U.S. Politics

[Rick Plant]

Here's the massive turkey shortage that Republicans are lying about! In fact most of these birds probably won't even be sold. 





The right wing media and right wing Republicans are lying because there's plenty of turkey to go round.



The media shamefully claims gas prices is $5 when gas is under $3.

[Rick Plant]

Our President Joe Biden and our First Lady Jill Biden were at Fort Bragg serving our troops. It's great to have a President that respects our men and women in the military again.

[Rick Plant]

The Republicans are taking their terror campaign to the next level



Republicans in Wisconsin have upped the operational tempo in their ongoing war on free and fair elections. Trump stalwart United States Senator Ron Johnson is exhorting state GOP legislators in his home state to illegally seize control of federal election administration over the objections of the governor. Johnson's plan is contravened not only by a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, but also by a ruling of the US Supreme Court. But who's counting?

Johnson is buoyed by a fringe constitutional theory popularized by Trump lawyer John Eastman in his notorious coup memos. Eastman asserted that state legislatures had ultimate power over election administration, including the right to cast aside the popular vote for Biden and choose Trump electors instead, provided a Republican yells "fraud" loudly enough.

A long-awaited report commissioned by the Republican state legislature found no evidence of election fraud in 2020. Instead of reflecting on the life choices that have led their state to the brink of one-party rule, the Wisconsin GOP has redirected its rage towards the non-partisan Wisconsin Elections Commission. These legislators are looking for a pretext to abolish the WEC and usurp its powers.

The report alleged a handful of picayune violations of election law by the WEC, including sending absentee ballots to nursing homes. WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe defended her commission's work and said the report contains errors. These errors could have been resolved if the WEC had been allowed to review the report before publication, as audited agencies typically are. But the first rule of endlessly re-litigating the 2020 election is never to let the facts get in the way of a good smear.

Republican vindictiveness knows no bounds. It's not enough to slander Wolfe and her colleagues, and demand their resignations. Earlier this month, the Republican sheriff of Racine County asked the Republican district attorney to file felony charges against five of the WEC's six members. Their alleged crime? Helping little old ladies vote in nursing homes while protecting them from Covid.

If Racine County DA Patricia Hanson agrees to go along with this charade, these dedicated public servants could each be charged with two Class 1 felonies, which, in the vanishingly unlikely event they are convicted, could carry up to three and a half years in prison apiece.

Wisconsin law requires pairs of officials known as "special voting deputies" to visit every nursing home in the state twice to help residents vote. However, during that phase of the pandemic, most nursing homes banned all visitors, including the deputies. And for good reason. It didn't seem very safe to send these officials and their various hangers-on traipsing from one nursing home to the next, interacting with patients, and possibly spreading the virus.

Therefore, the WEC voted to stop trying to send deputies to nursing homes (where they were already banned) and instead to send absentee ballots to nursing homes. The sheriff alleges that illegal votes were cast because cognitively impaired residents were assisted in voting. This despite the fact that people with cognitive disabilities retain their right to vote in Wisconsin unless a judge determines that they are incompetent. A family member's gut feeling that Mom is too senile to vote is legally worthless.

Wolfe insists the decision to send absentee ballots was not only legal but required by state law: "The law says if you cannot accomplish those two visits by special voting deputies, if a voter cannot vote during those two visits, that you have to send the ballots to the voters in those care facilities," Wolfe explained. She also noted that if they hadn't sent absentee ballots, these elderly and disabled voters would have been disenfranchised.

Elections officials across the country have been subjected to death threats from voters who have been duped by the Big Lie of election fraud. The threat of felony charges is taking the terror campaign to the next level.

https://www.rawstory.com/redistricting/

[Rick Plant]

Ilhan Omar fact-checks 'buffoon' Lauren Bobert's lie: 'This whole story is made up'



Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) went back to her home district for the Thanksgiving holiday, and while there she spoke to constituents where she made fun of her Democratic colleagues. However, it turns out that her story was all a lie.

According to Boebert, she was in a capitol elevator with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) when a Capitol police officer ran up.

"Well, she doesn't have a backpack. We should be fine," Boebert claimed she said, illuding to Omar being a terrorist because she's Muslim. She went on to call Omar a member of the "jihad squad."

But Omar is speaking out. After seeing the tweet, she tweeted that the incident never happened. In fact, Omar said that Boebert seems too scared to even look her even the eye.

"Fact, this buffoon looks down when she sees me at the Capitol, this whole story is made up," Omar tweeted Thursday evening. "Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout. Anti-Muslim bigotry isn't funny & shouldn't be normalized. Congress can't be a place where hateful and dangerous Muslims tropes get no condemnation."

Click Link for racist video:

https://www.rawstory.com/ilhan-omar-fact-checks-lauren-boebert/

[Rick Plant]

Thanks Biden!

US. unemployment claims fall to 52-year low after seasonal adjustments

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits plummeted last week to the lowest level in more than half a century, another sign that the U.S. job market is rebounding rapidly from last year’s coronavirus recession.

Jobless claims dropped by 71,000 to 199,000, the lowest since mid-November 1969. But seasonal adjustments around the Thanksgiving holiday contributed significantly to the bigger-than-expected drop. Unadjusted, claims actually ticked up by more than 18,000 to nearly 259,000.

The four-week average of claims, which smooths out weekly ups and downs, also dropped — by 21,000 to just over 252,000, the lowest since mid-March 2020 when the pandemic slammed the economy.

Since topping 900,000 in early January, the applications have fallen steadily toward and now fallen below their prepandemic level of around 220,000 a week. Claims for jobless aid are a proxy for layoffs.

Overall, 2 million Americans were collecting traditional unemployment checks the week that ended Nov. 13, down slightly from the week before.

“Overall, expect continued volatility in the headline figures, but the trend remains very slowly lower,” Contingent Macro Advisors wrote in a research note.

Until Sept. 6, the federal government had supplemented state unemployment insurance programs by paying an extra payment of $300 a week and extending benefits to gig workers and to those who were out of work for six months or more. Including the federal programs, the number of Americans receiving some form of jobless aid peaked at more than 33 million in June 2020.

The job market has staged a remarkable comeback since the spring of 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic forced businesses to close or cut hours and kept many Americans at home as a health precaution. In March and April last year, employers slashed more than 22 million jobs.

But government relief checks, super-low interest rates and the rollout of vaccines combined to give consumers the confidence and financial wherewithal to start spending again. Employers, scrambling to meet an unexpected surge in demand, have made 18 million new hires since April 2020 and are expected to add another 575,000 this month. Still, the United States remains 4 million short of the jobs it had in February 2020.

Companies now complain that they can’t find workers to fill job openings, a near-record 10.4 million in September. Workers, finding themselves with bargaining clout for the first time in decades, are becoming choosier about jobs; a record 4.4 million quit in September, a sign they have confidence in their ability to find something better.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/u-s-unemployment-claims-fall-to-52-year-low-after-seasonal-adjustments

[Rick Plant]

This is the GOP of today...vile, racist, and hateful of other religions. They mimic the behavior of Donald Trump because it plays well with his cult.   

'Flat-out wrong' Lauren Boebert doesn't understand the meaning of Christianity: former GOP governor



On CNN Friday, former Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) tore into Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) for likening Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to a suicide bomber in a comment to supporters — and suggested that it is an indication her own religious faith is rotten.

"For a woman to make this kind of statement means she's ignoring the fact we're all made in the image of God," said Kasich. "We all deserve respect. We don't deserve attacks. People who laugh at this, they don't understand what faith is all about. We wonder in this country why there's so much fighting, why there's so much name-calling, not just in politics about across the board. It's because people have lost sight of how important religion is, in terms of guiding individual behavior, and it's not about the negatives. It's about the positives."

"The idea that somebody would say something like this means they have really little understanding of what it means to have faith," continued Kasich. "I can't question her or think she's not a faithful person, but it sure gives you a sense that she does not understand that that is completely and totally inappropriate, and, frankly, as a person that is a Christian, it's flat-out wrong and it's very disappointing. These things need to be healed. These things need to be observed if we're going to begin to heal this country."

Watch below:

'Absolute garbage rhetoric': Mitch McConnell adviser hammers Lauren Boebert on CNN



On CNN Friday, former Mitch McConnell adviser Scott Jennings slammed Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) for her comments joking that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was a suicide bomber.

"Scott, was it just another day at the office and they got these folks in the far right in certain parts of the caucus that they just can't control?" asked anchor Jim Acosta.

"Senator McConnell serves in the Senate," said Jennings. "I guarantee you, I know what he's thinking. It's a garbage comment from a garbage politics. I'm as anti-Squad as the next [Republican], but there's plenty of ways to debate these folks without stooping to this garbage rhetoric. I noted, by the way, that Boebert has been forced to apologize. I assume that didn't happen in a vacuum, but she's of course committed the ultimate sin, which is the people she's being performative for here would say you never should apologize."

"Ultimately this is not the future of the party, not the future of the country, not the future of what any of us wants," added Jennings. "These are not the leaders that we need for America or for the Republican Party."

Watch below:

[Rick Plant]

This is a big deal.  Less than 2 years ago, the economy was in freefall, unemployment was rising to Great Depression levels, workforce participation was falling, GDP collapsing and unconstrained disease spread. Electing responsible adults like President Biden matters. https://washingtonpost.com/business/2021/11/24/jobless-claims-pandemic/




This is a historic jobs recovery: 5.6 million jobs have been created since President Biden took office and an unemployment rate of 4.6% two full years earlier than experts predicted was possible.