Okay Gnusies, it is time for some self care. The lying lairs in the lying liars White House are really going overboard. They lie so much I do not know how they all keep track of their lies. It is like the sport of lying, who can make up the most lies. In fact it is like the lying Olympics of lying and they are all trying to outdo each other for the gold medal. It is not only the lying but the blatant disregard for any of our Constitutional laws and norms. I mean did you read what McTurtle said, come on, just flabbergasting. When all of the corruption comes to full view, no matter when that is and it will come out, I do not think there will be a rethuglican left standing.
On to the self care. I found this website called The Daily Good and after exploring a bit I came across a rather old yet relevant post Gandhi's 10 Rules for Changing the World. A couple of thoughts from this article hit particularly close to home for me, as my emotions tend to go from anger to hope and back to anger and then hope quite frequently lately. I am sure I am not alone in these feelings and I do not want to feel this way nor do I want you to.
So to share a few tidbits I found to be uplifting:
What you feel and how you react to something is always up to you. There may be a “normal” or a common way to react to different things. But that’s mostly just all it is.
You can choose your own thoughts, reactions and emotions to pretty much everything. You don’t have to freak out, overreact of even react in a negative way. Perhaps not every time or instantly. Sometimes a knee-jerk reaction just goes off. Or an old thought habit kicks in.
And as you realize that no-one outside of yourself can actually control how you feel you can start to incorporate this thinking into your daily life and develop it as a thought habit. A habit that you can grow stronger and stronger over time. Doing this makes life a whole lot easier and more pleasurable.
One more:
The best way that I have found to overcome the inner resistance that often stops us from taking action is to stay in the present as much as possible and to be accepting.
Why? Well, when you are in the present moment you don’t worry about the next moment that you can’t control anyway. And the resistance to action that comes from you imagining negative future consequences – or reflecting on past failures – of your actions loses its power. And so it becomes easier to both take action and to keep your focus on this moment and perform better.
We cannot control the marmalade arse and his minions. We cannot control their lies and their cruelty. We also cannot control the speed of investigations, the actions of our Dem’s, or the processes that all of that involves. What we can control is how we react and act. We must act with purpose. We gain strength from each other. Throw away the negative and embrace the positive. There has been many bruises in our history, yet those who have caused this have ultimately been shunned. Our voices and our votes will win. Our positive attitudes and activism will triumph.
Onward!
Speaking of the turtle in the Senate:
AND YET SHE PERSISTED In Reading Mueller Report Right To Mitch McConnell's Dumb Face
Y'all hear about the shit Mitch McConnell pulled this morning? He stood up on the Senate floor to deliver one of his trademark lie-filled hypocritical bullshit speeches, this time about the end of the Mueller investigation, and boy did he deliver! His mantra was "case closed," because he assumes (correctly) most Americans haven't read the Mueller Report, and don't know he's lying (incorrectly!) when he says it exonerated Donald Trump. He angrily shouted at Democrats for "relitigating 2016," because he says that's what the investigation is really about for those who lost, so we wouldn't have to "come to terms with the American people's choice" in the presidential race. (You know, the one Donald Trump lost by three million popular votes -- that means "actual human votes" -- and barely won because of three states in the Rust Belt, the very same ones Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort passed secret internal polling on to a Russian spy repeatedly in the months before the election, with the general expectation it would end up in the hands of the guy known as "Putin's favorite oligarch.")
After McConnell shut his fucking yap, Chuck Schumer got up and corrected the record, reminding us how McConnell and his colleagues have spent the last several years actively aiding and abetting the Russian crimes against the United States.
But even better than what Schumer said in response to McConnell is what Senator Elizabeth Warren did, which was to spend 40 minutes on the Senate floor reading the Mueller Report into the record -- especially the good parts! -- and also reading aloud that awesome letter signed by approximately three million former prosecutors, which says that if Trump wasn't currently being protected by DoJ policy, he would have already been indicted for multiple felonies for obstruction of justice.
She is one tough woman!
Speaking of those prosecutors:
Yup, 650 and counting.
Boo Hoo barrstard:
Nadler moving forward with Barr contempt vote amid DOJ talks
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said on Tuesday that his committee is “still scheduled” to vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress on Wednesday, amid negotiations with the Justice Department over a subpoena for all of special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings and evidence.
Nadler’s pronouncement to reporters came after talks with DOJ appeared to be falling short of resolving the dispute. Another committee member, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), said “all systems go” when asked whether the panel still plans to vote on a contempt citation for Barr.
Beam me up Scotty!
Whatever side of the fence you reside on on this issue they must keep this on the table and in the news:
Pelosi Issues Impeachment Warning as White House Escalates Fight
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned that the Trump administration’s defiance of subpoenas could be an impeachable offense, even as the top White House lawyer instructed his predecessor not to comply with a subpoena from House Democrats.
Trump and his Republican allies are trying to move past the Mueller probe, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calling it “case closed” in a floor speech Tuesday.
But Pelosi made clear that Democrats plan to press their multiple investigations of the president, accusing Trump of “goading" House Democrats into trying to remove him from office.
One of the articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon was based on ignoring subpoenas from Congress, the speaker said Tuesday during an event at Cornell University.
The House is justified in seeking the full Mueller report "in order to exercise all of the powers of Congress, including impeachment,” Pelosi said at Cornell.
Rep. Elijah Cummings is not taking this sitting down:
House Oversight Committee threatens salaries of Interior staff who block interviews
The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday threatened to withhold the salaries of Interior Department officials who have blocked lawmakers from interviewing agency employees about whether Secretary David Bernhardt was complying with recordkeeping laws.
The committee’s threat ratchets up the pressure on Interior in the latest skirmish between House Democrats and the Trump administration over the lawmakers' complaints that agencies are withholding documents and ignoring requests to send senior officials to testify before Congress.
“Please be advised that any official at the Department who ‘prohibits or prevents’ or ‘attempts or threatens to prohibit or prevent’ any officer or employee of the Federal Government from speaking with the Committee could have his or her salary withheld pursuant to section 713 of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act,” Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said in a prepared statement.
Cummings also complained in the letter to Cole Rojewski, Interior's director of congressional and legislative affairs, that the agency "does not appear to recognize that Congress is an independent and co-equal branch of government" that is empowered to conduct its own investigations.
Oh yeah, he went there!
Well, well, well, and my, my, my, apparently Buzzfeed news has received a different redacted version of the Mueller report due to an ongoing FOIA case. Now it is not the full report either but it is one step closer to shining light on why items were redacted. An excerpt of the Buzzfeed article from one of me favorite sites boingboing.net:
The copy of Mueller’s report that Attorney General William Barr released earlier this month contained redactions that were labeled according to one of four categories: harm to ongoing matter, meaning investigations that are still ongoing; grand jury material, which is secret under federal rules and exempt from disclosure; classified information; and personal privacy.
Before the report was released, BuzzFeed News filed its public records request, as well as the related lawsuit, to compel the Department of Justice to explain any redactions in accordance with FOIA's nine exemptions. Each of those exemptions spell out the type of information the government can withhold and the harm that would result if it was disclosed.
Earlier this month, during a hearing in the case, US District Judge Reggie Walton said Barr had “created an environment that has caused a significant part of the American public to be concerned about whether there will be full transparency."
BuzzFeed News and EPIC will now have the opportunity to challenge the legitimacy of the redactions and argue before Walton that overwhelming public interest compels the disclosure of additional information in the report.
Bahahahahaha, there is not enough baha’s:
NYT: Tax papers suggest Trump had $1 billion in business losses over a decade
Shocking right? Not. I know this is news is all over the “nets” but I included it in case anyone missed and because bahahaha.
President Trump’s businesses lost nearly $1.2 billion between 1985 and 1994, according to The New York Times, citing IRS transcripts.
In 1990 and 1991 alone, according to the Times, Trump’s business losses exceeded $250 million each year, more than twice those of the nearest taxpayer in the IRS information for the two years.
The documents indicate he lost so much money during that decade that he avoided paying income tax for eight of the 10 years…
The period from 1985 to 1994 for which the Times obtained tax information includes the year when Trump published his best-selling book "Trump: The Art of the Deal" as well as years when several Trump hotels declared bankruptcy.
So, so much winning.
The NRA, they keep winning too:
The NRA's Internal Chaos May Cripple Its Lobbying Power in 2020
Every election cycle, the NRA uses its massive financial and political power to support the worst possible candidates and the worst possible causes. This is an uncomfortable reality of modern politics and the hold the gun lobby has over hundreds of politicians across the country, but it is not an unchangeable situation.
The good news, per a new report by the Guardian today, is that the NRA is currently so much of a shitshow it may not be able to be on top of its game in 2020. Thanks to a chaotic year of infighting and, crucially, a probe by the New York attorney general, the Guardian notes that the lobbying group’s immense political power may not be what it once was.
So the tangerine tool may not be able to count on the money funneled through Russia to the NRA in 2020, too bad so sad.
In other words, the more headlines you see about financial chaos at the NRA, the better. Every dollar it can’t spend on 2020 is a win for any candidate who wishes for a less-violent America.
Can we talk about NY for a bit? Really it may be the true downfall of the orange overlord from KFCsteros:
The thorn in Trump's side: New York attorney general leads barrage of investigations
While running to be New York’s attorney general, Letitia James did not mince words about Donald Trump. She called him an “illegitimate president” who should be removed from office, and vowed to use every legal avenue to investigate Trump and his business dealings.
Since taking office at the beginning of the year, she has toned down the rhetoric but she has let subpoenas do the talking instead – pursuing a barrage of investigations and emerging as a major thorn in the side of Trump and his political allies and notching up successes where even Congress has been blocked.
“We follow the facts and the evidence wherever it leads, and no one is above the law,” James said last week at her lower Manhattan office. “Including powerful organizations such as the NRA. Including the most powerful individual in this country, the president of these United States. It’s really about the rule of law.”
Unlike similar subpoenas from Congress, which Trump and his children sued the bank to block, there has been no effort so far to quash the attorney general’s subpoenas, and the bank has begun turning over documents, James said. She hopes to review Trump’s tax returns as well.
Oh, that is not all:
Uh Oh Donald, More Subpoenas From SDNY On The Inauguration
Okay this is not NYS but still.
Yesterday—after both strategic hire AG Bill ‘Low’ Barr and living typo Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told high-ranking members of Congress to bite them—the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York climbed out its hole, did not see its shadow and declared that we will have 6 more months of subpoenaing Candidate Stupid’s 2016 Goat Rodeo Inaugural Committee.
Go read, it is short and that is why I did not post more here.
One more NY:
New York Senate expected to pass bill allowing lawmakers to see Trump's state tax returns
The New York State Senate is expected to pass a bill on Wednesday that would allow congressional committees to request President Trump's New York state tax returns.
The legislation would loosen restrictions surrounding private tax information and allow the commissioner of the New York Department of Taxation and Finance to release state tax returns requested by the leader of one of three U.S. congressional committees.
Tee hee hee dumpster.
Okay, let’s see what other good news is out there.
'Bee corridor' planted in London to boost insect numbers
A seven-mile long "bee corridor" is being planted in a bid to boost the number of pollinating insects.
The wildflower meadows will be put in place in 22 of Brent Council's parks in north London.
A recent study blamed the decline of wildflowers as a factor behind the drop in pollinating insect numbers in the UK since the 1980s.
Councillor Krupa Sheth said bees were "so important for pollinating the crops that provide the food that we eat".
Great news about plastics:
Breakthrough discovery: New plastic could be 'holy grail' of recycling
Humans produce 300 million tons of plastic waste every year – which is roughly equivalent to the combined weight of all humans living right now. But a new discovery offers hope, and could revolutionize the way we deal with plastic.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have designed a plastic that can be recycled over and over again, and turned into new materials of any color, shape, or form. They are calling it polydiketoenamine or PDK, and this new plastic can be disassembled all the way down to the molecular level.
I say let’s legalize and treat, go Denver one more step:
Denver is voting to decriminalize hallucinogenic mushrooms
As criminal penalties for drug use fall across the country, Denver could be setting another first.
"Magic mushrooms" are now on the ballot in the city.
Denver will vote Tuesday to sort out two ballot questions, including Initiated Ordinance 301, or the Denver Psilocybin Mushroom Initiative.
The ordinance's text seeks to "deprioritize, to the greatest extent possible" criminal penalties imposed by the City of Denver "for the personal use and personal possession of psilocybin mushrooms."
A range of mushroom species naturally contain the compound psilocybin, which has hallucinogenic properties. The US Department of Justice lists psilocybin as a Schedule I controlled substance, meaning official federal policy states the fungi have no medicinal properties.
So although it doesn't legalize the mushrooms, I-301 would "prohibit the city from spending resources to impose criminal penalties" on those who have them.
When Mom Skipped Her Commencement to Attend Her Son’s, College Surprised Her With Degree
In a video that is now going viral, a dedicated mother was surprised with her college degree during a commencement ceremony that was not her own.
Amazing right?
The weekly Indivisible guide:
Your 5 weekly to-dos
- Demand that your MoC oppose giving Trump’s deportation machine more money. The administration doesn’t need billions more in DHS funding for detentions, deportations, and immigration enforcement agents. Your MoC should say no to Trump’s supplemental funding request.
- It’s time for your MoCs to support an impeachment inquiry.Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced H.Res. 257 a little over a month ago to open an impeachment inquiry in the House Judiciary Committee in response to Trump’s obstruction of justice and corruption. You can write a letter to your MoC, or make a call, to make sure that your MoC knows you want them to support beginning the process of impeaching Trump.
- Tell your members of Congress to act on H.R. 6, the Dream and Promise Act. House Democrats need to pass H.R. 6 without delay, and without watering it down. Members of the House Judiciary Committee in particular need to hear from you that protecting immigrants is a top priority.
- Make sure your MoC supports H.R. 1046 to reduce prescription drug prices. House Democratic leadership is working with the White House on bad proposals that would not adequately address the crisis of high drug prices (like narrow powers for Medicare to negotiate some drug prices, or arbitration between the government and Big Pharma).Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s bill, H.R. 1046, would guarantee that Medicare could negotiate prices for all drugs while protecting patient’s access to their medications. Call and make sure your MoC knows that the Doggett bill is the best option for bringing drug prices down.
- Sign up early for the June National Call. Mark June 6 for the monthly Indivisible National Activist Call! All group leaders, group members, and other Indivisible activists are welcome.
Follow Yosef52 for all the ways we can win in 2020 and beyond!
On the other hand there is this:
Just had to end with a smile and a chuckle.
You all know what to do from here…
Peace!