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.
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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.
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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." 
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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...

Moscow Mitch and his Republican Senate received big donations from Trump defense team

We know Republicans are corrupt from the top down and there is no reason to believe this isn't true for the impeachment trial. Members of Trump's legal team made several contributions to key Senate Republicans last year just before joining the president's legal team. Here's the scenario...

"Former independent counsels Ken Starr and Robert Ray, who both investigated former President Bill Clinton ahead of his impeachment, contributed thousands of dollars to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last year before they joined the president’s team, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics (CFPR)."

This reflects on McConnell's statement he would be in, “total coordination with the White House counsel’s office and the people who are representing the president in the well of the Senate.” Moscow Mitch followed this with...

“Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with the White House counsel. There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this.”

If that isn't a payoff, I don't know what is. Starr's $2,700 contribution to Lindsey Graham in 2017, apparently cinched up the fact...

"Graham has been one of the most ardent Trump defenders in the Senate and previously pushed for Republicans to dismiss the impeachment charges against Trump without a trial."

Conversely, "Sekulow, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin all also gave thousands to Sen. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign," while Romney is one of the most outspoken Republicans to voice support for witnesses. Go figure. And Trump did do some fundraising for suck-up Republicans, but he did snub Susan Collins, R-Maine, who has said she may be open to witnesses.

The whole thing does come down to what I said in the beginning, 'We know Republicans are corrupt from the top down and there is no reason to believe this isn't true for the impeachment trial.' I know many are asking this same question, will this country ever be free of this kind of sordid GOP politics? At this point, I would question the possibilities.   READ MORE...

Lobbyist to government job aids NRA agenda

Benjamin Cassidy left the National Rifle Assn. for a job at the US interior department in the Donald Trump administration in 2017. It wasn't long before he called NRA head, Wayne LaPierre, and his minions to open the gates of the Interior to this organization. The Guardian has previously unreleased communications proving what...

"potent influence that industry lobbyists and conservative organizations enjoy at a government agency where many key leaders are former lobbyists and conservative activists themselves."

It's bad enough when it is just a Republican in Congress supporting the NRA, but when it is a government employee, from an agency like Interior, and who is a former NRA employee, there is no end to the damage that can be done. The Guardian reports...

"The NRA has made the most of this dynamic during the Trump presidency, leveraging its connections to shape policy outcomes and personnel decisions at the interior department."

And here is an excellent example...

"In 2017, for instance, Susan LaPierre, a prominent NRA member and the wife of NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, was appointed by the head of the interior department to the board of the National Parks Foundation, a congressionally chartered organization that supports park programs."

And the  interior secretary, David Bernhardt commented recently...

“Respecting our second amendment is fundamental to our constitutional republic. We’re expanding opportunities to enjoy hunting and recreational shooting on our wonderful public lands.”

There is nothing wrong with the Hunting and recreational shooting on public lands, but the narrative just illustrates how Bernhardt and the interior agency are dominated by the NRA. Like all government agencies under Donald Trump's administration. And here's something I have first-hand knowledge of...

"Target shooting in the Sonoran Desert national monument in Arizona is controversial – it has damaged archeological artifacts, destroyed saguaro cacti, and harmed other natural and cultural resources."

I cannot tell you how many once-beautiful, age-old saguaro cacti I have seen on the side of the road that are dying because some dim-witted gun nut used it for target practice. Pathetic!   READ MORE...