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May 28, 2019 06:56 AM UTC

Tuesday Open Thread

  • 56 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.”

–Confucius

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56 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

    1. Morning.

      I wanted to take a moment to note here that I have been waiting for a couple of days, and still no response from Powerful Pear (or any MAGAt, for that matter) to tell me how far are you willing to support your glorious leader in his quest to be Americas' first emperor.

      Is there a T***pian who will state , with a straight face, their leader is NOT intent on becoming the sole power in this country. And if, as I believe, he will not accept even a sound thrashing at the polls, will MAGAts take up arms against their friends and neighbors to defend his throne. Will you, Pear, kill for the America your hero and his political party are intent on creating?

      How far, Pear? How much destruction are you willing to support or participate in to elevate your king?

        1. All of them. Those guys take their oaths seriously.

          We can hope that a stray clot from one too many buckets of KFC will do the trick. I hear propecia – induced dementia can be fatal, too. No, I don't want a President Pence, but he can hardly be worse for the country than the Mad King.

          Meanwhile, keep protecting voters, keep promoting the best possible Democratic candidates at every level, and yes, start impeachment inquiries.

          Wrap up all of these miscellaneous investigations under one umbrella, call it an impeachment investigation. That's what smart people like Harvard professor Laurence Tribe, ("Americans could lose their souls and their constitutional democracy") and 962 former Federal prosecutors advise.

          We are former federal prosecutors. We served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country.

          Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.

          So no, wishful thinking aside, we have to do the work, through our duly elected representatives. A stray clot or stray bullet won't do the job for us.

          Here’s Randy Rainbow with some constructive suggestions:

          1. Yeah, I have a cousin who has worked her entire career, since college, for the Secret Service. So, wishful thinking on my part.

    1. I'm on that distribution list.  In case you missed this: 

      Mitch McConnell, the man who broke America

      “No majority leader wants written on his tombstone that he presided over the end of the Senate,” the minority leader said. 

      He continued: “Breaking the rules to change the rules is un-American. I just hope the majority leader thinks about his legacy, the future of his party, and, most importantly, the future of our country before he acts.” 

      Are these the words of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as the Republican majority changed Senate rules this week to do away with filibusters of Supreme Court nominations? 

      Actually, they were uttered in 2013, by then-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), when Democrats pushed through a similar filibuster change for lesser nominations.

    2. I know you'll be shocked, C.H.B. (he made the good white folk in Paducah, KY very, very happy).  

      In reversal from 2016, McConnell says he would fill a potential Supreme Court vacancy in 2020

      Speaking at a Paducah Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Kentucky, McConnell was asked by an attendee, "Should a Supreme Court justice die next year, what will your position be on filling that spot?"

      The leader took a long sip of what appeared to be iced tea before announcing with a smile, "Oh, we'd fill it," triggering loud laughter from the audience.

      At the lunch, he said overhauling the judiciary is the best way to have a "long-lasting positive impact" because "everything else changes."

      "What can't be undone is a life time appointment to a young man or woman who believes in the quaint notion that the job of the judge is to follow the law," he said. "That's the most important thing we've done in the country, which cannot be undone."

       

  3. Democratic donnybrook could jeopardize must-win Senate seat

    Democrats are struggling to nail down A-list recruits in Senate races across the country. But here in Colorado, they have the opposite problem: A field of candidates so big that the primary is turning into a total free-for-all.

    In a spectacle that resembles Wal-Mart on Black Friday — or, for that matter, the Democratic presidential primary — nearly a dozen candidates are stampeding to take on Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), probably the most vulnerable Republican incumbent on the ballot next year. Other Democrats are weighing jumping in. And there’s neither a clear front-runner nor consensus among party leaders on the best standard-bearer in the must-win race.

    1. As the article noted, the primary is a year away.  Plenty of time for several campaigns to wither on the vine for lack of interest and funding.  Also, as noted, Hick's presidential campaign will likely be over in plenty of time to allow him to reconsider his future options, and if desired, would empty the pool by cannonballing into the Senate race.

      But, my bet is by the time the primary rolls around next year, the field will have effectively dropped to at most 3 or 4 viable candidates.

      1. What Davey said.  Hick would be perfect.  Romanoff or Madden can win if we get behind them.  And though she's a long shot, I'm getting a bit fond of Trish Zornio.  You never know when the voters will decide to settle this thing by reverse alphabetical order.😃

          1. All aboard team Romanoff! Hick doesn't want the job, as he hasn't worked at a lower than CEO level since the first Bush administration. Johston has a pretty face and cash, but I think he has squandered his once-great potential by over-reaching. 

            1. The rap I keep hearing on Johnston is his cozy relationship with big money interests. I don't know him as I do Andrew.

              The only person I immediately can think of who might make a better senator than Andrew Romanoff is a guy I know named Bowman, who is a hemp grower, among other things.

              2. Duke – you'd enjoy visiting one of our hemp projects that involves an Alabama, African-American farmer who nearly died on Bloody Sunday and farms in the Selma area (the klan is alive and well, still, in Dallas County) – and a godson of Congressman John Lewis.  This may well turn into one of the best hemp stories of 2019. Their challenges seem almost insurmountable, by design.  Decades of lender abuse, oppression and racism have taken a toll – but it hasn't completely extinguished the optimism of a handful of black farmers left in the Black Belt.  Stay tuned.  

            2. In Johnston's case, he finishes a poor third in the gov. Primary, so immediately files for the next available.opening.   It doesn't inspire me.

              Madden is a brilliant lady, if she only fires the idiot flack who keeps writing she was the first Democratic House majority leader in 60 years.  Not even close.  Bob Kirscht was elected majority leader in 1975. a pueblo Democrat.  So it was 30 years, not 60, when ds retook the house.

              Andrew was very fair and moderate as a speaker.   Both andrew and madden are coming off a loss but either could beat Gardner.

              Hick is an executive, not a legislative, type. He'd hate the Senate.  But he could win that race in his sleep.   I still hope he goes for it.

    2. This is all Hickenlooper's fault! He wants to indulge his presidential fantasy and the rest of us run the risk of paying for it. 

      If Hick finishes somewhere down between Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard in Iowa, and drops out the following day, does he still have time to declare for the US Senate?

  4. "Let he who hasn't raw-dogged a porn star while third baby mama nurses his fifth child cast the first stone"

    Franklin Graham announces 'special day of prayer' against enemies of President Trump

    "We believe our nation is at a crossroads, at a dangerous precipice. The only one who can fix our country’s white man's problems is God Himself #ProsperityJesus, and we pray that God will bless make rich once again our president #Brokehantas and our nation MAGAts for His their glory."

      1. On a not entirely unrelated note, I started watching Handmaid's Tale this weekend. It look like Mike Pence's wet dream come true.

        1. Which is why I hope Yammie-pie gets through his term whole-skinned and as healthy as possible. He may have to be dragged out kicking and screaming, and he's a hot mess as POTUS, but Pence is not. He would be frighteningly competent and would cheerfully usher in Gilead. I haven't watched the program, but I read the book while on a business trip with my wife and it was one of the scariest things I've ever read. Margaret Atwood makes Stephen King look like a piker. You know his stuff is pure fantasy.

        1. Isn't Willie one of the younger and relatively more moderate duckers? Isn't Uncle Phil the unadulterated religious nut in that family?

          1. Willie has found a lucrative schtick – pretending to be a backwoods redneck, instead of a millionaire business man and professional actor.

            Here's what he looked like in college:

      1. Oh, there is blame enough to go around, MJ.  Without the tireless efforts of the Bernie Bros and Jilliots, Trump would still be a third rate TV host and couldn't make any appointments.  Math is math, oh defender of the flame.

        1. In the last month or so, Neil Gorsuch voted again with the liberals, this time to support Native American treaty hunting rights, I believe, in Wyoming. Their rights are based on an 1868 treaty. The decision in support of the tribes was 5-4.

          1. Gorsuch apparently has a tense relationship with Roberts. They both think they are the smartest guy on the bench and like to demonstrate for the others.

        1. More or less a win for trans kids.  Existing policy lets them use self-idenity, not biology, in choosing bathrooms.  Existing policy stands.

          A key reason SCOTUS passed is that there was no disagreement at appeals court level.

          It's less of a win than if the Supremes had heard case and upheld policy.  But, of course, no risk of losing the case.

          A key is that self-identification isn't a casual thing.  A team of trained experts weeds out phonies, if phonies there be .

          1. See how much sense you can make when you stick to things you have actual knowledge about? As opposed to reading my intent or deliberately misquoting the posts of  myself (or others).

            This one time that you jumped in to my conversation with another Polster and replied for him/her, is OK, since you stuck to facts without your personal anti-trans spin.

            Keep doing that.

            1. While I know that everything is about you, MJ, I don't need your permission to reply to a public posting on a public blog.  Nor am I anti-trans, unless you mean Chelsea nee Bradley Manning.  In that case, I'm just anti-traitor.

              God, you have an ego!

        2. Unless there's a Circuit split in the future that requires SCOTUS to step in again, for now, schools will be free to allow kids to go (and dress) where they feel safest and most at ease.

  7. Somber rumination on the infantilization of our politicians (and politics) from Paul Krugman today (from his email newsletter so I don't think it is paywalled):

    The ascendancy of the toddler-in-chief didn’t come out of nowhere. Way back in 2006 I wrote about the Bush administration’s “mensch gap,” its officials’ inability to accept responsibility for the botched occupation of Iraq, the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, and so on. Readers of a certain age may go back even further, and remember how shocking it seemed at the time when a self-centered blowhard like Newt Gingrich became speaker of the House. But with Trump the demenschification of American leadership has reached its apotheosis.

    In case you hadn’t realized this already, one thing made very clear by the events surrounding last week’s Trump infrastructure tantrum was that Nancy Pelosi is every bit the mensch Trump isn’t: self-possessed, disciplined, someone who is trying to do her job rather than gratify her ego. The whole disgusting tale of the doctored video purporting to show Pelosi drunk was in a way a tribute to her virtues; even to pretend to bring her down to Trump’s level the right had to engage in outright fraud.

     

  8. Today, the Supreme Court denied cert (declined to hear) on part of an appeal of an Indiana abortion law that had been overturned by the 7th Circuit.  That law purported to prevent abortion based on a knowing choice to abort a fetus based on its sex, race, or the presence of a disability.  That decision wasn't made on the basis of the content of the law (i.e. they didn't decide the restriction was counter to "settled law" in Roe v. Wade) but that there was no circuit split (more than one circuit court of appeals ruling on the same matter but with different answers).  Cold comfort indeed.

    But, even more chilling, was the foreshadowing in Clarence Thomas' concurrence (an opinion saying I agree with the outcome, but here's how I would have gotten there).  He calls out, for a number of pages, what he describes as the roots of birth control in eugenics, giving undue weight and inaccurate character to the eugenicist views of Margaret Sanger, the woman who could be considered the founder of modern-day Planned Parenthood.  While some of Sanger's views are problematic, they are not the foundation of our modern-day views on birth control and women's right to make use of it.  His statements do, however, portend the coming assault on Griswold v. Connecticut, the case which established the right to contraception.

    1. Assault against Griswold v. Connecticut…….again adding what I posted before, from somebody on Yahoo! News.

      Visit: the pill kills dot org. Doesn't seem to be an overly active web site right now. But it does give a chilling insight into the plans for the country from the far right wing Christian dominionists. 

    2. That is the prize the RWNJ have been after all along….Roe is the "out front"case, but they are going after the underpinnings of abortion rights, gay marriage, right to private consensual relations between adults of the same gender…and that is Griswold.

      1. Hell, not just regulating private consensual relations between adults of the same gender but private consensual relations between any adults. Everyone knows their ultimate goal is man on woman in missionary position only with sole purpose being for procreation. Anything else is an abomination. 

            2. In 1988 I was denied a rental in Asheville NC because my housemate and I weren't married. I imagine that happens yet today in those parts.

  9. James Comey: No ‘treason.’ No coup. Just lies — and dumb lies at that.

    Russia engaged in a massive effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Near as I can tell, there is only one U.S. leader who still denies that fact. The FBI saw the attack starting in mid-June 2016, with the first dumping of stolen emails. In late July, when we were hard at work trying to understand the scope of the effort, we learned that one of Trump’s foreign policy advisers knew about the Russian effort seven weeks before we did.

    1. If you ask me, he's got a lotta damn gall. I still say he sandbagged 2016 with that stuff about the investigation of Sec. Clinton.

      1. Perhaps, Cook, but remember what a pundit said: "I was told that if I voted for Hilary, there would be continuous investigations. Well, I voted for her and there have been continuous investigations ever since."

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