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Rubio's Statement on the President’s Impeachment Trial is Incoherent Nonsense

“ultimately, voters themselves can hold the President accountable in an election, including the one just nine months from now.”

If Rubio really wanted to voters to hold the president accountable he would have asked for documents and witnesses so the voters could get the full story and make their choice as informed citizens.

By allowing the president to block all documents and block all first hand testimony, Rubio is actively preventing the voters from making informed decisions. Instead, the voters will hear a he said she said debate without all the relevant facts and be unable to hold the president accountable for his actions.

Let’s apply this simple test: If Rubio’s goal was to get voters to vote without knowing what the president did thereby being unable to hold the president accountable; is there anything Rubio would have to do differently?

From: medium.com

View at Medium.com

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From The Atlantic: The Rust Belt Didn’t Have to Happen

Vice President Mike Pence’s hometown of Columbus, Indiana, thrived while other cities declined, because J. Irwin Miller, its wealthiest and most prominent industrialist, remained deeply rooted in and committed to his city. He used his clout, money, and a visionary progressive approach to build up Columbus for long-term success. A new biography of him called J. Irwin Miller: The Shaping of an American Town, by Nancy Kriplen, reveals not just the story of a city but one of a lost model of American leadership that the country badly needs to recover if many of its communities are to ever turn around.

…

Miller’s approach was superficially similar to many of today’s public-private partnerships. The difference is that his program invested in building up public goods and services, whereas all too many of today’s partnership’s are about enriching private parties at the public’s expense.

…

That moderation also helped Cummins and Columbus avoid the labor strife of other Midwest cities. When national unions attempted to organize Cummins, the employees instead elected to form their own, independent Diesel Workers Union, over the objections of the United Automobile Workers. The relationship between the Diesel Workers Union and firm was much warmer than usual, with Miller given honorary union membership. As he put it, “Unions are management’s mirror. They tell you things your own people won’t admit.”

The results speak for themselves. Cummins has remained a successful global enterprise. And Columbus has prospered, never experiencing a major period of decline. Today it’s still growing in population and adding jobs faster than the nation as a whole. It’s more educated than the country at large and boasts a GDP per capita higher than Portland, Minneapolis, and Houston.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/the-rust-belt-didnt-have-to-happen/603523/

Worth reading.

The key take away is that Columbus Indiana’s story is not one of laissez faire tax cuts and deregulation. It’s one of the private sector making use of public goods and then funding those public goods. It is one of human capital development, trade and shared prosperity.

Sadly there is no sign Pence learned anything from his home town.

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Jeff Flake doesn't understand the Republican Party

“The former senator, who was a frequent critic of Trump, called on his former colleagues to put themselves through a “simple test.” And that involves asking, “What if President Barack Obama had engaged in precisely the same behavior?” 

From: slate.com

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/jeff-flake-urges-senate-republicans-put-country-over-party-impeachment-trial.html

Jeff, they would reverse themselves. You should know, you were there. You watched your party reverse itself on executive oversight. The deficit. Golfing. Impeachment. On the issue of character in the executive. Free trade.

Quoting Paul Krugman from last year:

the real test came after 2016. A complete cynic might have expected economists who denounced budget deficits and easy money under a Democrat to suddenly reverse position under a Republican president.

And that total cynic would have been exactly right. After years of hysteria about the evils of debt, establishment Republican economists enthusiastically endorsed a budget-busting tax cut. After denouncing easy-money policies when unemployment was sky-high, some echoed Trump’s demands for low interest rates with unemployment under 4 percent — and the rest remained conspicuously silent.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/opinion/republican-economists-bad-faith.html

Jeff, if you don’t know that your party acts in bad faith, on almost everything, no one should listen to you.

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Giuliani Claims He Kept Texts From State Dept. To ‘Protect’ Himself

Remember in 2016 when the GOP thought that the threat that Hillary might have State Department communications on private devices was enough to disqualify her and the possibility that they might end up outside to control of the State Department was enough to justify red faced screaming “lock her up”? Some people might start to think those concerns about cyber security in 2016 were not in good faith. 

So how did Rudy get those? Who sent them? Will there be an investigation? Will the GOP show even the slightest concern about private devices being used for State Department communications? Of course not. They never cared.

“Giuliani also repeated his claim that the State Department had approved of all his communications with Ukraine–and that he had five or six more texts in his back pocket as proof.

“I’m going to use them to protect myself if and when I need them,” he told CNN.”

From: talkingpointsmemo.com https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/giuliani-texts-state-department-ukraine-protect

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The president who is escaping indictment appointed the guy escaping 83 ethics charges.

The story not being told here is that Brett was facing 83 ethics charges and they went away when he became a Justice of the Supreme Court.  This was brought up during his confirmation hearing and somehow the story was all about the he-said she-said allegation and not the mountain of ethical problems that Brett had. The mystery mortgage payments? His role in the Brook’s Brothers riot in Florida? He public meltdown and unhinges ranting about conspiracies targeting him went mostly unremarked. The president who is escaping indictment appointed the guy escaping 83 ethics charges.

100k pages of his time in the Bush white house were withheld from congress. Somehow that wasn’t a story. Even while the NY Times covered it.

The bulk of the records being withheld “reflect deliberations and candid advice concerning the selection and nomination of judicial candidates, the confidentiality of which is critical to any president’s ability to carry out this core constitutional executive function,” wrote Mr. Bush’s lawyer, William A. Burck.

Looking at the WaPo fact check of the reasons why the Republicans didn’t care about those documents reveals some odd excuses.

Kavanaugh was a trusted adviser to Bush, said Paul C. Light, a New York University professor and expert on the White House

 

“Both groups concluded that Kavanaugh is no longer subject to the federal judiciary’s internal ethics review process because he is now a member of the Supreme Court. He became immune the moment he was confirmed on Oct. 6, a process that followed a congressional testimony about sexual misconduct allegations against him.”

The president who is escaping indictment appointed the guy escaping 83 ethics charges

From: huffpost.com

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brett-kavanaugh-ethics-complaints-dismissed_n_5d4442a1e4b0acb57fcb6356

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Mueller Was Right: Read the New Senate Report on Russian Technology Meddling in US Elections

““Throughout 2016 and for several years before, Russian intelligence services and government personnel conducted a number of intelligence-related activities targeting the voting process … the Committee found ample evidence to suggest that the Russian government was developing and implementing capabilities to interfere in the 2016 elections, including undermining confidence in U.S. democratic institutions and voting processes.””

That’s the key quote. This is going on and Moscow Mitch is doing all he can to block election security.

From: forbes.com

https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveandriole/2019/08/01/mueller-was-right-read-the-new-senate-report-on-russian-technology-meddling-in-us-elections/

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Children of US Troops Born Overseas Will No Longer Get Automatic American Citizenship

“Children born to U.S. service members and government employees overseas will no longer be automatically considered citizens of the United States, according to a policy alert issued by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Wednesday.”

What a disgusting thing to do the troops. I can think of no one more deserving of “merit based immigration” than the children of active duty military personnel.

From: military.com

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/08/28/children-us-troops-born-overseas-will-no-longer-get-automatic-american-citizenship.html

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Under Donald Trump, drone strikes far exceed Obama’s numbers

 

“Obama eventually put in place arcane requirements to issue public reports on civilian death tolls (but just in certain military theaters), to limit targets to high-level militants (again, in certain battlefields), and require interagency approval (also only for certain targets).

Trump has peeled back all of those requirements because, well, he can. We now know more than we did about U.S. drone wars when Obama first took office, but less than when he left.”

Trump’s drone war escalation has gone unreported. His blocking of all reporting on it has gone unnoticed. I don’t hear a single thing about this from the concern trolls who cared very deeply about Obama’s drone war. 

From: chicago.suntimes.com

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2019/5/8/18619206/under-donald-trump-drone-strikes-far-exceed-obama-s-numbers

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Hannity has mentioned Clinton on 86 percent of his shows since Trump’s inauguration: study

“Hannity’s apparent obsession with Clinton is “largely a reflection of his show’s focus on the dizzying conspiracy theory he constructed to defend Trump” from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, “

Hannity needs to respect the results of the election and move on with his life.

From: salon.com

https://www.salon.com/2019/09/11/hannity-has-mentioned-clinton-on-86-percent-of-his-shows-since-trumps-inauguration-study/

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Bret Stephens should show the same respect to the man who called him a bedbug that he demands we show to Nazis on campus.

“So I was surprised to receive an email from Bret Stephens last night. The subject line read “From Bret Stephens, New York Times.” The provost of my university was cc’ed on the message. Stephens had found a tweet that I had written earlier that afternoon. Riffing on the headline “Breaking—there are bedbugs in the NYT newsroom,” which was drawing rounds of Twitter jokes, I had written “The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens.” The tweet had landed with a thud (nine likes, zero retweets), and I went about my day.”

Republican attempts to shut down free speech on campus because his feelings were hurt. None of the free speech concern trolls who stand up for Nazis could be reached for comment.

From: esquire.com https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/amp28829576/bret-stephens-bedbug-david-karpf-interview/?__twitter_impression=true