Good Day Good Newsies!
Will the budget pass, will the government stay open or shut down again, will the amazing wall get funding or will there just be some repairs and a little extension? So many questions. So few answers. Only the Orange Omen of Doom seems to hold our fate in his tiny tiny little hands. Just kidding, whatevs. You threaten to take money from Puerto Rico? Guess what?
Puerto Rico to take "legal action" if Trump diverts disaster aid
"Should Donald Trump decide to go ahead and take assistance away from Puerto Rico, we are ready to take immediate legal action against his administration," the official said. "We are confident justice will prevail as the legislative intent of the disaster relief bills was to help Americans affected by the 2017 and 2018 natural disasters."
Well, well, well and we have not even heard from Governor Newsome of CA yet. That should blow some more smoke up the the talking yams arse.
So It the Clown does not like the deal. Too dang bad. This is getting more than tiresome, actually more than ridonculous.
Beto O’Rourke fact-checked Trump’s rally live from across the street in El Paso
Beto fact-checked Trump live
With the backdrop of the US-Mexico border, Trump used El Paso to support his border wall policy — the reason he shut down the government for more than a month in December and January — and try to scare Americans about the dangers of violent criminals coming over the border.
O’Rourke decided to serve as Trump’s fact-checker on the border.
“The US cities of the Mexican-American border are much safer than the US cities in the interior of the United States of America,” he said.
O’Rourke’s comments are based on some statistical facts about immigration:
So we know this to be true but the ticking time bomb, the vampire, the chief of hiding in the corner when he is told to and suckerbee stands a lot, all think this is just all hollow fabrications. Oh, I forgot faux news insane red faced hannity. For all that is good, these loonies are so out there they are going to get people freaking killed at these stupid “rallies” that are just a substitute for spreading hate and fear.
Does anyone feel sorry for those that worship at the feet of the tangerine devil?
Why Trump's threat to declare a national emergency freaks out Republicans
Among the early details of a tentative agreement reached Monday night, according to a Democratic source, are that it includes $1.375 billion for fencing and about 40,000 beds for housing border detainees. Those are both significant reductions from what Trump had originally asked for. It's unclear whether the President would support such a deal, meaning there's still the potential for a second government shutdown.
A possible agreement also doesn't mean the President won't end up declaring a national emergency to secure the kind of money he really wants to build a wall, particularly if the bill Congress sends him falls this short of the $5.7 billion he'd demanded in the first place. While Trump has at times seemed intrigued by the idea of declaring a national emergency, Republicans in Washington aren't so thrilled by it.
That's because doing so could set off a chain of events on Capitol Hill that risks splitting the Republican conference, undercutting other parts of Trump's agenda and likely opening the administration's actions to legal challenges. It would also provide a clarifying moment that Republicans on the Hill have managed to avoid since Trump took office -- casting an up or down vote on whether to build the full-scale wall Trump desires.
Don’t you feel like having a pity party for the poor little ones that may have to actually show their true colors? Nah.
Okay, I have ranted and vented. The good news is I feel much better. Better news, I am done.
Onward!
This gives me hope that more people than I thought are not bat crap crazy:
Poll: More Americans have confidence in Mueller than Trump
More Americans would be more confident in facts presented by special counsel Robert Mueller than President Donald Trump, according to a recent poll by The Washington Post and George Mason University's Schar School.
The poll, conducted Feb. 6-10, showed 56 percent of respondents were more inclined to accept a version of the facts from Mueller, while 33 percent put more trust in Trump's accounts. Respondents were selected randomly; 32 percent identified as Democratic, 39 percent as independent and 26 percent as Republican.
Respondents were nearly unified, however, on wanting to see the results of the Mueller investigation, with 81 percent saying they believed Mueller's entire report should be made public. Trump's nominee for attorney general, William Barr, did not say he would release the full report during his Senate confirmation hearing. He said he would provide his own summary of the report to Congress. Still, Barr said he would try to make the summary as exhaustive as is "consistent with the regulations and the law.”
Blah, blah, blah rethugs thought whatever. Who cares? This is progress!
Speaking of reports to be seen in the future, the House Judiciary Committee continues to lawyer up:
House Judiciary Committee Democrats add legal firepower for Trump oversight
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are adding two high-profile lawyers to their team as consultants, public corruption and ethics experts who have studied obstruction of justice and will help Democrats ramp up efforts to explore possible legal and ethical issues involving President Donald Trump and his administration.
Ambassador Norm Eisen, a former Obama administration ethics czar and U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic who now serves as a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Barry Berke, a prominent defense attorney and co-chairman of the litigation department at New York law firm Kramer Levin, are set to join the key committee as special oversight counsels to help organize Democrats’ investigative plans related to the Justice Department and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, the committee announced Tuesday.
Democrats on the panel, working with Eisen and Berke, will roll out its oversight agenda in the coming weeks, according to a committee source.
Eisen and Berke, who will help Democrats craft their public-facing investigative and oversight strategy on the Judiciary Committee, have significant experience collaborating and contextualizing the Trump-Russia investigation. They two have worked together on op-eds for the New York Times and Washington Post responding to developments in Mueller’s investigation, and have penned a series of reports of legal analysis on the potential obstruction of justice case against Trump.
I breath a sigh of relief.
This, IMO, is great news:
Retired astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of Gabby Giffords, to run for Senate
The retired astronaut Mark Kelly announced on Tuesday he is running to finish John McCain’s final term in the Senate.
Kelly, 54, became a national campaigner for gun law reform after his wife, the congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot and severely injured in January 2011. He is a top Democratic recruit to take on Republican Martha McSally in what will be one of the most closely contested Senate races of the 2020 election.
He will have quite a bit of Democrat competition but think of the campaign slogans he could use against the thin skinned orange peels and his minions. Please fell free to come up with them in the comments.
So many great people ran for seats in 2018. Some won, some lost. But I keep hearing of those who didn’t quite get there and are still doing amazing things:
INSURGENT CANDIDATE KERRI HARRIS HAS A NEW JOB: LOBBYIST FOR THE WORKING POOR
KERRI HARRIS, THE insurgent candidate who lost her primary challenge to Sen. Tom Carper in Delaware, will be taking a new national advocacy director position at Working Hero Action, a nonprofit organization advocating for the earned-income tax credit and other anti-poverty policies.
Harris, a 39-year-old queer woman of color and an Air Force veteran, rose to national prominence when she decided to challenge Carper, a powerful Democrat who had held his seat for three terms, from the left. While Harris, whose campaign was outspent 10-to-1 by Carper’s, ended up losing the election by a 30-point margin, the 35 percent she pulled was more than Delaware politicos had thought was possible against Carper, a local icon.
For a politician, Harris brings an unusually intimate understanding of the effects of policies she’ll be pushing for, especially the need for a cash benefit. Even during her Senate run, as she was profiled in glossy national magazines, she remained mired in poverty, cycling through the same few outfits that bore the brunt of the campaign. Growing up in poverty gives a politician an important understanding of its character, but grinding through it as an adult puts it into even sharper focus.
Harris told me that only recently, she had been asking her daughter, who was turning 8 years old, whether she wanted a birthday party. “She kept saying no,” Harris said. “And then she confessed a couple of weeks ago that she did want one, but she knew that I didn’t have a lot of money, so she didn’t want me to feel stressed. I felt horrible.”
“I don’t want any other kids to have to feel that way,” Harris said. “I don’t want any other parents to feel that way.”
Harris says that she’s thinking of running again in the future. But for now, she sees her role as using the platform she built from her campaign to highlight working-class issues in her new position at Working Hero Action.
What amazing people to have come out since our dictator in training was elected. I do hold hope for our future when you have people like this standing up for the country and it’s citizens of all stripes.
The Supremes, not all of them, tried to kill unions, guess what:
UNIONS SEE AN OPENING IN THE WAKE OF A RULING THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO FINISH THEM OFF
THE LAST YEAR has been a whirlwind for the labor movement. There have been unexpectedly positive developments, like the forceful rise in teacher activism across the country, and negative ones, like the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME, which found that unions could no longer collect agency fees for bargaining from workers who do not pay membership dues. The labor movement had been grinding its teeth over that possibility for several years, bracing for its already strained coffers to further deplete.
But last weekend, when labor leaders and activists gathered at a two-day conference in Washington, D.C., to discuss their movement, the mood was overwhelmingly jubilant. With Democrats now controlling the House of Representatives, the immediate financial pain of Janus less severe than expected, and public opinion for unions standing at a 15-year high (Gallup reported recently that 62 percent of Americans approve of unions), movement activists seemed far more energized than one might have expected them to be one year ago. It almost felt like a pep rally.
Speaker after speaker at the Future of American Labor conference spoke confidently and animatedly about the progress unions have made in the United States, organizing strikes and winning some protections for contract workers — gains they expect to continue even in the wake of Janus.
It is a bit of a long read but well worth it.
What??
Senate Passes Sweeping Public Lands Bill Protecting 2 Million Acres
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly in support of a bipartisan public lands bill that safeguards more than 2 million federal acres and permanently reauthorizes the popular Land and Water Conservation Fund, established in 1964 to protect natural areas and water resources.
The measure, which includes more than 100 individual pieces of legislation, is said to be the largest public lands package in a decade. It establishes more than 1.3 million acres of new wilderness, protects hundreds of miles of rivers and trails, and creates four new national monuments.
“This is not only lands. This is water, this is sportsmen, this is conservation. This is about developing local economies,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who co-introduced the bill with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), said during a press conference following the vote. “This is about who we are as a country.”
The package also expands five national parks, including Death Valley and Joshua Tree, and withdraws more than 300,000 federal acres from future mining, as The Washington Post reports.
Did someone funnel a potion through the air ducts of the Senate? Was there a sinister being hovering in the chambers? Was the overlord already engrossed in the tee vee and eating kfc so he didn’t notice? It passed 92-8 people. Holy cow. Maybe we are just in the twilight zone…
I ran into this at Vox and thought what a great way to explain the broo haha over the 70% tax rate being proposed by AOC:
The 70% top tax rate, explained with potatoes
Just some feel good news:
At 64, PEN America winner Sandra Cisneros is just getting started
It’s poetically fitting that Sandra Cisneros, the Chicana literary trailblazer and best-selling novelist, plans to donate the cash prize that comes with winning this year's International PEN/Nabokov Award to her assistants so they can buy a home.
Home, in the physical and metaphorical sense, has been a central theme for Cisneros since her literary debut in 1980.
“With money and fame comes responsibility, and the amount is exactly what they need,” she said in a phone interview from her home in San Miguel de Allende,
the stunning colonial city in central Mexico where she has lived since 2013. “They’ve been looking for loans, and the interest in Mexico is 39 percent. I can’t describe how happy it makes me to be able to do this for them.”
For Cisneros, the nature of her success has always been steeped in generosity.
"I believe that there is a law in the universe that all the work we do is in service to those we love and it's always going to bring us better rewards and fortune. It puts us in a state of grace when you are in service to your community," she said.
What an amazing woman!
An update from TheBradBlog about the Georgia election scam:
Targeted? 1000's of Black Votes 'Missing' from GA 2018 Lt. Guv Election Results: 'BradCast' 2/12/19
I saw some commenters seeking an update.
Anyone here a dog person?
Awww, my girls heard me type dogs and here they come looking for a cookie, lol.
How about butterflies? I have been so heartbroken about the National Butterfly Center and the stupid wall. I mean come on they are butterflies.
Butterfly Refuge Files Restraining Order Against Feds Over Border Wall Construction
Late Monday evening, attorneys for the National Butterfly Center asked a federal judge to block the Trump administration from building a border wall at the refuge or using the center’s property as a pass-through to build elsewhere. The motion alleges that federal agents and contractors have been driving without permission through the Rio Grande Valley refuge’s property to access nearby federal land for the last week, and that they even replaced one of the butterfly center’s gate locks. The Trump administration plans to break ground on a 6-mile stretch of border wall as soon as this week, starting with a federal wildlife refuge tract just upriver from the privately-owned butterfly center.
The motion accuses the Trump administration of “defy[ing] centuries of democratic values that shield Americans from government action depriving individuals of their rightful property without notice and an opportunity to be heard.” It calls for the Washington, D.C., judge to temporarily forbid the government or its contractors from taking any action at the refuge “in furtherance of the construction of a border wall” or from interfering with the center’s “use and enjoyment of its property” — apart from Border Patrol agents stopping the “illegal entry of aliens.” The motion is part of an existing lawsuit, filed in December 2017, that contends the wall is being pushed forward in an illegal and unconstitutional manner.
In an email Monday night to the Observer, Treviño-Wright put the matter starkly. “We will not stand idly by as the bulldozers roll in,” she wrote. “We will not wait to be heard, until sometime after our land has been seized and destroyed for this racist wall.”
When the orange menace and his ilk cannot even have respect for butterflies there are many who will fight and you know what? The butterflies will win.
I know Netflix is evil but Russian Doll is an amazing series and I had to google the song it uses:
I feel so old...
Well folks, that is it for me today. Depending on how work goes will determine when I can be in the comments. But I know you will all take the lead and share the good news I missed and put forth the kinship that exists here. I love the snark and I love to put it to the rethugs but what makes this space special for me is all of you.
Peace!