WARFREEZONE

Trump's Conspiracy Against Democracy - The Atlantic : "The rest of the country . . . should not lose sight of why the president is being impeached, and it is not because of a good-faith dispute over Ukraine policy. Trump and his advisers conspired to rig the 2020 election on his behalf, scheming to defraud the American people of a free and fair election. A genuine republic cannot survive chief executives who utilize their powers to make anyone who might challenge their authority into a criminal by extorting weaker entities into leveling false charges at their political rivals. Indeed, the republic's Founders foresaw such a circumstance, and created the impeachment clause as a last resort against it. The high crime that the president has committed is not against Ukraine, but against America."

Secretive energy startup backed by Bill Gates achieves solar breakthrough - CNN : "The problem is that in the past concentrated solar couldn't get temperatures hot enough to make cement and steel. "'You've ended up with technologies that can't really deliver super-heated systems,' said Olav Junttila, a partner at Greentech Capital Advisors, a clean energy investment bank that has advised concentrated solar companies in the past. "That means renewable energy has not yet disrupted industrial processes such as cement and steelmaking. And that's a problem because the world has an insatiable appetite for those materials. Cement, for instance, is used to make the concrete required to build homes, hospitals and schools. These industries are responsible for more than a fifth of global emissions, according to the EPA."

Marie Yovanovitch, impeachment, and America’s last stand for playing by the rules | Will Bunch : "The current political drama on Capitol Hill also may be the last stand for that sense of decency and principle, for the notion that playing by the rules still means something in America. The emotional catharsis of watching a fearless woman stand up to the misogynistic hectoring of the 45th president will only go so far. In a matter of weeks, the just train of impeachment will collide with the self-serving ambition of a Republican Senate whose fealty to retaining power makes Succession’s Waystar Royco look like a good-government nonprofit. We’ll soon learn whether that applause Yovanovitch heard on Friday afternoon was merely the beginning of a rising public crescendo, or a poignant goodbye to what once actually made America great."

We Are Drowning in a Devolved World: An Open Letter from Devo - VICE : "As I started working with my Kent State poet friend, Bob Lewis, a philosophy emerged, fueled by the revelations that linear progress in a consumer society was a lie. Things were not getting better. There were no flying cars and domed cities, as promised in Popular Science; rather, there was a dumbing down of the population engineered by right-wing politicians, televangelists, and Madison Avenue. I called what we saw 'De-evolution,' based upon the tendency toward entropy across all human endeavors. . . . "Then, and in the decades to follow, we witnessed an America where the capacity for critical thought and reasoning were eroding fast. People mindlessly repeating slogans from political propaganda and ad campaigns: 'America, Love It or leave It'; 'Don’t Ask Why, Drink Bud Dry'; 'You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby'; even risk-free, feel-good slogans like 'Give Peace a Chance....

Pocket - Stephen Miller’s Sinister Syllabus : "For three years, Miller has used his perch to inflict fear and anxiety on refugees, asylum-seekers and unauthorized immigrants. Maybe, if you were charitable to Miller and sympathetic to restricting immigration, you could frame this as a misguided but good faith attempt to pull back from a more liberal status quo. No longer. These emails show that Miller’s views flow from his commitment to racist exclusion and the protection of a white demographic majority."

A telling moment from the impeachment hearing suggests Trump has an insurance policy on Mike Pence – Raw Story : "There's little reason to believe that that this nihilistic circus act being put on by Republicans will attract the newer, younger voters the party needs for its long-term health. "Republicans themselves see this, which is why they've focused so heavily on winding down the idea of democracy, by packing the courts and gerrymandering the voting map so that no matter how many more votes Democrats get, they never win full power. It may very well work. But the fact that they have completely abandoned any pretense of trying to argue their point and persuade voters, as the first day of impeachment hearings showed, is remarkable in itself. And if Republicans had any lingering hope that they could stanch the bleeding by replacing Trump with Pence, that seems to have gone up in smoke."

Democrats did MUCH better than expected: Here is why - The Washington Post : "Career Foreign Service officer George Kent, left, and top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine William Taylor, right, return from a short break in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2019, during the first public impeachment hearing of President Donald Trump's efforts to tie U.S. aid for Ukraine to investigations of his political opponents. (Andrew Harnik)"

The case against Trump in seven words - The Washington Post : "'A sitting president secretly tried to get a foreign government to announce an investigation into his chief political rival. In essence, Trump was using the awesome powers our Constitution gives presidents not to benefit the nation, but to benefit him personally.' "'It doesn’t matter whether the plot succeeded. It was a grave offense (and one that opened the president up to blackmail). The other questions, like whether or not there was a quid pro quo (there was) and whether or not there was a coverup (there was), are gravy. They are important questions, but the case for impeachment is even more straightforward. Asking us to wait until the election to remove him from office is like asking to resolve a dispute based on who wins a game of Monopoly — when the very crime you’ve been accused of is cheating on Monopoly.'"

Opinion | Don’t Expect Polls to Change Republican Minds - The New York Times : "And here’s the misfire, the point at which the expected functioning of popular democracy failed. The Republican Party had pursued unpopular political maneuvers and purged heretics from its ranks, shrinking the party’s base of support. The result? In 2000, it captured the presidency and retained control over both houses of Congress. "It was a pattern that would repeat itself over the next two decades. Republicans didn’t win every election — in fact, they’ve won the popular vote for president only once in the last 30 years. But they’ve commandeered the government repeatedly despite their unpopularity. . . . "That the party has seldom paid a price for that unpopularity points to a troubling feature of modern American democracy: It’s not that democratic."

Remembering Black Veterans Targeted for Racial Terror Lynchings | Equal Justice Initiative : "[B]lack soldiers' potential as community leaders was terrifying, and the 'disaster' would be a mass movement for African American rights. Indeed, many African American soldiers returned determined to fight for their own freedom and equality, and veterans like Hosea Williams and Medgar Evers played central roles in what became the civil rights movement. The effort to suppress that potential leadership made black veterans targets, and many suffered brutal violence for protesting mistreatment or simply wearing their military uniforms."

Sanders, AOC react to Bloomberg's presidential bid : "'Of course!' [Rep. Ocasio-Cortez] said in an interview with the Des Moines Register. 'They’ve got class solidarity. The billionaires are looking out for each other. They’re willing to transcend difference and background and even politics. "'The fact that Bill Gates seems more willing to vote for Donald Trump than anyone else tells you everything you need to know about how far they’re willing to go to protect their excess, at the cost to everyday Americans.'"

California law created to prevent Black women from dying during childbirth : "'The best studies that I’ve seen put it down to just one thing: prejudice,' [Elizabeth] Warren said at a forum back in April. 'Doctors and nurses don’t hear African American women’s medical issues the same way as they hear the same things from white women.'"

Opinion | The ‘Lost Cause’ That Built Jim Crow - The New York Times : "'Strange things have happened of late and are still happening,' Douglass himself worried aloud in that last major speech of his. More than 200 years after his birth, I can’t help wondering what he’d say about the current state of affairs in our democracy. Horrified by the scourge of lynching a generation on from what was supposed to have been a 'new birth of freedom' for black and white Americans, Douglass, in surveying the devastating shadows cast over the sunset of his life, said that 'some of these' developments 'tend to dim the luster of the American name, and chill the hopes once entertained for the cause of American liberty.' He continued: 'When the moral sense of a nation begins to decline and the wheel of progress to roll backward, there is no telling how low the one will fall or where the other may stop. The downward tendency already manifest has swept away some of...

Opinion | The Billionaires Are Getting Nervous - The New York Times : "Congress has slashed taxation three times in the past four decades, each time for the stated purpose of spurring innovation and investment and growth. Each time, the purported benefits failed to materialize. President Trump initiated the most recent experiment in 2017. The International Monetary Fund concluded in a recent report that it had not worked. "Moreover, while higher tax rates may weigh modestly against innovation and investment, that calculus is incomplete. It ignores the question of what the government does with the additional money. It also ignores the possibility that higher taxes could result in more innovation. "A study of American patent holders found that innovators tend to come from wealthy families, to grow up in communities of innovators, and to receive high-quality educations in math and science. Mr. Gates, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in American history, fits the p...

Roger Stone Trial: What Did Donald Trump Know About Wikileaks Dumps – Rolling Stone : "On day one of the trial, prosecutors dropped a bombshell, presenting call records showing that Trump and Stone spoke on the phone regularly as the WikiLeaks email-dump saga evolved, including on the day the DNC announced it had been hacked. Federal prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky stopped short of arguing Trump directed Stone’s activity, but the government alleged Stone’s criminal cover-up was perpetrated on behalf of the now-President. 'Evidence will show Roger Stone lied to the House Intelligence Committee because the truth looked bad,' Zelinsky told jurors. 'The truth looked bad for the Trump campaign and the truth looked bad for Donald Trump.'"

Opinion | The Cure for Democrats’ 2020 Terror - The New York Times : "in 2017, Democrats’ chances of winning the House seemed bleak, given the effect of gerrymandering. 'In early 2017 we got laughed at when we said we could take the House,' he said. The blue wave of 2018 wasn’t preordained — people built it. They’re building another. The only cure for worrying about whether it will be big enough is to help."

A white Southerner confronts her schooling at a segregated private ‘academy’ and challenges others to do the same - The Washington Post : “What would the Deep South look like if, in that moment, people in these towns would have said, ‘This is new and unsettling, but we’ve got to try to make this work in the public schools instead of setting up academies?'”

The President pressured a foreign country to smear his political opponents. Please read his words: “The US has been very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say it’s reciprocal.” “I would like you to do us a favor though.” “There’s been a lot of talk about Biden’s son.” https://t.co/l4gNiodL6N — Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) November 7, 2019

Opinion | Democrats Could Learn a Lot From What Happened In Virginia - The New York Times : "The lesson here is that Democrats must not write off entire geographies or communities. It took years of organizing and multiple election cycles that resulted in incremental progress for Virginia to reach the point where a Democratic sweep was possible. The same arguments once used to justify chronic underinvestment in Virginia’s progressive potential have been used to undermine the potential of similar states in the South, including other states that saw important shifts Tuesday night, like Kentucky, where the Democratic candidate for governor, Andy Beshear, appeared to beat the Trump-endorsed incumbent, Matt Bevin, in a state the president won by 30 percentage points in 2016. "States don’t become battlegrounds overnight. Democrats and national progressive organizations have the resources to take their case to the people and win, but they have to start early and organize relentless...

Wall Street snub Schumer, Dems running for Senate as Elizabeth Warren surges : "Some finance executives have recently told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that they are, for the moment, holding back from donating to Democrats running for Senate in 2020 due to their concerns with Warren becoming a front-runner in the race for the party's presidential nomination, according to people familiar with the conversations. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the private nature of the talks. "The move is intended to put pressure on party leadership and Schumer, who represents New York and has received millions of dollars in donations from Wall Street, to distance themselves from Warren's economic populism. "These financiers, which include hedge fund managers and private equity executives, are also worried that Warren's policies, were she to defeat President Donald Trump, could be detrimental to their businesses. They believe Republicans could ...

Opinion | Instead of a Generational Culture War, Let’s Fight the Rich - The New York Times : "On just about any important issue of the day, from climate change to mass incarceration to defeating Donald Trump, meaningful political change will come about only through cross-generational coordination — it will require concerned people of all ages to band together to alter the status quo. One reason this is difficult in America is we’ve been conditioned to think that people who are much older or younger than we are might be completely alien beings: Every millennial is an avocado-eating virtue signaler who won’t listen to opposing views; all boomers are white, affluent, selfish racists who can’t recognize their privilege; and the two sides will never see eye to eye on anything. "But that is plainly false. Last month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who’s 30, endorsed 78-year-old Bernie Sanders for president — not despite his age, but because Sanders’s 'decades of wor...

From Deadspin to picket lines at GM and in Chicago, a moral workplace is 2020’s stealth issue | Will Bunch : "For decades, U.S. workers have stared into the abyss of what could go wrong by standing up for what they think is right — a grand canyon that could mean not just losing a paycheck but losing the ability to see a doctor or to someday pay for their kids’ college education — and then usually turned back away from the abyss. That’s why the showdown at Deadspin, the strikes at GM. Mack Truck or by Chicago teachers, and even a renaissance of whistleblowers in Washington, all feel in some way part of a dramatic sea change in how work gets done in this country. "And as the spirit of rebellion spreads from the picket line to the cubicle farm, it’s also becoming a below-the-radar issue on the 2020 campaign for control of the White House and Congress. It reflects the growing awareness that the need to cling to employer-provided health insurance and pay for an overpriced univer...

Election Day 2019: winners and losers - Vox : "In addition to boding well for the party going into 2020, Democrats’ sweeping wins in Virginia could also mean crucial momentum for the Equal Rights Amendment. "The ERA, a potential amendment to the Constitution, would codify equal protections for men and women under the law, guaranteeing protections like equal pay. It needs to be ratified by 38 of 50 state legislatures in order to come to fruition. Presently, the ERA has been approved by 37. If Virginia were to vote in favor of the ERA, it would hit the threshold it needs for ratification."

Iraq will use 'new level of force to destroy' anti-government protests - The National : "Security forces in Iraq have killed at least 267 protesters in two waves of anti-government demonstrations since October 1 in Baghdad and across the mostly Shiite south. "Most of the deaths occurred during the first week of the demonstrations, when snipers shot into crowds from Baghdad rooftops."

Virginia Election: Democrats Take Full Control of State Government - The New York Times : "Democrats picked up at least two Senate seats, including an upset in a suburban Richmond district by Ghazala Hashmi, who will be the first Muslim woman in the Senate. "A former college literature professor, Ms. Hashmi was brought to the country from India as a child. Running her first campaign, she described experiencing a personal crisis after Mr. Trump ordered a ban on immigration from Muslim-majority countries. "'I didn’t know if I actually had a home in this country,' she said in an interview before the voting. 'My anxiety was caused by wondering if other people would speak up and support the assault we were seeing on civil liberties.' She decided to speak up and represent herself."

Former Republican David Jolly on GOP: "spineless politicians rotten to the core without virtue"

CNN: Kentucky elects Democratic governor NBC: Kentucky elects Democratic governor ABC: Kentucky elects Democratic governor CBS: Kentucky elects Democratic governor Fox News: pic.twitter.com/w2jNKLoc2j — Soviet Sergey (@SovietSergey) November 6, 2019 The cyclist who got fired after being photographed flipping the bird to Trump’s motorcade ousted a Republican to win a seat on the Loudoun County (Va) Board of Supervisors. pic.twitter.com/rk1sq1Vruv — Helen Kennedy (@HelenKennedy) November 6, 2019

Gordon Sondland's Testimony Before the House Confirms Trump's Quid Pro Quo With Ukraine's President Zelensky : "He's caught. He knows he's caught. And, for maybe the first time in his life, and certainly for the first time in his presidency*, nobody's going to step up and take the fall. Even Giuliani, eventually, will opt for self-preservation and not dying in prison."

What he said!

The scope of Trump’s corruption is mind-boggling. New developments show how. - The Washington Post : "Multiple government agencies are actively helping Trump absolve Russia of sabotaging the last presidential election on his behalf — thus burying his own campaign’s eagerness to benefit from it — and helping him cover up his effort to solicit more foreign help in cheating his way to victory in the next one."

Igor Fruman, Giuliani's Ukraine Associate, Tried To Argue He Was Not A Flight Risk. It Did Not Go Well. : "'I’m not exactly sure what your ask is here,' Judge Paul Oetken said to Todd Blanche, the lawyer for Fruman. "Blanche sighed and looked down. He was at a hearing at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York Friday, in which he was attempting to petition for modifications to Fruman’s bail agreement: house arrest, a GPS tracker, and a $1 million bond. It was not going well. "Blanche called the allegations that Fruman was 'fleeing the country' when he was arrested Oct. 9 on the jetway at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, DC, 'completely false': 'There is zero evidence,' Blanche told the court. "'It’s false that he had a one-way ticket?' Oetken aksed."

Lev Parnas, Giuliani Associate, Opens Talks With Impeachment Investigators - The New York Times : "The turnabout occurred after Mr. Trump denied knowing Mr. Parnas when he was arrested. "'Mr. Parnas was very upset by President Trump’s plainly false statement that he did not know him,' said Mr. Bondy, whose client has maintained that he has had extensive dealings with the president."

Takeaways from Yovanovitch and McKinley testimony - The Washington Post : "In perhaps the most intriguing passage — and one that will require more inquiry — Yovanovitch says she was told she needed to return from Ukraine in late April because of concerns about her 'security.' "She said she spoke at 1 a.m. Ukraine time with Director General of the Foreign Service Carol Perez, who told her to catch the next flight home. "'She said that there was a lot of concern for me, that I needed to be on the next plane home to Washington,' Yovanovitch said. 'And I was like, what? What happened? And she said, I don’t know, but this is about your security. You need to come home immediately. You need to come home on the next plane.' "Yovanovitch was pressed on what Perez meant about her 'security,' but Perez didn’t seem to know much: "YOVANOVITCH: And I said, physical security? I mean, is there something going on here in the Ukraine? Because so...

Opinion | The Presidency Is Not Enough - The New York Times : "Arguably the most important divide in the Democratic primary field isn’t by ideology, but between those candidates who understand the obstacles ahead and those who don’t. Despite the example of the last 10 years, the centrist candidates are still running as if persuasion and compromise will win the day."

Opinion | My Wish for Michelle Obama - The New York Times : "No one should endeavor to live their life as an exemplar for the white gaze. For the oppressed to feel any obligation to fix the flaw in the oppressor is simply another form of oppression. "Centering on the white racism perception of you is futile, distracting and corrosive. "My wish for Michelle Obama is simple: that she never again allow herself to entertain the thought of how she is being perceived by racists and whether or not that is changing any of their minds. "Why should cave men be allowed to occupy space in the mind of a super woman?"

The Republican Closing Argument against Impeachment Is Personally Implicated in the Scandal | emptywheel : "McCarthy received money both personally and in the guise of his Protect the House PAC from Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, the grifters at the core of the influence operation that led to Trump’s quid pro quo conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky. He also keynoted an event with the grifters. While he has said he’d donate the money to charity (though has not yet, as far as I know, shown that he did that), there is no way to unring the bell of their support. He became Majority Leader with the support of men who have since been indicted for that support."

Impeachment: the most important part of the impeachment resolution - Vox : "And, in what could prove to be an especially consequential aspect of this provision, Schiff and Nunes may also delegate their questioning time to 'a Permanent Select Committee employee.' That means that professional counsel, who have both the skill set to conduct an effective interrogation and the ability to devote all their time to preparing for hearings, will be able to question witnesses."

Memo: Polling Medicare for All : "Senator Warren’s Medicare for All financing plan, that doesn’t raise taxes on the middle class, is supported by a 57-30 percent margin among voters, and it is supported by a 53-32 percent margin among independents as well. Fully 1 in 3 Republicans support this financing plan as well. "Voters clearly support the goal of universal health coverage, with 59 percent of voters saying they would be more supportive of legislation if they thought it would achieve universal coverage. Seventy-four percent would be more supportive of Medicare for All if they knew it eliminated uncertainty as to whether or not a patient could see any doctor without worrying about their coverage."

The Deeply Dedicated State | by Michael McFaul | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books : "There is no deep state in the United States of America. "Instead, what I’ve seen is a deeply dedicated state."

Jennifer Davis, 85, Dies; Led Divestment Effort Over Apartheid - The New York Times : "For nearly two decades, from 1981 to 2000, Ms. Davis was the executive director of the American Committee on Africa, a New York-based organization that brought together diverse opponents of the strict racial segregation imposed by her country’s white regime. "Ms. Davis mustered the political and economic power of college students, religious congregations, organized labor and members of corporate, pension fund and philanthropic boards to boycott South African products and unload their stock holdings in American companies profiting from apartheid."

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Proof of Trump’s impeachable offenses plain to see | Fox News : "One can see that the reason Republicans have been attacking the process of impeachment is largely because there is no credible defense to the proof of impeachment. That proof has been hiding in plain sight – in the president's public words and the context to be provided by witnesses – and will soon be revealed."