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If at first you don’t succeed…impeach, impeach again — 51 Comments

1. Al Green, who is without question as crazy and stupid as Mad Maxine (amongst many other Democrats), has been in Congress for fourteen years. He provides a perfect argument in favor of term limits for elected representatives.

2. Al Green the True-bador: Let’s Stay Together (YouTube)

3. Green also complained there was no racial diversity among the law professors at the impeachment hearing the other day:

   It hurts my heart, Mr. Speaker, to see the Judiciary Committee hearing experts on the topic of impeachment, one of the seminal issues of this Congress … Hearing experts, Mr. Speaker, and not one person of color among the experts.

   What subliminal message are we sending to the world when we have experts, but not one person of color? Are we saying there are no people of color who are experts on this topic of impeachment? What is the message that we’re sending?

   Mr. Speaker, if I am wrong, I will apologize. But, if the committee is wrong, if the Congress is wrong, what will it do? Mr. Speaker, people of color, for too long, have been ignored by one party, and taken for granted by the other.

   There is no end to this.

   Personally I think the non-white impeachment experts (whoever they may be) dodged a bullet not to be linked to this travesty.

4. In the japanese fantasy novel The Kouga Ninja Scrolls, the protagonist has the natural born ninjutsu power in his eyes that when he makes eye contact with anyone carrying a killing intent against him in their mind he could drive them mad and make them commit suicide. sounds like the kind of power Trump has over the Dems.

5. I knew US was going to go down an anfractuous path when I read that Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr. was reelected in Nov 2012. Wikipedia notes the following during that period: On June 10, 2012, Jackson took a medical leave of absence from the House, citing exhaustion. On July 11, 2012, Jackson’s office said he was being treated for a mood disorder at a residential treatment facility. His office denied speculation that he was being treated for alcoholism. On August 13, 2012 it was confirmed by numerous news outlets that Jackson was being treated for bipolar disorder.

   That means that he was elected while in a mental hospital!

6. In theory, Rep. Green is correct. The House could impeach Trump repeatedly. This effort, now, is looking like political suicide, and repeats would be even worse. As Glenn Reynolds keeps saying, all they had to do was not be crazy, and they can’t even do that.

7. His taxes are another pile that they are desperately digging in to find the proverbial pony. They are convinced there is something there that is not only impeachable but criminal, or at least if they got their hands on them, they could manufacture it. A lot of this is probably projection since they realize how much fraud and other dubious information could be gleaned from their own tax returns.

   They are further bolstered in their thinking when he fights their release (and there are many valid reasons why he would do so other than trying to hide a criminal enterprise).

8. I’d like to think Democrats would not go to the impeachment well again — for self-preservation, if nothing else. But I read this self-servingly somber piece from the New Yorker today and think, these people aren’t letting go any time soon.

   Further north, the rivers were frozen into a cloudy gray. To witness this moment in history is to lie deep beneath the surface of that ice, peering up in the dismal bleakness. American historians have been asked for so long, by so many people, so many times, in so many ways: Is this President really that bad? Is this unprecedented? Almost always, I bite my tongue. But, yes, he is that bad, and this is unprecedented, and these acts are impeachable, and, if it seems as though people have been clamoring for his impeachment since he took office, that’s only because he has behaved abominably since he took office. Is abomination impeachable? No. But the abuses of office of which the President now stands accused are the very definition of impeachable.

   The madness lies in looking, honestly, at how this came to pass, at how many people had to give up on the idea of democracy for things to come to this. The sadness lies in the recognizing of the unlikelihood of anything getting much better anytime soon, what with the slush and the sleet and the coming storm. A farmer walks across a field, bracing against the wind. Hardness is what’s required to get through a political winter: determination, forbearance, sacrifice, not bitterness but a certain sternness.

   “The Impeachment Hearings and the Coming Storm”
   https://outline.com/xHhcee

   These people never specify what Trump did that was so bad and why. It’s a given, it’s something of which there is no need to explain. All good people can and must see it this way.

   Then they ladle on all this syrup about their love and righteousness. If Ayn Rand could see us now.

9. Reference was made to Drudge the other day. I looked in.

   This was the headline
   JOBS GROWTH SOARS
   RECORD WORKING
   UNEMPLOYMENT 50-YEAR LOW

   And the left goes on …

   The political class, and those who live in and off of government and co-opted institutions, really don’t give a damn about the U.S. and its people as we once knew it, and them.

   They live off of, but are enemies of, the same.

   It’s remarkable.

10. ” this is not a pose on their part; they believe it.” neo

    Once you reject reality, there’s no limit to what you can ‘believe’.

    I do suspect that Schumer and others of his ilk know it to be untrue, it’s just to their advantage to support whatever bit of madness is currently politically correct.

11. I can’t find it now, but I thought I saw a FB meme today to the general effect of how the majority of Republicans want a dictator because some survey showed they wanted “less interference” from Congress, which, the smug lefty-left acquaintance in question equates to “wanting a dictator.”

    The same insane moonbat has daily, gleeful posts about impeachment and somehow fails to grasp what the survey was about.

    If the Democrat party could just up its maturity level to, say, kindergarten level and concede that the 2016 election was lost and then go back and rework its message and candidates to better appeal to the American population (half of which lives in places other than coastal California and NYC), everyone would be better off. But at this point, it seems increasingly obvious that until Trump is removed or dead, they are going to continue beating the skeleton of this dead horse, in complete absence of any other tangible platform. The core Democrat constituency seems to invest whatever thoughts aren’t about Trump into the neverending Radical Victim Olympics, in which, as the normals bow out of the fray, they are viciously going after each other for not being woke enough.

    I cannot think of any comparable situation that has ever happened in the United States. I have no real confidence how this plays out, but most outcomes are scary bad.

12. “These people never specify what Trump did that was so bad and why. It’s a given, it’s something of which there is no need to explain. All good people can and must see it this way. “

    He talked to people they don’t talk to. He tried international solutions they advocated but never really risked. He failed to hate those they hated, failed to lie down and roll over as they expect Republicans to do, and he did to a lesser degree but to greater effect what they have always done … played a little hardball.

    He doesn’t drink wine. He cannot be intimidated by being “excluded”. He fights back when hit, and he has a wife who offends them by actually being what these aping sexual miscreants can only pretend to be, or wish they were.

    His greatest offense was to temporarily interrupt their planned culling of the Middle American populace through planned economic desertification and blooming state oppression.

    That’s what he did.

13. “I have no real confidence how this plays out, but most outcomes are scary bad.”

    You never know. It might turn out to be a televised rat fight between insane leftists.

    Be sure to “tape” it though, because after one smashes in the face of the other live, you will never have a chance to enjoy it again un-pixelated.

14. Huxley, wow, that New Yorker excerpt is seriously crazy.

15. Kate: Ain’t it.

    Sigh. The New Yorker was once a serious magazine, though usually with a light touch.

16. Instapundit has a short quote up today from a link talking about Andrew Yang’s campaign. Apparently Yang hasn’t had all that many strategy calls with the national party. But the ones that he has had have convinced him that the Dems still have no clue why they lost in 2016.

17. The Dems have self-transmogrified into little rat dogs yipping and nipping at the heels of their much taller betters. Jack Russell terriers, small dogs that think and act big, are not what I mean. I mean little cockroach Chihuahuas. They yip and nip from the safety of their sanctuaries in the press and in the House.

18. Doubtless to them, they don’t seem … insane. But to us?

    I was reading two viewpoints expressed online.
    1) Dems are acting crazy because many of them face jail time. When the Horowitz report is out, followed by the AG’s report, etc, etc, etc the coup plotters and their accomplices will be perp-walked
    2) Dems are acting crazy because they are a cult which sincerely believes that all problems (global warming, injustice, inequality, unhappiness, war, disease, racial prejudice, …) could be solved IF ONLY we all voted Democratic. Thus, the extreme reaction to America “missing it’s one chance” to achieve paradise … inexplicably … unfairly …

    Personally, I’m going with theory number 2.

19. “Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’ ‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'”

    Of course they believe “this time” they’ve got him…just like Charlie Brown kept believing he’d kick the football & the Queen kept believing impossible things.

    The problem becomes the law of unintended consequences. They can keep impeaching until Jesus returns, but somewhere along the way, someone’s going to have had enough & ballots will give way to bullets. Every time I read one of these D nutters I have the deep conviction there’s going to be bodies in the streets of one of the USA’s fair cities. And likely more than one.

20. JimNorCal,

    Dems are acting crazy because… once you reject key aspects of reality, that destination becomes inescapable. Trump has simply accelerated that mental decline but the increasing radicalization of the democrats did not start with Trump, arguably, its been progressing since at least Woodrow Wilson.

    “We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” — Woodrow Wilson “The Meaning of a Liberal Education” An Address to the New York City High School Teachers Association – January 9, 1909

21. “American historians have been asked for so long, by so many people, so many times, in so many ways: Is this President really that bad?”

    This is from huxley’s quote from the New Yorker. So I wondered, is the writer an historian? Here’s what my search engine coughed up:

    Jill Lepore is an American historian. She is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker,…

    Didn’t I recently say that the history books were already being written about how awful the (entire) Trump presidency was.

22. “… they know that if they just dig and dig and dig they will find the pony that will sink Trump. This is not a pose on their part; they believe it.”

    An excellent post Neo, and I completely agree about the above statement. But… I believe it is one of the few areas where their beliefs and rhetoric match up. And by “their beliefs” I mean the leadership.

    There’s an old movie called “Ransom” where Mel Gibson’s child is kidnapped. Mel’s character is a generally terrific guy who is the owner/operator of a successful large business and lives in NYC. His Achilles heel in this trial by fire, is the fact that he made a secret and highly illegal deal with a labor union boss in order to prevent the union from destroying his business.

    Trump built real estate in NYC? In Atlantic City? It’s highly likely that there really is a pony under all of that. It’s curious that no one in the Democrat party seems to be interested in any of Trump’s more distant past.
    ______

    The Al Green bit is really appalling. I keep thinking that the Dems are salivating over the possibility that McConnell will dismiss the impeachment case outright. Suppose there’s a Senate trial the first time, but McConnell dismisses the second attempt. Haha! Gotcha. (An absurd long-shot I hope.)

23. Geoffrey,

    That an American president* could have made the statement in your Wilson quote is appalling. And also downright creepy.

    *Normally I observe the convention of respect for American Presidents of capitalizing the initial of their title.

    I do not see how it respects the office of the Presidency to respect creatures like Wilson or Obama as presidents.

24. Here’s Wilson quote I found in an old-fashioned quote book, “The Practical Cogitator,” which is a companion to Geoffrey’s:

    What is liberty?

    I have long had an image in my mind of what constitutes liberty. Suppose that I were building a great piece of powerful machinery, and suppose that I should so awkwardly and unskillfully assemble the parts of it that every time one part tried to move it would be interfered with by the others, and the whole thing would buckle up and be checked. Liberty for the several parts would consist in the best possible assembling and adjustment of them all, would it not? If you want the great piston of the engine to run with absolute freedom, give it absolutely perfect alignment and adjustment with the other parts of the machine, so that it is free, not because it is let alone or isolated, but because it has been associated most skillfully and carefully with the other parts of the great structure.

    What is liberty? You say of the locomotive that it runs free. What do you mean? You mean that its parts are so assembled and adjusted that friction is reduced to a minimum, and that it has perfect adjustment. We say of a boat skimming the water with light foot, “How free she runs,” when we mean, how perfectly she is adjusted to the force of the wind, how perfectly she obeys the great breath out of the heavens that fills her sails. Throw her head up into the wind and see how she will halt and stagger, how every sheet will shiver and her whole frame be shaken, how instantly she is “in irons,” in the expressive phrase of the sea. She is free only when you have let her fall off again and have recovered once more her nice adjustment to the forces she must obey and cannot defy.

    Human freedom consists in perfect adjustments of human interests and human activities and human energies.

    What Wilson says about Liberty sounds grand until one realizes that it reduces human beings to mechanical parts in a machine. And that vast intelligence in charge of designing and building the machinery? Wilson, and people like him, of course.

25. Re: “I’ve never seen a list that includes the superpower that Donald Trump seems to possess, which is the ability to drive your enemies crazy and make them do stupid things.”

    It reminds me somewhat of a power given to the nonhuman race called “kender” in the Krynn universe of Dungeons & Dragons. A kender can insult enemies so effectively that they go into a blind rage and attack without thinking. Drops their attack dice rolls by a fair amount, and their armor rating by even more.

26. Jill Lepore is an American historian. She is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker,…

    TommyJay: Thanks for looking that up. She’s an historian, and not only that, but a professor of history at Harvard.

    Historians, like lawyers and climate scientists, are another big hole in my theory that critical thinking makes the difference.

    Then there was this constitutional law professor at this week’s hearing:

    But however smart scholars such as Michael Gerhardt, distinguished professor of constitutional law at University of North Carolina, might be, they aren’t above peddling partisan absurdities. Once Gerhardt argued that Trump’s behavior was “worse than the misconduct of any prior president,” we no longer had any obligation to take him seriously on the topic.

    https://nypost.com/2019/12/05/trumps-supposed-abuses-pale-in-comparison-to-past-presidents/

    I understand there are biases and opinions, but they shouldn’t include obviously “partisan absurdities.”

27. Rush keeps saying that Washington D.C, is like Hollywood for ugly people. Boy, is he right. All the Democrats are playing a role in this impeachment farce. Did you see Nancy Pelosi’s speech in which she wraps herself in the Declaration of Independence (I know you did, Neo; I saw your post). She failed in epic fashion. Just as she does when she claims to be defending the Constitution and the founders when she is exactly what the founders warned against and made them debate whether to even give Congress the power to impeach a President, so predictable was she and the rest of the Dem cast members in this Greek tragic comedy. Basically all the Democrats are playing the same part; Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlV3oQ3pLA0

    “Caine Mutiny – Capt. Queeg Loses It”

    I honestly believe that most Americans are looking at the Democrats with the same expression on their faces as the Admirals on the board of inquiry, the prosecuting JAG officers and even the accused have on their faces as they watch Queeg goes off the deep end obsessing over who ate the strawberries.

    Which seems about as serious as any of the charges the Dems have leveled against Trump and can’t prove. Perhaps they can add that to the articles of impeachment; it was really Donald Trump who ate the strawberries.

    That would be just as serious and weighty as the rest of their accusations.

    Al Green is not the only Dem high on sniffing impeachment glue. Obama’s former acting Solicitor General, Katbyal if memory serves, was at some sort of symposium preaching endless impeachapalooza. Bizarrely, inexplicably, completely bat guano crazily, he claims that all they need is the transcript of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky because “it’s all there” such as the asking for bribes, the quid pro quo, asking for help to fix the 2020 election.

    The Dems talk about that transcript as if we can’t read it ourselves, and learn that none of that is in there. Or maybe that’s part of Trump’s superpower. When he drives his enemies crazy they see things that just aren’t there. We can’t see it because it’s their hallucination, and by definition a hallucination only exists inside a deranged person’s head. But all the Democrats are having the same hallucination. Bravo, Mr. President, bravo. Well played sir.

    By the way, don’t forget to remember Pearl Harbor.

28. huxley:

    In a Wilsonian mind, individuals are grit in the gears and bearings of the perfect machine of government.

29. Steve57,

    Maybe the Democrats never read the actual transcript. Maybe they only listened to Adam Schiff’s fairy tale version.

30. Steve 57,
    I not only never forget it, I have a name for our exquisite ‘light and variable’ winter mornings here in Hawaii – Pearl Harbor Weather.
    Bittersweet.

31. In a Wilsonian mind, individuals are grit in the gears and bearings of the perfect machine of government.

    om: Yowch!

32. Steve57: Nice “Caine Mutiny” analogy! Though I confess, as I’ve aged I find myself more sympathetic to Queeg. But wasn’t Bogey good in the film…

    A friend’s father, who fought as a seaman in WWII and as a marine in the Korean War (one of the Frozen Chosin, no less), said the Caine mutineers would never have been acquitted.

33. I find little surprising in Wilson’s attitudes. He was a product of his times, just as we all are. This was the same era in which “Eugenics” was a respected talking point.

34. “just as we all are”

    The central thesis of Hegelian historicism (which Wilson adhered to) is “he was a product of his times”. So we are all Hegelians now. Nature, you see — human nature in particular — is out as any standard of judgment or reckoning, for nothing of it abides: history is all.

    Thus we see, and it’s little wonder our contemporaries cannot distinguish males from females and vice versa.

35. I find little surprising in Wilson’s attitudes. He was a product of his times, just as we all are. This was the same era in which “Eugenics” was a respected talking point.

    Roy Nathanson: I had to do a lot of reading to realize how autocratic Wilson was. It wasn’t emphasized in my high school history textbook nor in casual mentions of Wilson elsewhere. It wasn’t until I read conservative history that I got a glimpse of that and Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” sealed the deal.

    When I first encountered that quote in “The Practical Cogitator” I took it as a Great Thought by a Great Man without its venom registering.

    BTW, “The Practical Cogitator” remains a great little book for bathroom reading.

36. Here’s an Amazon review of “The Practical Cogitator” which explains the book well and its origins:

    One of the editors of this anthology, Charles Curtis, had commanded a US Navy destroyer during WWI. Observing that soldiers are nearly always idle in war, Curtis conceived of an anthology of passages from the nonfiction of recent centuries, that soldiers could read while marking time between rare battles. Throughout his busy professional life, Curtis continued to read widely, copying passages he loved into notebooks by hand. He also wrote several books on the law and public affairs.

    When WWII broke out, Curtis approached Houghton Mifflin, which agreed to publish such an anthology; thus the Practical Cogitator was born. One of HM’s editors, Ferris Greenslet, became a coeditor. The Practical Cogitator did not appear until the last months of WWII. A second edition came out just as the Korean War broke out. Greenslet’s son-in-law prepared the 1962 third edition.

    The PC is the fruit of an awesome collaboration between two equally brilliant persons whose differences nicely complemented each other. Greenslet was a humanist and connoisseur educated at Columbia, rather the introvert. Curtis was a Harvard-educated lawyer who read in several languages, and who knew something about science and business; he was the more extroverted of the two. This book is no highbrow Bartlett’s Quotations, and is not suited as an anthology for university instruction. But I would not hesitate to include on a course reading list essays that happen to be excerpted in the PC.

    Were a foreigner to ask me “What is American civilization and why might it be valuable?” I would reply: read the Practical Cogitator. If I were forced to spend the rest of my life with but one book, this would be it.

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RB9PRPCL6D04F/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl

37. And, like so much in my life I continue to value, I first learned of “The Practical Cogitator” in Stewart Brand’s “The Whole Earth Catalog.”

38. Via Instapundit, a Mark Steyn piece which seems to me topical here: The Men Who Walked Away

    This is not a story I had heard.

39. sdferr: What a story too! Recommendation seconded.

40. huxley:

    The Practical Cogitator is going on my books to get list. Thanks.

41. Via Instapundit, a Mark Steyn piece which seems to me topical here: The Men Who Walked Away

    Read the comments. One of the commenters takes exception to one of his examples, an Estonian ferry which was lost in the Baltic Sea in 1994. It’s a reasonable complaint.

    IMO, the more salient detail about the massacre was not that they left the room (did they have a secure sense that he was there to slaughter the women?) but that they made no effort to stop him while it was underway and no effort to detain him as he left (if that is indeed how it happened).

42. arvid on December 6, 2019 at 4:39 pm said:
    His taxes are another pile that they are desperately digging in to find the proverbial pony.
    * * *
    Ginsburg is next up for the outrage peddlers.

    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2019/12/06/ruth-bader-ginsburg-might-get-trashed-by-the-left-over-her-decision-about-trumps-n2557623

    Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg temporarily blocked a lower court ruling ordering two banks to release President Donald Trump’s financial records to House Democrats.

    Trump had asked Ginsburg to consider the emergency request earlier Friday. The temporary stay sets the issue on hold pending full consideration by the high court, it does not reflect how judges will rule in the underlying case.

    Obviously, she is now revealed to be one of the deplorable alt-right; but, since the “convention” of the Supreme Court is to replace justices with someone of the same ideology (yeah, they don’t tell you that’s what they’re doing…), that makes it awkward for the Dems to later complain about Trump appointing a conservative to her seat.

    *smh*

43. https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2019/12/IMG_2299.jpg?w=718&ssl=1

44. junior on December 6, 2019 at 5:59 pm said:
    Instapundit has a short quote up today from a link talking about Andrew Yang’s campaign. Apparently Yang hasn’t had all that many strategy calls with the national party. But the ones that he has had have convinced him that the Dems still have no clue why they lost in 2016.
    * * *
    Yang has nutty-socialist policy positions, but he doesn’t seem to be the kind of nut that the rest of candidates are.
    Tulsi is also much more tethered to reality, but there is no chance of a rational ticket from the Left.

45. huxley on December 6, 2019 at 5:03 pm said:
    I’d like to think Democrats would not go to the impeachment well again — for self-preservation, if nothing else. But I read this self-servingly somber piece from the New Yorker today and think, these people aren’t letting go any time soon.
    * * *
    Turley addressed a lot of the complaints on the line of “Is abomination impeachable? No. But the abuses of office of which the President now stands accused are the very definition of impeachable.” by agreeing with Rep. Ken Buck that no president (with the possible exception of Madison) would escape impeachment by the Dems proposed “definition.”

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/12/a-hearing-highlight.php

    Watch the whole thing; there’s a funny line from Turley about Madison.

    People who read The New Yorker (I no longer do) and its ilk believe Trump is guilty because that’s the only thing they ever hear or see.
    They are not hearing or seeing any of the exculpatory evidence, and don’t believe what they can’t avoid.

    It’s very much like the Climate Change viewpoint clash.

46. The Practical Cogitator is going on my books to get list. Thanks.

    om: Always glad to be of use!

47. I urge everyone to read the analysis by Sundance, linked below, about the DOJ/FBI’s use of “intent” as a way of excusing law-breaking, and his estimation that the upcoming IG Report will use this interpretation of the law to come to the conclusion that while, “mistakes were made,” no one committed an act that actually broke the law, because they had no intent to.

    See https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/12/08/varying-expectations-for-ig-horowitz-report-the-convenient-application-of-intent/

48. Hogwash. Don’t spread hogwash. Wait for the report.

49. The New Yorker has a new article:

    “I Do Hate What He Is Doing”: Adam Schiff on Trump, Impeachment, and What’s Next”
    https://outline.com/vAkCkx

    It’s not too surprising the article is short on “what’s next” and long on the usual handwringing and blunt assertions of Trump’s guilt.

    The main point, however, is Team Pelosi is on track to impeach. Damn the torpedoes and all that.

    A Senate trial still sounds like a bad idea for the Democrats. But that hasn’t stopped them yet. So much of their troubles now are due to their stubbornness in doubling-down and over-reaching.

    Like when Henry Reid triggered the nuclear option in 2013 to jam Obama bills through the Senate. Tit. Mitch McConnell triggered the nuclear option on Supreme Court nominees. Tat.

    Now Trump has two strong (I hope!) conservatives — Gorsuch and Kavanaugh — on the Court.

50. “The ‘New Yorker’…”

    Introducing: “Not the New Yorker”!!!
    https://nypost.com/2019/12/07/theres-great-hate-for-donald-trumps-success-goodwin/
    https://nypost.com/2019/12/08/dems-push-for-impeachment-means-real-works-not-getting-done/

    (Of course, there’s also the “New York Sun”…)

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