Hmmmmm !!!

Excellent ❤️

Turn about IS fair play.

Heard on the news this morning ( mainly the time I bother with news ) that while many remain silent, a lot of the Reps. are wishing/hoping that they can find a way to put someone other than Trump on the '24 ticket. Trump thinks he is carrying the same adoration and attentions that were commanded while he was in the WH and immediately after his abysmal loss to Pres. Biden. He said of Rounds from South Dakota, whom he endorsed, that he is now a rhino and that he is sorry he gave endorsement and certainly is recanting it massively.

I'm pretty sure as usual, most of the Reps. are doing a huge cringe and grimace. Rounds already seems to know that his constituents won't have much respect for a liar so he is sarting out on the high road. Would be great if a few more follow his lead.

Mutterings going on as Pres. Biden goes to Georgia to tout votings rights. Some in the blak community are seeing it more on the level of photo op. Also along with that I did read a piece on voting and how you could tell from what went on first tier issues with Biden in the first yr. that voting rights were clearly now one of them. Covid and Build Back Better were the items that recived all the time. Being in many ways not savvy about politiccal choices on those things Pres. Biden was right I think to take a strong stance and focus on Covid. The hideous mis-management previous to his presidency would seem to make that inevitable.

I also look at how Pres. Biden promised to have the back of the black people as, ( Jim Clyburn ) made sure he had the backing of black voters and it has appeared that he looked on while so many states changed their laws and legislated people who would damage voting ability. I hope Pres. Biden hasn't started too late.

I'm reading that Manchin and Synema are still taking a negative stance on filibuster changes and that there may even be a couple of other Democrats who could be iffy. I hope that the Democrats will have some sort of work around because I do fear the coming election/s if something isn't done to get needed laws passed.

and she couldn't be touched while the Reps. now getting subpeona's or being asked to appear before committee because they had nothing to hide are using every ignorant and transparent excuse to not show up. Talk about sniveling cowards without half a spine between the whole lot of them.

InAtlanta today

Bold Progressive. Org.

Moments ago, President Biden made the most forceful statements of his presidency about the need to reform the filibuster to save our democracy.

In Georgia -- the belly of the beast for Republican voter suppression laws -- Biden sent a signal to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema:

"To protect our democracy, I support changing Senate rules, whichever way they need to be changed to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights."

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has scheduled a vote on Martin Luther King Day, January 17. Every senator needs to know their constituents heard the president's words today and want action NOW on the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Can you call Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth and tell them time has run out. Senators must put our democracy first, reform the filibuster, and pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Click here for their phone numbers and a script.

And if you're on Twitter, please share a couple important Tweets about Biden's speech here and here.

With all 50 Senate Republicans obstructing voting rights, reforming the filibuster has long been the only path forward to protect our democracy. With this speech, the President may have just changed the dynamics in the Senate and cleared the way for democracy to prevail.

Here's more of what he said:

"The filibuster has been weaponized and abused...

"Not a single Republican has displayed the courage to stand up to a defeated president to protect America's right to vote. Not one.

"Let the majority prevail! And if that bare minimum is blocked, we have no option but to change the Senate rules including getting rid of the filibuster.

"I ask every elected official in America, do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? The side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? The side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?"

The Freedom to Vote Act sets national standards for elections, increases access to the ballot box, bans partisan and racial gerrymandering, protects our elections from partisan sabotage, and takes steps to ensure our government works for all the people -- not just the rich and powerful.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Act restores the accountability in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was gutted by the right-wing Supreme Court. It forces states to get approval from the federal government before making major changes to how they administer elections.

Right now, while the President's speech is fresh on senators minds, we must show every senator their constituents want democracy protected NOW.

Call Sens. Durbin and Duckworth now. Click here for their phone numbers and a script.

Thanks for being a bold progressive.

-- The PCCC Team (@BoldProgressive)

Adam Schiff Warns Kevin McCarthy Will Overturn The 2024 Election If Trump Loses

I should tell you ----- these last two pieces are from Politicus so I'm mentioning it in case you don't care for the site.

Opinion: West Virginia's coal miners just made Joe Manchin's life a lot harder

Greg Sargent
Washington Post

It just got harder for the West Virginia Democrat to get away with this stance. And the culprit is none other than coal miners in his home state, whose union is redoubling calls for Manchin to support President Biden's agenda.

What's happening now with miners seems like a seminal moment. Some of the worst tropes in our politics — Democrats harbor nothing but elitist ill will toward miners, and miners' "way of life" must be defended at all costs — are cracking up and falling away.

All this emerges from a new report in the New York Times that illustrates the true nature of home-state cross-pressures on Manchin. He's caught between the miners union and mine owners, who vehemently oppose BBB.

The United Mine Workers of America backs BBB because it will help mine workerstransition to a future they now see as inevitable. BBB contains tax incentives to spur manufacturing and consumption of alternative energy sources such as wind and solar, to hasten our transition to a decarbonized economy.

Crucially, some of those tax incentives would steer some of this renewable manufacturing to coal-producing regions, to smooth the transition for workers away from fossil-fuel toil. Miners also support BBB because it would replenish a fund that aids miners suffering from black lung disease.

But here's the rub: The mine owners oppose the tax incentives. Apparently, this is precisely because they would speed the transition to clean energy sources, which is bad for the coal business.

A 'real future' for miners

The owners aren't shy about advertising this. The president of the West Virginia Coal Association, which represents the owners, tells the Times that the union is "waving a white flag" by supporting tax incentives, meaning they're surrendering to coal's inevitable demise.

"We would have thought they'd go down swinging," the mine owners' representative tells the Times. He says it's folly to trade away "fossil energy jobs" for renewable ones, because the former are "extremely well paid and carry benefits."

Now note how the union is responding to this, per the Times, by invoking Donald Trump:

Phil Smith, the United Mine Workers' chief lobbyist, responded, "We're still swinging, but we're swinging in a smart way and in a way that will provide a real future for fossil energy workers in West Virginia and throughout the country."
Union officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering mine owners, said Mr. Manchin should not be listening to the West Virginia Coal Association, which includes some of Mr. Trump's staunchest supporters.

That's a remarkable rift. The idea that BBB is in the interests of mine workers — but against the interests of owners — has been forced out into the open.

To see why this is remarkable, go back to 2016, when presidential candidate Hillary Clinton declared that we're going to put coal miners "out of business." She added that transitioning to renewable jobs would be necessary, but that was lost amid the "gaffe."

Donald Trump pounced, holding events with miners promising to bring coal soaring back. Indeed, the mine owners' association endorsed Trump on the basis of Clinton's "gaffe" and Trump's promise, which was really a vow to resist the clean energy transition at all costs.

Of course, Trump's promise of a glorious rebound in coal jobs didn't come to pass. But what has been laid bare is that the mythologizing about these matters we've endured for years is nonsense.

Empty platitudes about defending this "way of life" won't alter the trajectory of the future. Those looking to ease the transition of miners into renewable jobs are not coastal elitists out to destroy them, and self-proclaimed protectors of this "way of life," like Trump, are peddling a bill of goods.

'Squeeze every dollar out of coal'

To be clear, the miners are not aligned with climate advocates. They have legitimate skepticism that renewable jobs might not pay as well or have as good of benefits.

But nonetheless, there are signs that such jobs might offer the region a future. Jason Walsh, the executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, points to the possibility of assembling solar panels in the Ohio Valley.

But key to this, Walsh notes, is the tax incentive encouragement in BBB. Which mine owners oppose.

"The current debate reveals the fundamental lack of alignment between the coal industry and the labor unions that represent its workers," Walsh told me. "Unions want a viable future for their workers. The industry wants to squeeze every dollar out of coal before it goes away."

Where does this leave Manchin? He does support tax incentives that would encourage renewable jobs in coal country. And he now says an agreement is possible on BBB's climate provisions.

Yet in his statement opposing BBB, Manchin faulted BBB's tax incentives with a barrage of misleading industry claims about what's truly in the national interest. Manchin says he "cannot explain" BBB to West Virginia. But if miners want it, this posture is much shakier.

Indeed, now that this fundamental conflict between mine workers and owners has been exposed, it should be harder for Manchin to sink BBB in the end, even under another pretext, without being perceived as operating in owners' interests.

That might not be enough to persuade Manchin. But if it isn't, what would be?

Hmmm....maybe the miners could explain BBB to Manchin?

One thing left out of the piece on Biden's voting rights speech was his description of the glaring alternative-universe nature of the difference between the last time the Voting Rights Act was extended in 1988 and 2006: it passed the Senate 98-0. Even Strom Thurmond, who originally infamously filibustered to try to kill the bill, was one of those 98 "yes" votes. And who signed it into law? Dubya--who was unequivocably Republican. Not ONE Republican is in favor of it today.

As to the filibuster, there have been numerous "cut-outs" from it over the past few years. Establishing that cut-out for civil rights matters would not mean being unable to keep a GOP majority from ramming through despicable laws.

Have to admit, while I'm normally pretty hopeful about our situations, I'm having trouble finding it right now. Pres Biden did have more fire and lift ( then he has had for some time ) yesterday, but is it too late. I listened to some things Romney had to say ( Dh talking made me miss it ) but I don't know if they were recent or some time back. He was denouncing Pres. Biden for not being able to bring bi-partisanship to the Reps.mainly. Are you kidding me ???

MJ, which is what I watch with my morning coffee, spoke about that and what Romney said and basically said it all comes down to the grift in soooo many cases where the Reps. are now. They have no ideas, no platforms, and basically nothing but their willingness to steal power in anyway that will allow them control and feeding their greed. Meaning that we really do need the laws changed, but Machin says he will not budge on the filibuster. What will it matter if he or Synema becomes the one/s who destroy who are the chief destroyers -- once it is done there won't be going back.

I guess all I can hope for now is some miracle shows up to help me get my inspiration and hope all the way back. I really disline and fear this one. Hard to recall how good it felt when Pres. Biden won -- and we kept the House and won the Senate.

Anybody who can afford a Maserati and a large houseboat does not represent the Democratic West Virginia I grew up in!!!

Loved the MI era explaining the BBB.

January 11, 2022

Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 12

January 11, 2022 (Tuesday)

The United States came perilously close to losing its democracy in 2020, when an incumbent president refused to accept the results of an election he lost and worked with supporters to declare himself the winner and remain in power.

We are learning more about how that process happened.

Yesterday, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol revealed that it has been looking at attempts to overturn the election not just at the national level but also at the state level. It has gathered thousands of records and interviewed a number of witnesses to see what Trump and his loyalists did to overturn the 2020 election in the four crucial states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

In those states, officials generally tried to ignore the pressure from Trump and his loyalists to overturn the election. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, was uncomfortable enough with a call from South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham on the subject that he recorded a call in which Trump urged him to "find" the votes Trump needed to win the state.

In Pennsylvania, right-wing Republican Representative Scott Perry tried to throw out Pennsylvania's votes for Biden and to replace Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen (who took over when Attorney General William Barr resigned on December 23) with Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who promised to challenge the election results.

But it turns out there was more. We knew that Trump supporters in Wisconsin had submitted fake election certificates to the National Archivist, but yesterday, public records requests by Politico revealed that Trump loyalists in Michigan and Arizona also submitted false certificates to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) declaring Trump the winner of Michigan's and Arizona's electoral votes. In Arizona, they actually affixed the state seal to their papers. NARA rejected the false certificates and alerted the secretaries of state. (Shout-out here to the NARA archivists and librarians, who are scrupulous in their roles as the keepers of our national history.)

Today, the committee issued more subpoenas, this time for documents and testimony from Andy Surabian, Arthur Schwartz, and Ross Worthington. Surabian and Schwartz were strategists communicating with Donald Trump, Jr., and Kimberly Guilfoyle about the rally on the Ellipse on January 6 before the crowd broke into the Capitol. Worthington helped to write the speech Trump gave at the rally.

The committee today also debunked a story circulating on right-wing media that government agencies rather than Trump loyalists were behind the January 6 insurrection. Arizona resident Ray Epps was captured on video in Washington on January 5 and 6, and Trump allies, including Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) have argued that he was a government agent trying to entrap Trump supporters. The committee says that it interviewed Epps and that he had told the members "he was not employed by, working with, or acting at the direction of any law enforcement agency on January 5th or 6th or at any other time, and that he has never been an informant for the FBI or any other law enforcement agency."

"Sorry crazies, it ain't true," committee member Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) tweeted.

As the attack on our country has become clearer, the determination to restore our democracy has gained momentum.

Today, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took to the road to champion voting rights. They went to the district of the late Representative John Lewis, the Georgia congressman for whom one of the voting rights bills before the Senate is named.

Lewis was beaten by mobs and arrested 24 times in his quest to regain the vote for Black Americans. On March 7, 1965, as Lewis and 600 marchers hoping to register African American voters in Alabama stopped to pray at the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, named for a senator at the turn of the last century who was a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, mounted police troopers charged the marchers, beating them with clubs and bullwhips. They fractured Lewis's skull.

The attacks on the Selma marchers prompted President Lyndon Johnson to call for federal legislation defending Americans' right to vote. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965. The VRA became such a fundamental part of our system that Congress repeatedly reauthorized it, by large margins, as recently as 2006.

But in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court gutted the provision of the law requiring that states with histories of voter discrimination get approval from the Department of Justice before they changed their voting laws. Immediately, legislatures in those states, now dominated by Republicans, began to pass measures to suppress the vote. Now, in the wake of the 2020 election, Republican-dominated states have increased the rate of voter suppression, and on July 1, 2021, the Supreme Court permitted such suppression with the Brnovich v. DNC decision.

Speaking in Lewis's Atlanta district, Biden called out the people behind the events of January 6 as "forces that attempted a coup—a coup against the legally expressed will of the American people—by sowing doubt, inventing charges of fraud, and seeking to steal the 2020 election from the people."

"They want chaos to reign," he said. "We want the people to rule."

After Selma, "Democrats, Republicans, and independents worked to pass the historic…voting rights legislation," Biden said. He reminded his audience that Congress repeatedly reauthorized the VRA, most recently in 2006 with a vote of 390 to 33 in the House and 98 to 0 in the Senate.

Sixteen Republican senators who voted to reauthorize the VRA are still in the Senate, now united against the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that restores the protections the Shelby v. Holder decision stripped from the VRA. Republicans also oppose the Freedom to Vote Act, hammered out by Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and a team of other Democrats and Independent Angus King of Maine, which would make it easier to register and to vote, stop partisan gerrymandering, and prohibit the partisan changes Republican-dominated state legislatures have made to guarantee their states go Republican in the future.

Biden called Republican senators out. "Not a single Republican has displayed the courage to stand up to a defeated president to protect America's right to vote," he said. "Not one."

Biden called for rebuilding our democracy and for passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. And he came out for a reform of the filibuster to enable the Democrats to get the bills to the Senate floor for debate, a step Republicans have been obstructing. With states able to pass voting restrictions with simple majorities, he pointed out, "the United States Senate should be able to protect voting by a simple majority."

The next few days will mark a turning point in this nation's history, Biden said. "Will we choose democracy over autocracy…?"

"I ask every elected official in America: How do you want to be remembered?"

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says Republicans have until Monday, January 17, the holiday celebrating the birth of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., to drop their opposition to a debate and a vote on the measure. If they refuse, the Senate will begin to debate changing the rules of the filibuster.

Voting rights journalist Ari Berman noted that even as Biden was speaking, a state court in North Carolina upheld redistricting maps that are so extreme they would give Republicans 71–78% of the seats in a state Trump won with just 49.9% of the vote. This, Berman notes, "is exactly the kind of partisan & racial gerrymandering [the] Freedom to Vote Act would block[.]"