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What was on Nancy Pelosi’s laptop? The sale of GE weapons manufacturer to China..
Sedition Treason Insurrection...
The Entanglements of Leadership
So, how did we get here?
When Nancy was born, her father was a Democratic congressman from Maryland (and he became Mayor of Baltimore seven years later). Pelosi's mother was also active in politics, organizing Democratic women and teaching her daughter the value of social networking. Pelosi's brother, Thomas D'Alesandro III, also a Democrat, was Mayor of Baltimore from 1967 to 1971.
Pelosi was born in Baltimore to an Italian-American family. She was the only girl and the youngest of seven children of Annunciata M. "Nancy" D'Alesandro (née Lombardi) and Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. Her mother was born in Campobasso, in South Italy, and her father could trace his Italian ancestry to Genoa, Venice and Abruzzo.
Thomas Ludwig John D'Alesandro Jr. (August 1, 1903 - August 23, 1987) was an American politician who was a U.S. Representative from Maryland's 3rd congressional district (1939-47) and subsequently the mayor of Baltimore, Maryland (1947-59).
A Democrat, D'Alesandro served as a member of the Maryland State House of Delegates from 1926 to 1933. After serving in Annapolis, D'Alesandro was then appointed as General Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue, a post in which he served during 1933-1934. He then was elected to serve on the Baltimore City Council from 1935 to 1938.
D'Alesandro was then elected to the 76th Congress and to the four succeeding Congresses, serving from January 3, 1939, until he resigned on May 16, 1947. While in Congress, D'Alesandro strongly supported the Bergson Group, a "political action committee set up to challenge the Roosevelt Administration's policies on the Jewish refugee issue during the Holocaust, and later lobbied against British control of Palestine" despite his equally strong support for Roosevelt's other policies.
Following his service in Congress he was Mayor of Baltimore for 12 years from May 1947 to May 1959.[3] D'Alesandro served on the Federal Renegotiation Board from 1961-1969 after being appointed by President John F. Kennedy, the same assassinated JFK who then asked the FBI to investigate Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. for connections to organized crime.
D'Alesandro was a strong contender for Governor of Maryland in 1954, but was dropped out after being implicated in receiving undeclared money from Dominic Piracci, a parking garage owner convicted of fraud, conspiracy, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Piracci was the father of Margie Piracci D'Alesandro, the wife of D'Alesandro's oldest son and namesake Thomas D'Alesandro III. Mayor D'Alesandro was later exonerated and never indicted.
Between World War II and 1968, Baltimore had changed demographically. The total population remained constant, but the black percentage of the total population had grown, while other populations shrank (a shift of 200,000 people). Black communities had sub-par housing, high rates of infant mortality, and more crime. They also suffered disproportionately from the decline in Baltimore's manufacturing sector. Black unemployment was more than double the national rate, and even higher in especially poor communities. Those who did have jobs were paid less and worked in unsafe conditions.
His son, brother to Nancy Pelosi, Thomas D'Alesandro III, who later served as Mayor of Baltimore from 1967 to 1971, said about his father "His whole life was politics. He was not what you would call a flaming liberal, but he was a progressive."
The Baltimore riot of 1968 was a period of civil unrest that lasted from April 6 to April 14, 1968, in Baltimore. The uprising included crowds filling the streets, burning and looting local businesses, and confronting the police and national guard.
The immediate cause of the riot was the April 4 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, which triggered unrest in over 100 cities across the United States. These events are sometimes described as the Holy Week Uprising.
Baltimore through a lens around 1969, photos of the police on E. Chase Street were taken the day after MLK's assassination. They were sent to protect us from us. Of course this was long before the riverfront revitilization. That is why you see a few pictures of drunks and beggars. don't think that exists downtown anymore.
After moving to San Francisco, Pelosi became friends with 5th district congressman Phillip Burton, and began working her way up in Democratic politics. In 1976, she was elected as a Democratic National Committee member from California, a position she would hold until 1996. She was elected as party chair for Northern California in January 1977, and four years later was selected to head the California Democratic Party, which she led until 1983. Subsequently, Pelosi served as the San Francisco Democratic National Convention Host Committee chairwoman in 1984, and then as Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee finance chair from 1985 to 1986.
Pelosi represents one of the safest Democratic districts in the country. Democrats have held the seat since 1949 and Republicans, who currently make up only 13 percent of registered voters in the district, have not made a serious bid for the seat since the early 1960s.
The Fall of America After 911
For the 2000 and 2002 election cycles, she held the distinction of contributing the most money among members of Congress to other congressional campaigns.
In the House, she served on the Appropriations and Intelligence Committees and was the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee until her election as minority leader.
Shortly after winning re-election, President George W. Bush claimed a mandate for an ambitious second-term agenda and proposed reforming Social Security by allowing workers to redirect a portion of their Social Security withholding into stock and bond investments. (To pay for the war in the Middle East?) Pelosi strongly opposed the plan, saying there was no crisis, and as minority leader she imposed intense party discipline on her caucus, leading them to near-unanimous opposition to Bush's proposal, and subsequent defeat of the proposed plan.
In the wake of President George W. Bush's reelection in 2004, several leading House Democrats believed they should pursue impeachment proceedings against the president. They asserted that Bush had misled Congress about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and had violated the civil liberties of Americans by authorizing wiretaps without a warrant. (Something the Obama Clinton administrations are now guilty of)
In May 2006, with an eye on the upcoming congressional elections-which offered the possibility of Democrats taking back control of the House for the first time since 1994-Pelosi told colleagues that, while the Democrats would conduct vigorous oversight of Bush administration policy, an impeachment investigation was "off the table". (A week earlier, she had told the Washington Post that, although Democrats would not set out to impeach the president, "you never know where" investigations might lead.)
After becoming Speaker of the House in January 2007, Pelosi held firm against impeachment, notwithstanding strong support for that course of action among constituents in her home district. In the November 2008 election, Pelosi withstood a challenge for her seat by anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who ran as an independent primarily because of Pelosi's refusal to pursue impeachment.
Prior to the U.S. 2006 midterm elections, Pelosi announced a plan for action: If elected, she and the newly empowered Democratic caucus would push through most of its program during the first hundred hours of the 110th Congress's term.
The origin for the name "first hundred hours" is a play on words derived from former Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt's promise for quick action on the part of government (to combat the Great Depression) during his "first hundred days" in office. Newt Gingrich, who became Speaker of the House in 1995, had a similar 100-day agenda to implement the Contract with America.
On January 5, 2007, reacting to suggestions from President Bush's confidantes that he would increase troop levels in Iraq (which he announced in a speech a few days later), Pelosi joined with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to condemn the plan.
Though Pelosi was re-elected by a comfortable margin in the 2010 midterm elections, the Democrats lost 63 seats and ceded control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans. After the electoral setback suffered by her party, Pelosi sought to continue leading the House Democratic Caucus in the position of minority leader, the office she held prior to becoming Speaker. After Pelosi's disparate intra-party opposition failed to pass a motion to delay the leadership vote, Pelosi was elected minority leader for the 112th Congress. On November 14, 2012, Pelosi announced she would remain on as Democratic leader.
In November 2011, 60 Minutes alleged that Pelosi and several other members of Congress had used information they gleaned from closed sessions to make money on the stock market. The program cited Pelosi's purchases of Visa stock while a bill that would limit credit card fees was in the House. Pelosi denied the allegations and called the report "a right-wing smear".
When the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (or STOCK Act) was introduced the next year, Pelosi voted for the bill and lauded its passing. Of representatives Louise Slaughter and Tim Walz, who drafted the bill, Pelosi said they "shined a light on a gaping hole in our ethics laws and helped close it once and for all".
In August 2016, Pelosi said her personal contact information was posted online following a cyber attack against top Democratic campaign committees and she had received "obscene and sick calls, voice mails and text messages". She warned members of Congress to avoid letting children or family members answer phone calls or read text messages.
Tim Ryan initiated a bid to replace Pelosi as House minority leader on November 17, 2016, prompted by colleagues following the 2016 presidential election.[68] After Pelosi agreed to give more leadership opportunities to junior members, she defeated Ryan by a vote of 134-63 on November 30.
In 2017, after Democrats lost four consecutive special elections in the House of Representatives, Pelosi's leadership was again called into question. In June 2017, Representative Kathleen Rice of New York and a small group of other House Democrats, including Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric Richmond (LA) held a closed-door meeting to discuss potential new Democratic leadership.[71] Other House Democrats, including Tim Ryan (OH), Seth Moulton (MA), and Filemon Vela (TX), publicly called for new House leadership.
When asked specifically why she should stay on as House minority leader after numerous Democratic seats were lost, Pelosi responded, "Well, I'm a master legislator. I am a strategic, politically astute leader. My leadership is recognized by many around the country, and that is why I'm able to attract the support that I do."
In November 2017, after Pelosi called for the resignation of John Conyers over allegations of harassment, she convened the first in a series of planned meetings on strategies to address reforming workplace policies in the wake of national attention to sexual harassment. Pelosi said Congress had "a moral duty to the brave women and men coming forward to seize this moment and demonstrate real, effective leadership to foster a climate of respect and dignity in the workplace".
The Framing of the President
In February 2018, Pelosi sent a letter to Speaker Paul Ryan about the proposed public release of a memo prepared by Republican staff at the direction of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. The memo attacked the Federal Bureau of Investigation for its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Pelosi said the FBI and the Department of Justice had warned Nunes and Ryan that the memo was inaccurate and that its release could threaten national security by disclosing federal surveillance methods. She added that Republicans were engaged in a "cover-up campaign" to protect Trump: "House Republicans' pattern of obstruction and cover-up to hide the truth about the Trump-Russia scandal represents a threat to our intelligence and our national security. The GOP has led a partisan effort to distort intelligence and discredit the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities." She charged Nunes with "deliberately dishonest actions" and called for his immediate removal from his position.
In February 2018, Pelosi broke the record for longest speech in the House of Representatives when she spent more than eight hours recounting stories from DREAMers-people brought to the United States as minors by undocumented immigrants-to object to a budget deal that would raise spending caps without addressing the future of DACA recipients, who were at risk of deportation by the Trump administration.
In May 2018, after the White House invited two Republicans and no Democrats to a briefing by Department of Justice officials on an FBI informant who had made contact with the Trump campaign, Pelosi and Senate minority leader Schumer sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI director Wray calling for "a bipartisan Gang of Eight briefing that involves congressional leadership from both chambers".
In August 2018, Pelosi called for the resignation of Duncan D. Hunter after his indictment on charges of misusing at least $250,000 in campaign funds, saying the charges were "evidence of the rampant culture of corruption among Republicans in Washington today".
Preparing to Steal the Election and The Brat Patrol
In the 2018 midterm elections, the Democrats regained a majority of seats in the House. On November 28, House Democrats nominated Pelosi to once again serve as speaker of the House. She was formally re-elected to the speakership at the start of the 116th Congress on January 3, 2019. Pelosi "clinched the speakership after weeks of whittling down opposition from some fellow Democrats seeking a new generation of leadership. The deal to win over holdouts put an expiration date on her tenure: she promised not to stay more than four years in the job". 220 House Democrats voted to elect Pelosi speaker, while 15 other House Democrats cast their ballots for someone else or voted present.
On February 4, 2020, at the conclusion of President Trump's State of the Union, Pelosi tore up her official copy of his speech.[85] Her stated reason for doing so was "because it was a courteous thing to do considering the alternatives. It was a such a dirty speech." She was criticized for this by President Trump and Republicans.
At the start of the 116th Congress, Pelosi opposed President Trump's attempts to use the 2018-19 federal government shutdown (which she called a "hostage-taking" of civil servants) as leverage to build a substantial wall on the American border.[89] Pelosi declined to allow Trump to give the State of the Union Address in the House of Representatives chamber while the shutdown was ongoing. After several news polls showed Trump's popularity sharply falling due to the shutdown, on January 25, 2019, Trump signed a stopgap bill to reopen the government without any concessions regarding a border wall for three weeks up until February 15 to allow for negotiations to take place to approve an appropriations bill that both parties could agree on. However, Trump reiterated his demand for the border wall funding and said he would shut down the government again or declare a national emergency and use military funding to build the wall if Congress did not appropriate the funds by February 15, reopening the federal government.
On February 15, 2019, President Trump declared a national emergency in order to bypass the United States Congress, after being unsatisfied with a bipartisan border bill which had passed the House of Representatives and the Senate a day before.
With Pelosi having successfully sought to impeach President Trump on December 18, 2019, and on the eve of his trial before the U.S. Senate, The Washington Post political writer Paul Kane called her the most powerful House speaker in at least twenty-five years, noting that some historians were comparing her influence to that of former Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas.
In February of 2020, COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States.
Pelosi aided with the passage of the CARES Act.
Pelosi attracted controversy when footage emerged in early September 2020 of her visiting a hair salon in San Francisco. This was contrary to regulations enforced at that time preventing service indoors.[96] Although criticized for hypocrisy by President Donald Trump and the owners of the salon, Pelosi described the situation as "clearly a setup". Pelosi's actions were defended by her stylist and other Democrats.
Baltimore - Nina Simone (1978)
Beat-up little seagull
On a marble stair
Tryin' to find the ocean
Lookin' everywhere
Hard times in the city
In a hard town by the sea
Ain't nowhere to run to
There ain't nothin' here for free
Hooker on the corner
Waiting for a train
Drunk lying on the sidewalk
Sleeping in the rain
And the people hide their faces
And they hide their eyes
Cause the city's dyin'
And they don't know why
Oh, Baltimore
Ain't it hard just to live?
Oh, Baltimore
Ain't it hard just to live?
Just to live
Get my sister Sandy
And my little brother Ray
Buy a big old wagon
To haul us all away
Live out in the country
Where the mountain's high
Never gonna come back here
Till the day I die
Oh, Baltimore
Ain't it hard just to live?
Oh, Baltimore
Ain't it hard just to live?
Just to live
dr. π (pi)
.
Sedition Treason Insurrection...
The Entanglements of Leadership
So, how did we get here?
When Nancy was born, her father was a Democratic congressman from Maryland (and he became Mayor of Baltimore seven years later). Pelosi's mother was also active in politics, organizing Democratic women and teaching her daughter the value of social networking. Pelosi's brother, Thomas D'Alesandro III, also a Democrat, was Mayor of Baltimore from 1967 to 1971.
Pelosi was born in Baltimore to an Italian-American family. She was the only girl and the youngest of seven children of Annunciata M. "Nancy" D'Alesandro (née Lombardi) and Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. Her mother was born in Campobasso, in South Italy, and her father could trace his Italian ancestry to Genoa, Venice and Abruzzo.
Thomas Ludwig John D'Alesandro Jr. (August 1, 1903 - August 23, 1987) was an American politician who was a U.S. Representative from Maryland's 3rd congressional district (1939-47) and subsequently the mayor of Baltimore, Maryland (1947-59).
A Democrat, D'Alesandro served as a member of the Maryland State House of Delegates from 1926 to 1933. After serving in Annapolis, D'Alesandro was then appointed as General Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue, a post in which he served during 1933-1934. He then was elected to serve on the Baltimore City Council from 1935 to 1938.
D'Alesandro was then elected to the 76th Congress and to the four succeeding Congresses, serving from January 3, 1939, until he resigned on May 16, 1947. While in Congress, D'Alesandro strongly supported the Bergson Group, a "political action committee set up to challenge the Roosevelt Administration's policies on the Jewish refugee issue during the Holocaust, and later lobbied against British control of Palestine" despite his equally strong support for Roosevelt's other policies.
Following his service in Congress he was Mayor of Baltimore for 12 years from May 1947 to May 1959.[3] D'Alesandro served on the Federal Renegotiation Board from 1961-1969 after being appointed by President John F. Kennedy, the same assassinated JFK who then asked the FBI to investigate Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. for connections to organized crime.
D'Alesandro was a strong contender for Governor of Maryland in 1954, but was dropped out after being implicated in receiving undeclared money from Dominic Piracci, a parking garage owner convicted of fraud, conspiracy, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Piracci was the father of Margie Piracci D'Alesandro, the wife of D'Alesandro's oldest son and namesake Thomas D'Alesandro III. Mayor D'Alesandro was later exonerated and never indicted.
Between World War II and 1968, Baltimore had changed demographically. The total population remained constant, but the black percentage of the total population had grown, while other populations shrank (a shift of 200,000 people). Black communities had sub-par housing, high rates of infant mortality, and more crime. They also suffered disproportionately from the decline in Baltimore's manufacturing sector. Black unemployment was more than double the national rate, and even higher in especially poor communities. Those who did have jobs were paid less and worked in unsafe conditions.
His son, brother to Nancy Pelosi, Thomas D'Alesandro III, who later served as Mayor of Baltimore from 1967 to 1971, said about his father "His whole life was politics. He was not what you would call a flaming liberal, but he was a progressive."
The Baltimore riot of 1968 was a period of civil unrest that lasted from April 6 to April 14, 1968, in Baltimore. The uprising included crowds filling the streets, burning and looting local businesses, and confronting the police and national guard.
The immediate cause of the riot was the April 4 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, which triggered unrest in over 100 cities across the United States. These events are sometimes described as the Holy Week Uprising.
Baltimore through a lens around 1969, photos of the police on E. Chase Street were taken the day after MLK's assassination. They were sent to protect us from us. Of course this was long before the riverfront revitilization. That is why you see a few pictures of drunks and beggars. don't think that exists downtown anymore.
After moving to San Francisco, Pelosi became friends with 5th district congressman Phillip Burton, and began working her way up in Democratic politics. In 1976, she was elected as a Democratic National Committee member from California, a position she would hold until 1996. She was elected as party chair for Northern California in January 1977, and four years later was selected to head the California Democratic Party, which she led until 1983. Subsequently, Pelosi served as the San Francisco Democratic National Convention Host Committee chairwoman in 1984, and then as Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee finance chair from 1985 to 1986.
Pelosi represents one of the safest Democratic districts in the country. Democrats have held the seat since 1949 and Republicans, who currently make up only 13 percent of registered voters in the district, have not made a serious bid for the seat since the early 1960s.
The Fall of America After 911
For the 2000 and 2002 election cycles, she held the distinction of contributing the most money among members of Congress to other congressional campaigns.
In the House, she served on the Appropriations and Intelligence Committees and was the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee until her election as minority leader.
Shortly after winning re-election, President George W. Bush claimed a mandate for an ambitious second-term agenda and proposed reforming Social Security by allowing workers to redirect a portion of their Social Security withholding into stock and bond investments. (To pay for the war in the Middle East?) Pelosi strongly opposed the plan, saying there was no crisis, and as minority leader she imposed intense party discipline on her caucus, leading them to near-unanimous opposition to Bush's proposal, and subsequent defeat of the proposed plan.
In the wake of President George W. Bush's reelection in 2004, several leading House Democrats believed they should pursue impeachment proceedings against the president. They asserted that Bush had misled Congress about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and had violated the civil liberties of Americans by authorizing wiretaps without a warrant. (Something the Obama Clinton administrations are now guilty of)
In May 2006, with an eye on the upcoming congressional elections-which offered the possibility of Democrats taking back control of the House for the first time since 1994-Pelosi told colleagues that, while the Democrats would conduct vigorous oversight of Bush administration policy, an impeachment investigation was "off the table". (A week earlier, she had told the Washington Post that, although Democrats would not set out to impeach the president, "you never know where" investigations might lead.)
After becoming Speaker of the House in January 2007, Pelosi held firm against impeachment, notwithstanding strong support for that course of action among constituents in her home district. In the November 2008 election, Pelosi withstood a challenge for her seat by anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who ran as an independent primarily because of Pelosi's refusal to pursue impeachment.
Prior to the U.S. 2006 midterm elections, Pelosi announced a plan for action: If elected, she and the newly empowered Democratic caucus would push through most of its program during the first hundred hours of the 110th Congress's term.
The origin for the name "first hundred hours" is a play on words derived from former Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt's promise for quick action on the part of government (to combat the Great Depression) during his "first hundred days" in office. Newt Gingrich, who became Speaker of the House in 1995, had a similar 100-day agenda to implement the Contract with America.
On January 5, 2007, reacting to suggestions from President Bush's confidantes that he would increase troop levels in Iraq (which he announced in a speech a few days later), Pelosi joined with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to condemn the plan.
Though Pelosi was re-elected by a comfortable margin in the 2010 midterm elections, the Democrats lost 63 seats and ceded control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans. After the electoral setback suffered by her party, Pelosi sought to continue leading the House Democratic Caucus in the position of minority leader, the office she held prior to becoming Speaker. After Pelosi's disparate intra-party opposition failed to pass a motion to delay the leadership vote, Pelosi was elected minority leader for the 112th Congress. On November 14, 2012, Pelosi announced she would remain on as Democratic leader.
In November 2011, 60 Minutes alleged that Pelosi and several other members of Congress had used information they gleaned from closed sessions to make money on the stock market. The program cited Pelosi's purchases of Visa stock while a bill that would limit credit card fees was in the House. Pelosi denied the allegations and called the report "a right-wing smear".
When the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (or STOCK Act) was introduced the next year, Pelosi voted for the bill and lauded its passing. Of representatives Louise Slaughter and Tim Walz, who drafted the bill, Pelosi said they "shined a light on a gaping hole in our ethics laws and helped close it once and for all".
In August 2016, Pelosi said her personal contact information was posted online following a cyber attack against top Democratic campaign committees and she had received "obscene and sick calls, voice mails and text messages". She warned members of Congress to avoid letting children or family members answer phone calls or read text messages.
Tim Ryan initiated a bid to replace Pelosi as House minority leader on November 17, 2016, prompted by colleagues following the 2016 presidential election.[68] After Pelosi agreed to give more leadership opportunities to junior members, she defeated Ryan by a vote of 134-63 on November 30.
In 2017, after Democrats lost four consecutive special elections in the House of Representatives, Pelosi's leadership was again called into question. In June 2017, Representative Kathleen Rice of New York and a small group of other House Democrats, including Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric Richmond (LA) held a closed-door meeting to discuss potential new Democratic leadership.[71] Other House Democrats, including Tim Ryan (OH), Seth Moulton (MA), and Filemon Vela (TX), publicly called for new House leadership.
When asked specifically why she should stay on as House minority leader after numerous Democratic seats were lost, Pelosi responded, "Well, I'm a master legislator. I am a strategic, politically astute leader. My leadership is recognized by many around the country, and that is why I'm able to attract the support that I do."
In November 2017, after Pelosi called for the resignation of John Conyers over allegations of harassment, she convened the first in a series of planned meetings on strategies to address reforming workplace policies in the wake of national attention to sexual harassment. Pelosi said Congress had "a moral duty to the brave women and men coming forward to seize this moment and demonstrate real, effective leadership to foster a climate of respect and dignity in the workplace".
The Framing of the President
In February 2018, Pelosi sent a letter to Speaker Paul Ryan about the proposed public release of a memo prepared by Republican staff at the direction of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. The memo attacked the Federal Bureau of Investigation for its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Pelosi said the FBI and the Department of Justice had warned Nunes and Ryan that the memo was inaccurate and that its release could threaten national security by disclosing federal surveillance methods. She added that Republicans were engaged in a "cover-up campaign" to protect Trump: "House Republicans' pattern of obstruction and cover-up to hide the truth about the Trump-Russia scandal represents a threat to our intelligence and our national security. The GOP has led a partisan effort to distort intelligence and discredit the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities." She charged Nunes with "deliberately dishonest actions" and called for his immediate removal from his position.
In February 2018, Pelosi broke the record for longest speech in the House of Representatives when she spent more than eight hours recounting stories from DREAMers-people brought to the United States as minors by undocumented immigrants-to object to a budget deal that would raise spending caps without addressing the future of DACA recipients, who were at risk of deportation by the Trump administration.
In May 2018, after the White House invited two Republicans and no Democrats to a briefing by Department of Justice officials on an FBI informant who had made contact with the Trump campaign, Pelosi and Senate minority leader Schumer sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI director Wray calling for "a bipartisan Gang of Eight briefing that involves congressional leadership from both chambers".
In August 2018, Pelosi called for the resignation of Duncan D. Hunter after his indictment on charges of misusing at least $250,000 in campaign funds, saying the charges were "evidence of the rampant culture of corruption among Republicans in Washington today".
Preparing to Steal the Election and The Brat Patrol
In the 2018 midterm elections, the Democrats regained a majority of seats in the House. On November 28, House Democrats nominated Pelosi to once again serve as speaker of the House. She was formally re-elected to the speakership at the start of the 116th Congress on January 3, 2019. Pelosi "clinched the speakership after weeks of whittling down opposition from some fellow Democrats seeking a new generation of leadership. The deal to win over holdouts put an expiration date on her tenure: she promised not to stay more than four years in the job". 220 House Democrats voted to elect Pelosi speaker, while 15 other House Democrats cast their ballots for someone else or voted present.
On February 4, 2020, at the conclusion of President Trump's State of the Union, Pelosi tore up her official copy of his speech.[85] Her stated reason for doing so was "because it was a courteous thing to do considering the alternatives. It was a such a dirty speech." She was criticized for this by President Trump and Republicans.
At the start of the 116th Congress, Pelosi opposed President Trump's attempts to use the 2018-19 federal government shutdown (which she called a "hostage-taking" of civil servants) as leverage to build a substantial wall on the American border.[89] Pelosi declined to allow Trump to give the State of the Union Address in the House of Representatives chamber while the shutdown was ongoing. After several news polls showed Trump's popularity sharply falling due to the shutdown, on January 25, 2019, Trump signed a stopgap bill to reopen the government without any concessions regarding a border wall for three weeks up until February 15 to allow for negotiations to take place to approve an appropriations bill that both parties could agree on. However, Trump reiterated his demand for the border wall funding and said he would shut down the government again or declare a national emergency and use military funding to build the wall if Congress did not appropriate the funds by February 15, reopening the federal government.
On February 15, 2019, President Trump declared a national emergency in order to bypass the United States Congress, after being unsatisfied with a bipartisan border bill which had passed the House of Representatives and the Senate a day before.
With Pelosi having successfully sought to impeach President Trump on December 18, 2019, and on the eve of his trial before the U.S. Senate, The Washington Post political writer Paul Kane called her the most powerful House speaker in at least twenty-five years, noting that some historians were comparing her influence to that of former Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas.
In February of 2020, COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States.
Pelosi aided with the passage of the CARES Act.
Pelosi attracted controversy when footage emerged in early September 2020 of her visiting a hair salon in San Francisco. This was contrary to regulations enforced at that time preventing service indoors.[96] Although criticized for hypocrisy by President Donald Trump and the owners of the salon, Pelosi described the situation as "clearly a setup". Pelosi's actions were defended by her stylist and other Democrats.
Baltimore - Nina Simone (1978)
Click to viewBeat-up little seagull
On a marble stair
Tryin' to find the ocean
Lookin' everywhere
Hard times in the city
In a hard town by the sea
Ain't nowhere to run to
There ain't nothin' here for free
Hooker on the corner
Waiting for a train
Drunk lying on the sidewalk
Sleeping in the rain
And the people hide their faces
And they hide their eyes
Cause the city's dyin'
And they don't know why
Oh, Baltimore
Ain't it hard just to live?
Oh, Baltimore
Ain't it hard just to live?
Just to live
Get my sister Sandy
And my little brother Ray
Buy a big old wagon
To haul us all away
Live out in the country
Where the mountain's high
Never gonna come back here
Till the day I die
Oh, Baltimore
Ain't it hard just to live?
Oh, Baltimore
Ain't it hard just to live?
Just to live
dr. π (pi)
.