Special kind of stupid!!!

The North Dakota House of Representatives passed a bill on Monday that would make future mask mandates illegal.The Grand Forks Herald …
Special kind of stupid!!!

The North Dakota House of Representatives passed a bill on Monday that would make future mask mandates illegal.The Grand Forks Herald …
The end-of-day totals from California public health websites for Sunday, Feb. 21, reported 3,495 new cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases there have been in the state to 3,509,219.
The 14-day total of new cases, 8,188, is down 80.6% from the Jan. 1 high of 42,268.
There were 228 new deaths reported Sunday, for a total of 49,340 people in California who have died from the virus.
There were 7,165 people needing hospital care, a 68.7% drop since the Jan. 1 high of 22,853.
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Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Johns Hopkins University, the World Health Organization, the California Department of Public Health, The Associated Press, reporting counties and news sources
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Grind these five versatile, beloved mixes ahead of time, then keep them on hand for cooking that’s full of verve and depth.
Confirm – now! President Biden’s choice for interior secretary faces her confirmation hearing on Tuesday. No other cabinet nominee has divided the two main parties as sharply as she has.

President Biden’s choice for interior secretary faces her confirmation hearing on Tuesday. No other cabinet nominee has divided the two main parties as sharply as she has.
Fake offense while not disowning Trump assault of US Congress is shameful beyond belief – GOP and Yellow Dog sham.
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Neera Tanden, nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), testifies at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Budget Committee on February 10, 2021. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Tanden looks like she’ll be the first cabinet nominee sunk by old tweets.
It’s increasingly hard to see how Neera Tanden will survive her Senate confirmation process.
Tanden is President Joe Biden’s nomination to lead the United States Office of Management and Budget, an office tasked with planning and overseeing the implementation of the federal budget once Congress passes it. Tanden, the president of the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, looks to be Biden’s first cabinet pick to not be confirmed by a narrow Democratic-led Senate. Her old tweets are a big part of the reason.
Biden’s administration has emphasized the historic nature of Tanden’s nomination; if confirmed, she’d be the first woman of color and first Asian American woman to lead OMB. She also spent part of her childhood on public assistance, an unusual background for someone in that position. But much of Tanden’s resume is being overshadowed by her online posting — at least 1,000 tweets raking both Republicans and Bernie Sanders-wing Democrats over the coals — that Tanden quietly started deleting in November 2020.
Moderate Republicans and at least one crucial moderate Democrat whose votes Tanden needs to be confirmed aren’t taking kindly to her rhetoric. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), a key Senate swing vote, said on Friday he’d oppose Tanden’s confirmation. Manchin’s statement looked to be the beginning of the end for Tanden, who needs 51 votes to be confirmed in a Senate that’s split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans.
“I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Manchin said. His statement was followed by moderate Republican Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Mitt Romney (UT) opposing Tanden on Monday.
“Sen. Romney has been critical of extreme rhetoric from prior nominees, and this is consistent with that position,” a Romney spokesperson told Vox. “He believes it’s hard to return to comity and respect with a nominee who has issued a thousand mean tweets.”
So far, the White House is sticking by its nominee, mounting an outreach campaign to senators of both parties to try and get them on board. All of Biden’s other cabinet picks so far have passed their Senate confirmations; many with support from both parties.
“We have been working the phones, in touch with Democrats and Republicans and their offices through the course of the weekend,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Monday, adding that the White House still sees a path for Tanden.
But the extremely tight math here means that unless one Senate Republican decides to vote yes for Tanden, her nomination can’t proceed. And with Collins and Romney already down as noes, it could be especially difficult to persuade fellow moderates like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to buck their party. There’s an obvious irony to Senate Republicans being so up in arms about Tanden’s tweets. After all, many spent the last four years defending an endless barrage of insulting tweets by President Donald Trump.
Tanden’s current dilemma illustrates a lot of the complex dynamics between the progressives and establishment wings in the Democratic party. It also shows the tricky math of an evenly split Senate and the power of individual senators to blow up pieces of Biden’s agenda. Even though Tanden has done plenty to anger the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, moderates are the ones now poised to sink her.
Ironically, Tanden is largely seen as the OMB pick who would be friendliest to progressive priorities because she doesn’t seem overly concerned with deficit spending. If her nomination goes down, her replacement could wind up being more fiscally hawkish, and likely less historic.
The controversy Tanden finds herself in underscores some age-old wisdom: Never tweet.
Tanden has been a prolific Twitter poster since the 2016 election. A close ally of Hillary Clinton, she sparred with the Sanders campaign during the 2016 primary and beyond. In a 2018 tweet that is still up, Tanden said, “Russia did a lot more to help Bernie than the DNC’s random internal emails did to help Hillary.” Unlike the friendlier 2020 presidential primary between Sanders and Biden, the 2016 primary left a bitter and longstanding rift between the Sanders and Clinton camps.
In addition to her tweets about Sanders and the left, Tanden has also been unsparing in her criticism of Republicans. She once called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “Voldemort” and tweeted that Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was “the worst.” Manchin was never personally targeted by Tanden’s tweets, but he is close with Collins.
“I said them, I feel badly about them, I deleted tweets over a long period of time,” Tanden told senators during her confirmation hearing, adding, “I’d say the discourse over the last four years on all sides has been incredibly polarizing.”
Tanden’s February 9 Senate Budget Committee confirmation hearing — chaired by Sanders — yielded perhaps one of the most memorable lines in confirmation hearing history, from the colorful Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA).
“I have to tell you, I’m very disturbed about your personal comments about people,” Kennedy told Tanden. “It wasn’t just about Republicans. And I don’t mind disagreements on policy, I think that’s great; I love the dialectic, but the comments were personal. I mean, you called Sen. Sanders everything but ‘an ignorant slut.’”
“That is not true, senator,” Tanden responded. Even so, she was very apologetic, repeatedly saying she regretted what she had written.
CLIP: Exchange between Senator Kennedy and OMB nominee Neera Tanden.@SenJohnKennedy: “You called Senator Sanders everything but an ‘ignorant slut.'”
Full video here: https://t.co/vjUdxHtPdu pic.twitter.com/OtXAAz7c8B
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 10, 2021
Though Sanders was more polite to Tanden than Kennedy, he also raised not just her personal attacks against him, but also concerns over the millions in corporate donations the Center for American Progress has accepted under her tenure.
“At a time when the wealthy and large corporations have extraordinary influence over the economic and political life of this country, I must tell you that I am concerned about the level of corporate donations that the Center for American Progress has received under your leadership,” Sanders said during the confirmation hearing. (Sanders appears generally supportive of Tanden’s nomination, though he hasn’t yet said exactly how he’ll vote.)
Tanden is certainly not the only one who has tweeted a lot of things they regret. But tweeting mean things about the very people who are tasked with confirming you to a consequential government position doesn’t necessarily set you up for success. In her statement opposing Tanden’s nomination, Collins said her “past actions have demonstrated exactly the kind of animosity that President Biden has pledged to transcend.”
Tanden’s tweets were always expected to be her weak spot in her confirmation hearings in a closely divided Senate. But all it took was one Democrat to sink her, and Republicans are looking unlikely to come to her aid.
For now, the Biden administration is pressing forward with Tanden’s confirmation, which will have a committee vote this week.
“The president would not have nominated her if he did not think she would be an excellent OMB director,” Psaki said. “He nominated her because she’s qualified, she’s someone with a proven experience and record of working with different groups and organizations with different political beliefs.”
The director of the Office of Management and Budget has a big hand in elevating certain priorities in the president’s budget and it’s a position that works closely with the White House. Having the head of OMB in place is especially critical to Biden right now; the president and congressional Democrats are currently working to pass a budget reconciliation bill to advance Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan through Congress and get it passed. If and when the House and Senate do pass the budget reconciliation bill, it will be up to the federal government — including OMB — to actually implement and execute the budget.
Right now, Senate Democrats and Biden’s White House are trying to lock down any possible Republican votes for Tanden before they weigh whether to pull her nomination. White House officials have pointed to conservative groups like the Chamber of Commerce supporting Tanden, as well as Republican names like former Sen. Jeff Flake and conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt.
“I think it’s too soon to make that decision,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) told reporters on Monday. “However, we need to measure what support she may have among other Republicans.” Durbin added he thought it was likely too late to change Manchin’s mind.
If they can’t, Biden is left with a few tough options. The most likely one is starting the nomination process all over again with a new nominee. Politico’s Tyler Pager recently reported that two contenders include Gene Sperling, a former top economic adviser to former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and former California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff Ann O’Leary. Earlier in the year, progressives raised alarm bells that Biden might nominate his now deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed to the position because of Reed’s long record as a deficit hawk.
The less likely possibility is if Biden uses a recess appointment to put Tanden in the OMB position — appointing her when the House and Senate are both in recess. Theoretically, this option could save Biden some time looking for a replacement and allow him to get his first choice at OMB. But it could hit procedural snags in the Senate and anger Manchin and moderate Republicans at the same time. Biden, a Senate institutionalist, may not want to go there.
In the meantime, his and Tanden’s remaining options are looking ever slimmer.

More than 100 farmworkers in Oxnard received a shot Friday as part of a pilot program aided by the Farmworker Resource Program.
A general strike on Monday made clear that the fatal shooting of two protesters over the weekend, and the fear of a further bloody crackdown, would not halt opposition to the return of military rule.

A general strike on Monday made clear that the fatal shooting of two protesters over the weekend, and the fear of a further bloody crackdown, would not halt opposition to the return of military rule.

By Peter Valdes-Dapena | CNN
The principal chief of the Cherokee Nation has asked Jeep to stop using the tribe’s name on its SUVs.
The Jeep Grand Cherokee is the brand’s best-selling model, while the Jeep Cherokee is its third best-selling. Jeep recently unveiled a redesigned version of the Grand Cherokee, and the company has sold SUVs under the Cherokee brand name for about 45 years.
“I think we’re in a day and age in this country where it’s time for both corporations and team sports to retire the use of Native American names, images and mascots from their products, team jerseys and sports in general. I’m sure this comes from a place that is well-intended, but it does not honor us by having our name plastered on the side of a car,” Chuck Hoskin, Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation said in a written statement.
He had initially sent the statement to Car and Driver, which first reported on the news.
“Our vehicle names have been carefully chosen and nurtured over the years to honor and celebrate Native American people for their nobility, prowess, and pride,” Jeep said in a statement. “We are, more than ever, committed to a respectful and open dialogue with Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr.”
For his part, Hoskin said he could not see any sort of arrangement under which it would be acceptable to him for Jeep to continue using the tribe’s name on its vehicles.
“It’s one of the most valuable things. It’s a part of our Identity,” he said in an inverview with CNN Business. “And if we wanted to match up who had the stronger claim and connection and affinity for the Cherokee name it would certainly be the Cherokee people.”
The Cherokee have been known by that name since before Europeans came in contact with them.
Car and Driver had asked Hoskin about the name after several other companies and sports teams announced changes to brand names and logos that used ethnic stereotypes and caricatures considered offensive.
Last summer, the Washington Redskins announced it would drop its name and call itself the Washington Football Team. Several months later, the Cleveland Indians baseball team announced it would change its name, as well.
Land O’ Lakes removed an image of a native American woman from the label on its butter. Other food brands, such as Uncle Ben’s rice and Aunt Jemima syrup and pancake mix, changed their names and logos as well.
The Jeep Cherokee was first introduced in 1974. The Grand Cherokee, with a more modern, car-like appearance was introduced in 1993. The original Cherokee model line was dropped in 2001, but the name was reintroduced in 2013 on a new compact SUV.
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Protesters mass around vehicles as they block roads during a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, on February 22, 2021. | Ye Aung Thu/AFP via Getty Images
On Monday, the country saw one of the largest uprisings yet against the February 1 military coup.
Myanmar saw its largest nationwide protests since the military coup earlier this month, with hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in the streets and businesses shutting down across the country.
Monday’s protests are the latest in a nearly month-long civil disobedience campaign that erupted in response to the February 1 takeover by Myanmar’s military that saw the country’s civilian leaders detained and ended the country’s decade-long experiment with quasi-democratic governance.
Since then, mass demonstrations have taken place across the country and citizens have engaged in acts of resistance, from lying across train tracks at a station in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, to work stoppages that now threaten Myanmar’s economy.
Mass protests are nationwide in #Myanmar today https://t.co/Nlf3j4AVIx
— Nicola Smith (@niccijsmith) February 22, 2021
Monday’s demonstrations — which some are calling the five twos, or the “22222 uprising” — saw hundreds of thousands of protesters take to the streets of Myanmar’s cities; stores, banks, and fast food chains shut down in solidarity. Protesters chose the date because it echoes the August 8, 1988 (8/8/88) protests against military rule, which the military suppressed in a bloody crackdown.
Monday’s action went forward despite the military’s threats that mass resistance would lead to “a confrontation path where [people] will suffer the loss of life.”
In cities like Yangon, authorities set up barricades and parked armored vehicles to try to block the mass gatherings, but the protesters were undeterred. The demonstrations were largely peaceful, though there were sporadic reports of violence and arrests, particularly in the capital of Naypyidaw.
But at least three people have died in confrontations with police since the protests began, including two protesters who were killed in Mandalay when police fired live and rubber bullets into a crowd of striking workers. The first protester to die — a 20-year-old woman who was hit by a bullet at a Naypyidaw protest — has helped galvanize the movement, despite fears of an even more aggressive crackdown from the military rulers.
The military junta continues to impose internet and communication blackouts, an attempt to prevent people from organizing. Activists also worry that the blackouts may give authorities cover to try to arrest protesters and other political organizers. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), a Thailand-based human rights organization, 684 people have been arrested, charged, or sentenced since the February 1 coup, and 637 people are still in detention or face outstanding warrants.
The protesters are demanding the end of the military junta and the restoration of the democratically elected civilian government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, won overwhelmingly in elections in November.
But just as the new government was set to be sworn in, the military interceded and insisted the election results were invalid because of widespread voter fraud. Neither the country’s Union Election Commission nor international observers found evidence of widespread irregularities that would have changed the outcome of the vote. Still, the military has claimed that it will retain control until it can host new elections in a year.
The military retained a degree of control even after the country undertook democratic reforms about a decade ago, but the February coup dispensed with even a nominal democratic government. The ousted Suu Kyi was detained and eventually charged with allegedly importing illegal walkie-talkies. Another charge — of meeting with a large crowd in defiance of Covid-19 public health measures — was announced last week as the leader’s trial began in secret.
But Myanmar’s civilians have met the military’s actions with sustained resistance, pulling from a wide swath of Myanmarese, including students, teachers, doctors, bankers, and laborers. Members of Myanmar’s persecuted ethnic and religious minority groups — who still faced repression under Suu Kyi’s leadership — have also joined in the uprisings.
Protesters have also called out the military’s repression of the Rohingya and other minority groups with signs during the demonstrations, a remarkable show of solidarity.
Protesters hold a poster mentioned “we deeply apologized all Kachin to Rohingya who are under oppression “ during protest in Myanmar. credit: Khin Zaw Myint Facebook post. #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar pic.twitter.com/xmtoiFbHIm
— Wa Lone (@walone4) February 22, 2021
Activists inside and outside Myanmar continue to worry that the military will lose patience and decisively try to crack down on the movement; at the same time, the pro-democracy resistance is strengthening despite the junta’s warnings and attempts to cut off communications.
The international community has also condemned the Myanmar coup. The Biden administration is sanctioning military members who orchestrated the coup, preventing them from accessing about $1 billion in the United States. It represents one of the first international tests for the White House, though its options are limited in how much pressure it can place on Myanmar. Still, the administration has made clear that it is closely watching as the uprisings unfold.
“The United States will continue to take firm action against those who perpetrate violence against the people of Burma as they demand the restoration of their democratically elected government,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Sunday night. “We stand with the people of Burma.”
Fake moderates back out again – shameful…

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) will oppose Neera Tanden’s nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), underscoring the dwindling number of potential GOP supporters for her confirmation.”Senator Romney…
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