January 15, 2019

Kennedy just asked Barr if being a Catholic prohibited him from being a Gov Employee

lordy, these Rs are something else...just pissing his 4 mins away with nutso stuff....

January 15, 2019

Sasse: Is Russia friend or foe? Barr: Gee, I think China is way worse....

this guy is hideous...I cannot watch anymore.. he is getting worse by the minute...

January 15, 2019

Klobucher: Will you jail journalists for doing their job?

straight up question, right? NO straight up answer...he does not know how to answer this.....THIS GUY IS DARN SCARY....

January 15, 2019

BAM! Whitehouse.."as a condition of accepting this job, did you say Rosenstein has to go?

our DEMs are magnificent...they are taking none of his mealy mouth crap..

January 15, 2019

Who the Fuck is this guy? Barr: "I don't know what the emoluments clause IS"

Dianne just asked about emoluments ...he said "I don't know what the emoluments clause IS"....he is stammering all over the place....and plain dumb.

January 15, 2019

Lindsey already playing to his Daddy...Struck and Page....and Orr

not even one hour in, and he is reading their tweets...Clinton, Steele Dossier....Daddy must have given him his talking points last nite.

January 15, 2019

Hearing commencing and Feinstein welcomes all including the 2 new shitty Republican women

Jebus, Earnst and Blackburn on committee...

January 15, 2019

Democratic 2020 hopefuls pay lip service to the left. Don't be fooled..$$$$$$$

Democratic 2020 hopefuls pay lip service to the left. Don't be fooled
Bhaskar Sunkara THE GUARDIAN FULL ARTICLE

Likely candidates are begging for Wall Street’s support – and reminding us who really owns American democracy

Tue 15 Jan 2019 06.00 EST Last modified on Tue 15 Jan 2019 06.02 EST

Cory Booker and Kamala Harris are among those who have been making a very different pitch of late – on Wall Street. Photograph: Pool/Getty Images

It’s a framing that’s been everywhere over the past two years: the Resistance v Donald Trump. By some definitions that “resistance” even includes people like Mitt Romney and George W Bush. By almost all definitions it encompasses mainstream Democrats, such as the likely presidential hopefuls Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand.

In their rhetoric and policy advocacy, this trio has been steadily moving to the left to keep pace with a leftward-moving Democratic party. Booker, Harris, and Gillibrand know that voters demand action and are more supportive than ever of Medicare for All and universal child care.
Gillibrand, long considered a moderate, has even gone as far as to endorse abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and, along with Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders’ single-payer healthcare bill. Harris has also backed universal healthcare and free college tuition for most Americans.

But outward appearances aren’t everything. Booker, Harris, and Gillibrand have been making a very different pitch of late – on Wall Street. According to CNBC, all three potential candidates have met with financial executives lately, including Blackstone’s Jonathan Gray, Robert Wolf from 32 Advisors and the Centerbridge Partners founder Mark Gallogly.

Wall Street, after all, played an important role getting the senators where they are today. During his 2014 senate run, in which just 7% of his contributions came from small donors, Booker raised $2.2m from the securities and investment industry. Harris and Gillibrand weren’t far behind in 2018, and even the progressive Democrat Sherrod Brown has solicited donations from Gallogly and other powerful executives.

When CNBC’s story about Gillibrand’s courting of Wall Street came out, her team responded defensively, noting her support for financial regulation and promising that if she did run she would take “no corporate Pac money”. But what’s most telling isn’t that Gillibrand and others want Wall Street’s money, it’s that they want the blessings of financial CEOs. Even if she doesn’t take their contributions, she’s signaling that she’s just playing politics with populist rhetoric. That will allow capitalists to focus their attention on candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who have shown a real willingness to abandon the traditional coziness of the Democratic party with the finance, insurance and real estate industries.


Gillibrand and others are behaving perfectly rationally. The last presidential election cost $6.6bn – advertising, staff, and conventions are expensive. But even more important than that, they know that while leftwing stances might help win Democratic primaries, the path of least resistance in the general election is capitulation to the big forces of capital that run this country. Those elites might allow some progressive tinkering on the margins, but nothing that challenges the inequities that keep them wealthy and their victims weak.

Big business is likely to bet heavily on the Democratic party in 2020, maybe even more so than it did in 2016. In normal circumstances, the Democratic party is the second-favorite party of capital; with an erratic Trump around, it is often the first.

The American ruling class has a nice hustle going with elections. We don’t have a labor-backed social-democratic party that could create barriers to avoid capture by monied interests. It’s telling that when asked about the former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper’s recent chats with Wall Street political financiers, a staff member told CNBC: “We meet with a wide range of donors with shared values across sectors.”

Plenty of Democratic leaders believe in the neoliberal growth model. Many have gotten personally wealthy off of it. Others think there is no alternative to allying with finance and then trying to create progressive social policy on the margins. But with sentiments like that, it doesn’t take fake news to convince working-class Americans that Democrats don’t really have their interests at heart.

Of course, the Democratic party isn’t a monolith. But the insurgency waged by newly elected representatives such as the democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ro Khanna, and others is still in its infancy. At this stage, it isn’t going to scare capital away from the Democratic party, it’s going to make Wall Street invest more heavily to maintain its stake in it.

Men like Mark Gallogly know who their real enemy is: more than anyone else, the establishment is wary of Bernie Sanders. It seems likely that he will run for president, but he’s been dismissed as a 2020 frontrunner despite his high favorability rates, name recognition, small-donor fundraising ability, appeal to independent voters, and his team’s experience running a competitive national campaign. As 2019 goes on, that dismissal will morph into all-out war.

Wall Street isn’t afraid of corporate Democrats gaining power. It’s afraid of the Democrats who will take them on – and those, unfortunately, are few and far between.

January 15, 2019

I was wondering HOW McConnell got to be him....what kind of challengers did his magnificent charisma

So, this morning I was wondering HOW McConnell got to be him....what kind of challengers did his magnificent charisma defeat, etc....didn't find much....sorry...

Early Years and Education

Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. was born on February 20, 1942, in Sheffield, Alabama. After contracting polio at age 2, he recovered through his mother's vigorous therapy sessions, even developing into a talented baseball player.

A new job for Addison Sr. brought the family to Louisville, Kentucky, where McConnell became student body president at duPont Manual High School. He held the same role at the University of Louisville, before graduating with honors in 1964 with a B.A. in history, and earning his J.D. in 1967 from the University of Kentucky College of Law.
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Early Political Career

Setting his sights on a career in politics, McConnell interned for Kentucky Congressman Gene Snyder and Senator John Sherman Cooper in the mid-1960s. He served as chief legislative assistant for Senator Marlow Cook after law school, and later became a deputy assistant attorney general to President Gerald Ford.

In 1977, McConnell earned his first elected seat as judge-executive of Kentucky's Jefferson County. A moderate Republican early in his career, he supported collective bargaining rights for public employees and steered federal funds toward the expansion of Jefferson Memorial Forest.

In 1984, McConnell edged out Walter D. Huddleston for a seat in the Senate, making him the only Republican in the country to defeat an incumbent Democratic senator that year, as well as the first of his party to win a statewide race since 1968.
U.S. Senator

During his first term in the Senate, McConnell earned a spot on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and advocated for tax reform. Gaining traction after his reelection in 1990, he became known for his opposition to campaign-finance reform, and successfully spearheaded an effort to block legislation on that front in 1994.

Named chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 1996, McConnell continued to buck the tide at opportune moments. He sued the Federal Election Commission following the passage of the bipartisan McCain-Feingold Act in 2002, and in 2006 he opposed a constitutional amendment to ban the desecration of the American flag.

By then, the junior Kentucky senator had earned renown for his political cunning and ability to forge coalitions. He was voted party whip in 2002, and four years later he took over as Senate minority leader.
Republican Leader

As the Senate's top Republican, McConnell rejected the Democratic push for establishing a timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq. In late 2008, he threw his support behind the Troubled Asset Relief Program, signed into law by outgoing President George W. Bush.

With the 2008 election of President Barack Obama giving Democrats control of the White House and both branches of Congress, McConnell focused on obstructing the new commander-in-chief whenever possible. Most notably, he opposed the passage of the economic stimulus package, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and the health insurance reform package, the Affordable Care Act (also known as "Obamacare&quot in 2010. Additionally, he has stood against the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, delayed approval of Obama's judicial nominees, and a host of other legislation put forth during the Obama administration. Making his party's strategy explicit in a 2010 interview with the National Journal, he stated: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

While McConnell didn't achieve that goal, he saw gains with the Republican takeover of the House in 2010.