Impeachment not an option. Dump Trump the old fashioned way. Throw him out. Lock him up.
Moscow Mitch
Our own XRepublican has a great idea for an ad in Kentucky:
Moscow Mitch. Mitch Mcconnell took millions from a Russian oligarch to protect Russian oligarchs’ interests. But won’t lift a finger to help Kentucky’s truckers and miners, whose pension money was stolen. In November, vote for YOUR money, and send Moscow Mitch back where his money comes from.
My thought is to raise money for Kentucky radio ads with this script.
just to be fair and balanced…
from politifact: Fact-checking claim that Mitch McConnell’s ‘biggest donor’ is sanctioned Russian oligarch
A screenshot of a tweet spreading online accuses Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., of receiving donations from a Russian oligarch who the GOP-controlled Congress recently lifted sanctions on.
The tweet reads: “Ready for this? It turns out that the biggest donor for Mitch McConnell (R. Moscow) is none other than the Russian oligarch that the GOP just lifted sanctions on.”
The same post links to a Jan. 28 Medium post by the Democratic Coalition, a super PAC founded in 2016 in opposition of Donald Trump.
This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
According to the Democratic Coalition’s story, Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen, donated millions to McConnell’s campaign and Senate Leadership Fund in recent years via his company Access Holdings.
The story also claims Blavatnik is a long-term business partner of Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, of the aluminum company RuSal, “in which (Blavatnik) is a major investor.” It then says McConnell led Republicans in January to vote against a resolution to maintain sanctions on Deripaska.
We found that this isn’t all false, but the claim exaggerates Blavatnik’s contributions to McConnell as being his “biggest” donor, and makes it look as if Blavatnik is the Russian oligarch affected by sanctions. In fact, it was another Russian with whom he conducted business.
Blavatnik emigrated to the United States with his family in the late 1970s and returned to Russia in the late ’80s as the Soviet Union began to collapse. His U.S.-based holding companies — Access Industries Inc. and AI-Altep Holdings Inc. — are conduits for his largest political contributions, according to Federal Election Commission records.
In 2015-16, Blavatnik’s contributions went to GOP PACs and top Republican leaders, including McConnell, according to FEC records.
In that cycle, his companies contributed over $6.3 million, with $2.5 million going to McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund. In 2017, Blavatnik donated another $1 million to the committee, records show, bringing the total to $3.5 million.
While Blavatnik certainly donated a lot of money to McConnell’s committee, he is nowhere near the majority leader’s highest contributor. In the 2017-18 cycle alone, at least two other donors, Sheldon D. Adelson and Miriam Adelson, gave $25 million (a piece) to his leadership fund.
In April 2018, the Trump administration announced sanctions on multiple Russian oligarchs and their companies, including Deripaska and his aluminum company Rusal, the second-largest aluminium company in the world. Deripaska is known to be closely allied with the Kremlin, and his name has come up in emails turned over to the Mueller investigation.
Then, in December, the administration agreed to lift the sanctions on Deripaska’s companies in exchange for him giving up majority ownership, along with other concessions.
About a month later, McConnell led Senate Republicans and blocked a Democratic effort to keep the sanctions on Deripaska’s companies.
Now that we are all caught up, how are Blavatnik and Deripaska connected?
As two of the richest Russian men in the United Kingdom, it’s not entirely surprising they have had business dealings. According to a report by the Dallas News, Blavatnik and business partner Viktor Vekselburg hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal.
(Vekselberg made news in May 2018 after it was revealed that a U.S. firm he invests in wired $500,000 to a company owned by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney.)
A post says McConnell’s “biggest donor” is a Russian oligarch who was released from U.S. sanctions.
Blavatnik is involved in Deripaska’s businesses, on which sanctions were lifted recently, but it is inaccurate to call him the Russian oligarch “that the GOP just lifted sanctions on.”
Blavatnik also donated money to McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund, but he wasn’t the highest donor, records show. He also contributed to other Republican leaders and GOP-affiliated PACs.
The attack on McConnell gets a lot of the details wrong. So we rate it False.
“The attack on McConnell gets a lot of the details wrong“ but NOT ALL of them, some of which are disturbingly right.
the republicans are not ruble free
another KY senator made the news today in the courier journal:
It’s been a long time, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg clearly hasn’t forgotten some controversial comments by former U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning.
When the subject of her health came up in an interview this week with NPR, the longtime U.S. Supreme Court justice didn’t mention Bunning by name but had a lot to say about some remarks he made in 2009, weeks after Ginsburg had undergone pancreatic cancer surgery.
“There was a senator, I think it was after the pancreatic cancer, who announced with great glee that I was going to be dead within six months,” Ginsburg said in an interview with NPR’s Nina Totenberg. “That senator, whose name I’ve forgotten, is now himself dead, and I am very much alive.”
Bunning, who represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate fom 1999 to 2011, made plenty of controversial remarks in his career. But his comments about Ginsburg in 2009 drew a notable amount of heat.
Bunning, who had no medical background, said during a speech at the time that Ginsburg had “bad cancer. The kind that you don’t get better from.” Even though she had undergone surgery to treat the cancer, he said, “usually nine months is the longest that anybody would live.”
He later apologized for the remarks and said it was “great to see her back” in the court 18 days after her surgery. He didn’t run for reelection in 2010 and was replaced in the Senate by Rand Paul in 2011. Bunning died in 2017 following complications from a stroke he had suffered months earlier.
Ginsburg underwent surgery in late 2018 after cancerous nodules were found in her lungs. She has since returned to the Supreme Court.
still, xrepub’s ad script meets the standard of proof, especially the low bar Trump has set
looks like somebody’s been lurking lately on the Trail
from the hill this morning: Scarborough calls McConnell ‘Moscow Mitch,’ says lack of action on Russian meddling is ‘un-American’
‘Morning Joe’: ‘Moscow Mitch’ McConnell Is Aiding And Abetting Vladimir Putin
patd – I am wondering if the “former” republicans, such as Scarborough, are willing to become members of the Democratic Party? Obviously they would not fit in the left wing section, but would be the new Blue Dogs. Watching Morning Joe over the years since the MSNBC show premiered has been a conservative republican with a centrist Dem wife change to a left Dem wife with a centrist Indie. Would he, and others like him, switch back to being a republican when SFB and the BH ( “bobblehead“) are gone? Probably, but they are no longer of the party and may not be accepted back. Their party no longer exists.
good for joe, hope media keeps it alive. raw story picked it up: MSNBC’s Morning Joe buries ‘Moscow Mitch’ McConnell for selling out American democracy to Russia
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough went on an extended rant against “Moscow Mitch” McConnell for repeatedly blocking measures that would protect American democracy from Russian attacks.
The Senate majority leader blocked two election security bills twice this week, despite warnings from U.S. officials and former special counsel Robert Mueller that the Kremlin was actively engaged in efforts to interfere with the 2020 election — and McConnell prevented the Obama administration from warning Americans about Russian meddling in 2016.
“Robert Mueller testified that not only did Russia try to interfere with our 2016 election and not only did Donald Trump’s — all of his intelligence community and Kirstjen Nielsen, when she was at Homeland Security, said Russia undermined American democracy in 2016,” Scarborough said. “We remember back then the warnings came, but ‘Moscow Mitch,’ that being Mitch McConnell, of Moscow, Kentucky, actually blocked that and said he threatened the people that were going to try to get that information out to warn Americans.”
Despite all those clear warnings, the “Morning Joe” host said, McConnell agrees with President Donald Trump that Russian election interference is just a “hoax.”
“‘Moscow Mitch’ says it’s a hoax,” McConnell said. “You have his own Intelligence Committee in the Senate led by Republican Richard Burr saying that Russia tried to infiltrate all 50 states back in 2016 and are going to try it again. ‘Moscow Mitch’ calls it a hoax. You have the Republican Trump appointed FBI director saying that the Russians infiltrated America’s democracy and are going to try again.”
“You have the head, the director of national intelligence saying that the Russians tried to infiltrate our election system, tried to subvert American democracy,” Scarborough continued, “they’re going to try it again. ‘Moscow Mitch’ said it’s a hoax. You have Trump’s appointed director of the CIA saying that the Russians are trying to undermine American democracy, that the Russians tried in ’16, will try again. ‘Moscow Mitch’ calls it a hoax.”
“You have military intel people, the military intel community, knowing because they were fighting the Russians in 2015-2016 and are still fighting them every day to stop them from continuing to infiltrate American democracy,” Scarborough said. ‘Moscow Mitch’ says it’s a hoax.”
Scarborough suggested the fix was in.
“I understand that there’s an oligarch that I have read is going to be setting up a big aluminum plant in ‘Moscow Mitch’s’ home state,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s it, but how can ‘Moscow Mitch’ so willingly turn a blind eye not only this year to what his Republican chairman of the Intel Committee is saying, to what Robert Mueller is saying what the FBBI director is saying what the DNI is saying, to what the CIA is saying, to what the United States military intel community is saying.”
“How can ‘Moscow Mitch’ keep denying that Vladimir Putin continues to try to subvert American democracy?” Scarborough added.
Watching snippets of the hearings yesterday it occurred to me that Nunes, Gohmert and Jordan should form a comedy troop. They would be a smash hit, They could call themselves the Three Stooges, but they’d probably get sued for that. I wonder if they could try Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest, or would they get sued for that? Maybe S Troop would fly. Hmmm, a quandary.
I thought Moscow Mitch was an inspired moniker.
And dammit, Thibaut Pinot abandoned the Tour. No explanation yet.
mediaite yesterday:
Joe Scarborough: Russians Celebrating the Fact That the ‘Entire Republican Party are Useful Idiots’
Joe Scarborough opened Thursday’s Morning Joe with a deep lamentation of just how far his former Republican party has fallen in his esteem, following Wednesday’s congressional hearing featuring Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
While many in the media focused on what they called disastrous “optics” for Mueller and the Democratic-led House committees that held the hearings, Scarborough instead focused on the specifics revealed and or reiterated by Mueller during both the Judiciary and Intel committee hearings.
Scarborough noted how the Republicans were “ecstatic” Wednesday given how the hearings proceeded before listing the items learned and/or confirmed by the hearing: 1) Russia interfered with American democracy, 2) Trump and his campaign “happily welcomed” that interference, 3) Trump and his team members repeatedly lied to federal agents investigating this, 4) President Donald Trump lied under oath about Russians trying to infiltrate, and 5) “American democracy is still, is still under threat from the Russians.”
Scarborough ended this opening riff by blasting the GOP members of Congress who, during much of Mueller’s testimony, seemed entirely more focused on undermining Mueller and his team’s investigation into Russian interference, than the Russian interference itself.
“So just a little nightcap for Russians who have to be celebrating the fact that the entire Republican Party are useful idiots for them now and have flung open their arms for the Russians to come and undermine American democracy, Scarborough said.
“Last night, Mitch McConnell allowed two measures to protect America from Russian cyber invasion. He killed two bills that would protect this country,” Scarborough snarked, adding “Republicans, celebrate. What a great day it was for you and Vladimir Putin, I know you are happy with that.”
and today, mediaite covered the latest rant ending with this:
The vexed and fuming host finished by literally yelling “Seriously, he is — he is aiding and abetting Vladimir Putin’s ongoing attempts to subvert American democracy according to the Republican FBI, CIA, DNI, Intel committee, all Republicans are all saying Russia is subverting American democracy and Moscow Mitch won’t let the Senate take a vote on it. That is un-American.”
raw story on mitch on another topic this week:
[…]
A group of retired Kentucky coal miners suffering from incurable black lung disease slammed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for brushing them off on Tuesday after they asked the Republican to commit to funding their medical care.
Around 120 miners and their families traveled to Washington, D.C. this week to meet with the Kentucky Republican and pressure him to take action to finance the federal Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, which serves as a lifeline for an estimated 12,000 former coal miners nationwide.
The miners said McConnell was “rude” during their meeting and quickly left after delivering a brief statement.
“We rode up here for 10 hours by bus to get some answers from him because he represents our state,” George Massey, a miner from Harlan County, Kentucky, told the Lexington Herald-Leader. “For him to come in for just two minutes was a low-down shame.”
According to Reuters, coal companies had previously “been required to pay a $1.10 per ton tax on underground coal to finance the federal Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, which supports disabled miners whose employers go bankrupt and can no longer pay out medical benefits. But the amount reverted to the 1977 level of 55 cents [in January] after Congress declined to take action to maintain the rate.”
“The coal industry had lobbied hard to allow the tax to drop as scheduled,” Reuters reported, “despite a government report saying the fund was in dire financial straits.”
Kenny Fleming, a former Pike County miner, said McConnell told the group of miners they “would be taken care of” but didn’t offer any concrete assurances.
Miners and advocates are worried that the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund could soon become insolvent due to congressional inaction.
Jimmy Moore, the head of the Letcher County Black Lung Association, predicted McConnell would not do anything to protect the former miners.
“He might’ve stayed a minute,” Moore said of McConnell’s rapid departure from the meeting on Tuesday. “It was a worthless trip, that’s the way I feel.”
As it’s going now the Peloton is keeping the escape group within 2′. Only Romain Bardet is within 2 minutes of Alaphilippe, so if this stands there won’t be any change in the top ranking today.
according to the hill an hour ago about “moscow mitch” nickname including some tweets:
The nickname took off on social media, with more than 65,000 tweets mentioning the nickname on social media as of Friday morning.
Pogo – looking like a few still have legs. Shame about Piton Thibout. Any muscle tear is nasty, but to try and race without the muscle attached had to be insane.
Geraint Thomas is making a move – he’s 1′ ahead of Alaphilippe approaching the summit of Col de l’Iseran. He’s obviously driven to try and repeat as TDF champion.
Well, that is a heck of finale of a stage. SNOW. Lots of snow. Definitely not something to pedal a bicycle in without studded tires. Wonder what kind of crash and pileup there would have been if they tried to race through it.
This is another reason the stage was stopped. https://twitter.com/mcewenrobbie/status/1154771347496669188?s=20https://twitter.com/mcewenrobbie/status/115477https://twitter.com/mcewenrobbie/status/1154771347496669188?s=201347496669188?s=20
And in a weird twist, the jury of the TDF decided to cancel the remainder of this stage as a result of a hailstorm between the Col de l’Iseran and the end of the course and will take times at the summit of the Col. Egan Bernal will be wearing yellow tonight.
The ripper candidate out to get ilhan omar’s seat
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/25/danielle-stella-republican-ilhan-omar-charged-felony-qanon-trump?CMP=share_btn_link
MOSCOW mitch is uninterested in saving the truckers and miners pensions :
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/plan-to-save-truckers-and-miners-pensions-is-running-out-of-time/ar-AAEQA6y?ocid=spartanntp
I’m with Pogo… the Dems need to keep having hearings and drag this thing out…. and to get all the information about trump, his associates, and the Russians. Then we need to vote his ass out of the WH come Nov. 2020.
Craig… if you’re serious… I’ll contribute.
Oh man, Mr Crawford, if I can play only a tiny part in ousting the sitting (and snoring) majority leader, I’ll call my myself the happiest man alive. It’ll be like getting the Nobel Peace Prize and the Medal of Freedom on the same November evening.
Lock them ALL up !
Just learned that one of my nephews spent a week as part of the amateur group participating in the Tour. He’s about 60-yo and bikes everywhere.
Flatus – très cool. I hope he enjoys the fun.
In the background I have The Mary Tyler Moore show running. It is the first season starting in September 1970. Wow, memories of fifty years ago flooding through. I had forgotten how short skirts were that year. Also, pre-disco. Nixon in the WH and a breakin has yet to happen. But, the fight against the Vietnam War was getting hotter.
wapo: Nadler says he’s going to court today and next week to enforce Mueller-related subpoenas
[…]
Nadler said impeachment would be necessary if the Trump administration defies any court orders enforcing House subpoenas.
“No administration has ever defied a court order,” he said. “There would have to be an impeachment, without question.”
Just found out something I hadn’t known….Boris Johnson is not stupid. Don’t know much about him otherwise, but I watched a 2 hour debate between him and Mary Beard the subject being whether Ancient Greece or the Roman Empire had a greater and more lasting effect on western civilization.
Ms Beard had Rome, Johnson had Greece. The audience was swayed by Ms Beard.
NY Times:
[…]
“Because Department of Justice policies will not allow prosecution of a sitting president, the United States House of Representatives is the only institution of the federal government that can now hold President Trump accountable for these actions,” Mr. Nadler quoted the legal filing as telling the judge, Beryl A. Howell, who supervised Mr. Mueller’s grand jury.
Referring to the part in the Constitution that gives Congress the power to impeach and remove a president, the application continues, he said: “To do so, the House must have access to all the relevant facts and consider whether to exercise all its full Article I powers, including a constitutional power of the utmost gravity — recommendation of articles of impeachment.”
By styling the committee as already engaged in impeachment considerations as it carries out its investigations, Mr. Nadler was attempting to sidestep a debate raging inside his party over whether the House should hold a vote to formally declare that it is opening an impeachment inquiry.
“Too much has been made of the phrase ‘an impeachment inquiry,’” Mr. Nadler said. “We are doing what our court filing says we are doing, what I said we are doing, and that is we are using our full Article I powers to investigate the conduct of the president and to consider what remedies there are. Among other things we will consider obviously is whether to recommend articles of impeachment.”
Other members of the committee were more blunt.
“I would say we are in an impeachment investigation, and as to the results of the investigation, it could lead to articles of impeachment or something else,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland.
Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, declared, “We’re now crossing a threshold with this filing, and we are now officially entering into an examination of whether or not to recommend articles of impeachment.”
Still, the move was as much about legal substance as it was about political optics. Democrats are hoping that Judge Howell will agree that their request for the grand jury material falls into the same legal category as Nixon-era requests, even though the Watergate-era access to grand jury material was granted to a formally declared impeachment inquiry.
[continues]
“Because Department of Justice policies will not allow prosecution of a sitting president,
Last night on Lawrence O’Donnell, Republican presidential candidate, Bill Weld, said that a policy is not a law. And that if he’d been appointed as Special Counsel, he would have at least made a sealed indictment of trump so that the statute of limitations would not be able to run out if trump were re-elected.
this is what happens when only one side is playing by the rules
Friday afternoon and the House is starting to shake. Tweets are stating that one hundred four representatives are saying impeach SFB. Topping one hundred was important, along with it being Friday afternoon. Speaker Pelosi is going to have a majority of the Dems ready to push a vote.
Sturge,
Boris isn’t stupid – maybe. I think more appropriately, Boris is well educated. The policies he seems to back (Conservative party policies in GB, Brexit, that sort of thing) strike me as pretty stupid. But then again I’ve been called stupid, so who the hell knows?
So the top 5 are Bernal, Alaphilippe, Thomas, Kruijswijk, and Buchmann, all within 2 minutes. Landa is next at 2 1/2 minutes behind Buchmann, so absent a hell of a lot of cracking among the top 5 tomorrow, he’s too far out to be looking for a podium spot, even with tomorrow’s monster stage.
Mr Pogo might be wrong on a rare occasion, but he certainly isn’t stupid.
I, on the other fist, am occasionally stupid, but never, ever, wrong.
Darn, pretty sure I can hit wrong AND stupid…..it’s a knack
X-R
We must be related. Our family motto – often wrong never in doubt
Just finished watching my recording of stage 19. Wow.
Heartbreaking to see Thibaut Pinot abandon due to injury. It’s an unfortunate trend for him. Damn, this race can be cruel.
Chapeau to Julian Alaphillipe. It was foreshadowed when the GC men dropped him on Galibiet and they did it again on L’Iseran. He’s got a turbo engine, not a diesel. These long climbs at altitude, day after day, were just a little too much. Although he was coming back on the descent, he likely would have lost even more time on the final climb of Montee de Tignes. Perhaps he could have finished with Thomas and Kruijswijk, but I doubt it. We’ll never know now.
Geraint Thomas looked like he took on the role of super domestique for Egan Bernal. Thomas launched the initial attack that unhitched the yellow jersey. Then Bernal used that to make his move. Ineos may not have been the strongest team throughout, but they had the right tactics at the right moment. Jonathan Castroviejo, Dylan van Baarle, and Wout Pouls set it up, and Thomas/Bernal finished it off.
The only stage I recall being cut short was Mont Ventoux several years ago due to high winds. I’ve never heard of one stopped by snow. Crazy. The athletes obviously want to race, but looking at those pictures of the snow on the road, stopping it was the right thing to do. And not just because of snow. I just saw pictures of the melting ice causing a freaking flood across the road! Safety first.
Now Bernal has the yellow jersey and the white jersey as best placed young rider. Now the question becomes…did he go too far into the red to hold it through tomorrow’s stage? Will he have saved enough, not having to make that last climb today? Will Alaphillipe race angry to hold his podium position? Will Thomas hold third or ride away from Alaphillipe to finish second? Can Kruijswijk or Buchmann get on the podium?
It’s 130k, with the last 33.4k to a summit finish on Val Thorens, unless weather forces a change to tomorrow’s course.
rant pol may not do anything for Kentucky coal miners, but with jim webb’s help, he’s a great asset for putin’s oil drillers :
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sen-rand-paul-fights-sanctions-on-russian-pipeline/ar-AAEV6Yr?ocid=spartanntp
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