Should impeachment be a bipartisan effort?

Jimmy Dore, the former comic turned political commentator, now so smitten with the sound of his own voice he's become Rachel Maddow for Radicals, here interviews Rep. Tulsi Gabbard on her decision not to take a position on the articles of impeachment. Even at the cost of enduring Dore, Rep. Gabbard's argument is important, especially as the impeachment effort stalls.



Must reads:
✓ Pundits are pitting “fast” vs. “slow” and “Ukraine only” vs. “everything.” But smart and thorough is the way to go: Democrats Must Reject False Choices as They Pursue Impeachment by Joan Walsh (The Nation
✓ Tulsi Gabbard Releases Statement on Impeachment of President Trump
✓ The congresswoman, a Hawaii Democrat, called impeachment “a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities” and said she favored censure instead: Tulsi Gabbard Votes ‘Present’ on Impeachment Articles: by Michael Levenson (New York Times)
✓ The way to defeat a rightwing political coalition is through leftwing politics, not political theater: Impeachment is the wrong way to beat Trump by Bhaskar Sunkara (The Guardian)
✓ Socialists should see impeachment as an opportunity to attack a movement that poses a long-run threat to the Left’s very existence: The Left Case for Impeachment by Max B. Sawicky (Jacobin)
✓ Getting rid of Trump would be great, but Congress isn’t going to do it — we actually have to vote him out. And impeachment, a therapeutic ritual for MSNBC hosts and an act of score-settling by the national security state, isn’t helping: What’s the Point of Impeachment? by Doug Henwood (Jacobin)

Our political theater - a series

From the Political Sideshows Desk:

Donald Trump’s racism, corruption, kleptocracy, endless war, poverty, homelessness -- these, not Elizabeth Warren’s DNA, are the real issues. Another sideshow in our political carnival.

Our long-running political theater of the absurd

Closing soon?

When Scott Pruitt is fired he will be replaced by his deputy, Andrew Wheeler (not incidently a coal lobbyist and former aid to Jim Inhofe, the Senate’s most prominent denier of climate change), who will calmly, efficiently, and unostentaciously proceed along the same course as Pruitt, polluting air and water, trashcanning regulations, shutting down enforcement, highjacking public lands, and generally undermining 70 years of hard-won progress on the environment.

The system will have worked, however: the corrupt and "extremist" Pruitt will be banished (but, not to worry, he will in all certainty spin through the revolving door to a high-paying precinct from which he will pester his former employees for special treatment for the same industries he currently -- nominally -- regulates).

The same dynamic will follow Donald Trump's departure. We will be told ad nauseum that our "exceptional," "democratic" system of checks

Dan Wasserman twitter@wassermantoons

and balances has rescued us from a narcissitic, unlettered, wannabe dictator and replaced him with the moderate, unassuming, grown-up Mr. Pence. Ignored in this account will be Mike Pence's history as a right-wing fanatic and fundamentalist religious lunatic whose real job will be to put lipstick on the pig of the Right's determination to turn back the clock, if not all the way to the 11th century, at least to 1876.

If the system worked, it hardly needs to be said, we wouldn't have a Pence or a Trump in the first place. Nor for that matter, would we be burdened with elected officials like blue dog Democrats Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly who helped to deploy Andrew Wheeler for his assault of the environment.

Extra credit:
✓ If scandals oust Pruitt, Andrew Wheeler is an ex-coal industry lobbyist pledged to end the ‘pure hell’ of Obama regulations: Scott Pruitt's new EPA deputy could surpass boss in scrapping protections by Oliver Milman (The Guardian)
✓ The US election and the systematic failure of modern politics by Benjamin Farrand (Critical Legal Thinking)

Watch the feet not the mouth (a series)

Hillary Clinton is pressing Bernie Sanders to round up the kid vote for her.

"Although Sanders lost to Clinton, he consistently drew younger voters to his side with promises to take on Wall Street, make college less expensive and close the income gap. He called on young people in New Hampshire, a swing state in the presidential election, to get behind Clinton."

Because, you know, Wall Street.

Alexander Hamilton Will Share His Space on the Ten-Spot -- U.S. Treasury

This is only the beginning of changes to our currency, according to the Treasury Department.

In 2020, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth will appear together on the back of the $10 bill, and Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King will be honored in a group portrait with Abe Lincoln on the $5.

Rumors are unconfirmed that the $2 bill will feature all the people on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Our political theater

Fred Dalton Thompson, who never quite filled the role of Senator and failed to be convincing even as a candidate for President, was "type cast" as avuncular senators, presidents and district attorneys on video and celluloid? Well, in his post-Senate career, Randal Howard "Rand" Paul looks to be a natural to play weasels, gunsels and con men.

It's all just a show, folks.

Former Ohio Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, the House radical, has signed on as a regular contributor to Fox News, the AP reports. Fox News chairman Roger Ailes said he's "always been impressed with Kucinich's fearlessness and thoughtfulness on the issues."

Hurry, hurry, hurry. The show's about to start.

Bill Clinton succeeded a failed GOP presidency and realized the entire corporatist agenda -- banking reform, telecom reform, welfare reform, free trade, etc. -- that the Republicans were unable to achieve.

Barack Obama followed a criminal GOP presidency and upped the ante on his predecessor's worst policies -- expanding militarism, domestic spying, military adventurism, etc., while coming up with some of his own, like extrajudicial assassination and quasi-legal or more probably illegal and certainly immoral deployment of drones, torture of Bradley Manning, tightening government secrecy and prosecuting whistle-blowers, at the same time allowing the war criminals and financial gangsters of the Bush era to go free.

Why does this happen? The liberals and leftists in Congress, and there are more than a few, will fight tooth and nail against a Republican who pursues such policies; but conservative Democrats like Clinton and Obama, by "triangulating" between the two congressional parties, neutralize and emasculate progressive Democrats in Congress who find it difficult to oppose "our guy."

The differences between Mitt Romney and Obama are in matters of revenue and spending that are largely legislative in nature; in the policies that are in the purview of the executive -- the conduct of the Department of War, the Justice Department, etc. -- there is virtually no disagreement between the candidates or the presidential parties.

The Democrats run for president as the champions of economic justice, but in office they can never seem to get the job done; the Republicans are the upholders of family values and individual rights, yet they leave office with such matters pretty much where they found them.

In the meantime, it is business as usual for capitalists, militarists, the security state. Like Obama's newfound populism, Romney's weird embrace of teapartyism will disappear after the election; if he wins, he will govern from near the center-right inhabited by Obama now -- Romney will move left as president, just as Obama will move right. The game is kept going by bogus political theater in which both sides try to persuade a majority that they are the lesser-of-two-evils. And we fall for it every time.