this was a neat rhetorical pivot

"
Those culture wars are pushing today’s right wing toward authoritarianism as they seek to enforce their views on the rest of the country.

Today, as we learned of more atrocities by Russian troops in Ukraine

"

i am not being ironic. good writing or arguing or whatever. if she would just use fewer adjectives. she did not say far right. but she said right wing. same thing. she should say right and left only. put the argument back on the ***** of the bell curve

Hold on.........I'm searching for that image in my mind.........could go either way..........

This was the introduction paragraph:

Today, former president Barack Obama returned to the White House at President Joe Biden's invitation to talk about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare. He noted there have been changes in the White House since he left in 2017. For one thing, "[t]here’s a cat running around," he joked, "which I guarantee you [his family’s dogs] Bo and Sunny would have been very unhappy about.”

* Whatever happened to Joe Biden dogs....Champ and Major?

HA! Imagine if they were Labrador retrievers. He could have named one Wu and the other Han. Wu Han Labs.

heh

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

April 6, 2022 (Wednesday)

Today, all but two of the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against a resolution finding Trump aides Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Among the early “no” votes was Representative Greg Pence (R-IN), whose brother, Vice President Mike Pence, was in danger from the mob on January 6 after then-president Trump blamed him for his refusal to overturn the election. The two who voted in favor were committee vice chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) and committee member Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).

The Republicans explicitly backed former president Trump and insisted that the investigation of the January 6 insurrection was simply a way to try to keep Trump off the ballot in 2024 and to distract from scandals potentially involving President Joe Biden’s son Hunter (who holds no government office).

The Democrats, in turn, warned that Trump’s attack on our democracy must not go unchallenged. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) called the Republicans a party “drenched in Putin propaganda” and noted that it had turned even on Cheney, who used to rank third in the leadership of House Republicans, “[b]ecause if you don’t go along with Donald Trump…a cult…they will attack you.”

An important current feeding the Republicans’ embrace of Trump is that the Republican leadership is wedded to an ideology that sees the most important American principle as a specific form of individual economic “freedom,” not democracy.

After World War II, Americans of both parties began to defend the concept of democracy, in which every person was equal before the law. That meant civil rights for Black and Brown Americans, as well as for women. But it also meant that the government tried to keep the economic playing field level enough that everyone had an equal shot at rising to prosperity.

Beginning with the New Deal in the 1930s and reaching into the 1970s, the government regulated business and protected workers and consumers. Those opposed to such a government insisted that such protections hurt their freedom to arrange their businesses as they saw fit. Second to their hatred of regulations was their dislike of the taxes that funded the government bureaucrats who inspected their factories, as well as underpinning social welfare programs. But it was the promise to cut taxes for working Americans that enabled them to take the White House in 1980.

The idea that America meant freedom for individuals to act as they wished took over the Republican Party after the election of Ronald Reagan as president. Beginning in 1981, the party focused on tax cuts to put more money in the hands of the wealthy, who would, they insisted, use it to expand the economy. Using the government to defend the “demand side,” by protecting equality, would destroy the ability of business leaders to arrange the economy in the most productive way possible. It was, Republicans said, “socialism.” And so, Republicans focused on cutting regulations and slashing taxes.

Rather than revise their ideology when their “supply side” economics concentrated wealth upward rather than promoting widespread prosperity, the Republicans doubled down on it, promoting deregulation and tax cuts above all else. They have now, in the second generation since Reagan, become convinced that their version of “freedom” is the fundamental principle on which the United States stands and that any challenge to it will destroy the country.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida in late February, the attendees had little to say about authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of democratic Ukraine, which had happened days before. But they had plenty to say about Democrats.

On February 26, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) gave a speech in which he said “We survived the war of 1812, Civil War, World War I and World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War,” but “[t]oday, we face the greatest danger we have ever faced: The militant left-wing in our country has become the enemy within.” He claimed: “The woke Left now controls the Democrat Party. The entire federal government, the news media, academia, big tech, Hollywood, most corporate boardrooms, and now even some of our top military leaders… They want to end the American experiment. They want to replace freedom with control.”

This is completely wrong historically, of course. But the rising extremism of the Republican leadership suggests that it is concerned that American voters, including Republican voters, are turning against the ideology of “freedom” that focuses on concentrating wealth on the supply side of the economic equation and would like to see the government try to restore some semblance of equality. This would mean higher taxes on the wealthy.

A YouGov poll released April 1 shows that 60% of Americans think that billionaires don’t pay the full amount of taxes they owe. Among poorer voters, only 16% thought billionaires were playing fair, while a whopping 63% thought they were not, and 20% were not sure. Two thirds of Americans think that households should pay at least 20% of their income over $100 million in taxes. In not a single demographic category did that number fall under 50%, and the only category for which it was 50% was Republicans.

More broadly, Americans have called for higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations now for years. In 2018, two thirds of Americans said they were dissatisfied with “the way income and wealth are distributed in the U.S.”; in 2017, 78% said that what bothers them about the U.S. tax system is that the wealthy don’t pay their fair share, and 80% said what bothers them is that corporations don’t pay their fair share.

Biden’s proposed $5.8-trillion 2023 budget, released at the end of March, proposes tax increases on the wealthy and on corporations. It would end Trump’s 2017 tax cut for the wealthy early. That cut sliced the top marginal income tax rate from 39.6 to 37% until December 31, 2025. It would also tax the interest on stocks and bonds, which currently is not taxed until those assets are sold, which means that their owners can accumulate large sums of money without ever being taxed on it, while wage workers pay full freight on their income. Biden wants to make American households worth more than $100 million pay a tax rate of at least 20% on their real income as well as on the gains on their unsold stocks and bonds.

The administration also wants to get rid of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Biden’s proposal would raise the corporate tax rate from the Trump low of 21% up to 28%.

The White House says these taxes would raise $1.5 trillion over the next decade, and it wants to use that money to fund public housing, science, police departments, climate change adjustments, education, pandemic preparedness, and, in this precarious time for democracy, increases to the military. While Trump’s tax cuts drove the national debt up to an astounding $23.2 trillion by the end of 2019 (up from $19.9 trillion when he took office), Biden promises to use money from his proposed tax increases to pay down the deficit.

Biden’s plans signal an end to the era of “freedom” in American politics and a return to a focus on equality and democracy. In this, they, hark back to the principles of the original Republican Party. During the Civil War, when faced with a mounting debt in their fight to protect the government, the Republicans invented the U.S. income tax in order, as Senate Finance Committee chair William Pitt Fessenden (R-ME) said, to make sure that tax burdens would “be more equalized on all classes of the community, more especially on those who are able to bear them.” Representative Thaddeus Stevens (R-PA) agreed, saying: “It would be manifestly unjust to allow the large money operators and wealthy merchants, whose incomes might reach hundreds of thousands of dollars, to escape from their due proportion of the burden.”

Meanwhile, Senator Rick Scott’s “11-Point Plan to Rescue America” promises to put income taxes on the 50% of Americans who currently don’t make enough to be taxed. It’s part of his plan to “grow America’s economy, starve Washington’s economy, and stop Socialism.”

It's no wonder the Republicans are trying to keep the national focus on Trump and the culture wars.

what she said

What did she say?

HERE'S A STORY ABOUT HOW THE RICH GET RICHER.......

Too predictable to check: Did California send $1 billion in pandemic relief to its most affluent families?
ED MORRISSEY Apr 07, 2022 10:25 AM ET

look what them two ol huggin cadavers did

got us a black lady on the supreme court

i have no doubt some cop will shoot her when she pulls into her bran spankin new parking spot

maybe with her name on it but it won be enough

they will be all like Well her hair was weird. we had to put a bullet in her. we will be better next time

POLITICS / DOUGLAS ANDREWS

FEC Fines Hillary and DNC … Sort Of

The fine is both minuscule and misdirected, but what it stands for is much more important.

POLITICS / THOMAS GALLATIN

Durham Offers More Evidence in Spygate

A newly revealed text message from Hillary Clinton’s former lawyer indicates he knowingly lied to the FBI.

RULE OF LAW / DOUGLAS ANDREWS

Where’s the Special Counsel?

The conflict is clear, and there’s no way to de-couple Joe Biden from his son’s corrupt business dealings.

Heather Cox Richardson

April 7, 2022 (Thursday)

Today, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to become Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s nominee by a vote of 53 to 47, with three Republicans joining all 50 Democrats in favor of confirmation. The three Republicans voting yes were Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Mitt Romney (R-UT).
Jackson’s elevation will not change the legal philosophy of the court. She will replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who was one of the three justices still on the court who do not adhere to the concept of “originalism,” which argues that the court must largely defer to state power rather than use the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect civil rights within the states. Six of the current nine justices, including the three appointed by former president Donald Trump, favor originalism.
It is likely that Justice Jackson will largely write dissents as her colleagues dismantle the legal frameworks that have shaped modern America. The ones currently on the table are the rights to abortion, marriage across racial lines, birth control, and gay marriage, but it is not only civil rights that are at risk. So are business regulation and protections for workers and consumers, and a decision last night suggests that the current Supreme Court will not defer to states when right-wing principles are at stake.
By a 5 to 4 decision, the court last night limited the power of states to stop big development projects that state officials worry will hurt the state’s environment. It did so under the so-called “shadow docket,” a system, rarely used in the past but now a key part of the court’s decision-making process, in which the court hands down decisions on an emergency basis without briefings or written decisions, so we have no idea on what grounds they are making their ruling. The American Petroleum Institute, the Interstate National Gas Association of America, and the National Hydropower Association all applauded the decision.
Jackson brings to the court a stellar record as well as experience as a public defender. She is the first justice with this experience since Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice, who left the court in 1991. Public defenders are a central part of our legal system, for if indeed everyone is equal before the law, it is crucial for everyone to have legal representation before the court. The Supreme Court itself recognized this principle in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), although two current justices have suggested they would overturn it if given the opportunity.
Jackson’s diverse experience is vital to a Supreme Court that is a historical outlier in its uniformity of professional backgrounds. While she brings experience as a public defender to the court, there is no one on the court who has ever served in elective office. Historically, presidents have always sought to have at least a few justices who understand politics because they have been part of the political system and thus understand that what they are doing in their chamber is very real life to those of us on the outside. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice, was the last justice on the court who had held elected office; she had served in the Arizona state senate. She left the court in 2006.
Justice Jackson, though, brings something brand new and vital to the U.S. Supreme Court. As Justice Marshall broke the Supreme Court’s color barrier, and Justice O’Connor broke the Supreme Court’s gender barrier, she is breaking her own barrier: She is the Supreme Court’s first Black female justice.
Justice Jackson’s perspective on the law and its effect on those of us who live here is crucially important. Also important, though, is that her elevation to the highest court in the land demonstrates the principle, however poorly we might honor it on occasion, that we are all equal before the law.
Today, Vice President Kamala Harris, the nation’s first Black vice president, presided over the Senate chamber for the momentous vote. Farnoush Amiri and Lisa Mascaro of the Associated Press described what came next. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus had come to witness history; Black female lawmakers sat together along the back walls. The visitor galleries filled with young people, including Black women and men. Most of the senators were at their desks, although two Republican senators—Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma—stayed in the cloakroom because they were not wearing ties, as Senate rules require.
Harris instructed the clerk to call the roll.
Voting moved quickly until it became clear that everyone had voted except Rand Paul (R-KY). As the Senate waited for him to show up, Harris gave Senators Rafael Warnock (D-GA) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) each a piece of vice-presidential stationery and asked the only two Black Democrats in the Senate to write a letter to a young Black woman to remember this day in history.
Then Paul cast his no vote from the cloakroom and the voting was over.
Jackson had won confirmation to the Supreme Court. When the final tally was announced, the Democrats broke out into applause and cheers. Murkowski joined them, while Romney applauded from across the aisle. Many Republicans had already left the chamber, but those remaining walked out during the applause. Romney remained alone on the Republican side, clapping.
The moment recalled another time of jubilation and hope, when lawmakers used their votes to declare all Americans equal before the law by passing the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. They ended the system of legal enslavement in the United States, a system that had divided Americans into different castes and given some people the power to rule the rest.
The New York Times recorded the scene when the measure passed in January 1865: “Thereupon rose a general shout of applause. The members on the floor huzzaed in chorus with deafening and equally emphatic cheers of the throng in the galleries. The ladies in the dense assemblage waved their handkerchiefs, and again and again the applause was repeated, intermingled with clapping of hands and exclamations of ‘Hurrah for freedom,’ ‘Glory enough for one day,’ &c. The audience were wildly excited, and the friends of the measure were jubilant. Never was a scene of such a joyous character before witnessed in the House of Representatives….”
Representative George W. Julian (R-IN) later remembered what it had been like to participate in that momentous day in 1865: “It seemed to me I had been born into a new life, and that the world was overflowing with beauty and joy, while I was inexpressibly thankful for the privilege of recording my name on so glorious a page of the nation’s history.”
After Jackson’s confirmation, Vice President Harris said: “I’m overjoyed, deeply moved…. There’s so much about what’s happening in the world now that is presenting some of the worst of this moment and human behaviors. And then we have a moment like this.”
Judge Jackson will be sworn in to her new role after Justice Breyer resigns in June. Until then, she will continue in her present position as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.