Wednesday, January 22, 2020

So good to see this....


41 comments:

  1. I am disgusted to see the Senators voting like a block instead of as impartial jurors. Our Founders must be rolling over in their graves, as it were.

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  2. Rep Adam Schiff: "The veneer is gone."

    There won't be a real vote on calling witnesses. It's a cover up. Our Republic is dead. We are on the way to a Monarchy or maybe even a Dictatorship.

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    1. It is a mockery of the Constitution. If we do not flip the Senate and the White House come November, we are done for.

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  3. In re HRC's silly claim that no other senators like Bernie, his effectiveness in improving legislation by amendment gives that the lie. He has been called (so I read) "the amendment king." That doesn't happen if one is universally disliked. Might Ms Clinton be projecting?

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  4. The Sage of Storm Lake: Relax, Democrats: your nominee will beat Trump in the midwest [Click]

    Democratic Women Gear Up for 2020 [Click] Well! The nerve!

    Top [and not so top] Democrats Beat Trump In New Poll [Click] Note who leads the pack…

    Trump admits to CNBC’s Joe Kernen this AM that he is looking to CUT Social Security and Medicare at the end of this year. [Click] He called it “the easiest of all things.” Easier than cutting entitlements for the filthy rich and monster corporations that dodge taxes?

    Trump’s Inaugural Sued for Violating Non-Profit Status [Click] By enriching Trump.

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  5. Most Maine Voters Think Trump Abused His Office [Click] Goodbye Susan Collins?

    A new CNN poll [Click] finds Bernie Sanders leading the Democratic presidential race nationally with 27%, followed by Joe Biden at 24%, Elizabeth Warren at 14% and Pete Buttigieg at 11%. They are followed by Michael Bloomberg at 5%, Amy Klobuchar at 4% and Andrew Yang at 4%. They say Bernie “surges” into the lead, but IMO “edges” would be more accurate.

    DNC Pours Money Into Six Battlegrounds [Click] Do they figure the Mike Bloomberg will take care of the others? Could be, I suppose.

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  6. Adam Schiff warned yesterday: [Click] The facts will come out in the end. The documents, which the president is hiding, will be released through the FOIA or through other means over time. Witnesses will tell their stories in book and film. The truth will come out. The question is, will it come out in time?

    It’s about ten months until the election; the campaign ads will write themselves. GOP senators are engaged in a cover-up, against the clear wishes of the people. Four recent polls favor having witnesses in the impeachment trial:

    CNN: 69% to 26%
    Washington Post/ABC News: 71% to 22%
    Quinnipiac: 66% to 17%
    Morning Consult/Politico: 57% to 24%

    Gambling against those odds seems unlikely to end well.

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  7. So I'm home. Got off Amtrak's Lake Short Limited around 9:30 this morning.

    Re a post a couple of days ago: Richard Anderson is unpopular with rail passengers, especially for replacing dining cars that hed an on-board chef and two servers with "dining lounges" with one server heating up the equivalent of airline food. That's a cost-cutting measure, of course, and he's predicting Amtrak will show a profit this coming year. I don't think showing a profit is really what Amtrak is about.

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    1. I recall the city bus service in Santa Cruz, California, when I was in graduate school (OK, olden times). When I first moved there, the bus service had long been privatized. The buses were old, and the service was on a downward spiral: increased prices, poorer service, decreasing ridership [repeat]. Then (it would have been during the Nixon administration, the federal government offered funding for new buses, and increased the distance from the bus lines where bus service taxes could be collected. The city took back the bus service from the private operators, bought new (and much nicer!) buses, improved service, cut fares, and [believe it or not!] ridership increased dramatically. The university students voted to tax themselves to fund extra buses and nighttime schedules, and in return could ride by showing their student body cards. It became possible to commute to work between Santa Cruz (the county seat) and Watsonville (at the far end of the county). Increased ridership paid for more buses and new routes--a virtuous spiral. Moral: decreased service can mean decreased revenues, and vice versa. The number of Amtrak riders in California's Central Valley has been more or less steadily increasing for some time now, resulting in more and longer trains to serve them. I have found Amtrak to be clearly the best option for intermediate-length journeys to court and back.

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    2. When I worked for Amtrak, only two trains IN THE WORLD made money: Japan's bullet trains, and Amtrak's Metroliner. Period. No one in the world expects trains to make money. Mostly, they're considered a public utility.

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  8. The way the impeachment trial is proceeding is making me more sanguine about the possibility of flipping the Senate this coming election.

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    1. Well, so far we're mostly hearing from the Dems. Wait 'til the Repubs have the floor next week. What we're hearing now may become so "last week." We suspect the Senate will vote to acquit. Willful ignorance is one thing, but intelligent willful resistance is far worse. I won't feel sure of flipping the Senate and White House until the votes are counted and the stupid Electoral College has spoken. We may need huge protests to get from here to November intact.

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  9. Rand Paul: GOP doesn’t have the votes to dismiss the case against DT. [Click]

    Sanders Urges Restraint After Clinton Remarks [Click] Politico: “Privately, Sanders’ aides and allies feel that Clinton is trying to bait them… Sanders’ campaign told staffers internally to not discuss Clinton’s comments.”

    ======================================
    Paul McLeod of BuzzFeed News tweets an amusing observation on the Senate floor:
    Mitch McConnell’s poker face finally broke. After 2 hours of talking and 15 mins after senators expected a break, Schiff seems to wrap up then says “now let me turn to the second article of impeachment.”
    McConnell threw his hands down and made a clear “Are you kidding me?” face.

    No, Moscow—not kidding. You asked for it, you got it. Go, Adam!
    ======================================
    From the “Poor little snowflakes” file:

    “Senate Republicans are fuming after Rep. Jerry Nadler accused them on the Senate floor of engaging in a ‘cover up’ to protect the president, seizing on his remarks Wednesday as a significant misstep that they say undercuts Democrats’ impeachment case,” Politico reports. Said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): “If the Democrats are smart, they won’t put Jerry Nadler on the field again. He was so out of line. It’s offensive accusing us of a cover-up.”

    You play the game, you get the name, Ronny.
    =====================================
    President Trump brushed off the traumatic brain injuries and concussion-like injuries sustained by U.S. service members after Iran’s missile strike on a military base in Iraq, saying he did not consider them to be “very serious injuries,” ABC News reports.
    Said Trump: “I heard that they had headaches. And a couple of other things.”

    They don’t medivac soldiers from Iraq to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for headaches, sonny.
    ======================================

    House GOP’s Legal Expert Torches WH’s Defense Against Impeachment [Click]

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    1. President Trump brushed off the traumatic brain injuries and concussion-like injuries sustained by U.S. service members after Iran’s missile strike on a military base in Iraq, saying he did not consider them to be “very serious injuries,” ABC News reports.
      Said Trump: “I heard that they had headaches. And a couple of other things.”


      My reaction to that is unprintable! Steam is rising from my ears.

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  10. Regarding the TBIs: DT *only* cares about himself. I knew as soon as I heard that some were sent to Kuwait and some to Germany that it was bad. I knew because my sister served in Kuwait during Bush's war. As a nurse who had to meet a plane coming in from the battlefield with wounded, and go alongside their stretchers; her job was to stabilize patients on the way to another plane which would take them to Germany because their injuries were so bad. She was traumatised by all she saw, and had nightmares for years.

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    1. I don't doubt it for an instant, listener. I worked for five years in a Level One Trauma Center, much of that time in the Emergency Room. We had a lot of very serious injury cases, but a lot of less serious ones too. I am sure that just as in Vietnam, the military surgeons and care teams at Landstuhl have developed skills that they will carry over into civilian practice stateside, to the benefit of us all. I expect that seeing the injuries that have only received field hospital care, without seeing their subsequent treatment and (we hope) recovery would be far more of a psychological burden than the surgery nurses, for example, would have to bear. Pulling someone through a really bad case is something that gratifies everyone in the team, and helps dealing with other cases that don't work out well; I wouldn't want to be deprived of that. It would be SO hard.

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    2. Well said. Incredibly hard.

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  11. House GOP’s Legal Expert Torches WH’s Defense Against Impeachment [Click]

    Reading about Adam Schiff’s performance in the impeachment trial, I was moved to look up his education and pre-political experience. [Click] JD Harvard Law, Assistant US Attorney. In short: “A” team. Mitch McConnell: graduated from University of Kentucky College of Law, no mention of passing a Bar exam, never practiced as an attorney. Thoroughly outclassed.

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    1. Reflecting on Schiff vs. McConnell, I think Schiff is playing it for the history books; this is the case of a lifetime for an attorney--indeed, for almost all attorneys. McConnell is playing for November of this year, if that far in advance.

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  12. On a far lighter note, that is a dandy photo at the top of the thread, listener; thank you. Would I be right to guess it was taken in Charleston, South Carolina?

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  13. One of the Facebook commenters suggested that if the Senate does a partisan acquittal of trump that the Democrats should file a new Article of Impeachment in each of the ten months remaining. Lord knows he's committed enough crimes to fill ten Articles!

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  14. Did anyone hear what the protester in the gallery yelled before being removed?

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    1. Yikes! I missed that, but expect I will be reading about it. "Sic semper tyrannis" comes immediately to mind as a possibility, but that might be too obscure to be likely these days.

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    2. Ask and ye shall receive (via Twitter and The Guardian, in this case):

      Phil Elliott (@Philip_Elliott)
      A protester on the third floor of the Senate is shouting “abortion” and “dismiss the charges against President Trump.” Also, something re Schumer. Under Senate rules, we are not allowed to photograph in this part of the Capitol.
      ===============================
      Kadia Goba (@kadiagoba)
      OMG!! The scariest thing just happened. A protester stormed onto the balcony while Hakeem Jeffries was addressing the Senate. “Jesus Christ would...” he yelled, before Capitol police pulled him out. Everyone visibly started, including me!

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  15. Mitch McConnell’s Gift to Democrats [Click] E.J. Dionne: “The fear was that Trump would inevitably tout acquittal in the Senate as vindication. He’d say that impeachment was, to use a word invoked over and over by his hapless lawyer Pat Cipollone on the Senate floor (because he had little of substance to say), ‘ridiculous.'”

    “But #MidnightMitch, as the Senate leader was labeled by his Twitter critics, rode to the rescue. By working with Trump to rig the trial by admitting as little evidence as possible, McConnell robbed the proceeding of any legitimacy as a fair adjudication of Trump’s behavior.”

    “Instead of being able to claim that Trump was ‘cleared’ by a searching and serious process, Republican senators will now be on the defensive for their complicity in the Trump coverup.”

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  16. Possibly of limited interest elsewhere, but my State Senator and committeeman of the Oak Park Democratic Party has just become President of the Illinois State Senate. The title of the local party's newsletter is The Progressive.

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    1. Now don't you go capitalizing on your personal connection to steer the course of the state, Bill. [grin]

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  17. Defending Trump Is a Has-Been’s Best Hope [Click] “Dershowitz, Giuliani, Starr, and others relive their glory days by latching onto the president.” The expert quoted identifies fame as an addiction. I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but it sounds like methamphetamine, tobacco or alcohol—you name it.

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    1. Remember how devastated people were when Princess Diana died? People create a “perfect” version of their hero and pin all their broken hopes on that person. Even if their lives are a mess, they can live vicariously through this hero. Because they identify that way, if a calamity should befall their hero, they feel it like a personal disaster.

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    2. That's an interesting thought, listener.

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  18. Does anyone here recognize the man linking arms with Bernie in the picture at the beginning of the thread?

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  19. Trump Eases Pollution Controls on Streams and Wetlands [Click] He sure is doing a lot while he hides out in Europe from MLK Day.

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