The Voice of Liberalism from Main Street, not Hollywood Boulevard
Friday, January 13, 2023
Of course, this is a ridiculous claim by Donald Trump. But we already knew that Donald Trump is, as Al Franken might put it, a lying liar who tells lies, so the moral of the story lies elsewhere.
Donald Trump claims that the judges in Kari Lake's lawsuit ruled against her because they were being threatened. pic.twitter.com/vr0UNhiTPi
— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) January 12, 2023
It's a style being copied by other Republicans, including the most powerful Republican in the country (Leonard Leo being the most influential).
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Thursday defended his
decision to keep California Democrats Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff off the
House Intelligence Committee – arguing that Schiff "openly lied"
about the Russian election interference and a disturbing briefing he received
from the FBI on Swalwell.
"If you got the briefing I got from the FBI, you
wouldn't have Swalwell on any committee," McCarthy said in the press
conference after one reporter questioned MCarthy's commitment to allowing
Democrats to pick their own committee membership.
"And you're going to tell me other Democrats couldn't
fill that slot? He cannot get a security clearance in the private sector,"
McCarthy said. "So would you like to give him a government clearance?"
“Members of Congress are routinely provided with defensive
briefings to raise awareness of the potential for them to be targeted by
foreign adversaries,” a senior FBI official said Thursday in response to an
inquiry about Swalwell. “As part of this briefing, they are encouraged to alert
the FBI about any suspicious activity and to cooperate with any
investigation"...
An FBI official has previously defended Swalwell, telling
outlets in December that Swalwell was “completely cooperative” and “under no
suspicion of wrongdoing,”
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy intends to force a vote on
Swalwell’s committee post Thursday afternoon, contending that the Democrat’s
interactions with Fang disqualify him from holding the sensitive assignment.
Swalwell wouldn’t be eligible for a security clearance in the private sector
and shouldn’t therefore be granted access to national security secrets through
the intelligence panel, McCarthy argued at a Thursday press conference.
Asked to explain his push against Swalwell, McCarthy fell
back on classified information he says he received in an FBI briefing last
year. “I cannot talk to you about what I was given in a classified briefing,”
he said, adding that the public record of Swalwell’s relationship with Fang
should be enough to disqualify him.
McCarthy was singing the same tune then as now but
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who unilaterally appoints the
Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee, has stood behind
Swalwell, saying she has “no concerns” about his actions.
House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff also defended
Swalwell Thursday, issuing a statement of support in a “Dear Colleague” letter
aimed at rallying the Democratic caucus to his side. Schiff noted that
Republicans — including the panel’s current ranking GOP member Devin Nunes of
California and then-Speaker John Boehner — were briefed on the matter in 2015
and raised no concerns about Swalwell’s ability to continue serving on the
committee.
When briefed on the matter, Democrats weren't worried.
Neither was the Republican Speaker of the House nor Devin Nunes, who became
such a supporter of President Trump that he would eventually resign from the
House to become CEO of Trump's Truth Social platform.
It's time for Kevin McCarthy to put up or shut up. If he has
damaging information on Representative Eric Swalwell, he should not keep it
from voters in California's 14th Congressional District.
He won't, however. He's rather slander (not in a strictly
legal sense, but still) a Democrat just as his hero, Donald J. Trump, does,
making wild charges without presenting any evidence. It's a feature of the Republican Party now,
where truth is not only optional, but a virtue to be avoided at almost any
cost.
To my friends in the media… it is called “receipts”… stop giving performance artists a venue to preach moderation & then vote extreme! She still voted for the damn bill!!! https://t.co/GTVpMmeUyj
Mace first stated "I'm pro-life but the vast majority of people in my district did not agree with Roe being overturned." Although Mace is not "pro-life" but anti-abortion rights, this is largely accurate because the record indicates that she has no problem with access of women to contraception. However, after these first words, the congresswoman strung together a few self-admiring sentences, remarking
And I'm pro-life but the vast majority of people in my district did not agree with Roe being overturned. We would town hall after town hall trying to find and talk about that common ground and not race to the fringes and I would ask my colleagues "you know, show some compassion to women. Show compassion especially to rape victims or girls who are victims of incest, uh, you know we've got to show love and compassion even when we disagree and not act liked (?) sometimes, which is what we do on some of these issues because we want to beat our chests. We want the base to love us but I've just chosen this election- I had two big elections this year- a primary, a big primary and a big general election that you can stick to your principles and values. You can find middle ground and you can win big and that's the lesson I learned that many of my colleagues haven't quite figured it out yet and I am very worried about our agenda. Uh, I know there are other swing district Republicans that want to stay in the majority and we're going to have to be vocal sooner rather than late. We're going to have to come together and find a dozen of us who are going to put a stop to this when it happens.
Remarkably, Representative Mace said all this without coming up for air and- as is Harrison's point- without a whit of challenge from co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski (Scarborough).
Mace herself has leapt to the challenge of beating one's own chest, having already introduced a bill which would require Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his staff "to fly commercial... until the issues with Southwest and the FAA are investigated and resolved." Performative behavior is alive and well in the GOP caucus.
On Wednesday, Representative Mace voted for two measures proposed by fellow Republicans, and approved, in the House. According to ABC News, one "would condemn violence against facilities, groups and churches opposed to abortions" and the other "would mandate health care providers give care to an infant that is born alive after a failed abortion."
Democrats actively oppose any law guaranteeing exportation of plants/vegetation to Jupiter.
Keep telling us about sh*t that doesn’t happen, bruh. You’re doing great. https://t.co/zoeiLamvM5
If passed by the Senate (which it won't be) and signed by the President (which it wouldn't be), this measure would at best be inconsequential. On August 15, 2002 the Born Alive Infants Protection Act was signed into law by President Bush, who contended it "ensures that every infant born alive- including an infant who survives an abortion procedure- is considered a person under federal law."
Of course, once the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade and awakened the nation's pro-choice majority, the congresswoman would conceal her record. In a general election debate last October against her Democratic opponent, Mace claimed "she just said that I supported and signed on to a bill that would ban all abortions without exceptions. That's a complete and utter lie. The word 'abortion' isn't even in that bill."
Mace had not been a co-sponsor. However, the bill, later signed into law by the Republican governor, included the word "abortion" sixty-two (62) times. And, oh yea, the title.
As suggested by Jaime Harrison, Nancy Mace is a performance artist who preaches moderation when politically advantageous but refuses to challenge her party's effort to force a woman into giving birth. She's given license by news hosts anxious to convince the public that there are two Republican parties: one "conservative" and one "moderate." Although a small majority of Republicans is mainstream and a large majority sympathetic to insurrection, there is ideologically only one, extremely conservative, Republican Party.
Fourteen months ago, the University of Missouri-Kansas City
Women's Center explained
a term coined by the late PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill, refers
to the mainstream media’s seeming fascination with covering missing or
endangered white women, and its seeming disinterest in cases involving missing
people of color...
Zach Sommers, a lawyer specializing in race, crime, and
media coverage, did an entire study on this phenomenon, and he believes it’s
influenced by money. “Sommers speculates that there’s also the economic
calculus of news coverage to consider: in skewing this type of coverage toward
white women, news outlets might be deciding that missing white women are worth
more in terms of eyeballs and ad revenue.”
I'm not sure whether by "people of color" the
author is referring to black; black and Latino;
black, Latino, and Pacific Islander; black, Latino, Pacific Islander,
American Indian/indigenous people; or whatever combination thereof. We get into
trouble when when assuming that each of these groups is the same or even has the
same interests.
Nonetheless, there obviously is more media coverage when a
white, rather than black, woman goes missing and UMKC Women's Center, rather
than assuming racism is to blame, correctly noted that profit should be
considered a possible motive. Consider that
An online fundraiser started by the Buffalo Bills safety
Damar Hamlin registered more than $4 million in donations just hours after the
NFL star suffered cardiac arrest during a game on Monday....
As condolences for Hamlin poured in from across the sports
world, fans also showed their support by pouring millions of dollars into a
charity that Hamlin started in 2020, shortly before he was picked in the sixth
round of the 2021 NFL draft.
That's quite an impressive response, especially compared to
the relatively muted response following a horrible shooting four days later
This is Abby Zwerner.
She is the teacher who police say was intentionally shot by her 6-year-old student Friday during an “altercation” in the classroom at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Va.
City’s mayor says Zwerner is stable at the hospital.
The Fox News broadcaster in Orlando, Florida deserves credit
for tweeting the name and picture of the little-known victim of a shooting.
There are many differences between Abby Zwerner and Damar Hamlin, but a few
similarities, the most obvious that both were taken to the hospital and were
identified as being in critical condition.
Americans everywhere are being implored to offer
"thoughts and prayers" for Damar Hamlin. There has been no such
intervention for Abby Zwerner. Surely, one reason is that the hit on Hamlin and
his collapse a moment later were televised, which millions of people watched
live and millions more viewed on social media.
The Hamlin incident was particularly frightening because he
suffered cardiac arrest, which strikes hundreds of thousands of Americans each
year, almost always fatally. That's far more than who are struck by bullets-
even in Louisiana, Alaska, Missouri, and other Republican states- and cardiac
arrest typically occurs without warning. People can relate to this tragic
event- which, unlike a shooting, is solely a tragedy and not a crime.
Moreover, Hamlin is a football player and people admire
professional athletes, justifiably insofar as it is motivated by a recognition
that they can do what you and I (and probably everyone we know) cannot do.
However, they also are worshipped, which is never a good thing, whomever they
may be. Americans are free to worship the God or gods of their choice (or none
at all) but should venerate no one else.
Yet, there is a more important lesson to be taken in all
this. They're not the same color.
That is obvious, and probably plays no role in the far
greater attention paid to Hamlin. Yet, the UMKC Women's Center quotes the late
Gwen Ifill citing the media's "seeming disinterest in cases involving
missing people of color.”
We should have realized that factors other than race per se
very likely play a greater role in the disparity in missing persons cases. They
probably do also in other incidents which pierce and penetrate the nation's
conscience. Now, thoughts and prayers pile up from people who assiduously avoid
prayer while millions of dollars are sent to a foundation virtually no one cared
about ten days ago. Abby Zwerner, though, remains a relatively unknown and
little-recognized figure and that is a stain on our national culture.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) praised former President
Trump and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) for pushing him over the finish line and
helping him secure the gavel.
He gave the two credit for convincing each of the six
remaining Republican holdouts — of which Gaetz was one — to vote “present” on
the 15th ballot, lowering the number of votes McCarthy needed to win.
Wisely, if a little unfairly, there was one individual
McCarthy chose not to thank for helping his win his battle for Speaker of the
House. CNN reported
Before the final vote, pandemonium erupted on the House
floor after Gaetz waited until the very end of the 14th ballot to vote
“present” when McCarthy needed one more “yes” vote. Stunned after believing he
had the votes, McCarthy faced his most embarrassing defeat yet. McCarthy’s
allies encircled Gaetz to try to find a way forward. McCarthy soon made a
bee-line for discussion and started engaging Gaetz, too.
After McCarthy walked away from Gaetz, looking dejected,
Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers moved toward the conversation and lunged at
Gaetz, having to be physically restrained by Republican Rep. Richard Hudson of
North Carolina. Rogers, a Republican from Alabama who earlier in the week
warned the GOP dissidents they would lose their committee assignments, told
Gaetz he would be “finished” for continuing to wreck the speaker’s vote.
Representative Patrick McHenry, a loyal McCarthyite, moved
to adjourn the chamber until Monday and a majority voted to adjourn when
with less than a minute left to go in the vote, Gaetz moved
toward the front of the chamber, grabbing a red index card to change his vote
on adjournment. Gaetz walked toward McCarthy, and the two briefly exchanged
words. McCarthy then raised his hand and yelled out, “One more!” as he
triumphantly walked toward the front of the chamber to change his vote, too. It
was the GOP leader’s final negotiation capping an emotional roller coaster over
the course of four days as he was held hostage by a narrow faction of his
conference. Dozens of Republicans followed McCarthy and Gaetz to defeat the
adjournment measure, and McCarthy’s victory, at last, was at hand.
The six Republican holdouts all voted present on the 15th
ballot, giving McCarthy a 216-212 victory...
Gaetz changed his vote for some reason or another but it
appears not to have been any additional concessions he gained from the cowardly
and superficial McCarthy because Gaetz admitted “I ran out of things I could
even imagine to ask for.” If those
concessions had been sufficient for the Floridian to vote for McCarthy, he
would already have done so. Instead, after denying a victory for the latter on
the 14th ballot and voting for an adjournment which would have given the
anti-McCarthy forces a chance to regain momentum over the weekend, Gaetz
changed course.
We'll never know the reason definitively because unsurprisingly, no one wants to 'fess up. However, CNN correspondent Melanie Zanona (as seen at 4:59 of the
video, with subtitles, below) has stated
And so Kevin McCarthy was completely dejected. We saw him
walk up the aisle toward where Boebert and Gaetz were sitting and pleading with
them to vote for him. He was in a moment of desperation.
Not to worry, Kev. Your muscle is on its way:
And then he saw Mike Rogers coming up from him behind the
well, coming down the aisle. And this is the one- he's a chairman, uh, he's a
close McCarthy ally. he has been growing frustrated and more frustrated with
the holdouts all week. So that is important context. In fact, we are told that
he had threatened to kick some of the holdouts off of their committee
assignments if they didn't fall in line. So he was frustrated. he came down the
aisle and sources told Annie Grier that he basically said "Matt, you're
finished" to him and at that point, Hudson, another member, he came up
behind him, sort of muzzled both and tried to hold him back so he wasn't able
to speak any more.
Well played- so well played that one is tempted to wonder
how Rogers, born in Indiana but raised in Alabama and representing one of its
congressional districts, so effectively exhibited the ways of La Cosa Nostra, an
organization always far less influential there than in the urban Northeast,
Midwest, Florida, and Texas.
"Matt, you're finished" is so vague and
threatening that Representative Gaetz probably was unclear what exactly Rogers
was referring to, and didn't want to find out. And Representative Hudson holding Rogers back was a nice
touch, a fine portrayal of a good cop, bad cop routine. It was almost as if it
had been choreographed, which cannot be determined because cable news networks
are disinterested in an event once the video becomes stale.
You can catch more bees with honey than with vinegar, the
cliche runs. Not being a bee, Gaetz was
insufficiently moved by the favors granted him by Kevin McCarthy and became motivated only when a southern
colleague issued an unspecific threat of political, personal, or professional injury.
"Everyone has a plan," Mike Tyson once noted, "until they get
punched in the mouth."
Matt Gaetz got punched in the face and his plan went out the
window, which may be a message for Democrats as they ponder how to deal with
the new GOP majority in the House.
This is incredible. It's truly outrageous. But we've been programmed to care more about Skip Bayless' harmless tweets than a president lying about the death of a police officer. https://t.co/686OG9NkKM
Beginning at 15:45 of the YouTube video below, President
Biden can be seen stating
Today is a ceremony to honor the heroes of January 6. We
also recognize the late U.S. Capitol police officer Billy Evans. His family is
with us today.
Three months after January 6 while they were still cordoning
off the Capitol because of threats by these sick insurrectionists continuing to
be profligated (sic) on the Internet- again, all America saw when Officer Evans
was killed defending the checkpoint it had to go through to get up to the
Capitol because of the Godawful sick threats that continue to move forward. The
whole world saw it. It's just hard to believe. It's hard to believe it could
happen here in America.
There is no reason to believe that more than a handful of
the insurrections were "sick." Inconveniently, however, Billy Evans
was no insurrectionist, possibly not even a right-winger. The Philadelphia Inquirer at the time reported
A Capitol Police officer killed last week when a man armed
with a knife rammed his car into two officers at a barricade outside the
Capitol does not appear to have been stabbed, slashed or shot, a police
official told The Associated Press on Monday.
Officer William “Billy” Evans, an 18-year veteran of the
force, died Friday after the driver rammed into the barricade near the Capitol.
The driver, identified as 25-year-old Noah Green, crashed into the officers and
the barrier, then exited the car armed with a knife and lunged at the officers
before police fatally shot him, authorities said....
Investigators are increasingly focused on Green’s mental
health as they work to identify any motive for the attack, a U.S. official
briefed on the investigation told the AP. Investigators have learned the
suspect had been suffering from delusions, paranoia and suicidal thoughts,
according to the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about an
ongoing matter and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.
In online posts since removed, Green described being under
government thought control and said he was being watched. He described himself
as a follower of the Nation of Islam and its longtime leader, Louis Farrakhan,
and spoke of going through a difficult time when he leaned on his faith. Some
of the messages were captured by the group SITE, which tracks online activity.
President Biden did not lie. He did not explicitly claim
that Officer Evans was killed because of the "threats by these sick
insurrectionists." But he linked the attempted coup more closely than
justified- or reasonable- to the murder while reference to "these insurrectionists"
strongly implied that the culprit was one of the insurrectionists of 1/6/01.
"It's hard to believe it could happen in America,"
Biden remarked, thereby in that portion of the event honoring Evans clearly referring to the insurrection.
It would have been factual
and not misleading to say Evans "was killed defending the checkpoint it
had to go through to get up to the Capitol because of the Godawful sick threats
that continue to move forward." Nonetheless, the rest of the comment was unnecessary and misleading.
In
charging that Biden's remark was "incredible" and "truly
outrageous," Jason Whitlock
evidently believes that the President was trying to paint a false portrait of
the murder. As is almost universally
known and understood, the coup plotters and its participants were
overwhelmingly white and right-wing. By
contrast, Noah Green was a black man who may have been mentally ill or
disturbed and was a follower of the Nation of Islam.
We didn't need Joe Biden to describe the apparent killer. We
also didn't need him to try to sell this guy as someone associated with the
insurrectionists of January 6, 2021. The comments were reprehensible.
In the video below from October of 2022, The Young Turks' Ana Kasparian slams Republicans because they want to force a debt showdown to cut what conservatives luxuriate in calling "entitlement programs." At approximately 1:58, she shows a graphic from New York Magazine noting
Bloomberg's Jack Fitzpatrick interviewed seven Republican contenders to lead the House Budget Committee. They all said, with varying levels of specificity, that they plan to instigate a debt ceiling standoff to force Biden to accept cuts to retirement and health-care programs.
Those would be, respectively, Social Security and Medicare, which Kasparian recognizes as vital lifelines for most individuals and families. She adds (at 14:07)
I hope people understand why it's that they spend all of their time crying about CRT, which doesn't exist in grade school. Crying about trans athletes, when they can't even name a single trans athlete that's impacting anyone in their state. The reason why focus on these made up boogie men is to scare their own voters and distract from the fact they want to rob their own voters of programs they've paid into.
So true- and yet, in their own way, Democrats do something similar. They're not trying scare people to distract the attention of their voters from what party officials want to do. However, they try- successfully- to distract their own voters from what they should be doing by giving them some red meat- their own culture war hot button issues.
Today we protected marriage equality in the U.S. Senate.
Putting aside the Senator's obvious problem with English grammar- the concern was not marriage equality in the US Senate but marriage equality in the country- the emphasis Klobuchar and some other Democrats placed on this was remarkable, and telling.
On November 29 the Senate passed the Respect for Marriage Act with 61 votes, including those of twelve Republicans. The Democratic-controlled House then passed the legislation, which was quickly and signed into law by President Joe Biden at a "triumphant White House ceremony." Notwithstanding Klobuchar's boast that the action "protected marriage equality," prohibition by any political jurisdiction of same-sex marriage already had been outlawed (in Hodges v. Obergefell) by the United States Supreme Court. The Respect for Marriage Act provides assurance that if the Supreme Court were to take up the same issue again and reverse its decision, a state which outlaws the union would be required to recognize the marriage of two men, or two women, conducted in another state. The law guarantees full faith and credit for same-sex and interracial marriages, and does little if anything else.
But that didn't stop many Democrats, Biden and Klobuchar only two of them, from touting the law and ignoring a far more urgent matter. Eight days prior to the Senator's triumphant tweet, Peter R. Orazag, former director of the Office of Management and Budget and the
Congressional Budget Office, explained
In October, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)
warned that Republicans are planning to use the debt limit as leverage to
demand spending cuts, potentially including Social Security and Medicare — cuts
that President Biden will not accept. Now that Republicans have won control of
the House and McCarthy is potentially the next speaker, the threat is real....
The debt ceiling — now $31.4 trillion, a level that stands to be pierced by the third quarter of 2023 — is an anachronism. Congress enacts changes to tax law and entitlement programs (such as Social Security and Medicare), and sets non-entitlement spending each year. These decisions, in turn, exhaust the policy levers available to control the level of U.S. government debt. (The evolution of debt is also influenced by the economy, market interest rates and other factors, but those are mostly outside the control of policymakers.) So having a separate limit on the permitted level of debt is redundant.
As the Government Accountability Office has written, “The debt ceiling does not control the amount of debt. Instead, it is an after-the-fact measure that restricts the Treasury’s ability to borrow to finance the decisions already enacted by Congress and the President"....
There are two ways to de-risk the situation in the lame-duck session of Congress. One is regular order, which would require the cooperation of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and a number of sitting Republican senators wise enough to join Democrats to address the issue now. But this may well not happen.
The other option involves a new budget resolution, which would facilitate using the reconciliation process to raise the debt limit, as was done in 1990, 1993 and 1997. This approach would require two votes — the first on the budget resolution and the second on reconciliation. It would take up about two weeks of Senate floor time, but it could be accomplished with only 50 votes.
Any Democrats averse to taking such a painful vote now should consider how much leverage their party will lose once Republicans control the House — and how much higher the risk of default will be then. It’s generally not a good idea to enter a negotiation with a ticking time bomb and a counterparty willing to let it go off.
The next two years will be turbulent in any case. The president and Congress can make them less risky by addressing the debt limit in December.
Nonetheless, the President and Congress did not address the debt limit then.Instead, as was reported a few days later, Senate Majority
Leader Chuck
Schumer said last week that he would like to “get a debt ceiling
done in this work period” but insisted that it would require Republican
support, effectively ruling out a go-it-alone approach that would allow
Democrats to unilaterally raise the debt limit. Speaking to reporters on the
same day, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said he didn’t think
Congress would take up the issue until “sometime next year”.
At that point and in the lame-duck session, Democrats- not Mitch
McConnell's GOP- controlled the Senate, in which an extension of the debt limit could
be approved by reconciliation, and the House of Representatives. Yet
Schumer said the Senate will take a final vote on
legislation to protect same-sex and interracial marriages when the chamber
returns after the Thanksgiving recess. Earlier this month, 12 Republicans
joined all Democrats to clear a major procedural hurdle that put the historic
measure on track to passage.
“Passing the Respect for Marriage Act is no longer a matter
of if but only of when,” he said in recent remarks. A version of the bill
passed the House earlier this year, with support from dozens of Republicans.
Schumer believed the Respect for Marriage Act would have passed in the
following Congress, anyway. By contrast, the earlier the debt limit is
effectively addressed, the less likely Republicans (who have taken control of the House, as was expected) will be able to hold it hostage, threatening the global economy, to cut Social
Security and Medicare.
The Republican Party is responsible for this problem. Taking
anyone or anything hostage is an impotent gesture unless the threat is credible,
and Republicans may be willing to take the economy down if Democrats don’t meet
their demands for policy which would slice and dice Americans who need Social
Security and Medicare. As Kasparian probably understands, Republicans may go on and on about critical race theory, trans athletes, or the other sexy issue of the moment, but they keep their eye on the prize, consolidation of wealth for the donor class.
The Republican Party is responsible for this problem. Taking
anyone or anything hostage is an impotent gesture unless the threat is credible,
and Republicans may be willing to take the economy down if Democrats don’t meet
their demands for policy which would slice and dice Americans who need Social
Security and Medicare.
But, hey, priorities are priorities. Democrats, who would like to protect the country from the mischief Republicans are planning, nonetheless focus on cultural issues of race and sex to keep their own base of voters engaged . And there are fewer greater priorities for them than making
sure that the sanctity of a same-sex marriage is respected.
Now, if the Supreme
Court takes up those unions, rules that states may prohibit them, and conservative
states such as Mississippi re-institute a ban, the marriage of a couple which decides to move from Massachusetts to Mississippi would still be recognized. And if next year the economy tanks or earned benefits plummet, we
can still celebrate Amy Klobuchar’s tweet, triumphantly.
Upon the 4th ballot on Wednesday , Representative Chip Roy of Texas rose to "nominate Byron Donalds as speaker of the House of Representatives." He made a few interesting remarks which little pertain to the matter of electing the chamber's leader.
At :44 of the video below, Republican Roy stated "Now here we are and for the first time in history there have been two black Americans placed into nomination for Speaker of the House." After polite, limited applause, members realized they were being prompted for a standing ovation, which they dutifully gave. It took them a moment but finally they realized that their colleague was offering them an opportunity to pat themselves on the back for being historically open-minded (and woke, ironically).
Having supported the notion that the two individuals to whom he referred, Republican Donalds and Democrat Jeffries, are to be judged in part by the race of their parents, Roy added (at 2:19) "we do not seek to judge people by the color of their skin but rather the content of their character."
Oh, give me a break. Neither Chip Roy nor any GOP U.S. Representative has, nor will, vote for one of those blacks, New York's Hakeem Jeffries, for Speaker. The other, Byron Donalds, has only two things in common with Jeffries: the color of his skin and the reality that he, too, will not be elected Speaker of the House.
Of course, in the manner of American politics, government, and anything which affects the American people, Donalds has far more in common with virtually every member of his caucus than he has with Jeffries.
Yet, an apparently sane and sober member of the United States House of Representatives, tasked with a select group with setting legislative policy for all Americans, has shamelessly and without effect brought race into the conversation, for which conservatives routinely criticize Democrats for in virtually their only justified criticism of political opponents. Not surprisingly, he then did an about-face, satisfied that no colleague nor member of the media would question his sincerity or consistency.
Roy is not an outlier, however. In the summer and early autumn of 2020, millions of Americans took to the streets to condemn the treatment of blacks by law enforcement and, to a lesser extent, the courts. It was generally understood that the mass incarceration so loathed by protestors and their supporters was engendered by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, celebrated by its sponsor as the "Biden Crime Act."
Approximately 23 years after enactment of legislation which, directly or indirectly, helped result in soaring incarceration rates for African-Americans, that same Senator Biden remarked "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is
articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a
storybook, man."
It was at the time, and for several years after, considered a gaffe, if not actually racist. But that was then, and in the presidential campaign of 2020, candidate Biden more than made amends: he pledged that his first nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court would be a black woman. It didn't matter, among black leaders, voters, or the mainstream media, who that individual would be or what she were to believe about anything substantive.
Nonetheless, Biden had made a gesture, the undergirding of racial politics. He also made vague promises on issues that would disproportionately affect blacks. However, his promise on a Supreme Court nominee was clear, specific, and much more widely publicized than anything else he inferred about race.
Chip Roy did the same on Wednesday. He made a gesture which, in an of itself, is nothing more. Nevertheless, that is how much of politics on the national level is today, in which symbolism typically dominates substance.
