McConnell and his Kentucky cronies tried to game the system and there’s no reason why Beshear shouldn’t turn Mitch’s clever little gambit right back on him. After Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) experienced his second freezing episode in five weeks, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) is decliningto say whether he would follow a state law requiring him to appoint a Republican in the event of a Senate vacancy. A reporter asked Beshear on Thursday whether, if McConnell were to step down, he would choose a replacement from one of three nominees selected by the state Republican Party, as the statute requires. “There is no Senate vacancy,” Beshear responded at the news conference. “Senator McConnell has said he’s going to serve out his term, and I believe him, so I’m not going to speculate about something that hasn’t happened and isn’t going to happen.” Asked whether voters deserve to know his stance on the issue, Beshear said he would not “sensationalize” McConnell’s health. Heh. Good one.
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He loved to dress up. Now he’ll be wearing a different costume: Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, former leader of the right-wing extremist group Proud Boys, was sentenced on Wednesday to 22 years in prison for his role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. Why it matters: Tarrio’s sentencing caps one of the highest-profile prosecutions related to the Capitol riot, and his isthe longest sentence handed down in the Jan. 6 cases. The previous highest sentencing record related to Jan. 6 was held by Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in May. Of note: Prosecutors had sought a 33-year sentence for Tarrio. Flashback: Tarrio was found guilty in May of seditious conspiracy related to Jan. 6, alongside other Proud Boys members. Tarrio wasn’t at the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot because he was arrested days earlier for vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church in D.C. in 2020.
The demagogue liar Vivek is the future of the GOP, god help us. But AOC is the future of the Dems — and they are very lucky to have her: Ocasio-Cortez, who at 29 became the youngest woman and youngest Latina to serve in the House of Representatives, is now 33, twice re-elected and comfortable in her political skin. She could hardly be described as an old hand but nor does she channel the shock of the new. She deploys social media with enviable authenticity; she grills congressional witnesses like a seasoned interrogator; she is an object of perverse fascination for Fox News and rightwing trolls; she has been around Washington long enough to draw charges of “co-option” and “selling out”. “AOC Is Just a Regular Old Democrat Now,” ran a headline on New York magazine’s Intelligencer website in July.
I’m not going to go into why that is a load of bullshit. The economy hummed along, no thanks to him but rather the recovery from 2008 finally reaching its stride. Our relationship with the world was nearing catastrophic. The border was a nightmare under him. We were still mired in Afghanistan and every day was some kind of chaotic catastrophe because this miscreant didn’t know what he was doing. This really takes some chutzpah: Not really. There are many more jobs now, manufacturing is coming back and the world is no longer terrified that the president is going to do something really stupid. But really, let’s take a look at where we were exactly three years ago today, shall we? When the pandemic hit he and his band of losers couldn’t even get masks and gowns to NY City while the morgues were filling up because he put his son-in-law in charge of “logistics” and he was clueless. Trump, meanwhile, was saying it was no big deal and if we got it we should take snake oil cures and inject disinfectant. On September 3, 2020: Trump’s answer to all that? On September 3, 2020 he had a rally in Pennsylvania.
Put up or shut up Holding firm to one’s convictions and principles is easy when they are not being tested. Thomas Paine spoke of it eloquently in December of 1776: “THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.” We live in such times again. We’ve simply traded Redcoats for red hats. We watched the latter sack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, ,2021 in service to a man and a movement that rejects the principles for which Paine and the Continental Army fought.
Of loss and Labor day and cultural shifts On Labor Day 2023, I’m thinking about the town of Canton, NC, just west of here. Their 100-plus year-old paper mill abruptly closed this year throwing over 1,000 workers out of their jobs. The mill was the town’s life’s blood. Now it’s gone. The city obtained the shift whistle from the mill as a reminder of the sounds that marked the days there for decades. People gathered downtown earlier this year to shed tears as the whistle blew for the last time. “This is not just 1,300 jobs; this is our blue-collar identity,” said Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers. Gov. Roy Cooper has pledged millions in support for the region’s displaced workers. Canton was also one of the few outposts of labor unions in the region. In March, Smathers told the Carolina Journal: “We’ve had a death in the family,” he said. “I had a mill worker tell me that. That’s exactly what it is and exactly what it feels like. Like a death, you just experience the numbness and shock of a sudden loss and that’s what happened out of the blue. I had to call the governor’s office and let them know.
Nor their cultural blemishes Predictions of calamity always attend change, be it cultural, economic or political. Preachers love to associate natural catastrophes with God’s judgement against unbelievers (until the storms and floods strike their own communities). Somehow, change always seems to bring out the doomsayer in us. So, it’s interesting that as church attendance declines, former churchgoers still maintain their sense of morality despite theocrats’ claims that that’s not possible. Daniel K. Williams writes in The Atlantic that, if nothing else, people shedding their churchgoing identities does not means losing their moral and political ones: So, as church attendance declines even in the southern Bible Belt and the rural Midwest, history might seem to suggest that those regions will become more secular, more supportive of abortion and LGBTQ rights, and more liberal in their voting patterns. But that is not what is happening. Declines in church attendance have made the rural Republican regions of the country even more Republican and—perhaps most surprising—more stridently Christian nationalist.
Outside the California State Capitol last month, a fitness trainer turned school board president fired up the crowd at a parental rights rally, telling them they were all fighters in “a spiritual battle” for their kids and must answer the call from God. Sonja Shaw, who was elected to the Chino Valley Unified School District board of education last November with an assist from a local megachurch and its Christian nationalist pastor, didn’t equivocate in naming the enemy: state Democratic officials who are challenging her right-leaning policies—and drafting laws that hinder book bans and protect teachers from harassment. “Today we stand here and declare in his almighty name that it’s only a matter of time before we take your seats and we be a God-fearing example to the nation, how God is using California to lead the way,” Shaw crowed, adding, “We already know who has won this battle. You will be removed in Jesus’s name!
Back in the day, presidential campaigns started on Labor Day — in the election year! And it wasn’t that long ago. I remember George Bush Sr saying, “I’ll get into on labor day” when asked when he was going to hit the trail in 1988. Sure, you have the conventions in the summer but the barnstorming and advertising didn’t really kick in until then. I’m not nostalgic about much but that’s one thing that was better in the good old days. The permanent campaign is exhausting. Well, it looks as though Joe Biden is keeping with the tradition, sort of. he appears to have kicked off his presidential campaign in earnest today. He went after Trump directly: Maybe it’s just that everyone has accepted the fact that barring some unusual circumstance that knocks him out, Trump is the nominee and he has a record that needs to be attacked since he’s been out there saying his term was heaven on earth and people are starting to believe it. Good. As much as I wish we could ignore all this for a while, it’s time to engage and engage seriously.
Michael Luttig makes the case that the question of whether the 14th Amendment precludes Trump from running again will be decided shortly by the Supreme Court: I don’t doubt the Supreme Court will decide this. I do doubt that they will uphold the idea that Trump is disqualified from running. It would be the most shocking decision ever. And I don’t think anyone can even guess what it might mean politically. I have my doubts that it would end well but who knows?