Monday, January 27, 2020

Once More Unto the Breach, My Friends!


You know, there's a way to settle that argument.
Does he know we can hear him?
Which, again, is a statement we could test by putting him under oath and cross-examining a witness. Oh, of only we had a way to weigh and assess and determine the truth of contradictory statements and witnesses who change their stories! Woe is us, that we lack such fora*!
Yes! Precisely so!

*It's the right plural!  Get over it!
Posted by at No comments:

"What it is ain't exactly clear...."

It is, though. Two of Trump's lawyers are arguing before the Senate now that Biden was corrupt because Hunter was on the board of Burma through corruption. Oh, and Biden fired the Ukraine prosecutor (the known source of this conspiracy theory) because that prosecutor was investigating Burisma. (Up is down in Trumpworld: the Ukraine prosecutor was forced out by a coalition of world forces, publicly, because he refused to investigate and prosecute Burisma. He was, in fact, taking bribes to look the other way. This was acknowledged in the trial testimony Bondi accused the House managers of cherry-picking.) Are they making this argument only to claim Trump was acting within the law? Nah. They want Hunter Biden and Joe Biden to testify (as Trump has publicly demanded again and again).
Yeah, like that.

So Trump's lawyers are laying the groundwork for a trade:  you get Bolton, we get Biden.  Maybe it won't happen.  But they've put their conspiracy theory on trial.  It might be they now have to subject it to cross-examination.

I dunno; it's not a trial.  But if the House can't answer this with testimony, it won't seem "fundamentally fair" to the American public. It should be. I really don't know if it is, anymore.
Posted by at No comments:

Legal Strategery

Good. Let the impeachment trial run for a month or two. Meanwhile, in the courts:
It would certainly be that "Constitutional crisis" the media is always fainting for fear of. And Ken Starr this morning took his argument straight from FoxNews:
Starr argued that the House shouldn't have impeached Trump because it hasn't been at least 100 years since Clinton was impeached. Oh, and Britain dropped impeachment from its law over 100 years ago. I'm not making this up. Somehow the Constitutional provision for impeachment is rendered moot because the Brits decided impeachment didn't lead to justice 100 years ago. And besides we hardly ever remove Art. III judges via impeachment, and they're appointed for life! Presidents last, what, four years, eight at most? Impeachment just really shouldn't be used against a President at all.  And certainly not when there is no crime:
Well, not for another 100 years, anyway.
Yeah, it really is.

I hope Starr got his money in advance.
Posted by at No comments:

WIDESPREAD PANIC!!!!

Honestly, this is hilarious.

Dan "LOUD NOISES" Bongino, ladies and gentlemen!

As the elevator doors closed:
Meanwhile, back at the Big House...er, White House:

Posted by at No comments:

This Could Mean A Real Trial

...and lorry nose we can't have that.
Posted by at No comments:

Three Guesses, First Two Don't Count

Posted by at No comments:

Round Up The Usual Suspects

Well, Sen. Hawley, there's a way to cure the hearsay problem. It's quite easy, actually.

And what does anything Stephane Grisham said have to do with what Bolton's book says? Clearly that's the new talking point:
Trump retweeted that early this morning. And then passed it in to Grisham? Sure, why not? But backed into a corner, he reaches for the golden oldie:
Yeah, we're all well past that.
Posted by at No comments:

Being that stupid...

...doesn't strike me as an endorsing qualification for public office.
Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, January 26, 2020

May You Live In Such Interesting Times








Yeah , we still have to wait for what tomorrow brings. What you think should happen is seldom what really happens.
And a reminder: there are no heroes here, and truth does not come forth to set all things right.
Posted by at 2 comments:

So, let's be clear

What the Senator said, per TPM:

“It’s the Democratic talking point that the President and his lawyers have argued that it was Ukraine who interfered in our elections, not Russia,” Cotton said. “You can read the President’s brief. They make it very clear that, yes, you can accept that Russia interfered in a systematic, organized top-down fashion in our election.”

While mentioning that he’s been “part of the Intelligence Committee that’s been investigating it for years,” Cotton added that “you can also say that it’s clear some Ukrainian officials tried to influence the outcome of the election in 2016” and that “both of those things can be true.”
The facts, plain and simple:

While Russia has worked diligently to make Ukraine the target, Trump has eagerly consumed and regurgitated the conspiracy theory as a way to accuse former challenger Hillary Clinton of causing all of it. Trump accused cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike of taking the Democratic Party server to Ukraine, a false claim given the server was a cloud-based server, not a physical one. Once it became clear that former Vice President Joe Biden would be one of Trump’s potential opponents, the president shifted the conspiracy theory to Biden and his last surviving son, Hunter. Trump claimed that the two were part of a corrupt deal in Ukraine in 2015, while Biden’s eldest son was dying of brain cancer.

“What we found is the president, yet again, seems to be echoing Russian disinformation when he says Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election, and the DNC was hacked not by Russia but Ukraine, that debunked conspiracy theory, that that the server, the DNC server, was in Ukraine and being protected by forces there,” Politico reporter Natasha Bertrand said on MSNBC. 

“Anything he associated with the intel community, he rejected pretty much out of hand because his sense was that the ‘Deep State’ had decided in some star chamber or secret meeting that they would feed intelligence to him that would cause him to make mistakes, and disprove a lot of his theories about what happened in the election,” the person told Politico.

Bertrand hunted down the conspiracy, only to find that the Russians were the ones floating the conspiracy as early as 2015, long before it was even known the DNC server was hacked. On July 22, 2016, a person or group called “Guccifer 2.0” claimed on a blog to have been responsible for hacking the DNC server. Guccifer 2.0 then admitted he was a Russian Intelligence Officer.

“They threw everything they could against the wall and settled on this idea that [Clinton] was receiving help from oligarchs [in Ukraine] in terms of her election campaign,” Bertrand continued. “The Kremlin floated this, saying because this information against Paul Manafort was released, forcing him to resign from the campaign, that was evidence of some kind of Ukrainian operation to hurt Trump’s campaign. But of course, there’s no evidence that there was any kind of top-down interference campaign like the Russians waged.”
This is so widely known and acknowledged you might as well be saying "And the sun rose in the east this morning."  Except Sen. Cotton says that's a Democratic talking point, and it could simultaneously be true that the sun rose in the west at the same moment.  Because it's on a physical server held in Ukraine, who has shipped it to China for safekeeping.  China, where Hunter Biden did some business.  Coincidence?  Sen. Cotton thinks not.

Note that:  Sen. Cotton thinks not.  That, too, seems to be beyond argument.
Posted by at No comments:

That's some catch, that Catch-22

It's the best there is.
Posted by at No comments:

Well, you know

The House should be spending this year in court trying to get that information, because the Senate can't afford to wait for the courts to decline to review a subpoena issued in an impeachment (as impeachments are not subject to judicial review or even oversight).  Just to be clear, this is what Ms. Haberman wrote in the NYTimes:

“The president’s statement as described by Mr. Bolton could undercut a key element of his impeachment defense: that the holdup in aid was separate from Mr. Trump’s requests that Ukraine announce investigations into his perceived enemies, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was in office."
Now, the Senate could still hear from Bolton, and still say it's not worth removing the President over; but why mess up a good thing?  IOW, Bolton's chances of ever testifying before the Senate just dropped below zero.  His chances of being asked to speak to the House, however?

Besides, there was corruption!
Oh, wait! The corruption was between Trump's incompetence and Giuliani's venality! Whew! Could think we kept that off the TV cameras!
Absolute immunity is an even better dodge than executive privilege!
But that would be corruption! Which is what Trump wanted to investigate, maybe! See? He found it!
But is it "crime-like"? Because that's the new standard! And only Alan Dershowitz knows what it means!
Posted by at No comments:

More Fun With Numbers!

Posted by at No comments:

Who Knew?

I thought I was being sarcastic.
Posted by at No comments:

"It was a pun!"

Owner: No, no...not a pun...What's that thing that spells the same backwards as forwards?

Mr. Praline: (Long pause) A palindrome...?

 Owner: Yeah, that's it!

Mr. Praline: It's not a palindrome! The palindrome of "Bolton" would be "Notlob"!! It don't work!!
It doesn't work as a metaphor, either.


I think he's actually on to something here. Just not what he thinks he's on to.

Attendant: Can't blame British Rail for that.
Posted by at No comments:

Just Hammering the Point Home

Projecting like a multiplex.

 “There should be no doubt at this point that this is a president who is capable of shaking down a foreign leader for his own personal gain,” Wu told the host. “Apparently, the only people who are unable or unwilling to see this are the Senate Republicans. When this is pointed out, the threats against them are pointed out, they feign outrage.”

“If this were a normal court case, Donald Trump would be dragged before a federal judge right now to explain why his threat against a prosecutor is not a felony,” he continued. “We know the dangers of this. We have seen in October of 2018 how a deranged supporter sent out bombs to Clinton and Obama — these are not just words.”
This is not a trial, and there is no judge to appeal to.  John Roberts sits as Presiding Officer of the Senate trial, not as Chief Justice of the United States.  The Senate chamber is not a courtroom; the Senators are neither judges nor a jury.
I think they should, because the President is saying the quiet parts out loud.  Senators are not listening; the American people should.
Posted by at No comments:

Civics Lessons

Sure you are.







Lesson No. 1: impeachment in the Senate is not a "trial." There are no rules of procedure or evidence consonant with those recognized in judicial courts. And unlike a trial court where a jury is selected or jurors removed for bias or having pre-judged the case, no Senator can be removed from the "panel" hearing arguments (and so far refusing any evidence, contrary to all due process) in the case. The Senators are not "jurors." This is not a "trial."




The Trump defense is based entirely on ad hominem. He doesn't deny what he did, he attacks the people who point out what he did, and how criminal it was; what an abuse of power it was. His answer is: "So what? You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny!"

Lesson No. 2:  Trump has no defense.  That won't matter in the Senate chamber.  It should matter to the voters in November.
Posted by at No comments:

Alternatively

There is also:
Judge not, that ye be not judged.

[2] For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

[3] And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

[4] Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

[5] Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Or:

So when they continued asking Him, He lifted Himself up and said unto them, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

That's the thing about scripture; there's always another one to remind you what Scripture really says about the subject.
Posted by at No comments:

I know I shouldn't be sensible about this, but....

Does Trump go into the crowd and meet all those people at the rallies? Does he go outside the White House gates and meet people on the street? Does he crash the White House tours? How does a POTUS, the most heavily guarded and scheduled man on the planet, meet "[a] 1000 people a day"? How does he do that? Bill Clinton didn't do that, and he loved crowds. Trump just loves cheering faces. How stupid are we supposed to be these days?
Posted by at No comments:

I'm Old Enough to Remember When Obama used brown mustard....

...and later wore a tan suit.
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)