The List of Shame vol. 1
The House of Representatives took their first vote on an impeachment resolution since the Democrats took the majority back in January. This was their first real test of courage. And they failed, of course.
Blocked by a strangely giggling Nancy Pelosi, 137 Democrats voted along with all the Republicans to push Al Green’s newest impeachment effort aside. I guess you could say this vote was a bi-partisan success at protecting Donald Trump. You could say that 137 Democratic Congressmen and women voted that Trump’s racist statements are tolerable. They declared that, despite all his crimes and despite his blatant racism— despite even this latest racist tweet-rade against their colleagues— Donald Trump does not deserve impeachment.
Frankly, from the side it looks like they should be ashamed of themselves. That’s what my mom would have said. “Shame on you!” she’d have said, wagging an index finger. These so-called Representatives have just watched a bully president insult and racially taunt a group of their colleagues– all women of color– and those 137 Democrats think that’s just fine, thanks. “No problem. You go right ahead, Mr. tRump. Incite racism— no impeachment. Commit election tampering and obstruction of justice— no impeachment. Profiteer off your presidency— no impeachment for you, Donald tRump. We follow Nancy Pelosi’s path.”
Apparently, for these 137 cowardly Democrats, nothing tRump could do would trigger impeachment. These same weak-spirited, craven, slouching-toward-extinction dinosaur Democrats— who refuse to face truth, refuse to hear reason, and refuse the pangs of their own consciences— must not care about the mostly dark-skinned refugee prisoners this racist (but to them unimpeachable) president has locked in cages along our border. If they won’t impeach for racism, then they are tacitly approving of racism by tolerating it.
What is wrong with these shameful Democrats? (I won’t even grace the worthless Repugs with an insult.) Which side are they fookin’ on?
Rónán mac Colmáin would put headaches and bad dreams on them, for their weakness, for their lack of intellect, for their self-serving violation of the oath they swore to the US Constitution. I can’t even mention which parts of them would begin to shrivel up. And dude could do that in just two lines, too, with only one fookin’ rhyme!
I’m no bard like that, that’s for sure. But I’m so glad I’m not a Democrat anymore. I wouldn’t want to be in a Party with these 137, who are now on the very first View from the Side List of Shame.
Their punishment is simple: They just have to repeat the words, “There’s no place for racism in America” out loud until they find the courage to impeach this racist president. Then they won’t be on the Side’s list anymore.
Here’s the full List of Shame of those Democrats who voted against impeachment. You can check it out to see if your rep is among them, and give them some heck if they are. I’m proud to say only one Oregon Democrat made this list of shame. Kurt Schrader has revealed his dinosaur skin and his yellow-belly, but the rest of the Oregon Dems have begun to see the light of change.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/17/politics/democrats-voted-against-trump-impeachment-resolution/index.html
This article from The Hill has more details.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/house-blocks-al-green-articles-impeachment-trump
The motion was agreed to, 332-95, with Oregon Democrat Peter A. DeFazio voting “present.”
House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, who has reportedly privately lobbied leadership to open an impeachment inquiry, said he voted against tabling the resolution because he opposed that procedure. The New York Democrat would have preferred the House have referred the measure to his committee, which has jurisdiction over impeachment.
“I have said I will support an impeachment inquiry if requested by the Judiciary Committee, which would be for a broad-ranging investigation and ultimately, hopefully, charges that are very substantial. To base impeachment solely on his racist, xenophobic comments of yesterday is not what we need as a bill of impeachment. So I’d like to see us move forward, but that wasn’t the way to move forward,” DeFazio said, explaining his “present” vote.
I’m encouraged that Jerry Nadler didn’t shame himself this time. He wants to start an inquiry, he says. I wonder, though, what’s stopping him…
And even my own representative, Peter DeFazio, by a careful sidestep move, managed to avoid his place on this first List of Shame. He wrote to me two months ago speaking strongly against impeachment. But now he seems to be drifting slowly with the tide rising toward the shores of impeachment. Sort of like seaweed, or a jellyfish, or something.
To awkwardly switch metaphors, I can picture Peter, here, sitting firmly astride the split-rail fence of indecision. He’s wearing a cowboy hat and boots. He’s quaking in those boots, afraid of jumping onto the horse called Impeachment. Chicken-shit cowboy, they call him in these here parts…
Hey, Peter, remember when I called you all those names before? You could make me apologize, you know, just by speaking out in favor of impeachment. Jump off that fence and onto that horse you swore to ride, and I’ll be the one groveling for a change. Please prove me wrong. I’ll apologize all over the fookin’ place, if you’ll just speak out and vote for impeachment.
But I’m betting you’ll ride that fence-rail ’til you wear a hole in the seat of your jeans. Come on, cowboy. WTF are you waiting for? Are you going to help stop this racist criminal? Or are are you gonna keep standing in the way, like your dinosaur boss, Pelosi? With Nadler ready to make the move, all he needs are a few more voices to push him forward.
Here’s a little more about that impeachment vote yesterday. Bloomberg notes the tide rising toward impeachment.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-18/is-nancy-pelosi-closer-to-impeaching-donald-trump
Under House rules, however, any member can force an impeachment resolution onto the floor as pending business. That’s what Green did Wednesday.
This maneuver doesn’t mean that impeachment gets a final vote, or even debate. What it does get is a “motion to table,” which means that lawmakers can vote to either keep the resolution as pending business or kill it off. When Green did this in 2017, 58 Democrats voted to keep the impeachment measure alive. In 2018, 66 did so. This time, it was up to 95.
And this opinion piece in the Examiner offers a similar view.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-impeachment-vote-a-warning-to-trump-and-pelosi
If 40% of Democrats are ready to impeach the president before considering any resolution on Russia, obstruction, campaign finance, or anything else, Wednesday’s vote suggests that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has argued that impeachment could backfire on Democrats politically, might have an uphill battle holding off impeachment on a more serious resolution.
Wednesday’s vote was a warning, both to the president and the speaker. It showed that any real impeachment effort will begin with 95 votes in the House. The Democrats who are dead-set on impeaching the president are already well on their way.
And The Hill gives us the other side, the list of fame. The 95 votes for impeachment.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/453638-here-are-the-95-democrats-who-voted-to-support-impeachment
What inspired Trump’s racist tweets that triggered this current wave of impeachment talk? Well, it was the back and forth about race between Nancy Pelosi and the so-called “Squad” of young Congresswomen of color, of course. Remember that just before proving himself a racist, Trump proclaimed that Nancy was not one, defending her from the dreadful “Squad”. So, why’s he competing with her for the ‘racist’ title?
I’m only linking this story because I think it’s so wrong. This writer claims tRump and “the Squad” want the same thing, while I think the exact opposite is true. It’s Pelosi and Trump who want the same thing— to maintain the status quo power structure in Washington. And the Squad is a threat to them both. Because the so-called squad, and more broadly the progressive populist movement in America, are a real threat to the current power structure, and to the current division of the economy. Those four are symbols of change, and as such both Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump have to fight them with all they have.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/18/trump-the-squad-aoc-omar-pressley-tlaib-pelosi-democrats
It verges on surreal to see Trump defending Pelosi – who has been demonized by Republicans since she first wielded the speaker’s gavel in 2007 – against supposed charges of racism by the Squad.
No, it actually is surreal. Super-real. Hyper-normal, you might say, if you wanted to put a name to it. We are being played from all sides, and this writer has bought into that play completely. And he’s wrong. Trump knows his real enemy is not Pelosi, who is no threat to him. It’s the new thinking these four women represent that Trump must attack. And pulling out one of the oldest racist cliches is his limited IQ way of doing that.
But there’s just no place for racism in America anymore. Not in an America based on equal rights. Not in an America based on its Constitution. I say to any racists including Trump, “You go back to where you came from– the past. Go back to Hitler’s Germany, to antebellum Alabama. Go back to your own barbarian nightmares, and leave the rest of us in peace. There’s no place for racists in America anymore.”
This next article will make you sick at heart if you are still a believer in American democracy. Are you getting excited to vote in your political party’s primary, and participate in choosing the next president? Good luck with that. WTF kind of term is “bundler”? And “rainmakers”? Jeez loo-fookin’ wheeze!! At least this level of cynicism about democracy can help us understand why so few Americans vote. Why should they, if their candidates are bundled and rain-made from the start? It’s all a show, folks, and Politico says so, too! Take a read of this look behind the curtains, if you dare. It’s all about the money.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/18/obama-clinton-rainmakers-2020-1418991
Big-money Democratic donors have jumped off the sidelines of the presidential race, and three candidates are the clear winners of their support: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris.
Each of those three candidates received more than 220 donations from top fundraisers who helped raise at least $100,000 (and sometimes many multiples more) for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign or at least $50,000 for Barack Obama in 2012, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission data. Members of this group of nearly 2,000 so-called “bundlers” have tapped their personal networks in the past to collectively raise tens of millions of dollars for Democratic campaigns.
Two candidates in the Democratic primary, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have eschewed the help of big-dollar fundraisers this cycle and still finished in the top four in fundraising last quarter thanks to massive participation from small donors online. But donations from wealthy individuals are a significant factor in powering the campaigns of Biden, Buttigieg and Harris, who each raised millions of dollars in checks of $2,800 apiece, the maximum amount allowed under federal law, during the most recent fundraising quarter.
That’s right folks. I’m sorry to have to say it. But in your heart, didn’t you already know it was true? Your candidates are chosen for you by the rich, by corporations, by the “big donors”. You don’t get to decide with your little vote. Sorry about that. Money rules the parties, and if you don’t have it, then you are ruled by it.
There is only one thing to do. Quit your parties, friends. Republican, Democrat, Green… it’s all the same machine. It’s time for all voters to be independent voters, free to choose a candidate who matches the needs of the country. Not a selection by the chosen few. Whom nobody chose in the first place.
Come join me on the Side, and maybe from here we can force the Parties to change.
And we have to change. Because there’s no time to waste with the Circus when the big-top is burning down all around us. Yes, the heat is rising this summer, with the hottest June ever recorded already in the books. The Climate Crisis is upon us, while our politicians whack each other with foam rubber mallets. Here’s a quick survey of today’s Global Heating news.
Robert Scribbler’s vlog discusses the June heatwave. Now we’re in the middle of July’s similar outbreak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv58jqzrQJE
And heatwaves can come with power blackouts.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/heat-wave-country-hot-blackout.html
As the climate changes, my beautiful Oregon’s gonna bake. What will that do to the forests?
https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2019/07/16/climate-change-study-predicts-dangerously-hot-days-oregon-to-increase/1715603001/
This article shows how extinction happens. An environmental threshold is crossed and the species simply can’t survive the new conditions. In this case, global warming and its related extreme heatwaves threaten salmon in Alaskan rivers.
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/rural-alaska/2019/07/15/record-warm-water-likely-gave-kuskokwim-salmon-heart-attacks-biologist-says/
Residents along the lower Kuskokwim River from Tuntutuliak to Akiak reported dead salmon floating downstream. Salmon don’t function well past 70 degrees, and the water had pushed just above that limit.
“Essentially, what could happen is salmon metabolism speeds up to the point that they’re having heart attacks and going belly up and floating downriver,” explained Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Ben Gray.
You think the immigration situation is bad now? This CNN piece claims “the climate crisis is already displacing millions.” I’d think that folks who were fearful of immigration would want to fight against climate change. Just sayin’.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/17/asia/india-nepal-flooding-climate-refugees-intl-hnk/index.html
Closer to my own home, the Oregonian lays a pretty devastating fact check on Portland’s mayor Ted Wheeler.
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2019/07/fact-check-ted-wheelers-testimony-to-congress-on-portland-climate-policies.html
Wheeler’s overstatement of Portland’s progress highlights the enormous discrepancy between rhetoric about change and real change. That difference is exactly like the difference between passing a non-binding resolution about Trump’s racist statements, and beginning an impeachment inquiry into removing him from office. The Dinosaur Democrats are all about rhetoric, but they are just as reluctant to change as the Dinosaur Republicans. In fact, the corporate Democrats like Pelosi don’t want real change at all. They have chosen extinction instead.
I’m sorry, friends. But real change will never come from within these fossilized political parties.
Real change can only come from somewhere out on the side.
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