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Month: February 2023

It’s police culture, stupid

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 9, 2023

Time for a cultural reset

Memphis police officer took photos of brutally beaten Tyre Nichols and shared one with others, documents show

The problems with U.S. policing date back to slave patrols. Others more versed in policing have pointed to the “warrior cop” ethic taught in some police training, to “warrior cop” culture, and the “officer survival” movement as a source of police violence. Police overreaction and the emphasis on dominating any interactions with civilians keep leading to deaths and more distrust of law enforcement. Are Americans seeking technical and training solutions to what is more a product of police culture?

Jill Lepore wrote in The New Yorker in 2020:

Modern American policing began in 1909, when August Vollmer became the chief of the police department in Berkeley, California. Vollmer refashioned American police into an American military. He’d served with the Eighth Army Corps in the Philippines in 1898. “For years, ever since Spanish-American War days, I’ve studied military tactics and used them to good effect in rounding up crooks,” he later explained. “After all we’re conducting a war, a war against the enemies of society.” Who were those enemies? Mobsters, bootleggers, socialist agitators, strikers, union organizers, immigrants, and Black people.

How little that has changed. Even now, when the police officers involved are themselves Black, as Tyre Nichols was.

What happened to Nichols in Memphis, and to others, feels like a lynching under color of law. One of the fired officers charged with second-degree murder in the case took cellphone photos of Nichols, bloodied and handcuffed, and shared it with friends like a trophy from a big game hunt. Or a lynching postcard.

A special Memphis police squad dragged Nichols from his car and beat him to death without, documents and records suggest, telling him why they had stopped his vehicle. The same police unit had a recent history of such behavior, the Associated Press reports:

A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses the same officers now charged with murdering Nichols, 29, with also violating the rights of another man from the same neighborhood as Nichols during a similarly violent arrest three days before Nichols’ arrest.

According to the lawsuit, Monterrious Harris, 22, was visiting a cousin at an apartment on the evening of Jan. 4 when his car was “suddenly swarmed by a large group of assailants wearing black ski-masks, dressed in black clothing, brandishing guns, other weapons, hurling expletives and making threats to end his life if he did not exit his car.”

Harris thought the men were trying to rob him, the lawsuit says, and he tried to back up his car before hitting something. He then reluctantly exited with his hands raised and was “grabbed, punched, kicked and assaulted” for up to two minutes, the complaint states. The beating stopped only after people came out of their apartments to see what was happening, the lawsuit alleges.

“Not once did any member of the Scorpion Unit identify himself as a police officer,” the lawsuit states (Huffington Post):

The Army veteran said he was pummeled by the men, leaving his head bleeding, his eye swollen shut, and the injuries to both his legs left it difficult to walk. His lawsuit includes photos of his face, depicting cuts to his forehead and under-eye bruising, that are said to have been taken nine days after being discharged from a hospital.

“The only crime Mr. Harris had committed was being young and African American,” his lawsuit claims.

Harris had every reason to fear for his life, as did Nichols. President Biden in his State of the Union Address spoke to the danger young, Black men face in encounters with police. Black parents routinely have “the talk” with their young sons:

Imagine having to worry whether your son or daughter came home from walking down the street, playing in the park or just driving a car.

Most of us in here have never had to have the talk, the talk, that Brown and Black parents have had to have with their children. Beau, Hunter, Ashley, my children — I never had to have the talk with them.

I never had to tell them if a police officer pulls you over, turn your interior lights on right away. Don’t reach for your license. Keep your hands on the steering wheel.

Imagine having to worry like that every single time your kid got in a car.

And it does not matter if the police officers are Black. Training alone won’t fix this. Police in this country need a cultural reset.

Mitt’s getting feisty in his old age

Published by digby on February 8, 2023

He’s mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore:

The tense showdown between Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and George Santos (R-NY) that had tongues wagging ahead of Joe Biden’s State of the Union address has been revealed—and it’s even juicier than first thought.

Earlier, Santos could be seen on the chamber’s video feed sitting near the center aisle in the House Chamber, seemingly waiting to shake President Biden’s hand. As Santos stood around, Romney appeared and the pair could be seen having a tense conversation. Even after the conversation appeared to be over, Santos turned towards Romney and spoke in his direction, despite the senator moving on.

Biden evaded Santos in the end, with Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, (R-IA) snagging the shake in his place.

It was initially unclear what was said between Santos and Romney—but the mystery was soon solved.

Santos recounted the exchange to Semafor political reporter Kadia Goba, who detailed the conversation as below:

Mitt: You don’t belong here.

Santos: Go tell that to the 142K that voted for me.

ADVERTISING

Mitt: You’re an ass.

Santos: You’re a much bigger asshole.

Questioned after Biden’s speech, Romney confirmed he told Santos that he “didn’t belong here” and explained he made the comments because he “didn’t expect that [Santos] would be standing there trying to shake hands with every senator and the president of the United States.

Mitt clearly has no fu…dges left to give:

“Given the fact that he is under ethics investigation he should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet instead of parading in front of the president and people coming into the room.

“Look, he says that he embellished his record,” Romney continued, noting Santos’ long list of falsehoods and fabrications.

“Embellishing is saying you got an A when you got an A-minus.

“Lying is saying you graduated from a college you didn’t even attend. He shouldn’t be in Congress and they’re going to go through the process and hopefully get him out. He shouldn’t be there and if he had any shame at all, he wouldn’t be there.”

Romney said he was unaware what Santos told him in reply and defended his choice to rip Santos to shreds: “He was standing right there in the aisle, shaking hands with everybody!”

He also described Santos as a “sick puppy” to The Hill.

Santos followed up with a tweet directed to his Republican counterpart.

Thankfully the Speaker of the House is a responsible adult:

There you have it. This is who they are.

Documenting their own atrocity

Published by digby on February 8, 2023

Those Memphis cops were proud of their work

The NY Times reports:

As Tyre Nichols sat propped against a police car, bloodied, dazed and handcuffed after being beaten by a group of Memphis police officers, one of those officers took a picture of him and sent it to at least five people, the Memphis Police Department said in documents released by the state on Tuesday.

The documents painted a picture of repeated misconduct by the officers, starting in the first moments after Mr. Nichols was pulled over for a traffic stop, through an arrest carried out with excessive force and continuing on through the many minutes when Mr. Nichols lay on the street in dire need of medical help.

Sending the photograph to acquaintances, including at least one outside of the Police Department, violated policies about keeping information confidential, according to the documents. But police officials said it was also part of a pattern of mocking, abusive and “blatantly unprofessional” behavior by the officers that also included shouting profanities at Mr. Nichols, laughing after the beating and “bragging” about their involvement.

The revelations came in internal affairs documents that the Memphis Police Department sent to a state agency, in which the department asked for the five officers — who have been charged with second-degree murder in Mr. Nichols’s death — to be decertified, meaning they could no longer work as police officers anywhere in the state.

In the documents, police officials described how the officers worked together as they severely beat Mr. Nichols, appeared to relish the assault afterward and then made a series of omissions and false claims in their reports about what happened.

Demetrius Haley, the officer who sent the photographs and who forced Mr. Nichols out of his car, also never told Mr. Nichols why he had been stopped or that he was under arrest. After Mr. Nichols ran away from the officers, several of them caught up with him a few minutes later and unleashed a series of punches and kicks while he was being restrained. And when one officer met with Mr. Nichols’s mother afterward, the officer “refused to provide an accurate account” of what had happened, the police officials said.

Despite policies requiring officers to activate their body cameras during “all law enforcement encounters and activities,” none of the officers’ body cameras captured the entire incident, according to the documents. One of the officers, Emmitt Martin III, at one point put his body camera in his car, the documents said.

In reports after the Jan. 7 assault, at least two of the officers said that Mr. Nichols had tried to grab an officer’s gun — a claim for which there is no evidence, according to the documents — while leaving out details of the beating.

All five of the officers were fired by the Police Department, as was a sixth who had fired a Taser at Mr. Nichols as he ran away. City officials said on Tuesday that seven more police officers were being investigated for possible policy violations in connection with the beating of Mr. Nichols, who died three days after the assault.

“We’re still adding names to the list,” Cerelyn Davis, the city’s police chief, said at a City Council hearing on Tuesday in which council members sought accountability from police and emergency management officials.

In the newly released documents, police officials said that Mr. Haley had admitted to sending a photograph of Mr. Nichols to at least five people, including two fellow officers, a civilian employee of the department and a female acquaintance. A sixth person also received the photo, the records state.

Mr. Haley’s lawyer, Michael Stengel, declined to comment, and lawyers for the four other officers did not respond to messages seeking comment late Tuesday.

Videos of the beating that were released by the city last month appeared to show Mr. Haley taking pictures of Mr. Nichols a few minutes after the beating, when the officers had propped him up against a police car. The videos show Mr. Haley shining a flashlight on Mr. Nichols and appearing to take a photograph with his phone. He then looks briefly at his phone and, a few seconds later, appears to take another picture.

Sick, sick, sick.

Haley was the cop who rolled up after the second altercation and ran up and kicked Tyre in the head. Apparently, he was so proud of his work he documented it and distributed it to friends. This person is a psychopath.

They all are:

Police officials also said in the documents that a civilian had witnessed at least part of the encounter and had recorded the officers with a cellphone. The witness’s opinion of the incident, according to the documents, was that officers had “left the injured subject lying on the ground, handcuffed and unattended.”

Rick Scott, the Bernie Madoff of the healthcare world

Published by digby on February 8, 2023

Senator Rick Scott is getting a lot of attention for proposing to sunset all spending, including Social Security and Medicare, every five years and making nasty ads like the one above, in which he accuses Biden of cutting Medicare and cheating on his taxes. Mitch McConnell himself is sick of him and removed him from the Commerce Committee which really ticked him off.

Scott is corrupt to the core and should be nowhere near government. If you are unfamiliar with his history in business, here’s a piece Chris Hayes wrote before Scott won the governor’s seat in Florida back in 2008. (WTF Florida???)

Rush Limbaugh offers Democrats an irresistible target as the de facto leader of the Republican Party, but for my money, Rick Scott is the man who best embodies the spirit of the current conservative opposition. The name may not exactly be a household word, or it may ring a faint bell, but Politico recently reported that the millionaire Republican would be heading up Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR), a new group that plans to spend around $20 million to kill President Obama’s efforts at healthcare reform.

Having Scott lead the charge against healthcare reform is like tapping Bernie Madoff to campaign against tighter securities regulation. You see, the for-profit hospital chain Scott helped found–the one he ran and built his entire reputation on—as discovered to be in the habit of defrauding the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is the man who will be delivering what Politico called the “pro-free-market message.”

A Texas lawyer who shared a business partner with George W. Bush, Scott started his health company, Columbia Hospital Corporation, in 1987. Its growth was meteoric, expanding from just a few hospitals to more than 1,000 facilities in thirty-eight states and three other countries in 1997. As his firm gobbled up chains, like the Frist family’s Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), it became the largest for-profit hospital chain in the country. By 1994, Columbia/HCA was one of the forty largest corporations in America, and Scott had acquired a reputation as the Gordon Gecko of the healthcare world. “Whose patients are you stealing?” he would ask employees at his newly acquired hospitals.

He promised to put nonprofit hospitals—which he insisted on referring to as “nontaxpaying” hospitals—out of business and touted his company’s single-minded pursuit of profit as a model for the nation’s entire healthcare system. “What’s happening in Washington is not healthcare reform,” he told the New York Times in 1994. “Healthcare reform is happening in the marketplace.”

The press portrayed Scott as a guru to be admired and feared, “a private capitalist dictator,” in the words of one Princeton health economist. “Probably the lowest body fat of anybody I’ve been in business with,” his partner told the Times.

“Other hospitals were intimidated,” recalls John Schilling, who worked for Columbia/HCA in the 1990s. Scott was “like the bully that would come into town and if you didn’t sell to him or partner with him, he would open up shop across the street from you and put you out of business.”

Not long after joining the company in 1993 as the supervisor of reimbursement for the Fort Myers, Florida, office, Schilling noticed things weren’t quite kosher. “They were looking for ways to maximize reimbursement…which ultimately would improve the bottom line.”

One way they did this was to fudge the costs on their Medicare expense reports. They were “basically keeping two sets of books,” says Schilling. The company would maintain an internal expense report, what it called a “reserve” report, which accurately tallied its expenses. “And then they would have a second report, which…they would file with the government, which was more aggressive.” That report would “include inflated costs and expenses they knew weren’t allowable or reimbursable. The one they filed with government might claim $5 million and the reserve would claim $4.5.” Columbia/HCA would pocket the difference.

It wasn’t just happening in Florida, and it wasn’t just fraudulent Medicare expense reports. Around the country, dozens of whistle-blowers like Schilling stepped forward to file lawsuits under the False Claims Act, charging the company with sundry forms of chicanery: kickbacks to doctors in exchange for referrals, illegal deals with homecare agencies and filing false data about the use of hospital space.

By 1997 the FBI was investigating Columbia/HCA. Days after agents raided company facilities armed with search warrants, Scott was forced to resign. In 2000 the company pleaded guilty to fraud and agreed to pay the government $840 million. Other civil settlements would follow, ultimately totaling a staggering $1.7 billion, making it the largest fraud case in American history.

(Scott was never criminally charged and continues to deny wrongdoing. His spokesperson did not respond to repeated interview requests.)

But in Washington there’s no such thing as permanent disgrace, and as the healthcare debate heats up, Scott has established himself as a go-to source for reporters looking to hear from the opposition. He’s been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. He’s been on Fox, of course, railing against President Obama’s efforts to control healthcare costs. He appeared on CNN, where (as Media Matters noted) host Jessica Yellin never saw fit to notify viewers that the man she introduced as running “a media campaign to limit government’s role in the healthcare system” once ran a company that profited mightily from ripping off that government.

Indeed, if there’s one thing that’s most galling about Scott’s antigovernment jihad–and most emblematic—it’s that for all his John Galt bluster, he made his fortune (which, yes, he still has) in no small part thanks to steady contract fees from the Great Society’s entitlement programs.

Congressman Pete Stark, a veteran of the last bruising round of fighting over healthcare reform, remembers Scott all too well. Stark recently sent his colleagues a letter hoping to refresh their memories. Calling Scott a “swindler,” the letter said, “If he is the conservative spokesperson against healthcare reform, there is no debate.”

Florida loved him so much they sent him to the Senate where he is now the Matt Gaetz of the upper chamber, arguing with McConnell and doing shit-posting troll ads calling Biden a criminal.

Keep in mind that many, many people knew then or have since learned that Scott is corrupt on a massively grand scale. And that’s what they like about him.

The Hunter Biden Dick Pic hearings begin

Published by digby on February 8, 2023

Aaron Rupar covered the first Hunter Biden “oversight” committee meeting this morning and it’s a doozy. I highly recommend that you go over to twitter to watch his highlights because it’s even worse than you might have imagined.

I’ve pulled up a few of the right wing fools contrasted with the Democrats on the panel. Dear God …

Governor Huckasanders’ dark vision

Published by digby on February 8, 2023

It was very, very bad. When she wasn’t talking about herself she was casting very ugly aspersions on her political rivals and then telling an interminable story about flying to Iraq on Christmas without ever saying Donald Trump’s name. These speeches are almost always bad but this one was for the books.

Here’s how it started:

Trump had a rebuttal too. Oy vey:

This video campaign of his is bizarre. The dilated pupils (which appear in all of them) are very suspicious. Maybe it’s just the lighting or something but they’re weird.

I think he and Huckasanders are pretty representative of the GOP in general. And that’s frightening.

The Happy Warrior meets the crazies

Published by digby on February 8, 2023

Biden’s State of the Union address was a triumph

Last weekend Donald Trump gave a speech in South Carolina where he announced his state leadership team. Among them was Republican Congressman Joe Wilson, whom he introduced by saying:

A friend of mine — that voice, that voice was so beautiful as he called it out in Congress, Congressman Joe Wilson. That was done from the heart, that was — I don’t know if you know or not but at the time people loved you for that because it showed honesty, dedication and the love of your country, right?

He was referring to Wilson’s notorious outburst at the 2009 State of the Union address in which he shouted “you lie” at Barack Obama when the former president denied that his health care plan would cover undocumented immigrants. (It was not a lie.) The pundits all called for the smelling salts and Wilson was later reprimanded by Congress and subsequently issued an apology. At the time, it was a shocking breach of decorum that stunned the nation.

Fourteen years later, Republican Marjorie Taylor Green told Wilson to hold her beer and went on a screaming tirade during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union. And the Georgia representative was not alone in repeatedly screaming “liar” and “you lie” during Biden’s address last night. Many of the Republican House members behaved like they were at a WWE wrestling match instead of a joint session of Congress. They simply ignored previous admonitions from narrowly-elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who also pursed his lips and mouthed “not true” from the dais, even as he tried to shush his members as they grew increasingly obnoxious.

This is par for the course in the “extreme ultra-MAGA” GOP (a phrase McCarthy asked Biden not to use in his speech because it apparently hurts the feelings of the sensitive extreme ultra-MAGAs.) After all, their Dear Leader told Joe Wilson just a week ago that calling the president a liar in the State of the Union is a patriotic act so, of course, they were going to do it. 

Many of the Republican House members behaved like they were at a WWE wrestling match instead of a joint session of Congress.

The Republicans heckled and booed Biden over a number of issues but they completely lost their minds when Biden suggested they were planning to cut Social Security and Medicare. How dare he suggest we would ever do such a monstrous thing!

 

Wherever did Biden get this idea do you think?

The Republican Study Committee, a powerful group of right-wing policymakers in the House, proposed a budget last summer that, you guessed it, raised the Social Security retirement age and lowered benefits. Meanwhile, the chair of the Senate Campaign Committee for the 2022 election, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fl., put out an agenda for Senate candidates to run on that included a draconian provision to have all government spending sunset every five years. None other than Mitch McConnell, now Senate minority leader, repudiated this plan confirming that Scott was proposing that Social Security and Medicare would be on the chopping block.

Sen Ron Johnson, R. Wis., said during his campaign that Social Security “was set up improperly” and that it would have been better to invest the money in the stock market. He then went even further than Scott, floating the idea of turning Social Security and Medicare into annual “discretionary” spending items. Imagine having to rely on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, to decide whether to fund your retirement or pay your hospital bills every year.

Republicans also recently floated the idea of setting up a commission to study increasing the eligibility age or adding means-testing to federal programs. Just the other day, Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Ok., chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said “I wouldn’t think it’d be off the table.”

As I noted a while back, Republicans have been trying to cut these programs from the day they were enacted, always under the rationale that it’s “socialism,” a charge which has made a big comeback in the last couple of years. It’s in the GOP DNA and they aren’t going to stop now. But the fact that they had a full-blown hissy fit in the middle of the State of the Union tells you that they are more aware than ever of just how politically lethal it is to be seen doing it at the moment, which tells you something. (Not to mention that Donald Trump has issued an edict that they are not to be touched.)

Biden couldn’t have handled the fracas any better if he’d planned it. He engaged with the Republicans right there on the floor with a back-and-forth that ended up with the Republicans all rising to their feet to promise that no cuts would be made to the programs. He was not intimidated by their antics in the least and clearly enjoyed putting them in their places. He was in his element, jousting with political opponents — the picture of a happy warrior:

This State of the Union speech was one of Biden’s best moments as president. He hit all the expected notes of empathy and concern that we’ve come to expect, particularly when he introduced the parents of Tyre Nichols and proposed new plans for police reform. He pulled no punches when he spoke of the erosion of democracy, harking back to January 6th, 2021 as Kevin McCarthy sulked behind him looking as if he’d just sucked on a kumquat. His speech was a well-written recitation of the major accomplishments achieved by the administration in the last two years, delivered with a sense of confidence that he will be able to “finish the job” — the theme of the address and a clear indication that he is going to run for another term. The economic news is good, even if it hasn’t yet hit home to a majority of the country.

The fact is that there is always a lag between the economic numbers turning around and the public’s perception of that in their own lives, largely because all they hear is gloom and doom from much of the media. Getting them to break out of that rut may be the best consequence of this successful speech.

The press has been relentlessly hammering him for months, sensing weakness and using that as an opening to demonstrate they are unbiased. As Salon’s Chauncey DeVega writes today, “The news media has engaged in endless false equivalency and “bothsidesism” where Biden’s failures have been amplified while Trump and the Republican fascists’ lawbreaking, criminality, and existential danger to American democracy and society have, in many ways, been downplayed.” Biden’s confident performance, thinking quickly on his feet, and engaging with the opposition may just give the media the motivation to reset a bit and start reporting the good news about the economy and giving Biden a little credit for a change.

When all was said and done, without a shred of self-awareness, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivered the GOP rebuttal to Biden’s address and said, “it’s not about right or left, it’s about normal and crazy.” She’s right, of course. The country has seen the new GOP House MAGA majority in action twice in the last month, first when they spent days and days acting like spoiled children trying to elect a speaker almost culminating in physical violence on the House floor, and now this juvenile display at the State of the Union.

It’s clear as day who is normal and who the crazies are. 

Salon

We’re paying GOP influencers

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 8, 2023

No agenda except trolling

I missed this observation but Marcy didn’t:

Former House Speaker Nacny Pelosi told CNN that the GOP heckling during the State of the Union Address was “showbiz” to cover putting Medicare and Social Security “on the table.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told reporters after the SOTU that he considers Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) “a sick puppy” who had no business being there. Cameras caught their exchange on the House floor but not the dialogue.

It’s who they are. It’s all they have left.

Talk about waste, fraud, and abuse, we’re paying their salaries.

SOTU: Biden’s style and substance

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 8, 2023

He wielded them both

“Here’s my message to all of you out there: I have your back,” President Joe Biden told Americans in his second State of the Union Address.

Biden’s 2022 SOTU audience topped 38 million. His speech Tuesday night would be his most-watched of the year. He might not be able to match the right’s 24-hour disinformation networks for daily screen time, but for 75 minutes last night he had as much of the nation’s attention as he would have this year. He knew it and he used it.

Democrats cheered. Republicans, many of them, jeered. Their style is their only substance. Biden brought both. If he meant to contrast his administration with his opposition’s chaos, he succeeded famously.

“Biden made perhaps the best speech of his presidency,” tweeted The New Yorker‘s Susan Glasser. “The heckling from Republicans only helped make his points.”

Biden ran through a list of his administration’s accomplishments to date: a record number of new jobs, Covid tamed, new infrastructure funded, the Electoral Count Reform Act, the Respect for Marriage Act, computer chip factories underway, a 50-year low in unemployment, including for Black and Hispanic workers. Made in America, etc.

“We’ve got to finish the job” was a recurrent them.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy asked Biden ahead of time not to use past divisive language like “extreme MAGA Republicans.” He didn’t. But Biden wasn’t there to play beanbag either. He threw punches. He knew the MAGAs would be there and he anticipated heckling.

When Biden warned Republicans not to use Social Security and Medicare as leverage in negotiations to raise the debt limit, it was game on. He directed many remarks to the Republican side of the chamber.

“Let’s commit here tonight that the full faith and credit of the United States of America will never, ever be questioned,” Biden said.

He baited them and they took the bait. Biden looked straight into the camera so tens of millions of Americas would not miss it:

Some of my Republican friends want to take the economy hostage — I get it — unless I agree to their economic plans. All of you at home should know what those plans are.

Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans, some Republicans, want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I’m not saying it’s the majority.

Biden referred to a written proposal by Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and statements Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Republicans shouted and catcalled. He’d struck a soft spot. Rep. Marjorie Tylor Greene (R-Ga.) stood and shouted, “Liar!”

Biden had cut the GOP caucus over the eye, so he worked the eye. He went off-script and engaged them. Republicans may wish they hadn’t.

Let me give you — anybody who doubts it, contact my office. I’ll give you a copy — I’ll give you a copy of the proposal. That means Congress doesn’t vote — I’m glad to see — no, I tell you, I enjoy conversion.

You know, it means if Congress doesn’t keep the programs the way they are, they go away.

Other Republicans say — I’m not saying it’s a majority of you, I don’t even think it’s even a significant — but it’s being proposed by individuals. I’m not — politely not naming them, but it’s being proposed by some of you.

Look, folks, the idea is that we’re not going to be — we’re not going to be moved into being threatened to default on the debt if we don’t respond.

Folks — so folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the books now, right? They’re not to be — all right. We’ve got unanimity.

Biden invited them to publicly refute that position. Many of them stood.

Social Security and Medicare are a lifeline for millions of seniors. Americans have to pay into them from the very first paycheck they started.

So tonight, let’s all agree — and we apparently are — let’s stand up for seniors. Stand up and show them we will not cut Social Security. We will not cut Medicare.

The chamber, Republicans included, stood again.

“Man, that was a setup and it was nicely done,” tweeted Tom Nichols, staff writer for The Atlantic.

“Wow, we just witnessed Biden paint the Republicans into a corner on live TV,” tweeted Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin. Not that the GOP won’t deny it when the time comes.

Those benefits belong to the American people. They earned it.

And if anyone tries to cut Social Security, which apparently no one’s going to do, and if anyone tries to cut Medicare, I’ll stop them. I’ll veto it. And look, I’m not going to allow them to take away — be taken away.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. But apparently it’s not going to be a problem.

Biden addressed a populist message to Americans beset by predatory capitalism. “Look, capitalism without competition is not capitalism. It’s extortion. It’s exploitation.”

“Americans are … tired of being played for suckers,” Biden told working people from coast to coast. He put the country on notice that Democrats are ready to fight for them again.

It’s about time. Americans love a fighter.

For those feeling extorted, Biden pledged to take on surprise bills, junk fees and surcharges, and airline practices that bilk travelers. The Junk Fee Prevention Act will “ban surprise resort fees that hotels charge on your bill. Those fees can cost you up to $90 a night at hotels that aren’t even resorts.”

The tax system is unfair, Biden said. People know it. And he means to make large, wealthy corporations that pay zero in taxes pay their fair share.

“Look, I’m a capitalist. I’m a capitalist. But pay your fair share.”

There was no real wo wonk-speak last night. “I have your back,” Biden said, and he meant it, knowing his largest audience of the year would hear. And see.

We all did. We saw a president who came from the working class speak to America’s struggling working class and shrinking middle class. He knows their everyday concerns and means to address them. If he can get the Republican House to go along.

New York raconteur George Hahn observed, “Joe Biden really taps into pain, loss and empathy like no one can. He knows first-hand. Yet he doesn’t wallow in it. No one can touch him there.”

While Joe Biden let Americans of all political persuasions, even “extreme MAGA Republicans,” that he is there for them, MAGA Republicans in the chamber put on The Greatest Show Not of This Earth.

When Biden addressed defending against threats to democracy, including events that happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Speaker McCarthy was slow to stand and applaud Biden’s condemnation of hate and extremism.

Republicans showed us who they are. It wasn’t the first time.

It was the most remarkable SOTU of my lifetime. And unexpected.

“It’s never, ever been a good bet to bet against America,” Biden said again Tuesday night, showing it’s never a good bet to count him out either.

UPDATE: Looks like I forgot Rep. Mike Lee.

The Frozen Field

Published by digby on February 7, 2023
Frozen (2013) Olaf (Josh Gad)

This piece in the Atlantic wonders why the 2024 presidential field is so slow to materialize.

When Donald Trump gave his 2019 State of the Union address, several of the Democrats listening inside the House chamber had already declared their plans to run against him. But when Joe Biden delivers his speech tomorrow night, his only official competition will be Trump. My colleague Russell Berman wondered over the weekend, Does anyone want to be president?

By the time a president gives the State of the Union address at the beginning of his third year in office, at least half a dozen people are typically already in the presidential race, Russell explained. But this year is different. Besides former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who is expected to announce her candidacy next week, the 2024 campaign is off to an extremely slow start.

“This [is] what happens when you have a former president who lost reelection but still inspires fear in his party, along with a Democratic incumbent—the oldest to ever serve—who is not exactly itching to campaign,” Russell explained.

Allies of President Biden have said that they expect him to formally announce his reelection bid sometime after tomorrow’s State of the Union, but the announcement could also be months away. A late announcement isn’t unusual for incumbents, who are already familiar to voters and want to be perceived as being focused on their presidential duties. And at this point, the president’s allies are assuming that Biden would have the Democratic field all to himself. But no president since Ronald Reagan has faced as much uncertainty about whether he would run for reelection; in 1983, Reagan was the oldest president in American history, but he was eight years younger than Biden is now.

Still, the bigger question is what happens to the GOP between now and 2024. As Russell noted, “Until Haley put out word about her announcement last week, no one in the emerging field—which could include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, among others—was willing to be the first target of the barrage of insults and invective Trump would surely hurl their way.”

A large proportion of Republican officials are worried about how a 2024 Trump campaign could damage the GOP; they’re aware of the former president’s volatility and the fact that he presided over three failed election cycles after taking office. “Aside from his most blinkered loyalists, virtually everyone in the party agrees: It’s time to move on from Trump,” my colleague McKay Coppins wrote last week. But the party doesn’t have much of a plan, if any, to help make that happen.

The GOP’s Trump dilemma probably won’t resolve itself. More likely, as the contributing writer Peter Wehner outlined in a new essay, “Donald Trump may lose the GOP presidential primary and, out of spite, wreck Republican prospects in 2024.”

Peter argued:

Trump has no attachment to the Republican Party or, as best as one can tell, to anything or anyone else. His malignant narcissism prevents that. Trump is an institutional arsonist, peddling conspiracy theories, spreading lies, sowing distrust. That’s his skill, and he’s quite good at it. But Trump is now causing growing unease among his past supporters and the GOP establishment by signaling that he may very well turn that skill against their party … If Republicans turn on him, he is likely to turn on them, filled with the burning rage of a thousand suns.

Even so, some of the Republican officials whom McKay spoke with are clinging to the “most enduring of GOP delusions”: that maybe this time, Trump will behave differently. McKay ended his essay with a telling anecdote:

When I asked Rob Portman about his party’s Trump problem, the recently retired Ohio senator confidently predicted that it would all sort itself out soon. The former president, he believed, would study the polling data, realize that other Republicans had a better shot at winning, and graciously bow out of 2024 contention.

“I think at the end of the day,” Portman told me, “he’s unlikely to want to put himself in that position when he could be more of a Republican senior statesman who talks about the policies that were enacted in his administration.”

I let out an involuntary laugh.

“Maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part,” Portman conceded.

If and when Nikki Haley announces her candidacy later this month, we might begin to hear from other Republican contenders officially entering the race. But for now, the GOP will continue to struggle with its inability to move on from Trump, and Biden will continue to bide his time.

None of this seems like that much of a mystery. Like most people, I expect the most likely outcome will be a rematch between Trump and Biden. But anything can happen. After all, we once actually elected Donald Trump.

I guess it wasn’t enough that the wholecountry