The Incredible Republican Party Year -- So Far

Think about it. In about 2 months this year, it's nearly unimagninable what the Republican Party has done---has gotten away with, really. First, on Janurary 6, of course, the Republican Party President lead an insurrection, an attack on our nation's Capitol and our government resulting in death and harming fellow citizens.This from the supposed "law and order" party. Then, more recently, they followed that up just last week with voting down, every one of their members in Congress voting down a financial relief plan for the nation, for Americans during the worst, most killing, deadly international pandemic in the last more than 100 years. Incredible. Loet's hope, hope, they have now, with this last one, done their worst. For the rest of the entire year. Hey, we can hope.

Quote of the Day -- Republican Party Hypocrisy Edition

"While Trump was president, EVERY Democrat voted for the $2 trillion CARES Act, even though doing so helped Trump. While Biden is president, ZERO Republicans voted for the $1.9 trillion American Relief Plan, because hurting Biden is more important than helping Americans." -- Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen "The disconnect and hypocrisy of elected officials honoring front line, healthcare, daycare, grocery store workers, etc who many don’t make a living wage/$15 an hour, while simultaneously voting against a increase in the minimum wage is absolutely appalling." --Matthew Dowd @matthewjdowd

The Real Reason Republicans Are Against Biden's COVID Relief Proposal

Yes, the Republicans say things about being concerned about the budget and that's why they're proposing a smaller and honestly weaker COVID relief plan but Robert Reich gets this correct.

The Real Reason the GOP Don’t Want Biden’s Plan? They Fear It Will Work

Biden’s success would put into sharp relief Trump and Republicans' utter failures on COVID and jobs

A bit from the article:

Ten Senate Republican have proposed a COVID relief bill of about $600 billion. That’s less than a third of Biden’s plan. They promise "bipartisan support" if he agrees.

Their proposal isn’t a compromise. It would be a total surrender. It trims direct payments and unemployment aid that Americans desperately need. Biden should reject it out of hand.

Republicans say America can’t afford Biden’s plan. “We just passed a program with over $900 billion in it,” groused Senator Mitt Romney.

Rubbish. We can’t afford not to. Millions of people are hurting.

Besides, with the economy in the doldrums it’s no time to worry about too much spending. The best way to reduce the debt as a share of the economy is to get the economy growing again.

Beyond COVID relief, Biden has other proposals waiting in the wings, such as repairing aging infrastructure and building a new energy-efficient one. These would make the economy grow even faster over the long term—further reducing the debt’s share.

There’s no chance that public spending will “crowd out” private investment. If you hadn’t noticed, borrowing is especially cheap right now. Money is sloshing around the world in search of borrowers.

It’s hard to take Republican concerns about debt seriously when just four years ago they had zero qualms about enacting one of the largest tax cuts in history, largely for big corporations and the super-wealthy.

If they really don’t want to add to the debt, they have another alternative: A tax on super-wealthy Americans...

The total wealth of America’s 660 billionaires has grown by a staggering $1.1 trillion since the start of the pandemic, a 40 percent increase. They alone could finance almost all of Biden’s COVID relief package and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic. So why not a temporary emergency COVID wealth tax?

Let’s be honest. The real reason Republicans don’t want Biden’s plan is they fear it will work.

This would be the Republican’s worst nightmare: All the anti-government claptrap they’ve been selling since Ronald Reagan will be revealed as nonsense.

Government isn’t the problem and never was. Bad government is the problem, and Americans have just had four years of it. Biden’s success would put into sharp relief Trump and Republicans’ utter failures on COVID and jobs.

If Biden gets his plans through, he and the Democrats would reap the political rewards in 2022 and beyond.Democrats might even capture the presidency and Congress for a generation. After FDR rescued America, the Republican Party went dark for two decades.

Further proof new President Joe Biden's plans and ideas are good and positive? 

Bolstering Reconciliation Case, Study Shows $15 Wage Would Boost Federal Budget By $65 Billion

Added to this, Joe Biden has only been President just shy of 2 weeks and his popularity is soaring, by any comparison, whether to the previous orange President or nearly any other.

Biden's Popularity Is Surging 

This is how Americans feel on our most pressing issue of the day, too.

Poll: 73 percent say Biden administration will do a good job handling coronavirus vaccine distribution

Joe Biden won by such a large margin in this election and he's so popular presently, Republicans are moving in 28 different states now, again, to make it even harder for Americans---you and I--to vote. 

Republicans Push to Make Voting Harder

The fewer people vote, the more likely they, Republicans, can get into government office and stay there. Wrap your head around that.

So don't think for a moment anyone in the Republican Party is concerned just now about keeping the national debt lower. Oh, no. They're concerned for the their own political party and for their own power, nation and people be damned, as we keep seeing from them over time, repeatedly.

Additional links to further Republican Party ugliness:

All 10 GOP Senators Behind Skimpy $600 Billion Covid Relief Offer Happily Voted for $740 Billion Military Budget

Meanwhile, we can do this.

'We Have Got to Act Now': As GOP Introduces Weak Relief Bill, Sanders Says Dems Already Have Enough Votes to Pass Stronger Package

I say again, why anyone, anyone from the middle or lower classes considers themselves a Republican and votes that way is beyond me. WAY beyond me.

Additional links:

Trump Tax Cuts Helped Billionaires Pay Less Taxes

Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts Helped Super-rich Pay Lower Rate

Trump Tax Cuts Have Failed To Deliver On GOP's Promises

Study: Trump Tax Cuts Failed to Help Anybody But the Wealthy

Trickle-Down Economics: Four Reasons Why It Just Doesn't Work

Robert B. Reich: Trickle-down economics doesn’t work

Trickle-down theory is a monstrous lie

From the Frightening to the Hopeful Today

Heather Cox Richardson's latest summary. I think these daily updates of hers have become nearly required reading she does that great a job of summarizing where we are and what's happening of late, showing where we stand and where we might be going.

January 31, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson      Feb 1

The most prominent story these days is that the Republican Party is sliding toward a full-on embrace of authoritarianism. Former president Trump’s exit and ban from his favorite social media outlets has left a vacuum that younger politicians imitating Trump’s style are eager to fill by rallying people to the former president’s standard. 

Notably, Representatives Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have tried to step into the former president’s media space by behaving outrageously and becoming his acolytes. Gaetz last week traveled to Wyoming to attack Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), the third most powerful Republican in the House, for her vote in support of Trump’s impeachment. Not to be outdone, yesterday Greene tweeted that she had spoken to Trump and has his support, although neither her camp nor his would comment on her statement.

Republican state parties have also thrown in their lot with the former president. In Arizona, the state party voted to censure former Senator Jeff Flake, the late Senator John McCain’s wife Cindy, and Governor Doug Ducey for criticizing the former president. In South Carolina, the state party formally censured Representative Tom Rice for voting to impeach Trump, and Republican lawmakers are starting to consider stripping Cheney of her party position, a development that led former President George W. Bush to indicate his support for her this weekend. She has already drawn a primary challenger.

Across the country, Republican-dominated legislatures are trying to suppress the voting that led to the high voter turnout that fueled Democratic victories in 2020. According to the Brennan Center, which tracks voting rights, 28 states have put forward more than 100 bills to limit voting. Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, whose voters chose Biden this year after going for Trump in 2016, all have introduced plans to lower voting rates. So have other states like Texas, which have voted Republican in recent years but show signs of turning blue.

The former president would like to solidify power over the party, but he has his own problems right now. The top five lawyers in his team defending him against the article of impeachment in his Senate trial all quit this weekend. Trump apparently wanted them to argue that the attack on the Capitol was justified because Democrats stole the election from him. Recognizing that this is pure fantasy—courts have already thrown this argument out more than 60 times—which could put them in legal jeopardy, the lawyers instead wanted to argue that it is unconstitutional to try a former president on charges of impeachment.

Tonight, Trump’s office announced that David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor, Jr., will lead his defense. Schoen represented Trump advisor Roger Stone when he challenged his convictions; Castor was the district attorney who promised actor Bill Cosby he would not be prosecuted for indecent assault. The impeachment trial is scheduled to start on February 9.

There are signs that some Republicans have finally had enough of their party’s march toward authoritarianism, especially as pro-Trump Republicans grab headlines for their outrageous behavior, including shutting down a mass vaccination effort at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles for about an hour yesterday.

Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), a 2010 Tea Partier but now one of the ten Republicans in the House to vote in favor of impeachment, told Anthony Fisher of Business Insider that “My dad’s cousins sent me a petition — a certified letter — saying they disowned me because I’m in ‘the devil’s army’ now….”

Kinzinger announced today that he has started a political action committee (PAC) to finance a challenge to Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party. Calling Trump’s loyalists in the Republican caucus “political terrorists,” Kinzinger said in the video launching the PAC, “Republicans must say enough is enough. It’s time to unplug the outrage machine, reject the politics of personality, and cast aside the conspiracy theories and the rage.”

It also appears to be sinking in to Republicans that momentum is on the side of the Democrats. Biden’s executive actions have generally been popular, and his support for workers threatens to shift a key constituency from the Republicans to the Democrats.

Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus proposal offers to give to ordinary Americans, hurting badly from the coronavirus recession, the kind of government attention that has lately gone to wealthier Americans. Among other things, it calls for $1400 stimulus payments, extends unemployment benefits, provides funds for state and local governments, and establishes a higher minimum wage. While Biden has said repeatedly that he would like Republican support for this measure, the Democrats have enough votes to pass a version of it without Republican support.

This would put Republicans in the position of voting against a measure that promises to be popular, and at least ten Republican senators would prefer not to do that. Today, they offered their own $600 billion counterproposal, and asked for a meeting with President Biden to discuss it.

In their letter to the president, they hinted that they think the nation has devoted enough money to the economic crisis already, noting that there is still money unspent from the previous coronavirus packages. But they did not state that reasoning explicitly, perhaps recognizing that this argument will not be popular from people who voted for Trump’s 2017 tax cut, which disproportionately benefited the wealthy, when one in seven adults say their households don’t have enough food to eat.

“We want to work in good faith with you and your administration to meet the health, economic and societal challenges of the covid crisis,” the senators wrote. After years in which Republican senators refused to discuss bills with the Democrats, this is a change indeed.

But perhaps not enough of one. In the Washington Post, James Downie noted that a proposal that is less than a third of Biden’s package is not a compromise. It also cuts stimulus checks down to $1000, cuts supplemental unemployment insurance, gives no local or state aid, and kills the minimum wage increase.

When asked why Democrats should compromise rather than go ahead without them, as Republicans repeatedly did when they held the majority, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) told “Fox News Sunday” and CNN’s “State of the Union,” respectively, that Biden should honor his call for unity and that refusing to do so would kill future hopes for bipartisanship.

In an article in The Guardian today, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich dismissed Republican concerns about the national debt, noting that if they were worried about it, they could just tax the very wealthy. “The total wealth of America’s 660 billionaires has grown by… $1.1 [trillion] since the start of the pandemic, a 40% increase,” he noted. Those billionaires could fund almost all of Biden’s proposal and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic hit.

Reich suggested that “[t]he real reason Republicans want to block Biden is they fear his plans will work.” A successful government response to coronavirus, the economic crisis, inequality, the climate crisis, and poverty would devastate modern-day Republicans’ insistence that the solution to every problem is tax cuts and private enterprise. If Biden’s plans succeed, Reich wrote, Americans’ faith in government, and in our democracy, will be restored.

Tonight, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced that Biden has spoken with Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and has invited her and the other nine signers of the letter to the White House (we later learned they will meet tomorrow).

But Psaki’s statement did not give ground. It reiterated the need for fast action, and noted that “$1400 relief checks, a substantial investment in fighting COVID and schools, aid to small businesses and hurting families, and funds to keep first responders on the job (and more) – is badly needed. As leading economists have said, the danger now is not in doing too much: it is in doing too little. Americans of both parties are looking to their leaders to meet the moment.”

Trump and McConnell Sewing Their Own Electoral Doom for the Republican Party

This President Trump and Senator Mitch "Moscow Mitch" McConnell, at least, are helping insure Republican Party failure November 4 in this election. This is one more way they're making it happen. This story broke 2 days ago.

McConnell Won’t Support $1.8 Trillion White House Stimulus Bill—Even If Pelosi And Trump Make A Deal

A bit from the article.

With Pelosi and the White House still trying to find common ground between the $1.8 trillion plan and Democrats’ $2.2 trillion plan, McConnell added that he would not put a bill that large on the Senate floor for a vote.

Without support from McConnell and at least some of his Republican caucus, no deal that the White House makes with Pelosi stands any reasonable chance of becoming law. 

Meanwhile, this is going on, along with losing nearly 220,000 Americans, American citizens, to this COVID pandemic, their dying.

8 Million Americans Slipped Into Poverty Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, New Study Says

Researchers looked at the devastating financial effect the pandemic has had on Americans, with Blacks, Latinos and children faring the worst

Fortunately, here's yet another really great indication of how things are going at least in one state, if not nationally, too, for this President and the Republicans.

Trump throws in the towel in Georgia, says he won’t fundraise because “I just don’t want to do it”

And more locally, in Kentucky, this looks like it might well be a great indication of how things are going for that state and for control of the Senate the next 4 years.

One of Kentucky's largest newspapers endorses McConnell's challenger

Then, this story broke in the last day.

White House was warned Giuliani was target of Russian intelligence operation to feed misinformation to Trump

You would think that, after the 2016 election campaign when it looked very much like Russia and the Trump campaign colluded to get him, Trump, elected according to our intelligence agencies, you'd think Trump and his campaign would stay completely clear of even any hint of working with Russia yet here they are. Again.

He, Trump, said and did this earlier in the week.

Trump Rejects California Request for Federal Disaster Aid to Recover From Catastrophic Wildfires

During that state's worst wildfires in the state's history, he, Trump, this Republican Party President, turns down their, California's request for federal aid.  There went California.

Then the Motormouth in Chief said this:

Trump Says If He Loses Election "Maybe I'll Have to Leave the Country"

Can you imagine ANY OTHER President saying something like this? That's quite the patriot. It seems he's already trying to set the stage because he knows he'll be available for trying in a court of law.

Finally today, this week, a GOP Senator himself came out against the Orange Man.

GOP Sen. Ben Sasse unloads on Trump in campaign call

Suffice to say, ladies and gentlemen, things are not in any way going this President's way just now, nor is very much going the way of his/their political party.  And thank goodness.

So thanks, Mr. President.
Thanks, Senator McConnell.

Thanks, Republicans.

Y'all are terrific.

Apparently, if the entire nation were multi-millionaires, you'd maybe, maybe do your jobs and do something for us.

While things seem to honestly be going poorly for this President and his political party, there conversely seem to be quite a few good things going for Joe Biden, his campaign and the Democrats.

Hollywood gives Biden's digital campaign final star-studded push

Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez Endorse Joe Biden

Diddy Endorses Joe Biden, Launches Black Political Party 

86 45

BYEDON

#BlueWave2020

Incredible Development Today, Sure to Sink This President's Reelection Chance

 As with so many things of and about this President in the last 3-1/2 years, I can hardly believe what I'm reading today. This just broke.

Trump orders aides to halt talks on COVID-19 relief

He apparently, obviously no way realizes this will help sink his chances of reelection. He clearly seems to know nothing of our national election history showing that sitting Presidents virtually never get reelected in poor or bad economies.

In sharp contrast check out what someone else, aware and informed and adult but still from this administration has to say on this.

Powell warns of downward spiral of layoffs, recession without further coronavirus aid

Powell Urges More Stimulus From Congress, Citing ‘Strong But Incomplete’ Recovery

As proof of my claim for this article, check out the effect his, Trump's announcement is having on the markets.

Stocks drop after President Trump calls off stimulus talks

Meanwhile, pre-election polls, too, folks.

Biden Scores 14-Point Lead Over Trump in Poll After Debate

And note the source for that last story, last claim is from the very Right Wing, Republican Party supporting, ultra-conservative Wall Street Journal, too, folks.

It should be nearly all over but the crying for this President, folks. At least for him.

If not also his political party.

Thanks, Mr. President!

Vote!

And VOTE BLUE!!