appal_jack
appal_jack's JournalCertainly not.
Nothing about Trump is clean, and financial matters appear to be among the dirtiest (second perhaps only to his approach to governance).
I just don't happen to think that the next breathless revelation regarding Trump crimes and outrageousness will have a particularly greater impact than all the previous breathless revelations regarding Trump crimes and outrageousness to which we've been an audience since 2015 or longer.
The question is, what are the Democrats in the House going to do about it? Your suggestion above of sitting on our hands until 2020 would just about guarantee that nothing would come of impeachment, while handing the corporate media a convenient narrative that all this is just a nakedly partisan campaign tactic.
We can and must do better, much sooner.
-app
You can't "buy back" what wasn't yours to begin with.
To address violent crime, we need to tackle issues of equality, justice, opportunity, mental and physical health, and education. Will that solve the problem quickly? No, but we have sto start some time, and the work will be worthwhile every step of the way.
Proposals for gun bans, "buy backs" (no such actual thing), and confiscations would either go nowhere while stirring up anti-Dem votes, or worse, with the real possibility of much more violence from people opposing the bans and confiscations.
Too many DU'ers appear to have forgotten the history of Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing under the Clinton years, not to mention the various Bundy/fundy/send snacks militia actions of more recent Obama years. Plans to violate the Second Amendment via bans and confiscations would make those conflicts seem mild, and I want no part of either side of such.
Watching Democrats squander political capital on such a fruitless pursuit is one of the most depressing aspects of political engagement today.
-app
It's because we keep failing to prosecute the "last ones."
GHW Bush should have been prosecuted for Iran Contra.
GW Bush & Cheney should have been prosecuted for lying us into the Iraq War.
We need to begin the prosecution of 45, Pence, Barr, and Mnuchin simultaneously in one big impeachment inquiry into emoluments, nepotism, conspiracy w/ foreign dictators, perjury, obstruction of justice, etc. right now, while Democrats hold the House. "Looking forward" to 2020 while failing to address this very real crisis of the present moment is a recipe for exactly the failure you outline, fescuerescue.
-app
I agree, to a certain point and time.
Drunken Irishman, this is a well-reasoned post, and deserves a healthy k&r which I am glad to give. I agree that even beginning a formal impeachment inquiry immediately would be premature for many of the reasons you outline.
However, I have a different take than what you say here:
That's a tight rope to walk. I believe hearings should continue - as we've seen - but if those subpoenaed to testify continue to refuse to, and the White House stonewalls, and Mueller refuses to say anything beyond what's in his report, the optics aren't going to be there for the Democrats and once you go down the path to impeachment, there's no coming back or you've just handed Trump a monumental victory.
I agree that all the disparate Congressional Committee hearings do indeed need to continue. And I will bet good money that any subpoenaed witness that 45 can reach will be pressured to refuse. Barr will continue to obstruct and hide documents. Each such instance can and should build the case for impeachment, and some time in late June or perhaps July, that case will become overwhelming to even the fence-sitters. Such a time frame will also give Democratic Presidential candidates the chance to articulate the need for impeachment on the debate stage. Given the crimes and evidence we already know, if investigations, documents, and witnesses have not all moved forward in significant ways by late July, Pelosi (or any Speaker worth her salt) ought to be able to convene an impeachment inquiry vote with fewer than ten Democrats dissenting and hopefully three or more Republicans in favor.
I think the alternative of allowing both the past crimes and the ongoing obstruction remaining unaddressed by impeachment through the end of summer or beyond is an absolute dead end for Democrats, and hope that Pelosi can see that.
-app
MT Gov. Steve Bullock on NPR's Here & Now
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/05/24/steve-bullock-2020-electionI was quite impressed with this interview, especially how Bullock spoke up for rural voters, held to his principles, and deftly avoided most of the culture war traps the reporter (Jeremy Hobson) tried to set without sounding wishy-washy. Some highlights:
"Fundamentally — I mean, Roe versus Wade set out the course pretty darn well 45 years ago, and I think that's what we should be following," he says. "As opposed to attacking women's health, we could figure out ways to promote it."
&
"We need to do everything we can to mitigate harmful effects of coal-power emissions as we transition. And that's what we've done in Montana, both doubling wind, quadrupling solar. But it's also critical that we support those hardworking communities at the center of that transition. I mean these are folks who've worked their whole lives to power our country, and now many Democrats and others, they act like they're really part of the problem. ... We have to be able to show working people that Democrats are on their side."
&
"What I would do is actually bring the global community together and say that if it's going to be tech, you can't turn around and say, 'All right, you have to transfer all the tech if it's going to be built in China.' If it's going to be trade, it's actually going to be, 'You have to open up fair trade just as the expectations are that we'd do.' I mean I think that they're playing a long game. The thought that even what the president announced yesterday is, 'We'll give farmers some subsidies for those lost markets.' Don't kid yourself. In Montana and Iowa and everywhere else, that payment isn't going to make up for when countries like Brazil then end up getting some of the market share. It'll impact us for years and years and years to come."
&
"I think the discussion ... what's even more problematic in some ways is, when there was a transition to put Harriet Tubman on, saying, 'OK, we're not even going to have that discussion anymore' — I think that is problematic. And I think what we've seen of the current administration is really trying to divide people, and pour gasoline on the divisions in this country that we already have. That's no way to run a country."
More text & full 11-minute audio at link above. After hearing it, I'd describe Bullock as one to watch, and potentially at least a good possible VP candidate for Warren.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we have an impressive number of excellent people vying for the Democratic nomination in 2020.
-app
Very important.
Klobuchar has decided to occupy the "moderate" niche during this campaign. Thus, it's all the more important that her position on choice be so clear and defensible.
No waffling, no apologies, just a defense of choice as it has stood since 1974: this is a moderate position and articulation that I can embrace.
k&r,
-app
Excellent proposal!
Senator Harris continues to impress me with substantive proposals that most often would bend the arc of this country's future toward justice. This is definitely one of them that every Democratic candidate should embrace.
k&r,
-app
Thanks for the link.
I am on DU very frequently, but not constantly. I missed this one.
I still think that people denying that it was a picket line are off-base. In this day and age, actual strikes are very punishing to workers. I support union actions above and beyond strikes, and I think that every Democrat should.
Work-to-rule, workplace slowdowns, public protests, off-site picket lines: these are the least of what will be necessary to regain workplace protections and fair wages.
-app
Joe Biden crosses a picket line to fundraise w/ healthcare exec?!?
With Protest Outside Big-Dollar Fundraiser, Healthcare Union Members Call on Biden to Back Their Fight Against KaiserbyJake Johnson, staff writer
Source:https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/05/08/protest-outside-big-dollar-fundraiser-healthcare-union-members-call-biden-back-their
Note: Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License, so reproduced in full from link above. Emphases added.
"Joe Biden's statements about mental health will ring hollow if he can't make them directly to giant HMOs like Kaiser."
Healthcare workers protest as former Vice President Joe Biden attends a fundraiser at the Los Angeles home of Kaiser Foundation board member Cynthia Telles.
Workers with a California healthcare union gathered Wednesday to voice their disapproval as 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden attended a big-dollar fundraiser at the Los Angeles home of a Kaiser Foundation board member.
As HuffPost reported, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) "is locked in a bitter, yearslong fight with Kaiser over mental health staffing levels in the healthcare provider's California facilities."
Union representatives called on Biden—who is presenting himself on the campaign trail as a "union man"—to cancel the event, which was hosted by Kaiser Foundation board member Dr. Cynthia Telles. The Kaiser Foundation is a subsidiary of the healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente.
NUHW president Sal Rosselli said he never heard back from Biden's team.
"Kaiser, Kaiser, you can't hide, we can see your greedy side!" union members chanted outside of Telles's home.
According to an invitation seen by HuffPost, average contributions at the event ranged from $250 per person to $2,800—the maximum for individual donations in a presidential primary.
"The executive board members, the president of Kaiser Permanente—these executives are writing big checks to the vice president," Rosselli told ABC News ahead of Wednesday's event. "We'd ask him to use his influence with them to fix their mental healthcare system, to work with their clinicians to do it, to urge Cynthia Telles to meet with the psychologists—her fellow psychologists—to learn the inadequacies of the current system."
John Nelson, vice president of communications at Kaiser Permanente, attacked the union's demonstration in a statement shortly after the fundraiser began.
"This is a publicity stunt by union leadership disguised as a bargaining tactic aimed at disrupting a board member's event," Nelson said.
NUHW vice president Elizabeth White responded on Twitter, "This is no stunt!"
According to HuffPost, NUHW "has long alleged that Kaiser understaffs its mental health clinics, leading to long waits for vulnerable patients. The union has demanded that Kaiser hire more therapists and put pay and benefits on par with other employees in medical care."
On Twitter, NUHW said Biden's past "statements about mental health will ring hollow if he can't make them directly to giant HMOs like [Kaiser]."
This is unacceptable from any Democratic candidate.
-app
The hype is so overblown.
The environment is changing: temperature and rainfall disruptions, elevated CO2, soil loss, etc. Unsurprisingly, certain "invasive" plants are taking advantage of it.
Knotweed can be controlled organically by grazing and mowing. We can also accept it in certain areas. I have some just down the road. I will use the string trimmer and mower to keep it away from my foundation. I hope to get a few sheep for the pastures eventually. Where it's too wet for sheep, the knotweed will be part of the ever-evolving ecosystem. Maybe I'll get some bees some day, and they will work the summer flowers.
-app
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