Now you’re singing my song.

Billionaire liberal threatens to unload on Dems if they don’t impeach Trump
By LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ and STEPHANIE MURRAY, Politico
02/07/2019

Billionaire Tom Steyer is cranking up pressure on key House Democrats to impeach President Donald Trump where he thinks they’ll feel it most — back in their home districts.

Steyer’s first targets are three powerful committee chairmen, Richard Neal (D-Mass.), Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.). But the liberal megadonor isn’t stopping there: He will soon turn his attention to rank-and-file members seated on the committees that would be involved in impeachment proceedings, including freshmen.

And Steyer’s Need to Impeach PAC is considering going after the top three Democratic leaders, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.).

The previously unreported plans to single out additional members on the Ways and Means, Judiciary and Oversight Committees, detailed by Steyer and his advisers, represent the latest turn in Steyer’s multimillion-dollar campaign to impeach Trump. And the thinly veiled threat against the Democratic upper brass puts the former hedge fund manager turned activist squarely at odds with leaders of the party.

“There’s a gigantic cost to not listening to your constituents,” Steyer said in an interview with POLITICO. “There’s a gigantic cost to thumbing your nose at democracy.”

Kevin Mack, Steyer’s lead strategist on Need to Impeach, said the PAC has virtually unlimited resources to spend in targeted districts. The group has committed $40 million to the campaign for 2019 so far. The offensive includes TV and digital ad buys, paid staff in key districts and volunteers to organize canvassing.

“We haven’t ruled out going into leadership districts,” said Mack. “Why does Steny Hoyer get a pass, why does Jim Clyburn get a pass? They’re all hiding behind the Mueller report.”

Though Mack said the PAC isn’t ready to back primary challengers against Democrats, that’s not being ruled out, either.

Steyer’s frustration with Democrats’ hesitancy to impeach Trump is palpable. But Steyer believes that veteran lawmakers like Neal, Nadler and Cummings will listen to their constituents if Need to Impeach gives voters a loud enough bullhorn.

Steyer, at least publicly, has no official timeline for the next steps his PAC might take if Democrats don’t make move aggressively to obtain Trump’s tax returns or begin building a credible impeachment case against the president. He simply said he will continue to place negative ad buys in districts like Neal’s and Nadler’s, informing their constituents where their representative stands on impeachment.

“We’re not saying, ‘We’re so brilliant, listen to us,’ we’re saying, ‘Listen to your constituents,’” Steyer said. “It’s not like we can just hold our breath until something happens.”

There’s little incentive for Neal, Nadler and Cummings to oblige. They are in safe blue districts and have warned that the political cost of launching impeachment proceedings against Trump before special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings are known could be high for newly empowered House Democrats. Nadler, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has repeatedly said Democrats need to “wait and see” on impeachment.

Cummings, who shortly after the election unveiled a laundry list of investigations his Oversight Committee will conduct, scoffed at the idea that Steyer’s campaign could change his mind.

“He ought to spend his money on something else,” said Cummings. “I’m going to run my committee with integrity, transparency and accountability.”

“I was mayor of a big city,” Neal, the Ways and Means chairman and former mayor of Springfield, Mass., quipped. “No, it doesn’t bother me, no.”

Need to Impeach chose Neal for its first campaign targeting a congressional district. The effort, which started this week, includes paid staff and a $109,000, two-week television ad buy in the relatively small Springfield market. The group says it will soon add another $100,000 in digital ad buys.

“It’s time to hold Donald Trump accountable, and we can do our part here in Massachusetts. All we need is our Congressman Richard Neal to be with us,” the TV spot says. “Neal can subpoena Trump’s tax returns and vote to start impeachment hearings against the most lawless and corrupt president in American history.”

Neal’s position remains unchanged: He wants to wait until Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling and potential collusion with the Trump campaign is finished. Neal is consulting the counsel of the House of Representatives and the Joint Committee on Taxation to determine the appropriate legal steps to move forward with the “unprecedented request” for Trump’s tax returns, the congressman’s spokesman William Tranghese said.

“There’s a discernible process that’s acknowledged and at the moment I think my position is consistent with the party leadership on the Democratic side,” Neal said.

Steyer said he’s spoken with Democratic leaders and has “some sense of where they stand,” though he wouldn’t disclose details of his conversations. The campaigns targeting Nadler and Cummings will start shortly after Steyer’s Feb. 12 town hall in Springfield. Steyer will hold town halls in both Nadler and Cummings’ districts.

Need to Impeach will also have a presence in the districts represented by Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters. But the campaign in Waters’ district is designed to boost the California Democrat. Waters was an early supporter of impeachment and demanding Trump’s tax returns.

“There is a lot of things we can talk about in Congress that I care about and agree with leadership on that are not going to happen,” Steyer said. “This is an actual crisis … we can deal with that crisis or talk about legislation that’s not going to happen.”

But more than a year into Steyer’s multimillion-dollar impeachment push, Democrats aren’t changing their calculus.

“I hear people say, ‘Why didn’t they do it the first day,'” Pelosi told POLITICO this week, referring to impeachment proceedings. “You have to do it right.”

She added: “You have to protect the prerogatives of the House of Representatives and you cannot be scattershot about that.”

Steyer lives in Pelosi’s congressional district and the two have “been friends for many years,” Pelosi said. But “why don’t we keep our focus on the Republicans?” she asked.

“Wait a minute, let me get this straight; a billionaire from California is coming into the district to spend money against Richie, who used to be the mayor of Springfield, and is now the chairman of the Ways and Means committee who is making us very proud of Massachusetts,” Pelosi said.

It is, she added, a “waste of time and money.”

Hmm… maybe.

Tom Steyer’s Net Worth is estimated as $1.7 Billion. Unlike Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio he is an actual, factual Billionaire.

How much money is a Billion? Left in T Notes it generates north of $25 Million a year or $2 Million a month and at the end of spending that you have exactly the same amount of money you did before.

And Tom Steyer has about twice that. And a donor network.

So while we’re not talking Aircraft Carrier money here I would imagine he can generate a modicum of fuss and bother if he put his mind to it.

Ok, it is. An anonymous Mill Town of the early Industrial Age all growed up in the middle of the most boring stretch of highway between me and Maine where about a week from now I’ll be attending a rare performance by Mame Dennis who does most of her work behind the curtain currently.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I voted for Republicans.

I mean, I’ve always been a registered Democrat and when asked my political affiliation that’s usually how I answer though my philosophy is Anarcho-Syndicalist, but there was a time when I considered, and did, vote for a Republican or two. For instance we had a good Mayor in Stars Hollow who was very anti-development that was a Republican and he had my support.

Another one was Lowell Weicker. See Lowell was a Liberal Republican and while it’s an oxymoron now he was in fact a Big Government New Deal Fair Deal Great Society Liberal, more so than many Democrats.

Conservatives hated him and recruited Joe Lieberman to chuck him out of the Senate (one of the many things personal and political I despise about Joe) and he turned around and ran for Governor as an Independent.

They hated him even more after that because he instituted a State Income Tax and there are a number of Grover Norquist Club for Growth types who can’t let go of it even though it’s been almost 25 years.

But that’s the local view, most United States citizens remember him for his work on the Senate Watergate Committee and he has an OpEd in today’s WaPo reflecting on that experience in light of our current situation I think is worthy of your attention.

I was on the Watergate committee. Don’t hide Mueller’s report from the people.
By Lowell Weicker, Washington Post
February 7, 2019

Nearly 46 years ago, I was among seven U.S. senators who were part of the Senate Watergate Committee charged with investigating corruption and coverups at the highest levels of government. At the opening hearing, I asked, “The gut question for the committee and country alike is and was how much truth do we want?” None of us knew precisely what we would find — a list of enemies kept by the president, and tapes that proved the president’s complicity — but we knew that, as an equal branch of government, duly elected with a responsibility to provide effective oversight, we had to get to the truth.

Today, as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III enters the fourth quarter of his investigation, the questions are familiar ones for the 116th Congress: How much truth do you want? And how much truth do you owe the American people? My bottom line is the same as it was in 1973: It isn’t enough for the special counsel to complete his investigation and then have his report buried in a drawer at the Justice Department, or censored by those appointed by the subject of the investigation. Mueller’s report and full findings must be made public for Congress and the American people to read. It is the only way to pull our country together around the truth, which after all should be the standard.

I don’t know what Mueller has found or will find. I know there is much that is deeply disturbing in the indictments already public. But I know that if the president is as innocent as he has argued from day one, then he should want Mueller’s report to be public and transparent, rather than rebutted and censored as Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, has already suggested he will do.

Our country is as polarized as we have been in recent memory. President Trump’s tweets and tantrums about Mueller’s inquiry do a disservice to anyone who simply wants the truth about Russia’s attacks on our elections and whether any Americans conspired with them. That is why the public needs to see the special counsel’s full, unvarnished findings for themselves — with redactions to protect only information that is classified or otherwise restricted by statute. Only by reading the evidence and conclusions that detail how Russia carried out its attacks and whether any members of the Trump campaign committed additional crimes can the country protect itself from future threats and assess accountability.

The good news is that I hear some voices emerging in Congress across partisan lines, green shoots of statesmanship after a winter of silence. Republican Sens. Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) have co-sponsored a bipartisan bill that would protect not just this special counsel, but all future special counsels, from political interference. Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) recently introduced legislation that would require the Justice Department to release the special counsel’s findings to Congress and the public.

To those who argue that it is hopeless to expect the president’s party to do more than rubber-stamp his attacks on Mueller through silence or action, I’d remind them of where we found ourselves in 1973. President Richard Nixon had carried 49 states in the 1972 election. He would remain popular with a majority of Republicans until the day he left office. But we drew the line, nonetheless. There is a proper place for Congress to take Mueller’s findings and hold anyone who committed a crime accountable, including the president.

It will take all of us — Republicans, Democrats, and none of the above — joining once again to make sure Mueller can release his findings for everyone to read. If that happens, I am confident that we will emerge stronger , as Ernest Hemingway wrote, “at the broken places.”

I think Lowell is incredibly optimistic. I can’t imagine a Republican today that would vote to convict Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio, though I could be pleasantly surprised.

That does not mean he should not be Impeached, as a matter of fact, if you care about the Constitution at all, it’s kind of mandatory.

Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio is a Russian spy, a Traitor. He has Obstructed Justice and Abused his Power. He’s as guilty, guilty, guilty as Richard Nixon ever was of all the same things only Super Sized and with an additional side of Treason.

The reason he must be Impeached is as an example to others there is Political Conduct that is unacceptable in a Democracy and a consensual Blow Job (albeit with creepy power dynamics) IS NOT IT!

After 70 years of the Cold War, what is so difficult to comprehend about “Spying for Russia, Bad.”? It’s so simple even the Lizard Brained Racist Republicans and the illiterate Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio can understand it.

Loooooong!

That’s right Georgia, you guys lost the Civil War. Never, ever forget that.

Oh, it’s Black History Month

If you’re not familiar with the concept it goes a little like this- In 2003 Barbra Streisand sued a photographer over pictures of her Malibu Estate, claiming “invasion of privacy”. The instant reaction was to hugely increase the popularity of the image and doxx her address to anyone who cared to know.

The coinage itself came from Mike Masnick of TechDirt, a site I read several times daily and frequently cite (among many flaws of written English currently is a failure to correctly use the homophones ‘cite’, ‘site’, and ‘sight’, don’t get me started about the proper use of ‘affect’, which is to pretend, and ‘effect’, which is to cause), in a 2005 discussion of a takedown notice issued to urinal.net, which naturally enough specialized in pictures of urinals, by a resort that was unhappy to be included in a compendium of male restroom plumbing.

Worked about as well for them as it did for Streisand.

Anyway, I am happy to report Comrades that our Socialist Revolution has received a great, and totally unintended, boost from Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio and his capitalist Republican running dogs.

Trump wants to run against socialism. That’s great for socialism.
By Paul Waldman, Washington Post
February 6, 2019

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Trump identified the chief domestic danger we face, alongside immigrants who come here to murder us all: socialism.
…
On the off chance that a dangerous ideology cannot be banished with sufficiently vigorous chants of “USA! USA!,” Republicans are amping up their warnings that socialism is here and ready to put its heavy boot on our necks. The fact that they’re pushing this line is not surprising, given that the Democratic Party is indeed moving left and embracing policy solutions with stronger government components than what is currently in place on issue like health care.

The trouble is that as an insult, “Socialism!” doesn’t have the zing it once did. And that’s Republicans’ own fault.

Perhaps not entirely, I’ll grant you. One reason “Socialist!” isn’t the powerful insult it once was is just time: Since the Soviet Union collapsed almost three decades ago, there are a couple of generations of Americans who have no memory of the Cold War. For them, socialism is not synonymous with communism, which anyway is just something they learned about in history class. They don’t view it as the ideology of our enemies.

But more importantly, in the time since, Republicans have attacked almost anything Democrats wanted to do as socialism. Modest tax increases on the wealthy? Socialism! Regulations to lower carbon emissions and reduce the risk of climate catastrophe? Socialism! Health care reform built on maintaining private insurance but with stronger protections for consumers? Socialism!

After hearing that for so long, a lot of young people in particular seem to have concluded that “socialism” means little more than “policies that are more liberal than the Republican Party would prefer.” In other words, they’ve accepted the Republican view of what socialism is.

You can see it in polls like this one from Gallup, showing that among people under 30, 51 percent have a positive view of socialism while only 45 percent have a positive view of capitalism. They have little actual experience with socialism, but if you’re saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, you’re working at a job with mediocre wages and few benefits, and you can’t see how you could ever afford to buy a home, capitalism may not be looking so hot.

Lately Republicans have been working hard to convince people of this syllogism: Democrats are a bunch of socialists; Venezuela is socialist; therefore anything Democrats suggest will inevitably turn us into an economic disaster like Venezuela. Besides being completely asinine (ask economists whether we’re in danger of seeing U.S. inflation reach 1 million percent any time soon), the argument relies on the broad public reacting with the same horror Republicans do when they hear suggestions like a wealth tax or universal health care.

But they don’t, in part because when they hear the word “socialist,” Americans are more likely to think of Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than Joseph Stalin or Fidel Castro. In other words, someone who admires the social democratic systems they have in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia, and would like to see something similar here: a capitalist economy, but one that isn’t structured so much to benefit the wealthiest elite and includes a stronger system of social supports. Which isn’t nearly as terrifying.

If President Trump decides to run against socialism in 2020, he’ll be repeating what Republicans did over the last few decades, except condensed into the space of a year or so. The policies he’ll be describing as socialist, like higher taxes for the wealthy and giving more people health coverage, already have wide support, and with his own low approval ratings he’s unlikely to persuade people to change their views on those policies. Instead of destroying the Democratic nominee by pinning on her a label that everyone agrees is horrific, he’s much more likely to make socialism more popular than ever.

Which is why actual socialists — or democratic socialists, who are almost certainly far greater in number in the United States right now than the pure variety — should be more than happy to see Trump wage a war on socialism. It’s the best advertisement they can get.

Properly sung with the right hand fist raised in salute if you don’t have a convenient AK-47 to grasp.