babylonsister

babylonsister's Journal

November 23, 2021

Biden to Tap Strategic Petroleum Reserves

https://politicalwire.com/2021/11/23/biden-to-tap-strategic-petroleum-reserves/

Biden to Tap Strategic Petroleum Reserves
November 23, 2021 at 6:36 am EST By Taegan Goddard

Politico: “The Biden administration is expected to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves in coordination with other nations in the coming days in a bid to tamp down the recent increase in gasoline prices.”

November 23, 2021

Report: January 6 Organizers Threw Back Champagne and Charcuterie as the Capitol Was Attacked

Capitol Attack
Report: January 6 Organizers Threw Back Champagne and Charcuterie as the Capitol Was Attacked
Apparently, bubbly and cured meat pair well with insurrections.
By Bess Levin
November 22, 2021

snip//

According to text messages obtained by Rolling Stone’s Hunter Walker, as law enforcement officers “were in their third hour of battle with supporters of former president Trump on the steps of the U.S. Capitol,” a conservative activist who’d organized the major pro-Trump rally that came before the violence was busy ordering hors d’oeuvres and drinks to her hotel suite. Having apparently been distracted during “the chaos of the event this morning,” Amy Kremer allegedly wrote to fellow organizers that she’d made the executive decision to just call room service at the Willard InterContinental hotel—the same one that served as a “command center” to overturn the results of the 2020 election—rather than wait to get everyone’s individual requests. (Rolling Stone reviewed the text messages in question on “a phone where they were originally received and timestamped.” According to Walker, “The messages from Amy Kremer and her daughter, Kylie Jane Kremer, came from phone numbers that have been used by both women.”) “We ordered dinner again tonight,” Amy Kremer told the group chat. “Sorry, but we forgot to take orders in the chaos of the event this morning, so we just ordered the same thing as last night. I figured that was better than not eating. Lol. Cheese & Charcuterie should be here at 6PM and dinner around 7PM.”

What was on the menu for dinner? Only the best for Trump’s merry band of election deniers. Per Rolling Stone:

An emergency curfew took effect and National Guard troops arrived at the Capitol to clear the remaining crowds at roughly the same time Kremer and her fellow organizers received their cured meats. Three sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the ongoing investigations into the rally, told Rolling Stone that, along with food, people were drinking Champagne in the suite while rioters skirmished with law enforcement at the Capitol complex.

The text messages [also] include[d] a menu for a dinner for the organizers on the night before the rally. Menu options included a “Willard Burger” with truffle aioli, red-wine-braised Angus short rib beef bourguignon, steak frites, and a salmon filet with aged balsamic. Based on Kremer’s text about the charcuterie plate, she chose options from the same menu for the organizers on the evening of January 6. The options in the Willard suite also included Champagne that Kremer’s guests were drinking just as her organization issued a press release denouncing the violence and calling the group “saddened and disappointed.”

Were the organizers munching on Camembert? Aged Gruyère? Paper-thin prosciutto di Parma? Unclear. Regardless, the revelation that Kremer, the chairwoman of Women for America First, was throwing back Champagne and cheese boards amidst literal carnage is not actually the most damning information to come out of Walker’s report. That prize would likely go to the additional bit of significant evidence showing coordination between the Trump White House and the people who planned the rally leading up to the insurrection.

Two sources who were involved in planning the Ellipse rally previously told Rolling Stone they had extensive interactions with members of Trump’s team, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The [new] text messages provide a deeper understanding of what that cooperation entailed, including an in-person meeting at the White House. Rally organizers also described working with Trump’s team to announce the event, promote it, and grant access to VIP guests. A spokesperson for the former president did not respond to a request for comment on the record.

more...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/11/january-6-organizers-text-messages-champagne-charcuterie

November 22, 2021

Two Fox Contributors Quit Over Tucker Carlson's Jan. 6 'False Flag' Special

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-contributors-stephen-hayes-and-jonah-goldberg-quit-over-tucker-carlsons-jan-6-false-flag-special?ref=home

Two Fox Contributors Quit Over Tucker Carlson’s Jan. 6 ‘False Flag’ Special
‘VIEWERS WILL BE GRATEFUL’
Justin Baragona
Media Reporter
Published Nov. 21, 2021 6:46PM ET
Janos Kummer/Getty

Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, Fox News contributors since 2009, have resigned from the network in protest over Fox News star Tucker Carlson’s recent Patriot Purge docu-series. The special, which is currently airing on Fox’s online streaming service Fox Nation, pushes a range of conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, including the baseless claim that the deadly riot was a “false flag” orchestrated by the federal government.

Revealing their departures to The New York Times’ Ben Smith on Sunday, the now ex-contributors—who founded the center-right Never Trump publication The Dispatch in 2019—called Carlson’s documentary “truly dangerous” and factually inaccurate. “Whether it’s ‘Patriot Purge’ or anti-vax stuff, I don’t want it in my name, and I want to call it out and criticize it,” Goldberg said. “I don’t want to feel like I am betraying a trust that I had by being a Fox News contributor.”

The pair’s views in recent years, however, have fallen by the wayside of the Republican mainstream. As a result, they have been unwelcome on the network’s primetime opinion shows while being seen only occasionally on Fox’s so-called straight news programs like Special Report and Fox News Sunday. Goldberg also said he had some hope that Fox News would “right the ship” after Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat but that Patriot Purge was “a sign that people have made peace with this direction of things, and there is no plan, at least, that anyone made me aware of for a course correction.”

Carlson, for his part, celebrated Hayes and Goldberg leaving after 12 years, saying it was “great news” and that the network’s “viewers will be grateful.”

November 21, 2021

Rittenhouse Attorney Calls GOP Efforts To Cash In On Client 'Disgusting'

Rittenhouse Attorney Calls GOP Efforts To Cash In On Client 'Disgusting'
Mark Richards also slammed Donald Trump Jr. as "an idiot" after he announced a gun organization planned to award Rittenhouse an AR-15.
Mary Papenfuss
11/20/2021 07:29pm EST

A defense attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse blasted Republican lawmakers on Saturday for trying to “profit” from his client’s acquittal in the shooting deaths of two men, calling it “disgusting,” Business Insider reported.

“There’s a lot of people trying to profit on this, and I don’t think people should,” attorney Mark Richards told Insider.

“They’re raising money on it, and you have all these Republican congressmen saying come work for me,” he added. “They want to trade on his celebrity, and I think it’s disgusting.”

Richards also called Donald Trump Jr. “an idiot. I don’t have to expand on that because it speaks for itself,” he added.

Richards was responding to a since-deleted tweet from Trump Jr. Saturday announcing that a gun organization planned to award Rittenhouse an AR-15, and urged his followers to sign an accompanying a card “in support of Kyle.”

more...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kyle-rittenhouse-mark-richards-acquittal-disgusting-madison-cawthorn-paul-gosar-matt-gaetz_n_61997a0de4b0f398af063fe4

November 21, 2021

Trump's Estate Tax Giveaway To Rich Triggered 50% Drop In The IRS Revenue: Report

Trump's Estate Tax Giveaway To Rich Triggered 50% Drop In The IRS Revenue: Report
Billionaires, meanwhile. have doubled their collective net worth to more than $5 trillion in just 5 years.
Mary Papenfuss
By
Mary Papenfuss
11/20/2021 11:24pm EST | Updated 2 hours ago

As Republicans bellyache about Democrats not balancing the budget, a new report reveals that a massive Trump administration estate tax giveaway that particularly served the ultra-rich sparked a 50% plunge in IRS revenue from the taxes.

Estate tax payments dropped from $20 billion to just over $9 billion last year, Bloomberg reported, based on its analysis of IRS data.

American billionaires, meanwhile, have doubled their collective net worth to more than $5 trillion in just over five years.

The “dramatic decline” in estate tax revenue is largely the result of the Republicans’ 2017 tax overhaul, which doubled the amount the wealthy can pass to heirs without paying any estate tax, Bloomberg noted.

more...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/estate-tax-rich-irs-revenue-plunge_n_6199bb06e4b07fe2010cb159

November 21, 2021

Kyle Rittenhouse Just Killed our Right to Peacefully Protest

Kyle Rittenhouse Just Killed our Right to Peacefully Protest
ONLY IN AMERICA
With his acquittal, we’ve lost our First Amendment right to peacefully assemble to a half-cocked, cocaine-cowboy version of the Second Amendment.
Cliff Schecter
Published Nov. 20, 2021 8:11PM ET

Only in America.

There are certainly other countries where a young man known to hang out with a fascist gang but not a member of any “well-regulated militia” could drive 20 miles across state lines in the direction of unrest while toting a gun illegally to end up shooting and killing other humans and walk away a-ok.

Yet, much like those with whom we compare these days in world health-care system rankings or our use of the death penalty, they’re not countries the world’s oldest sorta-still-going democracy should be proud to join on those lists. (“Hey, what’s the problem? We’re handling these things just like Lithuania and Colombia!”).

The point is that what happened with Kyle Rittenhouse doesn’t happen in any other high-income liberal democracy—and one that has gotten quite drunk on referring to itself as the leader of the free world and a beacon of opportunity might really wanna, at this point, check itself before it wrecks itself.

snip//

The very idea of self defense here is full of more bullshit than the Dutton Yellowstone Ranch.

But over the past 20 years, even before the GOP became a wholly owned subsidiary of a racist real-estate debtor, the NRA was paving the way for white nationalism—encouraging vigilante violence, launching scurrilous attacks on law enforcement and propagandizing with blatantly racist material. They’ve put their every waking hour into creating an America where Kyle Rittenhouse could claim self defense even when being somewhere he shouldn’t be, with a weapon he should never possess.

more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kyle-rittenhouse-just-killed-our-right-to-peacefully-protest?ref=home

November 20, 2021

U.S. Republicans move to decriminalize marijuana at federal level

Bring it on. Do SOMETHING for once.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-republicans-move-decriminalize-marijuana-federal-level-2021-11-15/

Reuters home
November 15, 20213:56 PM ESTLast Updated 5 days ago
REUTERS/Mike Segar

WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced legislation on Monday that would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level and eliminate legal hazards facing many cannabis-related businesses while regulating its use like alcohol.

snip//

It would prohibit marijuana use by those under 21, restrict advertising, protect access to hiring and benefits for veterans who have used cannabis and expunge the records of people convicted on nonviolent, cannabis-only related offenses.

The bill diverges in several important ways from draft legislation proposed in July by Senate Democrats including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Mace's bill would impose a 3% excise tax on cannabis, compared to an increasing Senate tax proposal that would top out at around 25%.

Where the Senate proposal would give the Food and Drug Administration a primary oversight role, the Republican legislation limits FDA involvement to medical marijuana and makes the Treasury's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau the primary regulator for interstate commerce.

November 20, 2021

Nazis Call for Dead Leftists to be 'Stacked Up Like Cord Wood' Following Rittenhouse Acquittal

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/11/20/2065335/-Nazis-Call-for-Dead-Leftists-to-be-Stacked-Up-Like-Cord-Wood-Following-Rittenhouse-Acquittal

Nazis Call for Dead Leftists to be 'Stacked Up Like Cord Wood' Following Rittenhouse Acquittal
by Mark C. Eades

There will be blood—

White supremacists and others on the far right are celebrating the acquittal of Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, and the tone of their celebrations appears to confirm fears that their new hero’s acquittal will inspire more right-wing violence. Following the acquittal, right-wing social media platform Gab sent out an email encouraging its users to “buy firearms and form Christian militias.” As NPR reports, celebratory online comments by members of the Proud Boys included a call for dead leftists to be “stacked up like cord wood,” further indicating that the Rittenhouse acquittal will be seen as license to carry out similar acts of violence disguised as “self-defense”:

“This might be interpreted across the far right as a type of permission slip to do this kind of thing or to seek out altercations in this way, believing that there is a potential that they won’t face serious consequences for it,” said Jared Holt, a resident fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council. “I worry that that might end up being interpreted by some people as a proof of concept of this idea that you can actually go out and seek a ‘self-defense situation,’ and you’ll be cheered as a hero for it."

“Rittenhouse’s acquittal has already been adopted as a justification for future violence,” observed Alex Newhouse of the Middlebury Institute’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism in Newsweek, “Many see it as a blank check to use violence at leftist protests, others see it as a spark in a coming civil or race war.” Newhouse commented further at BuzzFeed:

“The ‘saints’ of the far right include the Charleston, Christchurch, Poway, Pittsburgh, and El Paso shooters… and now they also include Rittenhouse.... They have all rallied around Rittenhouse as a person who walks the walk of revolutionary [and] accelerationist myth; he actually went out onto the streets and took violent action against protesters…. There’s precedent for acquittals like this to be used in inciting to and carrying out further violence.... Already, the far right is using Rittenhouse’s full acquittal as tacit approval of at least vigilante violence—and, in many cases, they’re calling for the expansion of anti-leftist political violence more broadly.”

Meanwhile in Congress, Nazi tourism enthusiast Madison Cawthorn, white supremacist one-man freak show Paul Gosar, and sex-trafficking frat boy Matt Gaetz all want Rittenhouse to come and work for them as a congressional intern, as a reward for killing leftists and getting away with it, and so that he can roam the corridors of the Capitol trying to intimidate liberal congresswomen. Cawthorn also celebrated Rittenhouse’s acquittal by telling his supporters to follow the latter’s example, “be armed,” and “be dangerous.”

None of this bodes well for America’s near future, as progressive commentators observe with alarm. “Kyle Rittenhouse’s future looks hideously bright,” writes Kali Holloway at The Daily Beast, “What his trial ultimately proved beyond a reasonable doubt is that white supremacy is the only law that truly matters, the one organizing principle of American society that provides grounds for any action taken in its name.” As Ja’han Jones further observes at MSNBC, “Conservatives are encouraging white vigilantes like Rittenhouse to police progressive spaces by all means.” According to MSNBC legal analyst Maya Wiley, “We’re in more danger today than yesterday.”

—Trying hard to be optimistic, but finding it a little bit more difficult each day.

(Mark C. Eades is a writer, educator, California voter, and member of Democrats Abroad currently working in Asia)

November 20, 2021

The Pentagon Budget Costs 4 Times As Much As Biden's Social Policy Bill. Guess Which One...

The Pentagon Budget Costs 4 Times As Much As Biden’s Social Policy Bill. Guess Which One Congress Thinks Is Too Pricey.
Lawmakers are rushing to pass a $778 billion defense authorization bill for next year, but are dithering over $170 billion annually for the Build Back Better Act.
By Akbar Shahid Ahmed
11/19/2021 02:30pm EST

Now that the House of Representatives has approved President Joe Biden’s social spending and climate plan, the legislation’s fate depends on the Senate ― where Republicans and key Democrats say the plan costs too much. But as senators debate the $1.7 trillion package, they will also advance a far more expensive bill with far less scrutiny: the annual Pentagon budget, which approves more than four times as much spending as Biden’s Build Back Better Act.

Lawmakers have this year crafted one of the largest military spending bills in American history. The National Defense Authorization Act would approve $778 billion in spending in 2022, compared to the approximately $170 billion in spending that Biden’s social policy would entail next year. Senate leaders hope to pass the defense legislation before Thanksgiving and Build Back Better in December.

Hawkish Democrats worked with Republicans to ensure that the defense bill would be $25 billion greater than Biden’s proposal for the military budget, and to quash progressive efforts to trim costs.

“There’s a fear of being seen as weak on national security by some Democrats but we need to reframe the debate ― a lot of the money is going to defense contractors,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee. “We should say we’re for military families and job creation, not CEO salaries of $5 million.”

“And we shouldn’t be memorializing [former President Donald] Trump’s massive increases,” he added, referring to the huge uptick in defense budgets under the last Republican administration.

more...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ndaa-build-back-better_n_6197ee6de4b025be1adbcc74

November 19, 2021

Eric Boehlert: Everything the press said about the economy was wrong

https://pressrun.media/p/everything-the-press-said-about-the

Everything the press said about the economy was wrong
It's surging

Eric Boehlert
3 hr ago

snip//

The specifics:

• The government dramatically undercounted the number of new jobs from June through September, so we now know an additional 626,000 jobs were created those months, blowing away the idea of a stymied hiring pattern nationwide. Remember the “disappointing” jobs report from August, with 235,000 jobs? It was actually 483,000 new positions. It turns out there’s been a jobs explosion this entire year, and all indications are the trend will continue into 2022.

• Goldman Sachs predicts by the end of next year the U.S. unemployment rate will drop to a 50-year low, thanks to a "red-hot demand for workers.” Under Trump, the rate peaked at nearly 15 percent.

• Retail sales surged 1.7 percent in the month of October, as consumers flocked online and into stores, splurging on electronics and home-improvement projects. American consumers spent $638 billion in October, a 16 percent increase from last year.

• JP Morgan upgraded its growth expectations for the economy, raising its forecast for the U.S. gross domestic product to climb to 5 percent in the fourth quarter.

• Biden’s pandemic stimulus plan has worked: “Households are sitting on a collective $2.5 trillion in savings built up during the pandemic,” the New York Times reports.

It’s a royal flush of economic good news.

snip//

The press wasn’t holding up a mirror to the U.S. economy. The press painted its own picture. Desperate for a dramatic angle to lure consumers back to TV news and websites, and weirdly anxious to bury Biden, the Beltway media have gone all in on the Doomsday narrative. Remember that corporate media owners benefit from tax breaks when Republicans are in office.

The panicked tale was never true. In recent days, the new data points paint a clearer picture of the economy — it’s a surging one that’s powering through a stunning pandemic recovery and stands poised to blast off in 2022. An unemployment rate all the way down to 3.5 percent? A stock market sitting at the once-unthinkable 45,000 mark? Both are entirely possible in the next calendar year.

Today’s press coverage suggests the economy is an albatross around Biden’s political neck. In reality, it’s booming.

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