Watching Deadline White House and saw Steve Schmidt articulate the scary fact that 43% of the Republican Party would like all legislation governing and restricting Presidential behavior lifted so that the President could do as he pleases and play out all his dictatorial fantasies. That means we have about 16% of the general population that wants to discard our democracy in favor of a dictatorship led by a clown who has become the laughing stock of the world,
That’s right; where once leaders of the world trembled before the power of the United States, now they laugh at our President. Donald Trump fled the NAYO meetings because he became aware that other leaders were laughing at his ignorance and incompetence. How does that make you feel Americans? Our President, supposedly the most powerful man in the world is a bad joke.
But to where did he flee? Back to the good old US of A where on the same day Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, announced that she was asking the House to draft impeachment documents to put that same laughing stock on trial for high crimes and misdemeanors in violation of his oath of office.
Richard Nixon was almost impeached for some of the same violations that Trump will be impeached for but he was faced by a bi-partisan congress that understood the severity of what he had done and was willing to cross Party lines to convict.
Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about whether or not he got a blowjob from a star struck White House intern. How did that affect national security or anything else he was doing as President?
This investigation is all about what Trump is doing as President and how it affects our national security, It seems he has, far outdone Nixon in his violations of The Constitution, but in this case the Republican Party is locked in a partisan cell that does not allow any of them to approach the problem with anything like an open mind. This makes it even further from the Clinton impeachment than anyone with a logical mind can fathom.
*****And the discussion goes on, and on, and on, and on. Every pundit says the same thing they said last week and last month and even last year. That doesn’t exclude me. The right and the left have just reversed the arguments each has made on the impeachment of Bill Clinton. That’s supposed to be the big revelation. But it isn’t any big revelation. It’s just the truth. The GOP impeached Bill Clinton for lying about a blowjob from a willing intern who was so enamored of him that she saved the stained dress as a souvenir. This was no Roger Ailes or Harvey Weinstein forcing an unwilling girl to her knees to keep her job. This was a mutually acceptable interaction by a married man and a young, and overwhelmed woman. Sure Clinton was wrong, dead wrong, but his actions did not violate the Constitution or endanger our national security as Trump’s have.
It’s that simple. It was made that simple when Trump, Mick Mulvaney and others admitted to what Trump was doing and told us to “get used to it.” There was no apology only an instruction that they were going to continue to violate the constitution and our national security and if we didn’t like it, it was too damn bad. That, for those of you who are too slow to understand the difference, is what make impeachable offenses.
So let’s stop the bullshit and just admit that the GOP is now made up of nothing but sniveling cowards who care more about their cushy jobs and high-end healthcare that they are fighting to keep the rest of us from having, than they do about our country or the people who elected them.
We are about to find out just how degenerate our Senate really is. We are about to find out whether the GOP Senators will hold to the Party line they are already espousing against all reasonable evidence or whether they will finally acknowledge their duty when the evidence is presented to them. Perhaps a few will vote their conscience and not their jobs.
*****I have always argued that TV and radio hosts, who interview politicians who lie, are obligated to call those lies and to reveal them to their followers. My wife argues that the host’s job is to be revelatory and not combative, thereby insuring that guests will return to the show.
I reject this argument on two grounds. The first has to do with the times. We now live in a Trumpian era where truth has absolutely no value to any of the followers of the fat liar in the White House. There was a time when politicians at least hedged their lies in a manner that allowed them to pull back when they were outed. Now they will state any blatant lie and double down on it. These lies must be called or the host does a disservice to the viewers who depend on his show for viable information.
The second of my arguments has to do with the fact that no matter how a host may insult his guest and prove that he or she is a liar, said guest will never turn down a chance to get more face time on TV. This is made clear by the fact that anyone who will deliberately lie to millions of people is so lacking in character that they don’t have the moral stability to do the right thing so they must be called to task. That job falls to the host who has invited these liars onto his or her show. It is my firm belief that any potential host who hasn’t the gumption to act in support of the truth, should not have their job. They are in a position to influence millions of minds and if they refuse to accept that responsibility they have no business cashing those big checks.
*****
Watched Denny Heck (D) Washington and Ted Cruz ® Texas being interviewed by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press. It was a primer of the difference between the Parties and what is wrong with the national political scene. Heck was polite and intelligent in his condemnation of the Trump administration; a man one would listen to and consider in most areas.
Cruz began the interview with a lie and just built on whatever was discussed from there. His lies were so outrageous that at one point Todd’s reaction was total consternation that anyone would actually try to sell such a whopper. It drew laughs from those in the background. It was like an instruction video on the difference between what we want in congress and what we must stamp out.
*******
Yesterday the Justice Department’s Inspector General released a 434-page report blowing all of the administration’s nonsense about any FBI illegal investigation of Trump out of the water. The IG report states that there was no bias on the part of the FBI in favor of those attacking Trump. It states further that there is nothing to the foolish idea that Obama had Trump tower bugged and it pounds home the fact that all Trump’s accusations against Obama, Clinton and the FBI are just more Trump lies. It doesn’t state it but it also insinuates that Trump has been lying his way through the entire process and he is lying now, every time he brings any of this idiocy up in various attempts to deflect his own guilt in the face of the House impeachment investigations.
Then this morning, the House Committee investigating the President came out with three articles of impeachment and hinted that there will be more.
Of course, Bill Barr tried, as he did in the case of the Muller Report, to jump the IG report even before it was published. He did this by stating that he had opened his own report, headed by John Durham, into the same material covered by the IG report, because he doesn’t believe the Justice Department’s own Inspector General is being honest. If there’s anyone who can recognize a crook it has to be Barr,
Needless to say, Barr’s actions only point out how far he has slipped from the job description of his office. The man who is supposed to be America’s top lawyer has dropped off the table to become the personal lawyer to our criminal President and in so doing has violated his oath of office and stepped in a direct line of fire to himself, be impeached.
By jumping in before publication and twisting the meanings of first the Mueller Report and now the Inspector General’s Report, Barr has revealed himself to be a petty sycophant and a disgrace to his profession and his family.
*****
The other night Donald Trump stood before a rabid, foaming at the mouth, mob of blind Pennsylvania supporters and screamed the lies they wanted to hear. Among his attacks were those on Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren; fact free, schoolyard style, vitriol filled, accumulations of lies and absurd accusations that no one with their full faculties would ever even consider. But these raving fools bought it all, hook, line and sinker. They also bought and cheered for his attacks on the FBI one night after the Justice Department’s Inspector General released the aforementioned report absolving the FBI of any wrongdoing in their investigation into the Russian interference in our 2016 election.
Trump stood before this screaming mob of racists, bigots, white supremacists and raving, blubbering fools and called the FBI scum. Of course this is to be expected. Most criminals call the FBI scum and Trump is, and has always been, a criminal, going back almost 50 years to a time when he and his father were indicted for fraud in their treatment of subsidized housing cases brought against them in NYC.
At that time Roy Cohen, quite possibly the most degenerate member of the legal profession extant, was their lawyer. Ever since then Trump has been looking for just such a crook to represent him and finally he has found him in Bill Barr.
Of course Bill Barr isn’t supposed to be representing Trump. He’s supposed to be the Attorney General of the United States, representing the people of this nation, but being the dishonest slug he is, Barr has abandoned his responsibility to the people of America and taken up the cause of a criminal who is even worse than he is.
As the noose of impeachment begins to tighten around his flabby neck, Trump attacks everyone who is not actively supporting him. But it’s becoming more difficult every day. A Rogue’s Gallery of criminals that surround Trump in what might possibly represent the most comprehensive Rico case ever assembled, have already been convicted and are either in jail or awaiting sentencing. This group includes: Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos and Roger Stone.
But that’s just the beginning. Already stashing away money for their inevitable legal fees are Rudy Giuliani, Bill Barr, Mick Mulvaney, Kellyanne Conway, Mike Pompeo, Steve Miller and Trump himself.
Obviously missing but still a contender is VP Mike Pence who after weaseling his way into the second spot has fought desperately to distance himself from most of Trump’s disregard of our constitution and other legislation written to keep this nation from becoming a dictatorship. It’s not that Pence doesn’t follow Trump’s party line, it’s just that he’s wily enough to recognize the end of the world when he’s staring into the void.