April 22, 2019

great video about Pete by a DUer here, Egberto Willies

April 21, 2019

the trolls are on a roll, lolol

April 21, 2019

all of the following cities were within 300K (many much closer) in size to South Bend

based off the last full Federal census (final figures released a month or 2 before (some even after) Pete was elected Mayor in 2011)

(South Bend was 101,168)

Atlanta was just over the cut off point of 300K larger or less at 420,003

so we have

Miami 399,457
Cleveland 396,815
Oakland 390,724
Minneapolis 382,578
New Orleans 343,829
Honolulu 337,256
Tampa 335,709
St. Louis 319,294
Pittsburgh 305,704

Cincinnati 296,943
Newark 277,140 (Booker BTW, was mayor for less time there than Buttigieg was of South Bend)
Buffalo 261,310
St. Petersburg 244,769
Orlando 238,300
Birmingham 212,237
Des Moines 203,433

Salt Lake City 186,440
Tallahassee 181,376
Providence 178,042
Fort Lauderdale 165,521
Kansas City KS 145,786
Dayton 141,527
Columbia SC 129,272
Hartford 124,775
Green Bay 104,057
Boulder 97,385


Also, the South Bend metropolitan combined statistical area is is 721,296 and was close to 1 million at it's peak in the mid 1960's (massive drop off due to the rust belt de-industrialisation coming in). It isn't like it is some sleepy country village area. That 720K is bigger than 5 STATES' entire populations were when he took office. 4 now, due to ND exploding a bit due to the oil drilling/fracking over the last 10, 15 years.

April 20, 2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Still Plans to Visit Kentucky, Despite Being Disinvited by a Republican

https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a27214210/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-still-plans-to-visit-kentucky-andy-barr-disinvited/

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is used to Republicans who aren't exactly in her corner; she's used Twitter and Instagram to stand up for herself on more than one occasion. Now she and her team are dealing with yet another controversy after Kentucky Republican Rep. Andy Barr rescinded his invitation for Ocasio-Cortez to visit a coal mine in the state. CNN reports that the freshman Congresswoman is still planning to visit, according to her spokesperson Corbin Trent.

"Luckily, we still have open borders with Kentucky; we are free to travel there," Trent said. "We hope to visit and have a town hall, listen to concerns of workers in Kentucky." During a hearing last month, Barr invited Ocasio-Cortez to come to Kentucky to see how her proposed Green New Deal would affect the coal miners in the state.

"I want to invite the gentlelady to come to eastern Kentucky where thousands of coal miners no longer have paychecks," he said. "I invite her to go underground with me and meet the men and women who do heroic work to power the American economy."

AOC accepted the offer. "I'd be happy to," she said adding that she'd “also like to note that in the Green New Deal, one of the things I advocate for is fully funding the pensions of coal miners in West Virginia and throughout Appalachia because we want a just transition to make sure that we’re investing in jobs across those swaths of the country.”

Since then, Barr sent a letter to Ocasio-Cortez telling her that he was disappointed in her treatment of Texas representative Dan Crenshaw on Twitter. He said she would have to apologize to Crenshaw before being invited to come to Kentucky.

https://twitter.com/RepAndyBarr/status/1116802528459595776

snip

April 20, 2019

Mayor Pete Buttigieg town hall in Plymouth, NH, 4/20, Full event

many more videos

https://hearpetespeak.com/

April 19, 2019

Return of The Jedi

April 19, 2019

I have been against impeachment due to the Senate, I no longer am

The crimes and general trashing of the rule of law, the shredding of constitutional, ethical, moral, and legal norms is too great. We simply are bound by the oversight mandate, the upholding of of American values, literally the very act of maintaining of any semblance of normalcy and continuity of lawful processes to a point that we MUST impeach.

If not, we might as well collectively join in with the Trumpians, the Rethugs, the Russians, the racists, the dupes, the shills, the haters, and indeed the CRIMINALS who permeate ALL those rancid legions and just wipe our arses with our Constitution.

Use it or lose it forever. There is NO going back if Trump escapes from justice. At that point most all meaningful, foundational, bedrock checks on the executive branch that truly limit raw, lawless, unaccountable power will have been atomised.

If this failure to do our constitutional, legal, and moral duty is indeed the course of cowardice and expediency we choose, we might as well start calling this monster, and indeed, all other future presidents, by the name and title we will have forged for them....... KING.

April 19, 2019

Maya Wiley needs her own show on MSNBC.

If I had to pick a role model to aspire to in 33 years (our age difference), she is the number one pundit for me to pick. Such a whip smart, poised, assured, powerful female voice. I just love her.

April 18, 2019

Mueller's report could revive attempts to impeach Trump

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/muellers-report-could-revive-attempts-to-impeach-trump/

We always knew the full 400-page report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller probing possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia during the 2016 election would be a lot dicier for the president than Attorney General William Barr’s four-page summary. Barr’s letter to Congress, released earlier this month, was in many ways his own interpretation of Mueller’s investigation. And in the AG’s own telling, Trump was free and clear: no collusion with the Russians and no actions which would rise to the standard of an obstruction of justice offence. Trump, who has called the entire 22-month Mueller inquiry a hoax, witch-hunt, and con-job from the very first day Mueller was appointed, declared a “complete and total exoneration.”

Now Americans and indeed the world can read the actual report (or at least the sections that haven’t been redacted) for themselves. It’s a doozy of a story that puts the president in a far more conflicting light. At times, you almost feel sympathetic for Trump’s naiveté and inexperience in how Washington works. As Barr explained during his short press conference before the report’s disclosure, Trump was undergoing unprecedented strain from the moment he stepped into the White House. He was like a caged animal being poked with a stick by federal prosecutors with unlimited resources and a wide mandate.

Trump comes across as somebody with terrible judgement. When White House chief political strategist Steve Bannon learned about the president’s January 27, 2017 dinner invitation to FBI Director James Comey in the White House residence, Bannon tried to convince Trump not to meet with him alone. Trump declined and decided to go ahead with the dinner, which would lead to the infamous loyalty-pledge. One doesn’t have to be a career bureaucrat in Washington to understand that meeting with the top law enforcement investigator in the country and talking about the target of an active FBI investigation (in this case, Trump’s own national security adviser at the time) would be an idiotic and legally perilous thing to do. Trump, however, took the chance anyway. Left unsaid in the report is the president’s motivations in reaching out to Comey; Trump probably believed he could butter up his FBI director into dropping the investigation and letting Michael Flynn off the hook.

We learned about Trump’s desperate attempts to persuade former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to unrecuse himself from the Russia investigation, including tasking his White House Counsel Don McGahn to forcefully make the case. Trump viewed the Attorney General as his own personal protector from legal jeopardy rather than America’s chief law enforcement officer. Sessions told McGhan he was sticking with the recusal. And Trump was livid, harassing Sessions until the day the exhausted and abused AG resigned.

snip

April 18, 2019

this is a section that is going to be spun to a massive degree by Trump-dumpsters

starting on page 180

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/04/18/mueller-report.pdf