Their voters are authoritarians with anti-democratic views

Happy New Year! At least I hope it is a happy year. Happier than last year. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported Senator Bernie Sanders had been filibustering the override of the veto of the defense spending bill. It is a bill that must pass. Sanders said he would filibuster until the GOP agreed to a vote on the bill to raise virus relief checks from $600 to $2000. The House had already passed that bill at the urging of the nasty guy. But Moscow Mitch didn’t fold. The Senate had to vote on the bipartisan defense spending bill. So when the vote came to close debate it was 80-12, way more than the 60 needed. The defense spending veto was quickly overridden and the relief bill died. The $600 (which has started to go out) won’t be increased to $2000. Sanders accomplished one thing: shining a bright light on the situation – no relief checks while Mitch is in power – and that will be a campaign point for Georgia runoff election on Tuesday. Various GOP House members have said they will object to the Electoral College votes when they are counted on January 6. Joe Cunningham, Representative from South Carolina, tweeted that he noticed something:

Every one of these members of Congress who plan to object to the results of the presidential election have one thing in common: They all represent gerrymandered seats that ensures that they cannot lose a general election. End gerrymandering and you end 99% of this nonsense.

Which means the only thing they worry about is a primary challenge from the right. Their show on the 6th is part of trying to prevent that from happening. Brian Klass, a professor of global politics at UCL, tweeted about the senator who has announced he will object to the EC vote:

Senator Hawley is clearly a dangerous opportunist willing to discard democracy for his political ambitions. But he's also a canary in the coal mine: Republican politicians now understand that their voters are authoritarians, and many are willing to cater to anti-democratic views. America, for quite some time, will be grappling with what it means for one of the two main political parties to be filled with authoritarian populists who view democracy as valuable only if their own party wins and disposable when they don't.

I’ve seen a lot of Twitter traffic of people worried about a possible war with Iran with the nasty guy getting it started then claiming he has to stay in office to see it through. I’ve shared very little of it because I don’t know what sources to trust. However, this idea is worth sharing. Trita Parsi tweeted:

Israeli and Arab media reports that Saudi and Israel are pressuring Trump to strike Iran before he leaves office. Completely disregarding US interest and the wellbeing of the American people. Who needs enemies when you have friends like this?

Ian Bassin, founder of Protect Democracy, responded:

Does anyone doubt the Saudis would offer to help Trump with his massive debts if he strikes Iran? Does anyone doubt Trump would grab that offer? This is literally the kind of situation the Founders designed the Impeachment Clause to prevent.

Dr. Julia Patterson of Britain tweeted the virus vaccine effort there has a lot of problems. It is hard to vaccinate people when there isn’t sufficient staff. Andrea Chalupa, a host of Gaslit Nation, tweeted in response:

Extraordinary parallels between Donald Trump and Boris Johnson's failures at rolling out the vaccine.

A reason for the parallels is both of them are authoritarians. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that America is the only country that has not brought the coronavirus under control. He included a graph showing that. He then discussed what happened at the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the CDC, under the nasty guy.

Why has the United States had the worst-in-the-world performance on COVID-19? It’s not just the failure of leadership at the top. It’s also the way that HHS has been gutted of experience and knowledge top to bottom. Donald Trump valued personal loyalty over knowledge and capability. This is what we got.

The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) produces the Voice of America broadcasts that are a good source of news to countries with authoritarian regimes where the local news is what the tyrant wants it to be. Well, had been. The nasty guy installed his own people to take it over. The top guy, Michael Pack, purged all those not sufficiently loyal to the nasty guy. Hunter of Kos noted he also rewrote hiring contracts specifying the loyalists cannot be fired for two years. That means Joe Biden might be able to boot Pack, but he will have a much harder time getting rid of the loyalists, perhaps not until two years into his time in office. I had mentioned before that Public Citizen had tweeted that Jeff Bezos could have quadrupled the hazard pay of his Amazon employees and still made more than last year. Public Citizen tweeted another way to look at it:

Jeff Bezos could give every single Amazon employee $105,000 and still be as rich as he was before the pandemic. Tax the rich.

Leah McElrath tweeted about the Nashville bomber and that his girlfriend reported his bomb making to the police a year ago. The police turned the case over to the FBI, who did little. But the woman’s story was challenged. McElrath tweeted:

White men are the most dangerous element of society, but we’re conditioned to believe otherwise. As I wrote in 2016: “What we fear is what we link to fear. What we link to fear is not necessarily what is actually dangerous. “Relevant to our current dilemma, many people are socialized not to link fear with seemingly affable white men...”

Below that she included a picture of the nasty guy. Carrie House commented:

NPR reported on this earlier & ended the piece saying it’s not clear why the investigation went nowhere. I replied aloud because he’s a white guy. The repeated pattern of MSM to cloak truths in questions creates a whirlpool of disinformation.

Joan McCarter reported Joe Biden is learning lessons from his former boss. Obama was too slow to confirm judges in his early years, leaving a lot of vacancies for Moscow Mitch to block, then rapidly fill with conservatives. Biden is already asking Democratic senators for their recommendations of candidates with legal experience that has been underrepresented, such as public defenders and civil rights attorneys. He also asked for a diversity of race and gender. He wants to be able to nominate a person within 45 days of a vacancy being announced. If Moscow Mitch is still in power, any judge nominated by Biden won’t get far. But Biden looks ready to fight in ways his boss didn’t.