caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

If you thought that the defense budget was completely out-of-control and couldn't get any worse, think again. The new, "totally bipartisan" defense bill is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with our political system.
The reasons are too numerous to count, so I'll just stick to the highlights.

There has to be a better name for this abomination than USMCA.

Everyone is for it, lotta smiles all round, bipartisanship.

Republicans gave here too. Instead of pharma being protected from generic competition in Mexico for 10 years they'll lose that monopoly, in Mexico. Of course we here will continue to pay the inflated outrageous prices. That must really sting. What a concession. Not.

If I was a cynical person, I'd say the Dems apparent decision to vote on two articles of impeachment of Trump (i.e.,his abuse of power in Ukraine in order to subvert democratic elections in the USA, and Obstruction of Congress) is purely a political gambit to keep media attention focused on the grand spectacle of a trial in the Senate rather than on the Democratic Party's primary. Actually, now that I think about it, I am that cynical.

Imagine for a moment that Trump, or Biden, or Mayor Pete saved someone's life.
The headlines would be screaming it. Their campaigns would be pushing the story hard.
It would make incredibly good PR.
...and then there is the Sanders campaign, which is like no other political campaign in my lifetime.

Remember this from late 2018?

The OIG report acknowledges, Carter Page was an “operational contact” from 2008-2013 for an unnamed US Government intelligence agency, and this was withheld from the FISA Court. What the Horowitz report fails to acknowledge, however, is had Page not been infiltrated into the Trump Campaign by his Agency handlers, there would have been no Steele Memo, and thus no probable cause for commencing FISA wiretapping or even an FBI investigation.

Much of what happened at the Paris Summit is being reported a bit differently, and sometimes rather enigmatically, and will include ‘breaking news’ toward at the end.  This may be the War and Peace report (both literally and figuratively) on the Summit, but in my defense, I’ll ask you to consider that it’s the nexus of proxies for NATO/US Ukrainegate/and Putin’s Russia.

I’ll start with:  ‘Normandy Four agree to ‘stabilize’ eastern Ukraine in Paris communique’, Dec. 9 2019, RT.com

“Prior to the news conference, the leaders said in a joint communique that they agreed to “immediate measures to stabilize the situation in the conflict area in east Ukraine.” Previous attempts by the ‘Normandy Four’ group to simmer down the conflict have achieved mixed results at best.