Teresa Hanafin writes the daily Fast Forward for the Boston Globe.
Here are two stellar items from today’s bulletin:
So Trump is manipulating his gullible supporters again (I could start an item with those words every day), trying to convince them that replacing decrepit barriers on the southern border — a regular maintenance item that every recent administration has done — is the same as building new, i.e. additional, wall as he promised during his 2016 campaign. Let’s be clear: Trump has replaced about 50 miles of existing barriers and added zero miles of new wall.
He’s also still obsessively continuing his attacks on four congresswomen of color who disagree with his policies. Good God, man, give it a rest. Maybe try governing for a change….
Back to Boris: Johnson is a former London mayor who ginned up the masses to vote in favor of Brexit, and now he wants to pull Great Britain out of the European Union with no guardrails in place to ease the transition. Members of the Cabinet have already started resigning in disagreement with his policies.
Johnson was born in New York and had a privileged upbringing in England that led him to believe he could get away with pretty much anything. He worked as a journalist for a time, but kept getting fired for making things up. He’s had extramarital affairs. His eight years as London mayor were marked by chaos and Johnson’s indifference to governing; he appointed a deputy who did all the work. He’s most interested in cultivating adoring followers, although he doesn’t think much of them: “The terrible art of the candidate is to coddle the self-deception of the stooge,” he once wrote. Hmm. Here’s a good profile in The New Yorker.
How did such a character became head of the country? Um, Americans really have no business asking that question.
Trump likes him, but Johnson wasn’t always a fan. When Trump claimed during his campaign that there were roving bands of Muslim radicals that were making parts of London so dangerous that people couldn’t go there, Johnson ridiculed him: “When Donald Trump says that there are parts of London that are ‘no-go’ areas, I think he’s betraying a quite stupifying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president of the United States.” But Johnson now has embraced Trump. Sound familiar, Lindsey Graham?
Andy Borowitz posts a daily joke for The New Yorker online. Today, he posted that Queen Elizabeth had decided to move to Canada. Her corgis are already in Toronto.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Have you watched Rancy Rainbow’s latest parody called “SUCKERS” that is about Trump’s supporters? If not, you are in for another treat from RR.
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If Trump is elected it will be proof that we are dumber.
……………………
Satire from The Borowitz Report
British Lose Right to Claim That Americans Are Dumber
By Andy BorowitzJune 24, 2016
LONDON
Report)—Across the United Kingdom on Friday, Britons mourned their long-cherished right to claim that Americans were significantly dumber than they are.
Luxuriating in the superiority of their intellect over Americans’ has long been a favorite pastime in Britain, surpassing in popularity such games as cricket, darts, and snooker.
But, according to Alistair Dorrinson, a pub owner in North London, British voters have done irreparable damage to the “most enjoyable sport this nation has ever known: namely, treating Americans like idiots.”
“When our countrymen cast their votes yesterday, they didn’t realize they were destroying the most precious leisure activity this nation has ever known,” he said. “Wankers.”
In the face of this startling display of national idiocy, Dorrinson still mustered some of the resilience for which the British people are known. “This is a dark day,” he said. “But I hold out hope that, come November, Americans could become dumber than us once more.”
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LMAO!!! But they will still be able to make fun of us. Johnson is fluent in French and Italian and reads and writes Latin and classical Greek. He’s not entirely an imbecile; he just plays one on TV for the benefit of “stooges”–the objects, as he describes them, of a politician’s theatricals. Trump, on the other hand, would be hard pressed to read the directions on a can of orange tan-in-a-can. Fortunately for our Dapper Don, our Child-Man in the Promised Land, he has people who do that for him.
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Don-the-Con does have a daughter and others to read the directions for him but then he doesn’t do what they tell him he should do.
No matter how hard his underlings and the one daughter he’d like to seduce try to teach him what the directions say, Don-the-Con doesn’t have an attention span long enough to learn anything and he goes off like a sniper rifle with a sensitive, hair-trigger all the time without even using the scope to aim and hit the target.
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Sounds like the UK now has a Donald Trump clone called Boris Johnson, but the UK’s government is a parliamentary system and Prime Ministers (the equal to a U.S. President) can come and go at a moment’s notice. One day they are in power. The next day they are being swept out with the garbage.
Considering how popular Donald Trump is in the UK, how long will Boris survive as the UK’s Prime Minister if he is a Donald Trump Clone?
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Johnson is the Brit’s answer to Donald Trump, a buffoon that cannot possibly win, or can he? Like Trump he does not see the bigger picture. He prefers to disrupt and feed his narcissism.
Most TV shows are not worth the time it takes to watch them. A “must see” show is a British production called “Years and Years.” Britain is facing many of the same problems we are. This production is the single most disturbing, but engaging show you will see this year. It stars Emma Thompson as a bizarre, charismatic politician that does not have much of a platform, but she shocks and provokes. Sound familiar?
This dystopian story gives us look into the future we may face if we fail to heed the warnings of climate change and other societal ills. It has much to say about identity politics, demagoguery, migration, family, relationships, technology and the rise of corporate control of just about everything. If you have HBO, you should be able to get it on demand. Don’t miss it.
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We have become Ameri-DUH, a country that smashes a burger, onion rings, french fries, cheese, lettuce, mayo, bacon, and who knows what else together between a bun and call this creative. Bet the food used is low quality and either decaying fast or on the verge of decay.
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Pie had a great take on this a couple of weeks ago:
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No one does this like the Brits! It must be that while they are exercising all that famous British reserve, it builds and builds until–this. LMAO!
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Britain has been prey to the same anti-knowledge education professors that have damaged the minds of the populace here in the US. Boris/Trump is what we get when democracies’ schools fall prey to bad ideas and fail to properly inform the judgment of their citizens, which Jefferson and Madison believed was critical.
This is a very intelligent, deep conversation between Daisy Christodoulou, a brilliant, anti-Dewey, pro-knowledge critic of the UK education system, and Doug Lemov, who shows himself here to be a diligent, thoughtful reader and empirically-minded truth-seeker: https://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/minutes-daisy-christodoulou/
Reading Christodoulou changed Lemov’s mind.
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One thing I loved in this, Ponderosa, was the notion of giving kids, early on, a “little history of the world”–an overview, however comic book-like. It’s of enormous value, I think, to have a timeline in one’s head–something to hang other knowledge on–to give it structure. I’ve seen this done in Core Knowledge elementary schools–projects to create timelines with characters on them. In my school, each year, the faculty votes on a theme for the following year. These are usually completely stupid–one year the theme was baseball, and all classrooms were required to have baseball-related decorations (“Knock those test scores out of the park!!!” Aie, yie yie). I tried to get my colleagues interested in choosing the theme World History and decorating each hallway with a timeline showing the major events and discoveries, etc., of a particular era, to get that into kids’ heads. Alas, no go. I forget what they chose instead–race to the top or some such stupid crap as that.
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“all classrooms were required to have baseball-related decorations”
While the Spanish speaking world has produced many great ball players and I could have worked with it, except for the fact that I already had my realia in place, I probably would have brought in a softball and a baseball and put them on my desk. And then when the adminimal would have evaluated me and downgraded said evaluation because I didn’t have any baseball related decorations, I would have walked him/her into the room and showed him/her the balls and kindly requested that they delete the mis-evaluation. (I actually had something similar happen one year with “displaying student work”)
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I did a massive poster annotating the literary devices used in Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat.” But I wasn’t happy about this use of my valuable time or about the stupidity of the theme, generally. I’m a huge fan of playing sports, but sport team enthusiasm generally just seems, to me, like training in/reinforcement of dangerous tribalism. Some rich man (it’s usually a man) rents a bunch of freak-of-nature bodies from around the world and calls these the hometown team, and then people get together to watch that team perform and to shout “kill ’em!” No thank you.
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“The Nietzscheans are now taking the field. They aren’t looking too good since the loss of their star player, Derrida–especially with the depth of pitching we’re seeing from the Kantians–I mean, Rawls and Nagel?–com’on, these guys are formidable.” See the difference? This isn’t an arbitrary group brought together by some rich guy’s money. Kurt Vonnegut’s wonderful term for poking fun at such arbitrary collections of people was, of course, the granfalloon–the operative term being “loon.”
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I hope you’ve seen this very famous match:
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OK. I’ll trade you one, Duane. One of my all-time favorites (you may already know this): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M-cmNdiFuI
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Made me chuckle!
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Glad you read the dialogue, Bob. So many sharp insights there, don’t you think? So much fresh thinking.
I loved her account of her early years teaching –how she tried to use “best practices” but they never seemed to work. This is my experience too.
She wanted to teach HS but realized that kids couldn’t perform because their elementary education had been deficient, so she started focusing on the younger ages. That’s my story too.
She recommends reading Isabel Beck for ideas on how to efficiently transmit vocabulary (which is knowledge). I plan to do this.
The discussion of Dewey was electrifying. The brilliant Hofstadter basically declares Dewey incoherent. Stop blaming his followers; his own ideas were flawed. Time to knock this guy off his pedestal in the US.
I love her take-down of conventional approaches to reading instruction and writing instruction. We fail to break down the tasks into simple pieces and drill them to automaticity. That’s why kids, despite copious practice at reading and writing, fail to get better. We’re giving them the wrong type of practice.
In defiance of “best practices” (ha), one of my main aims as a history teacher is to install a schematic timeline of history in my students’ long-term memory. There is a huge colorful timeline along the length of my classroom. I make them memorize a handful of dates –e.g. 1492 –I should probably do more. As Daisy says, knowing the approximate location of events on a timeline enables one to see causation. And, as Mark Twain once wrote in favor of memorizing dates, it prevents historical knowledge from piling up in a disorganized heap. The new CA history framework militates against transmitting facts and teaching chronology. It’s all about “inquiry”, just like in Daisy’s Britain where the government inspectors, Ofsted, expect to see “discovery” (same thing). “Best practices” are malpractice, “malpractice” is best practice in our benighted EdWorld (though I am hearted that the influential Doug Lemov has become a Daisy/Hirsch true believer. I fear it will be a thousand years before the NEA or Teachers College sees the light.)
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Trumpeteering as Volkish Mythology
Much has been made in the press of the indifference of Trumpeteers to truth (no, he hasn’t built any new border wall, and Mexico hasn’t paid for it) and of their unwillingness to apply to Trump their own absolutist moral dicta (evangelical/family values types seem utterly undisturbed by Trump’s separating small children from their families, engaging in predatory sexual behavior, and paying porn stars for sex). Because of their imperviousness to actual events—one cannot imagine a situation in which the Trumpeteer will alter his or her opinion of the Leader—Trumplings are commonly described, these days, by various pundits, as members of a cult, and that’s scary, of course, because we know where cults end up. If unsuccessful, they end up as marginalized groups that commit atrocities (see, for example, The People’s Temple, the Branch Davidians, Heaven’s Gate, Aum Shinrikyo, and Nxivm). If successful, they murder their way across the globe.
Like these other movements, Totalitrumpitarianism is fundamentally irrational because its appeal is not to facts or norms but to a transcendent mythos. And where does that come from?
Well, the need to belong—to be part of a community, to be one of the cool kids—is fundamental. We fall into life in an act of separation from the mother, and we seek, from Day 1, reconnection–hold me, rock me, include me. When this fundamental human drive isn’t met, people respond in terrible ways—with the violence of the school shooter, for example, or with the extreme compensatory narcissism of Donald Trump, whose entire life is predicated on telling others that he really is worth something. Really. A mythos—a mythological system—provides instant community and connection, and that’s a powerful motivator. Primitive nationalism of the kind that Trump espouses is simply a kind of political mythos-making: there was a Golden Age in which the community to which the devotee belongs was ascendant and powerful and privileged, and the leader will bring about its millennial return—will Make America Great Again. The appeal to belonging is instinctive and emotional—and thus the irrationalism of the Trumplings. The response to any challenge is not rational argument or negotiation but a scream—Lock her up! Send them back. And, of course, a short-cut to mythos-making is to define the community to which the devotee belongs in opposition to a despised Other—Trump’s “Democrat Party,” “People That Hate America,” etc.
The polyglot literary critic George Steiner has commented often that the big question raised by the twentieth century is how the Holocaust became possible. We tend to focus, naturally, on the atrocities, but less attention is given to what made these possible–to Hitler’s myth-making—to the vast resources that he and his propaganda minister, Goebbels, poured into creating a myth of a once-and-future perfect Aryan folkland of maypole dances and fair deutsche maidens growing up to produce beautiful, blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies. What you got in exchange for looking the other way from the concentration camps was MEMBERSHIP IN THAT TO-BE-PERFECTED COMMUNITY. Don the Con is a salesman, and that’s what he is selling. He is paid, in return, by being the belonging-est of his belong-ers. The physical manifestation of this belonging is, of course, the rally. I look at a Trump rally in 2019 and think, by golly, what Trump and Miller are missing is their Leni Riefenstahl to film all this.
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Covfefe to us all. I thought Kingston was in Jamaica.
Twitter by Ivanka:
Congratulations @BorisJohnson on
becoming the next Prime Minister of
the United Kingston.
5:06 AM July 23, 2019
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SUCKERS – a Randy Rainbow Song Parody
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Time to begin impeachment hearings!
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1033761
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Elizabeth Warren
✔
@ewarren
Robert Mueller’s report is an impeachment referral, and it’s up to Congress to act. But impeachment shouldn’t be the only way that a sitting president can be held accountable for committing a crime. No president is above the law. https://medium.com/@teamwarren/no-president-is-above-the-law-f4812e580336 …
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The Orange Moron doesn’t know what exculpated means. That explains Trump’s declaration that Mueller was a ‘disaster’ for Democrats.
……………
President Trump told reporters that Robert S. Mueller III’s testimony on Capitol Hill was a “disaster” for Democrats and that the Russia investigation was a “phony cloud.”
Trump’s comments came after Mueller testified that “the president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed,” and that Trump could be indicted after he leaves office.
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Video: Highlights from Robert Muller’s Congressional testimony.
[You do not have to be a NYT subscriber to watch video.]
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Impeach
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/1809110001
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Agreed! https://politics.theonion.com/pelosi-concerned-outspoken-progressive-flank-of-party-c-1836707083
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I’d rather see one of these two scenarios take place.
One: Trump loses the 2020 election by a Popular Vote, Electoral College landslide and New York state immediately file all kinds of lawsuits against him that bankrupt his family business and puts him and his family in prison for a long time.
Two: If Trump wins in 2020, the Trumpian Party (formally the Republican Party) loses its majority in the Senate in every Senate election, and Democrats pick up more seats in the House and then Pelosi goes forward with impeachment.
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Impeach
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/homenews/administration/454333-naacp-calls-for-trump-impeachment%3famp
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NAACP delegates representing local branches of the civil rights organization voted unanimously on Tuesday to call for Trump’s impeachment, the group announced on Twitter.
………………………………………………………..
It’s Time to Impeach Trump
The Atlantic
Published on Jan 17, 2019
Impeachment is a powerful tool. The time to wield it is now, argues the Atlantic senior editor Yoni Appelbaum. In the latest Atlantic Argument, Appelbaum invokes Andrew Johnson’s impeachment in 1868 to make the case for democratically removing President Donald Trump from office. Appelbaum underscores that this measure is not meant to resolve a policy dispute; rather, it is an attempt to rectify the problem of Trump’s inability to discharge the basic duties of his office.
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SCHIFF: “Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged Russian interference?”
MUELLER: “Yes.”
SCHIFF: “And then Trump and his campaign lied about it to cover it up?”
MUELLER: “Yes.”
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I just read a new name for the Orange Swamp Monster: rectal ventriloquist
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Trump just chewed out a reporter for asking if he was concerned about being indicted after he leaves office. He claimed, falsely, that Mueller walked back the possibility of indictment. He didn’t, he merely clarified he never determined whether he would charge, since he could not indict a sitting president.
Such an incompetent twit.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/homenews/administration/454614-trump-lashes-out-at-reporter-after-being-asked-if-hes-worried-he%3famp
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Trump says only 11% want to begin impeachment proceedings. No, 11% of Repugnicanths want to begin either impeachment proceedings or walking on land.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/415760-voters-split-on-if-house-dems-should-begin-impeachment%3famp
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Yesterday
https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-only-11-percent-favor-impeachment-hearings–lower-than-recent-polls-show/2019/07/23/d2860542-ad53-11e9-bc5c-e73b603e7f38_story.html%3foutputType=amp
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Why does this happen? Because POTUSSR is a joke! He is faker than fake. He is a scam. He represents the downside of this country.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/trump-speech-in-front-of-presidential-seal-with-russian-eagle-2019-7
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Tie up your loose ends, Pelosi, then vote and hold the hearings. Remove this criminal from office.
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Pelosi and the House cannot remove Trump from office.
All the House can do is vote to send the trial to the Senate where there is a Republican majority led by traitorous, crooked Mitch McConnel.
That Senate will not remove Trump from office, and then Trump will repeatedly claim the Democratic-controlled House conspired against him with a witch hunt and Trump’s 24/7 flood of endless repeating lies will never stop.
The 42.7-percent of voters that approve of him will believe everything Trump tweets and says.
There are only two ways we are going to get rid of Trump.
One: Trump has a stroke and dies. Then we get Pence as president.
Two: The 53.1 percent of voters that disapprove of him all turn out and vote to remove him from the office in November of 2020 by a massive landslide in the popular vote and the Electoral College.
However, as long as Trump lives and is capable of tweeting and talking, he will never stop holding rallies (his base will pay to attend because they are that stupid and full of hate, and so Trump will keep making money off the idiots) drumming up his hate while claiming he was the victim of a witch hunt.
If Trump lives to be 110 (Dear, God, I hope not), he will never stop saying he was the victim and he was the greatest president that ever lived.
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Lloyd Lofthouse: The lying POS never stops. He is never wrong.
……………………………………………………
WASHINGTON — President Trump declared himself vindicated by Wednesday’s congressional appearance of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, calling it a “devastating” day for Democrats that exposed the Russia investigation as a “hoax” and a yearslong “phony cloud” over his head.
Speaking to reporters as he boarded Marine One for a brief trip to West Virginia to host a fund-raiser, the president said that Mr. Mueller was “horrible” during his testimony before two House committees and in his handling of the investigation.
“We had a good day today,” Mr. Trump said, echoing a sense of jubilation inside the White House that Democrats had failed in their bid to use Mr. Mueller to build a case for impeachment against the president.
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You can watch NYT video without being a subscriber.
President Trump criticized Robert S. Mueller III after the former special counsel spoke to Congress about his report and his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Credit
Pete Marovich for The New York Times
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Opps. forgot to put in the video link.
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The link isn’t copying. Weird. I’m posting it and when my comment comes online it is minus the link.
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The transcripts of the House-Mueller Q&A are saturating the media. Most of the Q&A is a waist of time but there were some nuggets worth spreading far and wide.
For instance, the Opening Statement:
“During the course of our investigation, we charged more than 30 defendants with committing federal crimes, including 12 officers of the Russian military. Seven defendants have been convicted or pled guilty.”
“First, our investigation found that the Russian government interfered in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion.
“Second, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
We did not address ‘collusion,’ which is not a legal term. Rather, we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member of the campaign with taking part in a criminal conspiracy. It was not.” …
NOTE from Lloyd: Now I will cherry-pick a few of the gold nuggets:
Asked if Trump wanted Mueller fired for investigating possible obstruction of justice: “That’s what it says in the report, yes.”
Asked if the president could be prosecuted for obstruction of justice after he leaves office, Mueller said: “True.”
Democratic Representative Val Demings mentioned people who were charged with lying to Mueller’s investigators and asked if there were lying witnesses who had not been indicted.
“I think there’s probably a spectrum of witnesses in terms of those who are not telling the full truth and those who are outright liars,” Mueller said.
When she asked if lies by Trump campaign and administration officials had hindered his work, Mueller said: “I would generally agree with that.” …
Asked about Trump’s comments on WikiLeaks, including “I love WikiLeaks,” after it released emails stolen from the Clinton campaign, Mueller said: “‘Problematic’ is an understatement in terms of what it displays in terms of giving some … hope or some boost to what is or should be illegal activity.”
As for communication between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks, Mueller said, “Disturbing and also subject to investigation.” …
Mueller was asked if Trump’s written answers were inadequate, incomplete and “showed that he wasn’t always being truthful.” He replied: “There, uh, I would say, uh, generally.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mueller-highlights/highlights-from-former-us-special-counsel-muellers-testimony-idUSKCN1UJ2LH
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If “fruitful” hearings take place, exposing all of the financial ties and corruption he is hiding, I don’t think we will see him back in office after 2020. I know if it is not “big” enough, it will backfire, but this is truly a matter of duty, of following the law, as I’m sure you know. I know the House itself doesn’t remove, it impeaches. But that could really be damning. Trump appears to be desperately hiding something, or a number of things.
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The repugnicanths appear to either believe the playing field is so tilted and the dems are so dirty that it’s okay, in fact, patriotic to break the law and twist ethics to get out from under, or they simply choose identity and dirty politics over apparent, objective, worldly truth, “mainstream” truth, which lesser than their higher truth. Or most are just hotheaded morons.
I think almost nothing will move the Senate to remove. But the hearings would again clarify the obstructions, will to collude and much more. It all has to come out. At least those of us who already walk on land will know much more of the truth.
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Ted Lieu was pretty educational, the Q&A and graphics. obstructive action: check
Nexus: check
Criminal Intent: check
Mueller hardly had to mutter.
If only all of the Q&A were like this.
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From what I have read and read, the Democrats were not organized. It seems only one or two knew what they were asking and the rest were clueless.
Some of the Trumplicans, from the former Republican Party, on the other hand, attacked, attacked, attacked and didn’t ask any intelligent questions. All they did was create sound bites that Faux Fox News could use to make Mueller look like he is the criminal instead of Trump.
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I heard Nadler say on radio before the hearings that the Democrats were well organized and prepared. The Republicans’ attacks on Mueller—which he did not answer—were disgusting.
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I think the goal of the Democrats in this hearing was to keep key elements of Mueller’s report from being forgotten by most American voters that are notorious for short attention spans and even shorter memories
That once Trump is out of the White House, Mueller made it clear, again, that Trump can be tried in court for the alleged crime of Obstruction of Justice on the ten examples his investigation discovered.
That Trump’s written Q&A was incomplete and riddled with answers that did not match the evidence Mueller’s team collected. In other words, Trump lied in the written answers that he did provide.
To keep those key points in front of the voters, the Democrats will have to repeat them through the House’s investigation of Trump, and then probably much closer to the election in November 2020, during impeachment proceedings in the House.
Just like Trump repeats some lies over-and-over to turn those lies into manufactured truth, the Democrats must repeat the key points of Mueller’s report and anything new they discover over-and-over, too, to keep the real truth alive so Trump and The Trumpican Party doesn’t succeed.
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Yeah, I saw some of those attacks live. I’m sure that’s what the war room huddle was about.
Personally, I thought Mueller was much like an aging master of his field, a grandfather who happens to be a world-class master or top professor. Everyone seems to think he was supposed to explode in partisan theatrics. That ain’t his job. That would denigrate all of his work. The Repugnicanths could have at the very least recognized that he’s simply doing a world-class job and vented at the Dems for forcing him in, but they seem too challenged, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually or whatever it is — their tin-foil hats were sparking. I’m sure it was Ether-Twittoreal messages from the Overlord.
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Kind of how I saw it too.
Mueller did his job. In fact, went beyond.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/25/robert-mueller-hearing-was-awesome-227478
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Be assured, there must be good reason for Trump to fight so hard against the probe. Remember, the bright red line was his finances, and family. An impeachment inquiry would reveal what he is so desperately hiding that he has blatantly obstructed justice several times.
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BTW: ofc POTUSSR had to watch the Mueller spectacle to know which repugnicanth to reward or sink, according to his tribal mobster, alpha-lizard code.
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The bad news is the enemy of our society is POTUSSR.
The good news is that he and his allies are being exposed. The infection or disease has spread far and wide, but it is all being exposed. And most people know when they are wrong, especially when under the light of day. They may even choose not to change, but deep down they know. They’re children know. It takes time.
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Their children know.
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But it’s starting to look like there won’t even be a hearing.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/politics/schiff-downplays-impeachment-says-that-at-this-point-trump-is-only-leaving-by-being-voted-out/2019/07/25/4ce96424-aede-11e9-bc5c-e73b603e7f38_story.html%3foutputType=amp
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This doesn’t feel like the right move, morally, legally or politically. But what else is new on this planet?
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A world championed by idiots like Michael Goodwin of the Post.
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There are SO many things wrong with this country and when politicians don’t stand up for justice, it just shows that we are decaying. Will time erase this current disaster or will time continue to spin us ever downward?
There are too many people who are ignorant. Make America Great Again by not voting for the Orange Swamp Monster.
Some GREAT QUOTES:
“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media writes as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of a**.”
All of the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.”
“Laziness is a trait in blacks.”
Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father . . .
“An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud.”
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Hard to separate the nauseating lowlife from the would-be mobster from the con artist from the addled bigot and on and on.
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Predator, bully, braggart, dunce . . .
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This is written with complete sentences. Obviously the Buffoon didn’t write it.
“…the failure to find that Mr. Trump committed a crime”. Don’t think that is what was reported.
……
Email from the WH
11:23 AM (52 minutes ago)
West Wing Reads
The Do-Over Delusion
“No matter how many times Democrats demand a do-over, the results won’t change.”
The Washington Times editorial board writes that “facing the klieg lights on national TV Wednesday, Mr. Mueller appeared overwhelmed by the moment, unfamiliar with his brief, a figurehead set in place by mischievous hands.” For a less confused account, look at the Special Counsel’s actual 448-page report. “Each copy spells out in black and white the failure to find that Mr. Trump committed a crime.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows this, and she must be itching “to slam the door on impeachment proceedings,” the editors add. The question is: Will the far left let her?
“Democrats are, without question, worse off now than they were before former special counsel Robert Mueller gave his five hours of testimony,” Eddie Scarry writes in the Washington Examiner. “Anyone who watched the back-to-back hearings Wednesday got exactly nothing new from Mueller . . . but Democrats thought it wise to drag out this never-ending nightmare.”
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Dem Leaders Have Done Everything to NOT Impeach Trump
By Michael Moore, Michael Moore’s Facebook Page
25 July 19
onald Trump is the most criminally corrupt and dangerous President we’ve ever had. The majority of voters despise him and voted the Democrats in last November to hold him accountable. Yet the Dem leaders have done everything they can to NOT hold him accountable and to NOT impeach him.
For the past 2 years, Dem leaders have been promising us… Mueller Time! Mueller’s coming! Mueller’s gonna take him down! I warned people not to get their hopes up— Mueller was FBI, a Republican, a team player. Old School DC. Though hIs report offered damning evidence, he was committed to playing the game, not being a hero.
Do you know here has NEVER been a Democrat as the official FBI Director? All eight FBI directors, starting w/ Hoover in 1924, and including Mueller & Comey, have been Republicans. Republican presidents appoint Repubs to run the FBI. Democratic presidents appoint Repubs to run the FBI. For nearly 100 years!
Finally — Donald Trump’s lawyer was… RUDY GIULIANI! Mueller was outmaneuvered by RUDY GIULIANI?! Bill Clinton had to testify before a grand jury, under oath, on camera, for hours, and tell every nasty detail about his sex life. Yet Trump – the biggest criminal to ever step foot in the White House–and the legal genius RUDY GIULIANI outguns Mueller and prevents Trump from testifying! Mueller testified yesterday he never even issued a subpoena! Oh-and STILL NO TAX RETURNS! The question everyone keeps asking: How does Trump get away with everything? Yes—HOW?
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I’m for an impeachment so that Trump will be labeled for all history as being a tainted president. However….
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly cooled impeachment fires Wednesday, July 24 and is not prepared to move forward with impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump — at this time.
Pelosi shot down efforts by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler to move immediately on impeachment against the president on Wednesday, according to a report published Thursday by Politico.
Pelosi argued to her colleagues that the “slow, methodical approach” employed by House Democrats is the right way to move forward, despite the fact that more than 90 of her members have now called for an impeachment inquiry to begin.
Pelosi has insisted Democrats need support from Republicans, or a shift in public sentiment, before even starting an impeachment inquiry against Trump.
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Pelosi’s slow, methodical approach to the impeachment issue should enable her to bring the question to a vote in 2021.
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dianeravitch: I take it that the assumption is that Trump will win the election in 2020. It’s possible and I’d hate to think of the destruction this ignorant want-to-be-dictator will do to this country with a ‘mandate from the people’.
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When it comes to Impeachment proceedings in the House, I agree and disagree with Pelosi.
I agree that it isn’t the time yet — too soon.
I disagree that Democrats need the support of Republicans.
Impeachment proceeding in the House must be times with the 2020 election so they are not concluded by November 3, 2020. If the House completed its impeachment and sends the case to the Senate before the election, the Trumplicans (formerly the Republican Party) will not impeach and Donald Trump, always a lying, cheating, fraudulent game player who gets his thrills by playing that game. Trump will make all kinds of false claims about being the victim of a witchhunt, etc, etc, etc. He’ll even invent new crimes he isn’t guilty of like being innocent of the crime of collusion that Mueller said isn’t even a legal term let alone a crime.
“The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” Mueller said. But: “We did not address ‘collusion,’ which is not a legal term. Rather, we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member of the campaign with taking part in a criminal conspiracy. It was not.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/24/robert-mueller-kneecaps-president-trumps-no-collusion-no-obstruction-mantra/?utm_term=.31cd7e7dd34d
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At least he didn’t call it oranges.
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When President Donald Trump introduced Mark Esper as the new secretary of defense on Thursday, he also introduced a new word into the English language: “Infantroopen.”
It happened while the president was discussing the career of Esper, who was awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge for his service in the 101st Airborne Division during the first Iraq War.
However, the president called it the “Combat Infantroopen Badge,” according to Vox.com reporter Aaron Rupar.
Is this the new “covfefe”?
Today the President awarded a new military honor, the “Combat Infantroopen Badge for Military Service.”
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According to Yahoo News, it IS the new covfefe.
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-mark-esper-infantroopen-184307396.html
The new level of competence from this POTUSSR and his Whitening House.
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Akademos: Trump is SO creative. Slowly creeping dementia is showing up in his speech by his ‘creativeness’ and the usage of very simple words.
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In addition, Rupar said Trump also referred to members of Congress as “lawmarkers,” not “lawmakers.”
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I do feel, despite politics, that going forward with impeachment hearings is what should be done, morally and ethically.
Politically, I see the insanity in the Republican Party, and we seem to have a hugely out of proportion size chunk of craziness in the country: irrational extremists, lunatics, opportunists and the very desperate.
But recall that bright red line: finances and family. Financial documents are being forced out and Ivanka and Jared have just been subpoenaed.
It all seems too calculated, though. So much concern over support and Dems’ getting re-elected. How much is practicality (having absolutely necessary control) and how much is pure politics/sense of influence is hard to say.
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Morally and LEGALLY!
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Swalwell says begin proceedings now.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/think/amp/ncna1034586
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Why They Hate Bernie
BY BRANKO MARCETIC
…many prominent Democrats and liberals don’t actually want the things they say they want — whether it’s because it might alienate their donors, hamper their future money-making prospects, or both. Another answer is that, until 2016, Sanders wasn’t considered a threat to Democratic politics as usual.
The Democratic establishment was fine with Sanders when he was just a lonely voice fighting for progressive values, as long as the gravy train for consultants, lobbyists, donors, and former politicians kept on running. But once he went from just a voice in the wilderness to the head of a movement that threatened to upend this arrangement, something had to be done. This was why the prevailing media narrative around Sanders swiftly changed as his chances increased over the course of 2016. Where he was at first a rumpled wonk whose support consisted of “aging Grateful Dead hipsters, environmentalists and professors,” he quickly became a charismatic yet empty demagogue who lacks understanding of policy and is backed by an army of naive, misguided youth…
Establishment Democrats may not be able to put their finger on what they don’t like about Sanders, but it’s pretty clear to the rest of us.
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/07/bernie-sanders-msnbc-clintons-vast-right-wing-conspiracy
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How wonderful that Barr is ‘determined to find the truth’ about how and why a U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agency came to spy on a presidential campaign.
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Update from the WH:
West Wing Reads
What Mueller Was Trying to Hide
“Special counsel Robert Mueller testified before two House committees Wednesday, and his performance requires us to look at his investigation and report in a new light,” Kimberly Strassel writes in The Wall Street Journal.
“We’ve been told it was solely about Russian electoral interference and obstruction of justice. It’s now clear it was equally about protecting the actual miscreants behind the Russia-collusion hoax. The most notable aspect of the Mueller report was always what it omitted: the origins of this mess.”
What were those origins? “Christopher Steele’s dossier was central to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe . . . The report ignored Mr. Steele’s paymaster, Fusion GPS, and its own ties to Russians. It also ignored Fusion’s paymaster, the Clinton campaign, and the ugly politics behind the dossier hit job.”
Nine times during Wednesday’s hearing, Robert Mueller answered that something was not in his “purview” to investigate. And each time, it was “in response to questions about the origin story of the FBI counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board writes. “Americans need to know how and why a U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agency came to spy on a presidential campaign . . . The good news is that [Attorney General] Barr does seem determined to find the truth.”
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Instead of investigating how and why Russian agents influenced our election, Barr wants to know how and why the FBI investigated Russian interference.
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Trump’s bigoted America-first base ought to know about this, that his policies send $40 billion per year into foreign pockets (ownership of our companies), aside from aid, which is about $50 billion.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/opinion/trump-foreign-investors.amp.html
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Do me a ‘favor’ Sweden. We do favors for you. Rig your justice and set this guy, for me! Now! I’m thuggin’ out here! Want me to bust out a rap?!?
“Give A$AP Rocky his FREEDOM. We do so much for Sweden but it doesn’t seem to work the other way around. Sweden should focus on its real crime problem! #FreeRocky”
International coercion. Swag style? Sloppy and awkward.
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Set this guy free
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A national Fox News poll, released yesterday, helped shed new light on the question.
“Do you feel Donald Trump’s recent tweets, in which he criticizes four minority Democratic congresswomen and tells them to go back to the countries they came from, were an acceptable political attack or did those tweets cross the line?”
Crossed the line: 63%
Acceptable political attack: 27%
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I wouldn’t be surprised to find that this video gets deleted. Powerful people do things to protect themselves.
……..
Donald Trump rapes 13 year old in the home of Jeffrey Epstein
Terry Connor
Published on Jul 15, 2019
Video testimony of Katie Johnson detailing several sexual encounters with Donald Trump at age 13, in the home of Jeffrey Epstein.
Contains Adult language.
https://youtu.be/rbFJWo3gdRI
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Why Trump fears Schiff.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-07-26/heffernan-robert-mueller-testimony-adam-schiff
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Impeachment inquiry has already begun!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1035051
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