PRAWN
Philadelphia Regional Anti-War Network
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Upcoming Events Opposition to war on Iran
Jan 25th Demonstration against Iran War Jan 11th Demonstration against Iran War Jan 4th Demonstration against Iran War Pro-Impeach
and Remove from office
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Info, articles, etc.
The White House claims that their new travel ban raises the standards for immigration. Why is the Trump Administrtion trying to fix what isn't broken? *Sigh* The support that Senator Sanders has may be limited and may be hard to extend beyond his current base, but the last thing Democrats need is an appearance that they're trying to rig the primary. Rush Limbaugh tries to engage in historical revisionism,
suggesting that his 2009 statement of "Not my president"
was somehow not an attempt to delegitimize the Obama presidency. The “Birther” conspiracy theory was racist, but more to the point, it was precisely an attempt to delegitimize Obama. Looking back on some of the most wild and wacky assertions
made by the President's defense team. One argument that was repeated
was that impeaching the President would somehow invaidate the 2016
election. No, it would have indicated "buyer's remorse."
January An assessment of how Speaker Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairmand Schiff did during the impeachment trial. More on the Dershowitz "Presidents can do whatever they please" comment. Again, this is an entirely self-made problem that Dershowtiz has to take 100% responsibility for. I saw the Chief Justice refuse to read Senator Paul's comment on TV. I suspected it was about a senator trying to out the whistleblower. Trying to get people killed, are we, Paul? Wow! Jared Kushner thinks that because he's "read 25 books" on the Israel-Palestinian situation, that he's qualified to work on it. Reminds me of Congressman Tip O'Neill responding to a student question on Vietnam: Finally a student got him with a question.
A student at Boston College, Tip’s alma matter, said, "Sen. O’Neill
you have told the public about your many briefings of the war by
General Westmoreland, Robert McNamara, the CIA, and even President
Johnson but have you ever considered hearing the briefings of the
other side?” I have to wonder how many of Kushner's "25 books" were written from the Palestinian perspective. Why can't the President make any progress wooing Muslims? He
tweeted a picture of Senate Minority Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi
wearing a turban and a hijab,, with the Iranian flag behind them and
characterizing them as friends to the Ayatollah. This tells Muslims
that they are the enemy. Steve Doocy of Fox News on the scandal
that got the Presient impeached: "If the president said, 'I'll give you
the money, but you've got to investigate Joe Biden,' that'd be off the
rails wrong." Doocy's principles have become more, er, flexible since than! The blogger cites other examples. I'm 100% on board with the Speaker's view on this and 100% against Alan Dershowitz. No, getting election assistance from a foreign power is not okay! I agree with the blogger. The President shows extremely poor judgment here. He hired Bolton, despite everyone saying Bolton was a bad hire. Now he's saying hey, Bolton was a bad hire! Gee, maybe the President should have listened to the people who said Bolton would be a bad hire? Elie Mystal makes the brave sacrifice of watching the President's defense team so you don't have to! Number of US troops who sustained concussions from the Iranian missile attack is now 50. More love for Senator Elizabeth Warren as she looks at the "spread of infectious diseases," which in this case is the COVID-19 coronavirus. Woo hoo! There will be witnesses testimony in the impeachment trial! Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) doesn't have the votes to block witnesses in Donald Trump's impeachment trial. So Jared Kushner feels that Palestinians have blown every opportunity they've been afforded and they'll probably blow this latest one as well. Kind of a problem with the offer is that they may get a good deal of money out of it, but they'll be required to surrender large chunks of territory as well. Did Kushner mention that in this little speech of his? Nah, that must have slipped his mind.
"Everything about the plan is farcical." Essentially just a resurrection of South African Apartheid. Our galaxy is about 100k light-years in diameter and 1k light-years thick. The exoplanet KELT-9b is right in our neighborhhod, only about 670 light-years away from us. Surface temperature on the "cool" side reach a little over 4k Fahrenheit. Astronomers have documented a bizarre cycle of molecular destruction and rebirth on an ultra-hot, Jupiter-like exoplanet where surface temperatures exceed 7,750 degrees Fahrenheit. "By
seeking facts, Romney accused of trying to 'appease the left'" Uuh...whut?!?! John Bolton is now a liberal!?! Ooh yeah! Anyone who disagrees with Our Glorious Leader is automatically a dirty effing hippie. Wow! This is just so incredibly amazing! Secretary of State Pompeo had a minion ask a reporter to come to see him in a private room after their interview. She did and Pompeo does not deny that he screamed at her, using plenty of obscenities. Pompeo now considers it a breach of honor and decency that she told the public about his behavior!!! Good Lord! Did this guy ever graduate from second grade?!!?!?! Fox News host makes an interesting presumption: “Constitutionally
the House can impeach and that’s what they did,” [Ainsley
Earhardt] said. “And now they have to present their case to the
Senate but it’s not the Senate’s job to redo what is
constitutionally the House’s sole power. They had their
chance.”
But the House Managers are not requesting a "redo," they're requesting that the Senate continue what the House started. New information has come up since the impeachment articles were transmitted. Many questions were left unanswered because of the refusal of the President to do his job and to turn over requested documents and to make witnesses available. Once again showing his "wannabe a fascist dictator" tendency, the President demonstrates a desire to do away with a government-funded media outlet that doesn't toe the Republican line on all issues. Our President has attempted to lobby the West Bank Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas into accepting the US "peace" plan. Abbas was not consulted prior to this, so this is far too little, too late! Abbas, very sensibly, won't even take the President's calls. "Trump
suggests Schiff will pay a 'price' for pushing impeachment" "GOP senator: Impeachment should encourage Trump to be more 'careful' next time" "I think he'll put two and two together," Braun told NBC's "Meet the Press." "In this case, he was taken to the carpet." I've got a better idea! Let's toss the President's happy little butt out of office so there won't BE a "next time!" The President alleges that “Democrats have embraced the most
radical and extreme positions” by promoting “taxpayer-funded
abortion all the way up until the moment of birth.” NPR interviewer "Mary Louise Kelly has a Master's degree in European Studies from Cambridge University," but somehow Secretary of State Pompeo expects us to believe that Kelly confused Ukraine with Bangladesh (The two countries are about 3,600 miles apart). "Balloon
Juice | Lordy It's The Tape: The President's Fundraising Dinner Tape
Has Been Released" "Louise
Linton sides with Greta Thunberg after husband Steve Mnuchin takes
jab at climate crisis activist"
Just saw the opening remarks from the President's side. (paraphrasing) "We're going to present evidence you haven't heard before," after which we heard things that we had heard many times before. "The President took the unprecedented step of declassifying the call." But why was the call summary classified in the first place? As Democrats pointed out, the call records are still on the highly classified server where they're inaccessible to Democrats and to other diplomatic personnel. Nah, the President's side has nothing to mount as a defense.
Iraqis are trying the peaceful method first and are peacefully protesting the US presence in their country. Iran is not popular in Iraq either, but the aerial assassination of General Qadem Soleimani as well as that of the Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis has caused Iraqis to demand that all Americans leave their country. "'Take her out': Reported tape suggests Trump demanded ambassador's firing" A voice that appears to Trump's is heard on the recording saying, "Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out."
The President sounds just like a straight-up gangster here. Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff is correct. "All that, Schiff argued, constituted the behavior of someone who believes 'he is the state.'” If President Trump is exonerated, he will feel emboldened and will undertake even more dictatorial activities. Problem with coming up with good metaphors for pregnancy/abortion is that there is simply nothing in the human experience that's analogous. There is even less of an analogy between abortion and slavery. It's simply a stupid comparison. Nah, there's an absolutely zero chance that Education Secretary DeVos will step up to Representative Pressley's challenge. Secretary of State Pompeo makes an extremely unimpressive case for US diplomacy with Iran over the tenure of the current President. In terms of diplomatic progress, we've clearly moved backwards and have become less safe. Iran is now closer to having a nuclear weapon than it was before this President took office. First time I picked up on the COVID-19 coronavirus (25 January). One of the tweets reported that hospitals in Wuhan, China, were already being overburdened! "Trump
Reportedly Threatens Senators: 'Your Head Will Be On A Pike'"
CBS News reports that Trump is threatening senators to vote for his acquittal - or else.
As pundits have commented recently, this kind of statement is "on brand" for the President. Seriously, if they support this kind of mob-boss mentality, they deserve the consequences. Problem is, we share this country with them! An "on brand" Trump subordinate! Very happy to see that this story "has legs." Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is responsible for the physical safety of our diplomatic personnel. That's why people made such a fuss about that attack on the Benghazi diplomatic facility (it was neither an embassy nor a consulate) back in 2012. I can understand why the physical safety of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch is a very sore point with Pompeo, but that's just tough %$#@ for him! If he can't come up with a good answer for why he failed to protect her, he should quit. The argument that the President was fighting corruption was pretty thoroughly debunked during the House testimony, but is taken out and beaten again. "Twitter
Blasts Sen. Marsha Blackburn After She Questions Vindman's Patriotism"
Argument in the President's Senate impeachment trial by Representative Schiff. If we don't remove this president from office, we as a country are morally lost. "America's
First Shopping Mall is Being Turned into Affordable Apartments" Interesting theory taking off from the Joe McCarthy era, that demagoguery has a limited lifespan and Trump's is just about up. Cool! I'm normally in favor of incremental change, and had we adopted "muddle through," change back in the 1970s, when the climate crisis was discovered and accurately identified, we'd probably be okay. As it is, we need a major effort in order to get through this. GOP senators are trying to have it both ways at once. They're bored with seeing all of the old evidence re-hashed, but they don't want to see new evidence. I saw on TV last night that a reporter says a few senators were genuinely unfamiliar with the details of the case and really paid attention last night. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell takes a hopelessly muddled
and contradictory position. First, a correction. The Trump Administration has not "exerted
executive privilege." The administration has asserted a crazy,
half-baked theory of absolute immunity, which does not exist outside
of their legal arguments and that the courts have so far rejected.
"World’s
Oldest Known Impact Crater Confirmed in Australia" Democrats may not win removal of the President from office, but they're digging in and making Republicans pay for every inch. Closer we get to the SOTU address, the more frantic the President will become to want to declare victory. Republican senators adopted strategy of simply bulling everything through with their greater numbers. Not working too well and they're tiring before Democrats are. Great speech from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff! This is some really delicious schadenfreude here! Senate Majority
Leader McConnell thought he'd pull a fast one and run roughshod over
the Democrats. Then he has the sheer gall to try and ask them for
some cooperation. Nuh-uh! Ya give none, ya get none! McConnell
is clearly frustrated, because Trump’s team is unprepared, the
Democrats in House and Senate are working together well, and this day
has turned into free presentation time for the House impeachment team
without taking even a scratch.
A possible International Criminal Court investigation is making Israelis very nervous. As the old saying goes: "If you don't have anything to hide..." The President's latest justification for the aerial assassination of a foreign country's general: ...[Trump] spoke broadly about
Soleimani as 'the father of the roadside bomb' responsible for "every
young, beautiful man or woman who you see walking around with no
legs, no arms.”
Erm, the US invaded Iraq for no good reason. These "beautiful" men and women were the invaders. Initially, a minority of Iraqis thought of Americans as "liberators," but after a year or two had passed, no Iraqis thought that any more. "Protest
Anti Iran War 25Jan2020"
POTUS and VPOTUS made unannounced visit to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. Spent about 20 to 30 seconds there with heads bowed. President later tweeted about low black unemployment number. Kellyanne Conway says: "The President is preparing for Davos
and agrees with many of the things that Dr. Martin Luther King stood
for..."
The President's legal team submits their official position, a highly problematic position that's absolutely full of holes.
Georgetown law professor John Mikhail
explained why the Alan Dershowitz defense of the President is ridiculous. Again, the Trump Administration appears to be conceding that their case against impeachment is extremely weak. It appears that the CIA and NSA are holding back documents from the House Intelligence Committee that they really should be turning over. This is an important principle we shouldn't lose sight of. The
President sought to pursue his own policy preferences, knowing full
well that Congress didn't agree. He did so secretly, knowing he
couldn't justify doing so. This was kind of a stupid move, censoring a large, publicly-displayed photograph so as to not offend certain persons. I can sort of, kind of understand blurring out words like "vagina" and "pussy," though I would think an advisory would have been sufficient to protect delicate sensibilities. Censoring out the anti-Trump nature of the demonstration? That's just Stalinist-type revisionism. Well, we thought Rod Rosenstein was a hero because he stood by the Mueller Investigation. Turns out (According to the blogger): "Sure, I gave a known character assassin a powerful metaphorical gun, along with the names and addresses of a couple of tempting victims [Peter Strzok and Lisa Page]. But you can’t blame me for the fact that he killed them! I only did it to protect them!"
I was history major in college. When you count King vs Parliament as well as President vs Congress, conflicts over "power of the purse" go back many centuries. In this case, the President refused to spend money on a policy that Congress voted for. If the president can simply refuse to spend money on something Congress says he must spend money on, that critically weakens Congress' power. This is hardly an isolated case. See "The Wall." Yes, I think "abuse of power" is a perfectly legitimate charge in this case. Besides, the GAO has said that the President broke a specific law that goes right to the heart of the impeachment case. "The
'blossoming' of damning evidence is no accident—Pelosi's strategy
worked" After a considerable time period of needless and unexplained delay, Secretary of State Pompeo appears to have FINALLY been shamed into launching an investigation into Ambassador Yovanovitch being apparently surveilled by hostile actors. Pompeo claims his office will "obviously" respond if one of their people is being threatened, a claim that would have been far more convincing if he had delivered on it 48 hours earlier. *Sigh* Yeah. Comparing the credibility of Lev Parnas and the President, I believe Parnas. Fox News people are convinced that's because I have an irrational hatred of the President. No, that's because the President has never proven that he's innocent. The Mueller investigation may not have gotten him impeached, but it did prove that there was a serious amount of obstruction of justice going on. Here's another reason I don't believe much of anything this administration says: Very disturbing evidence that fascism is winning. Chiefs of the intelligence agencies don't want to give their annual threat assessment because last year, the President criticized them for doing so. Update (31Mar2020): The above piece is dated 16Jan2020.
Timing's about right for one of the topics to have been the COVID-19
coronavirus that had appeared in Wuhan, China. Did the cancellation of
this briefing mean that the US public was deprived of an advance
warning? This is very good news, that Ukraine is investigating the allegation that Lev Parnas made, that US Ambassador Yovanovich was being surveilled, but what's sadly missing from this account is what the US State Department is doing about these allegations! Why haven't they announced an investigation of a US Ambassador being stalked and surveilled in a foreign country? Both Parnas and Hyde have denied that Ambassador Yovanovitch was going to be "hit" mob-style, but we need to know for sure. Why is the State Department being silent on this? "The
Biggest Reveals From Lev Parnas' Blockbuster Rachel Maddow Interview" A former Army intelligence officer examines the Lev Parnas interview "And like tonight’s interview some of that information is accurate and true, some is disinformation, and some is agitprop." All of the Parnas information will need to be vetted. Also has interesting criticism of Maddow's questioning. "The
Big Loser in the Iowa Debate? CNN’s Reputation" "Rain
finally strikes Australia — putting out deadly bushfires" Senator Collins is caught between a rock and a hard place. Here's her trying desperately to sound naive and uninformed: "I wonder why the House did not put that into the record and it's only now being revealed," Uh-huh. As though the Trump Administration hasn't been battling tooth and nail to hide everything they possibly can! "The
media keeps refusing to show us Donald Trump as he really is, and
it's dangerous" In order to not appear as though they're taking sides, the mainstream media types downplay how crazy the President is. Who does that help? The President. Who does it hurt? The American people. The Uranium One story first arose during the tenure of
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It was obvious from the beginning
that it was a non-story. Nevertheless, Attorney General Jeff Sessions opened up an investigation two years ago.
That investigation, which should never havve been opened, is now
closed Shamefully, the NY Times published and supported the
story. "Trump
says it doesn't matter if Soleimani posed an imminent threat" A deep dive into Russian cyber-information gathering in the case of the Ukrainian utility Burisma. "Giuliani
associate Lev Parnas turns over thousands of pages of documents to
impeachment investigators" Yeah, the texts on Ambassador Yovanovitch sure do sound like Parnas, et al, were planning a mob-style hit on her. More on the threat to Yovanovitch. "Right-wing
hawk attack tactics aren't working this time — and here's why"
First, the Iraq war was such an
epic disaster that it casts a pall over any and all tactics that were
used to support it. Second of all, Trump is president and no one in
their right mind thinks he had good intentions with this Soleimani
killing, since Trump has never experienced a good intention in his life.
"Here's
what White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham has to say about
not holding press briefings" "Protest
- Anti-Iran War 11Jan20" I have exactly the same question about this interview that the
blogger did. The Defense Secretary Mark Esper on CBS: "I didn't see the intelligence about Iran posing an imminent threat to 4 US embassies, but I believe President Trump when he says there was one."
Information tends to go up the chain of command, not down. There's no credible, rational reason the SecDef would have gotten threat information after the President did! The blogger makes a number of good points, but I completely agreed with Representative Gabbard on the Trump Administration's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran. She laughed when Fox News host Bill Hemmer asserted at the 4:05 mark that Trump's policy towards Iran has been successful. "Based on what?" She's correct in that the US has moved backwards from where it was in January 2017. Under Trump, we've lost ground and have moved into a position of greater danger. As far as we can tell, General Soleimani was up to plotting something, but planning for it was clearly in the early stages. It was a long way away from being an "imminent threat." All kinds of disappointment and consternation over the clearing of
Hillary Clinton for, y'know, "Her Emails!" "Trump
Can't Believe His 'Wag The Dog' Attack Didn't Make Everyone Love Him"
"Maggie,
the president, we hear, is angry. Was he surprised that the House
took that (war powers) vote?" Alysin Camerota said to [NY Times
reporter] Maggie Haberman.
"He actually was surprised this was not more of a unifying event for the country, which is what he expected it was going to be." Archive
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