Impeachment Moves To Next Phase...

“I don’t know why Republicans are afraid of the truth.”

“Every member should support the American people hearing the facts for themselves. That is what this vote is about. It’s about the truth. And what is at stake in all of this is nothing less than our democracy.”

Nancy Pelosi, 10/31/2019

America will enter the next phase of the impeachment process, public hearings. Affording all Americans the opportunity to hear the facts and the truth for themselves. As the Washington Post accurately points out, democracy dies in darkness.

Why the GOP is afraid of letting the American people hear and know the truth is indeed puzzling. Authoritarian and dictatorial regimes around the world have always engaged in propaganda and disinformation in support of the regime leader's agenda and interests. But we are a democratic republic, not a monarchy or a dictatorship.

We question the motives and patriotism of the secretive GOP .

Full story BELOW the FOLD

Another Trump Twitter Tantrum...

Trump is an embarrassment. He is an unhinged narcissist who thinks of nothing but himself and his businesses. A populist demagogue who's demagoguery and propaganda rivals that of Adolph Hitler and the  Nazi party.
It is eerie how George Orwell's dystopian novel almost predicted Donald J Trump's presidency and the present GOP.

“Why are people that I never even heard of testifying about the call,” Trump tweeted. “Just READ THE CALL TRANSCRIPT AND THE IMPEACHMENT HOAX IS OVER! Ukrain said NO PRESSURE.” 

Vindman will be the first witness in the impeachment probe who listened in on Trump’s call with President Volodymyr Zelensky. His testimony appears to corroborate both a whistleblower complaint lodged by an anonymous member of the intelligence community who was alarmed by accounts of the conversation, as well as a summary of the call released by the White House. 

“Supposedly, according to the Corrupt Media, the Ukraine call ‘concerned’ today’s Never Trumper witness,” Trump tweeted, without providing any evidence that Vindman has an anti-Trump bias. “Was he on the same call that I was? Can’t be possible! Please ask him to read the Transcript of the call. Witch Hunt!” 

“Where’s the Whistleblower? Just read the Transcript, everything else is made up garbage by Shifty Schiff and the Never Trumpers!” he tweeted earlier Tuesday morning, referring to House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the leaders of the impeachment inquiry. 

“The Do Nothing Democrats are working hard to make everyone forget the Best Economy Ever, the monumental weekend raid, Tax Cuts, the Rebuilding of our Military, etc.,” the president also wrote, touting the special operations assault that resulted in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “The Impeachment Hoax is a disgrace. Read the transcript!”

The above is the president of our once great country. We can than The Donald and his supporters for our nations slide into chaos and declining relevance on the international stage.

Full story BELOW the FOLD

Are You Listening Republicans? Do You Even Care?...

Even the Russians know Trump is a morally bankrupt vessel.

The America I Knew as Russia’s Foreign Minister Is Gone

But by impeaching Donald Trump, it can become a beacon of moral truth again.

                                     Andrei V. Kozyrev, Russian foreign minister from 1991 to 1996

Russians with moral integrity know that for America to return to a position of MORAL authority Trump must go.

Looks like some Russians have a much higher bar to clear than many Americans.

The United States has often played a pivotal role in my political life, beginning 50 years ago when I was a student of international relations at a Moscow university.

At that time, Soviet propaganda was well-practiced at denouncing Richard Nixon for rejecting the Kremlin’s dogma that in politics, the ends justify the means. Mr. Nixon had argued during his 1960 presidential campaign that the American democratic system recognizes a standard of moral truth that allows the individual to say to government, “Thus far may you go, but no farther.” If what Mr. Nixon said was true, many of us in the Soviet Union thought, then America is on the right side of history.

The Kremlin would later exploit the Watergate scandal to sneer at Mr. Nixon’s — and by extension, America’s — allegiance to moral truth as nothing more than hypocrisy. But what looked like an easy propaganda victory turned out to be Pyrrhic. When Republicans joined Mr. Nixon’s Democratic opposition in Congress and forced him to choose between resignation or impeachment, the Soviet dissident newsletters retorted that the standard of moral truth had proved to be real in America after all. And they pointed out that the investigation of the president of the United States was initiated by two young reporters, representatives of a free press. The Kremlin found no counterarguments, except to condemn the press as enemies of the people and dissidents as traitors.

The Iron Curtain was not enough to block the words of moral truth from Washington. Gradually more and more people in Russia heard and heeded them. The words spoken by successive presidents, members of Congress and many ordinary citizens were loud and clear — and when buttressed by genuine efforts to live up to them, they were the most powerful weapons in the Cold War. Unlike nuclear missiles, free speech, and the moral truth it brought, was not an element of the superpower struggle to be found in equal measure among both rivals. It was a unique and essential advantage on the American side.

Of course American presidents made a few unhappy, even hypocritical, decisions, in both domestic and foreign policy. Yet we in Russia saw how severely they were criticized by the media and Congress when they did so.

The words above, and those that follow are spot on and demonstrate how the world once thought of the United States and our institutions of government. No longer. Since the rise of Donald J. Trump  we have lost the moral high ground. With this loss we have also lost the respect it brought with it.

It will be a long road back to where we once were. Even if Trump is impeached and removed the work to rebuild the trust and respect DJT has squandered will be daunting for the next President. If Trump is not removed or soundly defeated in 2020 our road back will be much more difficult to acheive. If not impossibe.

Continue reading on BELOW the FOLD..

Our Groping President...

 This is the pervert the Evangelical Jesus folks all seem to love dearly. We wonder why.

Can you blame us?

In 2016, President Donald Trump tweeted, “Nobody has more respect for women than me!” Although his sordid history with women has been well-documented (to date, at least 25 women have accused the POTUS of sexual misconduct), he remains in office, seemingly immune to the forces of the #MeToo movement. 

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Nothing ever happened with any of these women. Totally made up nonsense to steal the election. Nobody has more respect for women than me!

2:29 PM · Oct 15, 2016·Twitter for Android
18K Retweets

51.7K Likes

But a new book by journalists Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy aims to uncover parts of Trump’s past that should no longer be ignored. In the following passages excerpted from All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator, we learn of Trump’s egregious and disturbing misconduct around young women trying to make it in the modeling world in the early 1990s. —Rosa Heyman

Trump’s hands, the size of which would later become the subject of significant public curiosity, were infamous for other reasons back then, according to sources. “He was gropey...he had his hands in the most inappropriate places, always,” [NaKina] Carr said. [Editor’s note: NaKina Carr was working as a runway model for Oscar de la Renta.] “When he went in to kiss someone, the hand always went to either the hip or the butt. He was also really good when he did pictures or when he’d side-hug someone. He’d always get his hand on the boob. Every time.” Stories about Trump and his hands circulated within the modeling community. At one modeling event, Trump allegedly went down a line of women feeling their bodies to guess their dress size. Backstage at a lingerie show, he is said to have moved his hands all over a model’s breasts under the guise of inspecting the bra’s fabric.

Another trademark Trump move was honed back in the early 1980s. “I saw this several times: When he met a girl, he’d immediately move in to kiss her, not shake her hand or say ‘Hello, how are you?’ He’d immediately put his mouth on her,” Carr said. “I saw him many times go straight to the mouth, to kiss them on the mouth, and they would turn their cheek. But a lot of them didn’t because they knew he was the moneyman and it was a way up.”
Among modeling insiders, Trump had a reputation at the time for preferring the younger girls. “If you’re over twenty-one you don’t have to worry,” Carr said she was told.

More sordid truths about DJT BELOW the FOLD

Is Trump Preparing Us For HISD War?...

Trump warns U.S. 'may have to get in wars'

Who Ahh! Looks like Trump is preparing the US citizenry for eventual war with Iraq. Or perhaps with another favorite target of the imbecilic rightwing of the conservative cabal.  Ian immediately comes to mind.

The president specifically threatens to hit Iran "like they've never been hit before" if the regime provokes Washington.

With impeachment proceedings looking more and more inevitable Trump needs a major and catastrophic distraction.  Apparently war with another power is just what the political doctor described is a good guess.

President Donald Trump on Monday offered a confusing description of his foreign policy priorities as commander in chief — insisting that he was working to bring home American soldiers while warning the U.S. may soon enter into new military conflicts.
“I'm trying to get out of wars. We may have to get in wars, too. OK? We may have to get in wars,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Sounds like saber rattling don't ya think?

“We're better prepared than we've ever been,” he continued. “If Iran does something, they'll be hit like they've never been hit before. I mean, we have things that we're looking at.”

Perhaps another almost incoherent letter to the leader of Iran? With tRump who knows. His game is chaos and confusion. Keeping EVERYBODY, including allies off balance is Trump's MO.

Meanwhile, Trump’s directive to withdraw the last American service members from Syria has forced congressional lawmakers and Pentagon officials to reckon with the threat of a potential resurgence by Islamic State militants.

ISIS on the rise. Complements of GWB initially. Now, after ISIS was in serious recession Trump cleared the way for ISIS's resurgence with his genius decision to give Turkey the green light to INVADE northern  Syria and cleanse the area of or Kurdish allies.

For more disconcerting info continue on BELOW the FOLD.

GOP, The Party of the Past That Should Be Doomed To Final Failure…

I was once a republican. I believed that maintaining the national debt at a manageable sustainable level is important. The Republican party said they did as well.

I believed that annual budget deficits were often unavoidable during recessionary cycles but knew that during grow cycles budgets needed to be balanced in order to be able to sustain a manageable national debt level. I thought te Republican party believed the same.

I was wrong on both counts as the Republican party has been most responsible for our national debt explosion every since Ronald Wilson Reagan was our president. It continues under Trump unabated and NO ONE  in the Republican party is even talking about the national debt or budget deficits any longer.

It’s like no one cares anymore. Likely that is because they don’t. The Republican Party aversion to raising taxes during growth cycles is stuff of legendary proportions. Even though that is how debt control works. Reducing taxes to “stimulate economic growth” is something we’ve seen time and again just doesn’t work. The national debt stands as a monumental statue to that fact.

The Party of Lincoln (actually it no longer is) has become the Party of the Wealthy , By the Wealthy, and For the Wealthy. Its primary focus is to insure that wealth remains concentrated in the hands of those occupying the top 1 or 2 percent on the economic scale. A sure tract to oligarchy.

Below excerpt is from The New York Times.

… The financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 left the vast majority of working people and the Democrats’ base of African-Americans, Hispanics, single women and millennials shattered for years. They lost much of their wealth and were forced into new jobs that often paid less. Many faced prohibitive student debt. With wages stagnant for a decade, they were frustrated with the daunting costs of health care, prescription drugs, child care and housing. Yet in the main, Mr. Obama, Hillary Clinton — and now Mr. Trump — hailed the economy’s progress, the millions of new jobs. But that was and is clueless. Mr. Trump will be the latest presidential candidate punished by the voters for not getting it.

The Democrats in the 2018 wave election did get it and made their biggest gains, compared with 2016, not in the suburbs — despite winning most of their new seats there — but in the rural areas and among white working class voters, particularly women. This pullback from Mr. Trump among white working class women in particular went further this year. As of 2019, he enjoyed only a single-digit lead with the voters who played such a big role in the 2016 surprise. In 2018, Democrats succeeded by attacking Republicans for attempting to repeal Obamacare and failing to lower skyrocketing prescription drug costs. They proposed trillion-dollar investments in infrastructure and battled to drive dark money out of politics.

Mr. Trump and the Republican Congress continued to seek the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, working both to make it fail in practice and to slash federal health care spending for seniors and the poor. That made health care the top reason for voting for Democrats in 2018, but it also revealed what has become a defining partisan difference: a Republican Party determined to destroy government outside of defense and a Democratic Party determined to use it expansively.

The Democrats today are reacting not only to Mr. Trump but to the Tea Party-dominated Republican Party that preceded and prepared the way for him with gridlocked government. After coming to power in the 2010 wave election, the Republicans tried to keep the government from addressing virtually any problem at all. The Tea Party movement was animated by its hostility to Mr. Obama and his activist government. Empowered in the House, it forced an I.M.F.-like budget austerity on the federal government and blocked any new economic stimulus and investment. As a candidate, Mr. Trump built his base among Tea Party Republicans and Evangelicals in order to carry forward the assault on government nationally and in the states. The Democrats watched in frustration as the government was presumed to be impotent to address wage stagnation, surging inequality, climate change, the slaughter from automatic weapons and the flood of dark money into politics.

But this dam has burst. With Mr. Trump’s ever-escalating assault on government, the proportion of Americans who say that government “should do more to solve problems and meet the needs of people” surged to the highest level in 20 years. Democratic candidates who understand this political moment will push for a government that changes the country’s course, as it did under Democratic presidents after the progressive victories of 2008 and 1964 and especially after the 1932 triumph of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Democratic voters today look at the chief executives of major corporations and they see the face of an era where greed was unchecked, where companies failed to invest in their workers and used their big donations and lobbyists to rig the political system against the middle and working classes. They are determined that government must do something not only about corruption and corporate excess, but also inequality, universal health care, the state of the working family, climate change, globalization, entrenched racial and gender disparities and more…

Democrats have an amazing opportunity to take back America for the middle class and those less fortunate. But, the mega guns of the Republican party and its wealthy donors are gearing up for the monumental fight they KNOW is coming. Independents and Democrats need to unite to destroy the seeds of Trumpism before it destroys America.

Full article BELOW the FOLD.