THE 12 DAYS OF QUARANTINE - A Chris Mann Music Parody - YouTube

 

 THE 12 DAYS OF QUARANTINE - A Chris Mann Music Parody - YouTube 

POLITICO NIGHTLY: The Joe and Mitch show gets started

BY RENUKA RAYASAM Presented by Ford Motor Company MCCONNELL IN THE MIDDLE — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did today what President Donald Trump has not: He congratulated Joe Biden on winning the presidential election in November. McConnell’s recognition of Biden, along with his plea to Senate Republicans not to challenge the election results, was calculated. McConnell was careful not to alienate Trump — he waited an entire month after the election, until the Electoral College cast its votes — but he also surely wanted to protect his majority from voting to confirm the election results on Jan. 6. As Marianne LeVine and Melanie Zanona write, if the Senate were forced to deliberate the election results, most GOP senators would be going on the record against a president who values fealty above all else. The Senate majority leader even transmitted a message to the White House ahead of time that he would be congratulating Biden on his win over Trump, according to a source familiar with the matter, writes Burgess Everett. McConnell will have to work closely with Biden over the next two years, particularly if he leads a slim GOP majority. But he also has to work with Trump over the next few weeks: to pass coronavirus relief and a government funding bill and to win the two Georgia Senate runoff races. Nightly caught up with Senate reporter Marianne over Slack today to talk about the relationship between McConnell and Biden. This conversation has been edited. How well do McConnell and Biden know each other? Both men have referred to each other as “friends.” And McConnell was the only Senate Republican to attend Beau Biden’s funeral. Have they spoken since Election Day? Biden told reporters that he spoke to McConnell today and thanked him for this floor speech. It’s not completely clear if they’d spoken before that. Biden at a recent press conference declined to say whether he’d spoken to the majority leader, prompting some speculation in Twitterverse. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell conducts a news conference in the U.S. Capitol after the Senate Republican Policy luncheon. | Getty Images Do you think this will translate to the pair hashing out deals? Their long-standing relationship is likely to help in the sense that they seem to understand each other. Both men worked closely together while Biden was vice president. For example, in 2012 Biden and McConnell reached a bipartisan compromise on the fiscal cliff. But the Senate has only become a more partisan institution and while bipartisanship was a big part of Biden’s campaign pitch, it’s hard to know how much appetite for that there will be. McConnell’s moves will be guided by a desire to protect his majority in 2022. What does this mean for Biden’s agenda? The first test will be how McConnell handles Biden’s Cabinet appointments. McConnell and Biden are likely going to have to work together on spending deals and coronavirus relief, but outside of that it’s hard to say. Infrastructure is another area where Republicans and Democrats could potentially find common ground. But all of that may be the extent to which we’ll see collaboration. Democrats, for example, are wary of how McConnell will handle any judicial nominees Biden puts forward. Other predictions? I’ve learned with McConnell not to try to predict beyond what he says. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Very excited for the El Paso Chihuahuas to play again. Reach out at rrayasam@politico.com , or on Twitter at @renurayasam. A message from Ford Motor Company: Embrace Change. You don’t become a 117-year-old automaker in this country by refusing to change. The Ford Motor Company does not resist, deny or ignore change. We pledge to make our most iconic vehicles electric. To use 100 percent renewable energy across all global manufacturing plants by 2035. To stand for lower greenhouse gas emissions. To stand with Americans and for the planet.   FIRST IN NIGHTLY LET’S MAKE A DEAL — Biden named Louise Terrell director of his White House Office of Legislative Affairs late last month — making her the president’s chief ambassador to Congress at a moment when Washington seems all but ungovernable. By even the most charitable analysis, he’s handed Terrell a brutal job. Though little known even in Washington, running the Office of Legislative Affairs is a tough, political, often fraught job. It’s about drafting bills big enough to matter and narrow enough to pass, nudging legislation to friendly committees of jurisdiction, judging which chairs work best with a long leash and which need constant wrangling, knowing which members need which amendment, and which ones just want an invitation to a White House movie screening, writes Nancy Scola for POLITICO Magazine. If Terrell does make it work, she’ll have two assets: One is that her boss, who spent 36 years in the Senate, treasures the relationships he built there, and is far more of a dealmaker than Barack Obama, as senator or president, ever was. Terrell first worked for Biden as a Senate staffer back in 2001, when he was a member of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. Washington insiders who’ve worked with both of them see her as very much in his mold. The other is her own web of connections. Though she hasn’t worked in official Washington since the start of 2017 — most recently, she was the founding executive director of the charitable Biden Foundation, and is coming off a year-long stint at the consulting giant McKinsey — she has long relationships with a number of the key players in 2021, from Democratic senators to women’s rights advocates to a healthy helping of Republican lobbyists. But in 2021 that may not be enough: The president’s own party is riven by infighting, with a hair-width House majority that gives huge leverage to a handful of restive members on the left. The Republicans, meanwhile, have learned that saying “no” to Democrats gives them far more traction than saying “yes” to anything.   TOMORROW - TALKING TRANSITION WITH SENATOR CASEY: From Janet Yellen to Antony Blinken to Lloyd Austin, President-elect Joe Biden is building his Cabinet. What can we infer from Biden’s nominations so far? Which of his nominees will face the toughest confirmation obstacles in the Senate? Are progressives satisfied with his choices? Join POLITICO for our first Transition Playbook: Live edition featuring Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who will break it all down. REGISTER HERE.     TRANSITION 2020 FIRST ON POLITICO: GRANHOLM TO ENERGY — Biden will pick former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to run the Energy Department , the agency that would play a key role in helping develop the technologies needed to fulfill his pledge to move the country off fossil fuels, people with knowledge of the decision tell Tyler Pager and Zack Colman. Granholm, who served two terms as Michigan’s governor, is experienced in dealing with the auto industry — a potentially big advantage as the new president seeks to speed the rollout of electric vehicles and the network of charging stations needed to power them. THE CLIMATE CHIEF — Biden will name former EPA head Gina McCarthy as his domestic climate policy chief , placing one of the architects of Obama’s climate regulatory efforts at the helm of his strategy to put the country on a path to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, people familiar with the decision said. AROUND THE NATION MIDNIGHT TRAIN TO GEORGIA — In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, campaigns reporter James Arkin gives an on-the-ground look at what Georgia voters are thinking as early Senate runoff voting gets underway — and how visits from the president and president-elect are putting national politics front and center in the state. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast BIDENOLOGY Welcome to Bidenology, Nightly’s look at the president-elect and what to expect in his administration. Tonight, with news of Pete Buttigieg’s nomination to become Transportation secretary, we look at what the new administration has in store for DOT policy, and what’s in store for the former South Bend, Ind., mayor: Despite wanting to serve as U.N. ambassador, the 38-year old Buttigieg has landed at the Department of Transportation, a somewhat surprising choice for the 55,000 employee, $87 billion agency that oversees airspace, highways, pipelines and more. As Tyler Pager and Sam Mintz wrote today, South Bend is a city of just more than 100,000 residents, with a relatively small transportation footprint: “ South Bend Transpo, the local transit agency, has a fleet of 60 buses and has seen sinking ridership in the last few years. There’s an international airport near South Bend, but it’s run by the county.” Buttigieg did have big plans for the policy area during the presidential campaign: He was one of the first candidates with a detailed infrastructure plan. After the election, POLITICO’s Morning Transportation team reported on the initiatives the Biden team will now entrust Buttigieg to implement at DOT. First on the list: “The new administration is widely expected to implement a mask mandate for transportation, including airlines and public transit, Stephanie Beasley reports, although how he’ll do it remains unclear. ‘Biden could issue an executive order on the matter, or CDC could be empowered to exercise its broad authority.’”       FROM THE TECHNOLOGY DESK THE BLUEST CHECK — For years, Trump’s Twitter account has taken up an inordinate amount of our collective brain space. It’s where he’s made policy changes, made his feelings very known about every part of his presidency and even fired people. In the latest 2020 Check-In, Eugene Daniels talks with Nancy on how the president has used the social media platform, and what his future on Twitter looks like. THE GLOBAL FIGHT EUROPE’S STOCKING STUFFERS — EU citizens may be in for an extra special Christmas gift — their first coronavirus vaccine . The committee that’s expected to recommend a conditional marketing authorization for the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine will meet on Dec. 21, the European Medicines Agency announced today — which means official authorization could come a few days later. That meeting is eight days earlier than the previously floated Dec. 29 date, the latest day this year that the EMA said it would meet to decide on the authorization recommendation. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the news today, tweeting that it was “likely that the first Europeans will be vaccinated before end 2020.” Still, this approval would still come several weeks after the U.K.’s green light, and more than a week after the U.S. granted approval.   JOIN THURSDAY - CLOSING THE HEALTH CARE GAP: Another Covid-19 outbreak is taking a significant toll on the health of the Latino community. As President-elect Joe Biden prepares to assume office, how will his administration address the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on communities of color, particularly Latinos? Join POLITICO for a virtual conversation on the policy, economic and cultural barriers Latinos confront in accessing quality health care and how the pandemic can create an opportunity to identify solutions. REGISTER HERE.     NIGHTLY NUMBER 16,000 The number of progressive group Our Revolution supporters the organization says they have ready for “phone-banking, texting and door-to-door canvassing” for Nina Turner’s Ohio congressional campaign, according to executive director Joseph Geevarghese. Top progressive elected officials, groups and entertainers are throwing their weight behind Turner’s congressional campaign, setting up a clash between left-wing and establishment-oriented Democrats over a House seat in Ohio just as Biden is about to take office. PARTING WORDS HEAD COUNT — The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that between 330.7 million to 335.5 million people live in the country. The estimate is the first preview of a 2020 census count that has been plagued by the pandemic and by lawsuits. Yes, the count is important because it guides how $1.5 trillion in federal dollars gets doled out and which states could gain or lose congressional seats. But it’s also a look at how the country has changed over the past 10 years. Here are some things the census is expected show us: — If the population estimate is closer to the low end, it would be the smallest decade-long population growth since the first census in 1790, said William Frey, a senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy program at the Brookings Institution. Even if population growth is at the high end of today’s estimate, it would be the lowest decade-long growth since the 1930s, when the country was in a depression. The country is rapidly aging, fewer people are having fewer babies and immigration has tightened — especially during the Trump administration, Frey said. — For the first time the census asked people living together to define their relationship as “same-sex” or “opposite-sex,” which will provide the most comprehensive count yet of same-sex couples and where they live in the country. Expect the count to show that same-sex couples aren’t just clustered in big cities, Frey said. Still it could be another 10 years before the country has a better count of the country’s LGBTQ population. The Census didn’t ask about people’s sexual orientation or their gender identity, a proposal supported by the Biden Administration. — This year’s Census also allowed people who identify as white or Black to add more detail about their origins in a separate line so a person can fill in Irish underneath white or Ethopian under Black. For the first time the Census will likely show an absolute decline in the number of white people in the U.S. over a decade, Frey said. But the census approach to race and ethnicity has been criticized for a lack of nuance. Some want to do away with the race question, but it is more likely that the census will refine its approach to race with more subcategories. The Biden administration supports adding a new Middle East North African category to the count. A message from Ford Motor Company: Built for America. Ford is America’s auto company, assembling more vehicles and employing more hourly workers in the U.S. than any other automaker. With dealerships in every state, and more than 5,000 U.S. suppliers, Ford builds for America. As we look toward the future, Ford Motor Company is investing more than $11.5 billion to electrify our most iconic vehicles, like the Mustang and F-150. We are committed to using 100 percent renewable energy across all global manufacturing plants by 2035. We are proud of our strong U.S heritage and will continue to support our employees, customers and American innovation.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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RSN: FOCUS | Bernie Sanders: 'Congress Cannot Go Home' for Christmas Without Passing Stimulus Checks for Americans

 

 

15 December 20

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LACKING FOR DECEMBER: LARGER DONORS - So far for December larger donations, even those of one hundred dollars or more have been scarce. The volume of donations is actually up, but the dollar figures are down. Not everyone can make a larger donation. But it would really help. For your consideration, respectfully. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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FOCUS | Bernie Sanders: 'Congress Cannot Go Home' for Christmas Without Passing Stimulus Checks for Americans

Oliver O'Connell, The Independent
O'Connell writes: "Bernie Sanders is again urgently calling on his colleagues in Congress to pass direct stimulus payments to Americans before returning home for the holiday break."

Senator says Americans are facing economic desperation

“Congress cannot go home for the Christmas holidays until we pass legislation which provides a $1,200 direct payment to working class adults, $2,400 for couples, and a $500 payment to their children,” the Vermont senator said on Monday.

"This is what Democrats and Republicans did unanimously in March through the CARES Act. This is what we have to do today."

So far, direct payments to Americans are not part of the $908 billion bipartisan compromise deal being championed by other senators to help deal with the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Sanders argues that as a result of coronavirus, tens of millions of Americans are facing economic desperation.

“They can't afford to pay their rent and face eviction, they can't afford to go to the doctor, they can't afford to feed their children and they are going deeper and deeper into debt,” he said.

Despite many economists arguing in favour of individual stimulus payments as a method of keeping consumer demand going, their inclusion in any federal economic response does not look likely until after President-elect Joe Biden takes office in late January.

In an interview with Politico, Mr Sanders urged Democrats to reject the current bill being tabled by the bipartisan congressional group, describing it as “totally inadequate”.

He said it fell far short of what was needed being only $748bn and not the original proposal of $3.4 trillion.

“What kind of negotiation is it when you go from $3.4 trillion to $188 billion in new money? That is not a negotiation. That is a collapse,” the independent senator told the outlet. “We cannot go home until there [are] strong unemployment benefits plus $1,200 per adult, $500 per kid for every working person and family in this country.”

Mr Sanders has found support from the other side of the aisle — Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri agrees that relief checks should be part of any proposal, although the total cost of the bill would then be elevated to a point that would make conservatives unlikely to support it.

The current proposal is a $748 billion compromise spending bill and a $160 billion supplemental bill of state and local spending with a liability shield for companies.

Friday’s deadline to approve government funding gives Senator Sanders some leverage to push for the inclusion of stimulus checks.

A White House proposal to give Americans a $600 check was branded by Mr Sanders as “crap”.

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RUDOLPH THE LEAKY LAWYER - A Randy Rainbow Song Parody

 

RSN: FOCUS | Iowa Autopsy Report: DNC Meddling Led to Caucus Debacle

 

 

15 December 20

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SO FAR TODAY IS A, “WE GO BROKE DAY” - Only “2” donations for the day so far. That’s a bad start, a bad start means a bad finish and … we go broke. Funding for the work that RSN does is no joke. The basic budget that meets our operating costs has to be there or the process does, for sure break down. Thousands will come to RSN today. We need 30 donations to make it a decent day. Who? / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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FOCUS | Iowa Autopsy Report: DNC Meddling Led to Caucus Debacle

Tyler Pager, POLITICO
Pager writes: "Democratic National Committee meddling, combined with missteps by the state Democratic Party, were the primary drivers of the chaos that torpedoed the Iowa caucuses earlier this year, according to a new audit commissioned by the state party."

State party audit finds plenty of blame to go around.

The report, which was distributed to the Iowa Democratic Party State Central Committee at a meeting Saturday morning and obtained by POLITICO, identified a series of errors made by the DNC, IDP and the technology company contracted by the state party to build a reporting app to collect caucus results.

The February caucuses were overrun by foul-ups: The state party was unable to report a winner on caucus night, the mobile app to report results failed to work for many precinct chairs, the back-up telephone systems were jammed and some precincts had initial reporting errors. The state party chair, Troy Price, resigned in the wake of the debacle, which put Iowa’s status as the first in the nation nominating contest in serious jeopardy.

But the report pins the blame squarely on the DNC for the heart of the problem on caucus night — the delay in the reporting of the results. According to the report, the DNC demanded the technology company, Shadow, build a conversion tool just weeks before the caucuses to allow the DNC to have real-time access to the raw numbers because the national party feared the app would miscalculate results. The DNC’s data system used a different database format than Shadow’s reporting app, which caused multiple problems.

“Attempting to graft an entirely new software element onto the back-end reporting system at the proverbial eleventh hour is likely always going to be problematic, and it was ultimately the cause of a major problem on caucus night,” the report concludes. “Furthermore, the IDP was not involved in the development of this tool. The IDP simply permitted the DNC to direct the IDP’s vendor.”

The audit states the conversion tool had coding errors that spit out inaccurate numbers and caused confusion about the accuracy of the results, eventually leading to delays in reporting. But the state party’s app never malfunctioned nor was hacked, the report concludes.

“When the DNC’s database conversion tool failed to work correctly, it caused the DNC to wrongly stop the IDP from reporting its results, and the IDP’s entire planned reporting process was thrown into disarray,” the report says. “The DNC’s interjection was the catalyst for the resulting chaos in the boiler room and in the IDP’s attempts to manually collect and confirm caucus results by hand. If the DNC had not interjected itself into the results reporting process based on its erroneous data conversion, caucus night could conceivably have proceeded according to the IDP’s initial plan.”

The audit was conducted by Bonnie Campbell, the former attorney general of Iowa, and Faegre Drinker, an international law firm. The team conducted dozens of interviews with top IDP staffers, employees of Shadow and representatives from the Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg campaigns.

The DNC refused to participate in interviews by the lawyers who conducted the audit.

"Evaluating the nominating process always happens following the election so that DNC staff can remain focused on winning the general election, and this cycle that work helped contribute to President-Elect Biden's historic victory,” David Bergstein, a spokesman for the DNC, said in a statement.

The DNC said it offered to provide written answers so staff could remain focused on the work of the general election. The authors of the report declined that request, the DNC said.

Bergstein also defended the need for a “quality control check,” pointing to errors that were discovered in the initial caucus results. He also said Shadow was responsible for the technical issues.

Since 1972, Iowans have held the nation’s first presidential nominating contest, a position that has come under attack from Democrats who argue the state’s overwhelmingly white population is not representative of the country and therefore should not play an outsize role in picking the party’s nominee. Even before the botched caucuses, Democrats were calling on the party to reshuffle the nominating order and replace Iowa with more representative states.

Biden’s emergence as the Democratic nominee, after finishing in a dismal fourth place in the caucuses, served to ding the state’s reputation for picking presidents even more. Now, as the DNC and the IDP elect new leaders, the fight over the nominating calendar is likely to intensify in the coming months.

The audit also faults the IDP for waiting too long to develop the reporting application, which resulted in inadequate training and use. Many precinct chairs were unable to log into the app or faced other technical challenges, leading them to call-in their results.

The report notes the DNC contributed in part to the delay of the original app, saying the organization “aggressively interjected itself in all of the IDP’s technology endeavors,” primarily for cybersecurity reasons. The DNC was particularly worried about cybersecurity after foreign election interference in 2016.

But the report also blames the IDP for poor boiler room set-up and execution on caucus night, saying the party failed to train its volunteers on how to input data that was reported via phone and provide enough phone lines to handle the influx of calls after precinct chairs abandoned the application. Only 439 of the 1,765 precincts successfully submitted results on caucus night through the app.

The report says new requirements for caucus contests — passed by the DNC in order to improve transparency and accessibility, such as the mandatory reporting of the first and second alignments of caucusgoers — contributed to problems. In particular, the audit points to the difficulties the state party faced in increasing participation while avoiding any processes that were similar to primary voting because of New Hampshire’s insistence on being the first primary state in the nation.

“The DNC has certainly taken the position that there should no longer be caucuses in any state and has imposed requirements that make it even more difficult to carry out caucus,” the report concludes.

Bergstein, the DNC spokesperson, said the organization’s reforms were successful in increasing transparency and participation, and the DNC will go through another review process in the coming months.

“Every four years, the DNC looks back at what worked and what didn’t work and the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee will continue to evaluate all areas of our nominating process and make recommendations for any changes,” he said in a statement.

The state party and its leadership also failed to communicate effectively with the media, the report says, exacerbating the reporting problems. News organizations were given a clear indication that results would be out on caucus night — the delayed release of data simply created more chaos and confusion.

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RSN: FOCUS: Ted Glick | Civil War?

 

15 December 20

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FOCUS: Ted Glick | Civil War?

Ted Glick, Ted Glick's Website
Glick writes: "I can't remember ever hearing the two-word phrase, 'civil war,' as much as I've heard it over the past year."

Yesterday, at the latest, post-election, Trump-forever rally in downtown Washington, DC, the Washington Post reported that “podcaster David Harris, Jr. riled the crowd by suggesting if there were a civil war, ‘we’re the ones with all the guns.’”

This followed news reports that ultra-rightist Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, the day before, “posted photos taken inside the White House gates on the conservative platform Parler, adding that he had received a ‘last minute invite to an undisclosed location.’” White House officials denied that he had met with Trump or anyone else.

Is it realistic that Trump would have such a meeting? I’d say yes, given his desperation after all of the Supreme Court justices, including the three he appointed, summarily dismissed his latest loser lawsuit, clearing the way for the Electoral College tomorrow to officially elect Biden/Harris.

A desperate, anti-democratic, authoritarian, narcissistic, emotionally-depressed would-be dictator, with nowhere else to turn, could turn to extra-legal, extra-parliamentary action.

After all, in the months leading up to the November 3 election, he repeatedly and consistently declared that the elections were rigged. He called upon his supporters on election day to jam up polling sites. At the September 29^th Presidential debate he said, "I am urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully, because that's what has to happen. I am urging them to do it."

Did any of this happen on November 3? Apparently very little, if any. If it did it sure hasn’t been reported anywhere that I’ve seen, and you’d think it would be.

The fact is that for all of Trump’s bluster and bombast, for all the tens of millions of people who voted for him, the fact is that the November 3 election, held during pandemic times, was possibly the fairest, most transparent and most successful Presidential election ever. Masses of people were willing to vote for Trump, and to turn out for his rallies, but the evidence so far indicates that the percentage of those supporters willing to go beyond that is very small.

This is a critical point when it comes to the question of “civil war.”

Is the country very divided ideologically? Yes, although there’s a definite majority of voters, 51-47%, who support a center-left orientation.

Has Trump inflamed and hardened those divisions? Yes.

Is it therefore more possible than in the past that those divisions could lead to increased physical attacks on the Left and others by ultra-rightist, armed militias? Yes, but what the new Biden/Harris administration does about them is very key. If the federal government, acting via the FBI and the Justice Department, is willing to investigate and prosecute groups doing so, similar to what was done this summer when a plot to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was discovered, it seems to me that this will definitely tamp down the domestic terrorism threat.

But more than this is necessary. What is needed is for a Biden/Harris administration to move to seriously enact policies on a wide range of issues that clearly and unmistakably are intended to improve the lives of working class people of all races and nationalities, urban, suburban and rural. There must be a willingness to take on the billionaire class and the deep-seated economic inequality that disproportionately affects people of color but affects people of all colors and cultures. We need Green New Deal-type initiatives and just transition policies that create jobs in the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors for the currently un- and underemployed and for workers displaced from a shrinking fossil fuel industry. We need a wealth tax on the 1% and shifting money from the military budget to programs that benefit working people.

In many ways, this is the harder work, given Biden’s historic ties to transnational corporations and the influence of the 1% over the dominant forces in the Democratic Party.

The Left must work with the Biden/Harris administration, but it must also be willing to speak up and bring pressure, including public pressure via action in the streets, nonviolent direct action, hunger strikes and more for a genuine people’s program. It is not an extreme statement to say that to the extent this does not happen, to that extent will popular disillusionment grow, the Trumpublicans be given political openings and the armed rightist militias be empowered and grow.

Let’s work to support Democrats Warnock and Ossoff in Georgia January 5 as we keep building a unified, grassroots-based, issue-oriented people’s movement, the prerequisite for forward progress after our historic defeat of Trump.

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