Tag Archive: Ukraine

Adding to Republican troubles, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell calls it quits

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

Yesterday, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that he is stepping down from his leadership post this November. McConnell said that he would remain as Senator from Kentucky until his term expires in January 2027. That may be an ambitious goal, however, as McConnell is 82 years old and in frail health, having suffered at least two public episodes in the past year where he froze and was unable to speak or communicate.

McConnell is the longest-serving U.S. Senate leader in history, having been either Majority or Minority Leader since 2007. However, his legacy may well focus on a short period of time, during the presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and involving two particular areas. The first is these presidents’ judicial nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court. In particular, McConnell made the controversial (and arguably unconstitutional) move of denying a confirmation hearing for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, after the death of Republican Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. At the time, McConnell gave the flimsy excuse that no Supreme Court justice should be confirmed in an election year.

But just a short time later, not only did McConnell help confirm three Trump nominees to the Supreme Court, one of those nominees, Amy Coney Barrett, was confirmed just eight days before the 2020 elections. These nominees went on to help form the Republican majority that overturned the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, ruling that there is no federal right to abortion. This ruling, in Dobbs v. Jackson (2022), is one of the most consequential events in U.S. political history and, ironically, has driven Democratic voter enthusiasm and turnout to the point where Democrats have flipped a couple of U.S. House seats from red to blue in special elections, and are in a much stronger position for the 2024 elections.

Nikki Haley is losing to Trump but helping Democrats

Nimrata “Nikki” Haley, taking on Trump

Nimrata “Nikki” Haley lags far behind Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican Party presidential nomination. In terms of state primaries and caucuses, while it’s still very early, Trump has won both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, the first time that a Republican candidate has swept both contests since these states began leading the election calendar in 1976. In Nevada, things got weird with both a primary (pursuant to state law) and a caucus, because state Republicans wanted one just for Trump. There, Haley ran only in the primary and lost to “None of these Candidates.” Trump ran only in the caucus and won all the Nevada delegates, bringing his total thus far to 63 delegates compared to Haley’s 17.

As for the polls, Haley now trails Trump by as much as 60 points in the aggregate. Even in Haley’s home state of South Carolina, where the primary is being held tomorrow (February 24), she is approximately 30 points behind Trump in the polls. It seems that today’s Republican Party is indeed a Trump cult.

It appears, therefore, that Haley has only one slim chance to defeat Trump: he would have to withdraw either for legal or medical reasons. However, Haley says that, even after a likely defeat in South Carolina tomorrow, she has no plans to quit the presidential race, and wants to fight on at least through Super Tuesday, March 5, when some 15 states (plus American Samoa) hold their Republican presidential nomination contests. For that, Democrats should be very grateful, because Haley has been hammering Trump on the campaign trail. Check out some of Haley’s attacks on Trump after the page jump:

What to do when the media ignore President Biden’s accomplishments?

President Joe Biden

This past Monday, President Joe Biden held an event at the White House where he unveiled a more than $42 billion investment in high-speed broadband internet around the country. According to President Biden, this funding comes from both the American Rescue Plan (signed into law in March 2021) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (signed in November 2021).  The President indicated that the legislation passed thus far included “$25 billion for high-speed Internet in places where it was out of reach, for schools and libraries to help students connect to the internet if they couldn’t do it at home.” Now, says President Biden, the new funding will “be distributed to 50 states, Washington, D.C., and territories to deliver high-speed Internet in places where there’s neither service or it’s too slow.” The breakdown of such funding includes, for example, over $3.3 billion dedicated to Texas, over $1.8 billion to California, and more than $1.1 billion for Florida.

The President’s broadband investment plan is designed to “connect every person in America to reliable high-speed Internet by 2030.” However, President Biden stated that:

[I]t’s not enough to have access. You need affordability in addition to access. That’s why we worked with internet service providers to bring down prices for Americans struggling with internet payments. It’s called the Affordable Connectivity Program. It’s helping 19 million families save around $30 a month on their internet bills, and some save a lot more.

In short, this was a very important announcement about something that improves people’s lives and helps individuals, students, businesses and others conduct their activities more efficiently. It’s great for our economy and will create jobs as well.

However, at least according to a number of people (such as Mastodon user Kailee @skykiss@sfba.social), “[n]ot a single news outlet aired President Biden’s event.” If that is the case, the fault lies in several places, including with the news media, the Biden administration, Democratic leaders in Congress and in the states, and elsewhere.

Republican overreaching may hurt them in 2024 elections

Younger activists, a major Republican fear

Republicans have a predictable pattern: even with government nearly evenly divided, they get drunk with power, use their votes to overreach with extreme policies, and wind up alienating voters in the next election. In June 2022, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court, with three new right wing Republican justices courtesy of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, voted along party lines to take away the right to abortion that had been established in the Court’s Roe v. Wade decision nearly 50 years earlier. This decision set off a firestorm among voters, especially younger voters, who showed up to the voting booths in droves five months later and gave the Democrats considerably better results (retaining control and actually winning a one-seat majority in the U.S, Senate, barely losing control of the House, and gaining state governorships and state legislature majorities) in an off-year election where the party in power usually does much worse.

Republicans, however, did not learn the lesson from the 2022 elections, i.e., that their extremism scared away voters. Instead, the GOP has charged ahead with even more extremist actions that could hurt them in 2024. These include:

Arnold Schwarzenegger YouTube video seeks to terminate hate and antisemitism

Anti-hate protest

On Monday, Arnold Schwarzenegger posted another stunning YouTube public service video, this time trying to combat “the rising hate and antisemitism we’ve seen all over the world.” A year ago, Schwarzenegger posted a YouTube video aimed at Russian citizens and soldiers, urging them to reject Russian lies and propaganda about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and to push for ending Russia’s illegal war. This time, Arnold points out that he recently toured the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, where 1.1 million men, women and children, most of them Jewish, were murdered. He said that, at Auschwitz, “the weight on your back hits you at the very beginning … and it never goes away.”

Then Arnold points out that “‘Never Again’ is the rallying cry of all the people who fight to prevent another Holocaust,” and asks, “how do we stop this from ever happening again?” However, Schwarzenegger says his video is not intended “to talk to those people” who already seek to combat hate, or “to preach to the choir.” Rather:

I want to talk to the people out there who might have already stumbled into the wrong direction, into the wrong path. I want to talk to you if you’ve heard some conspiracies about Jewish people, or people of any race or gender or orientation and thought, “that makes sense to me.” I want to talk to you if you’ve found yourself thinking about anyone as inferior and out to get you because of their religion, or the color of their skin, or their gender.

Schwarzenegger goes on to cite his own personal and family history, indicating, “I’ve seen enough people throw away their futures for hateful beliefs.” He then references his father, a Nazi Austrian soldier in World War II:

I’ve talked a lot about my father, and the broken men that I was surrounded by when I grew up in Austria after the Second World War…. But besides their guilt and their injuries, they felt like losers, not only because they lost the war, but also because they fell for a horrible, loser ideology. They were lied to and misled into a path that ended in misery…. they bought into the idea that the only way to make their lives better was to make other lives worse. [emphasis added]

Don’t fall for the Republican shock and awe

GOP House Speaker battle looked like this

Republicans don’t know how to govern effectively, but they do know how to grab the media spotlight. This was demonstrated during the recent Republican battle for U.S. House Speaker. After narrowly winning the House majority in the 2022 midterm elections, the GOP’s first task in the new year was to elect a Speaker. They failed miserably at this job, requiring a historic 15 votes before finally electing Kevin McCarthy.

But what seemed to get everyone’s attention were the 20 or so Republican House representatives-elect, many of whom are members of the so-called “Freedom Caucus,” who battled against McCarthy’s speakership, and at least one who fought on McCarthy’s side. The members who seemed to be on camera or in front of microphones all the time especially included Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. Others on hand to a slightly lesser extent were familiar names such as Lauren Boebert and Jim (“Gym”) Jordan, so nicknamed because of his alleged involvement in a sexual abuse scandal involving wrestlers at Ohio State University. We’re not going to mention these names again in this post. Such representatives are known more for being superficial blowhards who say outrageous things rather than for the often dull but crucial work of legislating.

In short order, the GOP House Speaker election became about Republican media stars rather than about policy and substance. Such camera-hogging tactics worked, as McCarthy reportedly had to make numerous concessions to these members in order to secure their votes. What we call the GOP Civil War, also known as Republicans in Disarray, was on full, ugly display. But we already saw how a media celebrity made it into the White House six years ago, and the disastrous results that followed. The last thing we should do is feed that shallow, destructive process again by focusing our full attention on those Republican media hustlers.

Republicans may wish they never win a tiny House majority

Is it Taps for the GOP?

As of now, the Republican Party can be fairly described as having failed miserably in the 2022 midterm elections. Considering that the party in power almost always loses many seats in Congress in the first midterms two years into a new president’s term, and given the headwinds of COVID, Russia‘s war against Ukraine, and the resulting high inflation in the U.S. and around the world, the Democrats wildly exceeded expectations of a sweeping Republican “Red Wave” this time. Specifically, the Democratic Party has retained control of the U.S. Senate with at least 50 votes (Vice President Kamala Harris can provide the 51st vote for the Democrats in case of a 50-50 tie), and it may even gain a Senate seat in the upcoming Georgia runoff election on December 6.

Additionally, Democrats have increased their number of state Governorships held, gained seats and majorities in state legislatures, defeated the Republican candidates for Secretary of State who deny the results of the 2020 presidential election (and who would have been in a position in charge of elections in their state to meddle in the 2024 elections), and, where abortion rights were on the ballot, voted to protect such rights. One only need to look at the current Republican Party meltdown, including piling on Donald Trump, to judge the political consequences of the midterms.

Nevertheless, the results of the midterm elections in the U.S. House of Representatives are still unknown. According to the Associated Press, Republicans have won 217 seats, Democrats have won 209, and the outcomes for the remaining 9 seats are still being tabulated. The magic number to gain majority control in the 435-member House is 218. Thus, a number of pundits and news media organizations are projecting that Republicans will win the narrowest of majorities, by approximately one to five seats. If that occurs, Republicans may wish it never happened. Here’s why:

In Ukraine, these three little letters mean a lot

Ukraine support rally

While reading this article from the World Bank regarding emerging markets, this sentence caused a major pause:

The invasion of the Ukraine has triggered an initial appreciation of the U.S. dollar against EM currencies ….

The Ukraine”? Haven’t we read and heard repeatedly that we shouldn’t use “the” because that feeds into the Soviet-era position that Ukraine is Russia’s territory, not its own nation? Hopefully the inclusion of “the” in the article was an oversight, and indeed there is a mention of “the war in Ukraine” earlier in the article. But often, articles from large organizations pass through more than one writer or editor, so it’s not clear that everyone at the World Bank is on the same page.

This is something to keep an eye on, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine involves not just military weapons, but weapons of words and propaganda as well.

Photo by Robert T Bell, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/DCaHhz

Anatomy of a Republican conspiracy theory

The Republicans’ positive plan

Nearly everyone knows that inflation is a problem, and that there are various proposals to solve it. However, some Republicans this year have been spouting a conspiracy theory: that the U.S. Federal Reserve is waiting until after the November 2022 midterm elections to raise interest rates, in order to help President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. While this is just the latest in a long line of right wing conspiracy theories about the Fed, this particularly silly theory can be easily debunked a few steps:

–The current Federal Reserve Board Chairman is Republican Jerome Powell, who was appointed by Donald Trump. This fact alone should be enough to destroy the conspiracy theory. Moreover, of the seven Governors on the Fed’s board, three are Republican, which is normal during a Democratic administration. And in addition to Powell, these other Republicans were also appointed by Donald Trump. Given that the Fed Board’s votes to raise interest rates this year typically have been unanimous, one would have to believe the truly ludicrous theory that these Trump appointees are voting to help Biden and the Democrats.

–As indicated above, the Fed has been raising interest rates all year long. The Federal Funds Benchmark rate, which started at .25 percent early this year is now 3-3.25 percent, enough to sharply raise mortgage, auto loan and other rates. So if the plan was to delay rate increases until after the election, the Fed has failed miserably.

Donald Trump impeached for third time

Next stop for Donald Trump?

Those who followed last Tuesday’s fourth hearing held by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol were treated to a stunning play-by-play of Donald Trump‘s criminal behavior in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The Committee impeached Trump’s character in every way.

Most devastating to Trump were the recordings of various telephone calls he, often accompanied by others such as Rudolph Giuliani, made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Arizona Speaker of the House Russell Bowers, pleading with them to entertain false claims of voter fraud, replace electors for Joe Biden with fake electors for Donald Trump, or “find votes” for Trump, all with the intent of overturning Biden’s election victories over Trump in those states. On such calls, Trump also made threats to these officials, such as threats of prosecution, for failing to follow through on Trump’s wishes.

While Raffensperger, Bowers and other state officials stood up to Trump, these calls by Trump were a big mistake, as he failed to insulate himself from criminal liability the way a Mafia don usually does, by letting others do his dirty work. As a result, Donald Trump faces a criminal investigation in Georgia, and members of the January 6 Committee say they have enough evidence to refer a criminal indictment against Trump to the U.S. Department of Justice. At minimum, Trump’s calls to Raffensperger and Bowers were as bad as his July 2019 phone call to Ukraine‘s President Vlodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump demanded that Zelensky investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter to help Trump in his 2020 election efforts, in return for the U.S. providing weapons to Ukraine so it could defend itself against Russia. That call to Zelensky led to Trump’s first impeachment.