An imaginary conversation with your great-grandchildren

Chris Hayes, a news host on MSNBC, tweeted:

The reason that the House Democrats' efforts have failed to galvanize the public is because the Speaker of the House very clearly does not WANT the public galvanized on impeachment. End of story.

Adam Jentleson, former Deputy Chief of Staff for Senator Harry Reid, responded:

Pelosi repeats the adage about how “you can’t do anything without public opinion” as if it’s wisdom. But when you choose not to lead, that adage just means don’t do anything until the way is already cleared for you.

Can’t do anything without public opinion? Strange thing for her to say …

That never stopped Moscow Mitch, who pushes things through the Senate with 75% and more of the country against what he’s doing.

As Hayes points out Pelosi is doing a great deal to change public opinion away from impeachment.

She’s not the change we voted for. Time to go.



Jen Sorensen draws comics for Daily Kos. A couple days ago her comic proposes some honest questions for the next debate of Democratic presidential candidates. A couple of them:

Grilling you on immigration feeds into the right’s manufactured narrative that there’s a crisis. Instead, please have an imaginary conversation with your great-grandchildren as they are consumed by flames in a climate apocalypse.

So how does it feel to be the last thing standing between all of us and authoritarianism? You won’t let that happen, right?

Today, NPR had a segment discussing various people who say that the Houthis of Yemen couldn’t have blown up that Saudi oil refinery and so it must have been Iran. I’ll let you go find that one. Of more interest (to me) is a thread tweeted by Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut who, in 11 tweets, explains the ongoing war in Yemen. I added a few comments.

Houthis are a Muslim minority who follow a variation of the Muslim faith (similar to Catholics and Presbyterians of the Christian faith). Saudi Arabia formed as a country in 1932 and ever since then have been trying to meddle in Yemen’s affairs to get the Houthis to change to the version of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. Houthis didn’t like that idea and defended themselves, becoming the most battle tested army in Yemen. They did this with help from Iran (which also practices a variation of Islam different from much of the Middle East). Atrocities have been committed by both sides. Concludes Murphy:

Bottom line: the Saudis sowed the seeds of this mess. … Houthis/Iranians have blood on their hands too, but the U.S. should not be a part of this disaster.