Time for me to throw out a few quick hitters.

  • As a liberal and a Democrat, I have no problem lauding the killing of the ISIS leader al-Baghdadi as a triumph and a good thing for the country.  And I’ll leave it at that if you do, generic conservative guy.  But don’t expect me not to respond or hit back if you try to make it about Obama, or bin Laden, or Trump.  I have thoughts there and will argue if necessary.  But I’m quite content just to be happy that the terrorist is dead.
  • My representative is Tim Burchett.  I follow him on twitter and occasionally see his posts there.  It seems like he does a decent job of being active on social media and he gets around his district a fair amount.  At least as far as I can tell from twitter.  He recently posted something or another criticizing the House for a lack of a budget, which the House (under both Republicans and Democrats) has failed to do for 20 years.  He also has posted generally about the budget deficit.  I guess he can have a clean conscience about these things since he was only elected in 2018.  But his focus on the budget deficit is a sure sign to me that the GOP is afraid of a Democratic president come 2020.  Because we all know they only really care about the budget deficit if the president is Democratic.
  • I think I’ve talked about Julian Castro’s recent attempt to do a Booker and claim that he needs $800,000 before the end of the month or he would not be able to stay in the race.  I saw this in the news when it was first announced, but in case I forgot, I’ve gotten daily text messages from the Castro campaign with updates on the status and pleas for donations.  I like Julian Castro, but I don’t see a path for him to the nomination.  I specifically chose not to give him a donation this month because of this.  I think the end result of this is that they’re going to announce that they hit their fundraising goal and will be able to stay in the race.  Yay!  And, like I said, I like Julian Castro.  But I’m feeling a little cynical and suspect they’re going to announce, with great fanfare, that they blew through their fundraising goal.  If he ends up making the stage for the next debate (which is looking like more of a longshot every day), I hope he can add something to the discussion and make this little stunt worthwhile.
  • Speaking of the debate stage.  We’ve got nine that have qualified for the November 20 debate: Warren, Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, Harris, Booker, Yang, Klobuchar, Steyer.  And looking farther ahead at the December 19 debate, only Biden, Sanders, and Warren have qualified so far.  Ultimately, I’d like to see the field winnowed down to – Warren, Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, Harris, and Booker.  Probably Klobuchar, Yang and Steyer will stick around til the caucuses at least.  I think the rest of the candidates are living on borrowed time and it’s just a question of when their money will run out.  Except Gabbard.  She’s totally going to run as a third party candidate.  Hillary was right about her.
  • And speaking of Gabbard.  Glad to see she’s not going to run for reelection to Congress.  We’ll still have to deal with her for a while in the presidential race, but after that she’s just going to end up a Fox contributor and I, at least, won’t see her anymore.  She was too conservative to represent a district in Hawaii.
  • Interesting that the Democrats have decided to have a formal vote on continuing the impeachment inquiry.  I don’t like the perception that they’re letting the White House dictate the process for the impeachment hearing, since this vote is not required.  Also, they appear to have caved on the idea that the President gets to participate in the process in the House.  I note, though, that this can work to the Dems’ benefit.  The fact sheet they released says that the President will have opportunities to participate, but “if the President unlawfully refuses to cooperate with Congressional requests, the Chair shall have the discretion to impose appropriate remedies, including by denying specific requests by the President or his counsel.”  To me this is clearly aimed at White House lack of cooperation.  I hope they have the guts, when the White House continues to instruct witnesses not to testify, to follow through on this and deny any requests from the President and his counsel.