THe 131st Week of Donald's Dismal Dilemma!

The eyes of the nation will be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday when former special counsel Robert Mueller publicly testifies before Congress.

Mueller, who was a federal prosecutor, top DOJ official, and director of the FBI before serving as special counsel, is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning and the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday afternoon.

For analysis, Wallace interviewed for acting Socilitor General Neal Katyal.

“I think that the good news for the president is we’re not discussing right now, at least for the last few moments, whether the president a rapist, now it’s just are you a felon,” Katyal joked.

“He’s got that going for him,” Wallace replied.

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In a scathing column for the Washington Post, journalist Dana Milbank lambasted GOP lawmakers for their cowardice when it comes to calling out Donald Trump for his overt racism.

“Republican lawmakers have long cut profiles in cowardice during the Trump presidency, but never before have the consequences of their leadership vacuum been as vivid,”

Milbank then suggested, “The lawmakers’ behavior is, in a way, worse than Trump’s.”

“He has long demonstrated that he has no sense of propriety — only an instinct for the expedient. We can expect no more of him,” he charged. “The real injury comes when elected officials who know better nod and wink at Trump’s behavior, thereby signaling to the public that it’s acceptable.”

“So it will continue. Republican lawmakers made their choice to give Trump their tacit approval. The ugliness in North Carolina is what happens when leaders become mere followers,” he lamented.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, is the longest-serving Republican U.S. Senate leader ever, and now he is America’s most unpopular Senator.

A Morning Consult poll released Thursday finds McConnell’s approval rating is even worse than President Donald Trump’s, just 36%. His disapproval rating stands at 50%. By comparison, Maine Independent Angus King is America’s most popular Senator, with a 62% approval rating and a 28% disapproval rating.

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Wall Street contributions helped Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell raise $3 million last quarter. But just 9 percent of his donations came from individual donors in his home state of Kentucky.

It’s no wonder that McConnell is so well-liked among the New York elites his party so often castigates. McConnell helped lead the charge to slash taxes on corporations, saving big banks billions. He also led the effort to roll back parts of the Dodd-Frank law, which was enacted after the 2008 financial crisis.

Most of the money McConnell’s campaign raised last quarter came from out-of-state donors. Just 9 percent of his contributions came from individual donors in Kentucky, according to the analysis. McConnell raised less than $182,000 from Kentuckians while receiving $281,000 from donors in New York and $216,000 from donors in Texas.

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It is amazing how similar America in 2019 is to America in the 1920’s, a decade that began almost a hundred years ago. It is as if America is reliving its own history, trapped in a prison of deja vu, purposely not wanting to remember the disaster that unfolded as the 1920s ended.

The parallels are striking, the anti-immigration frenzy, race-baiting, trade wars, over-heated stock markets, corruption, and technological changes that produced hip urban centers contrasting with rural alienation and bitterness. Like today, the 1920s was a period of spectacular wealth and an ever-increasing income gap.

In the 1920s the country was awash in anti-immigrant rhetoric. Like today it was partly based on the fear of loss of power by the white majority, as well as a fear of change at a time when technology was rapidly changing the nation. When translated into political terms, these fears became explicitly racial.

In 1921, Good Housekeeping ran an article by then-Vice President Coolidge entitled, “Whose Country Is This?” It was an essay that could be the basis of any number of Donald Trump’s tweets today. Coolidge stated in the article:

“There can’t be too many inhabitants of the right kind, the vicious, the weak of body, the shiftless, or the improvident,” the “suicidal…inflowing of cheap manhood, constitutes a danger in our midst. Some immigrants, politically twisted agitators, came with a set desire to teach destruction of government. Others may not have been intent on treachery, but there were still racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside.”

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JackLuis said:

Mitch McConnell is America’s most unpopular Senator – and he just got another challenger



Mitch McConnell’s big donors are Wall Street firms — and only 9% of his funds comes from Kentucky



Bought and paid for representation? Oh Hell YES!

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Fox News host Howard Kurtz on Sunday grilled former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci after he called some of President Donald Trump’s tweets racist.

“You’ve said these tweets against [four Democratic congresswomen] are racist,” Kurtz reminded Scaramucci. “In fact, you said, if Trump continues to act like this… we say you are turning into [a racist]. That’s pretty strong words.”

“How much blowback have you gotten from the pro-Trump side?” Kurtz wondered. “I imagine the president is furious with you. I don’t know if this severs your relationship with him. And I know you’ve been disinvited from a Republican fundraiser.”

“It’s doesn’t matter to me,” Scaramucci replied. “Because I’m my own guy. You cannot have a loyalty with someone who throws an apple on the floor and says you have to tell us it’s an orange.”

Kurtz concluded the interview by asking Scaramucci why he believes Trump will take his advice after rejecting similar warnings from allies.

“He’s not going to take my advice, I get that,” Scaramucci agreed. “But the thing is, he likes winning. So, if enough people speak up, he’ll change his behavior and that will be better for America.”

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According to Guy Smith, who advised former President Bill Clinton during his impeachment ordeal, Mueller’s own words will carry tremendous weight with voters who have no idea what is in his report on the president.

“Well, what we’re going to see is people who have never read the report, which is most everybody, and they have only heard President Trump and the attorney general say he’s been exonerated. It does not,” he told host Christi Paul. “So, what’s going to happen is that they’re going to be hearing Robert Mueller in his own words say that the president obstructed justice. The American people have not read this thing.”

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The Trump administration on Wednesday officially banned Turkey from purchasing American-made F-35 fighter jets, citing the NATO member’s purchases of Russian-made anti-aircraft systems.

“Turkey’s decision to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems renders its continued involvement with the F-35 impossible,” a statement from the White House said. “The F-35 cannot coexist with a Russian intelligence collection platform that will be used to learn about its advanced capabilities.”

The Turkish government said Wednesday that two Russian cargo aircraft had delivered the 13th and 14th shipments of components for the S-400 missile-defense system to Mürted Air Base near Ankara.

“The delivery of the S-400 long-range air defense system is ongoing,” Turkey’s Defense Ministry wrote on Twitter along with a photo of one of the Russian cargo planes.

“Turkey cannot field a Russian intelligence collection platform in proximity to where the F-35 program makes repairs, and houses the F-35,” said Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition Ellen Lord at a press conference. “Much of the F-35′s strength lies in its stealth capabilities, so the ability to detect those capabilities would jeopardize the long-term security of the F-35 program.”

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US strategy on Iran is confused and Washington seems increasingly short of options to avoid escalation, with President Donald Trump saying that the choice between war and diplomacy “could go either way.”

“The Trump administration is facing a fork in the road with respect to its own policy,” said Suzanne Maloney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The US has “deployed an enormous amount of pressure on Iran” and is “well prepared to keep that in place for as long as they deem it necessary,” as long as Washington “can avoid escalation and an eruption of a military conflict,” Maloney told AFP.

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For those who have read it, the special counsel’s report speaks for itself. For those who haven’t, he can speak for it in Congress.

By Neal K. Katyal

Mr. Katyal was an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration.

There are just three simple yes-or-no questions Congress should ask Robert Mueller:

Mr. Mueller, the president said your report found, in his words, “no collusion, no obstruction, complete and total exoneration.”

First, did your report find there was no collusion?

Second, did your report find there was no obstruction?

Third, did your report give the president complete and total exoneration?

That’s it. That’s the ballgame. It makes no difference if there are 20 questioners or two when Mr. Mueller appears before two House committees on Wednesday. All of this speculation about whether Mr. Mueller will go beyond the four corners of his report is largely a waste of time, with one asterisk. The report itself is deeply damning to Mr. Trump, elevating him to the rare president who has been credibly documented as committing federal crimes while sitting in office.

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JackLuis said:

On Iran, Donald Trump is running out of options



Trumpski blew up Obama's deal so he could emerge victorious with a 'Better and more Biggly Plan" but it looks like the Shart of the Dealer has struck again.

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jaF0 said:

My one question would be more direct.

Did you find that (Donny) acted in any way that would be grounds for removal from office?

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needit700 said:

take your fake news and your Dem bull shit some place else. Unless you have a pussy and tits no one wants to read your sad snow flake shit.

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KDLeon said:

I'll second that.

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KDLeon said:

"me thinks".....? Probably not.

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KDLeon said:

On second thought, never mind. Your opinion is worthless to me. And everyone else.

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