Week in Review Discussion on The Critical Hour (10/4/2019)

Will the Ukraine Scandal Turn Out to Be a Double-Edged Sword for Dems?

It's Friday, which means it's panel time!

On Thursday night, investigators from the House of Representatives released a trove of text messages obtained from former US Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, in which US State Department officials and Rudy Giuliani — US President Donald Trump's personal attorney — negotiated with a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The texts show that US officials felt Trump would not agree to meet with Zelensky at a summit unless the Ukrainian president publicly promised to investigate both the 2016 US presidential election and a Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden, the son of current Democratic presidential candidate and former US Vice President Joe Biden. As this continues to play out, where’s the leverage? Who has the advantage?

[My related article: Dead Man’s Hand: The Impeachment Gambit]

Priorities

America: Where we have our priorities straight.
(And where there's constant complaint about teachers' salaries.)

from Deadspin, via Twisted Sifter

Here, Kitty

Where has it gone? $9 doesn't even make up half the difference.

Reminder: It Has Happened Here

Class warfare. It has happened here. Every social advance, every social benefit that was won from the American ruling class, was only ceded because organized labor fought for it. And every single one is now being rescinded because American working people and their erstwhile supporters are not fighting for them. Would there be any proposals for cutting Social Security and Medicare, while the banksters received trillions of dollars in subsidies, if the politicians knew they would be facing resistance like this? Class warfare. Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes it's not, but it is always there. A fact of capitalist social life. It is happening here -- only, unfortunately, with the working classes agreeing to limit themselves to the inevitably losing tactics and strategies permitted by the their masters. For the moment, at least.

(A nice compendium of clips, with the narration making clear, as always, whose side the media is on.)