Republican Senators Are Running Around Like Chickens Without Heads

Everybody keep your powder dry

That Bolton book release over the weekend sure did turn the impeachment trial on its head! Susan Collins' campaign sent out an emergency e-mail yesterday: "Susan has and continues to be a voice of reason that we can ALWAYS count on. But right now, she needs to know if she can count on us. As we type this, Democrats are ramping up their efforts to see Susan defeated. Millions of outside dollars are being poured into Maine to slander her name and completely vilify Susan. We need your help to fight back... The road ahead is going to be difficult." It sure is! Example: Trump's discreet former chief-of-staff, John Kelly, said he believes Bolton over Trump in a speech at a Sarasota, Florida Library Association Town Hall lecture series. "If John Bolton says that in the book I believe John Bolton. Every single time I was with him... he always gave the president the unvarnished truth."

Manu Raju's CNN report suggested that Bolton's revelations "could" turn the tide of the whole case of subpoenaing witnesses. "The President's legal team resumed its second day of arguments just after 1 p.m. ET Monday, but all of the attention will be focused on the Republican senators sitting in the chamber and how they react to Sunday night's New York Times bombshell that Bolton's draft manuscript says Trump told him US security assistance to Ukraine was conditioned on investigations into Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden."

Sen. Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican, acknowledged that the Bolton news would "make the dynamic different" but argued it doesn't change anything.

"I'm not going to deny it's going to change the decibel level and probably the intensity of which we go about talking about witnesses," he said.

Both parties are turning their eyes toward two Republican senators in particular: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is not running for reelection.

"I stated before that I was curious as to what John Bolton might have to say," Murkowski said in a statement Monday. "From the outset, I've worked to ensure this trial would be fair and that members would have the opportunity to weigh in after its initial phase to determine if we need more information. I've also said there is an appropriate time for us to evaluate whether we need additional information-- that time is almost here. I look forward to the White House wrapping up presentation of its case."

Alexander declined to comment to reporters on his way into the Senate Monday.

Romney told the Washington Post that he thinks "it’s increasingly likely that other Republicans will join those of us who think we should hear from John Bolton."

Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said she read the NY Times revelations and she's "curious" to know what Bolton has to say about Trump and Ukraine. And Collins issued a statement saying she's always been likely to vote to call witnesses and that the Bolton book "strengthens the case for witnesses and have prompted a number of conversations among my colleagues." Even Trump apologist and enabler Lindsey Graham is tap dancing around this now.

Kelly Loeffler, the former Democrat, just appointed to fill Johnny Isakson's Georgia Senate seat-- and who under attack by the Trumpist right in an election coming right up-- took a much more pro-Trump stance, slamming Romney to please Trump and his supporters: "After 2 weeks, it’s clear that Democrats have no case for impeachment. Sadly, my colleague Senator Romney wants to appease the left by calling witnesses who will slander Donald Trump during their 15 minutes of fame. The circus is over. It’s time to move on!"

Many Republican senators are just avoiding the media altogether. At the Senate GOP Monday luncheon, Moscow Mitch cautioned his other fellow Republicans to hold off. The last thing he wants is a stampede of Republicans announcing they're backing calling impeachment witnesses.

He and other GOP leaders warn that issuing subpoenas for Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and other witnesses being demanded by Democrats, could extend the trial indefinitely.

The GOP leader reminded colleagues at a closed-door meeting in the Mansfield Room that they don’t need to decide the need for witnesses now because they have already voted for an organizing resolution for the trial that sets up a debate on that question after both sides have presented their opening arguments and senators have had 16 hours to ask questions.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who attended the lunch, said McConnell gave senators “the wisest counsel” by telling them “remember we passed a rules package that gives us an opportunity to vote on this very issue of witnesses after we hear both sides and ask our questions.

“It seemed wise at the time and it seems even wiser now,” Cramer said.

In other words, keep your powder dry.

“He just reiterated that a couple times as did some other people just to remind us that we have dealt with this and we don’t have to deal with the next step of it until the end of phase one,” Cramer added.

Democrats need four Republican defections to win a vote on witnesses, and two possible swing votes, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN), were keeping a low profile Monday morning.

Murkowski and Alexander said they were going to stick with their timelines, which is to wait until phase one of the trial is over before deciding on the need for new subpoenas.

Murkowski said in a tweet Monday afternoon “there is an appropriate time for us to evaluate whether we need additional information,” adding “that time is almost here” while Alexander highlighted his effort to ensure a vote on witnesses by week’s end.

"I worked with my colleagues to make sure we have a chance after we've heard the arguments, after we've asked our questions to decide if we need additional evidence and I'll decide that at that time," he said.

Republican leaders spent much of Monday downplaying Bolton’s claim in hopes of keeping the call for witnesses within their conference to two Republican senators.

“To me the facts of the case remain the same. There is nothing new here to what the House managers have been saying,” Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso (WY) told reporters Monday.

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (SD) echoed that point, arguing he doesn't "think it changes the facts,” and Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-MO) said Bolton’s claim doesn’t change the House manager’s case fundamentally.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), an adviser to the GOP leadership, said he was suspicious of the motives behind the leak given that Bolton is trying to sell a book.

“It seems awfully manipulated, the whole sequence,” he said.

Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) said Bolton’s manuscript “added some fuel to the fire” but doesn’t change Republicans’ view that the impeachment effort is fundamentally driven by political motives and would interfere with the voters' choice in 2016 and ability to choose in the next election.

“I think what it’s done is take an already hot topic and added some fuel to the fire,” he said.

“For me, from a place like Indiana, it still goes back to the origination of how this occurred: Wanting to malign the president from before he was even inaugurated,” Braun said.

Cramer warned that voting for a motion to consider additional witnesses and information could turn the trial into a fishing expedition.

“I just hate to start going down that path,” he said. “My concern is if the Senate becomes the House managers favorite fishing pond, when do you stop pulling fish out?”

“Given how weak the argument is, I don’t see why we should let that happen. If it does happen then I’m afraid ... it could become a very open-ended situation,” he added.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), emerging from the GOP lunch, said Bolton’s reported claim doesn’t appear to have shifted the landscape much within his conference.

Rounds said GOP colleagues don’t think Bolton would “change the focus” of the House managers’ argument but acknowledged “the question is whether or not he would be a material witness to anything that was necessary.”

And by the way, Susan Collins wasn't the only one who sent out an e-mail after the Bolton revelations. Kentucky state Rep. Charles Booker, one of the Democrats vying to take on Moscow Mitch, wrote that "McConnell has the power to either respect our Constitution and the rule of law, or to bring shame upon our country through a sham coverup. It is utterly unpatriotic for Mitch to not bring witnesses and new evidence into the Senate impeachment trial after reading what Bolton has put in his book. The fact that McConnell has not already set rules allowing for witnesses in the trial is exactly the reason Booker feels compelled to run against him.This isn't about Republicans or Democrats; it's about justice. Yet, you wouldn’t know that from watching Mitch. Mitch always puts his partisan vendettas over the needs of Kentuckians, and our country."

Andrew Romanoff, the Colorado progressive running for the Senate seat Trump ally Cory Gardner is holding, also sent out an alert to her followers. "Did Donald Trump withhold foreign aid in order to force an investigation into a political rival? The evidence says yes-- which must be why Cory Gardner doesn’t want to hear it. Gardner voted last week to block the witnesses and documents a fair trial requires. But now he may get a do-over. A new book shows the President demanding that Ukraine investigate the Bidens-- and this time the evidence comes from Trump’s own former national security advisor, John Bolton. The Senate should subpoena both Bolton and his manuscript...  Gardner and his Republican colleagues had a chance to subpoena Bolton last week. They voted no, and they’re not likely to budge now. But we can’t let the President or the Senate off the hook. The White House is engaged in a cover-up, and Cory Gardner’s silence is complicity.


Iowa Senate candidate for Joni Ernst seat, Admiral Mike Fraken (ret.) told me he thinks this whole thing is going to go badly for the GOP. "The silence is deafening from Senator Joni Ernst today; while most GOP Senators are voicing logical or illogical positions on exploring all germane additional evidence, Joni is inaudible. Iowans are not the loud, boisterous type, true…but we do like to see justice served after all the evidence is presented. So maybe Sen Ernst ought to speak up."

The progressive up against John Cornyn in the Texas Senate race is Cristina Ramirez and, like Mike Franken, she seems very offended by the Republican stance on protecting the country. "This isn’t about a party, a president or an election," she told us this morning-- "our entire democracy is on the line. Our President has used his office to betray the American people. Of his own admission, he has withheld foreign aid for his re-election and lied to the American people. We don’t just call that dishonest, we call that corruption, we call that criminal-- the Government Accountability Office has even published a report saying so. And Trump has done all of this with the support of people like his good friend John Cornyn. If Cornyn truly cared about verifying the facts of the impeachment case, he would allow Bolton to testify."

Glad To See Conservatives Frackenlooper And Moulton Gone From The 2020 Race

Two of the worst 2020 candidate bit the dust: Moulton and Frackenlooper

As we saw last week, Seth Moulton's polling numbers are so low-- nationally, in Iowa and even in New Hampshire, which borders on his congressional district and shares media with it!-- that he was buried at the bottom of the 2020 barrel. No debates, no events, no interest, no nuthin'! All Moulton wants is to be Biden's Secretary of State or Defense Secretary. When he dropped out of the race yesterday it barely caused a stir in the news cycle. It wasn't even a blip.

So he dropped out with his head up Biden's ass: "I think it’s evident that this is now a three-way race between Biden, Warren and Sanders, and really it’s a debate about how far left the party should go," he told the New York Times. He announced he will run for reelection for the House.

He added that "I’m not going to endorse anyone right away, but the vice president is a mentor and a friend and I think he’d make a great president. Anybody in this race will be better than Donald Trump and I will enthusiastically support whoever the nominee is." But Moulton is somewhat reactionary and a member of the Wall Street-owned and operated New Dem caucus, so, of course, a Biden supporter. Funny how the whole Republican wing of the Democratic Party in Congress prefers Biden. Moulton has no following and virtually no admirers outside of his immediate circle of cronies. Perfect for Status Quo Joe.

This is how the ProgressivePunch rates the Massachusetts House delegation, by lifetime crucial vote score. Note who's at the very bottom. The number in parenthesis is the district's PVI):

• Ayanna Pressley (MA-07)- A 100% (D+34)
• Katherine Clark (MA-05)- A 97.03% (D+18)
• Jim McGovern (MA-02)- A 96.71% (D+9)
• Lori Trahan (MA-03)- A 95.35% (D+9)
• Joe Kennedy (MA-04)- B 90.75% (D+9)
• Richard Neal (MA-01)- C 85.96% (D+12)
• Bill Keating (MA-09)- D 80.52% (D+4)
• Stephen Lynch (MA-08)- F 77.98% (D+10)
• Seth Moulton (MA-06)- F 73.51 (D+6)

The Boston Globe summed his race up nicely the day before he finally dropped out: Politics is all about timing and it isn't Seth Moulton's time. For the sake of the Republic, hopefully it will never be Seth Moulton's time. Nor is it Frackenlooper's time. He polled better than Moulton, but never got to 1% either. It was good to see him go... except for one thing. He's now running for the very winnable Colorado Senate seat-- and he's been dubbed the "front runner" already.

Blue America has endorsed the progressive in the race: Andrew Romanoff. His response to Frackenlooper's announcement to leave the presidential race and try to get into the Senate as a consolation prize was classy:

We deserve-- and I pledge to run-- a campaign grounded in public policy. I know and respect both Cory Gardner and John Hickenlooper, but I disagree with them on some fundamental issues.

As Colorado’s next senator, I’ll lead the fight for a Green New Deal. They’re leading the fight against it.

I’ll champion Medicare for All. They’ve vowed to defeat it.

Cory and John have attacked these progressive priorities as socialist or Stalinist. That’s outrageous. Would they say the same of Social Security or Medicare itself?

Democrats must decide whether we want to combat the climate crisis and end our reliance on fossil fuel—or allow polluters to bankroll Congress and block reform. Whether we’ll ensure health care for all—or condemn half a million Americans to bankruptcy each year and thousands to an early grave. Whether we’ll build an economy that works for everyone—or force families to work even harder for less.

Those are the stakes in this election. They couldn’t be higher, and we can’t afford to cower now.

The best way to defeat Cory Gardner is to present a clear alternative. Echoing his talking points will achieve nothing and inspire no one.

This is no time to surrender our dreams. Let’s go fight for the world we imagine.

And meanwhile... Trumpanzee's #1 enabler in Washington just got a taste of his own foul medicine from his Democratic electoral opponent in Kentucky, Amy McGrath in the form of a super-powerful one minute TV ad. Believe me, this is very much worth watching:

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy. Caught in reality." Trumpworld.

Twitter is great for many things. Group rewrites of song lyrics with near strangers is one of them. I have a feeling that the late Freddy Mercury, and his fellow band members in Queen would approve of this version of their "Bohemian Rhapsody." It's hard for me to look at these new lyrics and not start singing the song in my head, obviously nowhere near as well as Freddy did, though.

Ideally, this can start a viral trend; a near future of a twitter-sphere jammed with classic songs with new lyrics that subject the obese orange jackass to the intense ridicule and abuse he deserves. I hope for a twitter feedback loop that is so expansive that it melts his phone as he sits on his gold toilet at 3:00 some morning thinking up new ways to shit on the people of this country and the world. So he thinks he can stomp us and spit in our eyes, indeed.

In case you've somehow missed the last 40+ years of pop culture, "open your eyes." Here's the original:

Barr Will Never Release Anything Showing Trump Is Guilty In The Putin-Gate Scandal

Señor Trumpanzee was throwing his bananas and toys around the White House Thursday morning screaming like a madman. Finally his keeper gave him back his cell and he calmed down enough to direct his rage at the New York Times, Bob Mueller and the Democrats. It was inevitable that eventually it would start leaking out that the Mueller Report very much does let the country know just how criminal and complicit he has always been.

And that The Times tweeted right back in his face, may have caused him to throw his phone at a wall and break it. Who knows... all we do know for sure is that he stopped his twitter rampage right after this:

The original Times story by Nicholas Fandos, Michael S. Schmidt and Mark Mazzetti hit like the proverbial bombshell Wednesday evening during the primetime cable news shows. "Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators," they wrote, "have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations... Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public... The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report," summaries which Barr purposefully did not release to the public-- or even to Congress. Barr is determined not to release anything that is in any way detrimental to Trump or his family members.

Though it was not clear what findings the special counsel’s investigators viewed as troubling for the president, Mr. Barr has suggested that Mr. Mueller may have found evidence of malfeasance in investigating possible obstruction of justice. “The report sets out evidence on both sides of the question,” Mr. Barr wrote in his March 24 letter.

Mr. Mueller examined Mr. Trump’s attempts to maintain control over the investigation, including his firing of Mr. Comey and his attempt to oust Mr. Mueller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to install a loyalist to oversee the inquiry.

...Trump has fully embraced Mr. Barr’s version of events. For days, he has pronounced the outcome of the investigation a “complete and total exoneration” and called for the Justice Department and his allies on Capitol Hill to investigate and hold accountable those responsible for opening the inquiry.

Traitor Jared... embezzlement

Yesterday the Department of Justice asserted that there were NO pages in the Mueller report that didn't possibly contain information that could not be publicly release. The threats of redaction are sobering and Barr will apparently do everything he can to protect Trump and his spawn. Jerry Nadler was on CNN yesterday and said wants to know why the prepared summaries weren't released instead of Barr's press release that was meant to mislead people into thinking the report cleared Trump. Nadler said "I think it's inevitable that Mueller is going to testify at some point, but the first thing we need is the release of the report and the documents."

As you know, every House Republican joined every House Democrat to call for the release of the full Mueller Report to the public-- very much what the public is demanding. Yesterday though-- and for the 5th time-- the Kentucky Senate tag team blocked the resolution that passed the House from being voted on in the Senate. This time it was Rand Paul instead of McTurtle. Paul says he'll unblock it snd allow a vote if and only if he can add an amendment calling for the release of communications between Obama-era intelligence officials that he says could shed light on potential "misuse of power" leading up to the launch of the Trump-Russia investigation.

Meanwhile let's not forget... Trump, gaslighting America... bigly:

We Will, We Will, Rock You

-by Valley Girl

Queen has been on my mind. So has Bernie Sanders. Queen and Bernie Sanders swirled together when I found the video above on YouTube.

The Oscars are tomorrow night. My arm had to be twisted to go see the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. I really didn’t want to see it, because I couldn’t imagine it could do justice to Freddie Mercury. To my surprise, the movie was enjoyable, exhilarating to watch. It seemed to go by in an instant. And it was easy to love the music. No, it was not deep dive into the complexities of Freddie Mercury, nor Queen. One reviewer said that the movie played "fast and loose" with the facts.  Undoubtedly it did. But it was meant to be a popular movie, and as such gloriously succeeded.

The closing scene is the re-creation of Queen’s performance at Live Aid.  Nothing "fast and loose" there, in the performance. It’s cut down to highlight  maybe 10 or 15 minutes. You can watch the original at Wembly Stadium here:



Will Bohemian Rhapsody win "Best Picture" at the Oscars mañana?  No way, I say. The category I’ll be watching is "Best Actor." I’m placing my bet on Rami Malek, who played Freddie Mercury. A stunning performance.

Now back to what I said at the beginning, about Queen and Bernie swirling together in my mind. Two Queen songs have become intertwined: "We will Rock You" and "We are the Champions."  Performed in sequence on stage. But the choruses have taken on a life of their own.

We Will Rock You:

[Chorus]
We will, we will rock you
We will, we will rock you

[Chorus]
We will, we will rock you, sing it out
We will, we will rock you

[Chorus]
We will, we will rock you, sing it
We will, we will rock you, everybody
We will, we will rock you, hmm
We will, we will rock you, alright

Be sure to add in the stomp stomp clap part: otherwise a huge element would be missing.

That’s a Bernie anthem in the making. Because Bernie has been rocking the boat since forever, but now more than ever.

"We are the Champions":

Not much more to the chorus than adding “of the world” to the end (or whatever you wish).

About the two songs being played together, yes, Queen engaged the audience big time, no doubt. Queen and especially Freddie Mercury were stellar at engaging audiences. In their time. But watch this Green Day performance at the Redding Festival, bringing things into slightly more current musical triumph: