Heather

[billy backstay]

November 7, 2022​

Heather Cox Richardson

Not sure if you’ve heard, but the U.S. midterm elections are tomorrow.

Just kidding, of course. Not sure anyone can think of much else.

Remember, though, this election is full of wild cards. Traditionally—but not always—the party of the president does poorly in the first midterm election. But we are in uncharted territory: never before in our history have more than half of Americans lost the recognition of a constitutional right, as the Supreme Court took from us with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision in June, overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the constitutional right to an abortion.

Never, too, have we had to vote in an election where more than half the candidates of one of the parties deny that the president was fairly elected. Those candidates have suggested that, had they been in power in 2020, they would have put former president Donald Trump in power even though he lost the popular vote by more than 7 million and lost in the Electoral College. Their position is a profound attack on our democracy.

For all the polls showing that Democrats are going to win in huge numbers or Republicans are, no one knows how it will turn out. The polls are deeply problematic this time around, and at least some of them are attempts by Republicans to boost the hopes of their donors and to keep Democrats from voting. Perhaps even more than most elections, this one will come down to turnout.

There are, though, some stories worth following:

There has been a crazy amount of money invested in this year’s contests, much of it by a very few people. Ronald Lauder, for example, the 78-year-old heir to the cosmetics fortune, has dumped at least $11 million into getting a Trump Republican, Representative Lee Zeldin, elected governor of New York. Billionaire Peter Thiel put $30 million into super PACs backing Republican senate candidates J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona.

Today, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and the leader of the private military company the Wagner Group, who is close to Russian president Vladimir Putin, boasted that Russians had interfered in U.S. elections and continue to do so. “We have interfered, we are interfering and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do.” He added: “During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once.”

Prigozhin is apparently behind the Russia-based “troll farms” that try to affect U.S. elections. Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times writes that Russians have indeed targeted the 2022 elections to make right-wing voters angry and undermine trust in U.S. elections. Their hope is to erode support for Ukraine’s struggle to repel Russian invasion by electing Republicans who side with Putin.

Republicans are not acting as if they expect big wins tomorrow. Many of the Republican candidates have refused to say they would accept the election results, and Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson is already saying that Democrats will steal the election.

Others are fighting to get Democratic mail-in ballots thrown out, especially in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Still others are trying to game the vote count already, claiming that results that are not announced by the end of the day on Tuesday are suspicious. But votes postmarked on Election Day can take days to arrive. In addition, a number of Republican-dominated states have made it illegal to count mail-in votes before Election Day, creating backlogs that take time to work through. It sounds as if they, like Trump in 2020, are expecting to lose the actual vote and to fight to steal it.

The Department of Justice will be monitoring the polls in 64 jurisdictions in 24 states to make sure those jurisdictions comply with federal voting rights laws. Officials remind voters that any disruptions at polling places should be reported to officials. Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson expressed thanks to the Department of Justice for “real support for protecting voters,” which she said was missing in 2020 under the former president.

Aside from tomorrow’s election, there is an epic fight brewing in the Republican Party. Former president Donald Trump threatened to announce tonight at a rally in Ohio that he is running for president in 2024, likely because he believes such an announcement will make it harder for the Department of Justice to indict him for his theft of classified documents when he left the White House. He is also concerned that Florida governor Ron DeSantis will steal his thunder and capture the 2024 nomination, but because they are competing for the same voters, an announcement from Trump will undercut DeSantis.

Republican Party leaders urged Trump to hold off on the announcement, worrying it would energize Democratic voters before Election Day. In the end, Trump’s announcement tonight was: “I’m going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15, at Mar-a-Lago in Florida…. We want nothing to detract from the importance of tomorrow.”

Finally, for all the uncertainty surrounding tomorrow's election, there is one thing of which I am 100% certain. Far more Americans today are concerned about our democracy, and determined to reclaim it, than were even paying attention to it in 2016. There are new organizations, new connections, new voters, new efforts to remake the country better than it has ever been, and the frantic efforts of the Republicans to suppress voting, gerrymander the country, and now to take away our right to choose our leaders indicates we are far more powerful than we believe we are. No matter what happens tomorrow, that will continue to be true, and I am ever so proud to be one of you.
—
Notes:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/polls...going-to-happen-during-2022-midterm-elections
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/russias-prigozhin-admits-interfering-us-elections-2022-11-07/

Matt Ortega @MattOrtega
This is absolute bullshit. Some states, like Pennsylvania, prohibit counting early votes until election day. No serious person claims votes must be counted by x time or day or be discarded, especially as Republicans demand time consuming hand counts.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar
Trump lawyer Christina Bobb previews that MAGAs will try to declare victory as votes are being counted: "There should absolutely be a result no later than the middle of the night, early Wed. morning. I think those areas that don't have a result, it's gonna look very suspicious" https://t.co/VnKnnRqs5v
12:12 AM ∙ Nov 8, 2022

---

708Likes278Retweets
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/russian-mercenary-leader-commits-to-more-meddling-in-us-elections
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/06/nyregion/ronald-lauder-zeldin-governor.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/03/pet...d-vance-will-fundraise-for-blake-masters.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/06/technology/russia-misinformation-midterms.html

Aaron Rupar @atrupar
Trump lawyer Christina Bobb previews that MAGAs will try to declare victory as votes are being counted: "There should absolutely be a result no later than the middle of the night, early Wed. morning. I think those areas that don't have a result, it's gonna look very suspicious"

12:09 AM ∙ Nov 8, 2022

---

2,140Likes780Retweets
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/07/gop-sues-reject-mail-ballots/
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/just...-states-compliance-federal-voting-rights-laws
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/top-republicans-talk-trump-out-of-announcing-2024-tonight
https://twitter.com/JocelynBenson

Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen
Trump: "I'm going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15 at Mar-a-Lago in Florida... We want nothing to detract from the importance of tomorrow."
3:08 AM ∙ Nov 8, 2022

---

1,541Likes207Retweets
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-ne...ce-suspect-fraud-if-gop-doesnt-sweep-midterms

 

[billy backstay]

November 8, 2022​

Heather Cox Richardson

I just got a text from a Gen Z voter in Michigan who has been in line to vote for more than an hour and predicts he will be there hours more. He has no intention of leaving.

If there is an obvious story from today with results still unknown, it is this: a new generation is picking up the torch of our democracy.

It puts me in mind of what poet Walt Whitman wrote about the momentous election of 1884. In that year the Republican Party had become so extremist that many of its members, disparagingly called “Mugwumps” by party loyalists, jumped ship to vote for a reformer, Democrat Grover Cleveland. It was a chaotic and consequential election, for it showed those Republicans who stayed with the party that they must moderate their stances or become a permanent minority.

Younger Republicans like Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, and Theodore Roosevelt of New York took notice and turned their party back toward its roots, protecting the rights of individuals rather than of corporations. By the end of the century, they had captured the imagination of the nation. Once in office, they ushered in the Progressive Era.

But on Election Day, 1884, all anyone could know was that there were currents and crosscurrents. What would come from any of them would not be clear for another decade or more. In that tense election the main point was that there was voting at all, for the right to choose our lawmakers was what made America, America.

Whitman wrote:

“If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

‘Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon’s white cones—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—nor Mississippi’s stream:

—This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I'd name—the still small voice vibrating—America’s choosing day,

(The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the quadriennial choosing,)

The stretch of North and South arous’d—sea-board and inland—Texas to Maine—the Prairie States—Vermont, Virginia, California,

The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and conflict,

The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,

Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s the peaceful choice of all,

Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:

—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the heart pants, life glows:

These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,

Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.”

I am not going to say any more tonight out of concern I will mislead people with incomplete information. I do feel comfortable saying that the youth vote will be a big story going forward.

With that I am going to stop obsessively refreshing my screen and go to bed.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

 

[billy backstay]

November 9, 2022

Yesterday was a good day for democracy. Americans turned out to defend our principles from those who denied our right to choose our own leaders. There was little violence, the election appears to have gone smoothly, and there are few claims of “fraud.” As I write tonight, control of the House...

heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

I am counting on Gen Z to rid us of the regressives who would take us backwards, instead of forward.

" In 25-year-old Maxwell Frost (D-FL), elected last night, Gen Z has its first member of Congress. "

 

[Steam Flyer]

November 9, 2022

Yesterday was a good day for democracy. Americans turned out to defend our principles from those who denied our right to choose our own leaders. There was little violence, the election appears to have gone smoothly, and there are few claims of “fraud.” As I write tonight, control of the House...

heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

I am counting on Gen Z to rid us of the regressives who would take us backwards, instead of forward.

" In 25-year-old Maxwell Frost (D-FL), elected last night, Gen Z has its first member of Congress. "

Maybe. There are plenty of young fascists out there.

 

[billy backstay]

Maybe. There are plenty of young fascists out there.

cite?

 

[Steam Flyer]

cite?

How many under-40s were there in that Unite The Right rally, ~ 5 years ago? They didn't go anywhere.

Unfortunately, there is a big audience for hate-speech here in the USA. If Trump is the high-water mark for it, and the pendulum starts to swing back towards decency, that'll be great! I'll take it! But that doesn't mean they all Raptured out of here instantly.

 

[billy backstay]

How many under-40s were there in that Unite The Right rally, ~ 5 years ago? They didn't go anywhere.

Unfortunately, there is a big audience for hate-speech here in the USA. If Trump is the high-water mark for it, and the pendulum starts to swing back towards decency, that'll be great! I'll take it! But that doesn't mean they all Raptured out of here instantly.

Gen Z are younger, so hope springs eternal!! Gen Z. 1997 - 2012. 10 - 25.

 

[Ishmael]

Gen Z are younger, so hope springs eternal!! Gen Z. 1997 - 2012. 10 - 25.

So this demographic?

 

[billy backstay]

Just heard on the tube that ages 18-29 were very instrumental in the blue wavelet.

 

[billy backstay]

November 10, 2022​

Heather Cox Richardson

Two days after an election in which the Republican Party attacked the Democrats for inflation, today’s consumer price index data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that inflation is slowing more quickly than expected. It rose just 0.4% in October, making the rate over the past twelve months also come in lower than expected at 7.7%.

The stock market had its biggest jump since 2020, with the different indexes observers use to measure the market all rising. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 1,200 points, or 3.7%; the S&P 500 jumped 5.54%; and the Nasdaq Composite surged 7.35%, the best it has done since March 2020.

In a statement, President Joe Biden promised to continue to work to get prices down but noted that his policies are having an effect. “[O]ur economy has reopened, new jobs are being created, new businesses are growing, and now, we are seeing progress in getting inflation under control—with additional measures taking effect soon.”

Then Biden appeared to reach out to Republicans interested in forging a way forward from their party’s politics of the recent past, while also recalling that for all their complaints about inflation, their only plan to fix the problem was to cut taxes for the wealthy again. Virtually no economist said cutting taxes would help inflation, and many said such a policy would actually make inflation worse.

Biden said: “I will work with anyone—Democrat or Republican—on ideas to provide more breathing room to middle-class and working families. And I will oppose any effort to undo my agenda or to make inflation worse. We are on the right path—we need to keep moving forward to build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out.”

Biden appeared to have wind under his wings, though, as with this recent vote of confidence he looks forward to the rest of his term. The 27th United Nations Climate Change conference is being held right now in Egypt, and the U.S. administration today announced a new policy for dealing with climate change. Arguing that climate change and the shortages and damage to supply chains it brings create significant financial risk for the government (that is, taxpayers), it advanced a plan to use the federal government’s power as the world’s largest buyer of goods and services—over $630 billion in the last fiscal year—to address climate change.

It would require any federal contractor who gets annual contracts worth more than $7.5 million a year to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, explain their climate-related financial risks, and set emissions reduction targets.

Climate change is a key issue for Gen Z, who came out for Biden strongly on Tuesday, but Biden’s other major initiative on their behalf ran into trouble today as U.S. District Court Judge Mark Pittman, a Trump appointee, declared Biden’s student loan relief program illegal. The government has already appealed.

Meanwhile, the counting of votes continues, with control of both houses of Congress still unclear.

What is clear is that there is a war erupting in the Republican Party. After former president Trump surged to an unexpected victory in 2016, there appeared to be a sense in the Republican Party that he had figured out how to mobilize previously unengaged voters to deliver victories to the Republican Party, and established Republicans increasingly rallied to his standard.

But he has led the party to defeat now for the third time. In the 2018 midterms, Republicans lost control of the House, with Democrats picking up 41 seats. In 2020, of course, he lost the election, as well as control of the Senate. And while this year’s outcome is not yet clear, the Democrats have had one of the best midterm performances in recent memory. Suddenly, Trump no longer seems to have a magic formula.

White nationalist Nick Fuentes told his audience that the solution to the fact Republicans are in a minority and keep losing elections is to establish “a dictatorship.” "We need to take control of the media or take control of the government and force the people to believe what we believe or force them to play by our rules.”

Others seem to think the answer is just to dump Trump, although as Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) warned Republicans in his closing argument in Trump’s first impeachment trial: “If you find that the House has proved its case and still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel—and for all of history.”

That his star is tarnished became clear today not just on cable television and Twitter, where right-wing users complained about his hand-picked candidates, and in Pennsylvania, where Republicans were stung by the loss of a Senate seat, but also on media owned by right-wing kingmaker Rupert Murdoch. Today the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal noted Trump’s perfect record of electoral defeat and said: “Trump is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.”

Apparently stung, Trump unleashed a furious rant on Truth Social, claiming credit for DeSantis’s start in politics. It included an astonishing claim: “I was all in for Ron, and he beat Gillum, but after the Race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his Election from being stolen….”

This is an apparent reference to the 2018 election that put DeSantis in the governor’s chair rather than his Democratic opponent Andrew Gillum. The race was very close: just 32,463 votes out of 9 million cast, about 0.4%, separated the two candidates. Considering what we now know about Trump’s approach to election results, a claim to having rigged the 2018 Florida election was one heck of a statement. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo noted that even though Trump “is a pathological liar… this requires some explanation, if only a clear and definitive confirmation that this did not happen.”

Pundits are already suggesting Florida governor Ron DeSantis as a replacement for Trump as a presidential candidate in 2024. This is terribly premature. If, in fact, the party is going to move beyond the Trump years, it seems it might well not turn to DeSantis, who, among other things, is still under investigation for flying a plane load of legal migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, an act not just cruel but possibly illegal.

There will be plenty of time to worry about 2024.

In the meantime, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke to a Democratic National Committee Event today at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C. Harris told the audience members that their work sent a message to the entire world: Our democracy is intact…. [T]his is what it looks like…. Some Democrats won and some Republicans won. That is what happens when more than 100 million Americans participate and vote in free and fair and open elections…. And the people in this room and around our country made that possible by standing up for basic American values: freedom, liberty, and the rule of law. And I believe when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for.”

Biden told the attendees that Democrats “beat the odds” in the midterms “for one reason—this is not hyperbole—because of you…. I really mean it…. You believed in the system. You believed in the institutions. You fought like hell for it. And that’s the most important thing that happened, in my view, in this election. It was the first national election since January 6th, and there were a lot of concerns about whether democracy would meet the test.”

“It did. It did. It did.”
—
Notes:

NBC News @NBCNews
WATCH: "If you find that the House has proved its case and still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel — and for all of history." Rep. Schiff makes his closing argument to senators in the impeachment trial of President Trump.

8:31 PM ∙ Feb 3, 2020

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589Likes172Retweets
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...n-on-the-october-consumer-price-index-report/
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/10/con...er-less-than-expected-as-inflation-eases.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald...senate-house-congress-republicans-11668034869
https://www.sustainability.gov/federalsustainabilityplan/fed-supplier-rule.html
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...-administrations-student-debt-relief-program/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...eral-supply-chain-from-climate-related-risks/
https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/florida/governor/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/umm-what-2
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/pa-republicans-blame-trump-2022-losses-20221110.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/10/politics/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-struck-down/index.html
https://apnews.com/article/biden-te...tudent-loans-f2e944d85e95792089fa1e2fb9858287
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post...2-elections-prove-why-we-need-a-dictatorship/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...ris-at-a-democratic-national-committee-event/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...eral-supply-chain-from-climate-related-risks/

 

[Steam Flyer]

Uncle Joe is a good guy. Corny, but earnest.

 

[Not My Real Name]

Watched "BlacKkKlansman" with my parents last night. For those of you who don't recall, they live in Charlottesville.

I'd seen it, but had completely forgotten that Spike Lee ends the movie by cutting from a cross burning at the end to footage from the Unite the Right Rally, which happened almost a year to the day before the release of the movie.

As we're watching it, my mother (81) tells us that she's managed to never see the actual footage of the event, from the screaming Nazis to the street fighting and the car ramming into the crowd. She left leaning and voting, but doesn't like extremely violent TV and movies. So while aware of the events (she couldn't not be, living here) she had not sought out the footage or details on the event. Nor has she gone to Heather Heyer Way, though she's driven by it many times.

She found it a bit shocking, and said it affected her viscerally. It was not my intent to do that to her, but I think it really brought home to her a bit of reality that she hadn't really focused on because it's intensely negative and she tries to keep negativity our of her life. She's not about to go shouting at rallies in the streets at this point in her life, but I don't think she's always well served by avoiding some reality.

Anyway, it made me think of this thread. Just like it did the other day when we went to the CVS on the downtown mall to get our Covid boosters and walked down Heather Heyer Way again. I took pictures again, but you've seen it before.

You can't forget or ignore.

 

[billy backstay]

November 12, 2022​

Heather Cox Richardson

A little before 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, NBC called Nevada’s tight Senate race for the incumbent: Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto. Cortez Masto defeated Adam Laxalt, a former attorney general for the state, whom former president Trump had endorsed.

This means that the Democrats keep control of the Senate.

Democrats will have 50 votes in the new Congress just as they did in the current one, enabling Vice President Kamala Harris to break ties in their favor.

Harris may not need to break ties, though, if the last Senate seat goes to the Democrats. That last seat is the one outstanding seat from Georgia. In the election there, Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock garnered about 35,000 more votes than Trump-endorsed Republican Herschel Walker, but neither man won 50% of the vote. Under Georgia law, this forces a runoff, which will be held on December 6. Walker is a deeply flawed candidate, and now that his election cannot give the Republicans control of the Senate, it is not clear that voters will turn out for him.

As of late October, NPR reported that outside groups had spent almost a billion dollars on the campaigns of Republican Senate candidates, hoping to take control of that body. Key to that desire for control was control of the judiciary, where the right wing has entrenched itself as it has become increasingly extreme and unpopular. Even without control of the House—which is still unclear as election officials continue to count votes—Democratic control of the Senate means that President Joe Biden will be able to continue confirming judges.

After the Nevada race was called, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters that the victory was “a vindication for Democrats, our agenda, and…for the American people.” He explained: “The American people rejected the antidemocratic extremist MAGA Republicans.”

—

Notes:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/20...bc-news-projects-defeating-many-tru-rcna56677
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/de...uld-seal-their-us-senate-majority-2022-11-12/
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/22/1129...idterm-elections-republicans-democrats-senate
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/us/elections/georgia-senate-runoff.html

 

[billy backstay]

I am much relieved that the MAGA'ts and election deniers are no longer a major factor in our Governments direction for the moment!!

Now it's time to indict Trump and his minions and root every single election denier from public and private Government service, per the 14th Amendment, Article 3. Until that happens, we could once again fall prey to demagogues and regressives who would send us backwards rather than forward.

 

[billy backstay]

Watched "BlacKkKlansman" with my parents last night. For those of you who don't recall, they live in Charlottesville.

I'd seen it, but had completely forgotten that Spike Lee ends the movie by cutting from a cross burning at the end to footage from the Unite the Right Rally, which happened almost a year to the day before the release of the movie.

As we're watching it, my mother (81) tells us that she's managed to never see the actual footage of the event, from the screaming Nazis to the street fighting and the car ramming into the crowd. She left leaning and voting, but doesn't like extremely violent TV and movies. So while aware of the events (she couldn't not be, living here) she had not sought out the footage or details on the event. Nor has she gone to Heather Heyer Way, though she's driven by it many times.

She found it a bit shocking, and said it affected her viscerally. It was not my intent to do that to her, but I think it really brought home to her a bit of reality that she hadn't really focused on because it's intensely negative and she tries to keep negativity our of her life. She's not about to go shouting at rallies in the streets at this point in her life, but I don't think she's always well served by avoiding some reality.

Anyway, it made me think of this thread. Just like it did the other day when we went to the CVS on the downtown mall to get our Covid boosters and walked down Heather Heyer Way again. I took pictures again, but you've seen it before.

You can't forget or ignore.

Neither should we forget nor ignore The Tulsa Race Massacre of Black Wall Street, in May 1921. My Grandfathers were young men then, and it was not so long ago in the history of our country.

'Black Wall Street' Before, During and After the Tulsa Race Massacre: PHOTOS

Historic images of Tulsa, Oklahoma's Greenwood district reveal how the 1921 mob attack devastated the nation's Black cultural and economic mecca.

www.history.com

 

[Not My Real Name]

Neither should we forget nor ignore The Tulsa Race Massacre of Black Wall Street, in May 1921. My Grandfathers were young men then, and it was not so long ago in the history of our country.

'Black Wall Street' Before, During and After the Tulsa Race Massacre: PHOTOS

Historic images of Tulsa, Oklahoma's Greenwood district reveal how the 1921 mob attack devastated the nation's Black cultural and economic mecca.

www.history.com

No, it's a horrific story we were not taught about in history class. I learned about it as an adult.

 

[Bus Driver]

No, it's a horrific story we were not taught about in history class. I learned about it as an adult.

Same. And, it is not the only one.

 

[Steam Flyer]

One thing to note, after both WW1 and WW2, Black soldiers returning home tending to stand up straighter, step aside less, and say "yes, massah" not at all; and this touched off a lot of violent incidents by white peckerwoods.

 

[billy backstay]

November 14, 2022​

Heather Cox Richardson

The contours of last Tuesday’s midterm election continue to come into focus. They are good, indeed, for the Democrats and Democratic president Joe Biden. Foremost is that the Democrats have not lost a Senate seat and could well pick one up after the December 6 runoff election between Georgia senator Rafael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

Those results are strong. According to Axios senior political correspondent Josh Kraushaar, only in 1934, under Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt; 1962, under Democratic president John F. Kennedy; and 2002, under Republican president George W. Bush and just after the 9/11 attacks, has a president’s party not lost a Senate seat in the midterms and lost fewer than 10 House seats. Since World War II, midterms have cost the party in power an average of 28 seats.

Democrats also did well in state governments, picking up some state governorships—including Arizona’s tonight, as Democrat Katie Hobbs is projected to have beaten Trump-backed Republican election-denier Kari Lake—and taking control in some legislative chambers, although again, it’s not clear yet how many. They also denied the Republicans veto-proof supermajorities in others.

Also crucial was the defeat of election deniers, who backed Trump’s false allegations that he won the 2020 election, in six key elections where those folks would have been in charge of certifying ballots for their states in the future. In Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico, voters rejected election deniers running to become secretary of state. Indiana voters elected as secretary of state election denier Diego Morales, who has been mired in scandal, securing Republican control of the state.

In Nevada, Republican Jim Marchant was personally recruited by Trump’s people to run for secretary of state, and they asked him to put together a group of those who thought like him across the nation. At a Trump rally in October, Marchant promised voters that “[w]hen my coalition of secretary of state candidates around the country get elected, we’re going to fix the whole country, and President Trump is going to be president again in 2024.”

Instead, voters chose Democrat Cisco Aguilar, who told Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: “People are tired of chaos…. They want stability; they want normalcy; they want somebody who’s going to be an adult and make decisions that are fair, transparent, and in the best interest of all Nevadans.”

While many of us have been focusing on events here at home, the outcome of the election had huge implications for foreign policy. As today’s column by conservative columnist Max Boot of the Washington Post notes, “Republicans lost the election—and so did [Russian president Vladimir] Putin, MBS [Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman], and [former/incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”

Autocrats and hard-right leaders liked Trump at the head of the U.S. government, for he was far more inclined to operate transactionally on the basis of financial benefits, while Biden and his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, have advanced a foreign policy based on democratic values. Leaders like MBS have ignored Biden or denigrated him, expecting that a reelected Trump in 2024 would revert to the system they preferred. Now those calculations have hit a snag.

Indeed, Russia put its bots and trolls back to work before the election to weaken Biden in the hope that a Republican Congress would cut aid to Ukraine, as Republican leaders had suggested they would. The Russian army is in terrible trouble in Ukraine, and its best bet for a lift is for the international coalition the U.S. anchors to fall apart. Russian propagandists suggested that Putin suppressed news that the Russians were withdrawing from the Ukrainian city of Kherson until after the election to avoid giving the Democrats a boost in the polls.

Today, Secretary of State Blinken announced more sanctions against Russian companies and individuals, in Russia and abroad, “to disrupt Russia’s military supply chains and impose high costs on President Putin’s enablers.” Director of the CIA William Burns met recently in Turkey with his Russian counterpart to convey “a message on the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons” and “the risks of escalation,” but said the U.S. is firmly behind “our fundamental principle: nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

Also today, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved a resolution saying that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine violated international law and that Russia must pay war reparations. In Germany and Poland, the governments separately announced they were taking over natural gas companies that had been tied to Russia’s huge energy company, Gazprom, in order to guarantee energy supplies to their people.

On Friday, November 11, Biden spoke at the United Nations climate change conference in Egypt. He was the only leader of a major polluting nation to go to the meeting, and there he stressed U.S. leadership, pointing to the Inflation Reduction Act’s $370 billion investment in the U.S. shift to clean energy and other climate-positive changes. Also on Friday, his administration announced it would use the U.S. government’s buying power to push suppliers toward climate-positive positions. Protesters called attention to how little the U.S. has done for poorer countries harmed by climate change that has been caused by richer countries.

From Egypt, the president traveled to Cambodia for a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. In the past year, the U.S. has announced more than $250 million in new initiatives with ASEAN, investing especially in infrastructure in an apparent attempt to disrupt China’s dominance of the region by supporting counterweights in the region. The U.S. is now elevating the cooperation with ASEAN to a comprehensive strategic partnership to support a rules-based Indo-Pacific region, maritime cooperation, economic and technological cooperation, and sustainable development. “ASEAN is the heart of my administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, and we continue to strengthen our commitment to work in lockstep with an empowered, unified ASEAN,” Biden said.

While in Cambodia, Biden also met with Japanese prime minister Kishida Fumio and reinforced the U.S. “ironclad commitment to the defense of Japan” after North Korea’s recent ballistic missile tests. Biden and Kishida reiterated their plan to strengthen and modernize the relationship between the U.S. and Japan to “address threats to the free and open Indo-Pacific.”

From there, Biden traveled to Bali, Indonesia, for a meeting of the G20, a forum of 19 countries and the European Union comprising countries that make up most of the nation’s largest economies.

Today the president met for more than three hours with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The main message from the meeting was that the two countries are communicating, and while each is standing firm on its national sovereignty, each sees room to cooperate on major global issues.

Biden made it a point to say that U.S. policies toward Taiwan have not changed—a concern that created ripples of uncertainty when House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island nation last summer—and both he and Xi agreed that Russia should not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. In a sign that relations are easing, Biden said that Blinken and other U.S. officials will visit China to begin working on issues of mutual interest..

Meanwhile, authorities in Iran are cracking down on the protesters there, with news of torture and now of a death sentence for one of the 15,000 protesters who have been arrested. Today, national security advisor Jake Sullivan condemned the human rights abuses inflicted on its citizens by the Iranian government and called for “accountability…through sanctions and other means.”

In Bali today, the president reminded reporters: “On my first trip overseas last year, I said that America was back—back at home, back at the table, and back to leading the world. In the year and a half that’s followed, we’ve shown exactly what that means. America is keeping its commitments. America is investing in our strength at home. America is working alongside our allies and partners to deliver real, meaningful progress around the world. And at this critical moment, no nation is better positioned to help build the future we want than the United States of America.”

—

Notes:

Josh Kraushaar @JoshKraushaar
CNN’s @ForecasterEnten says Biden’s first midterm performance for president is one of the best in modern history: Only 1934 (FDR), 1962 (JFK), 2002 (W Bush) did President’s party not lose Senate seats and less than 10 House seats.
9:56 PM ∙ Nov 11, 2022

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7,566Likes1,830Retweets

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/11/1135...-lawmakers-legislatures-pennsylvania-michigan
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/13/election-deniers-defeated-state-races/
https://www.indystar.com/story/news...retary-of-state-election-results/69541301007/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/12/us/politics/jim-marchant-cisco-aguilar-nevada.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/14/midterms-empower-biden-foreign-policy/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...t-biden-in-a-press-conference-bali-indonesia/
https://www.state.gov/targeting-rus...curement-network-and-kremlin-linked-networks/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...ident-biden-at-the-annual-u-s-asean-summit-2/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/11/11/climate/cop27-climate-summit
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...n-climate-change-cop27-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/politics/joe-biden-xi-jinping-meeting-g20-bali/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/14/iran-death-sentence-protests-mahsa-amini/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...he-continued-crackdown-on-protestors-in-iran/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/14/politics/cia-director-bill-burns-russian-counterpart/index.html
https://wisconsinwatch.org/2022/11/...rity-in-the-legislature-in-the-2022-election/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...sean-u-s-comprehensive-strategic-partnership/
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/15/ari...obbs-defeats-kari-lake-nbc-news-projects.html
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...g-with-prime-minister-kishida-fumio-of-japan/
https://www.axios.com/2022/11/14/un-vote-russia-reparations-ukraine-war
https://apnews.com/article/europe-b...rgy-industry-9b46b2333c10a074bddf652cc1a7a38a

 

[billy backstay]

November 15, 2022​

Heather Cox Richardson

Today, what appears to have been a Russian-made missile fell into eastern Poland near Ukraine, killing two civilians. Poland is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an organization formed in 1949 to stand against the expansion of the Soviet Union and now standing against the expansion of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

According to Article 5 of NATO’s founding document, an attack on one NATO member is considered an attack on all of them. But exactly what happened today remains uncertain: it is not clear if the missile was an intentional attack, an error, or an intercepted weapon that went off course. Poland could invoke Article 5 but doesn’t have to and indeed would have a hard time getting the necessary support for that escalation without absolute proof the attack was deliberate.

So far, Poland appears to have activated Article 4, which brings NATO leaders together for consultation “whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.” A joint consultation shows the world that NATO is still unified and warns against further escalation (if indeed any was intended).

Biden spoke by phone with Polish president Andrzej Duda to express his condolences and reiterate the U.S. commitment to NATO while the investigation into what actually happened is ongoing. He also spoke with NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg.

Russian missile attacks on Ukraine have increased as world leaders are meeting at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. The G20 is a forum of the European Union and 19 countries that include most of the world’s largest economies. Meetings of the G20 focus on cooperation for development, financial stability, and addressing climate change.

After filing the paperwork earlier today, former president Donald Trump announced a run for the 2024 presidency tonight in a speech from Mar-a-Lago before an audience that included a number of far-right social media influencers, his wife Melania, and family members Eric, Lara, and Barron Trump and Jared Kushner, but, so far as I can tell, no members of the Republican Party leadership. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who was a key advisor in the Trump White House, was not there, and said tonight she does “not plan to be involved in politics.”

The speech was a subdued version of his rallies, claiming he is a victim and offering a replay of his inaugural address, which focused on what he called “American carnage.” Tonight he warned “our country is in a horrible state, we’re in grave trouble” and said he was leading “a great movement” to take the country back. Compared with the midterms crowds yelling for their candidate, the lack of enthusiasm in the room seemed marked, and after about an hour, while Trump was ranting about former German chancellor Angela Merkel, the Fox News Channel cut the live feed.

Domenico Montanaro of NPR indicated that Trump might not enjoy the same uncritical coverage he received in 2016 when he began his story on the announcement: “Donald Trump, who tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and inspired a deadly riot at the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep himself in power, announced he is running again for president in 2024.”

According to Mark Sweney of The Guardian, after the Republicans’ poor showing on Tuesday, in which the high-profile candidates Trump backed lost, media mogul Rupert Murdoch has told Trump that he will not support Trump’s 2024 candidacy and will instead back Florida governor Ron DeSantis should he decide to run. If Murdoch follows through, this means Trump will lose the backing of the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Fox News Channel.

The party’s losses in the midterms appear to have opened the door for Trump's opponents to toss him under the bus. According to Jonathan Swan at Axios, at this morning’s annual meeting of the Republican governors, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie got “huge applause” from the room full of hundreds of politicians, consultants, and wealthy donors when he blamed Trump for three cycles of losses for the Republican Party. Christie said voters “rejected crazy.”

Trump has likely announced his candidacy so early either to try to stop DeSantis from announcing and attracting Trump’s voters, or to try to avoid indictments, or both.

There is no doubt the former president’s legal troubles are heating up. On Saturday, a legal filing from the Department of Justice to Special Master Judge Raymond Dearie, in charge of reviewing the documents the FBI seized on August 8 from Mar-a-Lago, revealed that Trump kept a document marked “SECRET” and another marked “CONFIDENTIAL” in a drawer together with personal documents from after his time in office. This suggests that he deliberately mishandled the documents at a time after he left office.

Meanwhile, Trump has told the special master that the president has the authority simply to declare which records are personal records, and that he declared all the seized documents to be personal records while in office. He suggests his careless handling of the classified documents proves he considered them personal records. The Department of Justice has responded with incredulity (that’s the gist of it, anyway).

Two days ago, Trump’s second chief of staff, 72-year-old former Marine Corps general John F. Kelly, told Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times that Trump wanted to use the Department of Justice and other government agencies against those he perceived to be his political enemies. Repeatedly, he told Kelly he wanted to use the Internal Revenue Service in that way; last summer the New York Times revealed that after Kelly had left the White House, the IRS selected former FBI director James Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe, whom Trump blamed for the investigation into the ties of his 2016 campaign to Russian operatives, for rare and extensive audits.

Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington dismissed Kelly’s account, although others have made similar statements, saying: “It’s total fiction created by a psycho, John Kelly, who never said this before, and made it up just because he’s become so irrelevant.”

New documents from Trump’s former accounting firm, Mazars USA, released by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, showed that foreign governments including those of Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and China “spent more money than previously known at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., and did so at sensitive times for those countries’ relations with the United States.” The leader of Malaysia, for example, spent more than $250,000 over 9 days at the hotel, and Trump praised him highly while the leader was “publicly under investigation by the Department of Justice…for looting a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund and laundering the money through U.S. financial institutions.”

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform yesterday wrote to the acting archivist of the United States, Debra Steidel Wall, asking her for presidential records to determine whether Trump distorted foreign policy to serve his own financial interests. In a statement, the committee’s chair, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) said of the information from Trump’s accountants: “These documents, which the Committee continues to obtain from Mazars, will inform our legislative efforts to ensure that future presidents do not abuse their position of power for personal gain.”
—
Notes:
https://oversight.house.gov/news/pr...-records-showing-extensive-foreign-government
https://breakingdefense.com/2022/11/after-moscow-blamed-for-explosions-in-poland-all-eyes-on-nato/

Right Wing Watch @RightWingWatch
Gonna put together a thread on the various MAGA cultists who have been invited to Mar-a-Lago for Trump's announcement on Tuesday. (If you see others, send us a DM with a link and we'll add them.)
8:42 PM ∙ Nov 14, 2022

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2,913Likes512Retweets
https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00828541/1661550/
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/15/1044234232/trump-announces-run-president-2024

Acyn @Acyn
Fox cuts coverage while Trump is ranting about Angela Merkel

2:43 AM ∙ Nov 16, 2022

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2,833Likes368Retweets
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...nald-trump-in-favour-of-defuture-ron-desantis
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763.176.1.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ssified-after-presidency-court-filing-alleges
https://storage.courtlistener.com/r...d.618763/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763.171.0_2.pdf
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/14/politics/trump-justice-department-white-house-personal/index.html
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763.173.0.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/trump-hotel-foreign-government-spending/
https://thehill.com/homenews/campai...ved-in-politics-as-father-announces-2024-run/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/13/us/politics/trump-irs-investigations.html
https://www.axios.com/2022/11/15/chris-christie-trump-governors