Year: 2022
Biden Wants $30 Billion More for COVID Fight
$30 billion
“The Biden administration is telling Congress that it needs an additional $30 billion to press ahead with the fight against Covid-19,” the AP reports.Politico: “While the administration anticipates it has enough vaccines and therapeutics to ride out the Omicron surge, three people with knowledge of the matter said the government doesn’t currently have enough money to respond if another dangerous variant emerges.”
Study: Dems Are ‘Preachy,’ Focused on ‘Culture Wars’
“And the party’s House campaign arm had a stark warning for Democrats: Unless they more forcefully confront the GOP’s ‘alarmingly potent’ culture war attacks, from critical race theory to defunding the police, they risk losing significant ground to Republicans in the midterms.”
— Democrats’ own research shows that some battleground voters think the party is “preachy,” “judgmental” and “focused on culture wars,” Politico reports.
Election Fraudit Is Expensive
$550,000
Legal fees paid so far by Arizona Senate Republicans to defend their refusal to release records related to their “fraudit” of the 2020 presidential election. The Senate president has called lawsuits aimed at forcing the Senate to release the records “frivolous,” but judges have consistently ruled in favor of organizations who argue the Senate has failed to comply with Arizona law.
Trumpster Navarro Sputters When Asked if VP Harris Can Throw out Results of 2024 Election
HuffPost: “Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro apparently thinks it would have been OK for then-Vice President Mike Pence to challenge the 2020 election results, but not for current Vice President Kamala Harris to do the same in 2024. After claiming that Pence has the ability to throw votes that might be ‘suspicious’ back to the states, Navarro got into a bit of a tizzy when MSNBC’s Ari Melber asked him on Thursday: ‘It would follow, from your contention, that Vice President Harris should ultimately have the call over who should be president, regardless of the results in the next election?’…
‘It’s not for the vice president to determine who wins. The only thing Pence had the authority to do was go back to the states and let the states look at the votes,’ he said. Of course, Navarro ignored the most basic point of his plan: The votes can’t go back to the states unless a vice president like Pence or Harris goes along with the scam.”
Sarah Palin’s Perry Mason Moment
“I admit, at this point in her testimony, I was a little impressed. Palin in no way resembled the caricature I had in my head. She was confident, articulate, and—somewhat to my surprise—quite lucid. I’m not saying she was Stephen Hawking, but she at least evinced a sort of horse sense, paired with grinning charisma, that you could imagine might make her an effective mayor or governor. Then, about a half hour in, the wheels came off.”
— Seth Stevenson
New York City Set to Fire 3,000 Unvaccinated Workers
3,000
“New York City on Friday is expected to fire as many as 3,000 municipal workers who have refused to get coronavirus vaccines,” the New York Times reports.
US Senate Candidate in Louisiana Burns Confederate Flag in Campaign Ad
The Hill: “Gary Chambers, a U.S. Senate candidate in Louisiana who went viral last month for smoking a blunt in a campaign ad, burned a Confederate flag while decrying restrictive voting laws in his latest video released on Wednesday.
“In a one-minute video titled ‘Scars and Bars,’ Chambers is seen wearing a camo jacket as he pins a Confederate flag on a clothesline and ignites it with a lighter — right after he cites the famous Declaration of Independence line ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’
As the flag burns, the Louisiana Democrat argues that inequality lingers and ‘remnants of the Confederacy remain’ in the South. The candidate mentions gerrymandered districts and restrictive voting laws as “byproducts” of the Confederacy.
“‘The attacks against Black people, our right to vote and participate in this democracy, are methodical,’ he said. ‘Our system isn’t broken. It’s designed to do exactly what it’s doing, which is producing measurable inequity.'”
Fascists Hold an Old Fashioned Book Burning in Tennessee
Nashville Scene: “Last week, McMinn County made news when the school board voted to ban beloved graphic novel Maus — a Holocaust story told with anthropomorphic mice and cats — due to instances of swear words and nudity. While the vote happened in early January, it went viral following a report from TN Holler.
“Last night, Mt. Juliet pastor and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Greg Locke decided to turn it up a notch by organizing an old-fashioned book burning. The books included millennial staples like Harry Potter and Twilight — hits of the early Aughts that were targeted by Christian book burnings back in the day.
“In a sermon preceding the bonfire, Locke described beefing with ‘Free Mason devils’ and said ‘I ain’t gonna be ‘suiciding myself’ no time soon.’ Locke also said people aren’t mad that they were burning books, but mad because of the books they were burning — implying that his critics, even other pastors, were devil and witchcraft supporters.
“You can see the footage in Locke’s Facebook video of the event — the burning starts about an hour in.”
