from reality much of his political base has become -- or always was.


https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/01/16/politics/fact-check-dale-top-15-donald-trump-lies/index.html?__twitter_impression=true

January 17, 2021

The Trump-fueled riot shocked America. To some, it was a long time coming.

Early pundits pointed to economic anxiety fueling Trump’s supporters, but this was only partially true. The average Trump voter in 2016 earned well above the national median income. What was predictive of Trump support: high levels of anti-Black sentiment, according to the National Election Survey, said Gabriel Lenz, a political psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Those who have said they were Trump voters because they like his tax policy, his judges, his description of himself as pro-life simply have to ask themselves if it was worth it and how they feel about the camp they are in,” said Anderson. “It includes a man who wore a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ T-shirt to take Capitol Hill.”

A more accurate understanding of American politics would have to account for the repeated cycles of Black progress followed by broader white backlash, often punctuated and enforced by bloody events, Anderson said. It’s illustrated in the Jim Crow era and the terror of lynchings that followed the Civil War, the staunch segregation that followed Black involvement in World Wars I and II, and the assassinations that disrupted the civil rights movement’s major gains, said Thomas C. Holt, a history professor at the University of Chicago.

Bloody, violent coups occurred across the American South during Reconstruction, forcing Black politicians from elected office and replacing them with white officials. In Wilmington, North Carolina, Black elected officials were rounded up in 1898 and given a choice: resign or die. Many of the white men involved in that coup and others like it around the South were or became mayors, governors, lawmakers, newspaper publishers and prominent businessmen.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/trump-fueled-riot-shocked-america-some-it-was-long-time-n1254465