Projections on coronavirus in the U.S.

CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield and task force

The coronavirus outbreak has killed a minimum of 362 people worldwide with another 17,300+ infected. The virus center is Wuhan province, China, where hundreds of Americans are still being evacuated. In the 2003 China SARS epidemic, 349 people died. CNN reports coronavirus has spread to more than 25 countries, with researchers doing their best to develop a vaccine. There are eleven coronavirus cases in the United States with no deaths so far.

U.S. cases are in the states of Washington, 1; California, 6; Arizona, 1; Illinois, 2; and Massachusetts, 1. Here's the scenario...

"The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has listed 260 'patients under investigation' for the novel coronavirus across 36 states as of February 3, according to an update posted on the agency's website Monday. That’s an increase of 19 from the last update, provided Friday.

 "Of the 260 patients under investigation, 11 have tested positive, 167 negative, and 82 are still pending.

"CDC is the only lab in the US that can conduct diagnostic testing for the virus, but it is developing coronavirus testing kits to share with "domestic and international partners," according to an earlier statement from the agency."

China is becoming more isolated each day as airlines cancel flights in and out of there. The country has built a hospital specifically for the coronavirus but is finding it is already not enough. The U.S. is no where near this stage but you have to wonder if we would be prepared at home to handle a pandemic, as is being predicted. CNN has a complete report you can read here.

The Donald Trump Senate impeachment trial makes a mockery of the justice system

Of course there is the big mouth Oval Office lunatic and then there is the lowest of life Moscow Mitch McConnell rejoicing over their win in the Senate with the close vote of 51 to 49 against calling any witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial against Donald Trump. All the legal and political experts confirmed that a trial is not a trial without witnesses. Yet, a partisan vote of Republicans voted no, knowing full well they were bastardizing their oath.

David Atkins of the Washington Monthly put it like this...

"The few GOP senators who pretended at a conscience toward the end have predictably decided to throw in their lot with the majority of their conservative colleagues cravenly engaging in a coverup for the president, while pretending to be deeply offended at the suggestion that that is exactly what they are doing."

Atkins continued...

"And why? Because they fear the wrath of Trump’s base and his twitter feed more than they fear the voters or the judgment of history. And because they simply don’t care."

That says it all but there is no doubt that historians will document this moment, plus when this GOP Senate votes to acquit Donald Trump as one of the most egregious acts in the antiquity of Washington politics. And you can also count on the fact that the American public will remember this come the November election. Those that count on the left will go to the polls in numbers never before seen and fulfill the dream of dumping Trump.   READ MORE...

Donald Trump has Conservative pundit Rick Wilson on his back...again

If conservative Rick Wilson's bite is as bad as his words, Donald Trump not only has the left to fear in November; having raised the ire of another Republican who has sworn to turn his Lincoln Project group loose on T-rump exclaiming he is...

"set to do everything thing they can to oust Donald Trump and his Congressional enablers out of office in 2020 with, in his words, a 'pretty frigging nasty' blitz of ads."

I just did a post on Davis Faris' book, "It's Time To Fight Dirty," which comes from a staunch Progressive, but pushes the same agenda as Wilson. Hey, we'll take all the help we can get, and this GOP strategist is right at the top of his Party when it comes to substance. Here's the scenario...

"Asked by [HBO “Real Time”] host Bill Maher if his group will be endorsing a Democrat or another Republican for president, the acerbic Wilson said that is not their plan and that they will instead focus on hammering Donald Trump and vulnerable Republican lawmakers who defend him."

Wilson continues, but here chides Democrats for their miserable recent actions against Republicans...

“As an outside force that can do things that the Democrats have demonstrably failed on doing a lot of the time, like actually getting in people’s sh*t, we’re sort of a pirate ship in that regard.”

There is absolutely no excuse for the way Dems have handled the "war" against the GOP, starting with Debbie Wasserman Schultz's running of the DNC in the 2016 election, up to the feeble attempts made by House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senator Chuck Schummer to move the Democratic Party forward. Like Davis Faris said, the left has been guilty of coddling the right with no real plan to put the Dems back on top. The Party is simmering in the juices of mediocrity.

If the Democrats don't come up with some "friggin nasty" tactics real soon, this November will go back in the books as just another Republican political nightmare.   READ MORE...

David Faris' book, "It's Time to Fight Dirty," is dynamite

David Faris' book, "It's Time To Fight Dirty" was recommended to me by Facebook pal, Neil Schneider, and it would be the understatement of the year to say, it is scary. Since I have followed the political scene with my blog for the last several years, I am aware what is going on in everyday politics. I knew the GOP was defrauding and deceiving the left at every turn, but Faris points out how the Republicans were able to set up such intricate strategy, right under the noses of Democrats. It is beyond pathetic.

He starts right off with the concept of "originalism." a belief that the Constitution must be interpreted just as it is, not veering to the left or right with its doctrine, but just what it says. Comparable to fundamentalists in their interpretation of the bible. The late SCOTUS justice Antonin Scalia was one of the most forceful modern advocates for originalism, and this is where gun nuts take their lead when it comes to the defense of the 2nd Amendment.

University of Chicago law professor William Baude comments that originalists believe "that the words in the Constitution have the same meaning over time, even if modern circumstances change, and even if we wish the words meant something else." If Scalia had had his way, same-sex marriage would have still been illegal, and we would not have certain portions of the Affordable Care Act, according to the New Yorker. 

Originalism crops up throughout the Republican ideology, which you will see as I continue to review this great book, "It's Time To Fight Dirty."

If Mike Pompeo is considered a "disgrace," why is he still in the cabinet?

Mike Pompeo railed against NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly in a "mean-spirited outburst" that has resulted in widespread criticism, especially among liberals. "Journalist Shay Khatiri calls Pompeo out in a blistering article for the conservative Never Trump website The Bulwark." Here is her opinion of one of T-rump's highest Cabinet members...

“Mike Pompeo is a disgrace to the office he holds and the department he leads, And he goes on to explain why Pompeo’s ranting against an NPR reporter speaks so poorly of him."

 Khatiri continued...

"the secretary of state 'began cursing' at Kelly when she brought up the “Ukraine scandal” — and on Saturday, Pompeo pulled a 'McSally maneuver' and “attacked the media.”

The “McSally maneuver” Khatiri is talking about is...

"Sen. Martha McSally’s recent attack on CNN’s Manu Raju, who she insulted as a “liberal hack” when he asked the Arizona Republican whether or not witnesses should be featured in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial — which was a perfectly reasonable question."

 Khatiri calls it a Trumpian political stunt, which, knowing McSally from Arizona, is another ploy to get attention. She is desperate since former astronaut Mark Kelly is beating her in the polls, 46.3% to 43.7%. It is all moot because it has become clear that Mike Pompeo has become another clone of Donald Trump and this is just in the DNA.   READ MORE...

Lindsey Graham in the loop for Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden

Lev Parnas - Lindsey Graham

It is well known that Lindsey graham has become one of Donald Trump's biggest flunkey suck-ups, but Giuliani associate Lev Parnas claims that he is also mixed up in the Ukraine incident as one of the perpetrators who tried to influence President Zelensky to find out what he could about Joe Biden to help Trump's election. Here's the scenario...

"Lev Parnas, a Ukraine-born businessman charged with campaign finance violations, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° that Graham has a personal interest in keeping witness testimony out of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial."

Parnas says Graham was definitely in the loop, a good relationship with Rudy Giuliani, maybe going back to 2018 or earlier. It is also known...

"he was the one Rudy Giuliani was supposed to bring Viktor Shokin [another Giuliani associate] to when the visa got denied, and I think he was even, if you check the records, involved in getting the request for the visa somehow.”

It was around a month later that Giuliani "tried to help Shokin, a former top prosecutor in Ukraine regarded as corrupt by the previous administration and U.S. allies, obtain a visa to meet with Graham in the U.S." Parnas said that Graham was definitely in the loop and must have known what was going on. But here's the clincher...

Parnas told CNN he was '1 million percent' sure that Graham was "aware of his and Giuliani’s efforts to press Ukraine to announce an investigation of Biden."

If Lindsey Graham doesn't lose the election in 2020, he is "statistically tied with Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison," he should be put in line for impeachment.   READ MORE...

Donald Trump went to the White House riding the backs of lowlife like Roy Cohn

It all started with Roy Cohn, once an associate of Sen. Joe McCarthy, whom the Oval Office lunatic befriended back in the 1970s. From then on, Donald Trump has made it a habit of surrounding himself with sleazy characters that, somehow, have managed to move his political career to where it is today. This apparently opened the door to his gang of sordid characters, many of which are still around. From advisers to Cabinet members, the seedy group pushes him forward.

Michael Rothfeld and Joe Palazzolo have a new book, “The Fixers: The Bottom-Feeders, Crooked Lawyers, Gossipmongers, and Porn Stars Who Created the 45th President.” I could end this post here with the book title saying almost everything, but there really is much more. Salon calls it, "a veritable encyclopedia of the unsavory characters that have made Trump who he is, alongside some new reporting.

Donald Trump and Roy Cohn

Cohn gave T-rump a boost in the beginning but once it was learned that he was gay and had AIDS, poor Roy was dumped, and can you believe this, "after Cohn died in 1986 of AIDS-related complications, Trump ordered the staff at Mar-a-Lago to fumigate the silverware." The book starts with the parade of pathetics...

"He will use people as long as the person can help him and then discard them or, worse, demean and demonize them. Look no further than Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who had been a loyal blunt instrument for Trump since the mid-2000’s. But when Cohen got into serious trouble — apparently for running sleazy errands for Trump — the president turned his back on his longtime friend, which ultimately led to Cohen working with the authorities in the hopes of lessening his prison sentence."

Then came Rudy Giuliani, Bill Barr, Karen McDougal, who was paid off for Trump by the publisher of the National Enquirer, and Stormy Daniels who was paid off by Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer. AlterNet asks the question, "How do you have a president who has one guy paying off a porn star and another guy paying off a Playboy model?" You have to look back decades to see a pattern of "how Trump had people surrounding him who were just kind of willing to do his dirty work for him."

This is how the authors explain their book...

"That’s how we came up with the idea of writing “The Fixers.” It’s the seamy underbelly of the Trump presidency. It’s a world that most people probably don’t know about, but where you have muckrakers, paparazzi, porn stars and all this, and they helped him refine the tactics that he took to The White House."

It may be a world that most people don't know directly, but it is a world that the world has come to know as Donald Trump' oligarchy. There is much more to this article which I highly suggest reading.

Just how involved is Bill Barr in the Ukraine investigation?

AG William Barr

It has apparently become impossible to separate Attorney General Bill Barr from the impeachment of Donald Trump, particularly the Ukraine incident. The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent reports a recent “damning new audio recording” has far-reaching effects...

"reportedly features Trump telling his associates that he wants then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch fired could be a significant development in Democrats."

 In the recording, Trump clearly says, “Get rid of her!” in reference to Yovanovitch. Then he says, “Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it.” 'Take her out?' This idiot sounds like a mafia boss, but. then, he has been compared with Don Corleone before. Well, Yovanovitch is out and the video confirms Lev Parnas' version of the firing. Parnas told Rachel Maddow...

“I do remember me telling the president the ambassador was bad-mouthing him and saying he was going to get impeached, something to that effect.”

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent reports...

"the recording reveals “how involved Trump was in the campaign to oust Yovanovitch” in order to “clear the way for the corrupt scheme that Giuliani was preparing to orchestrate in an effort to extort Ukraine into announcing investigations that would help Trump politically.”

Then Sargent closes with this re. Barr...

“All of which is a reminder that we still have only the foggiest understanding of the role Attorney General William P. Barr is playing. Is Barr allowing this investigation — whatever it’s examining — to proceed wherever the facts lead?”

For some time now the suck-up Attorney General has directed all his energies protecting the White House maniac instead of the citizens of this country he swore to protect when taking office. Chalk up one more to dump.
READ MORE...

Our Founding Fathers would probably have impeached Trump...so what is the Senate waiting for?

Facebook friend, Neil Schneider, brought this article to my attention, something that all Americans, liberal or conservative, should consider. The answer to the above photo is a resounding YES! Robert Reich's video, below, gives a running timeline from the meeting of the Founding Fathers right up to the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.

The Fathers were pretty sure they had George Washington as a sure bet for president, and they were right. But at the time, Benjamin Franklin made this comment...

“The first man put at the helm will be a good one,” but “Nobody knows what sort may come afterwards.”

And then, of course we ended up in 2016 with the Oval Office lunatic, who has turned out to be the worst president the United states has ever known. The Founding Fathers decided quickly there must be a way to remove a president that was a disgrace to his office. James Madison and others argued they needed specific reasons to do this. They decided on “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The delegates to the Constitutional Convent were "also concerned that a foreign power might influence the outcome of an election." This leads to...

During the Virginia ratifying convention, Edmund Randolph explicitly connected impeachment to foreign money, saying that a president “may be impeached” if discovered “receiving emoluments [help] from foreign powers.” George Washington, in his farewell address, warned of “the insidious wiles of foreign influence.”

Bingo! Donald Trump holds the offer of over $400 million in aid to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in abeyance until Zelensky comes up with dirt on Trump's political opponent, Joe3 Biden. With a number of cases where this has been confirmed, from former U.S. Ukraine Ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch. to Trump's former National Security adviser, John Bolton, there is no doubt T-rump violated the emoluments clause.

Yet a cowardly Republican Senate is so far refusing to convict Donald Trump in the Senate trial. I highly recommend watching the above Robert Reich video, and the article is a must read.

Looks like millennials could put Bernie Sanders over the top

There are 71 million millennials in the United States ages 24 to 39. 26 millennials voted in 2018. Bernie Sanders is ahead in the Iowa Caucuses and he leads in the New Hampshire Primary. So what does this say for the Bern...

"Democrats will need high turnout among young, left-leaning voters in November, and Bernie Sanders is overwhelmingly popular with such voters."

Joe Biden has been the front-runner on the left since he entered the race, with other candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg running up and down the rankings. Sanders has continually hovered around second position throughout the Primary competition, but lately has been surging...

"According to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, Bernie Sanders boasts the support of 53 percent of Democratic voters under 35 nationwide, while Joe Biden lays claim to just 3 percent. That poll’s margin of error is 3.4 percentage points — which means that the percentage of younger voters who support the Democratic Party’s current front-runner could, technically, round down to zero."

The fact of the matter is that Joe Biden just does not appeal to the younger generation even though he is younger than Bernie by two years. The Intelligencer reports...

"Although Sanders’s 2016 backers did not sit out (or defect) during the general election in aberrantly high numbers, the age gap between Biden and Bernie backers this year is even larger than the one that prevailed between Clinton and the Vermont senator four years ago."

And then you have Michael Bloomberg entering the race who seems to be syphoning off support from all the candidates but Bernie Sanders. As I have said earlier, I am not sure Bloomberg is running to win or just to make sure Donald Trump doesn't win. The next couple of months will certainly be interesting.
READ MORE...

Why don't GOP lawmakers who trash president behind his back come out in the open and do it?

Michael McFaul

Well, it is now established that Republican lawmakers detest Donald Trump as much as the American public. Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul told host Bill Maher on HBO’s “Real Time that the Congress trashes him behind his back. And it sounds like Bill Maher also dislikes T-rump prompting McFaul to say...

“What really bothers me about folks like this,” he began while speaking to the host who has just ripped into the president, “They don’t like Trump. They talk like you. I mean, they all talk like you.”

Maher countered  “The Republicans?” Then McFaul again...

“All those guys,” McFaul shot back. “When they’re talking in the family, that’s what they say among the family. And yet when they come out in the public, then they care about taxes and other issues and maybe power, but they just forget about all this other stuff — and that is what I can’t respect.”

Respect from the American public is exactly what Congress currently does not have today with their job approval rating at 23%. And the whole lot is simply too dumb to realize just how lousy a job they do. McFaul is a Democrat, but he is also an American academic and professor of political science who served as the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. Although outside the circle of the Trump administration, apparently he is still a part of the "family." 
READ MORE...

Former White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly says he believes former National Security Adviser John Bolton is telling the truth

There are not too many of Donald Trump's ex-White House staff I would believe, most are clones of the Oval Office lunatic, a born liar; but John Kelly I do believe. In a headline from AlterNet, this phrase is taken from a statement quoting Kelly...

"he finds Bolton’s assertions on Trump and Ukraine to be totally credible"

The Republicans are hell-bent on preventing any witnesses, in keeping with Trump's complete unwillingness to hear from people like Bolton or Lev Parnas. With Senators like Mitt Romney and Susan Collins seemingly in favor of witnesses, looks like Moscow Mitch will have no choice. Some of the media is reporting that if this happens, the impeachment trial could drag into months with only just short of ten months until the November election.

Here's the scenario...

"The New York Times reported over the weekend that in a leaked manuscript of his new book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir” (due out March 17), Bolton alleges that Trump tied military aid to Ukraine to an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. House Democrats have been asserting that Trump and his allies had a “quid pro quo” with Ukraine: a Bidens investigation in exchange for military aid — and Bolton, according to the Times, alleges in his book that this “quid pro quo” was a fact."

John Kelly "would clearly like to see Bolton testify." Again, he commented, “If John Bolton says that in the book, I believe John Bolton.” Kelly left the Trump administration at the end of 2018, having planned to stay on until the 2020 election. White House staffers reported...

"The two men had been in something of a stand-off in recent weeks. Trump was reluctant to directly fire Kelly and he was advised by some of his aides that pushing out a four-star general could result in political blowback, administration officials said. Meanwhile, Kelly made it clear that he had no plans to resign, leaving it up to the president to force him out."

 Most political pundits agree that John Kelly, "kept the government on the tracks," and it is my opinion he was most likely responsible for keeping Donald Trump from doing more stupid things than he is actually guilty of. General Kelly has been missed.   READ MORE...