Good morning, Happy hump day, and so glad to be saying goodbye to winter. Well, I am not sure how weary you are of hearing everyone talk about It’s Mueller Time being stolen from us by the criminals in this administration but I must share my brief thoughts. Believe me, I am not OHD, (that is why I treasure his wisdom and words), I was a downright debbie downer Sunday night. But something happened while I was reading across the Kos comments. I got severely ticked off, ticked at myself for feeling the way I did and ticked off for all the other reasons you must surely know. I am ready to fight, no matter what the headlines or what the tangerine and his hoard of minions try to pull off. We will win in 2020. Turn that anger and despair into action. We did it in 2018 and we will do it again.
I wanted to share a little something from the Indivisible Tuesday Newsletter:
Indivisibles,
Let’s talk about last Friday.
In the late afternoon, we got news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had completed his long-awaited investigation and turned over his report to Trump’s hand-picked Attorney General, William Barr. As required, 48 hours later, Barr took the report and produced a 4-page summary that raised more questions than answers.
Barr’s summary indicated that Mueller did not find criminal conspiracy (“collusion”) between the Trump campaign and Russia and that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute obstruction of justice. But the letter explicitly said that Trump was not exonerated on obstruction.
Since then, several Democrats have called for the release of the full report. This way, Congress and the public can see the underlying evidence that justifies (or doesn’t justify) the Justice Department’s hasty decision not to prosecute Trump for obstruction of justice.
How we move forward
It’s normal to feel a bit disappointed after the two-year buildup that was Mueller’s investigation. We were all ready to finally see Trump and his cronies brought to justice. That didn’t happen with Mueller’s report. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t get to know the whole truth, and our asks remain the same:
- Release the full report. We demand to view Mueller’s full report. And in a 420-0 vote, the House of Representatives recently agreed that the report should be transparent. Mueller’s findings should be made fully public.
- Continue investigations in Congress to hold Trump accountable. The scope of Mueller’s investigation was narrow compared to other ongoing investigations on Trump. Trump’s abuses of power and the corruption of his administration is clear and the new Democratic House has already launched wide-ranging investigations to hold him accountable. These investigations should continue to be supported.
Lastly, no matter what happens with the Department of Justice or with Congress -- we all must set our sights to 2020. Former candidate for Florida Governor, Andrew Gillum, said it best:
Yes!
I do not want to focus too much on this topic as I know it is, 1. not good news and 2. getting old hearing the MSM and the rethugs spin it around. So a few links and then you know what I will do.
‘Let’s just get the goods’: Pelosi rallies dejected Dems post-Mueller
Speaker Nancy Pelosi sought to rally House Democrats behind closed doors Tuesday morning in the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation.
“Be calm. Take a deep breath. Don’t become like them. We have to handle this professionally, officially, patriotically, strategically,” Pelosi said, referring to Republicans, during a closed-door meeting with House Democrats.
“Let’s just get the goods,” she said of Mueller’s report.
I love her more and more each day. The Democrats should not feel dejected, they should feel energized. This may be a stumbling block, but we all know there are many more ongoing investigations and the House Committees should keep plugging away.
To h*ll with the backlash, we all knew how the rethugs would react if the “conclusion” was no “collusion” HaHa. Anyhoo:
Democrats demand Mueller’s full report by next week
House Democrats intensified their efforts to obtain Robert Mueller’s full report on Monday, as the party sought to recast its investigative strategy after the special counsel did not implicate President Donald Trump in a crime.
Top Democrats demanded that Attorney General William Barr turn over the report by April 2, while Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee strongly hinted that they were prepared to issue a subpoena if Barr doesn’t hand over the full report by next Tuesday.
In a letter to Barr, the leaders of six key House committees said the attorney general’s four-page summary of Mueller’s findings was “not sufficient,” arguing that Congress must obtain all of the underlying evidence from the Mueller probe because the special counsel declined to make a determination on whether Trump obstructed justice.
“I believe that what Mueller was saying by not making a finding with regard to obstruction was that he wanted the Congress to take a look at it, and we make the decision,” House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) told reporters.
Just a link here, take it for what you will:
Poll: 84 percent want Mueller report made public
Well that is enough of that, onward as one may say. Let donnie have his little spotlight and have his run to make awful decisions. They will all regret it when we go to the voting booth. Like this:
Trump hands Democrats a gift with new effort to kill Obamacare
House and Senate Democrats on Tuesday seized on the Justice Department’s endorsement of a federal court ruling to eliminate Obamacare in its entirety, immediately renewing attacks on the GOP for trying to gut the law’s popular protections and rip health coverage from more than 20 million Americans.
The administration’s surprise decision — a shift from its prior stance that only parts of the Affordable Care Act should be thrown out — offered a unifying moment for Democrats still grappling with the news that Mueller would not charge President Donald Trump with any crimes and comes as the party readies a fresh legislative offensive on health care.
And even as Democrats decried the move, they also saw it as a political gold mine.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) told Democrats in a closed-door caucus meeting Tuesday that the DOJ’s decision was “a gift” to Democrats, who have struggled for months to keep the focus on their legislative agenda and not all things Mueller.
“It’s really outrageous. I don’t understand if Republicans weren’t present for the last election, but if there was an issue that was deeply critical, it was health care,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said after the meeting.
It’s “not only immoral, it’s a really bad political decision for them,” she added.
Ya think! What does donnie duck tales and his nephews think? Oh, never mind dumb question. But really of all the things I have read today they are just like, wanting to be forgotten to history?
Meanwhile:
House Democrats’ new plan to strengthen Obamacare
House Democrats are rolling out a plan to strengthen the Affordable Care Act that would expand federal insurance subsidies and reverse the Trump administration’s attacks on the health care law — but avoids the party’s internal fight about more ambitious proposals to extend health coverage.
Democrats released the bill the day after the Trump administration said it wanted the entire health care law thrown out by the courts, underscoring the striking divide between the two parties on an issue at the top of voters’ minds.
The new legislation sticks to policies that should win immediate support from the entire Democratic caucus.
“This is about very immediately answering the promises our members made in the campaign to lower health care costs,” a senior Democratic aide told me. “This isn’t the end of stuff we’re going to do on health care, in any regard.”
The Democratic bill is a smorgasbord of provisions to expand health care and undo the Trump administration’s regulatory actions to weaken the ACA:
- It expands the tax credits available under the law, both reducing costs for lower-income families and expanding eligibility so middle-class Americans can receive federal assistance.
- It creates a national reinsurance program to offset high medical bills for insurers and thereby keep premium increases in check.
- It rolls back Trump actions expanding skimpier health insurance plans, giving states the freedom to undermine the law’s benefits requirements, and cutting enrollment outreach funding.
I know this will go no where in the Senate but this is a show of what we could begin to accomplish when we win in 2020. I am more a Tricare for all than a Medicare for All gal but either would be a major improvement from where we are now.
And our Democratic Committees will not stop, there is more than the orange’s ones crimes to consider. Betsy, I am an evil witch, DeVos was in the hot seat on Tuesday.
Please Enjoy Barbara Lee Trashing Betsy DeVos to Her Face
In her 2020 budget request to Congress, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos fell back on her old standby: ruthlessly stripping money away from disadvantaged groups. Devos’s proposed budget even went so far as to eliminate the federal earmark for the Special Olympics.
Fortunately for the country and for all of us watching from home, DeVos had to defend that budget in front of the House Appropriations Committee earlier today. And even more fortunately, that committee includes Barbara Lee, who promptly raked DeVos over the coals—something that is becoming a personal hobby of hers, considering she did it last time DeVos had to sit in front of her as well.
Just say no.
House committee has a firm no for defense secretary's plan to send $1 billion to build Trump's wall
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan is going to have to reckon with House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith before he follows through on taking $1 billion in military funding from the projects for which it was intended in order to build 57 miles of border wall.
“The committee denies this request,” Smith says in a letter to the Defense Department.
Not sure this will really stop the transfer of funds but it sure is an up yours to, help NNNE I am running out of adjectives to refer to these idiots.
If you love Kos, call your rep:
Real Net Neutrality Protections Passed Their First Vote
The Save the Internet Act (H.R. 1644) has survived its first vote, 18-11. This is a victory for everyone who wants strong, real net neutrality protections. It is, as is so often the case in the net neutrality battle, a win for the majority of Americans who support these protections against the narrow interests of a few giant Internet service providers (ISPs).
Millions of American across the country denounced the FCC’s decision to repeal the 2015 Open Internet Order and abandon oversight over the broadband industry. Americans overwhelmingly support net neutrality and the privacy and competition protections that accompany it. The FCC nonetheless tried to ignore common sense, market realities, and the public interest. This bill sets things right, following a clear mandate from the American people. We applaud the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology for listenting to the thousands of you who have spoken up for net neutrality.
Again, this is good news but the Dem’s cannot do it alone.
What is happening in the Supreme Court? I thought it was intended to be stacked against the “libs”.
Chief Justice John Roberts Denies Gun Owners’ Request to Stay Ban on Bump Stocks
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has denied an emergency request by gun owners’ groups to temporarily stay the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks. The ban took effect at midnight Tuesday. One more stay request is reported to be still pending with Justice Sonya Sotomayor. Unless the court intervenes, bump stocks—the devices that enable semi-automatic rifles to fire almost as quickly as machine guns—will be banned nationwide.
And this, holy cow:
An unlikely alliance on the Supreme Court could end two of the nation’s worst gerrymanders
A Supreme Court decision invalidating a partisan gerrymander is the Holy Grail of voting rights litigation and, just like the Arthurian Grail, has evaded the boldest and the brightest seekers for many years. And yet Tuesday’s oral arguments in Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek — challenges to two of the most aggressive gerrymanders in the country — offered a glimmer of hope.
Just over a year ago, there appeared to be five justices ready to join an opinion striking Wisconsin’s especially egregious state legislative gerrymander. Instead, Justice Anthony Kennedy chose to take his crucial fifth vote and quite literally go home. With the nomination of archconservative Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill Kennedy’s seat, an anti-gerrymandering decision appeared further from reach.
On Tuesday, however, Kavanaugh appeared skeptical of one of the primary pillars that conservative justices have used in the past to prop up gerrymandering. That skepticism, combined with some quick thinking by Justice Elena Kagan, may ultimately prove enough to take down gerrymanders in North Carolina and Maryland.
Given the Supreme Court’s history of flirting with an anti-gerrymandering decision and then coyly backing away, no one should assume yet that the court will ultimately hold that the Constitution limits partisan gerrymanders. But Tuesday’s hearing gave something unfamiliar to Americans who, whipsawed by the combination of gerrymandering, Senate malapportionment, and the Electoral College, have come to fear that the United States will descend into an anti-democratic death spiral: Hope.
Read. It. All.
Yay Wisconsin!
Second judge blocks parts of Wisconsin GOP lame-duck laws
A Dane County judge threw out parts of lame-duck laws Tuesday, dealing a second blow in less than a week to measures Republicans passed in December to curb the powers of two of Wisconsin's top Democrats.
The ruling strengthens Democrats' position, at least for now, because Republicans would need to get two orders from appeals courts to put the laws back in place.
These people are spawns and it is heartening to see them face some backlash:
The Sackler family made their fortune in opioids — and museums are rejecting their donations
Wherever you go in the art world, you’ll run into one prominent name: the Sackler family. The Smithsonian has the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a Sackler Wing; the Louvre does, too (the Sackler Wing of Oriental Antiquities). There’s a Sackler Museum at Harvard and a Sackler Center for Arts Education at the Guggenheim.
But recently, many of these institutions have taken steps to sever ties with their benefactor. Britain’s National Portrait Gallery last week announced it was cancelling a planned $1.3 million donation from the Sackler Trust. The Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Tate museum in London announced this week they won’t accept any further Sackler donations.
The reason? The Sackler family made their fortune (estimated by Forbes at $13 billion) through their ownership of Purdue Pharma, inventor and purveyor of the opioid painkiller OxyContin —a drug that has been blamed for the opioid epidemic.
The article is worth the whole read if you have the time.
I usually really (is that a writer no no) do not like to share what the rocks for brains rEbuplicans have to say, this is too comical not to share.
Senate Republicans Tried to Mock Democrats for the Green New Deal. Then Mike Lee Pulled Out His Charts.
All I am going to post from this is, well this.
And because I am a huge fan of animals of all stripes….
Prize-winning show dog found after vanishing at airport for 3 days
The prize-winning show dog that disappeared in one of the world's busiest airports for three days after being checked in for a flight has been found.
Gale, a pure-bred American Staffordshire terrier whose owners live in Amsterdam, has been found and reunited with her family, the Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport announced in a tweet Tuesday afternoon. The pup was being shown in the United States by her handlers and had one final event in Louisville, Kentucky, on Saturday before flying home.
Love them, even after they chewed up woodwork, couches, blankets, sigh.
I am going to leave you with this:
Follow Yosef52, he will inspire you to GOTV!
You know what to do from here, share your good news.
Peace!