Although there are no federal numbers on where employed SNAP participants work, the state of Ohio, does keep a list of the top 50 companies with the most workers and their family members on food stamps. Ohio’s list includes lots of fast food chains and discount and big-box stores: McDonald’s, Target, Kroger supermarket, Dollar General. At the very top is Walmart, which had an average of more than 14,500 workers and family members on food stamps last year.* If you take into account the average size of a family on food stamps, as many as 7,000 individual Walmart employees were on food stamps last year—nearly 15 percent of the company’s workforce across Ohio.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/04/walmart_employees_on_food_stamps_their_wages_aren_t_enough_to_get_by.html

By admitting that he plans to coordinate the senate trial with the White House, McConnell just gave the Democrats an opportunity to make sure that the trial will be as fair as possible.

https://bipartisanreport.com/2019/12/14/mcconnell-blunder-provides-major-opening-for-dems-at-impeachment/

"Gym" Jordan finally made it onto the pages of The Onion:

https://politics.theonion.com/well-spoken-my-good-fellow-but-let-me-retort-says-1840399399

Here's yesterday's hearings, summed up by a solitary picture:

Due to the fact that the Republicans control the senate, it's unlikely that Trump will get removed from office, which means he would be the Republican candidate for president in 2020.

One interesting twist is that he just said that he is considering skipping the 2020 TV debates because he thinks the moderators are all against him - a theme that he has used before. During the 2016 presidential campaign Trump complained that moderators in his debates with Hillary Clinton were biased, and he boycotted a Fox News GOP primary debate over a dispute with its moderator Megyn Kelly.

The madness continues ............

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-considers-2020-presidential-debate-boycott-sees-moderator-bias-2019-12?fbclid=IwAR1BTbcWBnbpWq8MRuzAfV5O8foDJR4F3gqWioTGQ06kDtB1JjQsFkigllA

Matt Gaetz has already gotten a lot of mention already due to his childish antics at the impeachment hearings. However, Mother Jones published a lengthy (and revealing) article about him in October that is worth reading:

The reason that he is such a strong supporter of Trump is that he is EXACTLY the same as Trump - rich father and all.

One paragraph in the article sums him up very well:

The meanest member of Congress hails from a town called Niceville, a sleepy enclave of about 15,000 nestled on Choctaw­hatchee Bay, just off the Gulf of Mexico. When Gaetz was growing up, it was 90 percent white, solidly middle class, and best known for hosting the Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival—in honor of the plentiful local fish, not the hairdo. The Gaetzes owned a second home, in the nearby town of Seaside, where The Truman Show was filmed. Gaetz, who has devoted his career to getting on television, spent much of his childhood in a house made famous by a character trying to get off TV.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/how-matt-gaetz-used-daddys-money-to-become-trumps-favorite-congressman/

I just learned about this lady this morning.

Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian and Professor of History at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains Indians. She previously taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts.

So far, she has authored five books, and she also publishes a nightly newsletter titled, "Letters from an American", which I just signed up for.

All of us certainly have enough stuff to read every day, but her thoughtfully written comments are worth reading. The link immediately below will take you to the one that she published last night:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Cox_Richardson

Yesterday morning, former Obama attorney general Eric Holder wrote an op-ed Wednesday accusing attorney general William Barr of “plainly ideological” and “nakedly partisan” actions in response to Barr’s framing of Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe.

Barr’s statements, made in a series of interviews this week, were “so deeply inappropriate for America’s chief law enforcement official that they demand a response from someone who held the same office,” Holder wrote.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/eric-holder-claims-barr-is-unfit-to-be-ag-in-op-ed/

You may remember that Holder came under criticism for his handling of the "Fast and Furious" case. What's often overlooked, though, is the fact that the same operation was started by the Bush administration in 2006, but was initially called "Operation Wide Receiver".

https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/27/world/americas/operation-fast-and-furious-fast-facts/index.html

I listened to the impeachment hearings this morning on NPR, and it's obvious that the Republicans (Collins, for one) are doing everything they can to delay the process. Fortunately, Nadler had an excellent command of the various rules regarding the process so he was able to maintain control.

A Republican amendment to strike the impeachment article on abuse of power was defeated 23 to 17 after nearly three hours of debate.

The amendment, from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), proposed to strike the entire first impeachment article charging Trump with abuse of power. But lawmakers stopped referring to it as the discussion degenerated into a rehash of partisan talking points.

One of the more interesting comments this morning came from California representative Zoe Lofgren, who managed to get Stormy Daniels entered into the official records of the proceeding.

“I would just like to note that the argument that somehow lying about a sexual affair is an abuse of presidential power, but the misuse of presidential power to get a benefit somehow doesn’t matter,” Lofgren said. “If it’s lying about sex, we could put Stormy Daniels case ahead of us.”

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/republicans-object-after-congresswoman-says-lying-about-sex-isnt-impeachable-we-could-put-stormy-daniels-before-us/

Matt Gaetz, of course, made an ass out of himself - again.

https://politicaltribune.org/watch-matt-gaetzs-face-as-dem-rep-calls-him-out-on-his-hypocrisy-after-he-brings-up-hunter-bidens-substance-abuse/

Also, let's not forget "gym" Jordan, who got shut down by Washington representative Pramila Jayapal.

“I am not yielding!” Jayapal fired back at the GOP Rep. “I am not yielding. I am not yielding.”

https://politicaltribune.org/democratic-rep-appears-to-wipe-out-jim-jordans-attempt-to-derail-her-argument-in-favor-of-removing-trump-i-am-not-yielding/?fbclid=IwAR1_PWG9O0eoeG2JX7YHIW2FxU9Zx4qPYQrMPbu9bZso0TvBULtV6KlIYr0

A letter in today's Daily Star explains why food stamps are so critical.

Here's a couple of key sentences:

Last year, the Arizona Food Bank Network and its members collectively provided emergency food relief to 450,000 Arizonans per month.

For every one meal a food bank can provide, SNAP provides up to nine.

If there was evidence to suggest that eliminating a person’s access to food assistance results in him or her finding sustainable work, our network would be among the first to endorse it. That evidence does not exist, however, because it’s not that simple.

https://tucson.com/opinion/local/local-opinion-who-does-the-new-snap-rule-really-help/article_c2ed7c3d-b90a-5cd2-953c-0031b7ddc5ae.html