Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) joins Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss the need to investigate how “dark money” has influenced the country’s judicial system, including the three Supreme Court Justices nominated by Donald Trump who are now serving lifetime terms on the bench. Aired on 03/12/2021.
02:53
BUT THE THING FRONT OF MIND FOR
02:55
ME IS WHY DON’T WE TELL THE STORY BETTER?
THESE ARE NOT THINGS THAT ARE HAPPENING.
THESE ARE THINGS THAT ARE BEING DONE.
AND THE FORCE BEHIND THE ALL RULE BREAKING, ALL THE NORM BREAKING, ALL THE HYPOCRISY AND POSITION REVERSALS, ALL OF THE – THE WHOLE THING JUST MELDS AND PEOPLE DON’T BEHAVE.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse says it's "not tolerable" for the FBI to avoid questions from lawmakers
BY VICTORIA ALBERT. - MARCH 3, 2021 /
“It’s just not tolerable to have an agency of government, least of all a law enforcement agency, that won’t answer questions for years at a time about its conduct,” Whitehouse, a Democrat, told “Red & Blue” anchor Elaine Quijano.
If the FBI does not improve its process for responding to questions from the legislature, Whitehouse said he would consider withholding appropriations and stalling nominees, as well as other tools of “legislative persuasion.” …
“I suspect that there’s going to be a much broader solution than just, like, one little specific silver bullet,” he said, adding, “It’s very hard when you are getting boatloads of information into a fusion center that has to go through it, sort it out, analyze it and figure out what it means and narrow it so that the consumer of those services can actually take it in to solve that problem.”
“But certainly when an FBI report out of Norfolk says that there’s gonna be a war and that information doesn’t get to the decision makers protecting the Capitol, something has gone awry,” he added. …
America does need an informed and engaged citizenry, now more than ever.
Case in point:
‘Who Says Activism Is A Waste Of Time?’: CEOs Pivot On Georgia Law Amid Pressure
March 31, 2021 | | All In | MSNBC
Some corporations are now condemning the Georgia anti-voter law.
Why the change?
“These pivots happened because activists have been putting pressure on the corporations,” says Mehdi Hasan.
Aired on 03/31/2021.
H.R.1 - For the People Act of 2021
Sponsor:
Rep. Sarbanes, John P. [D-MD-3] (Introduced 01/04/2021)
Committees:
House - House Administration; Intelligence (Permanent Select); Judiciary; Oversight and Reform; Science, Space, and Technology; Education and Labor; Ways and Means; Financial Services; Ethics; Homeland Security; Armed Services
Latest Action:
Senate - 03/11/2021 Received in the Senate. (All Actions)
It’s like many liberal types still haven’t figured out Republicans really and truly want to crush us and take over the US government. They have contrived to see us as their enemies. That can’t be ignored. Unless we are changing minds we are losing. Things are going to get tough enough, . . . . . . .
I think it’s hard to appreciate, in this world of rapid communication, that it’s still possible to be uninformed and unaware. Willful ignorance is rare, but still important and needs to be addressed. But when we attack anyone who hasn’t seen the latest news, accusing them of willful ignorance, they dig in, entrench their feelings, and create the climate we’re fighting against.
I think it’s hard to appreciate, in this world of rapid communication, that it’s still possible to be uninformed and unaware. Willful ignorance is rare,
Fortunately, I don't have time to get into the weeds on this, but a decided baloney to that.
How are our Republican Congressmen acting? How about the gut reaction of denying all culpability, rather than examining problems. Hell they’re actively rewriting the history of insurrection day, and finding all sort of excuses to normalize that day and what happened and forgive who did it?
Instead, with every issue, behavior of a totally criminal thinking and acting of a treasonous president, voting, health, protecting our global life support system, (that despised “environment” don’t you know), etc, etc, manufacturing utter fictions intended to defame and libel the other, pushing all that crap with total brainwashing techniques and hidden internet bots giving the lies megaphones like never before and on and on and on.
The manufacture of and embrace of utterly otherworldly conspiracy theories. You don’t drink up that poison unless you are emotionally dedicated to filtering out and ignoring all, purely on ideological grounds, with facts and honest being totally meaningless concepts to them.
When truth becomes meaningless, how do we pull them back from the morass, lordie knows trying to sing “Kum ba yah” with them hasn’t done any good.
Even after being elected to the Senate in 2012, the Hawaii Democrat Mazie Hirono was, by her own choosing, a politician little known outside her home state. Then, around 2016 and the election of a particularly divisive president, Hirono, who was born in Japan and is the Senate’s only immigrant, decided that staying under the radar was unsustainable. She frequently made herself available to the national media. She publicly said President Trump was a misogynist and a liar and called for his resignation (as early as 2017, mind you). She unabashedly punctuated her comments with salty language.
And it wasn’t just her unexpected transition that raised her profile: Senator Hirono’s forceful questioning during the Kavanaugh and Barrett Supreme Court confirmation hearings, as well as, more recently, calling on President Biden to nominate more diverse people for senior positions in his administration, have also been central to her earning national stature. “It’s not the easiest thing for political people to speak candidly with the national media,” says Senator Hirono, who is 73 and whose memoir, “Heart of Fire,” will be published on April 20. “I’m not doing it for effect. I don’t go out there and spew things. I’ve thought things through.”
The Senate is supposed to be the world’s greatest deliberative body, and instead it’s where so much legislation goes to die. Do you feel that it’s broken? What I see in the Senate is how important one person is. That person on the Republican side is Mitch McConnell. There are very pragmatic reasons that he holds his caucus together: He is the money person. The Republican senators having tough races, they go to him, and he provides resources.
If Mitch McConnell said, “OK, we’re going to work with the Democrats,” it would happen — even if there would be holdouts like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Tommy Tuberville and that handful of people who — I don’t know who they think they’re representing except themselves. Mitch McConnell is a guy who single-handedly made the Supreme Court
an eight-person court.11As a result of McConnell’s declining to hold confirmation hearings for the Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016, the court had an empty seat for 14 months. The vacancy was ultimately filled by the Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch. . . .
And so on and so forth . . .
The problem is we’re dealing with people who literally want to destroy us. Incidentally, what has TED actually accomplished besides putting out wonderful talks we listen to, feel good about, then forget just as fast.
Major League Baseball announced Friday that this season's All-Star Game and MLB Draft will not be held in Atlanta in response to Georgia's recently passed laws that placed new restrictions on voting.
Every little bit helps.
Though it’s probably more than a little bit of a hit for the small business owners nearby.
I wonder if any of the other 30-some states will take notice. Or if other industries or organizations will step up
Then he said some stuff, including, "Tell me again how Democratic policies are bad for business? Explain it to me like I'm 5."
I added that when Republicans say "better" what they really they mean is the policies harm the people they don't like.
So he said, "So what you are telling me is that they are a bunch of selfish a-holes?"
And, I sort of agree, except his idea of "they" is all Republican voters. My idea of "they" is the lying people who manipulate their way into the upper ranks of the Republican party. Democrats have those too. A Democrat got us into Vietnam. They got the Civil Rights Act passed, but they abandoned the South in the process. Even Clinton sucked up to big business because he thought it would get him something. Anyway, here's my full response to the "a-holes" comment:
it's more complicated than that. Most people are too busy surviving to think about how to design a better world, let alone something like state laws for economic policy. They don't wake up each day choosing to be selfish. But there are some people who do, people with lots of cash and lots of free time, and they use it to play on the minds and emotions of the people who work hard and go home tired every night
“The reason we are where we are today is because the old school Republicans didn’t stand up to the crazies. They embraced them, however uneasily. And now the crazies are ascendant,” says Mehdi Hasan. “And John Boehner wants to be celebrated for calling them crazy.” Aired on 04/02/2021.
When Boehner becomes the spokesman of Republican reasonableness you know they’ve totally gone down the rabbit hole.
When Boehner becomes the spokesman of Republican reasonableness you know they’ve totally gone down the rabbit hole.
There was a strong chance I would have voted for Boehner 5 years ago. But now seeing what the GOP has become, there's no chance in hell I'll vote for any GOPer.
That is a pretty twisted statement isn’t it? Corporate pays him, almost directly to implement laws. In this case, they went rogue. They, the corporations, usually say “do what we pay you to do, then we’ll give you more”. Now they are saying, “don’t do what we didn’t ask you to do, or we’ll cut your pay in a number of ways”.
That is a pretty twisted statement isn’t it? Corporate pays him, almost directly to implement laws. In this case, they went rogue. They, the corporations, usually say “do what we pay you to do, then we’ll give you more”. Now they are saying, “don’t do what we didn’t ask you to do, or we’ll cut your pay in a number of ways”.
The corporations are just playing nice with the people before they turn on them. Notice, it took awhile before they (MLB, Coke, Delta) said anything. And now the rest of the bobble-head Corps in the other states are saying "Yeah, what they said" ?
I don’t believe their sincerity beyond making a buck off of slinging a sack of shit. Maybe individuals have certain feelings, but as a Corp, they need to answer to their stockholders and Do What is Right Makes a Profit quarter-over-quarter. And that is what the board members and c-levels are paid to do. So if you weigh in on the wrong side and lose sales, you could lose your job. So best to stay silent until you detect which way the wind is blowing
Then there is the call to boycott those Corps by the Trump … oh excuse me, he is now to be known as “45” … by the 45-brigade, but they’ve already tarnished their brand.
@mrmhead (f) Threads and posts are not allowed that in the opinion of Moderators are impolite, vulgar, nasty, uncivil, or otherwise disruptive to the good functioning of the either the Forum or to CFI’s mission. Free inquiry is only possible if we maintain civility. Abuse of forum members will not be permitted. In particular, abuse of Moderators for performing their responsibilities will not be permitted. What constitutes abuse will be determined by Moderators on a case-by-case basis, however in general it amounts to any racist, sexist, homo-sexist, threatening, harassing, or other personally offensive, vulgar or derogatory comments. Abuse would include so-called hate speech and fighting words.
