On the impeachment trial
The Russia hoax collapsed in the senile display of Robert Mueller before the House Judiciary Committee on July 24. On July 25 President Trump had the congratulatory telephone call with Ukraine’s President Zelensky that somehow became the subject of a complaint submitted by a fake “whistleblower.”…
As the Russia hoax was a pretext for undermining Trump, the Ukraine thing is an obvious pretext for the continuation. Both episodes are shot through with such dishonesty and bad faith it is no coincidence (as the Communists used to say) that Adam Schiff has been out in front of each…
The Federalist Papers cover the constitutional mechanism of impeachment in numbers 65 and 66. Their sobriety and prudence provide a telling contrast with the spectacle before us. The observation of Publius in Federalist 65 reads like an eternal verity: “it ought not to be forgotten that the demon of faction will, at certain seasons, extend his sceptre over all numerous bodies of men.”
This event reminds me of this:
The early 50’s was the period when TV really started to flex its muscles. Boob-tube infiltration of American households increased by leaps and bounds. And movie attendance suffered accordingly. Why go out when there was free entertainment at home? Especially when movies, in general, seemed to be undergoing some sort of creative logjam.
So we are close to November election each party “started to flex its muscles”
This one of those days movies, Slaves Of Babylon
The Russia hoax collapsed in the senile display of Robert Mueller
The answer to that River Of No Return
The Russia hoax is kind of the original sin of the Trump opposition. It not only became the comfortable explanation for why they were all wrong about Trump winning, it became the underlying justification for any and all extreme norm-busting resistance to the Trump Presidency. Does anyone think this Ukraine stuff actually makes it all the way to a Senate impeachment trial if the Russia lies hadn’t kept the pump primed for two years?
Mike
I encountered this while looking into the “I Like Ike” campaign on the Bernie vs Hillary thread.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/11/07/snopes-confirms-dems-tried-impeach-every-elected-gop-president-eisenhower/
It’s absolutely maddening to watch inspector Javert, uh, err, manager Adam Schiff, lay out his overwhelming evidence of guilt of the POTUS. In his mind, maybe. Once again he puts fake words and ideas in the POTUS’s mouth and mind. Once again, he assures us that the evidence is out there, if only the Senate will demand that POTUS provide it. Yet, he also assures us that he is ready to go to trial and will prove the guilt of POTUS beyond a reasonable doubt. What a twerp! He’s demanding we all see the guilt without any evidence just as he did during the Mueller probe.
“Guilt By Accusation.” That’s the title of a new book by Alan Dershowitz. It certainly applies to this miscarriage of the American tradition of innocence until proven guilty.
I cannot watch more than a few minutes at a time because it angers me so. Have already contacted my Senators twice and will continue to do so until this travesty ends.
I like Johnson’s characterization of this as the Seinfeld impeachment. It’s about nothing.
This whole impeachment thing is a joke. It will backfire – big time – on the Dems.
The House Democrat impeachment managers are making a number of demands, the most salient and potentially accomplished of which is this: that their group photo be submitted for publication in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary under the entry for the definition of “tendentious”. I say, let them have it.
This whole impeachment thing is a joke. It will backfire – big time – on the Dems.
It will injure them hardly at all. Their constituency is untroubled by systemic dishonesty. Where it could hurt them is with swing voters. The trouble is, swing voters are swing voters for any one of a number of reasons, but the most common is going to be low-information and low-capacity to evaluate information, which means they’re blown to-and-fro by media tomfoolery. IMO, the Kavanaugh imbroglio was one of the more grisly spectacles I can recall in 40-odd years of reading newspaper stories on Capitol Hill gamesmanship. In re the Clarence Thomas hearings, there wasn’t any doubt Hill and Thomas had worked in the same suite of offices for three years. Partisan Democrats last year were all swearing allegiance to Christine Blasey Fraud when the evidence that she’d ever met Brett Kavanaugh was just about nil. Then they shift to a different square on the board and it’s all about how he ‘lied’ about his late adolescent drinking habits. Discernable injury at the ballot box for this horrid behavior was…nil.
“It will injure them hardly at all. Their constituency is untroubled by systemic dishonesty.”
Systemic dishonesty is self-injuring. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell yourself the stove isn’t hot, you’re still going to get burned. The mainstream Left has unleashed and promoted a lot of pernicious forces over the last four years and while the true impact may take a while to show up, it will show up.
Who thought that letting Bill Clinton get away with it in 1998 would not only result in a GOP President in 2000 but would STILL be a factor in electing another GOP President in 2016?
Mike
Most people, on the left and the right, are not going to be swayed in their opinions by the impeachment trial. The vote in November will largely be determined by “its the economy, stupid”. Trump should handily win the EC vote, dreams of winning the national popular vote are just that… dreams.
It’s a good thing I don’t drink anymore. I would be drunk by now. Watching the dishonesty and prevarication of Adam Schiff and company is maddening. Their focus group tested phrase is “Trump withheld lethal aid from a valued ally to pressure that ally to help him ‘cheat’ in the next election.” Also, :”He put our national security in jeopardy by withholding the lethal aid.” He has no proof of either statement. The transcript of the phone call doesn’t show anything like that. But he mouths it with the assurance that he knows something that we don’t. If only we could open our eyes and see what he sees. Such weasels.
The entire Democratic cloth has been extremely cleverly woven.
Do not underestimate the enemy.
The Russian theme began with factual fact of hacking into DNC and John Podesta’s computer files by Russian hackers. Remember Podesta’s password was “password”?
Embarrassing, to say the least.
But the Dems turned the worm into “Trump and Russia”, Trump dealing with Putin as two buddies would. Trump wanting to build in Moscow. The MSM sang this song loudly.
So Hunter Biden’s Burisma dealings while Daddy was formally charged by Barack Hussein with control of foreign policy toward Ukraine were ignored, even though the old fool bragged about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired.
Then along comes a conversation between Trump and Zelensky, which the Dems have morphed via someone who heard of it from someone who heard of it from someone… into an outrageous breach of presidential conduct worthy of impeachment.
Russia, Ukraine, what’s the difference?
Our real problem is the American people are stoopid, and De Tocqueville is proved correct in his long-term concern.
FB,
Thanks for SLAVES OF BABYLON. Any film by William Castle including a “special dance” is going to have some real moments.
I by the way once published a novella entitled LAMENTATIONS OF BABYLON which features as its lead character a pre-op transsexual (as we called them until very recently) called Kim or Kimberly. I was to some extent using Warhol’s Candy Darling as my model but went far beyond.
Roxane Gay was the editor who championed this story for her online magazine. She soon thereafter published BAD FEMINIST which was a big hit. She has a lot of opinions and she’s black. Are she and I still on good terms? I don’t know. It’s been ten years.
J.J. on January 21, 2020 at 7:25 pm said:
….Watching the dishonesty and prevarication of Adam Schiff and company is maddening.
* * *
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/21/impeachment-trial-adam-schiff-plays-deceptively-edited-video-again-misquoting-trump/
Tangential but related.
Several profoundly perceptive tweets from Richard Fernandez (@WretchardtheCat) are posted over at Instapundit at 10:13 pm Jan 21 (www.pjmedia.com/instapundit). I have transcribed one of them below:
As the Instaprof often advises, read the whole thing.
“…she also lost…”
Um, actually, Obama set the stage for this. Prepared the ground.
Opened the floodgates.
As far as I’m concerned (FWIW) Obama destroyed—sorry, make that “fundamentally transformed”—the Democratic Party.
He was DPUSA’s Jeremey Corbyn, not that anyone would want to recognize that rather inconvenient fact (or even if recognizing it, admit it).
I’m sure all the faithful in that benighted side of the political spectrum are thanking their lucky stars that they’ve been able to focus with insane obsession and the passion of the deranged on Trump and his “racist” supporters (something that the Party leadership, such as it is, and the running-dog MSM have been promoting so as to deflect intention from their own abysmal responsibilities…once again, not that they’d actually see it this way. Think about the uses of anti-Semitism as a means to deflect the attention of the masses….).
(Meanwhile, on Martha’s Vineyard…..)
Correction: “…deflect intention…” should be “deflect attention…”
“…the spectacle before us…”
Not so much a spectacle but a genuine, unabashed show trial, with all the ecstatic trimmings. A modern-day auto da fe.
Indeed, the current cohort of breathless, panting, perfervid Stalinists—mouthing, in typical fashion, terms like sobriety, composure, respect for process, seriousness and patriotism—are running riot on Capitol Hill:
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/01/21/analysis_dems_repetitive_impeach_lingo_suggests_no_slam_debunk_122083.html
So much at stake. But who exactly will end up being burnt?
Schumer’s series of tedious amendments seem to have been pursued purely for the purpose of laying a predicate with which to charge the majority of conducting a coverup or sham trial; nothing to do with discovering the truth of matter. It’s a rhetorical gambit aimed, evidently, at the politically religious left on the one hand and the stupifyingly uncommitted ignorant on the other, nothing more. All in all, an appalling exercise in dishonest misrule.
This whole impeachment thing is a joke. It will backfire – big time – on the Dems.
I hope it will have the effect of BREXIT in the UK. We will learn in November if this is true. Mean while, I am starting Peter Schweizer’s book.
Bloomberg has come out in favor of removing Trump via the Democratic impeachment. And if that fails, this $60 billion man will buy him out of office, or something like that.
Um, actually, Obama set the stage for this. Prepared the ground.
Obama’s an unscrupulous man with funny little shticks, but it’s a mistake to see his administration as anything but the resultant of the vectors at work in the Democratic Party. He added little that was uniquely his own other than a tincture of spite.
The real problem is our political culture. The problem isn’t equally distributed. About 90% of the poison is coming from the Democratic Party.
Bloomberg has come out in favor of removing Trump via the Democratic impeachment.
Bloomberg, who is among the most accomplished figures in American business, has been demonstrating that he’s willing to say anything to curry favor with the Democratic base.
Obama’s an unscrupulous man with funny little shticks, but it’s a mistake to see his administration as anything but the resultant of the vectors at work in the Democratic Party. He added little that was uniquely his own other than a tincture of spite.
Art Deco: So you keep saying — ipse dixit. Others see it otherwise.
Obama inspired a messianic presidential campaign with no comparison in modern American history. To be sure the Democratic Party was moving left, but Obama turbo-charged that leftward movement and also the decimation of moderate Democrats.
Obama inspired a messianic presidential campaign with no comparison in modern American history.
Exactly who do you hang with? The number of people I was personally acquainted with who treated him as some sort of messiah summed to zero. I lived in a college town in 2008.
He had a much more challenging path to the nomination than had John Kerry or Al Gore; you’d have had to go back to 1984 to find a Democratic nomination donnybrook more intensely contested. After he was elected, public discourse was taken up with anxiety over the condition of various financial institutions, Citigroup especially.
Art Deco:
I know quite a few people who idolized Obama and still do.
One of them is not all that political and that was the first time she ever decided to actively work for a candidate. She was so inspired by him! I think that, for the people I know who idealized and idolized him, the fact that he was black and had a chance to be president was a big part of it. But plenty of people felt that way and still feel that way, whether you’ve met them or not.
Exactly who do you hang with? The number of people I was personally acquainted with who treated him as some sort of messiah summed to zero. I lived in a college town in 2008.
Art Deco: Oh, I get it! You live in a Pauline Kael world.
I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.
So if you didn’t notice or deign to accept those things happened, they didn’t happen.
Back in real history we had all sorts of people going on about Obama as “as a sort of God” or “Ligthworker,” printing photographs with haloes around Obama’s head, accepting his rhetoric about transforming America and stopping the rise of the oceans, having schoolchildren sing his praises, a panoply of Hollywood celebrities pledging their service to Obama, etc. etc.
But if you didn’t notice or deign to accept those things happened, they didn’t happen.
Gotcha.
Here’s the astonishing “I Pledge” video to Obama. I encourage Americans of any political stripe to review it now and again.
“Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s I Pledge Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51kAw4OTlA0
Wherever one stands on Obama, his ascension to the presidency was a special moment in American history. He inspired vast utopian hopes in a great many Americans. At my church in San Francisco the priest led the post-election sermon with “Yes we can!”
“Yes we can!”
Well, he—and his pusillanimous pals—almost pulled off the defenestration of DJT.
He—they—might do so yet.
(And that was going, as Susan Rice, Mme Rectitude, declared—to herself, no less!—“by the book”. Just imagine what they might have achieved had they decided NOT(!) to go “by the book”….)
“…a special moment…”
Indeed, an extraordinarily special, P.T. Barnum moment.
(But I egress….)
People in my workplace were openly proud to have elected someone because of their skin color.
I thought it was freaky and bizarre but kept my mouth shut. I already sensed the beginning of the “If you disapprove of Obama in any way, you’re a racist” groupthink.
Art Deco: Oh, I get it! You live in a Pauline Kael world.
The chairman of the local Democratic committee was a personal friend. He showed up with a petition in early 2008 in preparation for the New York Democratic primary. I’m not a registered Democrat, but I wasn’t the one from whom he was seeking a signature. I don’t and didn’t live in a special world, just a matrix with a lot of partisan Democrats, including most of my relatives. (My late aunt was active for decades in the local Democratic Party where she lived in NoVa).
Back in real history we had all sorts of people going on about Obama as “as a sort of God” or “Ligthworker,”
I’ve absolutely never seen the term used non-ironically.
She was so inspired by him! I think that, for the people I know who idealized and idolized him, the fact that he was black and had a chance to be president was a big part of it.
Maybe it’s a Massachusetts thing. What’s amusing about that is his principal connection to the domestic black population was that he married into it; so did May Britt. When Gov. Blagojevic said ‘I’m blacker than Obama”, he was speaking the truth.
Wherever one stands on Obama, his ascension to the presidency was a special moment in American history.
The only thing special about it was the condition of Citigroup and Bank of America (about which BO was completely at sea).
“Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s I Pledge Video:
News Flash! Hollywood bimbo says something fatuous.
Art Deco:
I already said I know plenty of people who felt a remarkable reverence for and who idolized Obama, and still do. If you don’t know any, that merely means you don’t know any. But plenty such people exist, and most of the ones I know don’t appear the least bit extreme otherwise.
News Flash! Art Deco admits his limitations (not happened yet).
” I know plenty of people who felt a remarkable reverence for and who idolized Obama, and still do.” [Neo]
. . .and I’d be willing to bet that quite a few of the people like that simultaneously dismiss evangelicals, Hassidim and other fervent religious people as those who believe in myths and “fairy tales.”
My point is that while such people will dismiss such “primitive” beliefs, they have no problem projecting such “fairy tale” iconography and presence on those whom they choose to venerate. It says something about their lack of self-awareness, a common theme in Thomas Sowell’s work.
So, if anyone is watching this show, did Schiff, et al., ever actually present their non-existent evidence, or is it just all accusations and wild talk?
“About 90% of the poison is coming from the Democratic Party.”
The real poison is this: something false that is claimed as true, and you are also forced to claim it as true or lose your job or status.
This is the poison, and it’s all from the Democratic Party — on racism, on sexism, on the LGBTQ queer agenda and the related trans gender ideology, on an XY person being a “real woman” if they claim it.
Maybe you know of some issue where Dems & Reps disagree, and the Dems who disagree get fired for that disagreement. I don’t see such in the news. I see many Reps who have gotten fired or punished for disagreement about an opinion which might not be true, tho the PC folk claim it is a true fact.
Pretty sure Mark Morford was playing it straight back in 2008:
Is Obama an enlightened being?
https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/morford/article/Is-Obama-an-enlightened-being-Spiritual-wise-2544395.php
So, if anyone is watching this show, did Schiff, et al., ever actually present their non-existent evidence, or is it just all accusations and wild talk?
Sen. Rand Paul (who watched), on Twitter: “The more we hear from Adam Schiff, the more the GOP is getting unified against this partisan charade!”
Pretty sure Mark Morford was playing it straight back in 2008:
Fair enough.
I have to say that’s a bizarre and fanciful description of Obama. The President is something of a puzzle. His administration was (I think) a tribute to the high levels of ‘institutionalization’ in our system, inasmuch as the government kept rolling along more or less even though the man at the top was a complete tyro. Friendly depictions of him at work present him as the person partisan Democrats claimed Ronald Reagan was: a man who read canned memos from his staff, selected one of three pre-fabricated options, and added some inane marginalia. By what accounts have appeared, his involvement in hiring his cabinet consisted of a courtesy meeting with the selected candidate after staff had done all the leg work. The night of the Benghazi disaster he turned in so he could fly off to a fundraiser the next day. He hardly met with members of Congress and didn’t socialize with peers off hours. A small circle of friends assembled by Valerie Jarrett would appear in shifts from Chicago and keep him company on the week ends.
If you stop and think about it, it’s just bizarre. Here’s a man elected President who had been in Congress for < 4 years. He had won his seat in Congress due to his opposition being subject to a concatenation of PR disasters manufactured by the media in conjunction with moles in the Illinois court system. Prior to 2004, he had faced just one competitive election: a primary campaign against Bobby Rush that he lost badly. His entire career as a state legislator, teacher, NGO functionary, and working lawyer was a study in underperforming. Since age 21 the only position he's ever had at a business enterprise was a 30 month stint working as a copy editor for a company that produced corporate newsletters under contract. Recall Carly Fiorina's remark that activity is not accomplishment. How did this meh guy who has shown no interest in a blessed thing other than College basketball, golf, and reciting TelePrompTer text in front of an audience cadge an office that vigorous, ambitious, and (sometimes) capable men seek and fail to attain? It makes zero sense.
I’m not exactly sure how to explain Obama either.
Great Man or Zeitgeist? Dependent variable or response variable? A little of column A and a little of column B?
In the main, I believe the system produced him; he’s the thin (mom-jean wearing) edge of a fat wedge; but on the way up, there was always the chance he would fail.
The MSM chooses candidates and clears a path for them to succeed; but not every one is equal to the task, not every candidate can take advantage of the skewed playing field.
Obama succeeded where Kamala Harris, Hillary, Kerry, Dean and others have failed; and I believe the differences in his outcome compared to theirs is attributable to the marginal difference in quality between his candidacy and theirs.
Specifically, Obama was better than his peers at utilizing deep state networks and insider information to win.
Specifically, Obama was better than his peers at utilizing deep state networks and insider information to win.
That’s bizarre. What kind of ‘Deep State network’ is a member of the Illinois legislature going to have?
Art Deco on January 23, 2020 at 8:34 am said:
Pretty sure Mark Morford was playing it straight back in 2008:
Fair enough.
I have to say that’s a bizarre and fanciful description of Obama. The President is something of a puzzle.
* * *
Your description of Obama’s tenure matches my recollection. The meme of the VRWC is that he was only a front for some kind of handlers, most probably Valerie Jarrett and behind-the-scenes for-real-communists. I try to keep my tin foil hat polished; the Iranian “deal” makes me lean toward Jarrett, but it also benefitted Russia, so YGIAGAM.
Maybe it really does come back to his remark in the prologue to his second book:
“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/03/06/obama_from_blank_slate_to_empty_suit_109134.html
On what kind of Deep State network would he have had: he only needed a couple of entry points, via the politicians in Illinois and DC who were pushing his candidacy.
That the Deep State was interested in him is indisputable:
somebody with real heft was pulling the strings for him to beat out a Clinton.
And his network expanded rapidly: cf IRS, CIA, FBI, DOJ, State, EPA, etc etc etc.
Bonus for political junkies:
https://rightwingnews.com/quotes/the-worst-of-barack-obama-in-quotes-87-quotes/
I note that he wrote three more books, probably just as full of forgettable platitudes, and probably ghost-written also, as well as “authoring” countless compendiums from his speeches.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/barack-obama/196837/
The kind that helped him beat Jack Ryan.
The kind that finds out secrets about political rivals and weaponizes them:
Jack Ryan’s past was laid bare
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/jack-ryans-past-was-laid-bare-all-the-more-reason-to-see-john-conyers%3f_amp=true
Who knew the steamy details of the divorce once the details had been sealed? How’d the media find out? Worker bees in the administrative hive.
It’s practically Obama’s signature move.
Mentius:
Nothing to see, nothing to see, move along. Or, pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain. That is crazy talk! 🙂
crazy talk
https://youtu.be/XXQ58P4e7Cc
The kind that helped him beat Jack Ryan.
It was probably some 2d degree relative of someone on his campaign staff.
Maybe.
Obama’s signature move: unsealing private records
https://humanevents.com/2012/08/01/ann-coulter-obamas-signature-move-unsealing-private-records/
Obama’s political success and his opponents’s simultaneous bad luck with private records are highly correlated.
It seems to me that the point Mentus is making is that we should not limit the Deep State’s reach to just DC.
There are tentacles throughout every state.
My understanding is that the deep or administrative state is the permanent, unelected bureaucracy within the coercive apparatus (some would argue this definition should be expanded to included much of the corporate bureaucracy.)
Of course there are elements of the deep state in Illinois.