In Case You Missed it (v19)

Afraid you missed a post this week, with everything going on? Fear not - I've got you covered. 

Tom Steyer chatted with Jake Tapper on CNN's SOTU and Michael Bennet did the same with Chuck Todd in this week's Sunday School.  Here's a snippet of Steyer's answer to Tapper's question on whether the businessman had bought his way onto the stage.

I have been a grassroots organizer, as you know, for 10 years, and that is exactly what I'm doing in the early primary states. I am going in. I'm listening to people. I spend all my time in the kinds of meetings that I love, which is taking questions and asking questions and listening and learning. And so in fact that's what I think has happened...

For our Sunday School Extra Credit I checked in with the panel on ABC's This Week, talking about George's interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her strategy of holding the impeachment articles. Regarding the news that came out after the articles were approved, the WaPo's Rachael Bade suggested that

...in fact, there might have been even more news focused on those things, if everybody wasn't asking, 'what is Nancy Pelosi doing (with) the articles?' So, I do think there are a lot of Democrats who, while not going on the record and saying it, a lot of them have concerns about this.

Tuesday brought us the seventh debate of Democrats wanting to be president. As in all of the other debates, one of the topics was health insurance - Medicare for All, of course. 

Klobuchar (along with Papa Joe and Mayor Pete) says we need to build on the ACA which by the way is 10 points more popular than Trump who wants to kill it, and her plan actually pays for everything. A plan, we need a plan, not a bunch of pipe dreams. We need things that will actually pass, like one of her bills with 34 cosponsors in the Senate.

And then it was time for Wondering on Wednesday, where , not surprisingly, one of the topics was impeachment. 

We are free (at last) from wondering when on earth House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was going to free the two articles of impeachment from purgatory and actually send them over to the Senate. And we're free from wondering who'll be the House managers who will present the case against the president.  In addition to the obvious (if tainted) Committee Chairs Adam Schiff, who's 59, and Jerry Nadler (72), we've got five others, who, according to this Politico article, reflect Pelosi's

desire for geographic, racial and gender diversity... and draws from the Democratic Caucus' wide swath of legal and national security-related experience. 

In the first of two posts on Thursday, I took a look at the 10%, the 1%, and the 0% - companies that paid $0 in federal taxes last year. One thing I noticed, in looking at the people not the companies, was this.

To be honest, I think many people who express concerns about the 'wealth gap' are in the Top 10% based on income, and some may be there based on net worth as well, who have no idea they've "made it" - which is just one problem we have when talking about all of this income stuff in generalities.

And, in the regular Email of the Week feature, I had to struggle to find a winner. It was almost like we had reverted to where we were months ago.

This was crunch time for many of the candidates, and let me tell you, there were an awful lot of emails were filled with 'Donate' buttons and 'could you just send a little something before midnight/before tomorrow/before it's too late?"  That's what usually happens right before a debate -- and then after the debate, there's the 'I just got off the stage' email, which - you guessed it - also asks for money.

I was glad it was finally the end of the week -- TGIF time. One more time, we had to talk about impeachment - this time, it wasn't what Nancy Pelosi was doing, though. It was what the president was doing with his impeachment team that caught my eye: Ken Starr (yes, THAT Ken Starr) was added to the team - and so was Alan Dershowitz.

... Former Florida AG Pam Bondi is already on the team, helping with 'communications' which, I think, means making appearances on the Fox shows, but I'm not sure.  And, as the article notes, Monica Lewinsky (like Hillary, a 'Leaves of Grass' recipient) chimed in on Twitter.

On Friday morning, shortly after news about Starr joining Trump's legal team broke, Lewinsky wrote in a Twitter post "this is definitely an 'are you f---ing kidding me? kinda day."

So - now you're up to date! Remember, you can always subscribe and never miss a post - look for the Instant Gratification box on the right sidebar.