The Commentariat -- December 18, 2019
The New York Times is live-updating [link fixed] impeachment development. Washington Post live updates are here. The Guardian's liveblog is here. CNN is live-updating here.
The House clerk reads the Articles of Impeachment:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi's opening statement:
Aris Folley of the Hill: "Droves of protesters descended on the Capitol to voice support for President Trump’s impeachment on Wednesday ahead of the full House’s vote to impeach. According to The Washington Post, hundreds of protesters were demonstrating outside the Capitol, building on a string of similar protests calling on the president’s impeachment that spread across the country the night before."
The nature of foreign negotiations requires caution, and their success must often depend on secrecy. To admit, then, a right in the House of Representatives to demand and to have as a matter of course all the papers respecting a negotiation with a foreign power would be to establish a dangerous precedent. It does not occur that the inspection of the papers asked for can be relative to any purpose under the cognizance of the House of Representatives except that of an impeachment.... POTUS George Washington, letter to the House of Representatives, March 30, 1796
Except when an Impeachment is proposed & a formal enquiry instituted, I am of opinion that the House of Representatives has no right to demand papers relating to foreign negociations either pending or compleated. -- Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, letter to President Washington, March 26, 1796
Hoyer to Discuss McCrabbie Move. Kyle Cheney & John Bresnahan of Politico: “House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking lawmaker in the House, said Wednesday that Democrats must discuss a last-ditch gambit to delay sending articles of impeachment to the Senate and prevent the Republican controlled chamber from summarily discarding the case against ... Donald Trump. 'Some think it’s a good idea. And we need to talk about it,' Hoyer said just as the House began debating articles of impeachment that charge Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.”
New York Times: "A majority of House members support the articles of impeachment against President Trump, ahead of a vote by the House of Representatives on Wednesday." The Washington Post agrees. ~~~
~~~ Matthew Choi of Politico: "The whole House will gather to begin debating on two articles of impeachment at 9 a.m.... Members will have six hours to debate, and the final vote is predicted to take place between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m."
Neil Vigdor of the New York Times: “From Boston Common to the French Quarter in New Orleans, a series of protests reverberated across the country on Tuesday evening to call for President Trump’s removal from office, a prelude to momentous impeachment votes set for Wednesday in the House of Representatives. In Center City Philadelphia, a group of demonstrators held up signs with LED lights spelling out IMPEACH at the base of a bronze statute called 'Government of the People,' while Times Square in New York teemed with protesters chanting, 'No one’s above the law.'” Mrs. McC: According to an NBC News report, there were demonstrations in every state.
More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials. -- Donald Trump, letter to Nancy Pelosi, today ~~~
... Learn some history: 1) Salem 1692 = absence of evidence+powerless, innocent victims were hanged or pressed to death 2)#Ukrainegate 2019 = ample evidence, admissions of wrongdoing+perpetrators are among the most powerful+privileged -- Kim Driscoll, Mayor of Salem, Mass., in a tweet ~~~
~~~ Michael Shear of the New York Times: “President Trump on Tuesday denounced what he called a 'partisan impeachment crusade' being waged against him by Democrats, calling the effort to remove him an unconstitutional abuse of power and an 'attempted coup' that would come back to haunt them at the ballot box next year. 'I have no doubt the American people will hold you and the Democrats fully responsible in the upcoming 2020 election,' Mr. Trump wrote in a rambling, six-page letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent on the eve of House votes to impeach him on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. 'They will not soon forgive your perversion of justice and abuse of power.'... The president angrily disputed both impeachment charges against him in the letter, saying he had done nothing wrong and asserting that Ms. Pelosi and her allies were using the Constitution to attack him for the successful policies he had implemented.” This is an update of a story about McConnell's refusal to accede to Schumer's request for witnesses, linked below. The Hill's story is here. ~~~
~~~ An Extended Tweet on White House Letterhead. Trump's letter, via the Hill, is here. Mrs. McC: Recommended reading. It's kind of a Unabomber manifesto. You can tell the parts Trump wrote & the parts where his lawyers stepped in & added some "legal terminology" & other multi-syllable words. ~~~
~~~ Aaron Blake of the Washington Post has annotated Trump's screed with many corrections to the lies & misstatements in the letter. The New York Times also fact-checks Trump's letter & finds many false, misleading or exaggerated claims. Mrs. McC: I found the "mechanics" of the Times' fact-check more accessible than the Post's. ~~~
~~~ Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: "Reading President Trump’s impeachment-eve letter to the House speaker seemed very familiar to The Fact Checker. It’s like a written version of his campaign rallies, replete with false claims we have fact-checked many times before either in individual fact checks or in our database of false or misleading Trump claims. This letter will add a couple dozen new entries to our database, but here are some of the lowlights." ~~~
~~~
~~~ Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "Every point [Trump] makes [in his letter to Pelosi] is one that has appeared before, in 280 characters on his favorite social media website." Bump illustrates by comparing portions of the letter with Trump's previous tweets & retweets. ~~~
~~~ Jonathan Chait: "Trump’s letter strengthens the case for impeachment in two important ways. First..., he repeatedly denies that the House has any constitutional right to undertake impeachment at all.... [Second,] the letter makes it perfectly clear that Trump himself is in agony, to the extent where his mental health is very much in question. If a juror in Trump’s coming impeachment trial had no other evidence except this letter, it would provide ample grounds for impeachment. Trump openly denies the Congress’s constitutional prerogative, and makes plain his mental unfitness for the job." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: How the letter proves the necessity of impeachment, in my mind, is that it demonstrates anew that Trump thinks he did nothing wrong. In the letter, Trump describes his phone call with President Zelensky as "perfect" twice and declares that his remarks were "totally appropriate." If this call were so perfect that he readily shared it with the public, what kind of a deal did he cut with Vladimir Putin in that hour-plus-long conversation they had, the one where Trump confiscated the translator's notes and ate them? As Greg Miller of the Washington Post wrote in January 2019, "... U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years. Such a gap would be unusual in any presidency, let alone one that Russia sought to install through what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as an unprecedented campaign of election interference." Adam Taylor of the WashPo wrote in early October 2018, "President Trump has spoken privately with Russia’s Vladimir Putin at least 16 times since he entered office in 2017." Especially since we know that Trump revealed highly-classified information to Putin's deputies at a White House meeting in 2017, I'm thinking those conversations with Putin himself were neither perfect nor totally appropriate. ~~~
~~~ Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: “It is difficult to capture how bizarre and frightening the letter is simply by counting the utter falsehoods (e.g., repeating the debunked accusation that Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was fired for investigating Burisma; claiming Congress is obstructing justice; arguing he was afforded no rights in the process), or by quoting from the invective dripping from his pen. What is most striking is the spectacle of the letter itself — a president so unhinged as to issue such an harangue; a White House entirely unable to stop him; a party so subservient to him that it would not trigger a search for a new nominee; a right-wing media bubble that will herald Trump for being Trump and excoriate Democrats for driving the president to this point; and a mainstream media not quite able to address a public temper-tantrum (resorting instead to euphemisms such as 'scorching,' 'searing,' etc.).... To say the process is 'partisan,' or that the two sides are 'unable to agree,' misleads average Americans who think there is some shared responsibility for the result of one party’s willingness to subvert the truth and the Constitution.”
We present you not just with high crimes and misdemeanors but a constitutional crime in progress up to this very minute. -- Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), testimony to House Rules Committee, yesterday
I look at this as a crime in progress, and we’re trying to stop the president from rigging the next election. -- Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), Rules Committee chair, yesterday ~~~
~~~ When the Criminals Return to the Scene of the Crime. Again and Again and Again. ~~~
~~~ Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: “It was as if an accused white-collar criminal, during jury selection for his bribery trial, had offered the judge a briefcase full of unmarked bills.... Even as the House on Tuesday worked out the rules of the debate that will almost certainly see President Trump impeached by Wednesday night, Trump and his team continued to commit the very offenses for which he is being punished. As the Rules Committee moved to the floor an impeachment article alleging Trump had abused his office by soliciting foreign help for his reelection campaign..., Rudy Giuliani boasted to CNN that Trump is 'very supportive' of Giuliani’s ongoing efforts to dig up political dirt in Ukraine that would help with Trump’s reelection campaign.... 'He does this out of love, believe me,' the president said of Giuliani on Monday.”
Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: The House Rules Committee met Tuesday to set parameters for the House debate on impeachment. I tuned into it for a few minutes, and it was sort of hilarious. There was Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) making cogent, off-the-cuff answers (he was filling in for Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler who was called away by a family emergency) to questions posed by Rules chair Jim McGovern, & Judiciary ranking member Doug Collins, spouting nonsense half-sentences and even half-words; e.g., "Constitu." Here's a brief example:
Collins reminded me of Porky Pig, if Porky came from Georgia:
~~~ Much Later That Same Day. Jeremy Herb of CNN: "The House Rules Committee just approved six hours of debate on the House floor Wednesday on the resolution to impeach President Trump. The panel announced the parameters of the debate after voting to approve the rule on the impeachment articles along party lines. The six hours of floor time will be divided equally by Democrats and Republicans and will be led by the House Judiciary Committee leaders. The House will also have one hour of debate before taking the procedural vote to approve the rule governing the debate." Mrs. McC: I myself will spend the day shoveling the driveway, going to the recycling center. Christmas shopping, delivering gifts & whatever else I can think of to avoid the blowhards. Maybe I'll learn a new carol:
Michael Shear of the New York Times: “Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, on Tuesday rejected demands by Democrats to call four White House officials as witnesses during President Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate. On the eve of a House vote on Wednesday that is all but certain to result in Mr. Trump’s impeachment on two charges, Mr. McConnell said he would not agree to call the witnesses — all of whom have firsthand knowledge of Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine — including Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, and John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser. The White House blocked them from appearing during the House impeachment inquiry.... 'If House Democrats’ case is this deficient, this thin, the answer is not for the judge and jury to cure it here in the Senate,' [McConnell said on the Senate floor]. 'The answer is that the House should not impeach on this basis in the first place.' Mr. Schumer responded moments later, saying that holding a trial without witnesses 'would be an aberration' and vowing to demand votes by senators on whether to call witnesses and subpoena documents during the trial.”
Vice President Pence has refused to declassify testimony that is 'directly relevant' to the impeachment debate, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote Tuesday in a letter that raised further questions about what Pence said in a September phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In a letter to Pence, Schiff wrote that classified witness testimony gathered during the impeachment inquiry 'raises profound questions about your knowledge of the President’s scheme to solicit Ukraine’s interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.'... The testimony from Jennifer Williams, Pence’s Russia adviser, was provided as a supplemental written submission to the Intelligence Committee through her lawyer Nov. 26. Ten days later, Schiff asked Pence to declassify it. But ... Schiff wrote that in a letter last week, Pence’s office refused to declassify Williams’s testimony.... 'Without prompting, the letter volunteers that "the Vice President never raised the Bidens, Burisma, or Crowdstrike in his conversations with President Zelensky,’” Schiff’s letter stated. 'The Committee neither asserted that, nor asked whether, you specifically used those words.' Schiff called the letter from Pence’s office 'deeply troubling,' writing that if Williams’s testimony is true, it suggests the vice president had knowledge about the efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political opponents.”
Aaron Rupar of Vox: “On Monday’s edition of Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle, [Rudy] Giuliani admitted he played a leading role in last spring’s ouster of Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine. Yovanovitch’s removal set the stage for the Trump administration’s efforts over the summer to leverage Ukrainian diplomacy into investigations of Joe and Hunter Biden that stood to benefit the president. 'I forced her out because she’s corrupt,' Giuliani said, before alluding to sketchily sourced information he dredged up during his just-completed trip to Ukraine and adding, 'I came back with a document that will show unequivocally that she committed perjury when she said that she turned down the visa for [Viktor] Shokin because of corruption .... there’s no question that she was acting corruptly in that position, and had to be removed. She should have been fired, if the State Department weren’t part of the deep state.'... As Will Saletan of Slate pointed out in response to a tweet in which Giuliani made the same claim, the House Republicans’ impeachment report characterizes Giuliani’s effort to obtain a visa for Shokin, as 'potential impropriety' that the Trump White House 'shut down.'”
US District Court Judge Paul Oetken also questioned prosecutors' assertions that Parnas had misstated information about his assets and income. The judge said that while the information Parnas provided 'might have violated the spirit' of disclosure requests, 'I don't know that it rises to the level of intentional misstatements warranting the revocation of bail.'... Tuesday's bail hearing provided additional information about Parnas' ties to Firtash, who is living in Austria while fighting bribery charges in the US. Prosecutors disclosed that an attorney for Firtash paid $1 million to Parnas' wife, Svetlana, in September, a transaction that Assistant US Attorney Rebekah Donaleski described as suspicious. 'It is an unsecured, undocumented loan to a housewife,' Donaleski said. 'That makes no sense, your honor.'"
The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee accused Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday of 'unceremoniously recalling' the acting ambassador to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., a key witness in the House impeachment inquiry who criticized the White House’s decision to withhold aid to the country. 'I am extremely concerned that this suspect decision furthers the president’s inappropriate and unacceptable linking of U.S. policy to Ukraine to his personal and political benefit, and potentially your own,' Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.) wrote in a letter to Pompeo.... Taylor ... has been criticized by the president as a 'Never Trumper.' The White House also has attacked witnesses broadly as 'radical unelected bureaucrats.'”
Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "More than 700 American historians have called for the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump.” The statement, published in Medium, is here, along with the names of the signers.
The remarks from the 86-year-old justice came at an event in New York where she was awarded the Berggruen Institute Prize for Philosophy and Culture. She plans to donate the $1 million prize to a number of organizations that promote opportunities for women."
A secretive federal court accused the F.B.I. on Tuesday of misleading judges about the rationale for wiretapping a former Trump campaign adviser and ordered the bureau to propose changes in how investigators seek their permission for national security surveillance targeting Americans. In an extraordinary public order, the presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Rosemary M. Collyer, gave the F.B.I. a Jan. 10 deadline to come up with a proposal. It was the first public response from the court to the scathing findings released last week by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general about the wiretapping of the former Trump adviser, Carter Page, as part of the Russia investigation." The NBC News story is here.
Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "Rick Gates, one of the most significant former Trump campaign advisers who flipped on ... Donald Trump in the Mueller investigation, was sentenced to 45 days in jail and three years probation by a federal judge Tuesday morning. Gates, a longtime deputy to 2016 Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort who shared searing details about Trump's efforts in 2016 with special counsel Robert Mueller, admitted to helping Manafort conceal $75 million in foreign bank accounts from their years of Ukraine lobbying work.He agreed to plead guilty to related charges of conspiracy and lying to investigators in February 2018. He also signed up to cooperate, giving Mueller's team key insights into Manafort and Trump's actions in 2016 during the height of the Russia investigations. 'I accept complete responsibility for my actions,' Gates told Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Tuesday." Thanks to Ken W. for the link. The Washington Post report is here.
he Trump administration has said it does not consider the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 to be a genocide, contradicting a unanimous vote by the US Senate. The historic vote last week incensed Turkey, which has always denied that the killings amounted to a genocide. Turkey's foreign ministry on Friday summoned the US ambassador to express its anger over the vote, accusing the US of 'politicising history'. Armenia says 1.5 million were killed in an effort to wipe out the ethnic group. The killings took place in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, the forerunner of modern-day Turkey. 'The position of the administration has not changed,' said State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus in a statement on Tuesday. 'Our views are reflected in the president's definitive statement on this issue from last April,' she said. In a statement last April on the anniversary of the killings, Mr Trump said the US paid tribute to the victims of 'one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century', but he did not use the word genocide."
Katie Shepherd of the Washington Post: “On the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s final major push in World War II, a U.S. Army unit shared a tribute to the 'greatest battle in American history' — a detailed portrait of a worried military commander fretting over the plan that would ultimately secure an Allied victory over the Nazis. 'The fate of his beloved nation rested on his ability to lead his men,' the XVIII Airborne Corps wrote on a Monday Facebook post featuring the striking photo. But the description ... celebrated the strategic mind-set of Nazi war criminal Joachim Peiper, an infamous German commander who ordered the massacre of 84 U.S. prisoners of war during the Battle of the Bulge. The ... glamorous, colorized photo of Peiper ... was also shared on the Facebook pages for the Defense Department and the Army’s 10th Mountain Division. The backlash was swift.... Shortly after a public affairs officer for the Army criticized the posts on Twitter, the photos disappeared. The Defense Department and 10th Mountain Division deleted their posts, and the XVIII Airborne Corps removed the photo of Peiper from its lengthy narrative.” An NBC News story is here.
Tucker Doherty & Tanya Snyder of Politico: "The $67.4 million grant application for Boone County[, Kentucky] — a rapidly growing suburban district of political importance to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the husband of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao — was initially flagged by professional staff as incomplete.... [Yet the] Boone County project and 41 other applicants received [an] extra chance to fill in holes in their submissions when another 55 incomplete applications fell out of the running.... Chao chose it as one of 26 grant winners out of an initial pool of 258 applicants.... [E]mails obtained by Politico show that Boone County officials were in contact with Chao’s aide Todd Inman, a former McConnell campaign staffer known to offer extra guidance to Kentuckians with business before the secretary.... Chao’s alleged favoritism toward Kentucky has become a focus of scrutiny following revelations that she had designated Inman as a special point-of-contact for Kentucky officials.... No other state enjoyed such access to the office of the secretary.... House Democrats asked DOT’s inspector general to investigate the matter, and the office of the inspector general has confirmed ... that it has opened a review." --s
Presidential Race 2020
AFP: "Joe Biden is healthy and fit to be president of the United States, his physician said in a letter released Tuesday by his election campaign. The 77-year-old Democrat and former vice president is the current frontrunner in the race to challenge President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election. Earlier this year Biden had pledged to release his medical records before the Iowa caucuses in February, the first vote in the nomination race, after a challenger made allusions to his age. His campaign released a summary of his medical history from Kevin O'Connor, Biden's physician when he was vice president. Biden 'is a healthy, vigorous, 77-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency,' O'Connor, currently director of executive medicine at The GW Medical Faculty Associates, said in a three-page letter. He said Biden is being treated for non-valvular atrial fibrillation (A-fib), hyperlipidemia, gastro-esophageal reflux and seasonal allergies."
Pete's Wine Cave.~~~ Mary Papenfuss of the Huffington Post: “The wits in the Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) campaign are trolling Democratic presidential rival Pete Buttigieg and his tony wine-cave fundraiser with the purchase of the URL domain 'peteswinecave.com.' The curious who click on the link are led to a fundraising site for Sanders. The stunt ... was a dig at Buttigieg’s fundraiser Sunday in the cellars of a Napa Valley winery. The event was hosted by the winery’s billionaire owners, reported The Associated Press.” ~~~
~~~ Or, as Stephen Colbert said, "In case you were wondering if the wealthy gather in underground bunkers to plot the fate of the working class -- yeah." ~~~
~~~ Mary Severns of Politico: "Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign omitted more than 20 high-level fundraisers from a list of top bundlers it disclosed last week. The public list of bundlers, featuring more than 100 people who have raised at least $25,000 for Buttigieg, was meant to bring a close to more than a week of feuding between Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren over campaign transparency. But the list left off a number of people the Buttigieg campaign had previously touted as top donors in an internal campaign fundraising report obtained by Politico.
Mrs. McCrabbie: Sadly, I missed this fine work of performance art posted on Twitter late last week:
~~~ Move Like Bloomberg. Megh Wright of Vulture: “When Brad Evans and Nick Ciarelli took the stage at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles last Thursday..., they intended to ... create a very silly comedy bit [and] share the video on Twitter.... But ... [their] 23-second parody of the corny and relentlessly mocked Pete Buttigieg campaign dance video, only this time for candidate Mike Bloomberg and set to Maroon 5’s' Moves Like Jagger' — had gone viral... and igniting a wildfire of confusion and assumptions about whether or not the people in the video were, or were not, real Bloomberg supporters.”
Steve Peoples of the AP: “A small group of ... Donald Trump’s fiercest conservative critics, including the husband of the president’s own chief adviser, is launching a super PAC designed to fight Trump’s reelection and punish congressional Republicans deemed his 'enablers.' The new organization, known as the Lincoln Project, represents a formal step forward for the so-called Never Trump movement, which has been limited largely to social media commentary and cable news attacks through the first three years of Trump’s presidency.” ~~~
~~~ Here's a New York Times op-ed by George Conway, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver &
Leo Shane of the Military Times: "Half of active-duty military personnel contacted in [a Military Times survey] held an unfavorable view of President Trump, showing a continued decline in his approval rating since he was elected in 2016.... But the latest numbers still leave Trump with a higher approval rating than former President Barack Obama when he left office in January 2017."
Senate Race 2020. David Sharp of the AP: “Republican Sen. Susan Collins officially launched her bid for reelection Wednesday, setting up an expensive and closely watched battle that’s starting against the backdrop of impeachment proceedings against ... Donald Trump. Collins made her formal announcement in an email to supporters, saying her 'bipartisan commonsense approach' has been key to many legislative successes and will be important in an era of bitter partisanship.... Democrats have targeted Collins for her votes for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the GOP tax cut. They have also sought to link her to Trump and his brand of brash, divisive politics, and have accused her of failing to do enough to stand up to him. Trump is reviled by many in the state’s populous south, anchored by liberal Portland, but cheered in the rural north. Collins, who says she didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, is likely to face a dramatic vote on whether to convict the president in an impeachment trial in the Senate, a decision that will anger either Democrats or Republicans.”
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Reader Comments (15)
It appears that I was at least partially correct in my comment yesterday. Per NYT:
"Some of the president’s closest advisers were involved in drafting the letter, but they did not include Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel who will play a large role in a Senate trial.
Instead, Eric Ueland, the director of the Office of Legislative Affairs, led the process, with input from Stephen Miller, the president’s top policy adviser, who often scripts many of Mr. Trump’s public remarks. Michael Williams, an adviser to Mick Mulvaney, the president’s acting chief of staff, also weighed in, and Mr. Ueland’s draft was framed over the last few days."
Ueland and Williams must be dicks too.
@unwashed: A sane person who happened to be president* and who wrote a letter on a matter of great national significance, one s/he deemed to be a record for the history books, would run that letter by a bank of lawyers to make sure everything within it was "totally appropriate" and "perfect."
If ignorance is truly bliss, why is the Pretender so grouchy?
Unwashed,
Good call. Grammatical sentences—even sentence fragments—coupled with vocabulary words outside Fatty’s limited lexical demesne typically point to one or more ghost writers, all of whom must surely be dickheads. The usual rancid chocolate box of racists, bottom feeders, and goose stepping authoritarian apparatchiks, all half-eaten and tossed back into the box except by Always Trumpers who greedily gobble the coagulated mass of lies and viciousness, the better to fatten up on fascist longings for a monarchical white supremacist state that kicks, starves, tortures, and imprisons their many enemies.
Merry Impeachment
An oft-repeated mantra at this time of year, during this season of impeachment which runs up against Christmastime, seeks to remind all of us of the reason for the season, a season in which the world was brought from darkness into the light.
And to follow the analogy a bit further, it's interesting that Evangelical types who insist that their adulterous, mendacious, traitorous leader is blessed by Jesus, and who demand that the rest of us unbelievers, apostates, and non-Christians do as they instruct, because, of course, they possess the True Wisdom, find themselves on the other side of things where the heart of the American Experiment is concerned. It is they who are the apostates of democracy, the scoffers at decency, the laughers at ethics, and the haters of morality, because they are the ones who bow before democracy's own anti-Christ.
But I suppose they must also be fans of John Milton who said (sort of) that it's better to rule in (the) hell (of hatred, greed, and ignorance) than to serve in (the) heaven (of an inclusive American democracy based on constitutional principles and the rule of law).
And if one considers that the supporters of our very own Lucifer are giddy about shoving him back into the White House, with help from foreign powers antithetical to American ideals despite a sad and shocking litany of malfeasance and crimes against the United States, one would have to conclude that, in this case, Treason is the Reason for the Season.
With luck we are seeing the beginning of the move from Trumpian darkness into democratic (and Democratic) light.
One can only hope.
My husband, Joe, is not as much in the weeds politically as I, but he's involved more than the average Joe. He leaves me each night after we watch PBS News, to keep his date with Rosetta Stone who is teaching him Italian. Two nights ago he had a nightmare: Trump had given Turkey permission to invade part of the U.S. in order to gain leverage for the building of his wall or something crazy like that. Hordes of Turkish soldiers were streaming into cities in tanks and on foot. Joe learns of this from the announcement via the National emergency alert broadcasting system and its Trump's voice that is announcing this like a dictator saying all those who renounced him will be killed.
I, on the other hand, have had no nightmares ––-the real awake ones are enough for me, I guess. But I wonder–- if my mister is harboring such fear how many others are afflicted. Read the other day that depression is on the rise and therapists are very busy people.
And oh, how I wish we had more judges like Amy Berman Jackson!
AK: "Treason is the reason for the season"––nice ! and––"With luck we are seeing the beginning of the move from Trumpian darkness into democratic (and Democratic) light."
We better!!!!!!!!
I have concluded that the inestimable Pelosi (and hundreds, if not thousands of others) have it right: Everything points back to the Pretender-Putin connection.
How else to explain why the Pretender continues to double down on the behavior that got him into trouble in the first place?
Yes, his campaign sought and had a cozy (if not criminal!) relationship with Russia. Yes, Russia did interfere on his behalf in the 2016 election. Yes, with his own public remarks as president about Putin and his secretiveness about private conversations he has had with him, the Pretender repeatedly gives the impression he is indeed a Putin puppet.
And now the "perfect" phone call to Ukraine, which his toadies immediately tucked away, the frantic justifications for it that come directly from the Kremlin, and the brazen persistence along the same dark path that makes him seem nuttier by the minute.
When you're doing something that is obviously harming you politically, why don't you stop?
Because you can't. You can't becasue you know that your electoral college victory, in the face of popular vote rejection, was largely due to Russian help. The millions of dollars that flowed from Russia directly or indirectly into your campaign and the social meda barrage Russia let loose to support you played a large part that you will never admit to anyone but yourself and then only in a whisper.
But that whisper never goes away, and especially with 2020 just around the calendar corner you can't let go of what you have always known is your political lifeline. Those rallies are fun, sometimes the only fun you have, but there aren't enough yelling crazies out there to re-elect you. Not without even more outside help than you had last time around.
So you're stuck...as the inestimable Pelosi also said, impeaching yourself.
BTW, Mr. Pretender, I'm not praying for you. I'm praying for us.
I guess I was wrong about Trump not running his letter past his lawyers.
According to a Washington Post report, "Trump worked on the letter for more than a week, revising drafts with policy adviser Stephen Miller and legislative affairs director Eric Ueland, according to a senior administration official.... The president did not want White House lawyers to review it until the final stages, the person said, and some of them warned against including certain passages."
So the letter would have been even more nuts if some lawyers hadn't vetted it. And congrats, great job, lawyers.
The wag who writes New York's Intelligencer posts a link to the WashPo story with this title: "A three-person team toiled for a week to produce a letter that sounds like it was transcribed from a 20-minute Trump rant."
Went to our local rally downtown last night-- it was good to be among like-minded folks, singing, chanting and waving clever signs. Lots of honks and waves from drivers passing by. But I am reminded that I was DOWNTOWN (read "URBAN") and therefore amongst no "real people" and possibly amongst people who would get booted from the voter rolls simply because of not replying to a letter not received. Fortunately, PA hasn't inititiated this, but WI and GA have, both being run by horrible people. WI especially hurts me, as my parents were UW grads and I was born in Madison. Yes, there is a Dem governor but his hands are mostly tied by the horrible legislature. Of GA, with that lying pr*** Kemp at the helm, there is very little hope outside of the valiant Stacy Abrams and her crew.
Our newspaper put a rally picture on page 8 today. Last week, the demented Hershey rally got a whole page, and a rash of equally demented letters of r support. They also said there were about 100 people there, when there were easily twice that or more. Love those responsible journalists in r country...
Will not listen or watch the Parade of Lies today.
If trump's cabinet had even a milliliter of American blood flowing through their veins, trump should be more afraid of the 25th amendment than of impeachment.
And yet, here we are. And you have rrepresentatives who can't bring themselves to say that inviting a foreign government to interfere with the election is wrong.
I imagine it is because you and I exist in a world where $50K a month would be exceedingly comfortable (I would say extravagant) but all of the rs have tasted a world unimaginable to us, a world where $500K a month is for losers and $millions a month or more is within reach, as long as one signs away conscience and country.
Been watching the hearings on C-Span and the wife asks, "Who's the fat guy behind the Republican speakers?" (She thinks it looks really bad.)
I don't. Does anybody here know?
Unwashed,
Are you sure it isn't Trump?
Oh, wait. He's never behind anyone. They're behind him.
I watched this marathon for a bit while eating my lunch––when Collins ranted turned off the sound. Since it was just a repeat of what had gone on before I gave up and unlike Marie did not go out and shovel snow since it was icy and dangerous–-not unlike what I had been hearing from the republicans. Their talking points reminded me of a murder trial I once watched: The prosecutors had the forensic evidence, had witnesses that gave first hand evidence of where the man in question was on the night of the murder, and so forth and yet the defense presented a white-wash of that evidence. ( what I wonder did the republicans think about the mass demonstrations last night–-a little bit of a nudge in the old gut?). The jury in this case found him guilty. But then I remembered the O.J. Simpson case and became wary of any optimism I might have been feeling. Fatty will be impeached but he may very well remain in office and if that happens look forward to 2020 where he might very well reign again––stranger things have happened––and if that does occurs we can tell Franklin we tried–-but we just couldn't keep that republic.
I think the fat guy is Billy Long, R-Missouri. Same no-neck as Drumpf but different hair and suit.