You also have no idea what HIPPA rules do and don't do. They don't prevent anyone from asking you about medical issues, vaccine status, etc. They don't prevent any company or federal agency from denying or providing services based on your personal medical information. It prevents medical providers from disclosing your medical information to third parties WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
You also have no idea what HIPPA rules do and don't do. They don't prevent anyone from asking you about medical issues, vaccine status, etc. They don't prevent any company or federal agency from denying or providing services based on your personal medical information. It prevents medical providers from disclosing your medical information to third parties WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.
You also have no idea what HIPPA rules do and don't do. They don't prevent anyone from asking you about medical issues, vaccine status, etc. They don't prevent any company or federal agency from denying or providing services based on your personal medical information. It prevents medical providers from disclosing your medical information to third parties WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
You also have no idea what HIPPA rules do and don't do. They don't prevent anyone from asking you about medical issues, vaccine status, etc. They don't prevent any company or federal agency from denying or providing services based on your personal medical information. It prevents medical providers from disclosing your medical information to third parties WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.
As
President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6,
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was whisked to a secret
location and cloistered with a handful of other top lawmakers.
The
senator from Kentucky had spent the past four years as one of Trump’s
chief enablers, boosting his election by keeping a Supreme Court seat
open, pushing through his agenda with party-line votes and standing by
for weeks as Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen. But
their marriage of political convenience had abruptly shattered three
weeks earlier, when Trump exploded at McConnell for acknowledging Joe
Biden’s victory.
Safely
huddled with Democratic leaders as they watched video of police
battling Trump supporters in the Capitol, McConnell reacted with anger
and revulsion, according to Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who was
also in the secure location.
“I
thought to myself, 'This could be a transformative moment. He appears
to have taken this very seriously,’ ” recalled Durbin, who spent hours
that day holed up with the Republican leader.
But
when it came time to hold Trump to account, McConnell backed off. While
seven GOP senators voted to convict Trump following his impeachment by
the House for inciting an insurrection, McConnell supported acquittal,
ensuring Trump would face no formal penalty for inciting an
insurrection.
Ten
months later, Trump is once again dominating the Republican Party,
expected to run again in 2024 — and utterly disdainful of the Senate
leader who helped save him.Trump dismissedMcConnell as a “stupid person” and suggested his favored 2022 Senate candidates should oust McConnell from his leadership post when they get to Washington.
McConnell
is not a “real leader” because “he didn’t fight for the presidency,”
Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post.
The Post obtained hours of video footage, some exclusively, and placed it within a digital 3-D model of the building. (TWP)
For
many of his 36 years in the Senate, Addison Mitchell McConnell III has
cultivated an image as a master political and legislative tactician, a
consummate insider who knows how to gain power and use it to the
fullest. He was credited with masterminding Republican victories when he
ran Senate campaign strategy in the late 1990s, rising to party leader
and leveraging chamber rules to thwart much of President Barack Obama’s
agenda and to block judicial nominees, including a key Supreme Court
seat. He used his fundraising prowess to anoint favored Senate
candidates with the best chances of winning while undercutting fringe
figures who might be less palatable. Under Trump, McConnell ushered
hundreds of conservative judges to the federal bench, an achievement
many saw as an indication of McConnell’s ability to work his influence
over an inexperienced administration.
Yet
in the months since the Jan. 6 attack, a different portrait of
McConnell has taken shape. At 79, safely reelected last year to a
seventh term and in his 16th year as the Senate’s top Republican,
McConnell is nonetheless increasingly playing the role of a conflicted
and compromised booster of Trump’s interests — not a leader with his own
vision.
McConnell’s
vote on impeachment, which infuriated some of his closest backers, made
clear his calculus that he couldn’t challenge Trump, even at the former
president’s most vulnerable moment, a sign of the MAGA hold on the
party electorate and many in McConnell’s own caucus. He opposed a
bipartisan Jan. 6 investigation, blocked three bills Democrats put
forward to counter restrictive GOP voting laws driven by Trump’s false
fraud claims and endorsed a Trump-backed 2022 Senate candidate who echoed the false claim that the election was stolen.
To
top it all off, McConnell has pledged to vote for Trump if he’s a 2024
nominee. Asked by The Post in an interview whether he would support
Trump as the nominee “no matter what he’s done,” McConnell said he would
“obviously” back the GOP’s presidential pick. How could he square that
pledge with saying Trump had caused an insurrection? McConnell said it
was “pretty simple,” because he would follow his party’s wishes.
“My
guess is what happened is the tides changed and he realized there
wasn’t support [to convict] in the caucus,” said Trey Grayson,
Kentucky’s former secretary of state, whom McConnell once unsuccessfully
endorsed in a Senate race against Rand Paul. “Sometimes leaders lead,
and sometimes they have to follow some people that are trying to lead.
And I guess that’s what happened.”
This
account of how one of Washington’s longtime Republican power players
succumbed to the preeminence of Trump is based on interviews with
McConnell, his former and current Senate colleagues and others who have
known him over the years, as well as with Trump and other officials. The
Post reviewed McConnell’s memoir, his writings, speeches, tweets and
other pronouncements, and his Senate record.
The
examination found that McConnell’s actions after Jan. 6 followed a long
pattern in his political career, which began as a congressional intern
in 1963. He has reversed course on issues ranging from campaign finance
to voting rights, moving hard to the right as the Republican Party
changed around him. His guiding principle has been power — acquiring it
and keeping it — not an ideological adherence to policy, say those who
knew him early in his career.
McConnell
said in the interview that he is proud of the stands he has taken,
pointing to some at odds with conventional Republican thinking, such as
opposing a ban on burning American flags and supporting the Democrats’
infrastructure bill. Those stands mean that “the extreme elements of
your own party are not going to like it,” he said. “And there are other
times when you are engaged in activities that are applauded by them.”
Just
two years ago, seemingly at the pinnacle of his power, McConnell could
hardly have foreseen himself in such a precarious position. Midway
through Trump’s term, the veteran lawmaker released a new version of his
autobiography, which described his rise in the Senate in heroic terms.
The book opened with a new glowing foreword penned by Trump, who
lavished praise on McConnell as his “ace in the hole” and wrote that he
“couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”
Except
Trump never actually wrote those words — at least according to the
ex-president, who now mocks McConnell’s role in pursuing his agenda. In
an interview with The Post, Trump said McConnell actually wrote that
foreword and simply used the president’s name on the passage.
Trump said he told McConnell, “Why don’t you write it for me and I’ll put it in, Mitch? Because that’s the way life works.”
McConnell,
asked if Trump’s account was accurate, did not dispute it. “I really
don’t have anything to add related to him,” McConnell said.
His father’s plea on voting rights
As
McConnell tells his story, his politics were shaped by the stirring
words of his father, who had witnessed Black people facing racism and
being denied their voting rights while growing up in segregated Alabama.
“A
lot of us went to battle because some people didn’t believe in the ‘one
man, one vote’ rule,” A.M. McConnell, a World War II veteran who worked
as a manager for DuPont, wrote to his son, according to a letter
excerpted in “The Long Game,” McConnell’s 2016autobiography. “I
hope you never forget the importance of every single one of us … each
man has their right to stand up and be counted.”
McConnell
wrote that his father’s words had a deep impact. Around that time,
McConnell was a leader of young Republicans on the University of
Louisville campus, and he had enthusiastically introduced the party’s
1964 presidential nominee, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, at a school
speech.
But,
McConnell later wrote, he was “extremely disappointed” that Goldwater
voted against the civil rights bill, which put the senator “on the wrong
side of such an important issue — if not the most important issue of my
generation.” He said that “so great was my anger” that he voted for the
Democrat, Lyndon Baines Johnson.
The
year after the civil rights bill passed, McConnell, who had worked for
two members of Congress from Kentucky, was at the Capitol to witness
Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. McConnell listened as
Johnson said that “millions of Americans are denied the right to vote
because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote.”
McConnell wrote that he was overwhelmed by the bipartisan support for
the law, and he solidified his identification as a liberal-to-moderate
Republican.
But it was also clear early on to those who knew McConnell that ideals meant far less to him than power.
In the summer of 1968, while working for Marlow Cook’s Senate campaign, the 26-year-oldMcConnell
spent months driving around Kentucky with another volunteer, John
Yarmuth. What struck Yarmuth then and now is he didn’t know of any issue
that animated McConnell’s thirst for politics other than winning an
election.
“He
never wanted to change the world. This is all about being, not doing,”
Yarmuth said. As a result, he argued, McConnell has been willing to do
whatever it took to win favor. While Yarmuth became a Democrat, founded
an alt-weekly and later won election to Congress in 2006 to represent
Louisville, McConnell moved further to the right along with the party.
“He
clearly doesn’t care about being labeled a hypocrite. It just doesn’t
bother him. He is brazen about it,” said Yarmuth, who said he rarely
interacts anymore with McConnell even though both lawmakers live in the
same area. “That’s one of the cynical sides of Mitch. He doesn’t care.
If it’s expedient, he’ll do it.”
Over
the years, McConnell has reversed course when he saw a political
advantage. He once portrayed himself as a campaign reformer who in a 1973 op-edcalled
for the “complete disclosure of ALL donors, regardless of the size of
their contributions,” but then he went to oppose legislation requiring
disclosure of “dark money” donors to nonprofit groups.
Similarly,
McConnell voted for a 1990 environmental bill that targeted
coal-burning plant emissions, saying: “I had to choose between cleaner
air and the status quo. I chose cleaner air.” But he has now become one
of the leading opponents of climate change legislation, stressing
concern about its impact on Kentucky’s industry.
Most consequentially, McConnell has shifted significantly on voting rights. As recently as 2006,McConnell supported an updated version of
the Voting Rights Act, along with every other senator in what used to
be a symbol of bipartisanship. He also was a co-author of the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which established federal standards for how states administer elections.
McConnell’s view of an expansive federal role in elections, however, would soon change.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,798
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) tweeted a photoshopped, animated video that depicts him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and swinging two swords at President Biden, prompting condemnation and calls for his Twitter account to be suspended.
Gosar has long drawn criticism for his extremist views, including his spreading of conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob and the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. In February, he appearedat an event whose organizer called for white supremacy. Gosar later distanced himself from the organizer’s remarks.
From Letter From an American. Nazi party you've got there:
Meanwhile, it appears that Biden’s big win on Friday, marshaling a bipartisan infrastructure bill through Congress, has made Republicans almost frantic to win back the national narrative. The National Republican Congressional Committee has released an early ad for the 2022 midterm elections titled "Chaos,” which features images of the protests from Trump’s term and falsely suggests they are scenes from Biden’s America.
As Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Republican leaders today attacked the popular Sesame Street character Big Bird today for backing vaccinations—Big Bird has publicly supported vaccines since 1972—they revealed how fully they have become the party of Trump.
Excerpts from a new book by ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl say that Trump was so mad that the party did not fight harder to keep him in office that on January 20, just after he boarded Air Force One to leave Washington, he took a phone call from Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, and told her that he was quitting the Republicans to start his own political party.
McDaniel told him that if he did that, the Republicans “would lose forever.” Trump responded: “Exactly.” A witness said he wanted to punish the officials for their refusal to fight harder to overturn the election.
Four days later, Trump relented after the RNC made it clear it would stop paying his legal bills and would stop letting him rent out the email list of his 40 million supporters, a list officials believed was worth about $100 million.
Instead of leaving the party, he is rebuilding it in his own image.
In Florida, Trump loyalist Roger Stone is threatening to run against Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022 to siphon votes from his reelection bid unless DeSantis promises he won’t challenge Trump for the Republican nomination in 2024.
A long piece in the Washington Post by Michael Kranish today explored how, over the course of his career, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has singlemindedly pursued power, switching his stated principles to their opposites whenever it helped his climb to the top of the Senate. Eventually, in the hope of keeping power, he embraced Trump, even acquitting him for his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection.
The former president is endorsing primary candidates to oust Republicans he thinks were insufficiently loyal. In Georgia, he has backed Herschel Walker, whose ex-wife got a protective order against him after he allegedly threatened to shoot her. In Pennsylvania, Trump has endorsed Sean Parnell, whose wife testified that he choked her and abused their children physically and emotionally.
Although such picks could hurt the Republicans in a general election with the women they desperately need to attract (hence the focus on schools), the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Rick Scott (R-FL), did not feel comfortable today bucking Trump to comment on whether Parnell was the right candidate to back. Scott said he would focus on whoever won the primary.
The cost of the party’s link to Trumpism is not just potential 2022 voters. In the New York Times today, David Leonhardt outlined how deaths from the novel coronavirus did not reflect politics until after the Republicans made the vaccines political. A death gap between Democrats and Republicans emerged quickly as Republicans shunned the vaccine.
Now, only about 10% of Democrats eligible for the vaccine have refused it, while almost 40% of Republicans have. In October, while about 7.8 people per 100,000 died in counties that voted strongly for Biden, 25 out of every 100,000 died in counties that went the other way. Leonhardt held out hope that both numbers would drop as more people develop immunities and as new antiviral drugs lower death rates everywhere.
And yet, Republicans continue to insist they are attacking the dangerous Democrats. Quite literally. Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who has ties to white supremacists and who has been implicated in the January 6 attack, yesterday posted an anime video in which his face was photoshopped onto a character that killed another character bearing the face of New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Gosar character also swung swords at a Biden character and fought alongside Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
In response to the outcry about the video, Gosar’s digital director, Jessica Lycos, said: “Everyone needs to relax.”
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol is not relaxing. Today it issued six new subpoenas. The subpoenas went to people associated with the “war room” in the Willard Hotel in the days leading up to the events of January 6.
The subpoenas went to William Stepien, the manager of Trump's 2020 campaign which, as an entity, asked states not to certify the results of the election; Trump advisor Jason Miller, who talked of a stolen election even before the election itself; Angela McCallum, an executive assistant to Trump’s 2020 campaign, who apparently left a voicemail for a Michigan state representative pressuring the representative to appoint an alternative slate of electors because of “election fraud”; and Bernard Kerik, former New York City police commissioner, who paid for the hotel rooms in which the plotting occurred.
Another subpoena went to Michael Flynn, who called for Trump to declare martial law and “rerun” the election, and who attended a December 18, 2020, meeting in the Oval Office “during which participants discussed seizing voting machines, declaring a national emergency, invoking certain national security emergency powers, and continuing to spread the false message that the November 2020 election had been tainted by widespread fraud.”
The sixth subpoena went to John Eastman, author of the Eastman memo saying that then–vice president Mike Pence could reject the certified electors from certain states, thus throwing the election to Trump. Eastman was apparently at the Willard Hotel for a key meeting on January 5, and he spoke at the rally on the Ellipse on January 6.
None of these people are covered by executive privilege, even if Trump tries to exercise it.
From Letter From an American. Nazi party you've got there:
Meanwhile, it appears that Biden’s big win on Friday, marshaling a bipartisan infrastructure bill through Congress, has made Republicans almost frantic to win back the national narrative. The National Republican Congressional Committee has released an early ad for the 2022 midterm elections titled "Chaos,” which features images of the protests from Trump’s term and falsely suggests they are scenes from Biden’s America.
As Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Republican leaders today attacked the popular Sesame Street character Big Bird today for backing vaccinations—Big Bird has publicly supported vaccines since 1972—they revealed how fully they have become the party of Trump.
Excerpts from a new book by ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl say that Trump was so mad that the party did not fight harder to keep him in office that on January 20, just after he boarded Air Force One to leave Washington, he took a phone call from Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, and told her that he was quitting the Republicans to start his own political party.
McDaniel told him that if he did that, the Republicans “would lose forever.” Trump responded: “Exactly.” A witness said he wanted to punish the officials for their refusal to fight harder to overturn the election.
Four days later, Trump relented after the RNC made it clear it would stop paying his legal bills and would stop letting him rent out the email list of his 40 million supporters, a list officials believed was worth about $100 million.
Instead of leaving the party, he is rebuilding it in his own image.
In Florida, Trump loyalist Roger Stone is threatening to run against Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022 to siphon votes from his reelection bid unless DeSantis promises he won’t challenge Trump for the Republican nomination in 2024.
A long piece in the Washington Post by Michael Kranish today explored how, over the course of his career, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has singlemindedly pursued power, switching his stated principles to their opposites whenever it helped his climb to the top of the Senate. Eventually, in the hope of keeping power, he embraced Trump, even acquitting him for his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection.
The former president is endorsing primary candidates to oust Republicans he thinks were insufficiently loyal. In Georgia, he has backed Herschel Walker, whose ex-wife got a protective order against him after he allegedly threatened to shoot her. In Pennsylvania, Trump has endorsed Sean Parnell, whose wife testified that he choked her and abused their children physically and emotionally.
Although such picks could hurt the Republicans in a general election with the women they desperately need to attract (hence the focus on schools), the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Rick Scott (R-FL), did not feel comfortable today bucking Trump to comment on whether Parnell was the right candidate to back. Scott said he would focus on whoever won the primary.
The cost of the party’s link to Trumpism is not just potential 2022 voters. In the New York Times today, David Leonhardt outlined how deaths from the novel coronavirus did not reflect politics until after the Republicans made the vaccines political. A death gap between Democrats and Republicans emerged quickly as Republicans shunned the vaccine.
Now, only about 10% of Democrats eligible for the vaccine have refused it, while almost 40% of Republicans have. In October, while about 7.8 people per 100,000 died in counties that voted strongly for Biden, 25 out of every 100,000 died in counties that went the other way. Leonhardt held out hope that both numbers would drop as more people develop immunities and as new antiviral drugs lower death rates everywhere.
And yet, Republicans continue to insist they are attacking the dangerous Democrats. Quite literally. Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who has ties to white supremacists and who has been implicated in the January 6 attack, yesterday posted an anime video in which his face was photoshopped onto a character that killed another character bearing the face of New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Gosar character also swung swords at a Biden character and fought alongside Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
In response to the outcry about the video, Gosar’s digital director, Jessica Lycos, said: “Everyone needs to relax.”
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol is not relaxing. Today it issued six new subpoenas. The subpoenas went to people associated with the “war room” in the Willard Hotel in the days leading up to the events of January 6.
The subpoenas went to William Stepien, the manager of Trump's 2020 campaign which, as an entity, asked states not to certify the results of the election; Trump advisor Jason Miller, who talked of a stolen election even before the election itself; Angela McCallum, an executive assistant to Trump’s 2020 campaign, who apparently left a voicemail for a Michigan state representative pressuring the representative to appoint an alternative slate of electors because of “election fraud”; and Bernard Kerik, former New York City police commissioner, who paid for the hotel rooms in which the plotting occurred.
Another subpoena went to Michael Flynn, who called for Trump to declare martial law and “rerun” the election, and who attended a December 18, 2020, meeting in the Oval Office “during which participants discussed seizing voting machines, declaring a national emergency, invoking certain national security emergency powers, and continuing to spread the false message that the November 2020 election had been tainted by widespread fraud.”
The sixth subpoena went to John Eastman, author of the Eastman memo saying that then–vice president Mike Pence could reject the certified electors from certain states, thus throwing the election to Trump. Eastman was apparently at the Willard Hotel for a key meeting on January 5, and he spoke at the rally on the Ellipse on January 6.
None of these people are covered by executive privilege, even if Trump tries to exercise it.
From Letter From an American. Nazi party you've got there:
Meanwhile, it appears that Biden’s big win on Friday, marshaling a bipartisan infrastructure bill through Congress, has made Republicans almost frantic to win back the national narrative. The National Republican Congressional Committee has released an early ad for the 2022 midterm elections titled "Chaos,” which features images of the protests from Trump’s term and falsely suggests they are scenes from Biden’s America.
As Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Republican leaders today attacked the popular Sesame Street character Big Bird today for backing vaccinations—Big Bird has publicly supported vaccines since 1972—they revealed how fully they have become the party of Trump.
Excerpts from a new book by ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl say that Trump was so mad that the party did not fight harder to keep him in office that on January 20, just after he boarded Air Force One to leave Washington, he took a phone call from Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, and told her that he was quitting the Republicans to start his own political party.
McDaniel told him that if he did that, the Republicans “would lose forever.” Trump responded: “Exactly.” A witness said he wanted to punish the officials for their refusal to fight harder to overturn the election.
Four days later, Trump relented after the RNC made it clear it would stop paying his legal bills and would stop letting him rent out the email list of his 40 million supporters, a list officials believed was worth about $100 million.
Instead of leaving the party, he is rebuilding it in his own image.
In Florida, Trump loyalist Roger Stone is threatening to run against Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022 to siphon votes from his reelection bid unless DeSantis promises he won’t challenge Trump for the Republican nomination in 2024.
A long piece in the Washington Post by Michael Kranish today explored how, over the course of his career, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has singlemindedly pursued power, switching his stated principles to their opposites whenever it helped his climb to the top of the Senate. Eventually, in the hope of keeping power, he embraced Trump, even acquitting him for his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection.
The former president is endorsing primary candidates to oust Republicans he thinks were insufficiently loyal. In Georgia, he has backed Herschel Walker, whose ex-wife got a protective order against him after he allegedly threatened to shoot her. In Pennsylvania, Trump has endorsed Sean Parnell, whose wife testified that he choked her and abused their children physically and emotionally.
Although such picks could hurt the Republicans in a general election with the women they desperately need to attract (hence the focus on schools), the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Rick Scott (R-FL), did not feel comfortable today bucking Trump to comment on whether Parnell was the right candidate to back. Scott said he would focus on whoever won the primary.
The cost of the party’s link to Trumpism is not just potential 2022 voters. In the New York Times today, David Leonhardt outlined how deaths from the novel coronavirus did not reflect politics until after the Republicans made the vaccines political. A death gap between Democrats and Republicans emerged quickly as Republicans shunned the vaccine.
Now, only about 10% of Democrats eligible for the vaccine have refused it, while almost 40% of Republicans have. In October, while about 7.8 people per 100,000 died in counties that voted strongly for Biden, 25 out of every 100,000 died in counties that went the other way. Leonhardt held out hope that both numbers would drop as more people develop immunities and as new antiviral drugs lower death rates everywhere.
And yet, Republicans continue to insist they are attacking the dangerous Democrats. Quite literally. Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who has ties to white supremacists and who has been implicated in the January 6 attack, yesterday posted an anime video in which his face was photoshopped onto a character that killed another character bearing the face of New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Gosar character also swung swords at a Biden character and fought alongside Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
In response to the outcry about the video, Gosar’s digital director, Jessica Lycos, said: “Everyone needs to relax.”
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol is not relaxing. Today it issued six new subpoenas. The subpoenas went to people associated with the “war room” in the Willard Hotel in the days leading up to the events of January 6.
The subpoenas went to William Stepien, the manager of Trump's 2020 campaign which, as an entity, asked states not to certify the results of the election; Trump advisor Jason Miller, who talked of a stolen election even before the election itself; Angela McCallum, an executive assistant to Trump’s 2020 campaign, who apparently left a voicemail for a Michigan state representative pressuring the representative to appoint an alternative slate of electors because of “election fraud”; and Bernard Kerik, former New York City police commissioner, who paid for the hotel rooms in which the plotting occurred.
Another subpoena went to Michael Flynn, who called for Trump to declare martial law and “rerun” the election, and who attended a December 18, 2020, meeting in the Oval Office “during which participants discussed seizing voting machines, declaring a national emergency, invoking certain national security emergency powers, and continuing to spread the false message that the November 2020 election had been tainted by widespread fraud.”
The sixth subpoena went to John Eastman, author of the Eastman memo saying that then–vice president Mike Pence could reject the certified electors from certain states, thus throwing the election to Trump. Eastman was apparently at the Willard Hotel for a key meeting on January 5, and he spoke at the rally on the Ellipse on January 6.
None of these people are covered by executive privilege, even if Trump tries to exercise it.
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,722
From Heather Cox Richardson's letter today:
"Yesterday’s news that Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) had posted a
video of himself as an anime character killing Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and slashing at an anime Biden drew attention
today as Democrats called for an ethics and law enforcement
investigation into the congressman but no leading Republican condemned
Gosar’s outrageous and dangerous behavior. Instead, Republicans talked
of stripping the committee assignments from the 13 Republican
representatives who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill"
It appears that a huge portion of the GOP has lost interest in actual government and sees this whole thing as a video game or action movie. Their tactics and actions are about as useful as both- distracting, and maybe even entertaining if that is all you want from leaders- entertainment- but they are adding nothing of value or usefulness to the world. Pathetic.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
"Yesterday’s news that Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) had posted a
video of himself as an anime character killing Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and slashing at an anime Biden drew attention
today as Democrats called for an ethics and law enforcement
investigation into the congressman but no leading Republican condemned
Gosar’s outrageous and dangerous behavior. Instead, Republicans talked
of stripping the committee assignments from the 13 Republican
representatives who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill"
It appears that a huge portion of the GOP has lost interest in actual government and sees this whole thing as a video game or action movie. Their tactics and actions are about as useful as both- distracting, and maybe even entertaining if that is all you want from leaders- entertainment- but they are adding nothing of value or usefulness to the world. Pathetic.
"Yesterday’s news that Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) had posted a
video of himself as an anime character killing Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and slashing at an anime Biden drew attention
today as Democrats called for an ethics and law enforcement
investigation into the congressman but no leading Republican condemned
Gosar’s outrageous and dangerous behavior. Instead, Republicans talked
of stripping the committee assignments from the 13 Republican
representatives who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill"
It appears that a huge portion of the GOP has lost interest in actual government and sees this whole thing as a video game or action movie. Their tactics and actions are about as useful as both- distracting, and maybe even entertaining if that is all you want from leaders- entertainment- but they are adding nothing of value or usefulness to the world. Pathetic.
If I posted a video depicting me killing a coworker, I wouldn't have a job for long and would probably be talking to the police about it as well.
It's crazy how numb we have all become to shit like this. By numb I don't mean we don't see a reason for Gosar to get fired....we just don't do anything about it. Then again...what could we do?
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville 2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
It's crazy how numb we have all become to shit like this. By numb I don't mean we don't see a reason for Gosar to get fired....we just don't do anything about it. Then again...what could we do?
I guess if he was your representative you could collect signatures for a recall if that is an option in the state? Then people can dump tons of money into a political campaign that would probably see him reelected.
Years ago I thought right-wing pundits (eg, Rush) would eventually start winning elections and become politicians. While that has happened a few times, what’s really happening is the opposite…elected officials are morphing into pundits.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
"Yesterday’s news that Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) had posted a
video of himself as an anime character killing Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and slashing at an anime Biden drew attention
today as Democrats called for an ethics and law enforcement
investigation into the congressman but no leading Republican condemned
Gosar’s outrageous and dangerous behavior. Instead, Republicans talked
of stripping the committee assignments from the 13 Republican
representatives who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill"
It appears that a huge portion of the GOP has lost interest in actual government and sees this whole thing as a video game or action movie. Their tactics and actions are about as useful as both- distracting, and maybe even entertaining if that is all you want from leaders- entertainment- but they are adding nothing of value or usefulness to the world. Pathetic.
Imagine the shitstorm that would arise from the Qop if AOC had posted a similar video about gosar or TFG.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Anyone have any thoughts on AOC voting against the bill?
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Interesting. Makes sense for sure. Her district is in dire need of infrastructure. They were hit the hardest during the last storm. I’m just wondering if she starts voting a certain way just to keep in line with “the squad”
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,798
Anyone have any thoughts on AOC voting against the bill?
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Interesting. Makes sense for sure. Her district is in dire need of infrastructure. They were hit the hardest during the last storm. I’m just wondering if she starts voting a certain way just to keep in line with “the squad”
doesnt this line of discussion belong in the infrastructure thread?
anyway, posted a video addressing this over there.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Anyone have any thoughts on AOC voting against the bill?
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Interesting. Makes sense for sure. Her district is in dire need of infrastructure. They were hit the hardest during the last storm. I’m just wondering if she starts voting a certain way just to keep in line with “the squad”
It's just inability to compromise. She gets to say she's still fighting but the bill passed anyway.
Anyone have any thoughts on AOC voting against the bill?
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Interesting. Makes sense for sure. Her district is in dire need of infrastructure. They were hit the hardest during the last storm. I’m just wondering if she starts voting a certain way just to keep in line with “the squad”
doesnt this line of discussion belong in the infrastructure thread?
anyway, posted a video addressing this over there.
Comments
LGBTQIA
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
copy paste is your friend. ..
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Mitch McConnell spent decades chasing power. Now he heeds Trump, who mocks him and wants him gone.
How one of Washington’s longtime Republican power players succumbed to the preeminence of the 45th president
As President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was whisked to a secret location and cloistered with a handful of other top lawmakers.
The senator from Kentucky had spent the past four years as one of Trump’s chief enablers, boosting his election by keeping a Supreme Court seat open, pushing through his agenda with party-line votes and standing by for weeks as Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen. But their marriage of political convenience had abruptly shattered three weeks earlier, when Trump exploded at McConnell for acknowledging Joe Biden’s victory.
Safely huddled with Democratic leaders as they watched video of police battling Trump supporters in the Capitol, McConnell reacted with anger and revulsion, according to Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who was also in the secure location.
“I thought to myself, 'This could be a transformative moment. He appears to have taken this very seriously,’ ” recalled Durbin, who spent hours that day holed up with the Republican leader.
But when it came time to hold Trump to account, McConnell backed off. While seven GOP senators voted to convict Trump following his impeachment by the House for inciting an insurrection, McConnell supported acquittal, ensuring Trump would face no formal penalty for inciting an insurrection.
Ten months later, Trump is once again dominating the Republican Party, expected to run again in 2024 — and utterly disdainful of the Senate leader who helped save him. Trump dismissed McConnell as a “stupid person” and suggested his favored 2022 Senate candidates should oust McConnell from his leadership post when they get to Washington.
McConnell is not a “real leader” because “he didn’t fight for the presidency,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post.
For many of his 36 years in the Senate, Addison Mitchell McConnell III has cultivated an image as a master political and legislative tactician, a consummate insider who knows how to gain power and use it to the fullest. He was credited with masterminding Republican victories when he ran Senate campaign strategy in the late 1990s, rising to party leader and leveraging chamber rules to thwart much of President Barack Obama’s agenda and to block judicial nominees, including a key Supreme Court seat. He used his fundraising prowess to anoint favored Senate candidates with the best chances of winning while undercutting fringe figures who might be less palatable. Under Trump, McConnell ushered hundreds of conservative judges to the federal bench, an achievement many saw as an indication of McConnell’s ability to work his influence over an inexperienced administration.
Yet in the months since the Jan. 6 attack, a different portrait of McConnell has taken shape. At 79, safely reelected last year to a seventh term and in his 16th year as the Senate’s top Republican, McConnell is nonetheless increasingly playing the role of a conflicted and compromised booster of Trump’s interests — not a leader with his own vision.
McConnell’s vote on impeachment, which infuriated some of his closest backers, made clear his calculus that he couldn’t challenge Trump, even at the former president’s most vulnerable moment, a sign of the MAGA hold on the party electorate and many in McConnell’s own caucus. He opposed a bipartisan Jan. 6 investigation, blocked three bills Democrats put forward to counter restrictive GOP voting laws driven by Trump’s false fraud claims and endorsed a Trump-backed 2022 Senate candidate who echoed the false claim that the election was stolen.
To top it all off, McConnell has pledged to vote for Trump if he’s a 2024 nominee. Asked by The Post in an interview whether he would support Trump as the nominee “no matter what he’s done,” McConnell said he would “obviously” back the GOP’s presidential pick. How could he square that pledge with saying Trump had caused an insurrection? McConnell said it was “pretty simple,” because he would follow his party’s wishes.
“My guess is what happened is the tides changed and he realized there wasn’t support [to convict] in the caucus,” said Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s former secretary of state, whom McConnell once unsuccessfully endorsed in a Senate race against Rand Paul. “Sometimes leaders lead, and sometimes they have to follow some people that are trying to lead. And I guess that’s what happened.”
This account of how one of Washington’s longtime Republican power players succumbed to the preeminence of Trump is based on interviews with McConnell, his former and current Senate colleagues and others who have known him over the years, as well as with Trump and other officials. The Post reviewed McConnell’s memoir, his writings, speeches, tweets and other pronouncements, and his Senate record.
The examination found that McConnell’s actions after Jan. 6 followed a long pattern in his political career, which began as a congressional intern in 1963. He has reversed course on issues ranging from campaign finance to voting rights, moving hard to the right as the Republican Party changed around him. His guiding principle has been power — acquiring it and keeping it — not an ideological adherence to policy, say those who knew him early in his career.
McConnell said in the interview that he is proud of the stands he has taken, pointing to some at odds with conventional Republican thinking, such as opposing a ban on burning American flags and supporting the Democrats’ infrastructure bill. Those stands mean that “the extreme elements of your own party are not going to like it,” he said. “And there are other times when you are engaged in activities that are applauded by them.”
Just two years ago, seemingly at the pinnacle of his power, McConnell could hardly have foreseen himself in such a precarious position. Midway through Trump’s term, the veteran lawmaker released a new version of his autobiography, which described his rise in the Senate in heroic terms. The book opened with a new glowing foreword penned by Trump, who lavished praise on McConnell as his “ace in the hole” and wrote that he “couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”
Except Trump never actually wrote those words — at least according to the ex-president, who now mocks McConnell’s role in pursuing his agenda. In an interview with The Post, Trump said McConnell actually wrote that foreword and simply used the president’s name on the passage.
Trump said he told McConnell, “Why don’t you write it for me and I’ll put it in, Mitch? Because that’s the way life works.”
McConnell, asked if Trump’s account was accurate, did not dispute it. “I really don’t have anything to add related to him,” McConnell said.
His father’s plea on voting rights
As McConnell tells his story, his politics were shaped by the stirring words of his father, who had witnessed Black people facing racism and being denied their voting rights while growing up in segregated Alabama.
“A lot of us went to battle because some people didn’t believe in the ‘one man, one vote’ rule,” A.M. McConnell, a World War II veteran who worked as a manager for DuPont, wrote to his son, according to a letter excerpted in “The Long Game,” McConnell’s 2016 autobiography. “I hope you never forget the importance of every single one of us … each man has their right to stand up and be counted.”
McConnell wrote that his father’s words had a deep impact. Around that time, McConnell was a leader of young Republicans on the University of Louisville campus, and he had enthusiastically introduced the party’s 1964 presidential nominee, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, at a school speech.
But, McConnell later wrote, he was “extremely disappointed” that Goldwater voted against the civil rights bill, which put the senator “on the wrong side of such an important issue — if not the most important issue of my generation.” He said that “so great was my anger” that he voted for the Democrat, Lyndon Baines Johnson.
The year after the civil rights bill passed, McConnell, who had worked for two members of Congress from Kentucky, was at the Capitol to witness Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. McConnell listened as Johnson said that “millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote.” McConnell wrote that he was overwhelmed by the bipartisan support for the law, and he solidified his identification as a liberal-to-moderate Republican.
But it was also clear early on to those who knew McConnell that ideals meant far less to him than power.
In the summer of 1968, while working for Marlow Cook’s Senate campaign, the 26-year-old McConnell spent months driving around Kentucky with another volunteer, John Yarmuth. What struck Yarmuth then and now is he didn’t know of any issue that animated McConnell’s thirst for politics other than winning an election.
“He never wanted to change the world. This is all about being, not doing,” Yarmuth said. As a result, he argued, McConnell has been willing to do whatever it took to win favor. While Yarmuth became a Democrat, founded an alt-weekly and later won election to Congress in 2006 to represent Louisville, McConnell moved further to the right along with the party.
“He clearly doesn’t care about being labeled a hypocrite. It just doesn’t bother him. He is brazen about it,” said Yarmuth, who said he rarely interacts anymore with McConnell even though both lawmakers live in the same area. “That’s one of the cynical sides of Mitch. He doesn’t care. If it’s expedient, he’ll do it.”
Over the years, McConnell has reversed course when he saw a political advantage. He once portrayed himself as a campaign reformer who in a 1973 op-ed called for the “complete disclosure of ALL donors, regardless of the size of their contributions,” but then he went to oppose legislation requiring disclosure of “dark money” donors to nonprofit groups.
Similarly, McConnell voted for a 1990 environmental bill that targeted coal-burning plant emissions, saying: “I had to choose between cleaner air and the status quo. I chose cleaner air.” But he has now become one of the leading opponents of climate change legislation, stressing concern about its impact on Kentucky’s industry.
Most consequentially, McConnell has shifted significantly on voting rights. As recently as 2006, McConnell supported an updated version of the Voting Rights Act, along with every other senator in what used to be a symbol of bipartisanship. He also was a co-author of the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which established federal standards for how states administer elections.
McConnell’s view of an expansive federal role in elections, however, would soon change.
continues....
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) tweeted a photoshopped, animated video that depicts him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and swinging two swords at President Biden, prompting condemnation and calls for his Twitter account to be suspended.
Gosar has long drawn criticism for his extremist views, including his spreading of conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob and the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. In February, he appearedat an event whose organizer called for white supremacy. Gosar later distanced himself from the organizer’s remarks.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
But yell and scream about my body my choice when it comes to the vaccine
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/09/new-york-voters-reject-ballot-measures-voting-access
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
in line with “the squad”
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14