Politics-What's on your mind?

[homoe]

U.S. Senator Collins defends Romney, Cheney from Republican attacks.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator Susan Collins, a leading moderate Republican in the U.S. Congress, warned on Sunday against intolerance of differences within her party and pushed back at intraparty attacks from the right against Senator Mitt Romney and Representative Liz Cheney.

Collins, who won re-election in Maine last year despite a strong Democratic bid to oust her, said she was dismayed that Romney had been booed by fellow Republicans in his home state of Utah, and defended Cheney, who like Romney has been attacked from within the party for criticizing former President Donald Trump.

"We need to have room for a variety of views," Collins told CNN's "State of the Union" program. "We are not a party that is led by just one person."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-senator...172430322.html

[homoe]

Marooned at Mar-a-Lago, Trump Still Has Iron Grip on Republicans

Locked out of Facebook, marooned in Mar-a-Lago and mocked for an amateurish new website, Donald Trump remained largely out of public sight this week. Yet the Republican Party’s capitulation to the former president became clearer than ever, as did the damage to American politics he has caused with his lie that the election was stolen from him.

In Washington, Republicans moved to strip Rep. Liz Cheney of her House leadership position, a punishment for denouncing Trump’s false claims of voter fraud as a threat to democracy. Lawmakers in Florida and Texas advanced sweeping new measures that would curtail voting, echoing the fictional narrative from Trump and his allies that the electoral system was rigged against him. And in Arizona, the state Republican Party started a bizarre re-examination of the November election results that involved searching for traces of bamboo in last year’s ballots.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/marooned-...145045740.html

[homoe]

Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen predicted that his ex-boss won’t give Rudy Giuliani “two cents” for legal fees to defend himself against any charges that might arise from a current federal investigation.

“Let me be very clear: [Giuliani’s] going to get stiffed,” Cohen told Joy Reid in an MSNBC interview Friday. “Donald Trump does not pay legal bills. He doesn’t care about anyone or anything other than himself.”

Giuliani’s advisers earlier this week reached out to Trump’s team to shake loose some of the former president’s $250 million in campaign cash to reimburse Giuliani for his work attempting to overturn the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf. But Cohen said there’s no way that will happen. “Donald in his crazy mind actually believes” that money is his “to do with” as he wishes, Cohen told Reid. Giuliani now has a “better chance of sling-shooting himself to the moon” than getting a big pay day from the former president, Cohen added.

“Donald Trump wouldn’t pay him two cents because his feeling is it’s an honor and a privilege to go to prison for him, to do his dirty work,” he said.

Cohen should know. He was sentenced to three years in prison for a variety of crimes committed while he was Trump’s lawyer, including lying to Congress during its probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, campaign finance violations, and tax fraud.

Now Giuliani’s in the hot seat for work he did in Ukraine to dig up unflattering information about now-President Joe Biden and his son Hunter ahead of the 2020 election. In their effort to find communication between Ukrainian officials and the Trump administration, federal investigators last week seized more than 10 computers and phones from Giuliani’s Manhattan home and office. The Justice Department is reportedly focusing in part on Giuliani’s efforts to oust Marie Yovanovitch from her job as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. She was reportedly unpopular with some Ukrainian officials because of her strong stance against corruption. Trump booted Yovanovitch from her post in 2019.

Cohen believes Giuliani will eventually act out of self interest, though. Late last month on CNN, he said: “Do I think Rudy will give up Donald in a heartbeat? Absolutely. He certainly doesn’t want to follow my path down into a 36-month sentence.”

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/micha...235400782.html

[homoe]

In booting Cheney, 'My Kevin' leads GOP back to Trump....

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Kevin McCarthy is leading his party to an inflection point, preparing to dump Rep. Liz Cheney from the No. 3 House leadership position and transform what's left of the party of Lincoln more decisively into the party of Trump.

The GOP leader argues that ousting Cheney has less to do with her very public criticism of the former president's lies about his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden than her inability to set aside personal convictions and do her job. As conference chair responsible for communicating a unified party message, Cheney has lost the confidence of rank-and-file lawmakers, he said this week.

But in tossing aside Cheney, the daughter of the former vice president and as close as it gets to GOP royalty, and promising a “big tent” to win back power, McCarthy is hollowing out a cadre of lawmakers intent on governing while he is elevating the people and personalities most loyal to Donald Trump. In one stroke, he is amplifying the former president’s false claims about the election and seeking to mend his own tattered relationship with Trump, reasserting himself as Trump’s man in the House.

It’s a transformational moment for McCarthy, who resurrected his political career by attaching himself to Trump — who called him “My Kevin” — and is now on a glidepath to become House speaker, second in line to the presidency, if Republicans win control in next year's elections.

[Orema]

I didn’t catch the first debate of candidates for NYC Mayor, but I see that Maya Wiley did well according to the NYTimes. I like her a lot but am not familiar with most of the other candidates. Looked like Andrew Yang is doing well but I’m not convinced he’d be good for NYC.

[homoe]

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has been downplaying a mob’s attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results for months, and on Wednesday night he went on Fox News to continue asserting that there was not an insurrection.

“Calling it an insurrection ... it wasn’t,” Johnson said in an interview with Laura Ingraham. “I condemn the breach, I condemn the violence, but to say there were thousands of armed insurrectionists breaching the Capitol, attempting to overthrow the government, is simply a false narrative.

“By and large, it was peaceful protests except for there were a number of people, basically agitators, that whipped the crowd and breached the Capitol, and that’s really the truth of what’s happening here,” Johnson added.

So far, over 400 people have been arrested for crimes tied to the Jan. 6 riot, which resulted in several deaths.

[homoe]

Paul Ryan slams Trump in speech about future of Republican Party.....


IF only "little Eddie Munster" of had a backbone when it really counted!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/paul-ryan...053116596.html

[Blade]

McCarthy is an idiot. Shut up and sit down. Get out and vote when it is your turn folks we have to keep the Dems in office

[Kätzchen]

I find it terribly worrisome and hugely concerning that women (and our allies) are not mobilizing to address harrowing concerns over the possibility that Roe vs Wade could be overturned by current judges occupying seats on the SCOTUS.


Also deeply concerning is people with conduct disorders, personality disorders and sexual misconduct disorders, who exist deep within the American fabric and hold positions of power.

Big red flags all over the political landscape.


Super scary stuff.

[Stone-Butch]

I would like to shake all the Canadian fools that voted Trudeau in again as PM. Without a though for all of us he allowed Canadians abroad to come back and THEN put out a ban on arrivals from 3 other countries. The new virus is already here you bloody jerk.

[JDeere]

Originally Posted by Kätzchen

I find it terribly worrisome and hugely concerning that women (and our allies) are not mobilizing to address harrowing concerns over the possibility that Roe vs Wade could be overturned by current judges occupying seats on the SCOTUS.


Also deeply concerning is people with conduct disorders, personality disorders and sexual misconduct disorders, who exist deep within the American fabric and hold positions of power.

Big red flags all over the political landscape.


Super scary stuff.

That worries me as well, why aren't they mobilizing and speaking up?

I think as I see it, they are too busy arguing with each other over other stuff, they can't set aside time to coordinate to mobilize. However their male counterparts are no bettter, all they do is bicker.

I'm learning that the whole facet of the USA government doesn't truly care about us, in any form.

smh

[homoe]

~~
Democrat Stacey Abrams announces 2022 bid for Georgia governor.

Hopefully she'll get a fair shake this time around!

[cathexis]

Originally Posted by JDeere

That worries me as well, why aren't they mobilizing and speaking up?

I think as I see it, they are too busy arguing with each other over other stuff, they can't set aside time to coordinate to mobilize. However their male counterparts are no bettter, all they do is bicker.

I'm learning that the whole facet of the USA government doesn't truly care about us, in any form.

smh

Turn the TV on MSNBC, you will see the throngs of people protesting the "right to life" movement and pro-women's reproductive rights.

It is sad for this very important and life-saving vote to occur after a horrible presidency and the fear it might return plunging us into Fascism again, a pandemic that has killed many Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, and untold numbers Caribbean Island residents and Cuban citizens, and untold numbers of catastrophic weather phenomenon causing much disaster.

It would not surprise me if very few protestors showed up at SCOTUS, but there are those hearty souls who show up at the SCOTUS and The Capitol to stand up for those of us unable to show-up in person.

Thank You to those well, able, with housing and food unlike many up in my neck of the woods. I am warm, feed, without any major worries.

[JDeere]

Originally Posted by cathexis

Turn the TV on MSNBC, you will see the throngs of people protesting the "right to life" movement and pro-women's reproductive rights.

It is sad for this very important and life-saving vote to occur after a horrible presidency and the fear it might return plunging us into Fascism again, a pandemic that has killed many Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, and untold numbers Caribbean Island residents and Cuban citizens, and untold numbers of catastrophic weather phenomenon causing much disaster.

It would not surprise me if very few protestors showed up at SCOTUS, but there are those hearty souls who show up at the SCOTUS and The Capitol to stand up for those of us unable to show-up in person.

Thank You to those well, able, with housing and food unlike many up in my neck of the woods. I am warm, feed, without any major worries.

I was speaking on the women in the government mobilizing together! I rarely see them come together because they are too busy bickering and such on petty stuff, while the men do the crap deeds!

[Orema]

Why are US rightwingers so angry? Because they know social change is coming
Rebecca Solnit

The American right might win the occasional battle – but they will never win the war against progress


‘We are dismantling the trophies of the ugly old world of sanctified inequality and erecting monuments to heroes of justice and liberation.’ Photograph: Steve Helber/AP

While their fear and dismay is often regarded as rooted in delusion, rightwingers are correct that the world is metamorphosing into something new and, to them, abhorrent. They’re likewise correct that what version of history we tell matters. The history we tell today lays the groundwork for the future we make. The outrage over the 1619 Project and the new laws trying to censor public school teachers from telling the full story of American history are a doomed attempt to hold back facts and perspectives that are already widespread.

In 2018, halfway through the Trump presidency, Michelle Alexander wrote a powerful essay arguing that we are not the resistance. We, she declared, are the mighty river they are trying to dam. I see it flowing, and I see the tributaries that pour into it and swell its power, and I see that once firmly grounded statues and assumptions have become flotsam in its current. Similar shifts are happening far beyond the United States, but it is this turbulent nation of so much creation and destruction I know best and will speak of here.

When a regime falls, the new one sweeps away its monuments and erects its own. This is happening as the taking down of Confederate, Columbus and other statues commemorating oppressors across the country, the renaming of streets and buildings and other public places, the appearance of myriad statues and murals of Harriet Tubman and other liberators, the opening of the Legacy Museum documenting slavery and mass incarceration and housing a lynching memorial.

There was no great moment of overthrow, but nevertheless we are dismantling the trophies of the ugly old world of sanctified inequality and erecting monuments to heroes of justice and liberation, from the Olympic track medalists of 1968 making their Black power gesture at San Jose State University to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park in Maryland. All those angry white men with the tiki torches chanting, in Charlottesville in 2017, “You will not replace us” as they sought to defend a statue of Gen Robert E Lee were wrong in their values and actions but perhaps not in their assessment.

White people are not being replaced, but in many ways a white supremacist history and society is. The statue of the general was removed earlier this year and will be melted down to be made into a new work of art under the direction of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. They call the project “swords into plowshares”, a phrase suggesting that this marks the end of a war – perhaps the civil war in which the north never fully claimed its victory, the south never accepted its defeat.

What’s happening goes far beyond public monuments. The statues mark the rejection of old versions of who we are and what we value, but those versions and values matter most as they play out in everyday private and public life. We are only a few decades removed from a civilization in which corporal punishment of children by parents and teachers was an unquestioned norm; in which domestic violence and marital rape were seen as a husband’s prerogative and a wife surrendered financial and other agency; in which many forms of inequality and exclusion had hardly even been questioned, let alone amended; in which few questioned the rightness of a small minority – for white Christian men have always been a minority in the United States – holding almost all the power, politically, socially, economically, culturally; in which segregation and exclusion were pervasive and legal; in which Native Americans had been largely written out of history; in which environmental regulation and protection and awareness barely existed.

You have to remember how different the past was to recognize how much has changed. Frameworks such as indigenous land acknowledgments that were unheard of and maybe almost inconceivable a few decades ago are routine at public events. Land acknowledgments are not land return, but they fortify the case for it.

The Civil Rights Act passed in 1964; in 1965, with Griswold v Connecticut, the supreme court overruled state laws criminalizing birth control and laid the groundwork for Roe v Wade six years later; only in 2015, Obergefell v Hodges established marriage equality for same-sex couples (while equality of rights between different-sex couples had also gradually been established as marriage became a less authoritarian institution). The right is trying to push the water back behind the dam. With deregulation and social service and tax cuts, they have succeeded in reestablishing an economy of extreme inequality, but not a society fully committed to that inequality.

They have succeeded in passing laws at the state level against voting rights and reproductive rights, but they have not succeeded in pushing the majority’s imaginations back to 1960 or 1920 or whenever their version of when America was great stalled out. They can win the battles, but I do not believe they will, in the end, win the war.

While the right has become far more extreme and has its tens of millions of true believers, it is morphing into a minority sect. This has prompted their desperate scramble to overturn free and fair elections and other democratic processes. White Christians, who were 80% of the population in 1976, are now 44%. Mixed-race and non-white people are rapidly becoming the majority. On issues such as climate, people of color are far more progressive; if we can make it through the huge backlash of the present moment, the possibilities are dazzling.

These are relatively concrete changes. Others are subtler and more recent, but no less important. Even in the last decade there has been an epochal shift in our expectations of how we should treat each other, and the casual cruelty and disdain targeting women, queer people, Bipoc, the disabled and those with divergent bodies that pervaded entertainment and daily life are now viewed as repugnant – and are met with consequences in some contexts.

A regular experience of this era (for those of us who were around for the last one) is to revisit a song, a film, a book and find that we have now become people who can see better the insults and exclusions that were so seamlessly woven into it. Some of the old art has not weathered well and will fall out of circulation, as some old culture always does; some will be interpreted in new ways; some neglected treasures will move from margin to center. We – a metamorphosing “we” – are sifting through an old and building a new canon.

Even more profound than this is a shift in worldview from the autonomous individual of hypercapitalism and social darwinism to a recognition of both the natural and social worlds as orchestras of interdependence, of survival as an essentially collaborative and cooperative business. Disciplines from neuropsychology to economics have shifted their sense of who we are, what works, and what matters. Climate change is first of all a crisis, but it’s also a reminder that the world is a collection of interlocking systems. The just-deceased bell hooks talked about a “love ethic” that included “a global vision wherein we see our lives and our fate as intimately connected to those of everyone else on the planet”.

Birth can be violent and dangerous, and sometimes one or the other of the two involved die. There is no guarantee about what is to come, and the shadow of climate chaos hangs over it all. We do not have time to build a better society before we address that crisis, but it is clear that the response to that crisis is building such a society. So much has already changed. The river Alexander described has swept away so much, has carried so many onward.

It has come far; it still has dams to overtop and so much farther to go.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-change-coming