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1/27-29 Weekend News & Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on January 27, 2023 by BennyJanuary 27, 2023

Just found out I’ve been selected to serve on the powerful Oversight Committee w/ @OversightDems!

Make no mistake, I’m here to go toe to toe with extremist Republicans who only want to use this committee to push forward MAGA policies and conspiracies.

— Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@RepMaxwellFrost) January 26, 2023

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Posted in 2024 Elections, Black Lives Matter, grassroots, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution | Tagged Congress, Memphis, Open Thread, progressive politics | 55 Replies

8/20-21 Weekend News and Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on August 20, 2022 by BennyAugust 20, 2022

Benny’s bar is open for the weekend. Join us for drinks and conversation below.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Democratic candidates, GOP, Open Thread

7/25-26 News Roundup & Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on July 25, 2022 by BennyJuly 25, 2022

Your Democratic Party: Progressive who has won county exec races in a Trump area, known for saving a paper mill by working creatively with the union to keep it alive, is dropping out of the WI Senate race for lack of money. Marc Lasry, son of a billionaire from NY, is climbing. https://t.co/A5GW3aCmF7 — Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) July 25, 2022 More news and opinions in the comments. See you there.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged News Roundup, Open Thread

7/22-24 Weekend News and Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on July 22, 2022 by BennyJuly 24, 2022

Friday came quickly this week. Join us for news and commentary below. Benny’s Bar will open later for summer drinks.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Bernie Sanders Joe Biden, Congress, Open Thread, Super Tuesday

4-20 News Roundup and OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on April 20, 2022 by BennyApril 20, 2022

#420day #CannabisCommunity #cannabisday pic.twitter.com/o3sgNQVFPS

— JRuE (@jorgeru77) April 20, 2022

Let's be blunt.

We’ve got people behind bars while others make millions in the cannabis industry. On 4/20, we need @POTUS to pardon all cannabis convictions, wipe marijuana debt, free anyone currently incarcerated for it and LEGALIZE marijuana.

— Jamaal Bowman (@JamaalBowmanNY) April 20, 2022

Legalize marijuana. Expunge past marijuana convictions. End the failed War on Drugs.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 20, 2022

Benny’s Bar will be open later for mocktails and other libations. Join us in the comments below!

Posted in Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter | Tagged 420, cannabis, Open Thread

2/26-27 Weekend Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on February 26, 2022 by BennyFebruary 26, 2022

Today we’ll start with an article about the Texas 28 congressional race from WaPo.

In Texas, a millennial’s political ambitions could upend the career of one of the House’s most conservative Democrats

Jessica Cisneros, a 28-year-old immigration lawyer from Laredo, Tex., would rather focus on her campaign to unseat her former boss, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D), than her identity as a millennial backed by self-described liberals.

Cisneros argues that the 17-year incumbent — a first-generation Mexican American attorney like herself — is no longer the right fit for Texas’s 28th Congressional District, the deep-south Texas stretch from San Antonio to the border that came close to nominating her two years ago.

Cuellar dismisses Cisneros as a candidate with ties to “far-left” celebrities — a reference to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who recently campaigned for Cisneros in the district — and liberal groups that have backed her candidacy.

But the liberal label is not Cisneros’s pitch to voters.

“I’ve never branded myself in any of the terms Cuellar is using,” she told The Washington Post in an interview. “I never go up to a door and expect a voter to vote for me because I’m progressive. Like, we actually have conversations about the policies that I’m running on.”

With days to go before Tuesday’s primary, Cisneros stands as a serious challenge to Cuellar, one of the last congressional Democrats to oppose abortion rights and a frequent critic of President Biden’s immigration policies. The closely watched contest underscores the divide in the party and is a fresh test of whether left-leaning candidates, who have struggled in recent elections, can prevail over more moderate Democrats.

This is not Cisneros’s first bid against Cuellar. After interning for him in 2014, she waged a primary challenge six years later and came within 2,700 votes of defeating him. Cuellar was able to prevail thanks to decades of name recognition and a deep campaign account — he outspent her by $700,000.

But now, Cisneros is confident that years spent strengthening her relationship with the community, a stronger grass-roots campaign and a district redrawn to include more portions of liberal San Antonio will be enough to push her to a primary win.

When talking about her agenda, which includes support for abortion rights, Medicare-for-all and a more immigrant-friendly revamp of the nation’s system, Cisneros said her embrace is more than backing liberal ideals.

“When I talk about Medicare-for-all and why support that policy, I always talk about how when I was 13 years old, I had to help my family fundraise by selling plates of food to raise money … No 13-year-old or no family should have to do that,” Cisneros said. “It’s much easier for people to be able to grasp the concepts and policies that we’re running on if we do it that way, instead of trying to pigeonhole ourselves into one label or the other.”

Labels or not, Cisneros gladly campaigned with Ocasio-Cortez and welcomed the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). She received the support of Planned Parenthood, Emily’s List, the Latino Victory Fund, and labor unions, including the Texas AFL-CIO. She backs policies that often stand at the opposite end of the Democratic spectrum from Cuellar’s, who is considered one of the most conservative members of Congress.

Cuellar is running on the promise that he will strike bipartisan deals in the House, telling voters in a recent campaign ad that he wants to “build relationships with both parties.”

“While people in Washington fight each other, who will fight for us?” Cuellar asks. “I will.”

Despite serving in a fiercely divided Congress, Cuellar has remained close to the center, often crossing party lines and touting his deals struck with Republicans. He has voted with Republicans to ban the coverage of abortion care for those insured through Medicaid, asked the Biden administration along with Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) to name a “border czar,” and was among a group of nine centrist Democrats who urged their party to pass the bipartisan infrastructure deal without first voting for Biden’s $3.5 trillion social spending package — a priority for liberal Democrats. The infrastructure deal was signed into law, but the social spending bill remains in limbo.

Cuellar’s willingness to break with his party on high-priority issues — most notably, the border and abortion — is what Cisneros is targeting.

Last September, Cuellar was the only House Democrat who voted against a bill that — in an attempt to nullify Texas’s S.B. 8, a near-total abortion ban — would have codified the right to an abortion into federal law. Cuellar’s colleagues criticized his decision, but Cuellar remained unmoved. For him, abortion is “not a health issue,” but a matter of conscience.

Cisneros accused him in an op-ed of not acting on behalf of reproductive health by voting to ban the coverage of abortion care for those insured through Medicaid and defund Planned Parenthood.

Cuellar dismissed her criticism.

“When people frame this as ‘women’s health’ … if you want to call it abortion, call it abortion, please call it abortion,” Cuellar said in a Zoom conference days after the op-ed. “Women’s health — I have added money for health care for women.”

Cuellar has criticized Cisneros, arguing that she supports two key issues pushed by liberal Democrats that he claims could have a negative impact on the district — a move toward more clean energy and less funding for the U.S. Border Patrol.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) speaks before a campaign event for 28th District candidate Jessica Cisneros and 35th District candidate Greg Casar. (Ilana Panich-Linsman for The Washington Post)
“Cisneros is against oil and gas and I’m not going to vote to get rid of 40,000 jobs that are good paying jobs here,” Cuellar said in an interview with The Post.

While Cisneros has voiced support for the Green New Deal and the renewable energy industry, she’s pledged to be “a voice for workers in the fossil fuel industry to ensure no one gets left behind.”

On the border, Cuellar said he wanted to make sure “that we don’t have open borders or defund the police or attack Border Patrol.”

“Those are good paying jobs,” he said. “My opponent has said that my district is too dependent on Homeland Security jobs — that we totally disagree on.”

Like Cuellar, Cisneros is the daughter of migrant farmworkers. Her parents immigrated to Laredo from Mexico because her older sister needed medical care that was only available on this side of the border.

Cisneros has highlighted her background as an immigration lawyer to draw a contrast with Cuellar, who has become one of his party’s most outspoken critics of the Biden administration’s immigration policies. While he assailed many of former president Donald Trump’s immigration policies — he opposed the construction of a border wall — Cuellar has described the Biden administration as being too welcoming to immigrants.

He has also accused Biden of listening too much to “immigration activists” and not enough to those living on the border, including landowners and law enforcement officials.

Cuellar supports funding for programs meant to stabilize Central America’s Northern Triangle and of policies that would ramp up law enforcement across the border, a stance many Democrats have pushed against, arguing that the Biden administration’s handling of the border situation should be more humane, not more militarized.

Cisneros, meanwhile, constantly invokes her work defending immigrants from deportation during the Trump administration as evidence that her views on immigration are the opposite of Cuellar’s — and more attuned to her voters in her district, which is predominantly rural and Latino.

She supports the scrapping of a 1996 law passed during the Clinton administration that laid the groundwork for the country’s massive deportation system that still exists today.

“It was so heartbreaking and painful,” she said during a campaign event, of her work on deportation cases. “But I was representing so many people that reminded me of myself, of my family, and that the only difference between them and me was the fact that I was born in this country, that I just so happened to be born five minutes north of the river.”

While Cisneros is still running a grass-roots campaign like she did in 2020, her profile has grown, and so has her fundraising. Between the launch of her campaign in August and Dec. 31, Cisneros raised $812,000, a campaign spokeswoman said.

“There’s no question that she has a strong ground game,” said former Housing secretary Julián Castro, a Texas Democrat who endorsed Cisneros during her 2020 campaign. “If she has the strength, way above Cuellar, it’s not necessarily in money, it’s in people power.”

The race in the 28th District also comes on the heels of an FBI raid into Cuellar’s home and campaign headquarters on Jan. 19. The congressman has maintained his innocence and vowed to remain in the race but has not specified why he’s under investigation.

While Democratic congressional leadership supports reelection of their incumbents, only House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) has publicly endorsed Cuellar this election cycle. A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who endorsed Cuellar last time, did not respond to a request on whether she will endorse him again this year.

Cuellar told The Post he remains confident the Democratic Party leadership will continue supporting him, touting the investments he helped secure for other Texas Democratic campaigns, and the work he did for the Biden campaign in 2020.

As for voters in his district, he’s also confident their perspective on him hasn’t changed.

“It’s the same voters that we’ve had,” Cuellar said. “People have lived here for generations [who] know the work I’ve done.”

More tweets, news, perspectives in the comments. This is a weekend open thread.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Jessica Cisneros, Open Thread, TX primary

1/22-23 Weekend Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on January 22, 2022 by BennyJanuary 23, 2022

Sanders: ‘anti-democratic’ Republicans to blame for Biden woes, not just Manchin and Sinema

Bernie Sanders on Sunday sought to turn fire aimed by Democrats at two of their own, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, onto Republican senators he said were “pushing an anti-democratic agenda”.

“Republicans are laughing all the way to election day,” the Vermont senator told CNN’s State of the Union. “They have not had to cast one bloody vote which shows us where they’re at.”

But the Vermont progressive also confirmed that he will campaign against Manchin and Sinema, both Democrats, should they face viable primary challengers.

Manchin, from West Virginia, and Sinema, from Arizona, have blocked Democratic priorities including the Build Back Better spending plan and, this week, voting rights reform.

Their refusal to contemplate reform to the filibuster, the rule which requires 60-vote majorities for most legislation, meant two voting rights bills in answer to Republican attacks on voting in states were always doomed to fail.

On Saturday, Sinema was formally censured by her state party. Sanders said he supported that move. He also confirmed his threat to campaign against Sinema and Manchin in 2024.

“If there was strong candidates prepared to stand up for working families who understand that the Democratic party has got to be the party of working people, taking on big money interests, if both candidates were there in Arizona and West Virginia, yes, I would be happy to support them.”

But, Sanders insisted, “it’s not only those two. It is 50 Republicans who have been adamant about not only pushing an anti-democratic agenda but also opposing our efforts to try to lower the cost of prescription drugs, trying to expand Medicare … to improve the disaster situation in home healthcare, in childcare, to address the existential threat of climate change.

“You’ve got 50 Republicans who don’t want to do anything except criticise the president and then you have, sadly enough, two Democrats who choose to work with Republicans rather than the president, and it will sabotage the president’s effort to address the needs of working families in this country.”

Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, Sanders insisted the Biden administration made “a great start”, in part with a Covid relief bill passed with just 50 votes and the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris, but was now bogged down thanks in large part to Manchin and Sinema.

“The president and the Democratic Congress,” Sanders said, “… looked at the economic crisis that was caused by Covid. We passed the American Rescue Plan … and we also passed along the way the strongest infrastructure bill that has been passed since Dwight D Eisenhower … We were off to a great start.

“And then I will tell you exactly what happened. Fifty members of the Republican party decided that they were going to be obstructionist … and then you had two United States senators joining them, Mr Manchin and Senator Sinema.

“For five months now there have been negotiations behind closed doors trying to get these two Democratic senators on board. That strategy, in my view, has failed. It has failed dismally. We saw it last week in terms of the Voting Rights Act. We now need a new direction.”

Asked if he was frustrated, Sanders told CNN he was.

But, he insisted, “we need to start voting. We need to bring important pieces of legislation that impact the lives of working families right onto the floor of the Senate. And Republicans want to vote against lowering the cost of climate change, home healthcare, whatever it may be. And if the Democrats want to join them, let the American people see what’s happening.

“Then we can pick up the pieces and pass legislation.”

Some Democrats advocate splitting Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan into separate bills, in order to pass what they can.

Sanders conceded that most such legislation will not pass, given Republican obstruction and the machinations of Manchin and Sinema. Bringing bills to the floor, he conceded, would really be about electoral politics ahead of midterms this year in which Republicans expect to take back the House and possibly the Senate, and the presidential contest in two years’ time.

“Once we know where people are at,” he said, “then we can say, ‘All right, look, we have 50 votes here, we have just one vote here, 49 votes here.

“But what has bothered me very much is Republicans are laughing all the way to election day. They have not had to cast one bloody vote, or two, which shows us where they’re at. And we’ve got to change.”

Got some labor news too, including a Bernie tweet.

Join us in the comments. Happy weekend!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged AZ Dem Party, Kroger, Krysten Sinema, Labor, Open Thread, Starbucks

1/7-9 Weekend News Roundup & Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on January 7, 2022 by BennyJanuary 8, 2022

U.S. Details Costs of a Russian Invasion of Ukraine

The Biden administration and its allies are assembling a punishing set of financial, technology and military sanctions against Russia that they say would go into effect within hours of an invasion of Ukraine, hoping to make clear to President Vladimir V. Putin the high cost he would pay if he sends troops across the border.

In interviews, officials described details of those plans for the first time, just ahead of a series of diplomatic negotiations to defuse the crisis with Moscow, one of the most perilous moments in Europe since the end of the Cold War. The talks begin on Monday in Geneva and then move across Europe.

The plans the United States has discussed with allies in recent days include cutting off Russia’s largest financial institutions from global transactions, imposing an embargo on American-made or American-designed technology needed for defense-related and consumer industries, and arming insurgents in Ukraine who would conduct what would amount to a guerrilla war against a Russian military occupation, if it comes to that.

Such moves are rarely telegraphed in advance. But with the negotiations looming — and the fate of Europe’s post-Cold War borders and NATO’s military presence on the continent at stake — President Biden’s advisers say they are trying to signal to Mr. Putin exactly what he would face, at home and abroad, in hopes of influencing his decisions in coming weeks.

snip

While the Commerce and Treasury Departments work on sanctions that would maximize America’s advantages over Russia, the Pentagon is developing plans that have echoes of the proxy wars of the 1960s and ’70s.

Understand the Escalating Tensions Over Ukraine
A brewing conflict. Antagonism between Ukraine and Russia has been simmering since 2014, when the Russian military crossed into Ukrainian territory, annexing Crimea and whipping up a rebellion in the east. A tenuous cease-fire was reached in 2015, but peace has been elusive.

A spike in hostilities. Russia has recently been building up forces near its border with Ukraine, and the Kremlin’s rhetoric toward its neighbor has hardened. Concern grew in late October, when Ukraine used an armed drone to attack a howitzer operated by Russian-backed separatists.

Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.

The Kremlin’s position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATO’s eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscow’s military buildup was a response to Ukraine’s deepening partnership with the alliance.

A measured approach. President Biden has said he is seeking a stable relationship with Russia. So far, his administration is focusing on maintaining a dialogue with Moscow, while seeking to develop deterrence measures in concert with European countries.

To underscore the potential pain for Russia, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, spoke with his Russian counterpart two weeks ago and delivered a stark message: Yes, he said, you could invade Ukraine and probably roll over the Ukrainian military, which stands little chance of repelling a far larger, better armed Russian force.

But the swift victory would be followed, General Milley told Gen. Valery Gerasimov, by a bloody insurgency, similar to the one that led to the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan more than three decades ago, according to officials familiar with the discussion.

General Milley did not detail to General Gerasimov the planning underway in Washington to support an insurgency, a so-called “porcupine strategy” to make invading Ukraine hard for the Russians to swallow. That includes the advance positioning of arms for Ukrainian insurgents, probably including Stinger antiaircraft missiles, that could be used against Russian forces.

More than a month ago, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, created a new interagency planning cell to examine a range of contingencies if Mr. Putin goes ahead with an invasion. The cell, which reports directly to Mr. Sullivan, includes representatives from the National Security Council, the intelligence agencies and the Departments of Defense, State, Treasury, Energy and Homeland Security.

The cell is attempting to tailor responses to the many types of attacks that could unfold in the next few weeks, from cyberattacks aimed at crippling Ukraine’s electric grid and pipelines to the seizure of small or large amounts of territory.

Intelligence officials said recently that they thought the least likely possibility was a full-scale invasion in which the Russians try to take the capital, Kyiv. Many of the assessments, however, have explored more incremental moves by Mr. Putin, which could include seizing a bit more land in the Donbas region, where war has ground into a stalemate, or a land bridge to Crimea.

Several officials familiar with the planning say the administration is looking at European nations that could provide more aid to support Ukrainian forces before any conflict, as well as in the initial stages of a Russian invasion.

Lt. Col. Anton Semelroth, a Defense Department spokesman, noted in December that the United States had already committed over $2.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since 2014, including $450 million in 2021 alone. Over the past three months, it has delivered 180 Javelin missiles, two patrol boats, ammunition for grenade launchers, machine guns, secure radios, medical equipment and other items that U.S. officials describe as defensive in nature.

But the planning cell is considering more lethal weaponry, such as antiaircraft weapons.

After visiting Ukraine last month, Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts and a former Marine officer, said that in his view, “We need to make any incursion by Russia more painful — Day 1 painful, not six months from now painful.”

“We have a short window to take decisive action to deter Putin from a serious invasion,” Mr. Moulton said in an interview. “I worry our current deterrent tactics are responding to an invasion rather than preventing it.”

One option likely to be discussed at NATO this coming week is a plan to increase, possibly by several thousand, the number of troops stationed in the Baltics and in Southeast Europe.

Jake Sullivan is a Hil hawk.

More news, tweets, perspectives in the comments below. This serves as an open thread.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged GOP, GOP-lite, invasion, January 6, Open Thread, Russia

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