Category: Political

The St. Louis PD headline reads Missouri Republicans debate whether Greitens should stay or go. The debate is centered around revelations of the Greitens’ affair, and especially whether he photographed a bound, blindfolded woman and threatened blackmail.

Of course, discussions about kicking out a Republican in charge are not new this year. They happen all the time with President Trump. People breathlessly wait for the culmination of Mueller’s Russian investigation, hoping for a criminal indictment and impeachment.

Just stop for a moment, though, and think about what would happen if Greitens was forced to resign, and Trump kicked out of office?

In Missouri, the Lt. Governor would take over. This is Mike Parson. Many of us know Mike Parson from his effort to destroy Proposition B, the anti-puppy mill bill. He did so at the behest of Forrest Lucas, a wealthy Indiana oil man. Forrest Lucas is also the man behind Protect the Harvest, a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-animal welfare, anti-environmental effort. Lucas owns Mike Parson.

Not only would Parsons continue the destructive efforts begun by Greitens in the state, he’d likely increase such efforts because, unlike Greitens, Parson knows how to get along with the Republicans in the legislature. Right now, it is these same Republicans who have stymied some of Greitens more egregious actions.

Interestingly enough, the same circumstances hold true for Trump and the Vice-President, Mike Pence.

Mike Pence would support most of the cabinet members Trump has appointed. Heck, he probably recommended most of them. Pence would also continue undermining our civil rights, our environment, and our attempts at economic equality. But, unlike Trump, he’s seemingly level-headed, not overtly narcissistic, knows how to hide the bodies, and is a former Congressman. He’d get along with the Republicans in Congress—to the point where the GOP would stage such a slash-and-burn on the government and this country that it could be decades before we’d recover.

Most importantly, both Trump and Greitens are tarnishing the Republican brand. They are millstones tied around the neck of every Republican running for office.

So, giving up Eric Greitens for Mike Parson, and giving up Donald Trump for Mike Pence. Is this really what we want? Is it worth the momentary satisfaction of kicking a hated person out of office, only for them to be replaced by an even more destructive, harmful person?

Or is a better use of our time focused on preventing as much damage as we can, locally and at the national level, while we replace all of these jokers during elections in 2018 and 2020?

Update

To add to the judicial abuse, Congressional Republicans want the FBI to investigate Christopher Steele for the Russian “dossier”.

A veteran prosecutor, Peter Zeidenberg, said he had never heard of anything like the Grassley-Graham complaint and labeled it “nonsense” designed to detract from ongoing inquiries in to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“The FBI doesn’t need any prompting from politicians to prosecute people who have lied to them,” said Zeidenberg, a federal prosecutor for 17 years. While members of Congress make criminal referrals from time to time, they are usually related to independent congressional investigations, not to material already known to the FBI. “They should stay in their lane,” Zeidenberg said of the Grassley-Graham effort.

Earlier

I was astonished to see Clinton Foundation trending on Twitter. Even more so to read that yet more investigations have been opened into the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s emails. This, following the DOJ’s and FBI’s capitulation to Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes, related to Russian investigative documents.

I woke this morning to the fantastic news that Doug Jones won the Senate race in Alabama. It was a comfortable win, too—enough of a margin to preclude a voter recount.

The fact that the Republican candidate Roy Moore was a piece of garbage has less to do with Jones winning than his campaign’s and the NAACP’s outreach program during the election. Al Giordano created a Twitter thread listing all of the actions both took, and they were significant. Democrats coming up for election in 2018: pay attention.

https://twitter.com/AlGiordano/status/940657094050615297

The end result of this effort was outstanding. From the Washington Post exit polls, Jones captured the vast majority of the black vote, and enough of the white vote to win. Among the blacks, he captured over 97% of the black women’s vote—proving once again that black women are the most significant demographic for Democratic voters.