Good Wednesday Good Newsies!
Well the news has left us a lot to digest. Where to begin. Let us start with what a bad day it was for Devin, Mick, Rudy, Mike the pence, and although I have yet to read the whole report I am sure Bill the barstard, Mike the pompeo and Ricky P were none to, hey I am having a great day, either. But the bonus is knowing the meltdown the orange squatter in chief must be experiencing. Makes me smile a bit.
In my honest opinion at this point I do not care about poll numbers, Senate support or shall we say the Senate rethuglican criminality, the MSM, the pundits or just about anyone else on the national stage stating this could hurt our chances in 2020 or running to the hilltops to shout bothsiderism. Our Democratic leadership in the House is doing the right thing, by the book and in a manner unknown to the current, I am going to use NewsCorpse’s title here, the Republican Nationalist Party (RNP from here on out), and with the utmost professionalism. I am so proud of Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, okay all of them, I could just bust open, okay that’s gross, but damn I am PROUD!
We can hash over the ultimate outcome, we will get them out one way or another! But, when the children of the future read the history of this era, the people who put forward the effort to save our country will be remembered as hero’s. The RNP will hopefully be in the dust bin of that history.
Onward!
The tangerine tool lost in so many delicious ways, it is hard to know where to start.
Let’s start with this:
Trump Goes 0 for 4,792 With The Courts, Declares FLAWLESS VICTORY!
Trump v. Deutsche Bank and Capital One
This is the case where the House Financial Services and Intelligence committees subpoenaed Trump and his businesses' financials, and the president flipped his shit. Strangely, SDNY Judge Edgardo Ramos was unpersuaded by Trump's very serious legal arguments that OVERSIGHT IS ILLEGAL and DEMOCRATS ARE MEAN and NO LEGISLATIVE PURPOSE and something something Right to Financial Privacy Act, which ... does not apply to Congress, womp womp.
The Second Circuit wasn't buying it either, holding that the risk of distracting Trump from his very important Twitter duties is outweighed by Congress's obligation to do its damn job.
The Committees' interests in pursuing their constitutional legislative function is a far more significant public interest than whatever public interest inheres in avoiding the risk of a Chief Executive's distraction arising from disclosure of documents reflecting his private financial transactions.
House Judiciary Committee v. McGahn
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has had enough of the DOJ's bullshit. She's not giving the Justice Department any more time to dick around over Don McGahn's testimony, and their argument that the House can't effectively question McGahn without getting the underlying Mueller grand jury materials seems to have pushed Her Honor right over the edge. It's not every day that a federal judge says a Justice Department brief is "disingenuous, and therefore, is unpersuasive."
[I]t is indisputable that the Judiciary Committee has consistently sought access to materials and testimony with respect to its investigation of the circumstances that underlie the Mueller Report, and it is DOJ's appeal that has created a delay in the execution of Chief Judge Howell's order requiring that unredacted copies of the grand jury materials be turned over to the Committee. Thus, DOJ's argument here that any further delay will not be harmful to the Judiciary Committee because, in essence, DOJ has already harmed the Committee's interests by successfully delaying its access to other materials strikes this Court as an unacceptable mischaracterization of the injury at issue.
In 3, 2, 1 this will be appealed to the Supreme Court. Wonder how the Chief Justice wants to go down in history…
Before we move on to the damning report and the response to said report, let us enjoy a look at the RNP excuse for “the chosen one’s” innocence.
The Most Ridiculous Ways the GOP Tried to Defend Trump in Its Impeachment Report
As was the case throughout their recognized time during the hearings and subsequent appearances on cable news, Intelligence Committee Republicans relied on flimsy — at times comically so — defenses of the president in the report they submitted Tuesday.
Here are some of the lowlights:
Security aid to Ukraine and a White House invitation to President Volodymyr Zelesnky were withheld out of concerns over corruption
There was no quid pro quo
It wasn’t clear what investigation Trump was referring to in his July 26th call with Sondland
The whistleblower’s complaint misrepresented Trump’s July 25th call with Zelenksy
Trump says he’s innocent, so…
Yes, “criminal says he’s not a criminal” is what it’s come to for Republicans grasping for ways to defend the president. There’s even an entire section in the report titled: President Trump has publicly and repeatedly stated that he did not Pressure President Zelensky to investigate his political rival.
Well, there is that, sigh.
And the “king of the orange only candy land” is on it.
Trump Ridiculed for Claiming Unnamed 'Legal Scholars' Praised Calls With Ukraine Leader as 'Absolutely Perfect'
President Donald Trump told reporters in London Tuesday that "legal scholars"—who Trump did not name—examined transcripts of his two phone conversations with Ukraine's leader and concluded they were "absolutely perfect calls," a story that was immediately ridiculed by academics and critics.
"You'll see there was absolutely nothing done wrong," Trump said during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. "They had legal scholars looking at the transcripts the other day and they said, 'These are absolutely perfect. Trump is right when he uses the word.'"
Joyce White Vance, a University of Alabama law professor and MSNBC contributor, urged reporters to "make Trump identify the legal scholars who reviewed the transcripts (plural!) and said they were 'absolutely perfect.'"
"Then those scholars should be interviewed," said Vance. "But I feel certain they don't exist."
Political scientist Miranda Yaver suggested Trump either completely fabricated the story or used the "legal scholar" label very loosely.
"Yeah, that's not how legal scholars talk. I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say he thinks that Jeannine Pirro is a legal scholar," tweeted Yaver, referring to the host of the Fox News show "Judge Jeanine."
Trump's remarks came a day before the House Judiciary Committee is set to hold its first public impeachment hearing.
On Monday, the Judiciary Committee released the names of the four legal scholars who will testify during Wednesday's hearing: Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School, Pamela Karlan of Standford Law School, Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina School of Law, and Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School.
Despite his repeated claims of unfairness and lack of due process, Trump declined an invitation to participate in the hearing.
So on to the report…
House Democrats vote to send impeachment report to Judiciary Committee
The House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines Tuesday night to approve a report that found evidence of President Donald Trump's misconduct and obstruction of Congress is "overwhelming."
The report,
released earlier Tuesday, will form the backbone of the impeachment proceedings against the President and charges that Trump's conduct toward Ukraine compromised national security
The vote will send the report to the House Judiciary Committee as that panel considers moving forward on articles of impeachment.
The 300-page report from the House Intelligence Committee sets the stage for the impeachment of a US president for just the third time in history. The report stops short of outright recommending impeachment, with House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff and the other committee chairs leading the inquiry said that was a decision Congress ultimately has to make.
But the report makes clear that's where Democrats are heading.
"I'm going to reserve any kind of a public judgment on that until I have a chance to consult with my colleagues, with our leadership," Schiff, a California Democrat, said when asked if there was evidence for impeachment. "As you can tell, I am gravely concerned that if we merely accept this that we invite not only further corruption of our elections by this President, but we also invite it of the next president."
The most damning sentence in the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment report
The House Intelligence Committee just released a 300-page report with the conclusions from its impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s actions involving Ukraine.
You can read the full report, and if you have the time and inclination, you should. Or you can read the much shorter executive summary.
But all you really need to read is this one sentence from the report, which encapsulates all of its major findings: “[T]he impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection.”
That’s it and that’s all.
About sums it up. Music break...see I have friends in low places but the diaper dear leader and his throng do not have real friends in low places they are just in low places, shart that is not funny at all.
Moving on to our favorite character here Devin the great and his cow and mom.
Devin Nunes Just Met You And This Is Crazy But Here's His Number CALL HIM MAYBE?
The House Intelligence Committee has released its preliminary report on Donald Trump's impeachment-worthy crimes in advance of tomorrow's first hearing in the House Judiciary Committee. Take five minutes and read all 300 pages of it!
One thing reporters noticed quickly is that the report includes call logs the committee subpoenaed that show that OH BOY, committee ranking member Devin Nunes sure has spent a lot of minutes on the phone with the co-conspirators in Trump's Ukraine scheme, including Chucklefuck Lev Parnas, who is under criminal indictment, and Rudy Giuliani, whose federal indictment just might be coming any day now, MAYBE ALLEGEDLY.
There are also lots of calls between Rudy Giuliani and Mick Mulvaney's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which you'll remember as the chop shop that chopped off Ukraine's military aid, which had already been appropriated by Congress, while Trump was committing bribery and extortion against Ukraine to pressure them into meddling in the 2020 election on his behalf.
In a press conference this afternoon, committee chair Adam Schiff lightly addressed the fact that maybe the guy who sits next to him in committee hearings and spews Russian propaganda might be in Big Trouble Mister, saying it's "deeply concerning that at a time when the President of the United States was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival, that there may be evidence that there were members of Congress complicit in that activity." Yeah, we'd say!
That is a Wonkette must read!
Want to read more about the cow/mom/CNN sueing arsehole who I hope to see wearing his favorite color, you know what it is I do not have to spell it out:
Dems' Impeachment Report Puts Devin Nunes in Middle of Trump's Ukraine Scandal
House Democrats’ new impeachment report reveals startling new details about one of President Trump’s chief Republican defenders in Congress: Rep. Devin Nunes.
The report lays out how Nunes held repeated phone calls with key players at the center of the Ukraine scandal, including indicted Soviet-born businessman Lev Parnas and Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, at key moments under investigation.
And Democrats brought receipts: In the form of phone records subpoenaed from AT&T.
Nunes’ calls with an accused felon wrapped up in Trump’s Ukraine scandal deepen questions about the congressman’s own involvement. Most pressing of all: Why didn’t he disclose his contacts with figures in the drama, despite presiding over last month’s impeachment hearings as the top-ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee?
Inquiring minds would like to know. I have to interject to say as much as I wish the idiot in the White House would go down, I mean way down, I want to see this stain on American history go to prison.
As we know the DOJ, I mean tRumps personal lawyer, has been grasping at straws to make the IG offices report of the FBI investigation into 2016 Russian election interference come to conclusions that will protect the supposed “king”. Yet that may not go so well for him, Ha:
State Dept. official rejects claims of Ukrainian election meddling
The State Department’s No. 3 official on Tuesday flatly rejected a conspiracy theory pushed by President Donald Trump and his personal attorney that it was Ukraine who systematically interfered in the 2016 election, not Russia.
In a Senate Foreign Relations hearing on U.S. policy toward Russia, David Hale, the department’s undersecretary for political affairs, succinctly summed up the findings of the U.S. intelligence community in response to questioning from the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Bob Menendez.
“Secretary Hale, did Russia interfere in the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump?” the New Jersey Democrat asked.
“Yes, the intelligence community assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at our presidential election,”
Welp, what is the Senate going to do now? GOTV. That is for us cause moscow mitch ain’t gonna do squat!
These are making me crazy, seriously I should ask them for acting classes:
Truly will they stand up? Nope.
Ahhh, now the reason for my headline which I feel is a STFU to all of these guilty parties.
In many ways the report was an homage to Miranda rights, in which a suspect is warned by law enforcement that "anything you say can -- and will -- be used against you."
Clearly, Trump and his allies did not heed this warning.
The report cites a series of public comments from Giuliani, including television interviews, comments to reporters and Twitter posts. Democrat used all of these comments to hammer Giuliani for "putting pressure on Ukraine to open investigations that would benefit his 2020 reelection campaign" and said they prove Giuliani was working for Trump's personal benefit.
"We're not meddling in an election, we're meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do," Giuliani told
The New York Times of his exploits in Ukraine, which was cited in the report.
Democrats also highlighted Giuliani's tweet that, "everything I did was to discover evidence to defend my client against false charges." He has repeated this throughout the investigation.
Mulvaney's words are also used in the report to support the notion that aid for Ukraine was tied to investigations. They referred to his
watershed press conference in October, where he brazenly admitted the quid pro quo and said the press should "get over it."
The report also points to Trump's own words to lay out the case that he did, in fact, want Zelensky to investigate the Bidens.
In the Trump-Zelensky call on July 25, Trump asked for "a favor" and went on to discuss the investigations into his political rivals, including the Bidens.
"The call record alone is stark evidence of misconduct," the preface of the report said.
This:
'I'm not going to take any sh--': Nadler girds for battle
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler had a blunt message as he privately addressed Democrats the day before his panel assumes a starring role in the impeachment inquiry.
“I’m not going to take any shit,” Nadler said in a closed-door prep session Tuesday morning — a rare cuss word from the lawyerly Manhattan Democrat that prompted some lawmakers to sit up in their chairs, according to multiple people in the room.
Damn straight!
Had to include this cause he is such an honest tRump supporter:
California Republican Pleads Guilty to Misusing Campaign Funds
After claiming for a year that he was the victim of a political “witch hunt” by federal prosecutors as part of a “deep state” conspiracy, disgraced Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of misusing campaign funds for extramarital affairs with lobbyists and congressional aides, family vacations, his children’s private school tuition, and other expenses.
Hunter, who changed his plea from not guilty, faces up to five years in prison and is expected to leave Congress, marking an end to a family dynasty that has held a San Diego congressional seat for nearly four decades.
In other news….bout time right.
'People Are Underestimating the Force of Angry Kids': Greta Thunberg Returns to Europe for Climate Summit
After three weeks of sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Spain, teen climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived Tuesday in neighboring Portugal, where she was welcomed by an enthusiastic crowd of supporters.
"We've all been on quite an adventure," the 16-year-old Swede told reporters in Lisbon shortly after her arrival. Thunberg has gained global recognition for her solitary protests for climate action outside the Swedish Parliament last year, which led to an international youth-led school strike movement known as Fridays for Future.
t the conference, Thunberg said, "we will continue the fight there to make sure that within those walls the voices of the people are being heard."
"I think people are underestimating the force of angry kids," she added. "If they want us to stop being angry, then maybe they should stop making us angry."
Ahead of the conference, which kicked off Monday and is scheduled to run through Dec. 13, youth leaders organized a worldwide climate strike on Friday to pressure the COP 25 attendees to pursue more ambitious policies. Another global strike is planned for this coming Friday.
Chilean Environment Minister Carolina Schmidt—who is still serving as president of COP 25, despite the relocation—said Tuesday that she hopes Thunberg will motivate those attending the conference to back bolder climate commitments.
Schmidt told the AP that Thunberg "has been a leader that has been able to move and open hearts for many young people and many people all over the world."
"We need that tremendous force in order to increase climate action," the minister told Reuters television. "We need Greta in here with all that force."
Scientists Discover Molecule That Triggers Self-Destruction of Pancreatic Cancer Cells
With pancreatic cancer ranking as one of the most deadly forms of cancer, researchers are excited to report on a promising new breakthrough for a treatment.
Pancreatic cancer, which maintains a 95% mortality rate, is resistant to all current treatments. Patients have extremely poor chances of surviving for five years after being diagnosed—and since the disease does not show symptoms until the advanced stages, it is notoriously hard to diagnose.
However, this new Tel Aviv University study finds that a small molecule has the ability to induce the self-destruction of pancreatic cancer cells. The research was conducted with xenografts—transplantations of human pancreatic cancer into immunocompromised mice. The treatment reduced the number of cancer cells by 90% in the developed tumors a month after being administered.
Watch Exuberant Hockey Fans Make Record Donation By Hurling 45,000 Teddy Bears onto Arena Ice
My personal favorite as I have been following this story.
Puppy named Narwhal with tail on his forehead adopted by founder of Missouri organization that rescued him
A "perfectly healthy" rescue puppy with a surprising physical feature that makes him extra special has now been adopted by the founder of the organization who made him famous. Narwhal, the 10-week-old furball who has a small tail-like growth on his forehead, was adopted by Rochelle Steffen, the founder of Mac's Mission -- a nonprofit dog rescue that predominately helps pups with special needs.
Dang I could not get the video to embed…
Folks, it has been a busy and tiring, yet somewhat satisfying several days. Full on turkey and family, a bonus day off due to being buried in snow, Yet still I am spent.
Share all of your good news in the comments! Hopefully my internet will let me join you!
Your 6 weekly to-dos
- Sign up to make some calls connecting voters to 13 key senators. With impeachment hearings moving forward this week in the House, it’s critically important that we prepare for the next stage -- a fair impeachment trial in the Senate. We’ve hit 600,000 calls (!!) but we still have a ways to go to make our goal of calling one million constituents of the 13 senators who really need to hear from them. We're asking you to call voters in those states and ask them to turn up the pressure on their elected officials. It’s a simple four-part process:
- You call a progressive voter in a key state with one of these 13 Republicans. These folks are your friends—they attended the Women’s March and/or fight for progressive causes.
- You explain how they have power now. You’ll remind them why the continued fight for impeachment is so important—and why they have particular power in this moment.
- You ask them to use their power. Then, you’ll ask them to call their senator and make their voices heard on why we’re demanding courage in this moment.
- You push a button and connect them to their senator’s office. The call tool will allow you to automatically patch them through to the senator’s DC office.
- Register or find a Trump is Not Above the Law Impeachment Eve event now. We need to show that there is massive public support for impeaching Trump for his crimes and abuses of power. That’s why the night before the House of Representatives takes a historic vote to impeach Trump, we'll take to the streets to declare that Nobody Is Above the Law. There are more than 265 events on the map as of now with more being added every day. Make sure to RSVP for (or host) one near you.
- Write a letter to the editor on impeachment. This is a critical moment for our democracy -- a moment that requires us to turn up the heat on our elected officials, demand that they hold Trump accountable, and encourage others to get involved. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper and make sure your member of Congress and your neighbors know that nobody is above the law.
- Tell the House to lower prescription drug prices by improving H.R. 3. Nearly three in ten people in the country say they lack the funds to pay for their prescriptions. It’s time for Congress to act to take on Big Pharma’s greed. H.R. 3, which will likely get a vote in the House in mid-December, is a valuable first step, but it can still be expanded to benefit even more people, and put billions more dollars back in families’ pockets. Call your Member of Congress and tell them to improve H.R. 3 using our call script above!
- Register for the National Activist Call on Dec 5 at 8 PM ET. Make sure to join us to get the latest on the impeachment inquiry in the House, hear about the results of our presidential debate polling, and learn what’s coming next in our 2020 plan!
- Get involved in the fight for Medicare for All on Dec 4 at 8 PM ET. Our friends at Public Citizen have invited Congressional champions to share insights about how local resolutions efforts, like the recently passed resolution in Los Angeles, can support the growing momentum for Medicare for All in Congress. Make sure to RSVP to learn more from the activists and policymakers who pushed those resolutions across the finish line, and to get organizing updates from across the country.
Peace!