The House of Representatives of the United States has appealed to the courts for a ruling on the forced appearance of former White House counsel, Don McGahn in the House’s hearings on the impeachment of the President. The judge has ruled that McGahn must appear but the administration is still stonewalling McGahn’s appearance. What to do?
If we are to be a nation of laws there is only one thing to do. The Democrats don’t want to do it. The Republicans didn’t want to do it in former hearings either because it gets very messy but the defense of the constitution of the United States depends on someone on the House committee having the backbone to demand the appearance of McGahn, and if it doesn’t happen on the date indicated, sending out the US Marshall Service to arrest McGahn for contempt of Congress, and bring him to the hearings.
No one wants to do that. These guys all play golf together and have dinner with each other and their wives but it’s time to stop the bullshit and run the country the way it’s supposed to be run. The invasion of Donald Trump and his band of petty crooks of our government has signaled the beginning of the end of democracy as a form of government in our nation.
Trump wants to be a dictator, thinks he is a king and considers no limits on the power he would like to wield, as if he had some logical idea of what he really wants besides personal profit from his presidency.
Understanding that Trump is an egomaniacal crook and clown who has no understanding of what truth or morals are, it is imperative that the House no longer evades its duty and does what needs to be done to keep the country free and democratic.
Right now there is so much evidence that Trump, abetted by a group of criminal liars led by Rudy Giuliani, Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo and Mick Mulvaney, has repeatedly violated his oath of office, that McGahn’s appearance seems almost unnecessary but it isn’t about needing more evidence, although there is plenty more evidence not yet uncovered. What it is about is holding the country to the rule of law instead of letting it flounder in the illegal, immoral and fattening quicksand of a Trump invented swamp.
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What has happened to the Republican Party? Why is there no one, except possibly Mitt Romney, in this entire party who has the guts to stand up to a minority elected thug who is only in office because of an anomaly in our faulty electoral system. Trump rules because we still live under an antiquated system of election that seeks a one-acre, one-vote model, rather than a one-man, one-vote model as is called for in the constitution.
Of course the result of this anomaly is that we are left with a Republican party that will have not one entry in the next edition of Profiles in Courage. The current coven of sniveling cowards identifying themselves as Republicans has neither the intestinal fortitude to do the right thing nor the intelligence to see that their current actions in protecting the criminal Trump will inexorably lead to a destruction of our democracy.
Louisiana Republican Garret Graves made an intelligent and well thought out attack on the impeachment in general but couldn’t resist an impassioned plea to end partisanship in the process. As anyone who has watched any of this farce would understand, it was a lost cause. The battlement of partisanship is being supported by the GOP, which having no proof of Trump’s innocence nor any way to deflect the real evidence of his guilt has embarked on a crusade of evasion and lies to try to protect him.
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So NATO is having its annual meetings and Trump is there, stumbling over his tie. Yes, the same man who babbled that NATO was useless and we should pull out, is wandering around holding interviews about all the people back home who are trying to get him. Of course Donald Trump doesn’t understand how NATO works or how it has been the bulwark of western democracy ever since WWII, but that never stopped the fat liar from having an opinion.
Having done his best to destroy NATO, Trump is now faced by emerging leadership that has caught up and is now passing us in filling the leadership void that Trump has helped to fuel all over the world. It’s no different at NATO, as leaders of other nations have stepped into the void left by Trump’s inability to walk and chew gum and are taking the reins of power away from our incompetent President.
Where other leaders of the world once stepped aside and gave homage to our presidents, now they stand in Trump’s way and make jokes about his gross incompetence.
And who gains by this? Putin does. Putin believes that the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest political catastrophe in history. Now, with a nation in much-reduced circumstance, he has dedicated himself to causing political mischief all over the world with the goal of eliminating power structures that oppose Russia and filling the voids left by those reductions.
His problem in this endeavor is the power created by NATO and its opposition to just about everything he wants to do. Without NATO, Putin would be free to cause his trouble and expand his boundaries all over the world. Putin has been kept in check until now because America has provided Presidential leadership to NATO that has kept it focused and has rattled enough sabers to keep Russia in line.
Trump’s puppy-like submission to Putin has thrown this whole system out of balance. His attacks on NATO have just made things worse. Putin has troops in the Ukraine, Syria and any number of other hot spots around the globe and is using his cyber capabilities to cause trouble everyplace else.
It’s time to stop Putin and his false expectations of renewed glory, but that won’t happen until Trump is out of the White House and safely deposited in a jail cell
A new American President must take hold of NATO and the Russia problem with both hands and shake it vigorously. The job of putting Russia in its place will be difficult, but not impossible. What will be needed is a President who understands the power he or she controls and the responsibility that power demands.
Right now Russia is a failed state masquerading as an international power. Vladimir Putin exercising his limited power in clever and duplicitous ways has made this possible. What is needed to balance this is an American President who stands up to Putin and calls him on his every move.
The first thing that must be done is to stop the Russian advance in Ukraine. To do that our next President must make a significant move in the direction of further arming the Ukrainians so as to allow them to defend their borders. This will do two things. First it will actually give the Ukrainians some real firepower with which to fight back and drive the Russian mercenaries out of their country. Even more important will be the message sent to Putin. ENOUGH!
The second thing we will have to do is attack the Russian cyber capabilities in such a way that we send the message that any further incursion into our affairs will bring the Russian nation to its knees. To do that our cyber community must be able to display to the President their superiority over whatever Russia has put in the field just as we have already done in the nuclear area.
There is also one more area in which we can threaten Putin and push him back behind his own borders. It’s oil, the only real asset that currently supports the Russia economy. A concerted effort by the United States to move us and the world away from fossil fuels as we convert our economy to increase the use of renewables will all but crash the Russian economy and leave them in the dire straits of a third world nation. It won’t be an easy job but it is definitely achievable with the right President. Not the President who spends his time kissing the ass of the aggressor.
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The House Judiciary Committee jumped in on Wednesday interviewing four constitutional lawyers on the legalities this impeachment. It opened with Jerry Nadler’s statement in which he laid out a very clear concise set of charges against what is obviously a criminal President. He outlined each and every charge against the President and illustrated why each was brought.
He was followed by Georgia Republican, Doug Collins, who ranted and raved about everything and anything he could think of, in a failed attempt at blurring the facts in Nadler’s presentation.
Collins, who barely speaks understandable English, follows in a long line of GOP attack dogs including, Jordan, Nunes and Gowdy in claiming a lack of facts in evidence. Like them, he is wrong. Nadler’s opening address listed a long array of charges and the facts that supported them. The subjects of the interview were Jonathan Turley, Michael, Gerhardt, Pamela Karlan and Noah Feldman.
Feldman was up first. He laid out the reasons for impeachment and illustrated how Trump fit these criteria. He went on to explain why impeachment is in the constitution and the history of the debate that put it there. He further explained why Trump’s actions fit these descriptions to a “T”.
Feldman further stated that the evidence presented before the House fit perfectly with the actions of the President as described in the impeachment statute and by the witnesses. Feldman’s testimony was so clear that the GOP delegates immediately tried to shut down the hearing. They failed.
Next was Pamela Karlan. It became immediately evident that Ms Karlan was one angry lady, outraged by the actions of the President and the way he has endangered the constitution and the nation through the way he sought to alter the electoral process. She additionally pointed out the dangers of foreign influence in our elections and stated that this is exactly what Trump has done.
Then Michael Gehardt spoke. He pointed out the differences between our and the British systems in which the King is above the law and our President is not. He went on to point out that the type of misconduct attached to the President is clearly in violation of the constitution and impeachable. He then drew parallels between the Nixonian offenses and those of Trump, showing that they are of the same style.
Next was Jonathan Turley who started by speaking about sitting in the same position in the impeachment of Clinton. Turley’s problem is that he doesn’t feel this impeachment brings important enough violations to the table. Really? He sat on an impeachment panel where a blowjob by a willing participant was the motivating factor and he thinks this one, which deals with violations of our elections plus bribery and extortion are less important?
Turley takes up the cudgel of the GOP when he supports the process argument of the GOP rather than the evidence arguments of the Democrats.
The bottom line seems to be that the facts in evidence are not in contention. None of the GOP questioners even try to say that the facts presented are in any way wrong. What they are saying is that the facts presented do not make up a crime. They ignore that impeachment isn’t a criminal indictment but a congressional act based solely on actions by a president with no relationship to any other individual.