Squatch’s Open Thread 13 January 2019

 Posted by at 6:49 am  Open Thread, Politics
Jan 132019
 

As TC once said, he has a pants load of chores to get done with Wendy’s help today . . . not to mention a shower because he is “rancid”, his word not mine.  As a result, he may only have a personal update or an Open Thread at most.  So I have  tried to take up the slack a bit with an Open Thread and a second article.  Have a great weekend.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:41 (average 5:09).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

AlterNet — Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) on Friday appeared to short circuit after CNN’s John Berman asked him if a Democrat president could in the future use the precedent being set by President Donald Trump to unilaterally declare climate change a “national emergency.”

During a discussion about Trump potentially bypassing Congress to order the construction of his border wall by declaring a “national emergency,” Berman asked Brooks what he would think of a future Democratic president using the same tactics to address climate change.

Click through for the Republican’s palm plant hypocrisy of a response.  Absolutely unbelievable but the video does not lie!

Common Dreams — US Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Saturday called for congressional salaries to be put on hold during the next government shutdown.

The US government went into a partial shutdown at midnight on Friday after President Trump refused to sign a spending bill that did not include $5 billion for his wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. He had long claimed that Mexico would pay for the wall.

“It’s completely unacceptable that members of Congress can force a government shutdown on partisan lines & then have Congressional salaries exempt from that decision,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.

“Have some integrity,” she added, calling for salaries to be furloughed for the next shutdown.

AMEN!!!  I seem to recall during a previous shutdown that a Republican congress critter was noted as saying that he could not afford to have his salary withheld because he had bills to pay including a mortgage.  I wonder if that representative understands that those government employees caught up in the shutdowns also have bills to pay.  IMO, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has the right idea and I would surely support her proposal.  Further, lawmakers should be required to work even if furloughed.

AlterNet — The governor of Missouri wants to repeal a constitutional amendment that the voters of his own state have clearly established they want to see become law.

Gov. Mike Parson, who took over in June after his predecessor resigned in disgrace, says he is thinking of repealing and replacing Constitutional Amendment 1, which the voters in his state overwhelmingly supported in last month’s election. Gov. Parson told the Associated Press that he is also thinking about making it more difficult for initiative petitions to appear on the ballot, presumably due to his dissatisfaction with the success of Constitutional Amendment 1.

“Fundamentally, you think when the people vote you shouldn’t be changing that vote. But the reality of it is that is somewhat what your job is sometimes, if you know something’s unconstitutional, if you know some of it’s not right,” Parson told the AP.

Constitutional Amendment 1 is, to say the least, very difficult to accurately describe as “unconstitutional.” It requires lawmakers to abide by the state open-records law, restricts how much lobbyists can give to lawmakers as gifts and creates a new position of “nonpartisan state demographer” to redraw state House and Senate maps in a more fair way. This last initiative would quite likely cut into the Republicans’ supermajorities in the state House and Senate.

Governor Parsons was the state’s Lieutenant Governor when he assumed the governorship at the resignation of Eric Greitens 01 June 2017 following discussions of impeachment.  The Constitutional Amendment was approved by 62% of the ballots cast.  From the St Louis Post-Dispatch:

Missouri Constitutional Amendment 1

3256 of 3256 precincts reporting (100.0%)• More than 50% needed to pass measure

Name Votes Pct.
 Yes – For the measure 1,459,576 62.0%
No – Against the measure 895,012 38.0%

This is the Missouri Constitutional Amendment 1 as shown in the Washington University ProSPER

It seems that Missouri voters are tired of all the corruption.  Trust a Republican to screw with the will of the people when they get caught!

Raw Story — During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to eliminate the national debt within eight years. …

The United States Treasury Department numbers show the debt is $2 trillion larger than the day Trump took office …

The debt now stands at nearly $22 trillion.

And Trump wants $5.7 billion for a useless border wall that Mexico is NOT going to pay for?  I seriously wonder how he is going to eliminate the debt.  I suppose he could ask his buddy Putin but Russia has its own financial woes as usual.

AlterNet — In 2018, the U.S. Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security released an 11-page report suggesting that there was a link between terrorism and immigration.

Ben Berwick, counsel for Protect Democracy, has noted that about 100 foreign-born people suspected of terrorism are wrongly characterized as immigrants in the Justice Department/Homeland Security report. According to Berwick, they were extradited to the U.S. to stand trial for terrorist acts committed overseas—and they didn’t come in as immigrants.

The report noted that 73% of those convicted of “international terrorism-related charges” since 9/11 were “foreign-born.” But the report, according to CNN, wrongly gave the impression that they were immigrants to the United States—not people who committed acts of terrorism in other countries and were brought to the U.S. for prosecution.

Nahal Toosi, who covers foreign policy for Politico, has been critical of the Justice Department for not issuing a correction. In a January 4 tweet, Toosi wrote, “This is truly amazing. The Justice Department admits that, under Trump, it effectively made up and misstated information to link immigrants to terrorism, but that it won’t retract or correct the culprit report.”

Spinning information for the desired Republican talking points.  The fact that it is not accurate or true is no concern to Republicans.  The fact that the report is coming from the DOJ . . . what does that say about truth and justice?

My Universe

 

 

Posted to Care2 HERE

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Everyday Erinyes #152

 Posted by at 1:10 pm  Politics
Jan 122019
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

“2020 is kind of like in the WWE,” said a former White House official, “where they have seven or eight guys fight for the majority of the match and then the Undertaker strolls up and pins everybody after they’ve exhausted themselves.”

So, Elizabeth Warren has announced her candidacy for President in 2020. So has Kamala Harris. Julian Castro* has an exploratory committee. Tulsi Gabbard’s name has been mentioned. Trump has attacked Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, and Joe Biden as if they were running. And that list by no means exhausts the list of people potentially qualified to take on the Presidency. And every one of those people can expect to be savaged by Trump and his minions.

What is Trump’s plan to become “The Undertaker” in this scenario?  Because, in a kind of a sort of a way, he has one, and it’s not just confined to

“So far, I’m dreaming of those candidates,” Trump said at a rally in Kansas late last year. “I see those candidates before my eyes. Every night before I go to sleep. Sometimes while I’m sleeping, I love them so much.” 

No, there’s a very definite plan (not that Trump came up with it himself, of course):

The pair of outside groups tied closely to President Donald Trump has retained the top Republican opposition group in an effort to smother Democrats seeking to challenge him — and perhaps even help pick his 2020 challenger. 

So who are these people?

America First Policies is a 501(c)(4) “nonprofit” founded in January 2017 by six of Trump’s former campaign aides. It is allied with America First Action, a super-PAC. “Allied with” means the PAC essentially launders the money which the “nonprofit” spends, keeping dark the names of the donors and the individual amounts “donated.”

And there is lots of money to spend. Well, we all know that. I won’t belabor where it is coming from (and they’ll never tell), but we can get an idea where it goes. For instance, $1.2 million went to get Brett Kavanagh confirmed. $1.5 million each to confirm Gina Haspel and promote the Trump “Tax Plan.” All together, approximately $9.5 million in 2018. Which means they still have an estimated $20.5 million from 2018 at their disposal. And the donations will keep coming.

America First Policies and America First Action are the “pair of outside groups” referenced above. The “top Republican opposition group” is America Rising PAC. “Opposition” is short for “opposition research” which is Newspeak for “finding and exaggerating any dirt which exists and planting it where it doesn’t.” Their “mission statement” is “to hold Democrats accountable and expose any hidden hypocrisy. We use video tracking, research, and communication strategies to ensure they must account for every word and action.” In accordance with site policy, I won’t link to them, but you can google them easily. As I type, their home page has articles smearing Harris, Warren, Pelosi, Bernie, Biden, and House Democrats as a group. If you have blood pressure issues, perhaps you should stay away.

It crossed my mind while skimming – can you imagine how many people, and how much ink/bandwidth, would be required to put Republicans under the same scrutiny they are applying to us? And no one person could ever read it all.

It’s no secret that I have been hoping that our Democrats would hold off a little longer before starting to declare, and this systematic character assassination is a big reason why. But that ship has now sailed. And we must deal with it. But how? How is the best way we can protect our party from splintering as we did on 2016? Should we try to jump on board as people announce? Should we try to remain uncommitted as long as possible to attempt to maximize our commitment when we do have a nominee? I don’t know.

I’m sure there is an individual temperament factor. It will help if each of us will be honest with him- or herself as to how difficult it will be to change course if one’s preferred candidate does not survive the primaries.

And we must stay aware that Republicans will be doing this systematically, and more and more viciously, with particular vitriol being aimed at anyone who looks like a front runner at any given time.

Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, please help us keep our facts and our priorities straight. Don’t allow any of us to fall for any Republican crap. The future of civilization, in fact of life on earth itself, depends on it.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

*Just got an email that he announced today.

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Deep State or Deep Doo Doo?

 Posted by at 11:58 am  Politics
Jan 122019
 

To me, it has been obvious for a long time that Resident Donald Trump, aka Putin’s Puppet, sold out to Russia in return for Russia installing him in the White House.  I kept asking myself why it wasn’t being investigated.  Unbeknownst to me, it was.  Shortly after the Comey firing the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Trump, as they suspected that he had been working for Russia, against American interests.

0112TrumpRussia

In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.

Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. But the president’s activities before and after Mr. Comey’s firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <New York Times>

Please click through to read this article in it’s entirety.  It contains considerable detail.

When this came out, the Tangerine Traitor came unglued.

TrumpPuppetPresident Trump on Saturday morning called his firing of former FBI Director James Comey “a great day for America.”

The comment came in a tweetstorm voicing outrage over a recent New York Times report saying days after the May 2017 firing, the FBI opened an inquiry into whether Trump was “secretly working on behalf of Russia.”

“Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey, a total sleaze!” the president tweeted [sphincter delinked].

Inserted from <NY Post>

In short, Trump and the the Republican Reich say this is fake news from what they call the "deep state".  This could not be further from the truth.

Filling in for Lawrence O’Donnell, Ali Velshi analyzed some of the implications with David Corn, Glenn Kirschner and Frank Montoya.

 

I disagree with one point. Russia is not the chief threat to American democratic values. The Republican Reich is.

Now we know that when Mueller went to work, he already had ample evidence of treason dropped in his lap. 

If this story had come out as fiction five years ago, most of us would have dismissed it as too fantastic to consider.

This is not Deep State.  Trump is in Deep Doo Doo.

RESIST!!

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Open Thread – 1/12/2019

 Posted by at 11:57 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 122019
 

Yesterday my technician stood me up.  I rushed through my blogging and prepared the area.  I waited for him for four hours, before I gave up.  I feel pretty angry at him, but I’d like to hope that he had an emergency so extreme that he could not even call.  I’ll listen to his explanation, before I put him on my do not use list.  Today is a High Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  It’s Division Playoffs Weekend.  My Broncos are not playing, because they stink.  If your team is still going, may the Orb bless them with its holy light.  Tomorrow is a WWWendy day.  After destinking a rancid TomCat, we have a ton of tasks.  Please expect no more than a Personal Update or an Open Thread, and I will not be sending links messages on Care2.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:07 (average 5:38).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (NSNBC Channel): Senator Chris Van Hollen: Mitch McConnell Has Been ‘AWOL’ In Shutdown

 

Bought Bitch Mitch [R-KY] is a total coward. RESIST!!

From YouTube (Media Matters Channel): Fox News on a Democrat swearing vs Fox News on a Republican embracing white supremacy

Barf Bag Alert!!

 

Well, you didn’t expect integrity from the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, did you? RESIST!!

From Alternet: Evangelical activists demand LGBTQ protections be removed from anti-lynching bill.

Incredibly, the United States has no law that makes lynching a federal crime. Now, decades after the Civil Rights Movement, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to correct this. The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act would give federal prosecutors the power to charge people for bias-motivated mob killings. It passed the Senate unanimously and by anyone’s reckoning should be a slam dunk.

But according to PinkNews, the fundamentalist legal group Liberty Counsel is now lobbying the House to change the bill. Why? Because lynchings of LGBTQ persons are included as crimes — and that just might be a slippery slope to federal laws that would protect all LGBTQ civil rights.

“The old saying is once that camel gets the nose in the tent, you can’t stop them from coming the rest of the way in,” said Mat Staver, the group’s president. “And this would be the first time that you would have in federal law mentioning gender identity and sexual orientation, as part of this anti-lynching bill.”

Liberty Counsel has previously compared homosexuality to pedophilia, attacked bans on abusive “conversion therapy,” and defended the infamous former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis as she defied the Supreme Court’s orders to allow same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists it as a hate group.

This is the 4th in the author’s list of the week’s 5 worst Republican outrages. Click through for the rest. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

If they could, Republicans would repeal it.

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Open Thread – 1/11/2019

 Posted by at 10:03 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 112019
 

It’s another busy day here in the CatBox.  I have a computer technician coming to resolve some connection and network issues.  Therefore this is today’s only article.  TGIF!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:14 (average 4:13).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Trump A.G. Pick Advocated Pardons By George H.W. Bush; Bashed Mueller Probe (17:28)

 

The Republican Reich has a long history of using sleazy tactics to evade responsibility for their crimes. There they go again! RESIST!!

From YouTube (Media Matters Channel): Protesters speak out on the shutdown and why media should talk about its human impact

 

Furlough all the Secret Service agents that protect high ranking Republicans. That would end the Republican government shutdown today. RESIST!!

From The New Yorker: In a bid to end the government shutdown, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said on Thursday that he would recycle his empties to pay for a wall with Mexico.

Speaking to reporters from his office at the Court, Kavanaugh said that the inspiration came to him while he was building a beer-can pyramid in his basement rec room on Wednesday night.

“I was in my man cave, building this rad beer pyramid, and I was, like, I bet if I recycled all the beer cans down here plus the ones out in the garage, I’d have enough to pay for that freaking wall,” the Supreme Court Justice said.

Andy, I have a better idea. Instead of a wall that won’t work, Injustice Pervert KavaNazi should use that money to buy himself a chastity belt. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

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Friday Fun: The Sweet Smell of Success

 Posted by at 9:59 am  Politics
Jan 112019
 

Well, the Kossacks (of which I count myself a proud member) over at Daily Kos outdid themselves in sending a sweet smell of success to newly-elected Speaker Nancy Pelosi – and she deserves it!

At the suggestion of Daily Kos founder, Markos Moulitsas, they raised enough money to send 25,000 long-stemmed roses to her!  And at her request, to share them with other Democrats and the largest bulk to patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

This was not the first time Kossacks have flooded the office of Speaker Pelosi with roses.  Back in 2010 they delivered 2,600 roses to her, other Democratic staffs and patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on her birthday as a “Thank You!” for her efforts in getting the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) passed.

This time the original goal was to raise enough money to send 10,000 roses, estimating that $10 would provide 3 roses.  But they far outstripped their goal raising enough money to send 25,000!

Obviously, no office could hold that many roses, so at Speaker Pelosi’s suggestion, 8,000 were delivered to her office and other Democrats’ offices around the Capitol – and the remainder sent to patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

 

As you no doubt can imagine, you don’t just trot into the Capitol offices with 8,000 roses.  It took the planning of military precision to accomplish that feat, with coordination between Daily Kos and Speaker Pelosi’s staff.  And in fact, Moulitsas himself flew to Washington, DC and spent the morning helping carrying crate after crate up to Pelosi’s second floor office – which he described as “A great workout”.  (I’d be drenched in sweat.)

But it did not only involve coordination between the Daily Kos and Pelosi staffs, it took the Herculean efforts of a wholesale supplier and florist preparer to get the job done.

There have been some people who point out that the money could have been better used – and as someone who donated both times, I really can’t quibble with that too much.  But I will also point out that the people at DK raised over $200,000 at ActBlue just for Democratic candidates during the past 2018 election.  So I would say they have a history of being generous donors – as witnessed by the fact that it only took an hour and a half after posting to raise the money for the original goal of 10,000 roses.

The order for the 25,000 long-stemmed roses was placed at the wholesale florist Potomac Floral Wholesale in Silver Spring.  Jeff King, a sales team manager and public relations specialist for the floral wholesaler said, “It was the largest single rose order that we’ve ever received.”

King explained that red roses come in 20-50 different varieties with names like “Red Paris” and “Sexy Red” – but by coincidence, all 25,000 long-stemmed roses were the “Freedom” variety.  A nice happenstance!

They ended up sending 25,000 roses at 89 cents a stem, or $22,000.  BUT that does not include the cost of a local florist processing the shipment for delivery.

When you place a huge order like this, they don’t show up arranged in cute little vases.  The blooms come straight from the fields, wild and packed into large cardboard boxes.  That means someone is hired for picking them up, unpacking them, cutting the stems, removing excessive foliage, arranging them in vases, and delivering them.

That mammoth undertaking of processing 25,000 roses was handled by Angela Brunson of Blue Iris Flowers in Eastern Market.

As anyone who’s ordered flowers knows – it’s the middle-man that takes the biggest cut.  I have no idea how many thousands of dollars it cost to have the florist pick up 25,000 roses, unpack 25,000 roses, cut the stems of 25,000 roses, remove excess foliage from 25,000 roses, arrange 25,000 roses and deliver 25,000 roses – but I’m sure it was a huge sum!

With 8,000 roses in the Longworth House Office Building, it was reported that you could smell them just on entering the building.  Surrounded on all sides by the virtual garden of flowers, Speaker Pelosi exclaimed, “I’ve never seen so many roses in my life.”

At a time when Trump has cast a tumultuous dark cloud over America – and the World – Paul Hogarth, who managed the DK end, said: “We wanted to express our love for all the work she does and how hard Speaker Pelosi worked to get a Democratic majority.”

Founder Moulitsas added, “People wanted to do something nice for once.”

RESOURCES

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/1/10/1825079/-So-we-delivered-soooo-many-flowers-to-Nancy-Pelosi

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/01/09/nancy-pelosi-gets-delivery-roses-thanks-an-online-fundraiser/?utm_term=.d31ccf9b31ca

https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/01/10/nancy-pelosi-freedom-roses/

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/1/3/1823278/-Join-our-Roses-for-Pelosi-effort-and-thank-our-new-House-Speaker-for-her-incredible-leadership

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/03/bloggers-send-nancy-pelosi-260.html

BONUS

As you know, Paul Manafort’s “crack” legal team posted their latest filing on line with the parts documenting he was getting paid for the colluding he was doing while on the Trump campaign “redacted” – well, sort of redacted.

You can view a PDF of their failed filing here:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5677512/Manafort-20190108-Dc.pdf

All you had to do was copy/paste it into a word document – and voilà – the whole thing shows up.

It was a pain to reformat it, because it was in  that weird legal formatting, but it did it.  But if you want to see what Manafort didn’t want you to see, you can view it as my Word document on the OneDrive cloud here:

https://1drv.ms/w/s!AvRxVTeLcrBWtPg7S97c6HYuzRomjw

 

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Wall Unwanted

 Posted by at 12:27 pm  Politics
Jan 102019
 

I don’t want to write about the wall.  Sadly, it is dominating the news, and there’s not much else.  However, there are people less interested in having the wall than I.  They are the American citizens whose lives it would disrupt.  Democrats must not cave in.  The more Trump fights, the fewer support him  All we have to do is wait and inform the people of the US.

0110wall

The serene National Butterfly Center in Hidalgo County, Texas, occupies a 100-acre preserve steps away from the U.S.-Mexico line, where President Donald Trump is expected to visit on Thursday to push for a southern border wall

But for Marianna Trevino-Wright, the center’s director, it is the barrier itself – not an influx of criminals – that poses the greatest risk to the sanctuary, given that current plans call for the wall to bisect its property.

“Why on earth would me and my husband live here, and work here, and rear six children here, if it wasn’t safe?” she said.

In McAllen, the county’s largest city, several officials and residents interviewed by Reuters expressed skepticism over Trump’s claim that a wall is required to end what he described as a “crisis” in an Oval Office address on Tuesday.

Seby Haddad, a commercial lender at a regional bank, said he watched this binational community grow for decades because of immigration, not in spite of it.

He rejected the notion that a border wall would help stem the flow of illicit drugs, noting that most narcotics are smuggled in vehicles at official checkpoints, according to government data.

“It doesn’t fix any problem,” said Haddad, 38. “It’s an archaic solution.”…  [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Reuters>

Even Republicans are sick of it, as Chris Hayes demonstrates.

I don’t know what Trump will do next, but whatever it is, it will be wrong.

RESIST!!

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Open Thread – 1/10/2019

 Posted by at 12:26 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jan 102019
 

It’s another busy day here in the CatBox.  I slept well last night, but still feel tired and groggy  Tomorrow I have a computer technician coming, so I may have no more than a personal update or an Open Thread to publish.  I will not be sending links messages on Care2.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:01 (average 6:57).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Rep. Jerry Nadler: ‘The Walls Are Closing In On The President Donlad [sic] Trump’

 

Under no circumstances may Republicans be allowed to hide the contents of Mueller’s report. RESIST!!

From Vox: Democrats who want to speak with William Barr, President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, ahead of his confirmation hearing say they’re having a harder time doing so than normal. And the Justice Department’s excuse for why he’s unavailable — the partial government shutdown — doesn’t add up.

Barr will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing in Washington, DC, on Tuesday to replace former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and current acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker. Some committee Democrats have complained that ahead of the hearing, Barr is declining invitations to meet, which is generally customary.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said on Wednesday that he learned he wouldn’t get a meeting with Barr ahead of the hearing, calling Barr’s refusal “entirely unprecedented and unacceptable.” He said he was offered a meeting after the hearing, but obviously, he’d much rather meet before.

“The Department of Justice’s attempt to excuse this gross break in the norms by citing a ‘truncated schedule’ is galling when they are the ones who have rushed it,” he said in a statement. “My Republican colleagues should share my outrage at this appalling violation of the Senate’s independent authority.”

He’s had plenty of time to meet with Republicans. I suspect he’s giving them the criminal assurances they want, so they don’t worry when he lies and promises integrity during the hearings. RESIST!!

From Raw Story: Republican U.S. Congressman Steve King of Iowa, in a lengthy New York Times profile, expressed dismay and concern that “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” are offensive.

“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” Rep. King asked the Times. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

King, a nine-term Congressman who represents a district that is more than 95 percent white, is perhaps best-known for accusing undocumented immigrants of having “calves the size of cantaloupes” from “running drugs across the Mexican border.”

The Times says that “Mr. King, in the interview, said he was not a racist.”

The paper notes that Rep. King “has used racist language in the past, promotes neo-Nazis on Twitter and was recently denounced by one Republican leader as a white supremacist.”

King is not a racist, the Pope is not a Catholic, and bears never, ever shit in the woods. How would he feel about the terms black nationalist and black supremacist? He’d shit his pants! RESIST!!

Cartoon:

For Trump, she would only need a very small knife!

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