Pity about That Legacy, Paul Ryan

Bummer of Birthmark, Paul

House Speaker Paul Ryan is leaving, and on the way out, he wanted a legacy.

Seeing as how the soon to be former Congressman, AKA the zombie eyed granny starver, IS the zombie eyed granny starver, he sees his legacy as finding some new and inventive way to inflict cruelty on the helpless.

So, in contravention of more than 50 years of bipartisan consensus, Paul Ryan decided to gut food stamps (SNAP) in the latest farm bill, and so he had to pass the bill without Democratic votes, and the right wing nut-jobs of the Freedom Caucus refused to back the bill, because they wanted to vote on persecuting brown people first:

A sweeping farm bill failed in the House on Friday in a blow to GOP leaders who were unable to placate conservative lawmakers demanding commitments on immigration.

The House leadership put the bill on the floor gambling it would pass despite unanimous Democratic opposition. They negotiated with members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus up to the last minutes.

But their gamble failed. The vote was 213 to 198, with 30 Republicans joining 183 Democrats in defeating the bill.

The outcome exposed what is becoming an all-out war within the House GOP over immigration, a divisive fight the Republicans did not want to have heading into midterm elections in November that will decide control of Congress.

The bill’s collapse also highlight the splits within the GOP conference that have bedeviled House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and will be certain to dog the top lieutenants in line to replace him, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.).

With moderate Republicans maneuvering to force a vote on legislation offering citizenship to some younger immigrants who arrived in the country as children, conservatives revolted. The farm bill became a bargaining chip as they lobbied leadership for a vote on a hard-line immigration bill.

………


The Washington Post
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In blow to GOP, House fails to pass massive farm bill in face of conservative Republican showdown
by Erica Werner and Mike DeBonis May 18 Email the author

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday expresses support for the House Agriculture Committee’s work on the farm bill. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

A sweeping farm bill failed in the House on Friday in a blow to GOP leaders who were unable to placate conservative lawmakers demanding commitments on immigration.

The House leadership put the bill on the floor gambling it would pass despite unanimous Democratic opposition. They negotiated with members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus up to the last minutes.

But their gamble failed. The vote was 213 to 198, with 30 Republicans joining 183 Democrats in defeating the bill.

The outcome exposed what is becoming an all-out war within the House GOP over immigration, a divisive fight the Republicans did not want to have heading into midterm elections in November that will decide control of Congress.

The bill’s collapse also highlight the splits within the GOP conference that have bedeviled House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and will be certain to dog the top lieutenants in line to replace him, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.).

With moderate Republicans maneuvering to force a vote on legislation offering citizenship to some younger immigrants who arrived in the country as children, conservatives revolted. The farm bill became a bargaining chip as they lobbied leadership for a vote on a hard-line immigration bill.

Leaders tried to come up with a compromise, but 11th-hour negotiations, offers and counteroffers failed. McCarthy and Scalise will face a share of the blame for the failure, and their fortunes in the race to replace Ryan next year could suffer accordingly.

The farm bill itself became practically a sideshow, despite its importance to agriculture and the significant changes it would institute to food stamp programs.

………

The farm bill itself broke open partisan House divisions as Democrats abandoned negotiations with Republicans over the food stamp changes, which would require adults to spend 20 hours per week working or participating in a state-run training program as a condition to receive benefits. Democrats argue that a million or more people would end up losing benefits, because most states do not have the capacity to set up the training programs required.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) described the legislation as “cruel” and argued that with the proposed changes to food stamps, “Republicans are taking food out of the mouths of families struggling to make ends meet.”

This outcome was eminently predictable, and it could not happen to a more deserving guy.

6 Democrats Who Should Never Get Your Votes Ever Again

They are Senators Joe Manchin (WV), Joe Donnelly (IN), Bill Nelson (FL), Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), and Mark Warner (VA).

Simply put, they just voted to appoint admitted torturer Gina Haspel as head of the CIA, and this is a direct endorsement of torture, and they know it.

This is not about politics.  This is about right and wrong, and they have morally disqualified themselves from any position of authority.

This is an affront to basic human decency:

What's a little harsh interrogation between friends? President Donald Trump's pick Gina Haspel was today voted in by the Senate as the new head of the CIA, despite playing a key part in post-9/11 torture programs under President George W. Bush.

Her role in destroying the CIA's damning torture tapes in earlier years makes her the perfect spy boss for Trump, the President for whom force, secrecy, and lies are solutions to every problem.

Let me reiterate:  Trump does not matter here.  This isn't about Donald Trump, or the Republican Party, or the Easter Bunny.

This is about torture, and this is about rewarding torturers, which these 6 Senators just did.

Note that this was not an empty gesture.  Their votes were crucial to her approval:

Lawmakers approved Haspel’s nomination 54 to 45, with six Democrats voting yes and two Republicans voting no, after the agency launched an unprecedented public relations campaign to bolster Haspel’s chances. She appears to have been helped, too, by some last-minute arm-twisting by former CIA directors John Brennan and Leon Panetta, who contacted at least five of the six Democrats to endorse her bid to join President Trump’s Cabinet, according to people with knowledge of the interactions.

Do the math.  If they had all voted against the torturer, it would have been 48 to 51, if just 5 of them had voted against the torturer, Haspel would still had been rejected by 1 vote.

There is a special place in hell for these cowards.

And the House Will Never Allow a Vote, and Trump Will Veto It

Still, the fact that Democrats managed to peel off a few votes and overturn the repeal of net neutrality is good policy and good politics:

The US Senate today voted to reverse the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules, with all members of the Democratic caucus and three Republicans voting in favor of net neutrality.

The Senate approved a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that would simply undo the FCC's December 2017 vote to deregulate the broadband industry. If the CRA is approved by the House and signed by President Trump, Internet service providers would have to continue following rules that prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has scheduled his repeal to take effect on June 11. If Congress doesn't act, the net neutrality rules and the FCC's classification of ISPs as common carriers would be eliminated on that date.

Democrats face much longer odds in the House, where Republicans hold a 236-193 majority. Republicans have a slim majority in the Senate, but Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) broke ranks in order to support net neutrality and common carrier regulation of broadband providers.

The vote was 52-47.

The optimist in me celebrates this.

They cynic in me wonders how many Democrats in the Senate would have voted yes if there was any possibility of it actually being passed.

Spelunking Helmet, the Official Hat of Congressional Democrats

So, now there are two Democrats who are saying that they will vote to confirm torturer Gina Haspel as head of the CIA, Joe Manchin, and Joe Donnelly.

It turns out there is low level of moral depravity that conservative Democrats will affirm out of abject cowardice.

It is also a losing proposition in the long run, when Democrats refuse to stand up for the basic standards, their voters know that they will refuse to stand up for them:

The Senate appears to be moving full speed ahead on confirming Gina Haspel as director of the CIA.

The Intelligence Committee is expected to vote to advance her nomination to the floor during a closed business meeting scheduled for Wednesday morning, and a Saturday morning announcement by Indiana Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly further reduced the suspense.

“I believe that she has learned from the past, and that the CIA under her leadership can help our country confront serious international threats and challenges,” Donnelly said in a statement. “Importantly, Ms. Haspel expressed to me her commitment to be responsive to congressional oversight and to provide her unvarnished assessment — both to members of Congress and the president.”

Donnelly’s office said the Indiana Democrat met Thursday with Haspel, the current acting director of the CIA.

The same night, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Penceappeared together Indiana at a rally in support of Donnelly’s Republican challenger Mike Braun.

During the event, Trump and Pence criticized Donnelly for his voting record, while also pushing him to support the CIA nominee. In his statement, the senator said the support Haspel has received from the intelligence community was an important factor in his decision.

The people in the intelligence community who are supporting her are covering their own asses.

Either they were complicit in torture, or they are interested in sucking up to a woman who they see as being the next head of the CIA, and either their boss, or their client.

The ultimate fault lies with Barack Obama, who should have prosecuted torturers, but instead retained and promoted them.

There is Bad, Really Bad, and ………

So egregiously bad that so bad that the Washington Post editorial board is forced to do the right thing.

It's Gina Haspel wot done it. Between her torture, her aggressive support of torture, and her oleaginous performance before the Senate Intelligence Committee, it was too much for the WaPo editorial board.

I would note that Fred Hiatt's merry band of psychopaths, cheered the invasion of Iraq, destroying Libya, the Whitewater investigation, Bush's purge of US attorneys, privatizing social security, supporting Trump's border wall even as they called it stupid, privatizing education, and letting Richard Cohen near a typewriter.

I had though that there was no limit to their stupid, but Gina Haspel is just a bridge too far for them:

Gina Haspel, President Trump’s nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, faced a clear test when she appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday. After a 33-year career at the agency, she may be, in many respects, the most qualified person ever nominated to the post, as one Republican senator contended. But she has a dark chapter in her past: her supervision of a secret prison in Thailand where al-Qaeda suspects were tortured, and her subsequent involvement in the destruction of videotapes of that shameful episode.

As Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, made clear from the outset, Ms. Haspel needs to clearly repudiate that record. She must confirm that techniques such as waterboarding — now banned by law — were and are unacceptable, and she must make clear that she will never again accept orders to carry out acts that so clearly violate American moral standards, even if they are ordered by the president and certified by administration lawyers as legal.

Ms. Haspel did not meet that test. She volunteered that the CIA would not on her watch engage in enhanced interrogations; she said she supported the “stricter moral standard” the country had adopted after debating the interrogation program. Pressed by Mr. Warner and several other senators, she eventually said she “would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral, even if it was technically legal.” What she would not say was that the torture she oversaw was immoral, or that it should not have been done, or that she regretted her own role in it — which, according to senators, included advocating for the program internally.

That ambiguity matters at a time when the United States is led by a president who has cheered for torture, who lacks respect for the rule of law and who demands absolute loyalty from his aides. Unfortunately, it makes it impossible for us, and others for whom the repudiation of torture is a priority, to support Ms. Haspel’s nomination.

The Post's editorial page is the 2^nd most likely to be contradicted on the facts (a close race that the bat sh%$ insane Wall Street Journal editorial board won), but Gina Haspel is too much for them.

Honestly, I did not think that this was possible.

At Least They Wiill Be On Record

Democrats have managed to force a motion of disapproval of the FCC's repeal of net neutrality.

I do not expect it to pass, but forcing the Republicans to line up in favor of Comcast and AT&T is horrible politics for the 'Phants:

The Democratic push to restore net neutrality took another step today with the official filing of a petition, under the Congressional Review Act, to force a vote on whether to repeal the FCC’s unpopular new rules. The effort may be doomed in the end, but it’s still extremely important.

The CRA is a way of reversing rules recently instated by federal agencies; it’s simple and effective, though, until this administration, rarely used (but they made up for lost time, all right). Its expedited process and low bar to entry — only 30 senators are needed to bring a vote, and the vote generally happens quite quickly — have made it an ideal tool for Congress to undo Obama-era regulations, but the shoe is on the other foot now.

Democrats in the Senate are using the CRA as a potential method of removing the rules the FCC voted for in December and returning to 2015’s Open Internet Order and strong net neutrality rules. Today they filed the actual petition to force the vote.

………

Right now there are 50 senators supporting the measure, including one Republican. The Democrats are hoping to make this issue extremely visible in order to put pressure on other, perhaps undecided, Republicans who might cross the aisle with enough prodding from their constituency.

As I’ve written before, and as Senators themselves have admitted, the chance of this actually rolling back the rules is low, since it would have to also pass through the House, where Democrats are at a more serious disadvantage, then be signed by the president, which is unlikely, to say the least.

But by forcing a vote, they force everyone in the Senate to take a position for or against the rules, including those who have attempted to stay “neutral” through silence.

This is actually something that Democrats can run on, that is both good policy and good politics.  (Net neutrality is favored by Republicans by something like 2 to 1.)

More of this.

So Not a Surprise

If there is one safe US Senate seat for the Democrats this election cycle, it's California.

But this time around, the not only did the California Democratic Party not endorse Dianne Feinstein, ^* she actually lost to her challenger by a significant margin, though not enough to actually get the endorsement. (Kevin De León beat her 54% to 37%, and he needed 60% for the endorsement)

So, now that she has a viable primary challenge, and the top two finishers will almost certain Feinstein and De León, which given California's jungle primary means that they will face off in the general.

Once again proving that Republicans fear their base, and Democrats hate their base, so given that Feinstein is far more conservative than the state, and De León is not, the establishment has pulled out the stops for Dianne, including an endorsement from Barack Obama.

Not a surprise. Barack Obama has always hadd nicer things to say about conservatives than he ever did about progressives:

Former President Obama is endorsing Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) as she faces a prominent Democratic challenger.
Obama said in a Friday statement that he was giving his "strong endorsement" and calling Feinstein "one of America's most effective champions for progress to the Senate.”

"She’s always been an indispensable leader for California, and we became dear friends and partners in the fight to guarantee affordable healthcare and economic opportunity for everybody; to protect our planet from climate change, and our kids from gun violence," he added.

Feinstein's reelection campaign blasted out the announcement on Friday, noting the two had worked on "shared priorities" when Obama was a senator and during his administration.

Feinstein, 84, has held her the seat since 1992 but is facing frustration from liberals who believe her old-school Senate collegiality is out of touch in the era of President Trump.

The problem is not her , "old-school Senate collegiality," it's her support for the surveillance state, Wall Street, Iraq, the Death Penalty, the Flag Burning Amendment, Internet Censorship, expansion of the H1B program, and her opposition to marijuana legalization that puts her out of step with California voters.

It isn't her "Senate collegiality" that people have a problem with, it's her policies.



^*Full disclosure, I've never met her, but she is my 2nd cousin once removed.

How is the Trump Cabinet Like a Song by Queen

Thomas Homan has been acting head of ICE for over a year.

For reasons that are not particularly clear, his nomination has been on hold since November, has resigned as acting head of ICE:

Thomas Homan, the Trump administration’s top immigration enforcement official, announced Monday that he plans to step down from his job, less than six months after Trump nominated him to be director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Homan was named ICE’s acting director soon after Trump took office in 2017, and the tough-talking, barrel-chested former Border Patrol agent quickly became an unapologetic enthusiast for the administration’s more aggressive enforcement approach.

Under Homan, immigration arrests surged 40 percent after agents scrapped an Obama administration policy of targeting serious or violent criminal offenders in favor of casting a wider net. Homan said those living illegally in the United States “should be afraid” that his agents could be coming for them.

The article engages in some Kremlinology to try and explain this, suggesting that he had fallen out of Trump's favor, but I think that it is more likely that there was something in his background that would have prevented his confirmation by the Senate:

Thomas Homan, President Trump’s pick to permanently lead the nation’s immigration enforcement agency, has been in limbo since his nomination last November — and Democratic senators want to know why.

In a letter released Friday, nearly 20 Senate Democrats said they want the Department of Homeland Security to hand over documents shedding more light on Homan and his formal nomination to become the next director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The nomination of Homan, who has been leading the immigration agency in an acting capacity since the beginning of Trump’s presidency, has stalled since it was officially submitted to the Senate on Nov. 14, 2017, with no confirmation hearing nor movement in the chamber.

………

Democratic senators said DHS needs to give more information to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee before the nomination can proceed, but the department has yet to do so. The fact that it took Trump nearly 10 months to officially nominate an ICE director was also “striking,” Democrats wrote, “given the priority this Administration claims to place on immigration enforcement.”

“We understand that the Trump Administration may be concerned about Mr. Homan answering questions under oath about his leadership of ICE, as well as the possibility that Mr. Homan’s nomination could be defeated in the Senate,” the Democrats wrote in the letter. “However, the Senate is an independent branch of government and has a responsibility under the Constitution to provide its advice and consent on this nomination.

The fact that DHS has been unwilling to provide full documentation, and that this is juxtaposed with the spectacular flame out of Doctor Feelgood Ronny Jackson is ……… Curious ……… to say the least.

I gotta figure that there is something truly embarrassing in Homan's background, and that senior White House staff, along with senior Republicans in the Senate, know what it is.

Special Election Tonight

The Republicans won the race for Arizona's 8^th Congressional District:

Republicans won a closely watched special election in Arizona Tuesday, turning back a spirited challenge from a first-time Democratic candidate to keep a U.S. House seat in GOP hands.

The Associated Press called the race on the basis of the Republican’s lead in early voting. Debbie Lesko, a former state lawmaker, had the edge over Hiral Tipirneni, a Democratic physician making her first run for office, by 52.9 percent to 47.1 percent.

It's not an unreasonable showing by the Democrat, Trump won this district by 21%, and the Republicans significantly outspent the Democrats, but you don't get the brass ring for a close 2^nd place finish.

When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro ………

In the same day, we have former House Speaker John Boehner joining the board of a pot grower. and Current House Speaker Paul Ryan announcing his retirement.

While a number of reports regarding Ryan's decision to not to run for reelections read are hagiographies full of nonsense phrases like, "Principled Conservative," I think that the evidence points elsewhere:  Specifically, the polling appeared to indicate that he was in for the race of his life against Randy "Iron Stache" Bryce, a union activist and ironworker.

The Democratic primary should get interesting, as in addition to Mr. Bryce, a school teacher and school board member, Cathy Myers is running, and I would expect someone else to jump in before the June filing deadline, particularly since both Bryce and Myers are strongly progressive, and someone is going to try to stand up a centrist squish.

On the Republican side, the now-leading candidate for the nomination, Paul Nehlen, is a Nazi. (Not hyperbole)

Strange times.

Deliberately Missing the F%$#ing Point

The New York Times has a story about how Republicans are using the specter of impeachment to bolster their chances of reelection in what is a difficult cycle.

It's an interesting narrative, but it is profoundly wrong:

As Republican leaders scramble to stave off a Democratic wave or at least mitigate their party’s losses in November, a strategy is emerging on the right for how to energize conservatives and drive a wedge between the anti-Trump left and moderate voters: warn that Democrats will immediately move to impeach President Trump if they capture the House.

What began last year as blaring political hyperbole on the right — the stuff of bold-lettered direct mail fund-raising pitches from little-known groups warning of a looming American “coup” — is now steadily drifting into the main currents of the 2018 message for Republicans.

The appeals have become a surefire way for candidates to raise small contributions from grass-roots conservatives who are devoted to Mr. Trump, veteran Republican fund-raisers say. But party strategists also believe that floating the possibility of impeachment can also act as a sort of scared-straight motivational tool for turnout. Last week, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas used his re-election kickoff rally to introduce a video featuring a faux news anchor reading would-be headlines were conservatives not to vote in November.

“Senate Majority Leader Schumer announced the impeachment trial of President Trump,” one of the anchors says.

And when Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio, the chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, convened about two dozen party strategists in February for a private dinner at a French bistro here, the attendees were surprised when he addressed an issue not included in his formal PowerPoint presentation: the threat of impeachment against Mr. Trump, which he said fired up the party base.

First, Republicans are now now, nor have the EVER been, a small donation party.

Small donors are, at best, icing on the cake.

What this is about is getting Nancy Pelosi to do what she did in 2006, and panic and declare that impeachment is, "Not on the table".

The depressing thing is that it's probably going to work.

No one ever lost money going long on the cowardice of the leadership of the Democratic Party.

The Mainstream Wing of the Democratic Party in a Nutshell

You remember Donna Shalala?

She was in the Clinton cabinet, and then, as president of the University of Miami, she attempted to sabotage a unionization effort by janitors, and now, it appears that she was pulling heavy salaries from the boards of a health insurance company and a real estate developer.

No laws were broken, but this is fundamentally corrupt, and now she is the front runner for a House of Representatives seat in Florida because she is raising big bucks, much of it, I am sure, UnitedHealth and Lennar homes:

Here's a sentence that perfectly explains the state of Democratic politics in 2018: Former Clinton Foundation chief Donna Shalala, who helped lead a major homebuilder during the 2008 housing crash and also made $5 million after sitting on the board of a massive, for-profit health insurance company, is poised to steamroll a crowded field of Democratic competitors in a race for the U.S. House.

Earlier this week, Shalala announced her candidacy for retiring Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's seat representing downtown Miami, Little Havana, and Miami Beach despite the fact that seven Democrats are already battling in the primary, including more than a few solid candidates without huge red flags in their pasts.

Shalala, who declined an interview through campaign operative Fernand Amandi, paints herself as a progressive with deep understanding of how Washington works. But there are big unanswered questions about her time on two corporate boards tied to major crises in American policy.

As Americans debate how to fix a for-profit health insurance system that is both cruel and the most expensive in the developed world, Shalala will have to explain how she profited handsomely from her time on the board of a health-care giant.

After she served as the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary under Clinton, she used that experience to secure herself a gig on UnitedHealth's board. She wound up accumulating more than 61,000 shares of company stock, which she then sold in 2005 for more than $5.3 million. Shalala has not yet taken a public stance on the issue of Medicare for all, but signs suggest she might ultimately endorse the idea. Regardless, she'll have to sell voters on trusting a former health-insurance board member to work against for-profit insurance companies.

Even more troubling, Shalala sat on the board of Lennar Corporation, one of America's largest homebuilders, from 2001 to 2012. Securities and Exchange Commission filings show Shalala earned $113,000 in combined compensation (mostly stock awards) in 2011. To avoid a conflict of interest, the then-University of Miami president left the board in 2012 when Lennar CEO Stuart Miller Was angling to become vice-chair of UM's board. (He became a UM trustee in 2002.) She left UM in 2015 and rejoined the Lennar board two years later.

During the decade Shalala helped lead the company, Lennar played a major role in fueling the global recession. Most obvious, Lennar overbuilt: The mid-2000s housing boom came, in part, because D.R. Horton and Lennar were buying up every tract of land they could and slapping together houses as fast as they could. Miami-Dade County, in particular, got hammered during the Great Recession. A 2009 county report laid bare the obviousness of the overbuilding problem. County economist Robert Cruz wrote that from 2002 to 2007, the county's "vacant and for sale" rate spiked by 52 percent, and a particular construction boom from 2005 to 2007 led to an extremely acute vacancy hike just before the economy crashed.

It's the hypocrisy that rankles.

Between the board engagements, and the speaking gigs to captains of industry as back end payoffs to their political career, is it any wonder that the typical voter does not believe when people like her claim that they will fight for the ordinary person.

And Mylvaney's Anti Consumer Jihad Continues

He is now asking Congress to emasculate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:

The acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Monday asked Congress to restrain the power of his agency.

Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney, who is pulling double duty as the acting CFPB chief, asked Congress to take control of the bureau’s funding, make his successors fireable at will by the president, install an inspector general and give itself the sole power to finalize the bureau’s rules.

All four measures would be drastic blows to the CFPB’s power and independence.

They are in line with the views that Mulvaney had as a member of Congress. In fact, Mulvaney voted for the changes as a Republican lawmaker from South Carolina in 2017.

Mulvaney wrote in the CFPB’s semiannual report that “Congress established an agency primed to ignore due process and abandon the rule of law in favor of bureaucratic fiat and administrative absolutism.”

“The Bureau is far too powerful, and with precious little oversight of its activities,” wrote Mulvaney, who as a congressman had opposed the CFPB’s existence.

Mulvaney and the CFPB make Ann Gorsuch Burford and the EPA look like a pie fight, and the EPA is still damaged from her efforts 35 years later.

Mulvaney believes that it is the right of banksters to steal from ordinary people, and that any meaningful attempt to prevent their fraudulent activities is an affront to their free market gods.

Any Democrat who supports these so-called reforms, and my guess is that there are dozens in the House and a few in the Senate. should be primaried, and any one who wins their primary should not be voted for in the general election.

More of This

Black leaders in Missouri have refused to sign a letter condemning one of their colleagues criticism of Senator Claire McCaskill:

African American leaders in Missouri are frustrated with what they see as Sen. Claire McCaskill’s lackluster engagement with minority voters.

Frustrated enough that they refused to sign a letter pushing back against comments made last month by Bruce Franks, a prominent black activist and state legislator from St. Louis, who called on McCaskill to “show up” and earn the support of minority voters in her state.

“I’m going to vote for Claire, but Claire is going to have to bring her ass to St. Louis,” Franks said to applause at a town hall he hosted Feb. 17.

In response to Franks comments, McCaskill had asked African American elected officials in Kansas City and St. Louis to sign the letter.

Among those who were approached by McCaskill are U.S. Reps. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City and Lacy Clay of St. Louis, and state Rep. Gail McCann Beatty, the minority leader in the Missouri House.

Each declined to sign.

“I’m 100 percent certain that nobody signed it,” Cleaver said in an interview Wednesday with The Kansas City Star. “We talked about it very seriously and strongly and every one of us said, ‘We’re going to support her, but signing this letter isn’t going to achieve what she wants. It’s just going to make people angry.’ ”

Cleaver said he’s sympathetic to McCaskill’s plight. She’s a Democrat running for re-election in a state Republican President Donald Trump won by nearly 19 points in 2016. He understands she must win over some right-leaning voters to survive.

But as McCaskill works to burnish her reputation as a centrist, Cleaver and other African American leaders said they worry she’ll leave minority voters on the left with the impression that she’s taking them for granted — and it could cost her turnout in the urban centers that are crucial to her base.

I think that they are sick of being characterized as "super-predators" by people who want their votes.

Running against you base to appeal to people who will never vote for you is stupid, and it does not get you any votes, and people who do it do not deserved to be elected.

Nice to see this blow up in Claire's face.

The Process Is Simple, Choose a Rich and Stupid Candidate, Get Him to Make Huge Media Buys, and Profit

I think that I have divined a method to the madness at the DCCC and the DNC.

They push candidates that have nothing to recommend them but money (see Cisneros, Gil) then they boost these candidates, who, having no clue, run poor campaigns where they overspend on expensive media on the advice of consultants, and those consultants get a percentage of the media buy, and walk away with their pockets full, win or lose.

It is the Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it," made manifest.

This explains the latest shenanigans in Minnesota. It's looting by the political consultant class:

Jeff Erdmann of Eagan is a football coach at Rosemount High School who wants to add a term in Congress to his resume.

He hopes to run against first term Republican U.S. Rep. Jason Lewis in Minnesota's 2nd District.

But Erdmann said he faces an obstacle in gaining the DFL Party endorsement in the form of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

………

DCCC officials made it clear money drove their choice to back Craig, he added.

"We didn't talk anything about my background, my success as a teacher, as a coach any of the values that I hold. All they wanted to talk about was where we thought we could get money-wise."

………

In Minnesota's 3rd District in the western suburbs, another wealthy Democrat, Dean Phillips, also won early DCCC backing.

Democrat Adam Jennings is also in the race and hoping for the chance to run against Republican U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen. Jennings said the DCCC wouldn't even speak with him.

"There is kind of an establishment big-money component to all of this, and the more I think about it the more motivated I get to run."

The folks at the DNC and the DCCC hang out with the political consultants, they break bread with them, and in many cases, they marry them, and in a few years, the do a tour as political consultants themselves, and get rich giving bad advice to candidates.

They are deciding this on the basis of what butters their bread best, and not winning elections or getting good people into office.

They are parasites, and you cannot negotiate with a parasite, you can only remove it.

About PA-18

It's appears to be heading to a recount with a margin in the ¼% to ½% range (about 600 votes), with the Democrat leading.

In any case, it appears to be a roughly 20% swing from Trump, so whether or not the Democrat, Connor Lamb, or the Australopithecus, Rick Saccone actually ends up filling out remaining term of  Tim Murphy, who resigned following allegations of sexual improprieties.

Whatever the results, I expect the Democratic party establishment to claim that this shows that they need to make no changes to their strategy, because, as Upton Sinclair noted, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

(Update 24 hours later) Lamb has been declared the winner by a few hundred votes.

No update on the recount.

The DCCC Supports Enslavement of Women

If you oppose women having control over their own bodies, you support their enslavement, and Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) has said that he is fine with supporting candidates who want to strip women of control over their own bodies:

Democrats will not withhold financial support for candidates who oppose abortion rights, the chairman of the party’s campaign arm in the House said in an interview with The Hill.

Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said there will be no litmus tests for candidates as Democrats seek to find a winning roster to regain the House majority in 2018.

“There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates,” said Luján, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman. “As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America.”

So, you are going to support segregationist candidates in predominantly white districts in Alabama then?

Of course not, but women are expendable to Luján and his ilk.

Dpo not give to the DCCC.

And in the TX-7 Primary

The Democratic side is going to a runoff, with Lizzie Fletcher getting the most votes  with the condemned by the DCCC Laura Moser close behind.

The Emily's List endorsed Fletcher is a union buster lawyer, so even if the DCCC had not released an opposition research dump on Moser, she would have my support.

With the DCCC's war on Moser though, I'm actually interested in what would otherwise be an obscure, Congressional race.

It's highly unlikely that either can win the general:  7% more Republicans turned out than Democrats, and for them, the primary was meaningless, with the incumbent getting 76% of the vote.

Moser's campaign website is here.

Send her money, and tell the Blue Dog loving DCCC to go cheney themselves.

Tweet of the Day

photo of U.S. Congress pic.twitter.com/MlKkgA5kUe

— IL for a People's Party (@MPP_Illinois) February 1, 2018

Yeah, pretty much.

This is F%$#ed Up and Sh%$

It appears that Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee leaked communications of Mark Warner, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee were behind the leak of private text messages between the Senate panel’s top Democrat and a Russian-connected lawyer, according to two congressional officials briefed on the matter.

Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the committee’s Republican chairman, and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat, were so perturbed by the leak that they demanded a rare meeting with Speaker Paul D. Ryan last month to inform him of their findings. They used the meeting with Mr. Ryan to raise broader concerns about the direction of the House Intelligence Committee under its chairman, Representative Devin Nunes of California, the officials said.

To the senators, who are overseeing what is effectively the last bipartisan investigation on Capitol Hill into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the leak was a serious breach of protocol and a partisan attack by one intelligence committee against the other.

………

The messages between Mr. Warner and Adam Waldman, a Washington lawyer, show that the senator tried for weeks to arrange a meeting with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who assembled a dossier of salacious claims about connections between Mr. Trump, his associates and Russia. The Senate committee has had difficulty making contact with Mr. Steele, whom it views as a key witness. And Mr. Waldman, who knew Mr. Steele, presented himself as a willing partner.

………

Fox News published the texts, which were sent via a secure messaging application, in early February. President Trump and other Republicans loyal to him quickly jumped on the report to try to discredit Mr. Warner, suggesting that the senator was acting surreptitiously to try to talk to Mr. Steele.

………

Copies of the messages were originally submitted by Mr. Waldman to the Senate committee. In January, one of Mr. Nunes’s staff members requested that copies be shared with the House committee as well, according to a person familiar with the request who was not authorized to talk about it publicly. Days later, the messages were published by Fox News, the person said. Fox’s report said that it had obtained the documents from a Republican source it did not name.

The documents published by Fox News appear to back up the senators’ accusation. Though they were marked “CONFIDENTIAL: Produced to USSSCI on a Confidential Basis,” suggesting that they had come from the Senate panel, known as the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the person familiar with the congressional requests said that the stamp was misleading and that other markings gave away their actual origin.

Specifically, the copy of the messages shared with the Senate had page numbers, and the one submitted to the House — while preserving the reference to the Senate committee — did not.

A lawyer for Mr. Waldman independently concluded that the House committee had probably shared the document and sent a letter to Mr. Nunes complaining about the leak, according to a person familiar with the letter.

I have my suspicions about who leaked the texts **cough** Nunes **cough**, but regardless of who did, this sort of rat-f%$#ing between the House and Senate is really unprecedented.