Friday Frenzy, Ragin’ Cajuns,Democratic Debates, Off Route Mardi Gras Parades, and a Snow Moon! OH MY!
Posted: February 7, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, morning reads | Tags: krewe de boheme, krewe du vieux, MSNBC New Hampshire Democratic Debate 42 CommentsGood Day Sky Dancers!
The off route Krewes of Mardi Gras have started rolling. They’re the only parades I really attend these days. Krewe de Boheme’s second parade will take the Marigny/French Quarter route tonight and Krewe du Vieux rolls tomorrow night where I will nest at the Spanktuary with feast, libation, and friends. I need a break from the rest of the country right now and this is exactly what Dr Kat ordered. Nothing beats a downtown krewe!
But there will be more than just Mardi Gras Parades and the first super moon–a Snow Moon--of the year this weekend. We have debates and votes in New Hampshire and a maniac in the White House whose meltdown yesterday extended to a phone call to PM Boris Johnson. I really think the guy is on his way to a psychotic break but we need to get BB’s take on this. (He just said Pelosi’s speech ripping was a crime on TV too!)
The country has to get rid of this dotard.
The more I look at the polls, KKKremlin Caligula, and Moscow Mitch on TV, the more desperate I feel about 2020. I’m not the only New Orleanian who feels that way either. From VOX today: ‘“We’re losing our damn minds”: James Carville unloads on the Democratic Party. Why the longtime Democratic strategist is “scared to death” of the 2020 election.” Sean Illing extends the conversation that started with an MSNBC conversation that really got to me.
In a rant on MSNBC that went viral on Tuesday evening, the longtime Democratic strategist vented his concerns about the party’s prospects for beating Donald Trump, taking particular aim at the party’s leftward lurch.
“Eighteen percent of the population controls 52 senate seats,” Carville said. “We’ve got to be a majoritarian party. The urban core is not gonna get it done. What we need is power! Do you understand? That’s what this is about.”
His diatribe took place against the backdrop of an Iowa caucus that had fallen into chaos and amid a rancorous ongoing debate among Democrats over the party’s direction. He took particular aim at Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom he fears could lead the party to defeat in November.
Carville’s lament distills a concern among the Democratic Party’s establishment: Will ideological purity and playing to the base cost the Democrats victory in November? For Carville at least, “We have one moral imperative and that’s to beat Donald Trump.” That his comments went viral speaks to the sense of urgency among Democrats, even as it only fuels the debate over the direction of the party.
I still don’t see what any one sees in Bernie Sanders other than he’s a cranky old man of few accomplishments and a hell a lot of angry words mostly displaying the politics and economic stuff of the wobblies. He’s a walk to the past. And, he’s not a Democrat!
James Carville
We have candidates on the debate stage talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration. They’re talking about doing away with nuclear energy and fracking. You’ve got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells. It doesn’t matter what you think about any of that, or if there are good arguments — talking about that is not how you win a national election. It’s not how you become a majoritarian party.
For fuck’s sake, we’ve got Trump at Davos talking about cutting Medicare and no one in the party has the sense to plaster a picture of him up there sucking up to the global elites, talking about cutting taxes for them while he’s talking about cutting Medicare back home. Jesus, this is so obvious and so easy and I don’t see any of the candidates taking advantage of it.
The Republicans have destroyed their party and turned it into a personality cult, but if anyone thinks they can’t win, they’re out of their damn minds.
Sean Illing
I wouldn’t endorse everything every Democrat is doing or saying, but are they really destroying the party? What does that even mean?
James Carville
Look, Bernie Sanders isn’t a Democrat. He’s never been a Democrat. He’s an ideologue. And I’ve been clear about this: If Bernie is the nominee, I’ll vote for him. No question. I’ll take an ideological fanatic over a career criminal any day. But he’s not a Democrat.
Sean Illing
You know people are going to read this and say, “Carville backed Clinton in 2016. So did the Democratic establishment. They blew it in 2016. Why should I care what any of them think now?”
James Carville
I don’t give a shit. People will say anything. And first of all, Clinton won the popular vote by almost three million. And secondly, the Russians put Jill Stein in front of Clinton’s campaign to depress votes. And thirdly, the New York Times a week before an election, assured its readers that the Russians were not even trying to help Trump. And then they wrote 15,000 stories about Hillary’s emails.
But back to Sanders — what I’m saying is the Democratic Party isn’t Bernie Sanders, whatever you think about Sanders.Sean Illing
A lot of threads there. First, a lot of people don’t trust the Democratic Party, don’t believe in the party, for reasons you’ve already mentioned, and so they just don’t care about that. They want change. And I guess the other thing I’d say is, 2016 scrambled our understanding of what’s possible in American politics.
Are we really sure Sanders can’t win?
James Carville
Who the hell knows? But here’s what I do know: Sanders might get 280 electoral votes and win the presidency and maybe we keep the House. But there’s no chance in hell we’ll ever win the Senate with Sanders at the top of the party defining it for the public. Eighteen percent of the country elects more than half of our senators. That’s the deal, fair or not.
So long as McConnell runs the Senate, it’s game over. There’s no chance we’ll change the courts and nothing will happen, and he’ll just be sitting up there screaming in the microphone about the revolution.
The purpose of a political party is to acquire power. Alright? Without power, nothing matters.
I’ve been saying the same damn things but not so colorfully. So, why is the media chasing Buttigieg and Bernie while writing off Amy and Elizabeth and kind’ve ignoring the disappearing act that is Biden? This is a disgusting bit from Boston CBS.
Hoosier daddy now? In the latest exclusive WBZ/Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll, Pete Buttigieg continues his remarkable post-Iowa surge.
Bernie Sanders is holding steady at 24 percent, but Buttigieg is up four points over last night with 23 percent, a virtual tie in a survey with a margin of error of 4.4 percent.
Elizabeth Warren takes over third place with 13 percent, and Joe Biden slips to fourth with 11 percent.
Mayor Pete’s gains don’t seem to be coming at the expense of Sanders, whose numbers haven’t changed much all week. Instead, Buttigieg seems to be attracting registered Democrats. And his biggest gains appear to be raided from key backers of Warren and Biden.
Among women, Warren is down four points from Wednesday night and Buttigieg is up six.
And among voters over 65, a core source of Biden backers, Buttigieg has doubled his support overnight, a 16 point jump.
There are like two articles I found that somewhat ask some questions. But do they really go far enough? From WAPO: “His campaign on the line, Joe Biden goes missing in New Hampshire”. Iowa always stamps return to sender on Biden’s forehead. This is the third year. Can elderly black people in South Carolina revive him?
Biden spent Thursday gathered with his top advisers at his home in Wilmington, Del., seeking a reset and perhaps a last-ditch effort to save his candidacy, beginning with a debate Friday night. He held no public events.
Following dismal results in the Iowa caucuses that have rattled many in his orbit, his campaign is now simultaneously trying to lower expectations here — with some suggesting they would consider a finish as low as third place a victory — while also bracing for a second straight difficult Election Day.
In one troublesome sign for the financially strapped campaign, it canceled nearly $150,000 in television ads in South Carolina, which votes Feb. 29, and moved the spending to Nevada, whose Feb. 22 contest follows New Hampshire’s. The move seemed to acknowledge that Biden’s campaign cannot sustain a continued run of bad news.
“From a Biden perspective, there’s going to be a course correction in all three states before Super Tuesday,” said Dick Harpootlian, a South Carolina state senator who is in regular contact with Biden’s campaign. “He’s got to have sharper elbows.”He suggested that those inside the campaign realized the gravity of the moment and that Biden had to better “explain the difference with his opponents.”
“History may write that the best thing that ever happened to Joe Biden was getting gut-punched in Iowa,” he added. “It woke him up, it woke his campaign up and his supporters up. They were complacent. . . . You’ve got to talk about the other guy.”
But, at least on Thursday, it was the other guy talking about Biden.
Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) finished at the top in Iowa, continued his media blitz, appearing on shows from ABC’s “The View” to the gossip site TMZ, where he argued that he — not Biden — was the most electable Democratic candidate.
I did hear Biden go after both of them yesterday the few times I turned the TV on to see if the hapless Democratic Party of Iowa had finished trying to unclusterfuck the caucus clusterfuck that has now given BernieBros the chance to attack the rest of the world because every one they see as establishment is against them. Don’t try mentioning that all this changes were made to appease the Berntrocity of 2016. We’re undoubtedly going to get a lot of whining right up to November. From the Hill’s Jonathan Easley: “Iowa debacle deepens division between Sanders, national party”
The vote-counting debacle around the Iowa caucuses has furthered distrust and hardened anger between Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the national Democratic Party.
There is deep frustration among Sanders’s supporters and allies over the historic meltdown of the first-in-the-nation caucuses.
The early reported results found former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg with a small lead over Sanders — a dynamic that has been reflected in the news media for several days.
The race is too close to call, but the late results trickling in appeared to be breaking in Sanders’s direction and there’s still a chance he could win both the popular vote and a plurality of delegates.
Sanders’s allies believe he was deprived of valuable momentum he should have had coming out of Iowa.
And progressives are livid, viewing the fiasco as endemic of a party that’s been run by establishment figures whose unchecked power has bred incompetence and laziness.
Adding to the frustration is the fact that a handful of former Hillary Clinton aides are involved with the company that developed the failed app being blamed for the reporting irregularities that led to the slow and confusing release of results.
At some point, they need to stop dragging Hillary and any one that worked for her around. Joan Walsh discusses “The Erasure of Elizabeth Warren Continues” at The Nation. I’m still waiting for the moment every one realizes that she’s just about the 5th candidate in line for that right after Kamala, Corey, Julio, Amy, and Kristen. Lost in the media narrative is that she beat Biden and Amy was right there on his tail.
Coming out of the disastrous Iowa caucuses this week, media coverage of the Democratic presidential race turned back the clock almost a year: Suddenly everyone was again focused on “the B-Boys,” as Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan lamented last March: Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden, with a fourth killer B, Mike Bloomberg, replacing the departed Beto O’Rourke. Since Monday night, there’s been breathless coverage of the race between Sanders and Buttigieg to see who, finally, comes out on top in Iowa, plus endless hand-wringing over Biden’s disastrous fourth-place showing, and whether that opens the door to the billionaire Bloomberg’s buying the nomination.
Iowa conventional wisdom says there are only “three tickets out” of the caucuses, and yet coverage has curiously overlooked the woman who got one of them: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. From the moment cable networks switched from her caucus night rally speech to Biden’s, Warren has been virtually erased. As the fight for first place continued into Thursday, I have watched cable news panels mention Warren only in passing, if at all (MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell had been one exception, featuring an interview with Warren Wednesday night, and then on Thursday night she was hosted by Chris Hayes).
This despite the fact that Warren clearly beat the Democratic front-runner, Biden, and outperformed her numbers in the final Des Moines Register poll (spiked because of one complaint—one—from a Buttigieg supporter who said she wasn’t asked about him by a pollster), which had Warren in second at 18 percent; with 97 percent of the results in, she finished at 20 percent, in third, with Sanders and Buttigieg effectively tied (though Sanders on Thursday declared victory, and he may ultimately be right). Despite being derided as a New England progressive who might not connect with heavily rural and suburban Iowa, she beat two rivals who were said to have the inside track with those voters—Biden and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who came in at a disappointing fifth place.
“From the beginning, all of the women in the race—Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Klobuchar, Warren—have known they were facing erasure,” says former Iowa Democratic Party chair Sue Dvorsky, who switched her support from Harris to Warren after Harris left the race in December. “Elizabeth has known she has to just stay in there and keep fighting and just not quit.”
But since getting one of the “three tickets out” hasn’t earned her much of a bump, Warren will have a harder road ahead in New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and the Super Tuesday states.
Finishing a distant fifth, Klobuchar did herself a big favor by jumping out on Monday night and claiming some sort of victory, in a speech networks took live and in full, in an absence of other clear news at that point. Biden, Warren and Sanders got less time; Buttigieg, who appeared last and claimed a victory he hadn’t been granted, actually got more.
So, I must decide between the debate and the Krewe du Boheme.
I expect there will be fireworks at both so decisions! decision! decisions!
Here are a few other things I recommend you read:
Yes! It’s old! But it’s a lesson in what we should not repeat!
Jonathan Capehart from WAPO: Trump’s State of the Union speech was a white supremacist vision of America
Washington Post: Secret Service has paid rates as high as $650 a night for rooms at Trump’s properties
Kaitlan Collins / CNN: Key impeachment witness Alexander Vindman expects to leave White House post in coming weeks, source says
So what’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Manic Monday Reads: Iowa Caucus Day, Senate Gasbaggery and When will he take the sharpie to Missouri?
Posted: February 3, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, morning reads | Tags: Athenian Curse Tablets, impeachment gasbaggery, Iowa Caucuses, Kansas City 32 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I think I could have a new hobby from what’s evidently a very old practice! Ever heard of curse tablets? Well, it’s an Athenian thing and maybe we should bring it back! I keep a list of graves I intend to dance upon nips and clits up. (.e.g. Phyllis Schafly, Jerry Falwell and his spawn, Billy Graham and his spawn, you know the usual evil suspects). But, an Athenian curse tablet seems much more righteous and long lasting!
Thirty lead tablets engraved with curses have been discovered at the bottom of a 2,500 year old well in ancient Athens. Discovered in the area of Kerameikos, ancient Athens’ main burial ground, the small tablets invoked the gods of the underworld in order to cause harm to others.
These curses were ritual texts, usually scratched on small lead objects. “The person that ordered a curse is never mentioned by name, only the recipient,” observes Dr. Jutta Stroszeck, director of the Kerameikos excavation on behalf of the German Archaeological Institute in Athens.
Before the discovery of the 30 specimens in the well, dozens of curses from the classical period (480-323 B.C.E.) had been found mainly in tombs of dead people who had died in an untimely manner and were therefore thought suitable to carry the spell to the underworld. One had also been found in another well. But there was good reason for the transition of ill-will from graves to wells in ancient Athens.
The well where the curses were found was excavated in 2016 by a team under Stroszeck’s direction while investigating the water supply to a bathhouse about 60 meters beyond the Dipylon – the city-gate on the ro to the Academy. It was a public bathhouse, not a private one, that operated from Classical to Hellenistic times, the fifth to the first centuries B.C.E., and is thought to be the spa referred to by the comic playwright Aristophanes (Knights, 1307-1401). It was also mentioned in a speech by the 4th century B.C.E. Greek rhetorician Isaeus (against Kalydon, fragment 24).
So, as the Senate debates impeachment today … well, wait that might not be a good description. It’s more like as the Republicans spout noxious talking points while the Democratic Party folks beg for something akin to constitutional justice. So, as to whatever that thing is today that’s on TV with so much gasbaggery … consider finding the nearest well! We could start a thing!
I do have a well under my house so maybe I should consider digging the fill out for my new hobby. Those old holier than God dudes might be dancing with the devil now but their horrid sons are still plaguing the world. And of course, we know who needs to go to a devil waiting with millions of hints about what to do with him! He certainly showed Kansas last night that they were just fly over country! Or did he show the Show Me State of Missouri?
Here’s the headline via the Kansas City Star: “Trump congratulates Chiefs for representing ‘the Great State of Kansas.” My mom used to actually write for this paper believe it or not! Most of that side of my family is still all around the place although most now live on the Kansas side of State Line Road. Which reminds me to tell you that State Line is of the interesting roads ever! It used to be a stretch of road where of confederate Missouri folk frequently yelled obscene things at the folks from the Free State of Kansas and it’s aslo got Joe’s Kansas City BBQ! I’m as unlikely to go to or watch a football game as I am to enter a church any time in the near future but I do admit that this got a huge chuckle from me. Such a stable genius!
President Donald Trump congratulated the Missouri-based Kansas City Chiefs for representing the state of Kansas after they won the Super Bowl Sunday night.
In a tweet that apparently disappeared — but was captured in screengrabs — Trump wrote: “Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs on a great game, and a fantastic comeback, under immense pressure. You represented the Great State of Kansas and, in fact, the entire USA, so very well. Our Country is PROUD OF YOU!”
We all know geography is no part of his very stable genius but to be President of a country should mean you know something about its biggest cities! At least you think that would be a skill set you’d develop after three years or so. Let’s hope Kansas and Missouri remember this coming election!
And, just to get you juiced up for those curse tablets! Here’s the guy that really really needs a billion or so sent so everything i hell is waiting for him! I should hope the world doesn’t act like his church because that would look a lot like hell! Just think what will happen to all those kids of they think all those over 40 mothers and grandmothers can dance!!!!
So, I should probably mention another state around there that I spent an awful lot of time in given my Dad owned a business there for over 30 years! That would be the Iowa caucuses
While Iowa’s always held a caucus, their popularity is only about 50 years old. So what has changed over the years?
There are two men that historians refer to for as to why the Iowa Caucuses are so popular. That’s George McGovern and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Both of them used first in the nation status as a way to show their strength as a candidate.
It all started in the 1970s.
“In 1976, when Jimmy Carter was here, these were very small events,” David Yepsen, of Iowa PBS, said.
A living room, church basements: those were the kinds of places where Iowans met candidates 50 years ago, offering a sense of charm in politics.
“I think the candidates like to try and recreate it, but the thing has gotten so big that they can’t,” Yepsen said.
Yepsen is a long-time journalist who started his career in the 70s, just as the caucuses were gaining fame. The democratic party was in the midst of reforms, so Iowa wound up going first. It wasn’t for any specific reason. That’s just how it happened.
Through the years, the Iowa caucuses predict a party’s nominee correctly about half of the time.
Usually though, the one who wins the presidency does well in the Hawkeye state.
“The only time that a candidate has not finished in the top three and has gone onto win the presidency was 1992,” Leo Landis, curator of the State Historical Society of Iowa, said. “That was when Senator Harkin was running and Bill Clinton comes in 4th.”
Here’s some Iowa Caucus Day Reads!
Ronald Brownstein / The Atlantic: “2020 Democrats Are Bringing Butter Knives to a Gunfight”
Heading into tonight’s Iowa caucus, the clock may be ticking faster on the Democratic presidential candidates than they believe.
All of the leading contenders have campaigned energetically and extensively across the state during the past few days, but none have moved to sharply contrast themselves with their rivals.
None of the candidates have offered a sustained challenge to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has surged to the lead in most Iowa polls and delivered an impressive show of strength on Saturday night with a raucous rally here that attracted some 3,000 people. Nor has former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, or Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota delivered much of an argument against former Vice President Joe Biden, though he leads them in the competition for moderate voters. “I think this is a pillow fight compared to previous caucuses,” says Jeff Link, a longtime Democratic strategist in Iowa.
This restraint partly reflects a widespread belief in Democratic circles that in a multi-candidate field, a conflict between any two candidates hurts both of them and opens a pathway for another contender to win. That’s famously what happened in the 2004 Iowa caucus, when the scorched-earth hostilities between former Representative Richard Gephardt of Missouri and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean allowed John Kerry to make a late surge, winning the state and, ultimately, the nomination.
NBC News: “The stakes for Biden tonight in Iowa are enormous”
No one has more at stake tonight than Joe Biden.
A first-place finish in the Iowa caucuses here could put him the driver’s seat to win the Democratic nomination; a fourth-place finish could end his political career.
No other Top 4 Democrat has that wide range of possibilities.
Pete Buttigieg admitted on “Meet the Press” yesterday that he needs a strong showing to vault him to the later states, but finishing fourth wouldn’t end his political career (he’s just 38 years old).
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren could very well win tonight, but that wouldn’t put them in the driver’s seat for the nomination — at least not yet.
As Democratic candidates began a last-minute blitz across Iowa on Friday evening, nearly a dozen men gathered in a cavernous YMCA meeting room in downtown Des Moines to have a conversation that felt a universe removed from the 2020 race.
They were part of one of the largest groups shut out of Monday’s caucus: people with felony convictions. Iowans are barred from voting for life once they commit a felony, and people can’t vote even if they committed a crime decades ago. The state’s policy, one of the strictest in the country, means more than 42,000 Iowans out of prison won’t have a say in choosing a presidential candidate. Almost 10% of the black voting-age population can’t vote because of a felony conviction.
For decades, the Iowa caucuses have marked the beginning of the presidential primary, and often set the tone for the election year. But the event has come under increasing scrutiny for giving some voters – namely white and wealthy Iowans – outsized power in choosing the president in a state that’s already more than 90% white. Meanwhile, the physical and legal barriers built into the structure of the caucuses leave out large swaths of the population, whether they are disabled, work long hours, or were once convicted of a crime.
So, why does Iowa still go first? And given that many newly enfranchised Iowans that work the local stock yards and do construction work along with plenty of other Iowa type things have their heritage South of our border … what does Iowa think about this?
And there is the whiff of Troll in the Iowa air …
Anyway, this week will be wild. Stock up on whatever gives you comfort!
And, what’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Final Days of Democracy Reads: It’s all over as the Fat Man Tweets
Posted: January 31, 2020 Filed under: morning reads 45 Comments
“Liberty Head ver. XII #218,” Peter Max
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Susan B Glasser puts it this way “THE SENATE CAN STOP PRETENDING NOW”. As I’ve lurched through my life, I always thought the most dangerous theory of constitutional law was the idea of a “unitary executive” on steroids and testosterone. It seemed destined to run in to some one thrown into the presidency on false pretense and not up to the vast responsibility and morality that entails. But, impeachment was supposed to checkmate that … right?
Well, the kid that took civics in high school, constitutional law at university, and lived through Watergate, several specious wars up to and including the Iraq invasion is now facing the bottomless pit of possibility that we’ve just lost our system of checks and balances. I politic therefore I blog. Today, I blog from depression and desperation.
What happens when Trump just gets away with everything unconstitutional that he’s done? What happens when he gets his notion that he’s above the law constantly fed by the Republicans in Congress? Well, if we thought we saw lawlessness in the past, we’re about to go on the big kids roller coaster of anything goes!
Around 10 p.m., Alexander and Murkowski joined with another fervent Trump critic turned defender in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, to pose a question to Trump’s defense team. “Isn’t it true,” they asked, that, even if Bolton testified and everything he said was accurate, it “still would not rise to the level of an impeachable offense, and that therefore his testimony would add nothing to the case?” Sensing where this was going, Trump’s lawyer Patrick Philbin hastened to agree.
“It’s over,” one Democratic senator said to another, according to a reporter in the gallery. And, indeed, it was. The question offered a preview of the Alexander statement to follow. A few minutes later, Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, gave a truncated closing statement that suggested that he, too, knew what was about to happen. “They are afraid of the witnesses,” Nadler said. “They know Mr. Bolton and others will only strengthen the case.” On that note, the trial adjourned at 10:41 p.m. Nineteen minutes later, Alexander’s office tweeted out his statement. Murkowski did not join in, at least not yet. “I am going to reflect on what I’ve heard, reread my notes, and decide whether I need to hear more,” she told reporters; her office said she would announce her decision on Friday morning. Her colleague Susan Collins, meanwhile, announced that she would vote yes for the witnesses. Mitt Romney followed suit first thing Friday morning, as well. But how much did it matter?
All fifteen previous impeachment trials in the U.S. Senate, including the two previous Presidential-impeachment trials, had witnesses. But Lamar Alexander has spoken. Donald Trump’s stonewalling will succeed where Nixon’s failed. Perhaps Alexander has done us all a favor: the trial that wasn’t really a trial will be over, and we will no longer have to listen to it. The Senate can stop pretending.
“Statue of Liberty Ver. III #358”, Peter Max
What’s left to give us any hope that this horrid man will be thrown to history to pillage? What can we do to ensure that he won’t fix our next elections or just refuse to leave the White House if soundly trounced? Is there any hope in these final hours of Senate Failure? Jordain Carney at The HIll writes “Three ways the end of the impeachment trial could play out”
The Senate is expected to convene by 1 p.m. on Friday. Senators are warning that if Republicans successfully block witnesses, senators are likely to move quickly to Trump’s acquittal on Friday night or early Saturday.
Before a vote on witnesses, both Trump’s legal team and House managers get up to two hours each to make their cases to the Senate, according to a resolution passed last week on the rules for the trial.
What happens after that? There are a few scenarios to watch for.
Scenario One: The Senate rejects calling witnesses and moves to acquit Trump
This appears to be the most likely outcome, as the pool of potential Republican votes is quickly shrinking.
n a stark turnaround from just days ago when Republicans were caught flat footed by allegations from former national security adviser John Bolton, GOP senators are voicing renewed confidence that they will be able to defeat the request for witnesses.Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) stopped short of declaring victory but told reporters, “I’ve never been more optimistic that we’re in a good spot.”
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) added that he expects a vote on “final judgement” to happen by Friday night
The Statue of Liberty,Steve Penley’s portrait of Lady Liberty.
This has been a difficult time to live in and to understand especially for those of us that have been steeped in American History and the development of our Constitutional Republic.
This is from Jonathan Chait at NY Mag: “The Republican Cover-up Will Backfire. The House Can Keep Investigating Trump.”
Toward the end, the impeachment trial’s strategic purpose narrowed into an obsessive quest to produce evidence. Democrats have defined victory not as removal, but as winning a procedural vote to allow more testimony, especially by John Bolton. The House managers have designed their arguments not to reinforce Trump’s guilt but to underscore the need for more testimony. They seem to have given little attention to the question of whether such a victory would actually serve their larger strategic purposes at all. Republicans may have succeeded in blocking all new evidence and driving toward the rapid conclusion they seek, bu the tactical victory may well become a strategic defeat.
If the several days that have passed since the Bolton revelation have proved anything, it is just how uninterested Republicans are in holding Trump to account for his misconduct. Initially, even Trump’s staunchest supporters conceded that pressuring Ukraine to investigate Trump’s rivals would be, if true, unacceptable. (Lindsey Graham: “very disturbing”; Steve Doocy: “off-the-rails-wrong.”) As evidence of guilt accumulated, their denial that this unacceptable conduct took place narrowed to a tiny, highly specific claim: No witness testified that Trump personally ordered them to carry out a quid pro quo. Bolton is the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
It is probably for this reason that Republicans have fallen back to a quasi-legal argument offered by Alan Dershowitz: Even if true, abuse of power is not an impeachable offense. While Dershowitz’s reasoning is ahistorical, legally absurd, and opens the door to aspiring strongmen, it signals the party’s determination to acquit Trump regardless of the facts. Democrats hoped to persuade four Republicans to allow new evidence, and thus to extend the trial for perhaps a few weeks, prove Trump’s culpability even more thoroughly than they have. But this would only proceed to a partisan vote to acquit.
This is about all I’m capable of today. We have a Republic and we may not be able to keep it. It’s truly depressing
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Monday Reads: Bolton into the Blue
Posted: January 27, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, impeach trump, morning reads 27 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
Chinese New Year was on Saturday and nothing starts a new year off right like a twist in the prevailing media narrative! It’s the year of the rat and I’m pretty sure that’s what the mob boss in the oval office will be calling former Ambassador John Bolton in tweet after tweet after tweet as Capos Moscow Mitch and Boom Boom Barr and Senate bag men–like Lady Lindsey– fight to keep Bolton from testifying in the Senate impeachment trials. Trump is already tweeting denials. But, then, maybe we also need to hear from Boom Boom ?
I really love this emphatic lede from AXIOS: “Republicans fear “floodgates” if Bolton testifies”. We’re all waiting for those floodgates to open!
There may be enough new pressure on Senate Republicans to allow witnesses at President Trump’s impeachment trial, after the leak from a forthcoming book by former national security adviser John Bolton that contradicts what the White House has been telling the country.
Why it matters: This is a dramatic, 11th-hour inflection point for the trial, with an eyewitness rebuttal to Trump’s claim that he never tied the hold-up of Ukrainian aid to investigations into Joe Biden.
- GOP sources say the revelation could be enough to sway the four Republican senators needed for witnesses — especially since Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine have already strongly signaled they’d vote for witnesses.
What happened: Bolton alleges in his book — “The Room Where It Happened,” out March 17 — that Trump explicitly told him “he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens,” the N.Y. Times reported.
- Trump strongly denied Bolton’s claims on Twitter early today: “I NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens. … If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book.”
The state of play: Republican sources tell Axios that party leaders and the White House will still try to resist witnesses because, as one top aide put it, “there is a sense in the Senate that if one witness is allowed, the floodgates are open.”
- “If [Bolton] says stuff that implicates, say Mick [Mulvaney] or [Mike] Pompeo, then calls for them will intensify,” the aide said.
What we can expect Trump’s defense lawyers to say as they make their case at the trial, beginning at 1 p.m. today and continuing tomorrow:
- They’ll say Bolton’s account doesn’t change any key facts, and reiterate that the aid, which was only briefly paused, was released without the announcement of any investigations.
- They’ll emphasize that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said there was no pressure, the call record shows no linkage between the two, and Zelensky got his meeting with Trump at the UN.
- They’ll also argue that Trump’s concerns about corruption in Ukraine were well-known: He questioned giving aid to the country for a number of reasons, just as he has done with other countries.
The intrigue: Bolton submitted the book to the White House on Dec. 30 for a standard prepublication security review for classified information.
- The Times notes: “The submission … may have given Mr. Trump’s aides and lawyers direct insight into what Mr. Bolton would say if he were called to testify.”
- “It also intensified concerns among some of his advisers that they needed to block Mr. Bolton from testifying.”
So, there’s the highlights. Here’s some analysis from Aaron Blake at WAPO:. “John Bolton’s bombshell gives the GOP a glimpse of its nightmare scenario”.
The nightmare scenario for the GOP is that they give Trump the quick and witness-free acquittal that he apparently desires, but then information like Bolton’s keeps coming out. Bolton now suggests Trump was indeed telling people privately that the withheld military aid was part of a quid pro quo — a quid pro quo that Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that he communicated to the Ukrainians. This is something Trump’s team has strenuously denied, including at the impeachment trial. What if Bolton isn’t the only person Trump told this to who might suddenly contradict them? However closely this has already been tied to Trump, it can always be tied more closely. Bolton’s upcoming book — slated for March 17 — is a great example of how the hastily assembled walls the Trump team have built around its defense can quickly crumble and, in some cases, already have.
The evidence, after all, is pretty compelling that Trump wasn’t truly concerned about corruption in Ukraine. Giuliani actually said publicly that these investigations weren’t about foreign policy but were instead about helping “my client.” There are also several confirmations that these were quid pro quos — including both military aid and a White House meeting — and that the quid pro quos were communicated to the Ukrainians, even if previous witnesses couldn’t say whether Trump explicitly signed off on them. Indeed, both Bolton and Mulvaney — two very high-ranking White House aides — have now offered confirmation of the quid pro quos, even though Mulvaney recanted his.
Here’s from the NYT Noah Weiland: “5 Takeaways on Trump and Ukraine From John Bolton’s Book. New revelations from the former White House national security adviser could complicate President Trump’s impeachment trial.”
Mr. Bolton wrote that Mr. Pompeo privately acknowledged to him last spring that Mr. Giuliani’s claims about Marie L. Yovanovitch, then the American ambassador to Ukraine, had no basis, including allegations that she was bad-mouthing Mr. Trump. Mr. Pompeo suggested to Mr. Bolton that Mr. Giuliani may have wanted Ms. Yovanovitch out because she might have been targeting his business clients in her anti-corruption efforts. Yet Mr. Pompeo still went through with Mr. Trump’s order to recall Ms. Yovanovitch last May.
Mr. Pompeo lashed out at a National Public Radio host on Friday and Saturday after she asked him in an interview about Ms. Yovanovitch’s removal.
Mr. Bolton also wrote that he had concerns about Mr. Giuliani. He said he warned White House lawyers last year that Mr. Giuliani might have been using his work representing the president as leverage to help his private clients.
Among other names Mr. Bolton referenced in the manuscript: Attorney General William P. Barr. Mr. Bolton wrote that he raised concerns with Mr. Barr about Mr. Giuliani’s influence on the president after Mr. Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president. That call was a critical piece of the whistle-blower complaint that prompted the impeachment inquiry. Mr. Barr on Sunday denied Mr. Bolton’s account through a spokeswoman.
Happy Lunar New Year 2020 ! 🧧🧨🏮🐀 恭喜发财 Gong Xi Fa Cai
Attorney General Bill Barr was cited recently by Rudy Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas as being part of the “team” of people workign to create a conspiracy to help get President Donald Trump reelected.
“Attorney General Barr was basically on the team,” said Parnas in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “Mr. Barr had to know about everything.”
Parnas’ lawyer, Joseph Bondy, has demanded that Barr recuse himself from overseeing the Parnas trial and investigation.
In his recently submitted manuscript, former national security adviser John Bolton revealed that he went to Barr with concerns about Giuliani after the notorious July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Mr. Bolton also said that after the president’s July phone call with the president of Ukraine, he raised with Attorney General William P. Barr his concerns about Mr. Giuliani, who was pursuing a shadow Ukraine policy encouraged by the president, and told Mr. Barr that the president had mentioned him on the call,” the New York Times reported.
According to Barr’s spokesperson, however, Barr didn’t learn about the call from Bolton and didn’t find out about it until mid-August.
Bad news on the Democratic Primary front. Bernie Sanders is surging and David Leonhardt (NYT) argues this: “Iowa Should Never Go First Again. The current system is a form of white privilege that warps the process.”
The strongest part of the case for change, of course, is the racial aspect of the current calendar. Iowa and New Hampshire are among the country’s whitest states. About 6 percent of their combined population is black or Asian-American. Almost 87 percent is non-Hispanic white, compared with 60 percent for the country as a whole. Demographically, Iowa and New Hampshire look roughly like the America of 1870.
Julián Castro, the former presidential candidate, was right when he called out the Democratic Party’s hypocritical support for the status quo. “Iowa and New Hampshire are wonderful states with wonderful people,” Castro said. But Democrats can’t “complain about Republicans suppressing the votes of people of color, and then begin our nominating contest in two states that hardly have people of color.”
The typical defense from Iowa officials is that their state can be trusted because it once voted for a black man (Barack Obama) — which is a pretty stark bit of paternalism.
In truth, the whiteness of Iowa and New Hampshire matters. Consider that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris were doing as well as Amy Klobuchar in early polls of more diverse states; they led Pete Buttigieg in some polls. But Booker and Harris are finished, in no small part because of their struggles in Iowa and New Hampshire. Klobuchar and Buttigieg still might break out.
Or consider that a candidate with strong white support (like Bernie Sanders) could win both Iowa and New Hampshire this year. That result would create a media narrative about Joe Biden’s campaign being badly wounded, even though Biden leads among two large groups of Democratic voters: African Americans and Latinos. Those voters, however, are told to wait their turn.
Politico looks at the potential of record turnout in Iowa.
“The national conversation seems to be moving past Pete, past Elizabeth, to Bernie and Biden. That’s where I think everything’s heading, or returning,” said Doug Herman, who was a lead mail strategist for Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. “It’s kind of a reset back to the beginning of the race.”
But if there is high turnout in Iowa, he said, “It may help the other candidates: It may be what they need to stay viable.”
The Iowa Democratic Party has been preparing for record-breaking turnout for more than a year, driven both by Democrats’ angst about President Donald Trump and by an unusually large field of candidates — many of them with their own significant, independent turnout operations. The state party chairman, Troy Price, said the party is anticipating more caucus-goers than in 2008, which set a record when 239,000 Democratic voters participated, lifting Obama to victory.
“The winner is always who’s bringing a bunch of new [voters], said Sue Dvorsky, a former Iowa Democratic Party chairwoman who backed Sen. Kamala Harris before she dropped out of the race.
The difficulty this year, she said, is that new voters could go to any number of different candidates. “There literally is no historical analogy here,” she said.
Every candidate could see potential advantages in a high-turnout caucus. And the weekend saw each of them working furiously to swell their lanes of support.
These are certainly interesting times we live in. Some times, I wish they weren’t so heart stopping. Maybe it’s just something we can blame on the year of the Rat!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: Things that go Boom!
Posted: January 24, 2020 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Anita Hill serves Joe Biden, Dead Worker's legs hanging over street, Hard Rock Collapse, Houston Exposion, Trump heard firing Marie Yovanovitch 34 Comments
A leveled building and broken windows and doors for half a mile after an explosion at a business in northwest Houston Credit: Michael Stravato for The New York Times
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
These are surely weird times we live in and they can be very frightening. Is it just me or are we getting a big lesson in impermanence?
There was a huge explosion last night in a Houston suburb that has killed two people in the plant experiencing the explosion. Here’s the latest on that from the NYT.
At least two people were killed in a large explosion at an industrial site in Houston on Friday, and the authorities have started a criminal investigation to try to determine whether the cause of the blast was arson, the police chief said.
The blast jolted residents from their beds in the early hours of the morning, blowing out windows and scattering debris across roughly half a mile.
The Houston police chief, Art Acevedo, said it was part of the department’s protocol to investigate a possible criminal cause but added that “we have no reason to believe, we have no evidence at this point, that terrorism is involved.”
He said it was not clear whether the two people killed were employees at the industrial site.
Worker’s dead body exposed after tarp falls from Hard Rock collapse site The City asked residents not to take photos of the remains, which are clearly visible from the street. from WWLTV
Professor Anita Hill reminds us that she never got an apology from Joe Biden for his heinous treatment of her while she testified of her experience of sexual harassment by Uncle Clarence Thomas. She told an Iowa crowd this week that the statue of limitations was up on it. Was that the boom of a mic drop I heard?
Hill, a law professor, accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his 1991 confirmation hearings. Biden, then the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presided over the hearings and has faced persistent criticism since for how he and the all-white, all-male panel treated Hill during her nationally televised testimony.
Her appearance was part of the school’s MLK Human Rights Week program, but also came 11 days before Iowa holds the nation’s first presidential caucuses. Biden is among the frontrunners.
“I know you all are getting ready to caucus,” Hill said as she opened her remarks.
A question submitted later for the Q&A came from someone who said they were considering caucusing for Biden but could not forget his role in the 1991 confirmation hearings. How hard, the questioner wondered, could it be for Biden to simply say he was wrong?
“The statute of limitations for his apology is up,” Hill said to applause. “Here is what I want now … What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do today? Will you promise as leader of this country … would you promise to use all of your energy to address the problem as it happened and to prevent it from happening to another generation? That’s what I want to hear. And I not only want to hear from him, I want to hear from every one of them who want to be the leader of this country.”
Hill made a similar “statute of limitations” comment in late 2018, but in the months between then and Biden’s launch of his 2020 presidential campaign, the former senator and vice president reached out to her directly to express his regrets. Hill said at the time the call became public that she found his words insufficient.
Later, in an appearance on The View, Biden was grilled for his passive statements — “I’m sorry for the way she got treated” — and the story lingered for days. It had faded in the subsequent months as Biden’s campaign accelerated. Last June, Hill told NBC News she was open to voting for Biden.
“I was criticized because I didn’t immediately open my arms and embrace him [and say], ‘OK, I forgive you,’” Hill told her Iowa audience Thursday night. “One of the reasons I didn’t was because I didn’t think it was enough.” The other, she said, was that she didn’t want “every young woman” to “feel like they had to follow” her lead.
We have a weird, macabre twist to the Hard Rock Hotel Collapse story here in New Orleans. This is from Jules Bentley writing for Antigravity Magazine: “BUILT TO KILL,The Hard Rock Collapse is Simply Business as Usual for Louisiana”.
Have you ever encountered a really termite-eaten beam? It looks kind of like wood, but when you touch it, your finger sinks into papery crud; it’s comprised entirely of putrescence. That’s the case for all parties involved in the Hard Rock Hotel; anywhere you poke, you find nothing but rot. Because the Kailas family is one of metro New Orleans’ biggest landowners and developers, almost everyone’s in bed with them, including former Governor Jindal, whose various campaigns they provided with tens of thousands of dollars of donations, monetary and in-kind.
In just one year under Jindal’s tenure (2011-2012), the Kailas-owned Lago Construction firm got more than $1.5 million of taxpayer money through state contracts—contracts which, thanks to the hard work of WWL’s investigative team and David Hammer, we now know were variously improper and fraudulent. On dates they charged taxpayers for long days of public service work, Lago employees were instead laboring on the Kailas family’s multi-million dollar Bayou St. John mansion. You won’t find them there now, alas. In 2016, they sold that property to Metro Disposal CEO Jimmie Woods for ten dollars.
Lago has a history of being cozy with the state. In much the same way Louisiana politicians slide seamlessly between public office and oil-and-gas industry lobbying gigs, a gentleman named Mark Maier was simultaneously the head of a private consultancy firm that partnered with the Kailas family and the head of a Louisiana state government office, the Small Rental Recovery Program, that the Kailas family was defrauding.
Longtime Louisiana journalist Tom Aswell, writing in his “Louisiana Voice” blog, details the case of Tony Pelicano, a Metairie landlord whose building on North Turnbull Street had been damaged by the 2005 failure of the federal levees. In 2009, Pelicano was personally contacted by Maier and invited to become the first test applicant for a “forgivable loan” program for small rental property owners that would pay a contractor up to $75,000 to bring the building back into livability.
Pelicano was not allowed to choose the contractor who did the work, and when he met with Maier in 2012 to complain about problems with the work—construction change orders made behind his back, including substituting cheaper, non-pressure-treated lumber—he says he was threatened that “his bank note would be accelerated” and he’d be sued. After a third-party firm Pelicano hired verified the disastrous quality of the workmanship, Maier’s office contacted Lago, the Kailas company that Maier’s consultancy partnered with, to do its own inspection. Lago then issued a contradictory report dismissing Pelicano and the third-party firm’s findings.
Maier returned the favor a few years later. When Lago Construction was initially accused of stealing money from the Small Rental Property Program, Maier wrote a note absolving them of any wrongdoing, and the state’s investigation was dropped.
Alas for the forces of progress, the feds weren’t convinced by Maier’s note. HUD continued to investigate, and the U.S. Attorney’s office eventually filed charges. When Praveen Kailas admitted to filing fraudulent invoices worth $236,000, the judge agreed to go below the recommended sentencing range since, in her words, Praveen was taking “the fall for family members involved and not charged.” This slightly delayed development of the Hard Rock Hotel, but only slightly. Praveen just handed it off to his dad.
And now for the story connected to picture further up from WWLTV: “Worker’s dead body exposed after tarp falls from Hard Rock collapse site/ The City asked residents not to take photos of the remains, which are clearly visible from the street.” Yes, Mardi Gras Routes–like that of Zulu–are being changed because a dead man’s leg’s are dangling over Canal Street.
A tarp has fallen from the Hard Rock Hotel collapse site, exposing the remains of one of the workers killed in the collapse.
The City of New Orleans says they may not be able to cover the body again any time soon.
“A tarp put in place to conceal the remains of one of the victims of the Hard Rock collapse has been shifted by the wind,” a statement from City Spokesperson LaTonya Norton said. “The condition of the building and the altitude above street level complicate efforts to replace the tarp, as they have prevented recovery thus far.”
Photos of two legs sticking out from the rubble started to circulate on social media Tuesday afternoon. Below them, the red tarp that has covered the remains for months dangles in the wind.
Photos of two legs sticking out from the rubble started to circulate on social media Tuesday afternoon. Below them, the red tarp that has covered the remains for months dangles in the wind.
The implosion of the site is scheduled for some time in late March but guess who is still in charge of the site? Go back up to that AG and read about the wonderful developers again. It’s still in their hands to blow the thing up but the City does have some say also.
At least four council members are now backing council hearings into the collapse.
“I believe it is the role of this legislative body to ensure and demand a proper investigation and seek the truth behind this tragedy,” Councilwoman Helena Moreno said in a press release Thursday afternoon. “While we have been patient as the official investigation is still ongoing, ultimately, those responsible must be held to account — both for the victims and for the city as well so that we see to it that this never happens again.”
Those calls, however, ran into quick opposition from Cantrell and her administration.
“Investigation into this incident will be handled by the appropriate law enforcement authorities within the judicial system,” Cantrell spokesman Beau Tidwell said in a statement. “City legislators have no role in that process.”
That is unlikely to deter the council members, however.
“This is a public safety hazard, this is a matter of commerce, and this is also a matter of closure for the families that still have their loved ones inside that building. And this needs to come to a resolution and this building needs to come down like yesterday,” Councilman Jared Brossett said.
I would also like to remind you that a whistle blowing construction worker was scooped up by ICE and sent out of the country quite quickly.
Delmer Ramirez Palma, a Honduran national, was one of more than a dozen workers who were injured at the construction site on October 12. At least two people were killed.
Two separate letters from a state agency investigating the collapse and Ramirez Palma’s attorney say he was very vocal about alleged faulty work conditions on the Hard Rock site, which they believe are connected to Ramirez Palma’s deportation back to Honduras.
So, speaking of Crooked Real Estate Developers building things that collapse and kill people, the Poseurdent is being put on trial to do for the Obstruction part of the Impeachment articles. If you watch one thing today, make it this from last night:
https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1220570844856029184
Or you can listen to this: “‘Take her out’: Recording appears to capture Trump at private dinner saying he wants Ukraine ambassador fired. Trump apparently heard discussing firing Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.”via ABC News
A recording reviewed by ABC News appears to capture President Donald Trump telling associates he wanted the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch fired while speaking at a small gathering that included Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — two former business associates of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who have since been indicted in New York.
The recording appears to contradict statements by President Trump and support the narrative that has been offered by Parnas during broadcast interviews in recent days. Sources familiar with the recording said the recording was made during an intimate April 30, 2018, dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Trump has said repeatedly he does not know Parnas, a Soviet-born American who has emerged as a wild card in Trump’s impeachment trial, especially in the days since Trump was impeached.
“Get rid of her!” is what the voice that appears to be President Trump’s is heard saying. “Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it.”
So, let’s see what blows up today on us.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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