Progressives (Liberals)

It was meant to be part of a social media tribute on Memorial Day weekend.

On Saturday afternoon, the United States Army posted a video on Twitter featuring a scout in fatigues who said his service gave him the opportunity to fight for something greater than himself, making him a better man.

In its next tweet, the Army opened the floor and asked: “How has serving impacted you?”

The post was shared widely and received thousands of responses. But many were probably not what the Army was looking for.

Instead, the call-out provided what some felt was a rare platform to spotlight the darker consequences of military service for soldiers and their families, as tweet after tweet described lifelong health complications, grief over loved ones lost, sexual assaults gone unpunished and struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

“The public just doesn’t hear about it,” said Brandon Neely, 38, a former Army specialist who posted about his PTSD. “They don’t hear about the guys, these veterans, that don’t sleep, have night sweats, are irritated. Some guys get really bad anxiety, depression.”

Mr. Neely added, “A lot those people who have bared their soul on that thread have probably never said anything publicly before.”
In one tweet replying to the Army, a man who said he was a Navy veteran described how he had suicidal thoughts everyday.

Another read: “I was assaulted by one of my superiors. When I reported him, with witnesses to corroborate my story, nothing happened to him. Nothing. A year later, he stole a laptop and was then demoted. I’m worth less than a laptop.”

However, on the merits there is more than enough to impeach whether the Senate removes Trump from office or not.

For one thing, we would be in position to get the documents the house committees have been trying to get

Trump and Barr (Henry the VIII and Cromwell) are in processs of tearing up the intelligence community and risking the lives of operatives and informants and risking Russia and other hostile country knowing the secret ways the intelligence community gathers their intelligence.

The only way to stop Trump is by impeachment and exposing everything he has done since becoming President.

Even if it don't stop him, at least there will be information out there for all those supporting the President to at least have it in the back of their minds.

Regardless of how all the chips go down, it is the right thing to do. To me that is the bottom line. I have read and even agree with all the agreements not to (except the one of Trump has done nothing wrong) however, I still feel it is the right and true action we should take even if it makes us go down in flames.

To emphasize the obvious: The electoral impact of impeachment is really difficult to predict. It’s not clear that an impeachment push would hurt Democrats electorally (or help them).

So that leaves Democrats with an underlying question: How strongly do they believe in the case for impeaching Trump, electoral considerations aside? As long as Republicans remain behind Trump, impeachment would be a symbolic action to some extent. But it’s still a powerful and important symbolic act.

insult whole swaths of people as though all leftist are exactly alike.

Since you don't care for what I have to say, it's not surprising that you think I write too much and I'm not surprised that you refused to respond to all of my points under the guise that they are "not important."

One point I made about your absurd assertions bears repeating because you have reproduced it in your response and because it is typical of the thinking and tactics of progressives (In your case, just thinking because you are clearly not in a position to use tactics against the president.)

You have asserted Trump is "using the US attorney general as his own personal lawyer at the expense of our intelligence communities"

The part about Barr acting as the President's personal attorney is new to your argument but is a recent leftwing Democrat talking point often repeated in the MSM, and so I'm not surprised to find it as one of your own.

The most current Special Counsel statute does not require the AG to release the SC's report to the public. It was (re)written in this fashion because legislators (particularly, but not exclusively, Democratic legislators) didn't like the taste of transparency that governed the release of Ken Starr's report on his investigation of Bill Clinton. This means that the AG had a fair amount of legal latitude in how he handled Mueller's report. That he released a report with considerably less redaction than was predicted by all quarters; that he invited Mueller and his team to participate in determining what information should be redacted, that Executive Privilege was not once used in the redaction process and that he provided Congressional leaders with a copy of the report containing only those redactions required by law is hardly the way Trump's personal attorney would have handled the matter.

A lawyer acting in the sole interest of his client would do his damnedest to prevent the release of information that his client would find embarrassing and possibly damaging. Mueller's 10 Obstruction Issues (for lack of a better term) certainly constitute this sort of information, and yet we have all been able to read them from the very outset. There were no redactions, and no subpoenas were necessary for us to see it.

You might argue that Barr had no choice but to release the information, but you would be wrong. He had a choice and given how certain you and the Democrats are that these 10 Obstruction Issues present sufficient evidence to indict and impeach Trump, if he were acting as a personal attorney it would have been a choice he might have made. A personal attorney attempting to get his or her client out of a very serious jam doesn't really care much about political blowback. It doesn't really matter how your political opponents judge the legal tactics of your attorney if you are sitting behind bars.

Moreover, if he were acting as Trump's personal lawyer, it would not have been a choice he would have made without consulting his client. He could have gone to his client and said something to the effect of

"Look, this part of the report is going to cause you problems. There are legal ways that I can keep this information from being released. If I use them it will light a political firestorm and court challenges, but the information will not be in the public square unless leaked. You have to live with the political blowback of such a move though so what do you want me to do"

His advice on whether or not to release the info would hinge on the balance between the potential legal peril presented by the release of the information and the potential political peril caused by refusing to release it. Regardless, Barr insists that no such conversation took place between him and the President, nor any conversation at all concerning the report. That would be extremely odd behavior for a personal lawyer and depending on the circumstance could be grounds for disbarment. You, of course, dismiss this inconvenient consideration out of hand because you are certain Barr is a liar and that he lied when he testified under oath that no conversation with the President took place. It's a convenient fallback in a debate. Any and all arguments that are based on anything Barr has said can be disregarded because he is a liar.

But of course, what you really mean is that he is acting more like Trump's personal attorney than a fully independent AG. Right? In other words, when it fits your narrative the argument is valid, and when it gets sticky with facts...well, you didn't mean acting exactly like his personal attorney. For you, Barr, as AG, could not possibly have formed any legal opinions that are contrary to Jeffrey Toobin's (and thus yours) unless he was acting as a shill (personal attorney) for Trump. Right?

The corrupting effect of Trump is truly amazing. We know that every word out of his mouth is a lie because CNN and MSNBC tells us so, but apparently, his lying is so contagious that anyone who goes to work for him, no matter how pristine their reputation and past service, develops not only a willingness to tell whopping lies of prodigious size but insidious lies that they know will undermine our democracy and help an autocratic lout ruin the country. Pretty amazing! It's like he has a superpower or something!

There are scattered reports that IG Michael Horowitz's investigative conclusions are going to be very damaging to a number of people who have been leading the Dump Trump Campaign. We'll have to wait and see, but if they are and they can be used in any way to bolster Trump's position, we will no doubt be informed by you and CNN that Trump used his superpower on the heretofore forthright IG Horowitz. If, though, there are any real bombshells to be found in the investigation of the investigation, it is more likely that US Attorney John Durham will find and present them.

Barr must have thought long and hard about who to assign as head of the DOJ investigation into the origins of the Mueller Investigation. He needed someone with a track record of success in getting to facts and evidence that powerful people wanted to keep hidden, and he needed someone with a solid reputation for integrity and non-partisan objectivity. By all accounts, he found the person in John Durham, and he got the extra bonus of a US Attorney who has experience in successfully investigating our intelligence agencies. If there is any group of powerful people who you would expect to be good at keeping things hidden, it's them.

Of course, none of this will matter to you, Pelosi, Schummer, Blumenthal, Hirano, Booker, Sanders, Toobin, Lemon, Cuomo, Matthews, Maddow, Clapper, Comey, Brennan and 25 million other leftwing sufferers of TDS, if Durham announces at the end of his investigation that Trump was essentially correct: It was all a political Witch Hunt that originated in the Obama White House and involved senior leaders of our government including the FBI, CIA, NSA, the State Dept, and members of Congress and the MSM. The minute the first indictment is filed The NY Times, WaPo, MSNBC, CNN, Twitter and A2K will be ringing with shrill cries of how the junta has just begun! Durham will not only reveal himself to be a liar of Trumpian stature but a traitor like his boss Bill Barr.

I'm not predicting this result, but it's certainly possible and yet we will see much the same reaction as that described above if Durham's conclusions are only 25% as significant as my hypothetical. Any result that allows Trump to claim vindication, proves malfeasance if not criminality in the conduct of the entire Russian Investigation, and besmirches the image of the Obama Administration will be described as the darkest moment in US history. Durham will certainly have to weather numerous attacks against his veracity, integrity and even his patriotism. These attacks were teed up on the day it was announced he would lead the investigation with his state's Senator, Richard Blumenthal, telling members of the press that he feared Durham's stellar reputation would be ruined by this investigation. That's an incredible threat posing as a prediction and used against a US Attorney who has an unblemished record of professional service (Oh, and if there are any blemishes hiding in a closet in the Durham house, you can bet before this is all over, we'll know about them). That Blumenthal, the Vietnam Valor Theif, has the audacity to lecture anyone on veracity or integrity is a perfect indication of what a cynical, dishonorable cesspool Washington DC is.

Mark this post. 12 to 18 months from now you and other progressives in this forum will be wailing about how Trump has delivered a death blow to our democracy and has used the massive power of the DOJ to destroy his enemies whose only crime was to try and save our nation from him.

But, of course, I've veered into the land of hyperbole that I so often accuse progressive of inhabiting. Right?

Perhaps, but I don't think so, because the second part of your comment is a reiteration of the absurdly hyperbolic and completely unfounded argument you made in your prior post: Barr and Trump are putting the lives of US intelligence officers, as well as most guarded secrets concerning sources and methods in jeopardy. Of course, you didn't find my point about your nonsensical assertion to be important enough to respond to, and I don't expect that to change now, however, I'm still going to call you out on it because you doubled down.

Investigating the actions of the FBI, CIA and all other US intelligence operations as respects the Russia Investigation does not present a material risk to our national security, the personal security of any government employees or the ability of these agencies to perform their functions effectively. Full stop, end of sentence.

The people who will be conducting this investigation will have the same backgrounds and experience as those assigned to Mueller's team (except it's unlikely that they will all be Clinton supporters) Some (such as FBI agents) who were used by Mueller may be used by Durham. If they could be trusted with classified information during the Mueller investigation, and they didn't gut the government or any of its agencies, I don't think we have to worry about Durham and his team (or, for that matter, their boss, Bill Barr who is one of the least leaky of officials in government). You and those who agree with you may believe that the investigation is at best frivolous and unnecessary, but, at least, roughly half the nation does not. We don't get to vote on it, in any case, just as we didn't get to vote on the Mueller Investigation.

Not only did you and your friends dismiss out of hand the protests of some concerning the Mueller Investigation (First and foremost, Trump's) you asserted that any resistance to it indicated a fear, in Trump supporters, of what it would uncover, and an admission, in Trump's case, that there was something to hide. The proven conduct of senior FBI officals in the conduct of the investigation, alone, warrants this investigation and additional, troubling information has been seeping out since it's announcement (for example, the State Department official who told the FBI, in detailed terms, that Steele the foreign agent, paid opposition researcher, Trump-hater extraordinaire, and author of the infamous Dossier was an entirely untrustworthy source, before his dossier was used as support for the FISA warrant used to surveil Carter Page). We should be prepared for additional information to be volunteered as government officials, current and retired, continue to consider what they knew and did during the period of time under investigation, and decide they need to get ahead of the coming FBI interrogations, by volunteering what they know and which they may have previously felt they could safely withhold as the storm blew over.

We should also be on the look-out for infighting among the rats who wish to flee a sinking ship such as former AG Loretta Lynch's contradiction of the Congressional, under-oath, testimony of James Comey concerning her alleged instruction to him to call the FBI's actions relative to HRC and her e-mail a "matter," rather than an "investigation."

Samantha Powers (she of the 300 unmaskings), Susan Rice (she of the post-dated CYA email) and Ben Rhodes (he of the Echo Chamber), among others, will all have some 'splaining to do and I wouldn't be surprised if one or more drop a minor/major bombshell in some obscure interview on NPR. With all the indictments for process crimes coming out of the Mueller Investigation, it will be very fresh in the minds of potential Durham witnesses that trying to dance past one of these investigations by lying is not a smart idea.

To repeat one of my points, the declassification of documents related to the Russia Investigation has not yet happened and so it is ridiculous to allege it is hurting our intelligence and law enforcement operations or their agents. It is equally ridiculous to assert that it will result in serious damage when released. AG Barr, not Trump will determine what is and isn't declassified, and you would think this would comfort Trump-Haters who know that Trump can't be trusted with our nation's secrets. However, to understand your concern and the concern of all of your friends in the FBI, CIA and MSM, we have to return to the leftwing's premise that anyone and everyone who is associated with Donald Trump and is not actively (in secret or in the open) working against him, has been thoroughly contaminated. One small bite from President Trump and you're a fellow Zombie in search of a brain for breakfast. As previously explained, this, of course, means that [[[[[[Bill Barr has been infected and is a lying villain who will put national security and the lives of American agents in jeopardy to assist Trump in exacting his petty revenge.]]]]]]]. I think there many trump devotees who will cheerfully savage the truth for nothing more than a nod of approval from the Don

Lindsey Graham says he's not worried and why should he be? First of all, he knows Barr can be trusted and secondly he knows what the classified information is and what impact it will have (on intelligence capabilities) if it is released. But then he's a Trump Zombie too!

We have seen this Kabuki Dance play out innumerable times over the last 50 years or so. Every time the FBI, CIA or any of the other intel agencies is asked for information they cite national security concerns or moan about methods and sources and then stonewall the group or person requesting the information. If they are eventually forced to release documents, they are so heavily redacted as to be of no information at all. While I am sure that often, and perhaps even most often, the concerns and need for secrecy are legitimate,[[[[ we have seen numerous occasions where the information does ultimately come to light and it is revealed that the original concerns of national security were not appropriate, but, instead, the agency was attempting to prevent their own embarrassment.]]]]]] [[[[[The fact that they are only hiding evidence that might embarrass them rather evidence of wrongdoing does not make the attempt acceptable.]]]]]]

Because secrecy is such an important part of the way these agencies operate they have a tremendous amount of power. The scope of that power and it's potential for abuse makes it essential that the secrecy employed is limited strictly to legitimate purposes. It's a hard call to make and I appreciate reasonable people will disagree, but I support a policy that errs on the side of transparency. Obviously critical national secrets must be protected and can be by the processes in place for disclosure and human lives should always be of paramount importance but protecting someone's career from the consequences of their negligence or malfeasance, preserving budget allocations, and avoiding a public black-eye for any given agency are never acceptable reasons to hide pertinent facts about official wrongdoing from Americans.

Clapper lied to Congress about the extent of NSA's domestic surveillance. Brennan lied about spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee that conducted oversight of his department. James Comey, if Loretta Lynch is believed, lied to Congress as well. All three are the most obvious targets of Durham's investigation and if they all weren't bleating about that investigation's threat to national security I would be astounded. I am, though, still astounded by how quickly the American Left swept decades of mistrust and condemnation from their memories and rushed to embrace the FBI and our Intel Agencies the minute they realized that they and their corrupt former leaders would be of assistance to them in their battle against Trump. I am equally astounded that anyone could be so disingenuous or flat out stupid to trust anything Clapper, Brennan or Comey says about anything, let alone anything about the Russia Investigation.

Oh, look! Another long response. Oh well.

Elizabeth Warren Gains Ground in 2020 Field, One Plan at a Time

NEWTON, Iowa — To the crowd of Iowans gathered in a school gym on Saturday night, Senator Elizabeth Warren made a request: They should pose a question to the other presidential candidates who come to Iowa seeking their vote.

“Ask them: Where do you get your money?” she said. “Are you getting it from a bunch of millionaires?”

For Ms. Warren, the question highlighted one of the sharpest contrasts she has drawn with most of her top rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination: She has sworn off holding private fund-raisers with wealthy donors. “The best president money can’t buy,” signs and T-shirts for her campaign say.

“I like that very much,” Cheryl Scherr, 63, said afterward, “because that means that she’s not beholden to anybody.”

After five months as a presidential candidate, Ms. Warren is showing signs of success at distinguishing herself in a packed field. She has inched higher in national polls and, at events within the last month, consistently overshot the campaign’s expected amount of attendees.

She has been propelled in part by a number of disruptive choices, most notably the breakneck pace at which she introduces policy proposals. That has helped keep her in the news, put pressure on rivals and provided more opportunities to shore up her campaign’s once-lackluster fund-raising.

Other decisions have helped her with her party’s progressive flank. Ms. Warren was quick to call for the impeachment of President Trump, a view shared by many Democrats. She refused to participate in a town hall event on Fox News, a channel that is reviled on the left. She has also been the only major candidate to call for student debt cancellation, and about 250,000 people have used a tool on her website that allows visitors to calculate how much of their debt her plan would eliminate.

The website experienced a large surge in visitors after the billionaire Robert F. Smith made national headlines last week when he pledged to pay off all the debt for the graduating class at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

But Ms. Warren’s recent strength also highlights the volatile nature of the campaign’s early stages, and how much any candidate must do to overtake Joseph R. Biden Jr. — whose name recognition and status as a former vice president have placed him comfortably in the role of the front-runner.

Ms. Warren has become a favorite candidate among the activist left and is the subject of a viral tweet or video on a seemingly daily basis, but she still trails Mr. Biden by double digits in polls and does not seem to have broken through in New Hampshire, the critical primary state that neighbors her Massachusetts home.

Her ability to raise money over the long haul also remains a major question mark. In the first quarter of the year, before Mr. Biden entered the race, her fund-raising lagged that of four other candidates: Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Senator Kamala Harris of California, former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.

Still, interviews with more than two dozen attendees at Ms. Warren’s campaign events in Iowa over Memorial Day weekend suggested that her steady stream of policy proposals was getting voters’ attention. Her “I have a plan for that” campaign slogan has become a rallying cry for supporters.

“That’s going to be her big selling point,” said Joel Williams, 20, a college student who went to see Ms. Warren in Oskaloosa on Sunday. “The specifics that really go to the heart of people’s frustrations with the system as it is.”

“She’s got it all laid out,” said Susan Conroy, 71, a retired lawyer. “She’s got plans, and people are hungry for knowing, ‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’”

Several recent national polls have placed Ms. Warren at the front of the pack of candidates who are clustered behind Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders.

Ms. Warren has gained ground in polls over the past several weeks, while support for Mr. Sanders dipped after Mr. Biden joined the race.
At her events during a three-day visit to Iowa, Ms. Warren wove together the story of her upbringing in Oklahoma with a walk-through of her plans to achieve what she calls “big, structural change,” before taking a handful of questions.

“She was totally comfortable talking about any topic that anyone brought up, and you can tell she loves it,” said Frank Broz, 37, a small-business owner who went to see Ms. Warren in Fairfield. “I feel like any one of those topics, she could have spent another two hours on. That’s very persuasive to me.”

He added of her White House bid, “She has the energy to say, ‘I’m not just willing to do this; I’m dying to get in there.’

Ms. Warren’s visit over the weekend was her seventh trip to Iowa this year, and her campaign has established a robust presence in the state, with more than 50 paid staff members. Over the past two months, she has also spent more money on Facebook ads in Iowa, an estimated $34,000, than any other candidate, according to Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic communications firm.

In recent national polling, Ms. Warren has shown particular strength with liberals, college-educated voters and those who are paying close attention to the presidential race. In a survey released last week by Quinnipiac University, she was the most popular candidate among Democrats who are very liberal, with support from 30 percent of those voters, compared with 22 percent for Mr. Sanders.

Sophia Coker-Gunnink, 23, who works for a nonprofit and went to see Ms. Warren in Ottumwa, supported Mr. Sanders in 2016. But this time around, she favors Ms. Warren.

“The main thing for me is the plans that she has that are just more thought out,” she said.

Ms. Warren shows no sign of slowing down on that front. Her campaign is expected to release another major policy proposal within the coming week, timed around a trip to Michigan and Indiana — the 19th and 20th states she will have visited during the campaign’s early stages.
Ms. Warren’s campaign has also caught the attention of several liberal groups and unions. Top leaders at the Service Employees International

Union, the influential labor group with almost two million members, have pointed to Ms. Warren’s ascendance as a reason to slow their primary endorsement process, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
Some leaders at S.E.I.U. wanted to back Ms. Harris early in the primary season, these people said, particularly after her campaign’s strong initial rollout, but the fluid nature of the race has the group’s leaders echoing many rank-and-file Democrats, who feel it is too early to choose sides.

Ms. Warren still faces the long-term challenge of growing her support to include a broader population of Democrats, including nonwhite voters as well as moderates. And she faces obstacles in multiple directions: In addition to competing with Mr. Sanders for voters on the party’s left flank, she faces stiff competition from other candidates to emerge as an alternative to Mr. Biden, whose centrist campaign could appeal to a broad swath of Democratic voters.

Like others in the race, she is dealing with the so-called electability test, as voters assess which candidate they believe is best suited to defeat Mr. Trump — a calculation that can include gender bias in a country that has never elected a female president. Some online supporters have even taken to calling her “Likable Liz” in an attempt to rebuff notions she is only a policy wonk.

“I think she is somebody who could be a great candidate,” said Ann Visser, 62, a retired high school teacher who saw Ms. Warren in Oskaloosa. “I think there are some hurdles. I think that we have to get over this idea that a woman cannot be the president of the United States.”

Then there is the looming question of Ms. Warren’s fund-raising. Her decision to swear off high-dollar events distinguishes her in the sprawling field and dovetails well with one of the main planks of her campaign platform, which focuses on fighting corruption.

“Now is the time that Democrats had better be walking the walk, not just talking the talk,” Ms. Warren told the crowd in Newton after urging them to ask other candidates whether they were getting their money from millionaires.

At the same time, the decision carries risks for the financial viability of her bid. Ms. Warren is counting on online donors to sustain her campaign operation for the long haul, even as other candidates like Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris and Mr. Buttigieg pile up campaign cash from big donors in addition to online contributors.

For now, Ms. Warren has financial leeway because she transferred about $10 million to her presidential bid from her Senate account. But she struggled with early fund-raising, and her campaign burned through cash in the first quarter of the year, building a payroll that was far larger than that of any other Democratic candidate.

Mr. Biden, in particular, has relied on traditional high-dollar fund-raisers in the early days of his presidential bid. Ms. Warren declined to name names when asked by a reporter if she believed any specific candidates were not “walking the walk,” as she had put it.

“I know the race that I’m running,” she said, “and I’m proud to be running it.”

A Reminder That Some Journalists Are Lazy Idiots Who Progressives Spoon Feed

It is why much of the national press is breathlessly reporting that Netflix is threatening to leave Georgia over its fetal heartbeat law. There's just one problem -- Netflix made no such threat.This is all pre-packaged PR by a progressive PR firm and reporters, already more likely than not to be biased in favor of abortion rights, are falling all over themselves to report it.