AND PIGS WILL FLY: "Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos is chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. She said late Monday that she had 'fallen short' and would 'work tirelessly to ensure that our staff is truly inclusive.' "

Bustos will never veer from her corporatist roots and outlook. She likely was born that way. Bustos will "work tirelessly to assure" the DCCC is populated as a corporatist outpost and fort, to withstand any and all attempt by progressives to see a shade of reasonableness out of the woman and out of the organization for as long as Bustos controls it. She might do language and skin color AND gender diversity; but hell will be quite cold before she faces the reality that progressives are the future of the Democratic Party, indeed, the only future it has now that Republican-lite has been seen and is despised.

The only way Bustos could do diversity meaningful to progressives is to include progressives, especially young progressives, in the process and to eliminate that DCCC-maintained consultancy blacklist against any hangers-on for cash payments who aid primary challengers against corporatist Dem incumbents. Can DCCC be anything but a joke? Is the intent to make it look so badly biased against progress that a similar direction in DNC might be overshadowed? Who knows?

The headline quote is from a July 30 AP feed carried by Strib.

Cover art: The Brits have one now.

Link.

STRIB: a locally authored item written by Patrick Condon, notes, "That points to what has been a frequent line of attack for Klobuchar's critics: that her emphasis on issues around consumer protection, product safety and other narrowly-focused, generally bipartisan initiatives has been at the expense of pursuing ambitious change. Among Minnesota Republicans, she's been dubbed 'the senator of small things.' 'She always tried to avoid anything controversial,' said Preya Samsundar, an Iowa-based spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. 'But if a dog dies on an airplane, she's the first one to step up.' "

Strib's item speaks further in multiple ways; this link.

The only Crabgrass editorializing for this post is in choosing the headline quote. Readers of the Strib original, if choosing a headline quote, might present a different part of the Condon story. Read it to see what you think.

In judging coverage here, readers should know that I have consistently voted for Klobuchar in Senate contests against Minnesota's unimpressive Republican chain of challengers; (one, Mark Kennedy, having surprisingly reached an appointed major university governance status after his elective-office political career ended in a Senate-contest loss to Klobuchar).

Whether Klobuchar would make a good academic head honcho is interesting speculation. However, that question is irrelevant since she offers herself for a different and higher public service position.

With Google presently controlling over 90% of Internet search traffic, what fairness does it owe Presidential candidates? Put otherwise, is Tulsi Gabbard's step, "suing the bastards," well grounded, or specious?

NY Times reports on the lawsuit; and publishes the Gabbard complaint online.

Thinking at Crabgrass is pro-Tulsi. With this concrete court action, Google personnel cannot play dumb to the claim they have an ill-met responsibility of fair treatment, necessarily imposed because of their near monopoly control of Internet search. Search providers should not be politically biased, regardless of market share, but when batting .900, things are different than if Bing was number one, by miles, and Google had intentionally or negligently infringed advertising rights of the Gabbard campaign. The degree of interference, the impact of error (whatever its cause), would not be as serious as when a near-monopoly power disadvantages a candidate in a place where search reliability and impartiality has been touted.

Recall how grossly MSNBC [owned by Comcast, whose lobbying arm did the initial Biden fundraiser kickoff], acted last cycle; how that outlet froze Bernie out? Yes, coarse and inexcusable, but within free speech rights of an outlet struggling for market share while without any dominant presence in the market of TV news and ideas.

Compare Google, the eight hundred pound gorilla of the Internet. "Anywhere it wants to," unless the rule of law says no.

Tom Emmer. Dumb as a brick. Misleading as a Trump. Fitting into his peer group.

Mentor me?
I can say "Socialist" imitating you saying "unAmerican."
Is there more to it?

Roy Moore will run again. What's it mean to Al Franken?

Franken got #MeToo'ed by an incensed mob, one fed by the Dem will to connect Roy Moore to something Jeff Epstein did, but Epstein did it longer and on a grander scale. Aside from that, Moore was a target, Franken a casualty.

Moore's ambition.

So where does that leave Al, and what right or wrong step might he contemplate, now, after months have passed?

Compare two NYTimes items, then and now.

Al could make a large mistake, or do otherwise, So keep watch on the question.

The feeling here - multimillionaire Franken was far, far better (for Minnesota and the nation) at the job than multi-millionaire Tina Smith, Al's Senate successor; and it would be a better world were Franken still there.

Or whatever. More of a progressive does not mean as decently oriented as Bernie or Warren, nor clearly the voice Ilhen Omar offers. If the mood moves Al could adjust to having his seat returned to him by voters by being even more progressive than before, i.e., great if he'd be back as long as he would be working with Schumer but not for Schumer, as previously, which would be an unprogressive direction to take, should Al seek his seat back. The worry here is a Franken-Dem inner party Minnesota move that might be both long-term dumb, and highly counterprogressive, given his current residence in MN5. It is decision time on the razor's edge, for Al.

Vox at present still hangs onto the Franken resignation's propriety, despite current soundings out of Al's camp. Tinsel-town seems ready to forget. And it is now Epstein in the crosshairs of "What You Gonna Do When They Come For You, Bad Boy, Bad Boy."

Wherever the Epstein saga leads, it gives a scale to what triggered Al's resignation, per Tinsel Town opining:

Al Franken wishes mightily he hadn't resigned as U.S. Senator in wake of sexual misconduct allegations ... saying he should have put up a fight because he denies he did anything wrong.

The former Senator from Minnesota told The New Yorker he can't go anywhere without people telling him he should NOT have resigned back in December 2017. Franken says, in retrospect, he should have appeared before the Senate Ethics Committee to keep his job.

Franken put some U.S. Senators in his crosshairs, saying they pressured him to resign without due process. At the time, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand were spearheading the calls for him to resign.

So Al knows now how Schumer can be a sunshine-friend, turned in a tight 180 degree direction as soon as circumstances told the man Al was on his own when weather worsened. That knowledge might serve Al well, should he take his Senate seat back. That item continues:

When he stepped down, Franken took a parting shot at President Trump and former U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore saying, "I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party."

With or without full support of his party Franken could wait to primary Smith and many would support that.

Many may not like the idea. But it would be easier for Al than moving to New York and running for Senator there, (either seat, per the italicized part of the above quote).

What primaries are for is to allow a popular choice to prevail. Smith and Franken in a primary, running on issues not personality, and without mud slinging, would allow that.

Worth a look (he looks less mean, less impulsive, more sagacious, with a beard).

Proving you cannot judge a book by its cover. Link.

Still venal after all these years: A current look at a Glenn Greenwald post-inauguration postmortum of a flawed political party.

Same perps. Still at it. Same stench. Presented below is a screen capture and a link for those intrigued enough to follow embedded links in the original (links which are lost in screen capturing).

click image to read or
read original to best view
the fine print

On July 9, 2016 - just over three years ago - Politico reported of a scheduled July 11, 2016, appearance by the then Vice President among Florida's wealthy, to raise money for a cause every progressive, young or old, should never forget:

It’s the White House versus the revolution in the fight to protect Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

One week after President Barack Obama was in Miami fundraising for the Democratic National Committee — and declaring that Democrats needed to “have her back” like the DNC chair has had his back over the years — Vice President Joe Biden is headed to Florida to headline his own fundraiser just for her congressional campaign.

[...] On Sunday, Biden will be at the home of Stephen and Sabine Bittel for a fundraiser; maximum contribution is $2,700 and to be a co-host with entry to a special reception it’s $10,000.

All donors will get their pictures taken with the vice president.

If what DWS did while boss of DNC still rankles you, as it should, remember who traveled to give DWS a big money-raising tout after she'd knifed Sanders in the back but before Wikileaks published email confirming she'd knifed Sanders in the back. It could have been headlined, "Biden Backs Backstabber at Big Bucks Bonanza Banquet."

And then it was just Ol' Joe, being as "centrist" as ever - as that term has come to stand for zero besides "tool of the rich." Willingly so. Today? Still there, and still soliciting.

Pay heed: A 2020 primary vote for Joe Biden is a vote for DWS and her cadre of deceit and mediocrity, her DNC successor included.

Trump in 2016 running with a slogan, "Make America Great Again," was critical of the state of America as it stood, as he viewed it.

If unhappy with America, why did Trump not leave as the critic and malcontent he postured to be?

"LEAVE" is what he's saying for the discontented, now. (But saying it for others. Dissatisfied Women of color in particular.)

AND - Isn't MAGA a patriotism gap, or is such a question not for the people to decide, instead to be told what patriotism is by warped Republicans and so-called "centrists" seeking office (or in office with biases, special interest turf to protect, and axes to grind)?

Not knowing reader sentiment, the thought here - the feeling - is we'd be better off if he'd followed his own road map, and left. For Elba or some place.

Better, Saint Helena.

Is that the same old Koolaid they've been serving, bottled differently?

ZeroHedge, here and here

You doubt? Try this.

Trump = "Send Her Back" So where's he going to want to send you? Me? We disagree with him as much as Rep. Omar. And have you noticed, he picks on and enjoys insulting women? There's sickness there. The "blood coming out of her whatever" president really is a true sicko that way.

Pompous. False. Offensive. Lying.

Video. Watch it to the end. Watch the smug staged pause for "drama" during the staged crowd "Send Her Back" BS bit. Standing pompously, after lying about who Ilhan Omar is, while the fact is she backs progressive policy to make the lives of most of us, the 99%, better.

And this anti-progress jerk tries to demonize her because of her birth nation and the hijab, (without directly saying, "She's not one of us," instead having the tacky GOP orchestrated crowd chant ready to unleash saying it for him).

Then lying, with VOX inventing in its headlining a quite appropriate term,

"Gaslighter in Chief."

ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked why he didn’t do something to try to stop the “send her back!” chants that were directed toward Somali refugee-turned-Rep. Ilhan Omar during his rally the night before in North Carolina. Trump defended himself by simply lying.

“Well, number one, I think I did. I started speaking very quickly,” Trump said. “I disagree with [the chants], by the way. But it was quite a chant, and I felt a little bit badly about it. But I will say — I did, and I started speaking very quickly. But it started up rather fast.”

Trump went on to try to draw a contrast between what he said and what his supporters chanted.

“I didn’t say that, they did,” Trump said, [...]

Guardian posts video of the astounding lying session, after the rally, at his desk lying blatantly with the previously linked rally video clearly showing the truth. The ignorance of Trump supporters is immense, and quite troublesome, Dove-tailing as it does with Trump's willingness to mislead and to disdain the marks he attracts. He misleads while belittling a Congress member with the progressive policy positions Omar treasures and wishes to see - making America fair again. Do you believe the man has one ounce of respect for the idiots he convened and channeled into that chant? None showed itself in that rally video. Talking down to clowns got him there, and he's not intending any growth or change, from rabble-rouser, to Presidential.

So let's do it in November 2020 -

Make America Fair Again. Dump Trump.

- hey, make the Senate blue again --- as blue as the House will be as progressive numbers rise --- and then see if the promised reform can be passed despite Blue Dog foot dragging from the problem part of the Democratic Party --- 

All I am saying, is give fairness a chance

Jeffrey Epstein. He knew people and people knew him. Somewhere along the line media outlets will be printing names, filling out a batting order.

see: Vanity Fair and  ZeroHedge

Emmer, Stauber and Klobuchar - assisting and touting environmentally dangerous mining as an outcome in sensitive areas of Minnesota. Yes, two Repubicans, one Senator.

Left.mn link. For Klobuchar detail, this item (see p.2), which is linked from the left.mn item.

Politicians often are not long term thinkers. Some things are not worth sacrificing or endangering in order to whore for Iron Range votes over the next year or two. But politics is politics. Sad.

FURTHER: Does this knock your socks off? Not mine. Contributor stroking:

Protect federal employee labor rights. Senator Klobuchar will immediately rescind Executive Orders signed by President Trump that severely restrict federal workers’ rights, including the right to collectively bargain.

How about card-check? Why no mention either way on card-check? In any event, doing a word search for "labor," that's the first mention on the hundred days list, second, curiously:

Aggressively combat illegal Chinese steel dumping. Senator Klobuchar will ensure the federal government is aggressively combating illegal Chinese steel dumping including through expanded personnel to enforce our trade laws and increased inspections of steel imports at ports of entry. She will also direct the U.S. Department of Labor to expedite approval of Trade Adjustment Assistance petitions for workers from the affected mining operations.

At a guess Stauber and Emmer agree.

FURTHER: Doing a "trade" word search on the Klobuchar Hundred Days list, give the Senator credit for one resonate with the entire populace:

End Illegal Robocalls. Senator Klobuchar will coordinate efforts to crack down on illegal robocalls across the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and Department of Justice and direct the Department of Justice to aggressively pursue robocall scammers while working with Congress to increase penalties for aggravated violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

But Amy - go the extra step. Penalize phone companies for robocalling and it will disappear. Phone company profit motives have, so far, blossomed and assisted expansive robocall activity throughout the nation. The scammers rely on buying specialized access they need in order to robocall you, so that if a pecuniary disincentive to phone companies is created, game over. Require service providers to affirmatively police the strangling of robocalling. Make the phone service providers who are presently happily selling access to you to robocallers liable for severe fines fitting the nuisance of their not diligently policing the robocall problem, and their bean counting departments will push their firms to straignten up and fly right.

Goldman Alumni News -

At Zerohedge. Torch-passing at the ECB is nothing to sneeze at. More substantial than strings of tweets. But is it news?

Early polling.

click image or read original

Outspoken vs bombastic, winning by a point.

What a pile! Instigated by the piledriver in chief. Exposing a Pence spokesperson to be a dissembler wholly lacking finesse. To the point of making a joke of himself.

Short, four paces behind.

An AP item:

Trump refused to apologize and instead asked on Twitter when "the Radical Left Congresswomen" would "apologize to our Country, the people of Israel and even to the Office of the President, for the foul language they have used, and the terrible things they have said."

"So many people are angry at them & their horrible & disgusting actions!" he wrote.

Asked whether Trump's comments were racist, Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, defended Trump, telling reporters he had been responding to "very specific" comments made by Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who was born in Somalia, and was not making a "universal statement."

But Trump didn't make that distinction in his tweets. He cited "Congresswomen" — an almost-certain reference to a group of women known as "the squad" that includes Omar, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

"I don't think that the president's intent any way is racist," said Short, repeatedly pointing to Trump's decision to choose Elaine Chao, who was born outside the country, as his transportation secretary.

Marc Short is an idiot. But then he works for Pence.

Elaine Chao is Mitch McConnell's wife, for Christsakes.

So -- Marc Short suggests Trump is not a racist because he gave McConnell's wife a cuhshy high income federal job? What brand of communicator is this dude? Pence must like to be surrounded by ones a cut less talented than himself  (if suitably dogmatic too). Not that they're hard to find, in DC.

Would you be surprised if Marc Short were also to have said giving McConnell's wife that job proves Trump is not a misogynist? It fits.

Perhaps Pence should upgrade to someone like Doug Wardlow as spokesperson.

__________________
image source

___________UPDATE__________
Bio info on Short:

Short attended Washington and Lee University where he majored in politics and helped start The Spectator, an independent conservative magazine that he later said was to counter “the liberal values being taught by the faculty.”

After graduating in 1992, he went to work for the Young America’s Foundation, a nonprofit set up to promote conservative views on college campuses.

During that time he met Oliver North, the decorated Marine lieutenant colonel who had been a part of President Ronald Reagan’s administration until he was fired in the 1980s in the aftermath of an “arms for hostages” scandal known as the Iran-Contra affair. The administration illegally used profits from arms sales in the Middle East to bankroll rebel fighters in Central America. North’s convictions on several federal felonies were overturned on appeal.

North, a political conservative, “had a huge impact on me as a young man,” Short said.

“Ollie really helped to shape my faith and helped me accept Christ as a young man. I had a certain perspective of what Christians were, and then I saw Ollie North as a Bronze Star, multiple-Purple Heart Marine who was spending a lot of his time I was working for him in service to other men. It sort of changed my perspective.”

Short worked on North’s unsuccessful 1994 bid to unseat Democratic incumbent Chuck Robb for one of Virginia’s U.S. Senate seats. In the aftermath, Short worked for North’s political action committee before moving to Santa Barbara, Calif., to direct the Young America’s Foundation and oversee Reagan’s western White House – Rancho del Cielo – which the foundation operates as a memorial to the former president.

Social networking note, Pence is but one link away from Ollie North. If not closer. Small World.

___________FURTHER UPDATE__________
This Marc Short is quite plugged into Repubican circles including a private sector stint for a Koch operation, (much as pete hegseth did with "veterans" astroturfing within Koch tendrils before landing the FOX gig.

A seasoned DC sharp operator. An evangelical christian, as one would expect to see atop a Pence staff.

So, it seems that, less than dumb, Short drew the short straw and was placed in front of a microphone with incredible talking points he had to deliver. What Trump likely intended is clear, but more than that irrelevant.

You attack four newly elected young minority female members of Congress with that childishly bombastic stuff, saying what was said, you were making a racist statement, per se. Failure to even recognize and acknowledge it as such changes nothing. Such stonewalling against all evidence and logic, if anything, is an exacerbating fault.

Aside from dumb commentary against the four legislators, a single saving grace in this, if there is one, is that more delicate language was used this go-round with regard to less affluent nations than to call them shithole contries.

________________FURTHER UPDATE_______________
WaPo. Politico. Wikipedia. Why do I see a resemblance, here and here?

Minnesota coverage: Omar and allies a focus in the latest Strib report.

fighters for progress and justice for all

Also: Latest Strib op-ed. Strib carrying an AP feed. With Omar representing Minnesota's CD5, the local focus is Omar - and three others.

....................
Bonus time. Another topic, Strib online again, a headline showing some folks are banking Klobuchar. Against better judgment being the view at Crabgrass. The guess here, a Klobuchar fade after Iowa. Running into the sun, but she's running behind.

A mindset reflection, by statement, which exposes a sentiment better aimed at Sabastian Gorka.

Link.

Gorka bio. Nobody ever elected Gorka to anything. Unlike the members of Congress who Trump slandered. Compare Gorka to AOC. Dreck vs. quality. But then Trump is Trump, not knowing the difference.

Gorka exited the Trump White House a week after Bannon.

We may need a batch of red MGHA caps to wear around - Make Gorka Hungarian Again.

UPDATE: https://www.buzzfeednews.com

FURTHER: Spouse Gorka: Think Tank? I think not. Too much Dershowitz content to be taken seriously.

Polling.

Real Clear Politics reports averaging of very early polling results.

Good luck to you, if you believe you can take these numbers to the bank. Flux governs, at this point, while lazy media types can report "trending" in early polling as having transcendental importance. It's short of that, but interesting.

"Today, Roberts faces similar threats: a president who openly and repeatedly castigates judges in partisan and even ethnic terms, and Democratic presidential contenders, who think the number of justices on the Supreme Court should be expanded by statute if the Democrats take control of the Senate. They argue that Republicans, by refusing for nearly a year to consider President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, have so stacked the deck that the move is necessary."

NPR editorializing over John Roberts, the SOB. Dated July 8, the item is titiled, "Fear And Loathing At The Supreme Court — What Is Chief Justice John Roberts Up To?" Loathing, for sure.

Expanding the Court to undo the poison, bravo. The idea is needed. A new majority would mean a new look at money in politics, with Citizens United ripe to be overturned; given its phony basis, that corporations are equivalent in some way to humans.

A host of reforms would be possible with a fifteen member court with the new six appointed by Democrats; ideally with many more progressive voices having a say, and with Pelosi/Hoyer disavowed.

And, ideally, all six new appointees would be progressives, none a Blue Dog bench warmer. Ideally a court expansion would be under President Sanders, or President Warren, having hold of nominating. (Re Warren, she seems to be able to raise the cash to last.)

___________UPDATE_____________
Worth a thousand words of loathing.

STRIB carrying a WaPo item about the FBI using state-of-the-art facial recognition technology upon state driver license photos.

Link; excerpt:

Neither Congress nor state legislatures have authorized the development of such a system, and growing numbers of Democratic and Republican lawmakers are criticizing the technology as a dangerous, pervasive and error-prone surveillance tool.

“Law enforcement’s access of state databases,” particularly DMV databases, is “often done in the shadows with no consent,” House Committee on Oversight and Reform ­Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said in a statement.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Oversight Committee’s ranking Republican, seemed particularly incensed during a hearing about the technology last month at the use of driver’s license photos in federal facial-recognition searches without the approval of state legislators or individual license holders.

“They’ve just given access to that to the FBI,” he said. “No individual signed off on that when they renewed their driver’s license, got their driver’s licenses. They didn’t sign any waiver saying, ‘Oh, it’s OK to turn my information, my photo, over to the FBI.’ No elected officials voted for that to happen.”

Read the full story at Strib.

Many retired people have time to read.

Down With Tyranny examines politics and Social Security. (Not all the Democrats on Demo Farm are equal.)

______________UPDATE_____________
Readers are urged, having once read the linked item, to explore other recent posts:

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/

TED Talks.

Here, here, and here. From there, navigate to other web content as you see fit.

Reading stories about child detention centers raises two questions in mind: Are these federal facilities, or private sector contractors for a fee running the operations? Are these facilities former federal private-contractor prisons?

And there is a third question; "free to leave" to then go to or end up where, exactly? A fourth, is there something in CFR or by Executive Order which sets minimal health and hygiene standards for these "centers?"

City Pages reports. And, gee. The question line is answered; except for whose pockets are being lined in the course of "administrative" decision-making and implementation conduct City Pages describes:

Department of Homeland Security’s Office Inspector General released a report calling the conditions “dangerous.”

Some children have been sitting for days without access to showers, clean laundry, and working toilets. Two facilities weren’t even supplying them with hot meals until the department checked in, forcing the kids to survive on bologna sandwiches.

Even worse, the feds are wildly overpaying private companies for these services. In exchange for Third World conditions, the cost per person runs $750 a day, roughly twice as much as you'd pay at the finest hotels in downtown Minneapolis.

Does Marriott or Halliburton or some connected major firm run such sites, or is the Trump administration giving cushy human supervision contracts to fly-by-night grifters? For all the press covers the question, these lucrative sites might be operated by one of the nation's Erik Prince style mercenary contractors. What insurance contracts are required, and who has that business? Is a sound paper trail being maintained, or is the operation document-deficient?
________________________
Hat tip for the CP link goes to Sorensen's publishing at bluestemprairie.com

Sorensen probs Trump trade war farm subsidization - agricultural impacts arising from trade policy resulted in a program to help the family farmer survive Trump policy. Sorensen examines under-reported detail of who benefits while the public pays.

Link. Title: "Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting: Brazilian JBS lowballed USDA pork contracts."

Republican effort to bias the census to disenfranchise voters more likely favorable to the Democrats: "The U.S. Census Bureau's own experts have said a citizenship question would discourage immigrants from participating in the survey and result in a less accurate census that would redistribute money and political power away from Democratic-led cities where immigrants tend to cluster to whiter, rural areas where Republicans do well."

The headline is from Strib carrying an AP feed.

It is only a political purpose that motivates Republicans to try to pervert the accuracy of a census. Politics. Trump, on downward to every Republican official in the country, are hell-bent to disadvantage the Democrats. No surprise. Except the census should be exempt from scum-mongers wanting to shape it away from legitimate to something less.

Even John Roberts found it hard to take. That bad. Really.

But, John Roberts is a slick politician, dressed otherwise in a black robe symbol of transcending political ties in favor of justice. A false imagination of what the Supreme Court actually is and how it acts would be a needed mindset for cutting Roberts any slack.

"No slack for the hack," coming to mind as a slogan.

If any second bite at that apple is tolerated by the Court it only would be based on the things Republicans have elevated to that bench, Kavanaugh being most recent. Clarence Thomas there decades earlier (with Joe Biden's help), being the quintessential hack. Blame Missouri's John Danforth even more than Biden for that blot insulting the legacy of Thurgood Marshall.

That Roberts was a swing vote in ruling the census should not be perverted, via a 5-4 vote, is evidence of four insufferable thugs having reached high places. Effort by Trump's White House at monkeying around the census should have been handed back with a unanimous per curium "NO." Not by a 5-4 split.

Emmer has accrued a senior position in the Republican Congressional caucus.

STRIB reporting.

MSNBC is owned by Comcast, and Joe Biden is owned by Comcast, so is this critique of MSNBC propaganda legitimate or illigimate?

And it is not just MSNBC. But they deserve being under the microscope, and when there, they earn scorn.

Are such mainstream media outlets marching on a "narrative" sales effort, or just being fair umpires? Is inviting a pair of indistinct women to join a show host to trash Bernie as if pundits of some kind, is that in any way fair? Not to me.

To me, BS from pundits - even in chorus - when on TV shows owned by BIG corporations, cannot negate truth:

YOUR CHOICE, BOTTOM LINE: Believe seeing the crowds, or believe hearing a handful of paid propagandists tell you the crowds don't matter?

And they want to sell you Kamala Harris, no less; Harris, who has beeen an unspectular prosecutor? Wanting more glory is separate from earning it, and what has Harris done to earn trust? You tell me. "That little girl was me" is a crock, and while Biden and not Bernie was the target, it was a tawdry move, not presidential.

___________UPDATE___________
Distrust of institutional media has also earned attention in the original English speaking nation; e.g., MediaLens, see, here, here, here and here as examples, (as well as being interesting for themselves and not just as examples of something separate).

Only an asshole would blame the homeless for being homeless.

Link. Only an asshole would say ending homelessness is not a government duty, federal level, state level, local level, all levels.

For statistics, this link.

Private charity when supplementing governmental effort is welcome. However, it is clear the responsibility to manage homelessness to alleviate suffering of a part of our people is a duty of government, not to be abdicated to private charitable whims, but to always be addressed first and foremost by government, with church compassion and related private sector institutions being supplemental, interstitial care providers where they choose. The government on the other hand, functioning properly, cannot shirk its primary responsibility and still claim to remain legitimate in its actions toward the downtrodden. Poverty will always be a fiscal policy issue, however well or poorly government meets duties.

PiPress carries an Alpha News idiot's op-ed, where the writing child willingly ignores the social benefit and competitive national advantage of having an educated populace. Which is something the Chinese appreciate, in subsidizing young Chinese citizens seizing U.S. post-graduate and undergraduate study opportunities, as a national treasure to be fostered and encouraged. Being among Alpha News crews must bias this author against something she's not experincing in the workplace. That being trained skill and excellence.

Read, agree, or disagree with a student-loan exploitation defender. Just do not expect simple ideas to be written tightly, using only as many words as needed, without repetition. Expect Alpha News quality on the PiPress website.

PIECE OF WORK
As a former undergrad hockey player on a state university campus team, this Alpha author inspires two questions: Did she have her own college degree subsidized via a hockey scholarship; and second, how many hockey pucks to the helmet did the young woman receive, making her who she is?

click image to read the fine print

This Alpha writer declines to identify her university, but declares holding a Business Administration degree, meaning her major was at least not hockey, Yet business admin is a major with gut courses available to keep a qualifying grade point for staying on the hockey team. It generally is regarded as intellectually short of being a pre-med, an engineering student, or a math or hard sciences major. A business degree can be regarded as equivalent to one in poli-sci as a major, e.g., the degree held by Abigail Whelan. Business admin is a major where you get more John Scully than Steve Jobs coming through that pipeline.

UPDATE: More bio; the undergrad school from which the business degree ensued, and the major clarified -

[...Alyssa is] pursuing her MBA through the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire and is a former collegiate hockey player for the school. Alyssa spent most of her undergrad as a Pre-Law student with a major in Economics and minor in Political Science.

It would be informative to see a transcript, more to learn the courses she took than the grades she got. Any courses in social work? Something more inclined to broarden one's social empathy and policy awareness of care needs and networks; i.e., course work in things which by their nature would broaden one's compassions.

FURTHER: The author also has written in favor of "live and let live" social policy and against perceived political correctness pressure.

FURTHER: To emphasize something written earlier an encompassing term to include having an educated populace [workforce] is: public good. Having a policy which proactively advances having an educated U.S. workforce of voters is policy seeking a public good; indeed it is a public good to advance such a voting workforce, successful or not.

A policy such as this is clearly hampered by Draconian student loan policy and practice burdening some of the young who are here already, not having to be recruited elsewhere, and who personally benefit while our society benefits more broadly when young entrepreneurial spirits have a chance to and do succeed in launching prosperous novel business. Some under the heaviest of student loan burden are less likely to have needed entrepreneurial opportunity while their skill sets might be most fit for engagement in such personal and societal advancement.

FURTHER:; Re earlier mention of Abigail Whelan as similar in perspective to this Alpha author; first, re Whelan, Wikipedia notes:

In October, 2016 Whelan made a promotional video for Statesmen Academy which is a project of Family Policy Alliance (affiliated with Focus on the Family). "The organization’s mission is to advance biblical citizenship, train statesmen, promote policy and serve an effective alliance, all committed to a common vision."[11]

Some may remember Doug Wardlow's ties to James Dobson and Focus on the Family's empire of narrowness.

A link:
https://familypolicyalliance.com/issues/2016/10/21/change-world-statesmen-academy/

Ahlgren shows up
https://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=LR19D16

She is allied to the same junk religion stuff involving Dobson, Wardlow, and Whelan, an operation with Michele Bachmann in tow.
https://drjamesdobson.org/broadcasts/transcript/2019/march/unprecedented-times-michele-bachmann-on-america-s-foundation/

Ego tripping.

Pretty face. Ugly mind.

Crazyville, ya betcha.

FURTHER: One of the ego trip images; plus a Wikipedia link to a questionable operation.

These people are most dangerous because they are organized and chumps give them tons of money.

LAWFUL MJ ON A NATIONWIDE BASIS: Missing names - Beto, Buttigieg and Biden. (Among candidates seriously in contention, Dem party, 2020.) Candidacies on the margin: Irrelevant. (As in who cares, nationwide, what stance Klobuchar or Hickenlooper, etc., adopt?)

As a caveat, reporting might have omitted a name, in presenting a list. Strib:

Rep. Ilhan Omar: National marijuana legalization needed for 'equality in our laws' -- Congresswoman says a nationwide law would mean economic fairness.
By Torey Van Oot Star Tribune - July 6, 2019 — 12:17am

[...] Omar is a cosponsor of legislation that would remove the drug from the federal list of controlled substances and expunge federal convictions for marijuana possession or use. The measure is backed by a number of Democratic presidential candidates, including Sens. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The proposal has so far failed to get a hearing in either chamber or attract support from Senate Republicans, whose votes would be needed to pass it.

A number of members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation, including fellow freshman Democrats Angie Craig and Dean Phillips, have previously expressed support for allowing states to legalize the substance. But Omar is the state’s only member pushing for lifting the prohibition on the federal level. Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a presidential candidate, backs legalization but says “states should have the right to determine the best approach to marijuana within their borders.”

Those refusing to be part of sanity are part of the problem, and only that. They choose alienation toward any sensible policy solution. While not a Tony Cornish on the issue; where are Biden, Beto and Buttigieg on recreational mj? Anywhere that matters; that augers well for the future; or instead clinging to a past viewpoint that channels J. Edgar Hoover, and unencouragingly echoes things such as the Biden 1994 crime bill? Can the main corporatist candidate in the bunch show a learning curve?

How would Strom Thurmond have voted, and is that an indicator of how Biden would vote on the mj issue? Or Richard Russell? A Delaware Yankee liking too much amiss about "the South?" Then and now are worlds apart.

Did you notice how in the first debate Harris chose? She did not go after Biden's record as harsh on crime, racially biased. No saying, "I was a public lawyer, and during my tenure I've seen the devestation, and intervened frequently against private prisons, mandatory sentencing, and too frequent over-charging of defendants who choose to go to trial instead of accepting a plea deal for a lesser included crime." Because she didn't, so the ice was too thin to skate there. The plan was to jump Biden on busing, where she'd no skeletons to rattle in her own closet. And she could interject her "... I was that little girl ,..." prattle.

Harris is running on her record. So why not goad Biden on the 1994 crime bill? Based, clearly, upon juxtaposing her differing more appealing litigation-administration-policy record. But does she want to project detail, that area, where such appeal arguably fails to exist? Does her campaign see her record on crime as a foundation to carry a candidacy?

"The Democrats’ proportional allocation rules provide a far more equal playing field over the Republican Party nomination system, yet the superdelegates exist as a bulwark against populist insurgents [will of the people prevailing over will of inner party Yodas]."

In our political-donor-run-world, non-pliant Yodas are considered worse Yodas than ones in the habit of losing presidential elections they've been favored to win (which to big donors are only next to the worse kind); especially if crooked Yodas with hands on party levers are regularly being/backing losers rather than progressives when ordered to torpedo progressives by crooked big cash donors. (Big party cash donors who'd prefer four more Trump years to eight years of Bernie trying to rock the empire's boat).

The headline quote is from The Intercept, starting:

How Lobbyists and Insiders Could Override Voters to Choose the Democratic Presidential Nominee
By, Lee Fang - June 30 2019, 12:00 p.m.

The era of smoky backroom deals and political power brokers in charge of the Democratic Party could come roaring back in Milwaukee next year, when thousands of party faithful convene to formally select the party’s presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention.

The party’s delegate allocation rules, combined with the large number of candidates and an early election calendar for key states, have laid the groundwork for a small group of lobbyists and party officials to potentially play a deciding role in choosing the nominee.

If no single candidate receives a majority of pledged delegates in the initial vote of the convention, called the first ballot, the nomination goes to what is known as a brokered convention, in which so-called superdelegates participate in subsequent rounds of nomination votes.

Given that there are more than 25 candidates, including four to five with significant support in the polls, it’s possible that there will be no clear frontrunner by the convention in July next year. In that scenario, around 764 superdelegates — a group comprised of elected officials, party elders, and prominent consultants unbound by the will of voters — could dramatically remake the path to the nomination.

The superdelegates were added to the Democratic Party in the early 1980s as a sort of insurance policy, giving establishment figures a permanent share of delegates to guard against nominating a candidate they viewed as a political liability. The superdelegates include elected officials; former “distinguished party leaders,” including Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt; prominent party consultants; and state party officials, most of whom are chosen by the Democratic National Committee or the state parties.

Last year, after superdelegates fueled controversy over the party tilting the scales during the 2016 presidential primary, the Democratic National Committee shot down a proposal to remove superdelegates. Instead, the DNC moved to allow superdelegates to continue to hold power, but only vote in the case of a brokered convention.

In preserving the role of superdelegates, the Democratic Party is allowing conflicts of interest to proliferate — conflicts that could let outside interests influence the nomination process. Many superdelegates also work as professional influence peddlers seeking to shape policy debates around heated issues such as taxation, finance, technology, health care, and defense contracting.

The Intercept has reviewed lobbying records and identified at least eight superdelegates who are currently working with health care clients lobbying against Medicare for All. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase each have lobbyists who double as superdelegates.

And a growing number of superdelegates are currently employed by presidential candidates, an arrangement that means some will enter the convention with less than neutral standing.

[...]

[link in original] The Intercept names names, and unlike Gephardt or Dean, they're unknown functionaries, faceless scavengers feeding off the campaigning system as it stands today. (Doing so, instead of getting real jobs. And they infest both parties - a "bipartisan" leech infestation.)

Many call today "Independence Day" but with a populace enslaved by the two-party governing stranglehold there's only the name "Independence" and the July date; while money calls all the political shots to where only the rich are truly independent.

Biden, John Roberts, and the Clintons may like it, but they're not independent by anybody's real measure. Toadies and trolls run things, and it's a war to have them give up even one iota of actual power to the people. Oligarchy is one thing, democracy is something else. And what we've got is oligarchy. Don't doubt that for a second.

Bernie would have won. Bernie can win in 2020. He only needs the nomination. Warren is an honorable option, if she ends up nominee. And she could win in 2020. Instead, expect some schmuck?

An isolated event, or tip of an iceberg? Rep. Justin Amash is quitting the GOP. He must feel as isolated and alienated from the Republican inner party as progressives feel toward inner party Dems such as Pelosi, hoyer, biden, Podesta, the Clintons, and tom perez. (Mere tools do not get their names capitalized on July 4).

Link. Amash waited until after Paul Ryan left Congress to turn. Why not sooner, is the mystery.

There was a little girl with millions to spend, Clinton staffers recycled in droves, and when that little girl felt it was time to lawyer up that little girl did what she does best, aping Hillary Clinton-John Podesta conduct, in hiring the Perkins Coie dossier man, the oppo research cut-out buyer of Fusion GPS work product, (with bed peeing tales and all), because that's what little girls with few attributes besides donated money and while short on real mojo do; and that little girl was . . .

https://store.kamalaharris.org/that-little-girl-was-me/


So buy the frigging tee shirt, eh? Thirty bucks for the ugly thing, which could instead go to Warren or Bernie, advancing real class.

Lawyering up, per Washington Examiner, Zero Hedge, and  doing so within days of conducting the little girl's planned non-spontaneous bushwhacking ambush of Biden at the first debate, a step cooking on the campaign burner for months and months.

That little girl wanting Marc Elias . . .

For what? Marketing tee shirts? Taking the high road?