Dan Burns has been writing and posting recently at his Project Annex.

http://mnppannex.blogspot.com/

A screen capture is a frozen moment in time, frozen demeanor . . . and the caption says, " . . . Joint Chiefs of Staff." A piurge? a coup? A coincidence without causation?

Remember Al Haig, Gen. Haig, around the Nixon White House death rattles? Ford and a pardon. At any rate, a point in time, the Stib homepage as displayed, as excerpted, and as a thing of interest to make you shocked, SHOCKED!

Lawyers have a saying. If weak on the facts, argue the law. If weak on the law, argue the facts. If weak on facts and law, wave your hands, raise your voice and fake it.

Image. Any questions?

Twitter sucks. Few tweets deserve attention.

Yet every so often . . .

Warren - Momentum vs. Wall Street's will to rule.

DownWithTyranny, here.

Piketty's 2013 international bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, makes the case for an annual “global” wealth tax of up to 2% for rich households, adopted by cooperating governments across the world (a “utopian” ideal, he says, for a tax that might first be tried regionally). The book, a 700-page theory-of-the-case on the history and trajectory of wealth inequality, describes a widening gap in private capital “even more worrisome” than the widening gap in income — with accumulated and inherited wealth growing at a higher rate of return than the economy. The result, Piketty says, is “indefinite” wealth concentration, a threat to “meritocratic values” and “social justice.” In the U.S., the book generated a months-long debate among economists, academics, and columnists. But in Washington, even as Democratic lawmakers praised his work, they steered far from the words "wealth tax"

The headline is a mid-item part of this Buzzfeed item.

On the Bernie candidacy website, (where you can donate too.)

https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/

And more:

https://berniesanders.com/

where you cannot miss the top right corner "DONATE".

The image leads a post for now, but it and the link might later end up preserved atop the sidebar. The link captioning the image will reach the details Sanders has posted of his wealth tax intentions on his campaign website. It reaches levels of taxation beyond those Warren proposes in her wealth tax plan. Do you see this beyond those two? Not so far, certainly not from Biden or Harris; who hold fundraisers among those who might qualify for a Warren or Sanders wealth tax. Hands that feed being unbitten is a pattern Klobuchar honors too.

Breitbart linking to TheHill, about Biden, Ukraine, and documents contradictory to Biden's version.

Breitbart, "Report: Hundreds of Documents Conflict with Joe Biden’s Account of Why Ukrainian Prosecutor Was Fired."

TheHill, "Solomon: These once-secret memos cast doubt on Joe Biden's Ukraine story." [published as "opinion"]

Breitbart's item paraphrasing -

According to Solomon, the memos raise the following “troubling questions”:

1) If the Ukraine prosecutor’s firing involved only his alleged corruption and ineptitude, why did Burisma’s American legal team refer to those allegations as “false information?”

2) If the firing had nothing to do with the Burisma case, as Biden has adamantly claimed, why would Burisma’s American lawyers contact the replacement prosecutor within hours of the termination and urgently seek a meeting in Ukraine to discuss the case?

Solomon reported that in a “newly sworn affidavit prepared for a European court,” Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin testified that when he was fired in March 2016, he was told the reason was that Biden was unhappy about the Burisma investigation.

“The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin testified, according to Solomon.

“On several occasions President Poroshenko asked me to have a look at the case against Burisma and consider the possibility of winding down the investigative actions in respect of this company but I refused to close this investigation,” Shokin reportedly said.

Solomon said other documents show that as Biden’s efforts to fire Shokin picked up steam, Burisma’s American legal team “appeared to be moving into Ukraine with intensity.”

Burisma’s accounting records “show that it paid tens of thousands of dollars while Hunter Biden served on the board of an American lobbying and public relations firm, Blue Star Strategies, run by Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano, who both served in President Bill Clinton’s administration.”

According to Solomon, just days before Shokin’s firing, Painter met with the second highest official at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington and asked to meet officials in Kiev around the same time that Joe Biden visited there.

Ukrainian embassy employee Oksana Shulyar reportedly emailed Painter afterward: “With regards to the meetings in Kiev, I suggest that you wait until the next week when there is an expected vote of the government’s reshuffle.”

Ukraine’s Washington embassy confirmed the conversations between Shulyar and Painter but said the reference to a shakeup in Ukrainian government was not specifically referring to Shokin’s firing or anything to do with Burisma, according to Solomon.

Painter reportedly asked one of the Ukraine embassy’s workers to “open the door for meetings with Ukraine’s prosecutors about the Burisma investigation.” Blue Star would eventually pay that Ukrainian official money for his help with the prosecutor’s office, according to Solomon.

The Hill -

Former Vice President Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.

He insists that, in spring 2016, he strong-armed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor solely because Biden believed that official was corrupt and inept, not because the Ukrainian was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, that hired Biden's son, Hunter, into a lucrative job.

There’s just one problem.

Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents — many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles — conflict with Biden’s narrative.

And they raise the troubling prospect that U.S. officials may have painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Burisma’s legal troubles and stop prosecutors’ plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

For instance, Burisma’s American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Biden forced the firing of the country’s chief prosecutor and offered “an apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the Ukrainian government’s official memo of the meeting. The effort to secure that meeting began the same day the prosecutor's firing was announced.

In addition, Burisma’s American team offered to introduce Ukrainian prosecutors to Obama administration officials to make amends, according to that memo and the American legal team’s internal emails.

[linking in original] Moreover, The Hill item continues -

“I’m knowledgeable about the situation,” Zelensky told Trump, asking the American president to forward any evidence he might know about. "The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case.”

Biden has faced scrutiny since December 2015, when the New York Times published a story noting that Burisma hired Hunter Biden just weeks after the vice president was asked by President Obama to oversee U.S.-Ukraine relations. That story also alerted Biden’s office that Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin had an active investigation of Burisma and its founder.

Documents I obtained this year detail an effort to change the narrative after the Times story about Hunter Biden, with the help of the Obama State Department.

Hunter Biden’s American business partner in Burisma, Devon Archer, texted a colleague two days after the Times story about a strategy to counter the “new wave of scrutiny” and stated that he and Hunter Biden had just met at the State Department. The text suggested there was about to be a new “USAID project the embassy is announcing with us” and that it was “perfect for us to move forward now with momentum.”

I have sued the State Department for any records related to that meeting. The reason is simple: There is both a public interest and an ethics question to knowing if Hunter Biden and his team sought State’s assistance while his father was vice president.

The controversy ignited anew earlier this year when I disclosed that Joe Biden admitted during a 2018 videotaped speech that, as vice president in March 2016, he threatened to cancel $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, to pressure Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko to fire Shokin.

At the time, Shokin’s office was investigating Burisma. Shokin told me he was making plans to question Hunter Biden about $3 million in fees that Biden and his partner, Archer, collected from Burisma through their American firm. Documents seized by the FBI in an unrelated case confirm the payments, which in many months totaled more than $166,000.

Some media outlets have reported that, at the time Joe Biden forced the firing in March 2016, there were no open investigations. Those reports are wrong. A British-based investigation of Burisma's owner was closed down in early 2015 on a technicality when a deadline for documents was not met. But the Ukraine Prosecutor General's office still had two open inquiries in March 2016, according to the official case file provided me. One of those cases involved taxes; the other, allegations of corruption. Burisma announced the cases against it were not closed and settled until January 2017.

[italics added - links in original omitted] Devils dwell in detail. Three million devils, detailed?

More from The Hill -

At the time, Blue Star worked in concert with an American criminal defense lawyer, John Buretta, who was hired by Burisma to help address the case in Ukraine. The case was settled in January 2017 for a few million dollars in fines for alleged tax issues.

Buretta, Painter, Tramontano, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s campaign have not responded to numerous calls and emails seeking comment.

On March 29, 2016, the day Shokin’s firing was announced, Buretta asked to speak with Yuriy Sevruk, the prosecutor named to temporarily replace Shokin, but was turned down, the memos show.

Blue Star, using the Ukrainian embassy worker it had hired, eventually scored a meeting with Sevruk on April 6, 2016, a week after Shokin’s firing. Buretta, Tramontano and Painter attended that meeting in Kiev, according to Blue Star’s memos.

Sevruk memorialized the meeting in a government memo that the general prosecutor’s office provided to me, stating that the three Americans offered an apology for the “false” narrative that had been provided by U.S. officials about Shokin being corrupt and inept.

“They realized that the information disseminated in the U.S. was incorrect and that they would facilitate my visit to the U.S. for the purpose of delivering the true information to the State Department management,” the memo stated.

[...]

None of the other Democratic Party presidential candidates appear to have comparable background red flag hints of impropriety. Suggesting wisdom has a way out, early in proceedings.

____________UPDATE____________
Breitbart disrespectful toward Bernie's candidacy, while saying stick a fork in Biden, here, and Warren should be wary when seeing Breitbart seeing her.

_______FURTHER UPDATE________
The Hill's Krystal Ball also has a focus on Warren, Bernie mentioned only in passing. Bernie offers more for some to like, Warren offers less of a grudge figure for Dem corporatists.

Expected Trump talking points are emerging. Along with Minnesota specific content.

Reaching already to local levels. Link. Judgmental? Convincing?

Read and decide.

Breitbart. And if that interests you, given the source, try this. If Breitbart is flexing away, what can be read into that?

More Breitbart, here and here. Not in lockstep with The Donald. Is it damage control for the outlet's earlier Trump enthusiasims, or a sign of the ship sinking, the rats leaving?

_____________UPDATE______________
The HIll, yet another poll, but the specificity and twelve point jump portend the Breitbart cold feet for Trump may be prescient.

FURTHER: One quick quote [the poll sample size and methodology details are added at the tail end of the item] -

Support for impeachment grew among Democratic, Republican and independent voters alike. Democratic support jumped from 59 percent to 78 percent, a 19-point increase. The number of Republicans backing impeachment jumped 5 points to 18 percent.

The number of independents who back impeachment doubled to 41 percent.

Whether this represents a reliable long term barometer can be debated, but independents are hearing of the Ukraine call, and not liking what they are being awakened to. Does this mean Trump talking points are falling on deaf ears, or does it mean that the weight of coverage is what seeps through to less-informed voters? If the latter, Biden should worry. NOTE: The item does say 1001 sample size, with detail per an embedded spreadsheet few will take the time to study [not studied for this post - it's only one quick poll].

The Intercept on Reagan, Biden and incarceration.

Dated Sept. 17, 2019, titled, "The Untold Story: Joe Biden Pushed Ronald Reagan to Ramp Up Incarceration — Not the Other Way Around."

"Last month, Joe Biden told POLITICO that, if elected, he would maintain a firewall between his relatives’ business dealings and his administration. 'I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses. Period,' he said. 'And what I will do is the same thing we did in our administration. There will be an absolute wall between personal and private [business interests] and the government.' "

The headline above is the final Politico paragraph, here. With the current turmoil over Trump conduct, it remains true that Joe Biden has family-related worries other Democratic Party nomination seekers are free of, Bernie and Warren being examples, Harris even. Yes, Trump overstepped bounds of decency and good judgment in wanting dirt on Biden, but is there dirt or not, and even with an appearance of impropriety, Hunter having Ukraine cash flow and Joe not recusing himself from Ukraine policy when all fair minds must conclude he should have.

This image, with coverage, another Politico item, online here.

That image leads a troubling article about candidate Joe Biden. Never has such reporting touched Bernie, Liz, and Kamala, as already noted; nor Beto, nor Mayor Pete. Enough said, for now.

A 2020 election based on cross-mudslinging about ethics of both major party candidates can be avoided, at least on the Democratic side. The path is obvious. A nominee besides Joe Biden. It is that simple.

____________UPDATE____________
Here are images of a boardwalk through a swamp.

A CHOICE for a CHANGE - "Ask yourself, do you want the 2020 election to be about the pros and cons of runaway economic inequality and how to fix it-- or about whose family is more corrupt, Trump's or Biden's, who lies more, Trump or Biden, who is further alone the path to complete senility, Trump or Biden-- and who is the lesser evil, Trump or Biden? Let's have a real debate about real and fundamental issues."

The headline quote is from a post at DownWithTyranny, where, as always, the full text will get the full story across. The DWT item is headlined, "Bernie Is Right: There Shouldn't Be Any Billionaires."

And yes, Bernie is right with his spread the wealth thinking. Robin Hood policy, taking from the rich to help the poor, is so un-Republican that such a fact alone is cause to want it done; un-Republican being people friendly, by tautology. Bernie's plan has parallels with that of Warren, but is more aggressive in the extent of reform it intends to implement. (The headline quote is the final paragraph before the DWT's embedded youtube video. And that paragraph resonates by virtue of its simplicity, honesty, and good sense.)

The new top sidebar item is an image from the start of the DWT post. Arguably it squares with the item below it, which had been the top sidebar item. Work out in your mind the parallels you find. Not every new order is a bad order, sourcing being a factor to consider. Bernie suggests a new national order, one the remainder of the world can examine and adapt.

_____________UPDATE____________
Serendipity. Coincidence. After completing the post and accessing the Strib homepage, finding a recently posted AP item, "Census: US inequality grew, including in heartland states." The item begins:

ORLANDO, Fla. — The gap between the haves and have-nots in the United States grew last year to its highest level in more than 50 years of tracking income inequality, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released Thursday.

Income inequality in the United States expanded from 2017 to 2018, with several heartland states among the leaders of the increase, even though several wealthy coastal states still had the most inequality overall, according to the figures.

The nation's Gini Index, which measures income inequality, has been rising steadily over the past five decades.

The Gini Index grew from 0.482 in 2017 to 0.485 last year, according to the bureau's one-year American Community Survey data. The Gini Index is on a scale of 0 to 1; a score of "0'' indicates perfect equality, while a score of 1 indicates perfect inequality, where one household has all the income.

The increase in income inequality comes as two Democratic presidential candidates, U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, are pitching a "wealth tax" on the nation's richest citizens as a way to reduce wealth disparities.

There is lengthy detail following that start, all worth the time it takes to read it. Stagnant wages for regular people is stated as a recognized factor contributing to the increase in inequality - stagnation below while those at the top enjoy accelerating incomes quite far from any stagnation.

It is time to take the headline of this post to heart, and to bring about actual, real, phoniness-free CHANGE.

Where is Rene Alexander Acosta now, and who provides his cash flow?

Wikipedia and the entire web goes dark about him after his July 19, 2019, resignation as head of the Labor Department after federal heat arose over the wrist slap deal he cut with megabuck lawyers serving Epstein in Florida. So, silence to him may be golden, but it might be informative if we knew who is carrying his freight today. For all I know he might have a board seat with a Wexner company. To dispel such speculation you'd expect he'd make it easier to google and find him to have landed into unquestionably respectable employment. Somewhere.

"Green New Dealers Name Oil-Friendly Texas Democrat As First 2020 Primary Target," so says a HuffPo headline. Guess who, before reading.

Check your guess, read the details, this link.

Dueling banjos.

Braying jackasses? Taking their slantings seriously. Big question - whose bookshelf was Emmer posing in front of?

Someone who reads.

Barr should be impeached too.

NY Times posted the transcript. [alternate pdf online source]

Read the transcript, and note that it is disclaimed as to being verbatim. But it says enough. Clearly, Trump took Rudy and Barr along for the ride. Barr disclaims knowledge of the call, but has he denied conspiring in advance with Rudy and Donald?

Bill B.? What is your version about prior plans and participation?

To let Barr skate on this one would be to disarm and disavow the rule of law. The rule of law must apply to the nation's lawyer. The nation's! Not the Republicans'. Not the President's. Ours. And dishonored by the very inclusion of Barr as a named co-conspirator within that phone conversation.

______________UPDATE______________
Does this Trump step poison the well as to Biden family bribe-taking, as a possibly reasonable inference to be drawn by fair minds from what was known evidence prior to any Trump phone mischief? Hunter as a questionable cut-out, given his not being versed in energy matters where the Ukrainian natural gas baron had to have cause to give decently large sums of money to have Hunter "on board." When dad Joe was managing the Obama administrtion's Ukraine portfolio. That whole situation has a miasma suggesting Biden is the least likely Democrat to defeat Trump, November 2020. Denials are to be expected, while the circumstantial evidence is what it is. How should fair minds weigh things? Fair and cautious Democratic Party minds, not wanting a misstep?

________FURTHER UPDATE__________
A Marketwatch item.

________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Two immediate questions touch upon that transcript, itself. First the footer, p.1, "Classified By: 2354726," who 'dat?

Second, p.2, the Ukranian President, top of page, saying:

[...] I'm able to tell you the following; the first time, you called me to congratulate me when I won my presidential election, and the second time you are now calling me when my party won the parliamentary election. [...]

We are owed another transcript, obviously. It might be irrelevant, but there is absolutely no cause to have that hummer remain classified. As the one released was transcribed, then in the ordinary course of things there has to be a comparable memorialization of that first phone call. Release it too, or let us guess how damning it might be. Either/or.

When was the first call? Was Rudy mentioned and if so how? Was Barr mentioned, and if so how? Was either of the Bidens mentioned, and if so how?

Trump did not mention aid funds in the second transcript, or so it appears. What of that first call?

FURTHER: Trump says the conversation was about urging the Ukranian to do something about corruption. Do the word search there = corrupt. Nowhere in there. A curious omission. Not necessarily determinative of anything, but curious.

FURTHER: When is the whistleblower complaint to be released and the whistleblower identified so as to be made to testify to Congress? TMP noted:

While the contents of the complaint are still largely shrouded in mystery, multiple reports indicate that the complaint focuses on President Trump and an apparent “promise” he made during a phone call with a foreign leader. A member of the intelligence community who was aware of the call was so disturbed by the conversation that he filed a whistleblower complaint, the Post was first to report earlier this week.

During a closed-door briefing with the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, the intelligence community inspector general revealed that the whistleblower complaint centers on a series of actions, not just a single phone call. Inspector general Michael Atkinson did not answer questions about who was referenced in the complaint.

It’s unclear whether all of the actions allegedly mentioned in the complaint involve President Trump. CNN’s Jim Sciutto reported that Atkinson confirmed the complaint focused on multiple instances involving the President. Yet, the New York Times reported that Atkinson declined to confirm whether the complaint involved Trump. Atkinson also revealed in the Thursday session that he was unhappy with the way the Justice Department and the director of national intelligence handled the complaint.

[links in original] "Series of actions" suggests one phone call transcript is helpful to an understanding, but insufficient by itself.

Present all evidence, now or later. The sooner everyone comes clean, the sooner the House can reach determinations and move to actions. Phrased differently, one transcript alone doesn't cut it.

What hypocritical whoring looks like when done without any tie to conscience.

Strib carrying an AP feed:

At UN, Trump focuses on religious freedom, not climate
By JONATHAN LEMIRE and DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press - September 23, 2019 — 11:15pm

[...] rump's speech Monday extends a long-running focus on international religious freedom that speaks to a key priority of his evangelical base. His administration has hosted annual meetings on the topic in Washington, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced during this year's event that he would create an international alliance dedicated to the issue.

Underscoring the importance of Trump's action on the issue to evangelical voters who are critical to his 2020 reelection bid, one prominent evangelical backer Dallas-based pastor Robert Jeffress lauded Trump for focusing on religious freedom instead of climate change.

"What president in history would have the guts to do what President Trump is doing?" Jeffress, who was set to be in the audience for Trump's speech, said on Fox News. "And it's this kind of leadership that is absolutely infuriating the president's enemies, but it's also energizing his base, especially his religious base of voters."

Trump listed his administration's efforts on religious freedom and declared, "We've done a lot."

As for the climate summit, he told reporters as he left: "I'm a big believer in clean air and clean water and all countries should get together and do that, and they should do it for themselves. Very, very important."

Late Monday, he mocked Swedish 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, who had scolded the audience at the climate summit, repeatedly asking, "How dare you?"

Trump tweeted: "She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!"

This is the man who cozies up to Israel, the Saudis, and did a joint appearance with Modi. Yammering about religious freedom. Only mike pence could take that brand of BS seriously. And does. Or says so.

But wait. It is not only mike pence; for the above quote includes:

Underscoring the importance of Trump's action on the issue to evangelical voters who are critical to his 2020 reelection bid, one prominent evangelical backer Dallas-based pastor Robert Jeffress lauded Trump for focusing on religious freedom instead of climate change.

Well, yes, Jeffress. That's like pence with a bigger paycheck. A bigger following.

A Doug Wardlow, but successful. Last noted, Wardlow was living in MN CD6. Set for a primary challenge to Tom Emmer? It would be a hoot to see, if it would happen.

Trump - Hunter Biden, and manipulation of public attention.

The Hunter Biden story has been around a while. Do any level of websearch and it shows up several times, over time. It is not new. This range of Israeli elections is new, as is what will result as the next working government of that nation. But Hunter Biden - and the questionable story:

A "whistleblower" filed a complaint over a phone conversation Trump allegedly had with the new Ukrainian top politician in which Trump "suggests he may have mentioned and discussed Hunter Biden." Trump calling the "whistleblower" "a partisan," without knowing who the person is.

All this leaked to an eager but lazy press corps.

They jump it and wave it about hither and yon; and lo, a dormant story of possible Biden misconduct goes from moribund to front page. Trump manipulated the press to get that story out now, not letting it sit until after the Dems have chosen a candidate for the 2020 general election. Gun for Biden now, and it sets an ongoing theme and raises a lasting cause to doubt Biden. Yet the Biden name gets coverage leading into a primary cycle where Biden was starting to fade. Casual voters, uninformed but voting their prejudices anyway, will recognize the Biden name even more, for better or worse.

Does this mean Biden is "feared" by Trump more than Bernie, more than Warren?

Bernie is the one the establishment fears most, and in the Democratic Party there is a Clintonian grudge against Bernie because he sullied the run of the Queen. Never mind he ran then as the only major candidate with a chance yet with a sympathy for the people who the other two disdain. The inner party hacks who profit off the campaign flaking they do in exchange for contributor money, the campaign being merely a conduit for their cash flows with those cash flows being what matters - the beltway consulting class - they did not like the Bernie insurgency because he used different people than the regular consulting class members.

And Warren was literally begged to run then as an option for the people against Wall Street, and demured. Only Bernie stepped up to the job of offering a true option to Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, who must be remembered as in the November 2016 lead-up, the two most unpopular candidates of all time.

So, now, Bernie and Warren have bona fides, Booker is facing cash burn, Bullock is not well known, and Harris is replete with warmed-over Clinton candidate left overs while Joe serves corporations and nobody with any sense of anything doubts that for an eye blink.

Has Trump broken any law by seeking dirt against Biden? So, Trump had managed to kick to the front page the Hunter Biden story, for reasons we can only speculate about, while there is this whining outcry, "Impeach" whereas nobody has identified any correlaton between what Trump did, the phone call, and any one of the gross multiplicity of things federal criminal law criminalizes. Thus saying, "I did nothing wrong, it was a great phone conversation," is derisive of those clucking over the call, but without any basis in law mentioned yet in things to say his clear act of politics was criminal conduct. No statute cited, as yet, unless one has been mentioned with press types too lazy to look it up and report.

So it surely looks as if Trump wins this one. All the Pelosi House can do is call witnesses which will keep the name "Hunter Biden" in the news. Bright step for anti-Biden people, except that Biden is the establishment-corporate honey, and such a Pelosi House fox-chase will only cut against their favorite.

And it keeps Bernie frozen out of mainstream media mention, even though it is more likely Bernie has a greater popular following than Warren. Trump won this round because the press did as his manipulation was aimed. The effort to "front page" Hunter Biden succeeded, while the Biden name recognition gets a big upward kick from an already strong name recognition position. It does seem that Trump prefers a 2020 run against Biden than against Bernie. Against Bernie he'd have to be on defense as to his lying promises leading up to the 2016 vicdtory, whereas against Biden it would be finger pointing at one another as "a worse choice than me." Bernie has integrity to the point Trump has nothing to attack - Bernie's ideas being what polls continuously show as popular well beyond fifty percent. So Trump goes anywhere near that and Bernie says it is what you had promised, in your lying. Not a good thing, for Trump to respond to. So the game is dodge Bernie, sling Hunter Biden at dad Joe, and just feel that because he is a man Trump could handle Warren, because she's a woman, and hence a lesser power, in the Trump sexist worldview.

Back to the bottom line: either Bernie or Warren could easily defeat Trump and then be the best President of my lifetime - which goes back to Truman. THAT IS WHY CORPORATE AMERICA, THE POWER CLASS, THE MONEY MONGERS ALL WANT TO SCUTTLE BERNIE FIRST, WARREN SECOND. THEY UNDERSTAND WHICH SIDE THEIR BREAD IS BUTTERED. THEY SPEND FOR POLITICS, SEEKING A GREAT RETURN ON THEIR INVESTMENT. LAST CYCLE IT WAS INVEST IN CLINTON OR TRUMP, EITHER BEING A CAPTIVE CANDIDATE. THIS CYCLE, MARGINALIZE AS FEASIBLE THE PAIR, BERNIE AND WARREN. IT WILL PLAY OUT ON THE TV OF EVERY VOTING OR NON-VOTING CITIZEN, EVERY CHANNEL AVAILABLE, ALL OF THE TIME.

UPDATE: An image of what the nation's moneyed class wants to see as the 2020 final November voting choice. It is an image used more than once on the Down With Tyranny website - http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/

Showing a current status of Israel's likely government arrangements; by a websearch link.

Google search. "Unity government discussion" followed after Arab parties altering a long standing policy of not endorsing any prime minister candidate.

Trump, the Bidens, Ukraine and then, Netanyahu. The latter was the biggest foreign interferer in U.S. affairs, yet Mueller's millions were spent without any investigation there. Instead, what? A wink and a nod? We are being jerked around in all this.

CNN image of Rod Rosenstein accompanying this report.

The CNN item linked above reported on Rosenstein holding a formal press conference to tell the world that his independent counsel could prosecute Manafort over Ukrainian hijinks. What else was then also obvious, in terms of election tampering by foreign operatives?

PRESENTLY: Yes, Trump after the Mueller extravaganza aimed at saying foreign influence in our internal affairs is verboten generally disfavored, we see the SOB learned nothing.

Absolutely flat learning curve. He should be impeached for being so insensitive to messages. Yet he got away scott-free in playing footsie with Bibi, so he figured, it is all illusion and Joe is not his friend. What a pile of Trump.

Impeach him for having not even a flat learning curve but a downward sloping one. Or not? If he gets away with this latest peccadillo what's the lesson for him? For us? Is there no bound to the crassness and savagery of the man?

And then -- the 800 pound gorilla in the room -- Israel's repeated, indeed ongoing interference in internal U.S. affairs. WTF was Mueller's mandate from Rod Rosenstien? Take the investigation wherever it leads is recalled as the presented gist of the mandate; but somehow it failed to lead to Netanyahu. Who were these people aiming to  protect and who to deceive; and have they succeeded?

One clear short-term answer. Derail Biden and the corporatists behind him. Then Bernie or Warren gets the nomination and at least the reach of Trump's Ukranian solicitation error is neutralized.

And again, if the Biden family did something crooked, we, the public, deserve that information to be reported in full and suitable punishment to ensue. Otherwise, what have we become as a nation? All of this is beyond the pale. (For the etymologically inclined - fit that to Trump's savagery)

The original Rosenstein authorization letter:

The Comey testimony referenced in the order was posted online in transcript form by WaPo.

Mention is made of 28 C.F.R. 600.4(a). However, consider 28 C.F.R. 600.4(b), online here, and sit in amazed wonderment how Mueller could have had a blind eye to Israeli effort, via Netanyahu, with Romney as well as with Trump. How? Why? At whose orders was Israeli interference outside of jurisdiction, or was it gross negligence by the multi-million-dollar Mueller team?

The investigation did go beyond the original Russia inquiry. Beyond Russia, Manafort was jailed for Ukraine lobbying (without registering as a foreign agent). Michael Cohen was jailed for election law breach involving bimbo payments, and/or for tax law mischief. Both such heads on the wall represent a flyspeck compared to the Israel lobby wanting to push around the U.S. government, with success in the effort. When AIPAC sessions break for individuals to go to the Hill to lobby as constituents, shouldn't they have to register as agents of a foreign power, unpaid agents but agents nonetheless; i.e., agents roaming the halls of Congress tugging sleeves on behalf of Israel?

It is crystal clear. This from AIPAC 2018,

Ester Kurz: AIPAC's lobbying agenda this year is focused on three core issues: providing Israel with much-needed security assistance, opposing Iran's regional aggression and nuclear ambitions, and opposing boycotts of Israel, which also threaten U.S. companies.

Marvin Feuer: Which brings us to our first message for Congress. The United States must provide vital security assistance to Israel. This is the foundation of our work together, lobbying for the support Israel needs to defend itself by itself. Annual security assistance is the most tangible manifestation of American support for the Jewish state. For decades, America has understood that it is in our national interest that Israel has the resources it needs to respond decisively.

Brad Gordon: America depends on Israel as the one stable democratic ally in the Middle East. Both countries share intelligence, technology, and so much more. But instability grips the Middle East and Israel faces growing security threats, requiring her to invest more money in sophisticated and expensive weaponry.

To the north, Israel faces Hezbollah in Lebanon, with an estimated 150,000 missiles and rockets capable of hitting every part of Israel. And in Syria, Iran is cementing its military presence ever closer to Israel's border. To the south, Hamas controls Gaza, where it is digging more and more terror tunnels into Israel. And ISIS-affiliated terrorists roam the Sinai Peninsula.

Ester Kurz: Israel relies on our help to meet near-term threats, like rockets from Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as longer-term threats, like a nuclear armed Iran. To help meet these threats, on Tuesday, we will ask lawmakers to fully fund $3.3 billion in security assistance to Israel, $500 million in cooperative missile defense funding and to support the overall foreign aid bill.

Further, we will ask lawmakers to co-sponsor the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018, bipartisan legislation just introduced by Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Ted Deutch, and Senators Marco Rubio and Chris Coons. Yeah. They deserve a lot of credit.

This bill supports agreed-upon funding levels and it dramatically strengthens U.S. cooperation with Israel in many areas, including enhancing and expanding Israeli-based American war reserves stockpiles, which the U.S. can share with Israel in an emergency.

Marvin Feuer: This brings us to our second message for Congress. For over 25 years, AIPAC has been instrumental in bringing attention to the threat posed by Iran. We have worked with successive administrations and Congresses to peacefully address the Iranian nuclear threat.

[...] Marvin Feuer: Now, let's turn to our third message for Congress, the need for America to fight economic boycotts against Israel by the United Nations and other international governmental organizations. Almost every day, Israel faces unfair criticism and attacks that seek to stigmatize, delegitimize, and isolate the Jewish state. Syria's human rights crises grip our globe, yet Israel is the only country the UN Human Rights Council scrutinizes every time it meets.

Brad Gordon: This issue became more pressing in 2016 when the council ordered the preparation of a database of companies conducting certain business beyond the 1949 armistice line, including East Jerusalem and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. And in January 2018, the UN human rights commissioner for – the UN high commissioner for human rights threatened 206 companies, including 22 American companies.

These threats directly support the objectives of the BDS movement and can set back the cause of peace. Further, they could lead to international censure or worse for companies doing business with Israel and could deter others from engaging in any trade or investment in the Jewish state.

Ester Kurz: Tomorrow, we will ask both senators and representatives to co-sponsor the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, [...]

It is their aim and collective intent to influence Congressional decision processes. From the front of the hall they receive talking points. To go and lobby for a specific bill then presently before Conngress. They send out minions, with talking points!

There is flim-flam going around. All the hand wringing now about the dastardly Trump contacts and bullying of the newly elected Ukrainian head-of-state together with a near-universal institutional blindness among all toward Israel wanting to wrongly influence our elections beggars the imagination. Can there be much that rings as more phony than the Kabuki theater we are being served?

Was the entire point of the exercise to show the lobbying community and the governments of other nations, and their agents, how to do the influence game to a grotesque degree without consequence? Follow the Israeli way, and have a Get Out Of Jail card in hand?

_____________UPDATE_____________
If accepting the National Review view that Rosenstein gave Mueller a blank check to investigate anything and everything, then the blind eye toward Israel becomes more paradoxical.

Double standards always amuse and confuse. Beat those drums each of you who hung Ilhan Omar out to dry.

___________FKURTHER UPDATE____________
In terms of recent history, it seems the Clinton campaign via intermediaries, including hiding behind a law firm shield, engaged in solicitation of dirt about Trump from the Russians, again via a second intermediary in the "dossier" theater of the absurd; the second intermediary being the British national with ties to British intelligence.

So Trump targeted, Trump targeting Biden.

Where is the great substance of difference which justifies the present bellowing by Democratic Party ones, when earlier it was Republican ones bellowing over the dossier and FISA activities?

Either way, dirt digging was the motive and attempt, and whether one instance ends up more credible than the other depends on how much of this Ukraine stuff sticks onto the Bidens. Little of the dossier stuff proved to be really dirty dirt with factual proof backing it up. Hunter Biden, and money changing hands while dad worked international political levers seems grounded in fact, where denials exist but a belief that there may be circumstantial cause to disbelieve the denials is not unreasonable, as an inference. Hunter Biden did get substantial board of director fees and it seems he never, even now, knew jack-shit about energy markets, trends, practices, pitfalls or any other aspect beyond who his dad is. How was he worth what was being paid? And yet, overpaying a specialist can happen, where looking at professional sports salaries makes a stark and direct case for being worth whatever somebody willingly pays.

I still worry more about the Israelis because they not only try hard, but succeed. They have reached a critical mass. It is as with belief systems where the cut between a cult and a novel vigorous religion seems to be a numbers game. Joseph Smith was killed by ones believing he was a cult founder, which nobody claims today given today's Latter Day Saint numbers.

What is true or false when Ilhan Omar says it is identically true or false when Jason Lewis says it. The truthfulness of content of a message is independent of the messenger. Words can be shaded or blunt, but where is the hair-burning outrage over Jason Lewis and his shoot-from-the-lip persona and mentality.

Strib writes. Elliot Engle where are you to take your phony degree of offense, this time?

Quoting:

Minnesota U.S. Senate candidate Jason Lewis said on the radio in 2013 that some of his fellow Republicans had “dual loyalties” to the U.S. and Israel, and he attributed political support for the country to what he called “a very strong American Jewish lobby.”

[...] [...] In a statement, Lewis said his radio job “meant asking rhetorical questions, challenging audiences, playing devil’s advocate and seeing both sides of every issue.” His campaign manager, Tom Szymanski, said Lewis’s House voting record showed strong support for the U.S.-Israel relationship.

In the 2013 broadcast, Lewis claimed “there were a number of dual citizens” making policy during the administration of President George W. Bush.

Is it a defense of anything to say that as a radio host he dealt in bullshit because that was the key job qualification, but that he delivered votes independent of what he said to people on radio?

That is one strange defense statement. Bush the Younger did have that cell of neocons poisoning his presidency, and Israel got an Iraq war out of the cell, and Lewis, then, may have been factually correct, as Ilhan Omar was when she was critical of the power of the Israel lobby. There has been no call for any special prosecutor to investigate Israeli effort to influence U.S. election results. Such a probe might uncover more than Mueller found about Russia.

Why is it deemed worse by Israel's boosters to have true-enough comments by a Muslim castigated, but when by an idiot and a Republican, (I do repeat myself), things are okay?

Double standards always amuse and confuse. Beat those drums each of you who hung Omar out to dry.

Strib carrying an AP feed, raising more questions than giving answers; so read and infer.

An excerpt:

Giuliani told CNN that Trump was unaware of his actions.

"I did what I did on my own," Giuliani said. "I told him about it afterward.

Later, Giuliani tweeted, "A President telling a Pres-elect of a well known corrupt country he better investigate corruption that affects US is doing his job."

Among the materials Democrats have sought in that investigation is the transcript of a phone call Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on July 25.

Trump. Concerned about corruuption. That really is news. But also politics?

House Democrats are fighting the administration separately for access to witnesses and documents in impeachment probes. Democrats are also looking into whether Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani traveled to Ukraine to pressure the government to aid the president's reelection effort by investigating the activities of potential rival Joe Biden's son Hunter, who worked for a Ukrainian gas company.

[This link]

If the Bidens or one of them did something profitable and crooked, the public deserves to know. But Trump as instigator, or Rudy, either way politics arises as a clear stench attached to any factual content.

Bernie and Warren have no rattling skeletons; Trump? He's a big big closet to hold them all.

We can do better than we might. Bernie and Warren, again, fit that billing.

Follow the money. Quell the wisdom-free permitting. Janet Entzel and Steve Timmer co-write a letter to Strib's editors.

As headlined, respectively here, here and here. Mining at its worse is really damned bad!

In opposition to a terrible proposal set, one presently subject to a politically short sighted cramdown.

A/k/a hard rock sulfide mining without being actually near at all to suitable protections - as if suitable protection would represent an economic deal killer; so loosen the protections of the future, dig that f**king ore, process it on the cheap, because on the cheap is how to maximize short-term profits.

Damn the long term risks and consequences to us all; it's a Ranger "need." Others might call it only a "want," but DFL and Republican office holders will say it is a "need." They need to hold their elective offices, and what trumps that as a compelling need? Nothing! Don't rely on that said here. Ask 'em instead. Better - watch what they do not what they say. Learn how more corners can be cut than ever entered your imagination about public servants in action and who's served first and regularly. A/k/a follow the money; make reasonable circumstantial inferences from the money trail. It is a learning process.

Best and brightest? Worst and dimmist? Treadworn?

It is published as a cartoon. Is it more a sad commentary? A denunciation? J'accuse in a thousand-word surrogate? Try this for apt wording:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

But wait. There's more.

Down With Tyranny! Free the debt slaves. Let them rejoice, despite other Big Brother policy in place.

After student unrest at the end of the '60s the power holders came up with keep 'em indebted and anxious, and they'll be less "uppity." Other saga explanations can be offered, but this seems to be the Nixon-Reagan idea of screwing over the young. And it worked for decades, so you cannot fault their thinking, in light of their goals. It's the goals that suck and need to be retired. Progress demands it. Cutting the screed off there, there is this - a back to the future thing without a tricked out DeLorean:

click the image to read it

From Down With Tyranny! which linked over to NY Times reporting. All it takes is exercise of the human will toward decency, plus responsible public officials. The will has been ever-present among some. Now we face the clear need is to get rid forever of the McConnells who follow the footsteps of the Nixons and Gingriches [and Third Way Clintons]. All those dumpster-ready creeps who we still suffer, into the trash; and throw in a few media outlet controllers and the sun will shine brighter upon young and old.

LAST: The post would be incomplete without giving readers the DWT item's headline - "Conservatives Like Trump And Biden Don't Back The Idea Of Free College, But New Mexico Is Moving Ahead Anyway."

Yes. -- Naming a Two-some of disrepute. (As expected, the NY Times waffled in its headlining, not naming names when naming names helps shine a laser focus upon who the broom needs to sweep.)

So GOTV to decisively sweep out the crud. It is the theme of progress needed and progress sought. A theme where any who want to can hear the message clearly and resoundingly. Sweep for the future of our nation. For progress. And fight the forces for a stale same old repression of the human heart and spirit. They have held sway long enough.

Timmer writes of something rotten. It has a sulfide smell. No doubt about that. In Minnesota.

This link. If the police are in cahoots with the bandits, the bandits hold sway. In a nutshell that appears here to be Timmer's implication. The bandits being modern day copper barons, the worse of a breed.

No excerpt. Read the left.mn post. It is tightly written. It is informative. It is a step in presenting a story that yet may end well. Likelihood aside when every key politician in Minnesota is already on board to kissing the hands of the copper barons, and when Stauber and Emmer lead the House chorus. Last and present governor seem compromised in favor of copper baronies. Ditto the Amy and Tina show. Who represents integrity? Those filing the lawsuits, those informing the public of what seems a swindle against the earth, water, and people and all for a fleeting handful of Iron Range jobs. How coarse can things get? How bleedingly narrow a perspective can hold sway?

Richard Stallman resigns.

Guardian.

Where is John Bolton now? Fired by Trump, so who is now paying his freight?

Where Bolton gets money these days would tell us a lot more than Strib reporting about Klobuchar's campaign which is under a tombstone engraved R.I.P. Everybody but Amy and Strib have to see that.

So who is subsidizing the war mongering machine known as John Bolton when even Trump tired of the asshole?

Report that Bolton factoid WSJ, MSNBC, somebody, please. Ditto, the Whitaker guy at Justice, for that matter, Sessions - who's paying J.B. Sessions these days? Who and where?

Spicer, we know, perhaps Bolton is due to follow?

And ask the question in a bipartisan way - Loretta Lynch, where doing what for whom and for how much? Meeting whom, on airport tarmacs?

_________UPDATE__________
Guardian, on Spicer, image included. Bolton would look less foolish in that outfit than he looked mongering war all around DC. He could do his star dancing pairing with Henry Kissinger, each in that outfit. It would become a fan favorite. Softening the image of each.

"The private prison industry is set to be upended after California lawmakers passed a bill on Wednesday banning the facilities from operating in the state. The move will probably also close down four large immigration detention facilities that can hold up to 4,500 people at a time. The legislation is being hailed as a major victory for criminal justice reform because it removes the profit motive from incarceration. It also marks a dramatic departure from California’s past, when private prisons were relied on to reduce crowding in state-run facilities."

Guardian reports. The headline to this post presents the opening two paragraphs of the item, merged into a single quote.

Name that politician . . .

A politician whose recent speaking in public earned a response linking here.

Eric Black writes at MinnPost, "Would any one of the 10 Democratic nominees be an improvement over Trump?"

That is easy, yes, each, however Biden and Harris would be hard to support for various reasons, including each being aggressively uninspiring. With baggage, each.

THE QUESTION THAT MATTERS IS: GIVEN THAT ANY OF THE TEN WOULD BE BETTER THAN TRUMP, WHICH IS BETTER THAN THE REST?

There it is tough. Bernie, clearly. Warren, clearly. Between those two, a truly hard choice.

But is Eric Black ducking the true question? For Christsakes, even Klobuchar would be an improvement over Trump, but it is truly difficult to take the Klobuchar candidacy seriously. It will end, not with a bang, but a whimper. Ditto Harris. Ditto the outer tier talkers on either end of that last comparative session, relative to the three in the center; one sad, the other two on either side of the sad one bursting with potential.

image source (ratings were good)

Dan Burns posts at left.mn. About single payer appeal, and how all but us in the U.S. have it - HEALTH CARE AS A RIGHT

And why do we not have it? One simple answer. Republicans, plus the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Hoyer, Schumer, you know the names. Too bad we in Minnesota have no chance to ever vote against the likes of those two impediments to progress. Who is going to primary Hoyer? AOC should primary Schumer, next chance, or Gillibrand. Whichever has a term ending earlier than the other should be the AOC target. Of course her winning against Schumer might not be easy, but think of how the sun will shine brighter and the birds sing more sweetly when Schumer has to officially take on a Wall Street lobbying cloak. Happy Days! If/When.

Aside from the above mini-screed, the link to the Burns post: here.

"The U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter. But unlike most other occasions when flagrant incidents of foreign spying have been discovered on American soil, the Trump administration did not rebuke the Israeli government, and there were no consequences for Israel’s behavior, one of the former officials said."

The headline is a merged two opening paragraphs of a Politico item. Further in the item:

The miniature surveillance devices, colloquially known as “StingRays,” mimic regular cell towers to fool cellphones into giving them their locations and identity information. Formally called international mobile subscriber identity-catchers or IMSI-catchers, they also can capture the contents of calls and data use.

The devices were likely intended to spy on President Donald Trump, one of the former officials said, as well as his top aides and closest associates — though it’s not clear whether the Israeli efforts were successful.

[...] Based on a detailed forensic analysis, the FBI and other agencies working on the case felt confident that Israeli agents had placed the devices, according to the former officials, several of whom served in top intelligence and national security posts.

That analysis, one of the former officials said, is typically led by the FBI’s counterintelligence division and involves examining the devices so that they “tell you a little about their history, where the parts and pieces come from, how old are they, who had access to them, and that will help get you to what the origins are.” For these types of investigations, the bureau often leans on the National Security Agency and sometimes the CIA (DHS and the Secret Service played a supporting role in this specific investigation).

“It was pretty clear that the Israelis were responsible,” said a former senior intelligence official.

An Israeli Embassy spokesperson, Elad Strohmayer, denied that Israel placed the devices and said: “These allegations are absolute nonsense. Israel doesn’t conduct espionage operations in the United States, period.”

[...]"I don't think the Israelis were spying on us," Trump said. "My relationship with Israel has been great...Anything is possible but I don't believe it."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also denied after publication that Israel was behind the devices. [...]

But former officials with deep experience dealing with intelligence matters scoff at the Israeli claim — a pro forma denial Israeli officials are also known to make in private to skeptical U.S. counterparts.

One former senior intelligence official noted that after the FBI and other agencies concluded that the Israelis were most likely responsible for the devices, the Trump administration took no action to punish or even privately scold the Israeli government.

[...] “I’m not aware of any accountability at all,” the former official said.

Beyond trying to intercept the private conversations of top officials — prized information for any intelligence service — foreign countries often will try to surveil their close associates as well. With the president, the former senior Trump administration official noted, that could include trying to listen in on the devices of the people he regularly communicates with, such as Steve Wynn, Sean Hannity and Rudy Giuliani.

Do they not need to intercept conversations of Stephen Miller? One would think . . .

UPDATE: TruthOut.

FURTHER: How hideous Stephen Miller's soul is can be discerned by the fact Michel Bachmann gave him his first DC job, as her press secretary. Do read.

"But back to the gist of it all: as Bernie has been talking about for many decades and as Warren has begun talking about as the 2020 horse race heats up, the very restrictive cap now in place means that the ultra-rich essentially finish paying off an entire year of Social Security taxes on January 1st, contributing exactly the same amount to the program as someone who earns $132,900 a year. Wealth is by no means taxed at the same rate as work. It’s not even close. Put another way, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates pay the exact same amount in Social Security taxes as a middle class single or two-income couple living in a modest home in the suburbs. If oligarchic empires were subject to full progressive taxation, the nation’s retirement program could conceivably flourish into perpetuity."

The headline is a merged pair of sequential paragraphs from here.

"Klobuchar’s quest to capture the low ground of neoliberal incrementalism was thwarted by Biden, who has been preaching that gospel since 1973."

So says one post-debate III commentator, and opinions can differ. That quote was a sidebar highlight, as well as part of the flow of the story.

That is the extent of coverage here for debate III.

Fifty grand is not chump change. Especially when you get to write the job description for the job paying the fifty.

Strib local reporting. No excerpting here.

Quoted text, from Texas: Charles Chamberlain, chairman of the liberal advocacy group Democracy for America, said Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are “out of touch” for “picking winners in state after state.” “What they are doing is hurting our chances to win in the end,” said Chamberlain, adding that the DSCC has a terrible track record of choosing candidates early. “This is the heavy hand of Chuck Schumer who doesn’t understand how to run his caucus. The time for Wall Street, corporate Democrats is passed.” [...] “What I see Chuck Schumer trying to do for all these candidates is to package them like a cookie,” Sweet said. “Their formula is raise a lot of money and a lot of negative ads, and you win. I don’t believe that’s what’s going to win.” Gideon, the primary candidate favored by the DSCC, bristled at the charge that she’s packaged, saying in an interview at a party lobster bake that she “worked with blood, sweat and tears” in the part-time citizen legislature. “There’s nothing packaged and pretty about that,” Gideon said. “It is just hard work, and hard work that is based on dedication and conviction. And I will put myself up against anybody else in that frame any day with clear eyes and a full heart.”

Text is from "The Eagle." It was found by web search, so from the site it is inferred that it is a Texas Aggie outlet. And they write of Schumer.

Perhaps it is time to reevaluate. Calling the Schumer-DSCC effort to bias elections far from Schumer's Hew York home, and his DC digs, might not be "corrupt" as called in an earlier Crabgrass post. Just wise business. Let's say he is an elderly man, having spent his time in the beltway bubble instead of the real world, talking to like minded souls, who want their retired life comfortable and not impecunious so that over time they've become habituated to culling favors with moneyed interests in the hope of having unofficial IOUs they can cash once leaving hallowed government. It is future planning, with no malice toward those they direct money and power against. It not at all personal. Just an average Senator on the prowl. Not hostile to the poor but seeing them as a resource for the wealthy, who are the ones who matter. Courting a latter days payoff is nothing against the downtrodden, just keeping them down and trodden is a part of retirement planning. Not evil. Self and class centered, but isn't that what the job is? Again, nothing personal. Share a bottle with a good friend. Life is to be enjoyed to the fulllest. By those who know how. Folks living paycheck-to-paycheck lack an understanding that if they simply had more money they'd not have to do that. Unfortunate. But true. Uncork it. It is a fine vintage. A 95 rating by Wine Spectator.

Telling Schumer off is refreshing, although it will not change him or his overly offensive and undeserved hubris. He needs AOC to primary him into lobbying [officially].

click the image to enlarge and read

Schumer is Crabgrass - wanting to spread his ugliness and coarse nature over the entire lawn of the Democratic Party.

Oppose it. He is an empty suit, full of himself. Crabgrass in an expensive tailored suit. Probably wearing a Trump tie. He should take his entire corrupt DSCC and . . .

_____________UPDATE______________
A reminder to grassroot Democrats having a Senate candidate they respect and want elected:

Stiff these trolls. Give to individual candidate's campaign. Especially in states with primary contests - one Dem can be really better than another, and these people choose somebody else.

Be smart, not sheep. Stiff these DSCC Wall Street loving fat-cat serving creeps.

___________FURTHER UPDATE___________
Colorado Public Radio:

Committee To Elect Democrats To The US Senate Is At Odds With Most Of The Colorado Dems Who Want To Be In The Senate
By Bente Birkeland and Caitlyn Kim -- September 5, 2019

[...] Hickenlooper's White House bid never gained traction and he only decided to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Cory Gardner after months of wooing by national party figures, like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. They apparently overcame Hickenlooper’s own, oft-repeated, assertion that he wasn’t interested in, or cut out for, the Senate.

“There are a number of people I talked to, but it wasn't any one thing for me,” Hickenlooper said about his change of heart. “It was really a function of, how do you make a difference, right? And all this time I've been... not giving credit to the possibility that Washington can change.”

Almost immediately after Hickenlooper declared his candidacy, the messages of support started to pour in from former rivals in the presidential field: California Sen. Kamala Harris, former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg among them.

But it was the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s swift endorsement that has Hickenlooper’s primary opponents up in arms.

The DSCC endorsement unlocks fundraising and strategic help for Hickenlooper. And there are allegations the committee is actively working against at least one of his opponents.

[links in original omitted] "... how do you make a differnece ..." is by swinging on Schumer's Tarzan tree vine. As expected. As directed. An innovative approach, getting the DSCC inner party endorsement, to make a difference.


The Intercept, "Progressive Candidates Are Carving a Path to the Senate in 2020 — No Thanks to Chuck Schumer, by: Ryan Grim, Akela Lacy, Aída Chávez -- August 15 2019, 6:41 p.m." stating mid-item:

In North Carolina, state Sen. Erica Smith, a former Boeing engineer, high school math and science teacher, and ordained minister from Fayetteville, would be the first black senator to represent the state. Her platform highlights gun control and access to health care. She’s made climate change and the environment a top priority in her campaign. She supports an assault weapons ban and universal background checks, as well as expanding Medicaid. While she’s proposing progressive reforms to the criminal justice system, and opposes the death penalty as it’s historically been applied, she told The Intercept that “because of escalating instances of domestic terrorism,” capital punishment should be “included in the conversation” when it comes to mass shooters.

The DSCC has not yet endorsed in the 2020 primary, but there is speculation that it may support Cal Cunningham, an attorney, veteran, former state senator — and previous DSCC pick. Cunningham has raised a significant chunk of his $521,757 from donors linked to Schumer. He’s contributed an additional $200,000 of his own money to one of his campaign committees. (Trevor Fuller, a former commissioner for Mecklenburg County, and Eva Lee, a tax attorney from Raleigh, also announced their candidacies early.)

Cunningham, who lost a primary for Senate in 2010, is distinguished by having no distinguishing politics, precisely the type of candidate Washington consultants like to build assembly-line ads around. (You know the kind: two-minute biographical portraits with lots of aerial shots that decry “corruption,” followed by ads with the family in the driveway talking about their state’s values.) Though he has recently strengthened his position on guns, he received an “A” from the National Rifle Association in 2000, and as a state senator in 2002, he voted with 26 other Democrats in support of an NRA-backed bill that made it harder for local governments to sue firearms manufacturers.

A June poll by Emerson College showed Smith, who is currently serving her third term in the state Senate, leading incumbent Thom Tillis by 7 points, with 15 percent of voters undecided. She’s currently running her campaign with only about $25,000 cash on hand. She’s raised about $85,460 in individual contributions. She’s met with the DSCC twice and had several conference calls with the committee since early February, she said, along with three meetings with Emily’s List. She also met with Schumer in June during her vetting process. Talk of the committee leaning toward Cunningham, given his swift endorsement from several Democratic officials in the state, Smith believes, is “rumor … by some members of the establishment who have a preference for a particular candidate,” Smith said. “I’m not gonna take that away from my opponent that he ran in 2010 with the DSCC endorsement, but he did not win. And he’s not held office in 17 years.”

[links in original omitted]


L.A.Times:

Romanoff, who backs “Medicare for all” and aggressively combating climate change, said at least five political vendors that had expressed interest in working with him later told his campaign that officials at the DSCC, which helps recruit and finance Democratic candidates, said the vendors would get no other business from the committee if they worked for Romanoff’s campaign.

A political consultant at one of those firms confirmed the account but refused to be named for fear of retribution, saying that the firm was told by an intermediary for Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) that “under no circumstances were we to work with Andrew Romanoff.” If it did, the firm would get no more DSCC-related business, including lucrative referrals to work on other campaigns or to put together outside political advertisements. Romanoff’s account was first published Thursday by the Intercept, a left-leaning online publication. Since then, Romanoff said he’s received offers from several firms offering to help his campaign, including one that he said wants to “get banned by Schumer.”

Schumer’s office referred questions to the DSCC.

DSCC spokeswoman Lauren Passalacqua said the committee has no policy that forbids vendors from working with Democratic candidates that it does not support.

But she added: “In our role as a campaign committee focused on winning Senate seats, we have ongoing conversations with strategists and advisors about battleground races.”

[links in original omitted] Would you buy a used car from that "ongoing conversations with ..." spokesperson?

Or from Schumer?

A historic cause to dislike the possibility of Joe Biden being the 2020 Democratic Party nominee. [UPDATED]

[error - see UPDATE] Keep it simple, by links, with readers who are interested trusted to follow them and read. Here and then here. The Debbie Wasserman Schultz dimension of the Biden persona. (Presuming the second link is the "scathing critique" mentioned without linking in the first). What Schultz did to Bernie in 2016 is unforgivable, both because Bernie would have won, and because Schultz was negligent or worse in doing her DNC job. History has its role in educating us in the present. Biden was okay with the DWS handling of the DNC, and more. Bernie got knifed in the back, and Biden did tub-thumping for the wielder of that knife.

__________UPDATE___________
The Biden campaigning linked to above was in 2014, as the Florida press item is dated, not after the 2016 Democratic Party Convention during which DWS stepped down was fired as DNC head.

The Politico linked item dated 2017 clearly is after that surrender of DNC leadership.

This report by TheHill, from Aug. 2016, is after DWS was discredited and forced out of DNC leadership during the Party nominating convention. But before the 2017 Politico report.

After what DWS did to Bernie she should have been cast adrift in a lifeboat with three days rations. Instead Biden overlooked her botched handling of the DNC job duty of fairness, showing bias instead, and yet Biden did his love-in bit for her against a progressive alternate Democratic candidate for the district DWS held and still holds.

The initial posting clearly got timeline things bolexed up grandly, but after getting the time frame straight the compelling fact remains that Biden in 2016 after the DWS firing did the same as he'd done in 2014 - drum beating for a DWS reelection.

There is party leadership and there is being a willing party hack in support of a party hack, and those are not the same thing. Biden, in effect, showed disdain for Bernie and every person in the nation during the 2016 primaries who'd supported Bernie as one who could have won 2016.


Call the DWS alliance at best a Biden failure of judgment. One with that kind of judgment should not become President.

Bernie would have won.

__________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Readers are strongly urged to read and think over the Donna Brazile book excerpt published by Politico. It is one person's story of events, but give Brazile credit for having the public courage to tell it. Is this the manner of political party operations you want a part of? Or is it less than reason would have things?

Go figure. From today's forward looking perspective. There are reform candidates besides the guy stuck in a rut of beating the Wasserman Schultz drum, no matter what. Who is your choice?

__________FURTHER UPDATE___________
An earlier Politico item linked to from the Politico presentation of the Brazile book excerpt. Was there a need to mop up major-scale corruption? Read, then decide.

__________FURTHER UPDATE___________
In closing the post, a quote from the Brazile book excerpt published by Politco, late in the excerpt:

I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other way.

When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.

When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the candidate’s team starts to exercise more control over the party. If the party has an incumbent candidate, as was the case with Clinton in 1996 or Obama in 2012, this kind of arrangement is seamless because the party already is under the control of the president. When you have an open contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes under the candidate’s control only after the nominee is certain. When I was manager of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, we started inserting our people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.

It would have been great if Brazile had given us the date that determinative document was signed. At a guess, it was signed and agreed to sometime before Sunday, July 10, 2016.

Fleshing out but one brief part of the above quote, "with a copy to Marc Elias;" that's the lawyer. This lawyer.

Elizabeth Warren appears to many as close to the verge of becoming the nation's first female President; and it would be great for the nation if its first female President is one such as Warren, i.e., wholly free of any hint of corruption, of doing things the old way, depending on the old people with old habits, used to the old way.

So what's the lesson?

A retrospective look at an item from The Deets. Ed Kohler is a treasure.

"A federal watchdog agency is broadening its investigation into the handling of a key water pollution permit for PolyMet Mining's proposed Minnesota copper-nickel mine, giving the probe national scope. Without issuing any findings on the PolyMet case, the Inspector General of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a nationwide audit of comparable water quality permits."

The headline quote: Seeing smoke, indeed a smoke screen of a snow job, mixing metaphors for a four hundred page MPCA water discharge permit absent any regulation of heavy metal effluent contamination, the EPA Inspector General thinks such PolyMet smoke implies there might be a nationwide fire.

It is something like that. Earlier Crabgrass posting [here and here] linked to a Steve Timmer item published as citizen input by MinnPost. Timmer's item provides key facts which will not be presented again here. The latest Strib report revises and extends coverage, with a promise of a second perhaps bigger shoe to drop beyond MPCA staff being caught doing extremely bad politics, with a threat of serious irreversible environmental mischief:

EPA is broadening the scope of its probe into PolyMet water permit -- The EPA's findings from the PolyMet case will be incorporated into a nationwide audit.
By Jennifer Bjorhus Star Tribune
September 9, 2019 — 8:27pm

[... the headline quote] Specifically, it will examine whether the permits adhere to federal law "based, in part," on the Inspector General's examination of PolyMet, which started in June. A memo announcing the move also cited additional hotline complaints that have been lodged since the one in January that launched the PolyMet inquiry.

The agency will fold its PolyMet findings into the national audit, which means it could be many months before anything is released.

The PolyMet permit is now the subject of three separate inquiries — one by the EPA, one by Minnesota's Legislative Auditor and one in Ramsey County court — after Minnesota environmentalists and a memo leaked to the Star Tribune revealed what have been called irregularities in its handling by federal and state regulators.

The expanded audit was announced in a Sept. 5 memo from Kathlene Butler, a director in the EPA Inspector General's Office, to David Ross, the EPA's assistant administrator for water.

"We initiated that work to determine whether the EPA followed appropriate Clean Water Act and NPDES regulations in Region 5 to review the PolyMet permit approved by Minnesota and issued in 2018," Butler wrote in the memo. "We will incorporate the results from our work assessing the PolyMet permit review into this nationwide audit of the EPA's NPDES permit reviews."

The National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) regulates pollutants such as mercury and lead that can be discharged from point sources, such as industrial plants, into surface waters such as lakes and streams.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency issued an NPDES permit to PolyMet last year over serious reservations by the EPA's Region 5 Office in Chicago, which oversees Minnesota's enforcement of federal pollution laws.

[links in original] The Bjorhus-Strib item presents much additional detail beyond its opening paragraphs as set out above. It is a saga of courage of staff people at the federal agency to see the law obeyed despite the unfortunate politics of our State's two Senators, Klobuchar and Smith, and Reps such as Emmer (not even his district) and Stauber, and the Ranger will to say screw the environment, the planet, we want today a handful of additional jobs when Taconite mining remains the heavy hitter and the threat of sulfide mining far exceeds any potential benefit, beyond profit maximizing by conscienceless copper barons; damn all the consequences. There is more at stake than Glencore's bottom line. Our earth. Our waters. A few short term jobs beyond what taconite mining and processing provides. Relatively, a tiny handful of jobs compared to the risks.

While opinions can differ, the Crabgrass opinion is that Klobuchar's conduct re PolyMet (and by extension re Twin Metals) is the death knell of her presidential (vice presidential) ambitions. Too political an animal, too little statesmanship.

UPDATE: On the death knell belief, do some reading. Here and here. Are you impressed? Another link, a different publisher.

How do you define corruption?

While not in violation of any apparent criminal law, this image - note the big Pfizer middle finger at 2009.

We all know what could have been, absent moneyed interference, and the garbage we got instead. Garbage [warmed over Republican Romneycare] to where we now need Bernie and Warren pushing for Medicare for All. That Pfizer Finger is my symbol of the embodiment of corruption.

Opinions can differ. However, read the full Pfizer page, look at the list of those engaged in a sell-out of the public to special interest.

Perhaps focus on a single lobbying firm, a big hummer, Aiken Gump. 2019, so far this year, look at the buyers of the dirtbag influence peddlers; it is a cross section of corporate America. It would make a nice investment portfolio for a wealthy Senator or Representative to hold these customers of influence. Who knows . . . ?

Beyond that - these influence sellers know no shame. Touting their firm and how it delivers -

"Politico, The Hill, Others Cover Akin Gump’s Ascent to Top of Lobbying Rankings," stating in part:

Akin Gump partner Don Pongrace, who heads the firm’s public law and policy practice, told Politico, “While we’re really pleased that this result reflects confidence from our clients in our ability to advocate successfully on their behalf, we don’t view the numbers as an end to themselves. We continue to be driven by one primary goal: achieving outstanding results for our clients regardless of the issue we are addressing.”

This coverage follows on the recent arrival of an industry-leading health care policy team to Akin Gump (read more here and here) as well as of top-tier professionals to the firm’s communications and information technology practice (read more here).

[links in original] The buggers. They should advertise on Bedpage, where the whores post ads.

Better than a Schumer's Hickenlooper.

Andrew Romanoff. Send his campaign some money.

UPDATE: Why send him money? The Intercept. Mediocrity, or Conservative bias, arguably the same thing, needs to be countered with a hammer. Hammer Schumer. Hammer DSCC. Hammer sense into the thick heads. Actual CHANGE is brewing.

Fight venality in all its forms.

FURTHER: A successful AOC primary of Schumer would be a welcome eye opener. Pelosi or Hoyer might notice.

The Intercept link was given before.  At the end of this post.