House of Representatives: Democrats in da house!

[fraurosena]

Come hell or high water, Cohen's testifying.

 

[fraurosena]

Schiff's statement on Stone's indictment.

Most important paragraph, in my opinion:

"It is also significant that the outreach took place days before Donald Trump called on Russia to 'find the 30,000 emails that are missing' from Hillary Clinton's email server. That would mean that at the very time that then candidate Trump was publicly encouraging Russia's help in acquiring Clinton-related emails, his campaign was privately receiving information about the planned release of stolen Clinton emails."

[AmazonGrace]

 

To Mueller, not us

[fraurosena]

19 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

To Mueller, not us

Darn it.

[fraurosena]

 

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Darn it.

It is start at least.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Rachel talking about things that we already know but one thing that was new to me: at about 29 minutes she's talking about Adam Schiff's committee and she says that the Republicans are stalling Schiff who can't do anything until GOP have named the Republican members of the committee, and they haven't named anyone yet.

These people are a menace to society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqBxKvJPTfA

[SilverBeach]

On 1/18/2019 at 7:29 AM, fraurosena said:

Yes, the presidunce started this shutdown. But he isn't the one keeping it in place. McTurtle is.

The conversation should constantly and continuously be on why he refuses to put a bill to the floor of the Senate. He is the sole reason why there is still a shutdown. If the bill were put to the floor, everyone knows it will be agreed upon with a veto-proof majority. If anyone is to blame, it is McTurtle. (I love the AOC hashtag #wheresMitch. People should be going after him, and pressuring him to end the shutdown. He can't hide forever.)

@SilverBeach, I feel for you, I really do. I understand your anger (well, as much as anyone can who is not in your position). You are being hurt for no reason and there is nothing you can do about it. So I get that you wish the Dems would cave. In the short term that would indeed solve your problem. You could retire and be done with it, if the Dems give the presidunce what he wants.

But it won't solve the real problem in the long run, and all those federal workers who aren't able to retire, or who can't simply go work somewhere else, will be held hostage again, and again, and again. Because you can bet that shutdowns will happen at the drop of a hat every time the presidunce feels he needs to blackmail the country into giving him what he wants. You will be giving a would-be tyrant ammunition to use against you. That can't be right. 

I have no ready answer to solve this dilemma between solving personal hardship and serving the good of the whole. I wish I did. Maybe it's time for the American public (not only feds, but everyone) to flood the streets. Show solidarity and demand change.

You could do it for women, you could do it for the kids. You can do it for the federal workers too.

 

When your financial well-being is threatened, it is difficult to be altruistic or take a long term view of things. Not only would my problem have been solved by ending this or never having started it, but the problems of my coworkers with no income, regardless of their retirement eligibility status. I saw one of my coworkers, a young single mother, on the news last night. She didn't care about politics either anymore, she needed to feed her children.

The solution is to revamp the law so that shutdowns like this simply cannot happen. And to require fitness evaluations for presidential candidates like the military does when considering promotions. Eliminating the electoral college would help too. No way Dump should have ever been elected. Apathetic citizens need to get off their asses and vote too. If the polls are open, I'm there. We have mail-in ballots, absentee ballots, all of that, no excuse for not voting, although I acknowledge current Rethuglican voter suppression tactics. Assholes.

Federal employees are just regular people and cannot be burdened with serving the good of the whole at the expense of their families, that's not something we signed up for and I am resentful that this ever happened. Nobody works for the government to be insecure. We put up with so much other crap, such as minimal or no raises, like this year when the economy was supposedly so wonderful yet Dump cancelled our 2.1% proposed raise, gee thanks. That would have been a drop in the budget bucket, as is all Federal pay and benefits. There have been rallys and marches by Federal employees all across the nation during the shutdown, although some of us are older and with health conditions that preclude up form participating in those activities. I harassed my legislators.

People who haven't been through a sudden loss of income don't have any idea of what it is like, especially for bullshit reasons. There is psychological impact in addition to financial impact. Hopefully the nightmare will end in 2020. There is not one rational person who would accept repeated shutdowns, look how close we came to disaster with this one. I don't buy the argument that Dump would have kept pulling this stunt. I think everyone involved was posturing to some extent.

I hope I'm still working on February 16.

Edited January 26, 2019 by SilverBeach

[fraurosena]

5 minutes ago, SilverBeach said:

The solution is to revamp the law so that shutdowns like this simply cannot happen.

This. So much this. I read yesterday that the US should adopt the Canadian way of avoiding shutdowns. Apparently a shutdown in Canada automatically triggers new elections. The thought behind that is that if politicians want to keep their jobs, they will avoid shutdowns like the plague. It's a thought. Another option is the Stop STUPIDITY bill that sen. Warner has introduced. 

[fraurosena]

If this is true, and Sen. Speier and the House oversight committee are going to look into the Blavatnik money connections, it’s going to be so goooood.

 

Edited January 27, 2019 by fraurosena
Stupid phone riffle

[onekidanddone]

56 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

If this is true, and Sen. Speier and the House oversight committee are going to look into the Blavatnik money connections, it’s going to be so goooood.

 

I missed the Stone under the bus tweet. What did he say?

Gives new meaning to Cast the first stone 

[fraurosena]

4 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

I missed the Stone under the bus tweet. What did he say?

Gives new meaning to Cast the first stone 

I don't know. There's only one tweet in which he says that Stone didn't work for him "anywhere near the Election". Which strictly speaking is true: Stone was deliberately distanced from the campaign, and instead was secretly working behind the scenes. I don't see that remark as throwing him under the bus though.

[Howl]

23 hours ago, SilverBeach said:

No way Dump should have ever been elected.

But it's profoundly important to understand why he was elected, and continues to have mostly unshakable support from his Base.  Please, if you can, get a copy of the book Flyover Country and start following Sarah Kendzior on Twitter.  This has to do with conditions in the country that are ripe for this slide into authoritarianism masquerading as the Republican party. 

I agree heartily with all of your points and would add vigorous fight against the obvious trend in voter suppression and work hard against gerrymandering to get nonpartisan voting districts drawn up.  At the state level, when more Democrats than Republicans are voting and more Republicans than Democrats are winning, it's a sure sign that gerrymandering is brutally effective. 

[SilverBeach]

7 hours ago, Howl said:

But it's profoundly important to understand why he was elected, and continues to have mostly unshakable support from his Base. 

Mostly because of the electoral college. And his base is a minority. The tail shouldn't wag the dog.

Sorry, I don't Twit.

7 hours ago, Howl said:

Please, if you can, get a copy of the book Flyover Country and start following Sarah Kendzior on Twitter. 

Sorry, I don't Twit. I also think support for Dump is a reaction to a black man being president. Dump is their great white hope.

 

Edited January 27, 2019 by SilverBeach

[AmazonGrace]

 

[CTRLZero]

I went to the House Homeland Security Committee website, and see the committee is made up of both Republicans and Democrats.  Excuse my ignorance, but are there different Twitter accounts for the separate parties?  And where did Trump get those particular figures?  

[onekidanddone]

43 minutes ago, CTRLZero said:

I went to the House Homeland Security Committee website, and see the committee is made up of both Republicans and Democrats.  Excuse my ignorance, but are there different Twitter accounts for the separate parties?  And where did Trump get those particular figures?  

Those are the numbers of filet-o-fish wrappers found under his bed

[Howl]

Ima love bomb Ted Lieu.  For those of you who didn't catch it, John Bolton was photographed with a yellow legal pad with a note about sending 5,000 troops to Columbia.  This is Ted's "response".  What a droll fellow.

Ted's yellow legal pad says, 5,000 Documents Subpoenaed by House Judiciary.  Click on the pic to see the full view. 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Cartmann99]

On 1/28/2019 at 1:00 PM, onekidanddone said:

Those are the numbers of filet-o-fish wrappers found under his bed

Whoever has to clean his bedroom deserves a huge raise.  

[AmazonGrace]

 

About that deal that's going to pay for the wall...

[GreyhoundFan]

"Learning to ignore Trump"

Spoiler

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her House Democratic caucus have perfected the art of ignoring President Trump’s threats, non-facts and efforts to sway the electorate, thereby putting pressure on Democrats. As to the latter, he’s shown again and again (most recently in his totally ineffective Oval Office address on the border) how little he can move public opinion.

Indeed, it’s fair to say the only hope for the GOP and the country is to ignore Trump entirely and govern as the first branch of government -- even on foreign policy, which is usually the province of the executive branch.

On foreign policy, Republicans have started doing just that. The New York Times’s Peter Baker writes: “More than two years into his administration, the disconnect between President Trump and the Republican establishment on foreign policy has rarely been as stark. In recent days, the president’s own advisers and allies have been pushing back, challenging his view of the world and his prescription for its problems.” In other words, Republicans are not prepared to adopt Trump’s lies and misconceptions of the world, nor listen to advisers such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who insist on perpetuating them. They’ll stick with the facts -- and they’ll listen to the senior intelligence officials who remind us that Russia really is seeking to disrupt our democracy, the Islamic State really hasn’t gone away, North Korea really hasn’t shown a willingness to give up its nukes and Iran really isn’t violating the nuclear deal .

It’s remarkable that the distance between Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Trump is about as wide as it was between Trump and former defense secretary Jim Mattis. In fact, a former McConnell adviser is quoted as saying something fairly similar to Mattis’s resignation letter. ("Look, Senator McConnell has a different worldview than the president does. He’s a national security hawk who believes American strength in the world is critical.”)

As my colleague Josh Rogin points out, “Internationalist Democrats and Republicans are increasingly finding common cause, not only in promoting robust U.S. foreign policy positions but also in asserting the legislative branch’s role in national security decision-making and oversight.” In short, they are ignoring Trump’s lead, in fact pulling against him in ways that are striking for members of the incumbent president’s party.

On the domestic front, lawmakers would do well to adopt a similar approach -- ignore Trump. The president is warning congressional negotiators not to make a deal without a wall. The Post reports: “President Trump warned Wednesday that lawmakers would be ‘wasting their time’ if they do not discuss a wall or physical barrier along the southern border as part of a deal to stave off another government shutdown.”

However, as Pelosi rhetorically asked when Trump caved on the shutdown, “Have I not been clear on the wall?” There won’t be a wall. Democrats know it. Experienced appropriators on the conference committee know it. The days of asking Trump permission before deciding and voting on a plan must stop unless Republicans are prepared for politically devastating shutdown 2.0.

There is reason to be optimistic if one considers the people who are in the negotiations. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) has the right idea. The Post reports:

“There’s good people in that conference committee,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), another committee member. “I think we can come to an amiable conclusion if we’re left to our own device.”

Tester said Trump should stay out of it, even though “that’s not his nature, it’s not what he typically does.”

And Tester said he personally is open to fencing on the border, “as long as it’s part of what we analyze as actually making the southern border more secure.”

In sum, ignore the president on foreign and domestic policy, find areas of common agreement across the aisle and then put it on Trump’s desk. He’ll find a way to spin it as his own idea anyway. You see, it seems not even the president has the nerve to set off a second shutdown.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love Ted Lieu: