Good morning, and welcome once again to our revered Monday C&J series: Is This Bipartisan Enough For Ya, Senators?
With the midterm primary season finally upon us, we thought we’d revisit the pulse of the For the People Act, which would include “15 days of early voting, same-day registration, and limiting the ability of states to curb the use of mail voting and ballot boxes. It would also rewrite federal campaign finance rules and establish nonpartisan redistricting commissions to end partisan gerrymandering.”
Two things we know for sure. 1) Republicans are now hellbent on passing a blizzard of laws that legally take away voting rights from Democrats while rigging the system so that we lose even if we get the most votes, and 2) a pair of Democrats—one from West Virginia, one from Arizona—refuse to make even a small carve-out exception to filibuster rules so that the FTPA can be passed to stop Republicans from their power grab. So let’s remind everyone what Republican voters in West Virginia and Arizona think of all this.…
Continued…
Polling shows that Republicans in Arizona and West Virginia overwhelmingly support the sweeping election bill. […] In West Virginia, 76 percent of registered GOP voters support the For the People Act. In Arizona, the bill has support from 78 percent of registered Republicans and 75 percent support from voters who backed Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
The End Citizens United/Let America Vote Action Fund survey, first shared with Newsweek, found HR 1—also known as the For the People Act—to be extremely popular among all voters in both states.
In West Virginia, respondents supported the bill by 79 percent. In Arizona, 84 percent of likely voters supported the bill, and 73 percent “strongly” backed the voting rights legislation.
Ding Ding Ding!!! Americans love it! Get on it, Senate—the For the People Act is still a bipartisan winner!
Join us next time for another exciting edition of Is This Bipartisan Enough For Ya, Senators?
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, May 2, 2022
Note: I have good news: I just purchased Twitter for $50 billion dollars. I also have bad news: You’re all co-signers. I’m Bill in Portland Maine…and this concludes my Contract Signature Forgery 101 Master Class.
CHEERS to May! The month of flowers, Mom’s Day, Teachers Day (the 3rd), Armed Forces Day, Victoria Day, Lost Sock Memorial Day, National Pet Week, “End of the Middle Ages” Day (May 29—for Republicans a day of mourning), and Cinco de Mayo. Midterm primaries break out, with Democrats choosing between candidates who love their country, and Republicans choosing between candidates who don’t.
Also this month: the Russki Turret Frisbee Olympics continue.
It’s National Hamburger Month for carnivores and National Salad Month for vegetarians. The Webby Awards (and their famous 5-word acceptance speeches) will be awarded on the 16th, a week after the Pulitzer Prizes are announced on the 9th. Memorial Day weekend kicks off the summer season in 25 days, but not before we celebrate Star Wars Day (i.e. “May the Fourth Be With You”) and mark the 52nd anniversary of the Kent State shootings. Full moon arrives on the 16th, so make a note to look up, think of Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, and give it a wink. As for new movies and streaming stuffs, lots of what looks like forgettable murder, horror, and mayhem, but they all pale to the bantha in the room: the premiere of Obi-Wan Kenobi on the 27th on Satan’s Channel, aka Disney Plus.
And after a two-year pandemic-related hiatus, we’re happy to report that the Daily Kos contributing editors will once again dress in their frilly best this afternoon to dance around the Maypole. Also once again, they’ll end up with a bent pole, a huge granny knot, and a great big pile of phone-cams with their memories erased. Vive le return to normalcy.
JEERS to election skullduggery. Everybody heard our previous president try to coerce election officials in Georgia to “find” thousands of non-existence votes for him in order to cheat his way to a second term. I’m not sure if you know this, but—[whispers]—election fraud is illegal. Like, really, really illegal. And that’s why all eyes are on Fulton County today, where members of a special grand jury are being selected in anticipation of the Trial Of The Century:
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis asked a panel of judges in January for the special grand jury because of “information indicating a reasonable probability” that the election “was subject to possible criminal disruptions.”
Guilty!!!
Willis has said in interviews that the investigation includes a January 2, 2021 phone call in which Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, “I just want to find 11,780 votes.” Trump lost the state to Joe Biden by that margin—an outcome that was affirmed by several recounts. […]
Trump said in a January 20statement that “My phone call to the Secretary of State of Georgia was perfect.”
If charges end up being filed and Trump loses at trial, he could spend up to three years in prison. Perfect.
CHEERS to the days of lollipops and surpluses. On May 2, 1997, President Clinton and congressional Republicans came to terms on a plan to balance the budget over five years. Said Newt Gingrich of the bipartisan agreement: “This is a great moment for our children and our grandchildren and our country, and we are proud to be part of that.” Fourteen years later, as a presidential candidate, Gingrich foolishly raised his hand when asked if he would veto a budget with ten dollars in cuts for every 1 dollar in revenue increases. But in fairness, he did also offer jobs to our children and grandchildren. As janitors. On the moon. Amazingly, he didn’t become president.
CHEERS to redemption. It doesn’t happen often enough, but it does happen. A leader in the American Nazi movement has seen the error of his ways, burned his swastika armband, snapped his tiki torch in two, donated his khaki pants and polo shirt to Goodwill, moved to Norway, and embraced the reality-based left:
Evan McLaren, who played a pivotal role in the American white supremacist “alt-right” movement and attended a deadly fascist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, published a surprise statement Thursday renouncing his past racist and anti-Semitic activism.
McLaren’s conversion from the dark side was confirmed when he no longer broke down in tears of sadness while being shown a photo of the liberation of Paris.
“I am not and never will be connected to the far-right again,” McLaren wrote in the statement, published on Substack. “My revulsion for conservatism and the political right wing is total. I reject and disavow my past actions, views, and associations.” […]
It makes him one of the most high-profile defectors from right-wing extremism in recent memory. In his statement, McLaren, 37, said he is sorry for his white nationalist activism―which he described as “a desperate, foolish mistake, damaging to others, to myself, and to society”—but says he doesn’t expect, and isn’t asking for, any kind of absolution.
McLaren says he now listens to liberal podcasts like The Majority Report. Wow—from Hitler to Sam Seder. I hope his brain has supplemental whiplash insurance.
CHEERS to a memorable growth spurt. 91 years ago this week, in 1931, the Empire State Buildingwas dedicated. It was the tallest building in the pleasant village of New York until 1972, when the World Trade Center rose above it. It regained its “tallest” status in the worst possible way 28 years later. But today it plays third fiddle to the new One World Trade Center tower and the luxury apartments of 432 Park Avenue. There, there, Empire State—if it’s any consolation, King Kong always liked you best.
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 2, 2012
JEERS to my Alma Mater. Yeah, I graduated from Otterbein University (Class of ’86) in the lovely dry town of Westerville, Ohio. Yeah, they invited Mitt Romney to speak there last week. Yeah, he said something stupid:
If you’re young and you want to start your own business, Mitt Romney’s has some advice from you: Borrow money from your parents. At a “lecture” for students at Otterbein University in Ohio today, Mitt Romney told students that, his friend, Jimmy John, started a business by borrowing $20,000 from his parents at a low interest rate. Romney suggested anyone in the audience could do the same.
These days it’d be pretty easy: Mom and Dad can have the dog take the check downstairs to the basement where Junior will be crashing on an air mattress because Republicans destroyed the economy and our employment outlook. I hope the kid figures out why it’s made of rubber before he tries to cash it.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to blowing this popsicle stand. Whenever the shit gets too deep here on the bluish-brown marble, I head over to NASA’s site to see if our new Space Force—still a thing under the iron-fisted rule of Darth Biden—is conquering every ball of gas and rock in the known galaxy. Sorry to say the answer is no (although that little helicopter on Mars is still doing cool stuff) so we’ll just have to spend our days and nights gazing yonward and dreaming. This month’s major celestial events are a lunar eclipse and lots of hot planet-on-planet action. Here’s NASA with your monthly preview:
