How Many GOP Senators Threatening Party-Switch Would Persuade McConnell to Convict & Remove?

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday January 12, 2021 · 12:54 PM PST

2021/01/12 · 12:54

Screenshot2021-01-12at12.34.09PM.png — Image from Anchorage Daily News

Given FBI warnings of mass armed demonstrations on state capitols and DC being planned, we are running out of time to prevent the risk of massive bloodshed, and to be assured that we can count on the Guard (at least) to be deployed in defense of our government and do their sworn duty.

Should possibly-sane GOP senators be pressured to resign the GOP and caucus with the Democrats if McConnell refuses to act on impeachment, or at least threaten McConnell that they will?

Collins is safe for the next 6 years. Additionally, Sasse, Toomey, Murkowski and Romney MIGHT have the courage and fortitude to make this threat to McConnell, especially if things excessively escalate again prior to the inauguration. The loss of 5 Senate additional seats should frighten McConnell a lot, should it not?

Is it possible the only thing stopping McConnell is that he thinks he doesn’t have 18 votes to convict right now? He may remind his fellow senators, with our help, that if things get really bad and we make it through, some complicit senators may find themselves unseated by the new senate leadership for abetting sedition.

Cyntoia Brown's Life Sentence Commuted by Tennessee Governor

rhetoricus

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday January 07, 2019 · 9:47 AM PST

2019/01/07 · 09:47

In December, Brown, a victim of child sex trafficking, was looking at 51 years for murder.

Tennessee’s governor, Bill Haslam, today granted executive clemency to Cyntoia Brown.

Thank God.

Background:

Brown will be granted parole supervision Aug. 7, 2019 after having served 15 years in prison. Brown was sentenced to life in prison for the 2004 Nashville killing of the man who had bought her for sex. She was, appallingly, tried as an adult, despite being 16 at the time and beneath the age of sexual consent for anyone outside her age range. (Making her an even clearer victim of rape.)

Gov. Haslam said his decision to grant Brown clemency comes after "careful consideration of what is a tragic and complex case."

According to a release, Brown was trapped in prostitution and a victim of child sex trafficking at the time when she shot and killed Jimmy Allen.

Nashville mayor’s statement this morning:

I am deeply grateful to Governor Haslam for his decision to commute the sentence of Cyntoia Brown today. He has yet again demonstrated that mercy, redemption and forgiveness have an important place in our democracy and criminal justice system... This is a great day for social justice and our city

Brown earned her associate degree through the Lipscomb LIFE program with a 4.0 GPA, all while behind bars. She is also expected to earn her bachelor's degree later this year.

Confirming Kavanaugh Is About One Thing. Lifting the President and All His Cronies Above the Law

rhetoricus

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday September 30, 2018 · 11:18 AM PDT

2018/09/30 · 11:18

Screen_shot_2018-09-30_at_11.08.21_AM.png — All of them.

A pattern of sexual assault may be the upsetting item before us. The loss of reproductive rights may be assured with any conservative on the ticket. But Kavanaugh is special for the entrenched depth of his venality and corruption: his willingness to lie, torture and twist the Constitution on behalf of the powerful in his party. This is why they need him and no one else. He is the surest route to making Trump our new mad king, and rendering the Mueller investigation quaint.

We already know that Kavanaugh believes that any GOP president should be above any kind of investigation, regardless of obvious criminal behavior. But it’s worse than that. At stake in Gamble vs. US No 17-646, on the October SCOTUS docket, is the “separate sovereigns” exception to double jeopardy. “Separate sovereigns” means that even if a president issues a blanket pre-emptive pardon for, say, all his cronies (and even himself), none would escape state crime charges if they were to be applicable and brought.

An overturn of “separate sovereigns” would not just make it impossible to charge someone with a state crime if the same charge had been levied, and a jury impaneled, at a federal level. It would mean that any blanket, even pre-emptive, pardon would also sweepingly apply to any possible state charge, now or in the future.

With an overturn of “separate sovereigns,” we could become a mafia state overnight, with whole swathes of the president’s worst criminal cohorts suddenly and permanently elevated above the law. The law would exist only to serve Trump and anyone pulling his strings. We would become Russia-lite. Our *only* recourse would be elections, and a whole lot of trust in the voting mechanisms that even the Wall Street Journal warns us are vulnerable (read: certain to fall prey to) hacking attacks. (Why, again, were GOP Senators in Russia talking to Putin in on Trump’s behalf in August?)

Keep your eye on the ball, friends. Kavanaugh may well have had good reason to act as arrogantly as he did, and to feel confident enough to threaten his interviewers with “reaping the whirlwind.”

Sessions About to Get The Axe

rhetoricus

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday January 06, 2018 · 11:53 PM PST

2018/01/06 · 23:53

Screen_shot_2018-01-06_at_11.05.59_PM.png — Ditched.

After launching his latest irresistibly mockable Tweet-decoys to keep us occupied, Dear Leader has scurried off to an all-hands-on-deck meeting of Absolutely Everyone Important in his administration at Camp David this weekend to tear into the Halloween bag of investigative loot they just bullied out of the DOJ.

Thus armed, The ‘Resident, the Vice ‘Resident, his Chief of Staff, Director of Legislative Affairs, Director of Political Affairs, 5 Assistants to the ‘Resident including Nazi Zombie-Borg Stephen Miller, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, Speaker Ryan, Majority Whips Cornyn & Scalise, House Majority Leader McCarthy, The Secretaries of State, Defense, Homeland Security, Education, CIA, Office of Management & Budget, EPA, Transportation have all been summoned to an apocalyptically evil Camp David slumber party to choreograph the moves and messaging that will set loose the final disemboweling of the investigation into Russian Asse(t)s d’Orange.

Screen_shot_2018-01-07_at_9.14.28_AM.png

Every swamp rat, snake, leech and ‘gator of consequence has been outfitted in swamp-monster footie pajamas for this all-nighter.

All except one. Attorney General Beauregard Sessions. For some reason, the twisted Keebler elf wasn’t invited.

Can you guess why?

After the third GOP in Congress has called for Sessions’ resignation, and after Lindsey Graham has jettisoned all pretense of protecting the Russia probe, after GOP’s in Congress have recommended Chris Steele for criminal prosecution, after the DOJ has been ordered to re-investigate the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s emails, Congress has signaled their go-ahead to Putin’s Chief Stooge to clear the way for a new Attorney General who can neuter Rosenstein and gut Mueller’s investigation once and for all.

As a final ironic coup de grace, Il Douche might even use Sessions’ perjury to Congress about meeting with Russians as a basis for giving him the axe.

So now we know it’s coming. What are we gonna do about it?

"What If Mueller Proves His Case, and It Doesn't Matter?"

rhetoricus

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday November 03, 2017 · 8:41 AM PDT

2017/11/03 · 08:41

Screen_shot_2017-11-03_at_8.27.30_AM.png — What if there is no longer any evidentiary standard that could overcome the influence of right-wing media?

Vox lays out the bones of what it calls a “deep epistemic breach,” wherein the always-voting base responsible for electing Republicans has gleefully colonized The UpsideDown. They co-exist beside us in a dark, cold, warped realm in which the natural laws upholding reality have no bearing—*at all.* This crisis is

a split not just in what we value or want, but in who we trust, how we come to know things, and what we believe we know — what we believe exists, is true, has happened and is happening… [a] rejection of the mainstream institutions devoted to gathering and disseminating knowledge (journalism, science, the academy) — the ones society has appointed as referees in matters of factual dispute.

In other words, truth is what cynical FAUX-Rubes and Russia-backed shitlords tell them it is.

In this brave new world that

rejects the very idea of neutral, binding arbiters; there is only Us and Them, only a zero-sum contest for resources... the systematic conflation of what is true with what is good for the tribe,

the orange-stained Tweet-sharting is starting to look strategic, and the White House troll is starting to look a lot less idiot and a lot more savant. Groomed for office for decades by Roy Cohn and Roger Stone in strategic disinformation and “the politics of polarization,” DJT tested the ground with birtherism, and successfully left a plurality of Republican voters, as the Vox article notes, either unsure or firmly convinced that Obama is a Kenyan-born impostor.

The idea now is not just to get the base to digest increasingly violent, inane, twisted garbage without vomiting. It’s to turn them into ravening disinformation-tweakers. It’s to get them to crave lie-driven political sadism like meth, and to cook it up, serve it and sell it themselves.

The both-siderist mainstream media played a key role in letting it get to this point, of course. And now their desperate efforts to re-establish a truth signal, to get back to the facts and “real journalism” is getting lost in the noise their ratings-driven cowardice helped to generate:

As Brian Beutler wrote in a scathing piece recently, the mainstream media has never learned to deal with the right-wing bubble — it has not learned how not to take bad-faith lies seriously.

Part of it is on us, too. For years we have argued with these people on the premise that showing their nonsense to be nonsense would lead to their defeat. But they know instinctively what we have steadfastly refused to see--that their victory isn’t in being right. It’s being openly, proudly, savagely wrong and still remaining more powerful than those in possession of the facts and the truth.

From this (ad)vantage point, Bannon et al. need not badger Republicans into a diversionary parallel investigation into Uranium-One or some other concocted horseshit. They only need the WSJ Editorial page, FOX News, Breibart, Kelly, most radio talk show hosts, and half the GOP in Congress to do what they do daily, and to achieve the same victory they have with climate change: sow enough significant doubt to stymie action:

They may say Mueller is compromised. It’s a Hillary/Deep State plot. There’s nothing wrong with colluding with Russia in this particular way. Dems did it first. All of the above. Whatever. Say the entire right-wing media machine kicks to life and dismisses the whole thing as a scam — and conservatives believe them.

We already know this is the play. We also know the only “facts” GOP politicians will publicly understand are those that will keep the Koch/Mercer cash flowing and that will keep this increasingly brain-fiending, zombified Cult45 horde from hitting them with a primary challenge.

Meanwhile, “principled” Republicans, few and weak-tea, are not standing up and fighting. They’re retreating. They speak out only upon their craven departure, and in safe red districts, cede ground to yet more scum and villainy who will fall upon the bleeding prey that is our democracy.

We may very well be looking at a country with a successfully indicted president who can’t be removed.

Pie Fight Fundraiser: Price Menu

rhetoricus

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday April 24, 2017 · 5:42 PM PDT

2017/04/24 · 17:42

Screen_shot_2017-04-24_at_1.51.59_PM.png — It's a wonderful day for pie

Every day is Pi Day on Daily Kos.

You say you can quit anytime you want to, but we both know that’s a lie.

That’s ok. No judgment. You don’t need to stop throwing pie cold-turkey. All we ask is that while you savor your pie, you help out some less fortunate folks who maybe can’t afford pie, or can’t spare the time and energy for pie-throwing because their lives have become an ongoing Dolt45-instigated emergency.

Below is a handy suggested fee/donation menu for Daily Kos’ favorite pie flavor comment selections. (Please feel free to offer menu updates and suggested pricing.)

Now with delicious updates!

1. “Oligarch/Corporate Shill/Wall Street Sellout” Pie

Per-comment price: $1-$5 to Common Cause or CREW, or 1 phone call to MOC (Member of Congress) in support of investigating Dolt45’s tax returns and violation of the Emoluments Clause.

2. “Under the Bus” Pie

Per-comment price: $1-$5 to NRDC Sustainable Cities Project, or 1 phone call to MOC (Member of Congress) in support of green and sustainable public transit in your area.

3. “Tone Deaf” Pie

Per-comment price: $1-$5 to NEA-Music (or local equivalent), or 1 phone call to MOC in support of NEA funding.

4. “Purity Test” Pie

Per-comment price: $1-$5 to the Nature Conservancy Water Protection, or 1 phone call to MOC in protest of the law allowing coal ash dumping in watersheds, and to demand proactive action on lead poisoning in municipal water.

5. “PUMA/BoBcat” Pie

Per-comment price: $1-$5 to World Wildlife Fund—Western Big Cats Adoption, or 1 phone call to MOC in protest of the law permitting the slaughter of hibernating animals.

6. “Mello Bern” Pie (aka “Hill Manchin” Pie)

Per-comment price: $1-$5 to Planned Parenthood, or 1 phone call to MOC in protest of attacks on the ACA, and budget cuts to women’s health programs.

7. “WWC Favoritism” Pie

Per-comment price: $1-$5 to the Immigrant Defense Project, or 1 phone call to MOC to protest unconstitutional ICE raids and/or #fuckingwall.

8. “Defending Deplorables” Pie

Per-comment price: $1-$5 to GLAAD, or 1 phone call to MOC to support trans equality and access to public accommodations.

9. “Join the Party or FOAD” Pie

Per-comment price: $1-$5 to state party coffers, or 1 organizing phone call on behalf of a state or district candidate (consider Andrew Janz--challenging Devin Nunes!, Darlene McDonald of Utah (yessss), Aja Brown, Vi Lyles, Yvette Simpson, and Roger Dean Huffstetler).

10. “Rust Belt” Pie

Per-comment price: $1-$5 to NDRC, which fights gerrymandering in key districts, or 1 phone call to MOC protest racist, unconstitutional gerrymandering and voter suppression policies and to demand a national law to fix it.

11. “Privilege” Pie

Per-comment price: $1-$5 to #B lackLivesMatter, or 1 phone call to MOC to demand a national Truth and Reconciliation process that directly acknowledges and addresses institutional racism at all its levels, and that puts into motion genuinely affirmative and reparative policies to end white racism and to rebuild the communities harmed by it.

12. “It’s the Economy, Stupid” Pie

Per-comment price: $1-$5 to End Citizens United, or 1 phone call to MOC to demand a constitutional amendment getting corrupting money out of politics.

CNN: Comey to confirm whether FBI is investigating DJT ties to Russia

rhetoricus

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday March 14, 2017 · 8:56 PM PDT

2017/03/14 · 20:56

Screen_shot_2017-03-14_at_8.47.10_PM.png — "We'd like you to stay on. Really."

FBI Director James Comey told Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday that he will confirm tomorrow whether the FBI is probing a connection between President Donald Trump and Russian officials

Whether? If the FBI isn’t looking into this thermonuclear meltdown with the Chernobyl-size rancid cloud spreading across the horizon, then who is left to investigate, given the complete stoogidity of Congress?

And if Comey confirms an investigation, what is to stop him from getting Bharara-ed? (Aren’t FBI investigations supposed to be kept quiet unless and until someone is charged?)

Stay tuned.

"Voting for a Woman Will Turn Your Daughters Into Lesbians"

rhetoricus

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday June 05, 2016 · 11:55 AM PDT

2016/06/05 · 11:55

Screen_shot_2016-06-05_at_11.36.35_AM.png

I just wanted to add this to the many excellent reasons to elect President Hillary Clinton in November (if not earlier). As if you didn’t have countless ones already.

Even if you don’t or didn’t support Clinton in the primary, Hillary is clearly the superior choice for the Fall—that’s just a gimme. There are many well-documented, eloquent diaries on this site detailing multiple reasons why. (If all else fails, watch a Trump speech. That’s extreme medicine, I know, but trust me, it works.)

But this added perk? Awesomesauce! Thank you, Pastor Swanson, for informing a grateful nation about this added advantage in electing Hillary Clinton for president.

“Because, if you vote for her, you’re effectively sentencing your daughters to become lesbians someday. That’s what Hillary Clinton is doing, her entire policy is focused on empowering women and shifting the balance of power in America from men to women. And if you think about it, lesbianism is the perfect way to do that. Well, other than the fact that she herself is straight. Or is she?” --Pastor Swanson

Whose life hasn’t been made better by a lesbian or many? :)

#OneMoreReasonToElectHillary

Disruptors Disrupt. We're Surprised?

rhetoricus

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday August 08, 2015 · 7:38 PM PDT

2015/08/08 · 19:38

When I was a flying-under-the-radar queer teen, Act Up was going around everywhere disrupting, raising hell, pissing people off and crashing political rallies in their near-desperate effort to get action on the AIDS epidemic that was shaping up into a mass extinction of gay males. Act Up was rude and overwrought and full of itself and successfully fulfilled every negative stereotype of what an hysterical queen looked like in person. Oh, and Act Up didn't give even one micro-fuck about anyone's preferred candidate, or the "big picture." They really made me ashamed to be queer. And they were absolutely right to do what they did. Because they got results.

rhetoricus

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday August 21, 2012 · 4:37 PM PDT

2012/08/21 · 16:37

It's time to stick them with this label and not to let up. They never gave up calling us the DemocRAT party. They need their platform name to remind everybody, every day, including GOP women, what value they place on women's bodies, their safety, their integrity, and their lives. These rape-enablers are not getting rid of Todd Akin. Nope, they're doubling down with the thermonuclear idiocy that is Rep. Steve King.

They always double down on the crazy because it moves the Overton Window. Now we're no longer talking about abortion on demand, which was once the law of the land, but we're having to fight for it in cases of rape, for the love of Christ.

rhetoricus

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday November 15, 2011 · 1:11 AM PST

2011/11/15 · 01:11

If your local Occupy is anything like ours, it’s been challenged by harsh weather, police harassment, city ordinances, liberal armchair quarterbacks, endless right-wing attacks in the local paper, high turnover, and unintentional but sometimes overwhelming behavioral disruption surrounding the most ignored and under-served of the 99%.

If your Occupation is anything like ours, your General Assemblies have struggled to maintain focus and order amid inexperienced communicators, too many fires to put out, too many differing viewpoints, and distractions stemming from infiltration, and the ravages of addiction and poor impulse control. A week ago, we thought we were going to implode, that our own Occupation was going to tear itself apart from within.

Right when we were thinking of hanging it up, we made a desperate move and called for help. We reached high—we appealed directly to the creator of the Formal (Values-Based) Consensus model upon which most Occupation processes are based. We asked for him to come out to the left coast from Baltimore and personally coach us in consensus-based strategies in dealing with the problems plaguing our Occupation and our GA. And by God, he did. In a couple of days, our GA’s became productive, our mission and values grew tight, and everyone had new hope. We have a sharp new set of skills, and a much deeper understanding of Values Based Consensus process, thanks to its founder.

His name is CT Lawrence Butler. He also is the co-originator of Food Not Bombs.

rhetoricus

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday October 01, 2011 · 1:34 PM PDT

2011/10/01 · 13:34

Our good friend Plutocracy Files has suggested that the bloggers, academics, and activists who spend a lot of time wonking it up and focused on communications should help the Wall Street protesters with some messaging.

Well here goes. The one message that will carry ALL the rest is:

Get. The Money. OUT. Of Politics.

It's simple. It's understandable. And it gets at the heart of everything.

A democracy for sale has been at the root of all our tribulation. It's the REASON people have been thrown out of their homes, cheated out of fair pay, forced to watch their jobs go to Mexico and China, to clean up Big Oil's pollution, to bail out the banksters and send their kids to die so that corporate thugs can expand their empire.

Newer
Older

RSS

How Many GOP Senators Threatening Party-Switch Would Persuade McConnell to Convict & Remove?

Cyntoia Brown's Life Sentence Commuted by Tennessee Governor

Confirming Kavanaugh Is About One Thing. Lifting the President and All His Cronies Above the Law

Sessions About to Get The Axe

"What If Mueller Proves His Case, and It Doesn't Matter?"

Pie Fight Fundraiser: Price Menu

CNN: Comey to confirm whether FBI is investigating DJT ties to Russia

"Voting for a Woman Will Turn Your Daughters Into Lesbians"

Disruptors Disrupt. We're Surprised?

The Rape-ublican Platform

The Magic of the Values-Based Consensus Model

#OccupyWallStreet Core Msg: "Get. The Money. Out. Of Politics."