Just for the record, the three Republicans representing Iowa in congress at this moment voted to support congress member and Qanon believer Marjorie Taylor Greene to keep her committee assignments.
That is Ashley Hinson, Randy Feenstra and the hopefully temporary Mariannette Miller-Meeks.
That is two votes taken and two votes that appear to be against what many would term Iowa values.
When Donald Trump incited an insurrection to overthrow congress and keep himself as president these three amigos supported Trump in his efforts by voting NOT to impeach him.
Now the question is whether a member who believes in wild conspiracy theories including things like “Jewish space lasers” and that the murders at Majorie Stoneman Douglas High School were a “false flag’ operation (among many conspiratorial beliefs) deserves to be allowed to make laws. Once again, Iowa three amigos said yes Marjorie Taylor Greene should be allowed on committees.
Are these the views of Iowans? Lord, I hope not. One of Iowa’s core values has been to stay away from the extremes. Trump and Greene are the very extremes in American politics. Allowing the extremes to fester, even supporting the extremes is bad for the country and Iowa.
Just a year ago America was coming under the throes of a couple of illnesses that were about to rage out of control to make 2020 one of the worst, if not the worst year on record. On February 5th, 2020 Donald Trump was acquitted in his impeachment trial by the US Senate. Senator Susan Collins of Maine said that Trump “Learned a pretty big lesson.”
The only lesson that Trump learned was that he could pretty much do whatever he wanted and the spineless politicians in his party would bail his ass out no matter what.
The illness Trump in turn helped lead to perhaps the biggest single disaster in American history. On Feb. 6th, 2020 the first American’s death was directly tied to the corona virus. There have been 500,000 more in the year since, more than any single war in American history. Trump, having been freed from any scrutiny by his spineless party, proceeded to address the Pandemic as if he were a two-year old. His party followed his lead.
This is black history month. Expect a few questions in that genre today.
President Biden Thursday called for a diplomatic end to the war on what small Middle-East country?
Hey it is Super Bowl Sunday! Who was the first black QB to win the Super Bowl?
We almost had a coup last month. What SE Asian nation did have a coup early last week?
That clause in the constitution that says the VP can cast a vote in the senate to break a tie came into play when who cast a vote for the Covid-19 package Friday morning?
Methinks this one is a lie for sure. Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-Ga) stated in that past that California wild fires were ignited by what?
One more for the Super Bowl. When did two black head coaches oppose each other in the Super Bowl?
Iowa is very near the bottom in number of vaccines for corona virus administered. What percent of Iowans have been vaccinated?
The House voted to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from House committees. How did Iowa’s Republicans in the House vote on this issue?
Loving v. Virginia (1967) was the Supreme Court case that allowed what between races?
My Pillow is getting competition. What hero of a high school shooting says he will start a pillow company to compete directly with My Pillow?
Fox News is being sued by what voting machine company for $2.7 Billion?
In the Iowa State House, Speaker Pat Grassley will enforce rules on wearing jeans but not on wearing what public health need during the pandemic?
Actor Hal Holbrook died last week. He was best known for two roles, one of which involved portraying what super star author from a previous era?
Deaths from corona virus passed what sad milestone in Iowa Thursday?
The state of North Carolina announced that it would no longer issue license plates with what symbol on it?
What US ally declared the Proud Boys as a terrorist group in their country?
Russia is claiming fantastic results for its version of a corona virus vaccine which is named what after an early USSR space program?
September, 1963 the 16th Street Baptist Church in what Alabama city killing four young girls and adding impetus to a future civil rights bill?
September, 1957 saw national TV news covering the integration of what southern state capital’s high school?
Who said this – “If not us then who? If not now, then when?”
This is just personal taste, but if I were a lawmaker I’d be less worried about making a bill bipartisan if the other party had sent a mob to murder me 4 weeks ago. – Zack Borenstein
Oops! This just in:
Answers:
Yemen
Doug Williams of the (oddly) Redskins in 1988
Myanmar (aka Burma)
VP Kamala Harris (just wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten her)
Jewish space lasers
2007 when Tony Dunge’s Colts played Lovie Smith’s Bears
6.2% as of Friday
They voted to keep her on the committees.
Marriage
David Hogg
Smartmatic
Face masks
Mark Twain
5,000
The confederate battle flag
Canada
Sputnik
Birmingham
Little Rock
The recently departed John Lewis
What is systemic racism you ask? When a 9 year old African American child gets handcuffed and assaulted with a chemical agent, while the courts decide if the QShaman gets organic food in prison.
Beth Wessel-Kroeschell from her legislative web page
During the first few weeks of the legislative session, House Democrats have repeatedly called on Republicans to follow the advice of public health officials and require that legislators, staff, and visitors wear masks in the State Capitol to help stop the spread of COVID-19 (as of this week, five confirmed cases have been detected in the Iowa House). Republicans have refused to institute a mask mandate because Speaker Grassley claims it cannot be enforced on the House floor.
So, yesterday I wore jeans in violation of House Rules to prove him wrong. First, I was asked by the Chief Clerk to change my pants and I refused. Next, because of my jeans, Speaker Grassley refused to let me speak against a bill that would end diversity plans in Iowa school districts.
We are in the middle of a pandemic that has killed thousands in Iowa and hundreds of thousands across this country. Republicans will crack down on Democrats wearing denim but can’t muster the courage to have lawmakers and others at the Capitol wear masks to save lives?
By refusing to follow public health guidelines like face coverings and social distancing, Republicans are putting all who work at and visit the Capitol in danger. It’s time House Republicans step up and do the right thing.
Thank you for your support. As President Biden says, “Truth over lies.”
Beth Wessel-Kroeschell
State Representative, District 45
Quick Comment:
Once again, Republicans use public office to make Iowa a national laughingstock. Rather than take on serious issues of the majority of Iowans in a serious way Republicans go about the business of passing the Koch approved ALEC legislative agenda that is on desired by the far right wing (that is their rich donors) of their party.
To state the obvious we are in the very dead of winter. A foot of snow on the ground and temperatures that struggle to get above zero. For baseball fans this was a time known as the hot stove league, a time when everybody’s team will win as our imaginations turned banjo hitters into all-stars.
For those of us who try to keep an eye on who runs the ship of state, this is a time when we can run some “what if” races in our heads hoping to find the right person to put our side back in the winning column. Iowa’s Democrats really took it in the shorts in November. We have had some pretty rough sledding for a while and it seems to get a little worse every year.
Why Iowa’s Democrats have had such a hard slog continues to mystify me. The party and its candidates stand for what Iowans stand for. We are still the party of the working person, the party that works its tail off to get higher wages, better education, more opportunity better health care for all, maintain Social Security and Medicare for the elderly and is the party that is combatting the one enemy that may do us all in – climate change.
Yet here in Iowa issues seem to not make much of a difference at all. Joni Ernst says out loud that Social Security should be cut in a state with a high elderly population and she still gets re-elected.Iowa was once a state where issues where studied by serious, smart voters who then cast their votes based on their study. Now, the president loses the state’s major customer in the world and screws up their ethanol business and farmers vote for him in greater numbers. What happened to that serious Iowa voter?
But let’s pull out the old crystal ball and peer into a cloudy future to see if anything is appearing yet:
Two big races in Iowa in 2022. – the Governor and the Chuck Grassley senate seat. Republicans obviously have incumbents in both offices.
Will Kim Reynolds run again? And will Iowans have a collective amnesia once again about her record? Her handling of the corona virus crisis can be best described as almost doing nothing as we stand near the bottom in vaccinations and testing and near the top in positivity rates. Yet, President Biden will pull Iowa along as his administration busts its ass to whip this deadly disease. Reynolds will be right up front to take the credit.
Meanwhile, Senator forever Grassley will be announcing shortly whether he has one more run in him. If he runs and wins – and to be honest iowans vote for Grassley easier than they breathe – he will be 95 at the end of his next term in 2029.
Do the Democrats have anyone to run against Reynolds or Grassley. At the moment and after a drubbing in November, things are looking a little bleak. Rob Sand looked like he might be interested in a shot at the Governor’s mansion but he seems to have settled in as State Auditor. We’ll see. One of the great things Sand brings to his campaigns is his sterling reputation for honesty. Honesty is not something Reynolds is known for.
What about Grassley? Many Iowans were impressed by the campaign of Admiral Michael Franken in 2020. Although a late entry and hampered by the explosion of the corona virus, Franken’s knowledge and career caught a lot of attention. Could he take out the aging icon? Anything’s possible, especially if he starts early and runs hard.
In either the gubernatorial race or the senatorial race, statewide name recognition will be a valued commodity. Who in the Democratic lineup has that? Beside the two mentioned above there is former congressional candidate JD Scholten, former congress woman Abby Finkenauer and former senatorial candidate Theresa Greenfield.
As always there may be an incident that will make a household name out of a state legislator overnight, but right now the Democratic cupboard pickings are slim. Robb Hogg, maybe? Would Fred Hubbell be interested again? What about some of the other candidates in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2018 – say Cathy Glasson? John Norris? Ross Wilburn? Andy McGuire?
In 2 years, I believe the political landscape will be looking quite different. With big majorities in both houses of the state legislature, the Republican Party will be looking to transform the state into the Koch brothers vision of Utopia. I don’t believe the average Iowa will be all that thrilled with the product.
On the national level and to a degree on the state level expect the split in the Republican Party concerning the continuing cult of personality fostered by Donald Trump to cause some severe strains in that party. Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris Administration will be getting major praise for taming the corona pandemic and bringing the country out of the Depression conditions left by Trump. The exposure of the lies of the Trump years will continue to fuel conversations.
Midwinter – a time to dream and start new projects.
Year round organizing is vital to sustaining democracy. Check out this free training opportunity for all levels of involvement.
The DNC Best Practices Institute is excited to announce the launch of our 2021 Train the Trainer (T3) Webinar Training Program!
T3 is a free six-week, twelve-part webinar course covering several aspects of grassroots campaigning. This program seeks to expand the skills of progressive activists and volunteers by ensuring that comprehensive training is free and accessible for Democrats all over the country.
T3 trainings are held every Tuesday and Thursday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. ET, from March 16, through April 22. The deadline to register is Sunday, March 14 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Click here to register.
The Best Practices Institute (BPI) is a joint project of the Democratic National Committee and the Association of State Democratic Committees (ASDC).
Staff at the BPI hold training sessions for activists, party and community leaders, candidates, campaign staff, and more.
BPI training topics include
field organizing
digital mobilization
campaign data
finance and compliance
communications
leadership development.
Cliick here to register for the program. Registration is free, but please keep in mind that registration will close at 11:59 PM ET on Sunday, March 14th.
To stay updated on BPI’s offerings, you can sign up for their newsletter here.
22 Legally-cast, Uncounted — and Uncontested — Ballots Will Put Hart Ahead by Nine Votes
WHEATLAND, IOWA — Rita Hart has filed a new response with the U.S. House outlining Mariannette Miller-Meeks’s failure to demonstrate entitlement to the seat for Iowa’s Second Congressional District and reaffirming the need to ensure all legally-cast ballots are counted in this ongoing race.
In her initial Notice of Contest filed with the U.S. House in December, Rita Hart identified 22 lawful ballots cast by voters in Iowa’s Second Congressional District that were wrongfully not counted in the race. As a part of that contest, Rita provided comprehensive evidence to verify that these ballots were cast legally and erroneously uncounted. As Hart outlines in today’s filing, Miller-Meeks does not contest the validity of these ballots, instead she’s wrongly arguing about process to attempt to justify the disenfranchisement of Iowa voters.
“Contestant Rita Hart’s notice of contest identified—and provided comprehensive evidence to verify—22 lawful ballots cast by voters in Iowa’s Second Congressional District that were not counted in the November 2020 election,” said Hart attorney Marc Elias. “In her motion to dismiss, Contestee Mariannette Miller-Meeks does not contest the validity of these ballots. Instead, she shrugs at the undisputed disenfranchisement of 22 Iowa voters and urges the U.S. House to do the same based on a nonexistent procedural requirement with no basis in the law. Ultimately, Miller-Meeks’s focus on process over people fails, both as a matter of principle and as a matter of law, and she raises no substantive objection to the counting of the 22 votes identified by Contestant Hart. Contestee Miller-Meeks’s purported concern that this contest will diminish public confidence in elections rings hollow as she seeks to wrongfully disenfranchise lawful Iowa voters whose ballots should be counted. Her motion should be denied, those ballots should be counted, and Contestant Hart should properly be seated in the House.”
In condoning the undisputed disenfranchisement of 22 Iowa voters, Miller-Meeks calls the errors that caused these votes to go uncounted a product of the “ordinary course of election administration,” and urges the Committee to dismiss the contest. Unfortunately for Miller-Meeks, her insistence that state judicial remedies be exhausted before a House contest can be filed is not only inconsistent with House precedent set by Republicans when they held the majority, see Dornan v. Sanchez, but would also intrude upon Congress’s constitutional prerogative to judge the elections and qualifications of its members. These disenfranchised Iowa voters deserve to have their ballots counted.
For the full text of Rita Hart’s Notice of Contest, please click HERE. For the full text of Rita Hart’s response to the motion to dismiss, click HERE.
Thom Hartmann deep dives Craig Unger’s book American Kompromat: How the KGB cultivated Donald Trump, and related tales of sex, greed, power, and treachery, is being recommended by former CIA operative Robert Baer as: “a bombshell” and by Garry Kasparov as the book to read “to understand why the danger to American democracy is far from over.” And John Sipher at Washington Post confirms American Kompromat “makes a strong case that Trump is probably a compromised trusted contact of Kremlin interests.” https://bit.ly/AmericanKompromat#americankompromat
The book details how Russia recruited Donald Trump as an asset, starting around 1980.
Three Rural (Iowa) White Guys – that is, progressive rural white guys have a brand new weekly podcast and they also have a blog and a Facebook page. It is their intention and hope to bridge the great rural-urban divide. Good luck, guys!
This is from their website:
“It is pretty obvious that the world of podcasting doesn’t really need yet another trio of white men sharing their opinions to the world. So we are owning our privilege. We understand that white men have an unfair advantage in society at this point in history, especially in rural communities. We understand that our opinions and experiences are very limited when it comes to important social issues. One of our goals is to use that privilege to help level that playing field. In addition to their expertise and wisdom, our diverse guest list helps to provide perspectives on diversity, privilege and life in rural America in the post Trump era. We hope to serve as a bridge between these perspectives and the paradigm of our rural white neighbors.
and
“Join us in our journey to help broaden the perspectives of urban and rural folks alike. We seek to help close the urban-rural divide, and give voice to rural communities around the country. From a progressive point of view, we want to engage with those who both agree and don’t agree with where we are coming from. Join us in building pathways forward.”
Here is what everyone needs to understand about the Voucher bill that was passed by the Iowa Senate on Thursday and is heading to the House this week:
Republicans in Iowa and many states have been advocating for Vouchers for years. Betsy Devos elevated this campaign nationally, and ALEC created bills, now being pitched as “School Choice Legislation” are popping up in Republican controlled states across the country. The bill making its way through the Iowa legislator isn’t the effort of Iowa Senators, and it’s not Governor Reynold’s creative plan to help needy kids in Iowa like she wants everyone to believe. It’s an ALEC bill that was created as a steppingstone to larger Voucher programs that will completely reshape our state’s education system. It will damage our public schools, divert tax dollars to private schools, and it will widen existing inequalities. It will further segregate our communities by race and socioeconomic status. It will hurt Iowa’s Public Schools.
This bill, SF 159, tries to soften the hearts of Iowans by carefully planning the first steppingstone of their voucher program to only offering vouchers to kids in Iowa’s “failing public schools.” The problem is, even if this was where Republicans wanted their “school choice” efforts to end, which is it not, it is still fundamentally a flawed approach that will hurt both Urban and Rural public schools.
Republicans pushing for vouchers continue to use the term “failing schools” as a synonym for the 34 schools identified by our state as “In need of comprehensive improvement.” These are absolutely not synonyms.
Every year our state, because of a federal law called “The Every Child Succeeds Act,” must rank schools based on measures such as test scores, English proficiency, graduation rates, conditions for learning as determined by student surveys, and other metrics. Then they must identify the lowest performing 5% of schools in their state as in need of “Comprehensive” improvements. These are not “Failing schools.” In fact, every time I’ve heard a Republican use that term I get angrier.
It infuriates me because nearly every single school being referred to as “Failing” is also on another nationally compiled list: Low-Income Schools serving a high proportion of students eligible for free and reduced lunch. Do you know why these lists share so many schools? Because the socioeconomic status of a school is the number one predictor of most of the metrics we are using to rank our schools. Schools that serve wealthy communities will always outrank schools that serve low-income communities when the ranking system is heavily based on standardized test performance, graduation rates, and even ENGLISH PROFICIENCY.
So yes, these are schools in need of comprehensive support—But not because they are failing schools. Many of these schools are incredible and have amazing teachers in them. In fact, the list of schools that SF 159 refers to isn’t even a list of struggling schools. What it really is, is a list of schools serving low-income students. It’s a list of schools we absolutely should be identifying. But we should be identifying them so we can bring bills to the Senate floor that will provide those teachers additional resources and support. We should be bringing bills to the Governor’s desk that will incentivize the best educational leaders in our state to go work in the those buildings. The point of identifying the 5% of your lowest performing schools is to HELP those schools, not create laws that will damage them and force many of them to close—leaving many urban and rural communities with no public school.
SF 159 won’t help our state. It will take away funding and resources from 34 communities that need more resources, not less. It will hurt kids. And it’s only the beginning of what School Choice advocates hope to see happen to our Public Schools.
If you support Public Schools, I urge you to please contact your State Representatives and tell them to vote NO to any bill that creates Vouchers in Iowa. Public Tax Dollars are for Public Schools. Period.
Governor Kim Keynolds: (515) 281-5211 U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 Iowa Members of Congress - Rep. Randy Feenstra (R) - Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) - Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) - Rep. Zach Nunn (R) Iowa US Senators - Senator Joni Ernst (R) - Senator Charles Grassley (R)
Year round organizing is vital to sustaining democracy. Check out this free training opportunity for all levels of involvement.
February 3, 2021
Thom Hartmann deep dives Craig Unger’s book American Kompromat: 
Leland Michael
