A top US diplomat told impeachment hearings that President Trump directly asked about a Ukrainian investigation into his Democratic rival Joe Biden.

In previously unheard testimony, Bill Taylor, the acting US ambassador to Ukraine, said a member of his staff was told Mr Trump was preoccupied with pushing for a probe into Mr Biden.

He was speaking at the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry.

Mr Trump told reporters he did not recall making such comments.

Mr Trump is accused of withholding US military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the country's new president to publicly announce a corruption inquiry into Mr Biden, among the favourites to take him on in the 2020 presidential race. 

Mr Trump denies any wrongdoing and has called the inquiry a "witchhunt".

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50395015

 

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan liked what she saw when U.S. diplomats George Kent and William B. Taylor Jr. went before the House Intelligence Committee to give testimony as part of the ongoing impeachment drama. She saw them as “the old America reasserting itself.” They demonstrated “stature and command of their subject matter.” They evinced “capability and integrity.”

All true. Kent, with his bow tie and his family tradition of public service, appeared to be the very picture of the old-school American foreign service official. And Taylor, with his exemplary West Point career, his Vietnam heroism, and his longtime national service, seemed a throwback to the blunt-spoken American military men who gave us our World War II triumph and our rise to global dominance.

But these men embrace a geopolitical outlook that is simplistic, foolhardy, and dangerous. Perhaps no serious blame should accrue to them, since it is the same geopolitical outlook embraced and enforced by pretty much the entire foreign policy establishment, of which these men are mere loyal apparatchiks. And yet they are playing their part in pushing a foreign policy that is directing America towards a very possible disaster.

Neither man manifested even an inkling of an understanding of what kind of game the United States in playing with Ukraine. Neither gave even a nod to the long, complex relationship between Ukraine and Russia. Neither seemed to understand either the substance or the intensity of Russia’s geopolitical interests along its own borders or the likely consequences of increasing U.S. meddling in what for centuries has been part of Russia’s sphere of influence.

Both Taylor and Kent declared that America’s vital national interest is wrapped up in Ukraine, though neither sought to explain why in any substantive way. Spin out all the potential scenarios of Ukraine’s fate and then ask whether any of them would materially affect America’s vital interests. Any affirmative answer would require elaborate contortions.

It could be argued, perhaps, that an expansion of Russian influence in Ukraine could affect the vital interests of the rest of Europe, though that would hardly be inevitable. But cannot Europe handle any such threat vis-a-vis Russia, given that the EU has a population of 512 million and a GDP of $18 trillion—compared to Russia’s population of 145 million and GDP of $1.6 trillion?

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/impeaching-trump-and-de...

 

--------------------

 

Meanwhile:

As the 2016 sabotage of the Sanders campaign contributed to the failure of the flawed HRC campaign against Trump whose election led to a campaign of illegitimate Russiagate allegations which were refuted by the Mueller investigation, those same partisan shills have now opened an ill-founded impeachment inquiry lacking a credible legal foundation and based on an allegedly anonymous whistleblower/CIA operative  – all meant to distract Americans from the forthcoming Spygate indictments which promise to further decimate the once omnipotent Democrat party.

The public circus of fomenting national disunity and turbulence has allowed the American public to recognize the Democratic party as it truly is, conniving corruption to the bone, promulgating an illicit behavior now threatening the very foundation of what remains of our democracy.

To make sense of the intervening events, one only need grasp that the CIA/FBI/DOJ pre-election efforts were meant to entrap low grade Trump campaign associates until they boomeranged once the election results were known.

Still unknown is if those law enforcement/intel efforts were independent of the DNC or if a level of collusion occurred. 

Suddenly, there was an incoming duly-elected president whose staff had been infiltrated and surveilled as if it were a foreign power. Recognizing the need to cover a dozen or more collective butts served to deepen the panic to conceal the conspiracy as it set out to destroy the new President’s goal of peace with Russia.

If ever there was a time for all Americans of every political persuasion and ideology to rise above partisanship and stretch to a higher level of ethics and consciousness in support of the rule of law and a basic sense of fairness and justice, it is before us now.

As a life long Jeffersonian Democrat who once self identified as a ‘passionate’ Democrat and partisan activist, it is fair to ask who are these imposters who shanghaied the Dems away from defending the First Amendment and their working class roots into the bosom of Wall Street, the military industrial complex and the intel community?

Now forever entwined with the CIA and Deep State, the Dems await their karmic payback with the soon-to-be released IG report and later, the Durham investigation, party loyalists would do well to take their wrath out on the DNC and its Congressional leadership who have repeatedly and continue to lie to the country.

There is no doubt that the Democratic hierarchy were well aware that Mueller would bear no fruit to satisfy their lust for vengeance of the 2016 loss.

Not surprising it has been Tulsi Gabbard as the Only Democrat who understands the need to cease the fragmentation of American society. While not prone to hyperbolic overstatement, she suggests a more rational strategy, encouraging voters to do their job in November.

The party’s hierarchy, and apparently much of its base, however, prefer to follow its Reptilian instincts strewing divisiveness and animosity far and wide. (The R Complex purports to be the brain’s ancestral throwback to the dinosaurs with an aggressive, war-like demeanor as home to Obsessive Compulsive Disorders.)

In a complete turnaround from what might have been expected, Republicans appear in the unusual role as the aggrieved party as an assertive House contingent reminds us what a healthy opposition looks like as Senate Republicans more closely resemble an overly pious parade of Goody Two Shoes.

As the impeachment inquiry unravels, career State Department witnesses who have no direct first hand knowledge of a crime had already testified behind closed doors are now center stage repeating the same inconsequential blather.

As the inquiry drags on, it remains clear that there is no authentic WB but an individual who is a partisan snitch perhaps molded and created by the pompous Rep. Adam Schiff. who is known for Russiagate prevarications that never materialized. 

He now claims “I do not know the identity of the whistleblower” even after his staff redacted the WB’s name from public documents.

Democrats on the Intel Committee who have refused to allow the alleged WB testify, are now struggling to provide credible evidence that Quid Pro Quo was committed and that such QPQ constitutes an ‘abuse of power” crime.

The IG Horowitz report regarding improper FISA Court applications may be public prior to Thanksgiving with a recommendation for criminal referrals including the possible declassification of documents that President Trump referred to AG Bill Barr some months ago.

The question has been whether applications to the FISA Court to approve surveillance warrants on Trump campaign personnel were knowingly based on flawed Steele dossier, otherwise known as malarkey.

It appears that those defective classified documents were then leaked to media outlets to provide credibility and justify the original application request to the FISA Court.  The question remains whether there was a conspiracy to mislead and lie to the FISA Court; whether and how the FBI treated the Clinton campaign differently than they treated the Trump campaign.

As if there was not enough factual data to question the basis for an impeachment inquiry, attorney for the alleged WB, Mark Zaid, sent out a series of tweets clearly revealing the unfolding impeachment strategy beginning ten days after Trump’s inauguration.

On January 30, 2017 Zaid tweeted that the “coup has started. First of many steps…impeachment will follow ultimately”

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/11/19/impeachment-another-democratic-fiasco/

 

 

The Democrats have lots their mojo, have lost the plot and have lost their trousers... They have turned into a sad bunch of lying idiots... 

 

 

Read from top.

Every time a Republican lawmaker warns about the “dangerous precedent” Democrats will set by impeaching President Trump, my heart gets all a-flutter. How great would it be if no president ever served a full term in office? What if everysuccessive commander-in-chief was impeached? I can see it now.

First Trump goes, having been found guilty of shady dealings with Ukraine. The GOP is then thrown into chaos. In an effort to marshal the base, Mitch McConnell outs Mike “Lodestar” Pence as the anonymous leaker in the executive branch, and he’s impeached for treason or espionage or something. Then it’s Nancy Pelosi’s turn. She’s declared ineligible for office because 70 percent of her body is made in China and is promptly ousted. Chuck Grassley, having been a staunch defender of the Ukraine whistleblower, has long since been removed by McConnell. The Senate majority leader declares himself president pro tem, leapfrogging into the White House. Then the Washington Post publishes its 10-year-long investigation into McConnell, revealing that “Cocaine Mitch” (or La Tortuga, as mamacitas down in Sinaloa call him) is in fact the mastermind behind MS-13. He, too, is impeached…and on it goes, ad infinitum.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/impeachment-makes-karda...

 

 

Read from top.

 

 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Letter-from-President-Trump-final.pdf?

The cringing abdication of Senate Republicans

REPUBLICAN SENATORS who voted Friday to suppress known but unexamined evidence of President Trump’s wrongdoing at his Senate trial must have calculated that the wrath of a vindictive president is more dangerous than the sensible judgment of the American people, who, polls showed, overwhelmingly favored the summoning of witnesses. That’s almost the only way to understand how the Republicans could have chosen to deny themselves and the public the firsthand account of former national security adviser John Bolton, and perhaps others, on how Mr. Trump sought to extort political favors from Ukraine.

By Editorial Board (WaPo)
Feb. 1, 2020 at 9:50 a.m. GMT+11

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-cringing-abdication-of-senate-republicans/2020/01/31/

-------------------
Oh cry baby… Baby, cry… We can feel your pain.

But admitting “new” witnesses to the impeachment of Trump in the senate would have been a travesty of justice — especially when the main whistleblower is still kept “incognito”. Everyone knows who he is but he cannot be named except in an inadvertent question. And “his” testimony is second hand… Beyond this, WaPo baby, you should thank your stars that new witnesses were inadmissible. Your Joe Biden would have been savaged by hyenas in the witness box, giving Trump more trumps in his hand.

John Bolton is as credible as a dead cactus skeleton telling desert stories. Trump “employed” him only to sideline him. Bolton felt he was never listened to and, war being his main business, he got peeved because Trump did not want war. Trump did not want US soldiers to die, even if they gave him victory over the enemy, whatever these enemies are or were. Bolton and Hillary would have made a great pair: Syria, Libya, Iran, China, Russia would be in flames by now under the Bolton/Clinton doctrine. Not to mention that the USA would have been hit quite badly and some US cities would have been erased from the map, but this is the price to pay for victory against… against…

So Bolton wrote a book where he reveals what is in the clear transcripts of Donald asking for a favour. The new Ukrainian President isn’t a dummy. He knows where his bread is buttered. A lot of his administration is still run by the crooks of the Poroshenko regime. Volodymyr has to tread lightly. Poroshenko and Joe Biden were thick as thieves. They were (are) thieves, whether they are doing it for themselves (which Biden denies) but for the US national interest.

And by the way, the US public polls are as useful as those telling us that the Labor party was going to win the last election in Australia. 

And now the Democratic Party in the USA has changed the rules of their “contests” to allow someone like Bloomberg to participate in the televised “Democratic debates”. He did not fit the rules in regard to campaign contributions. So they changed the rules. Money talks. Bloomberg is 50 times the billionaire that Trump is. The party of the poor workers and the trodden can now be represented by one of the richest guy on the planet, who is so philanthropic that every-time he gives a billion, he might make two more… It’s perverse, but allowed in the psyche of the deranged US political structure. 

The “Republicans” played the game of hide and seek with the Democrats. They had the numbers to outright sink the Democrats request of new “witnesses” to a crime which is more of an opinion than a danger to the nation. Someone recently suggested that Trump should have asked congress the permission to enquire about Biden with Zelensky. This would have gone like a lead balloon. Had Biden done nothing wrong or not, the request would have been denied. More ink would have been liberally wasted in the media...

"So some Republicans had some doubts about Trump"… A few were sacrificed by the party to appear as if the Republicans had a soul, but this was a tactic, to let the Democrats fret. Romney was so ever two faced about his position, going onto the breach, knowing well the way the vote was going to go: 51-49. Request denied. 

So the WaPo and all the other so-called liberal media are crying foul… Go away, the whole thing was a farce. And this farce only help reinforce Trump’s position. May be you are devious enough to know this — and are playing a reverse psychological game…  Anyway, your only salvation will be if you support Bernie, Pete and Tulsi. All the others are part of the exclusive club of sociopaths in the DNC.

Time for change.

Opinion

Trump, Unrepentant and Unleashed

The diabolical* duo of Donald and Mitch, serving their own interests, not the national one.


By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist

Annotations by Gus Leonisky in Bold Roman.


WASHINGTON — During a meeting with Donald Trump at Trump Tower in June of 2016, with the opéra bouffe builder improbably heading toward the nomination despite a skeletal campaign crew on a floor below, I asked when he would pivot.
We all assumed he would have to pivot, that he would have to stop his belittling Twitter rants, that he would have to cease attacking fellow Republicans like John McCain, that he would have to get more in line with the traditional stances of his party, that he would have to be less of a barbarian at the gates of D.C.

He crossed his arms, pursed his lips and shook his head — a child refusing vegetables.

How naïve he was, I thought to myself. But I was the naïve one. Trump has forced the world to pivot to him.

Yes you were naive, Maureen. We don’t like Trump as much as you do, but the vegetables that came from the Democrats were overcooked and rotten.

The state of the union is upside down and inside out and sauerkraut. Trump has changed literally everything in the last three years, transforming and coarsening the game. On Friday night, he became, arguably, the most brutishly powerful Republican of all time. Never has a leader had such a stranglehold on his party, subsuming it with one gulp.

Yep, before this there was the need for a whole team, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rummy and all the other sycophants working for George Bush Junior who did the dirty work for him… All Junior had to do was claim "mission accomplished”…

But as well as being a secret supporter of Bush’s dirty war on Iraq (were you not?), did you really want the US to destroy the Saudis as well, or did you write this in jest?:

Mr Cheney argues that we must invade Iraq while we have a strategic window for action, while Saddam's army is still reeling. But attacking the Saudis would be even easier. They are soft and spoiled. Only this week Jerome Socolovsky of Associated Press wrote about how King Fahd brought thousands of members of the House of Saud to Marbella, where they stocked up on luxury items and hired north African servants. Women in veils and waterproof robes rode jet skis, and members of the royal family talked about the September 11 attacks as an Israeli-CIA plot.

Yep you did write this in jest… So now, because you did not get what you wanted, a Democrat lollypop for the American people you love so much, you feel your little world has been gutted. Hey you still have a chance at removing the Trump at the next presidential elections… So go for it… A hint: Buttigieg is the best one to defeat Trump.

As the Senate voted 51 to 49 to smother the impeachment inquiry, guided by the dark hand of Mitch McConnell, it felt like the world’s greatest deliberative body had been hollowed out, diminished.

Yep, the same happened when Clinton was impeached…

McConnell let Mitt Romney and Susan Collins vote to allow documents and witnesses such as John Bolton, knowing two could strain at the leash safely.

John Bolton as a credible witness? Please… Eat your dripping...

The rest of the senators fell into line as sycophantic clones of Mike Pence. The impeachment trial amounted to one side being earnest and one pretending to be. It was exactly what Nancy Pelosi feared would happen before she was reluctantly drawn into the show trial.

Why did the Democrats go for impeaching Trump since the day he got the gong, using dubious evidence, such as the Steele Dossier, collected even before the elections? I’ll tell you why. Because they don’t think they can win the next Presidential elections… after having pushed for Hillary, the devious warrior woman, the “progressive” were devastated and sought their revenge, non-stop. Not a good look. No grace. Ease up...

“Now the State of the Union is going to be the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man coming down the street and standing in the rubble of what’s left of the Congress,” keened one Democrat on Friday night. “The Republican Party has now lost whatever control they could exert over this president, any oversight they could have. It’s gone. The state of the union is there is no union. How can there be, when one side is petrified of their Godzilla?”

Godzilla? Stay Puft Marshmallow Man? Very funny… but when was the last time a President was “controlled” by his party rather than by the “deep state”? Why would the GOP people sink Trump when the Democrats didn’t sink Clinton, when he “did not have sex with this woman”?… And the State of the Union? It will be rubbish as usual, like all the previous SotU, except we’re promised “more optimism”...

Okay, both instances, Tump and Clinton, had nothing to do with “national security”… None...

…..
I feel like I have spent my career watching the same depressing dynamic that unspooled Friday night: Democrats trying, sometimes ineptly, to play fair and Republicans ruthlessly trying to win.
I watched it with the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings. I watched it in the 2000 recount with Bush versus Gore. I watched it with the push by W., Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to go to war in Iraq. I watched it with the pantomime of Merrick Garland.

Excuse me, did you not write: "I'm with Dick. Let's make war!” I know it was satire, but when was the last time the Democrats played fair?… And did not Gore accept the result with grace, even when the count was “crooked"?

Democrats are warning Republicans that they will be judged harshly by history. But in the meantime, the triumphant Republicans get to make history. And a lot of the history that Republicans have made is frightening: the endless, futile wars, the obliviousness to climate change, the stamp on the judiciary.

Yes the democrats never did something as bad as "stamping the judiciary"… Who decided on the war in Syria? Who launched the war on Libya? Ah yes, wasn’t it Obama and Ms Clinton, who laughed so heartily when Gaddafi got impaled from the rectum she nearly fell of her chair?… Did she goofed about the situation in Bengahzi? Oh yes… But it was such a little sin with a few diplomatic deaths… Her team of terrorists went beyond the US original brief...
I will give you that on global warming Trump is crap. But he could not be crap if a lot of the industries, also MAJOR supporters of the democrats, did the right thing and buried themselves. 

For hours on Friday, the House managers made their vain final arguments. Pressing for Bolton’s testimony, Val Demings implored Republican senators: 
Aren’t you worried that, if left in office, Trump will harm America’s national security, seek to corrupt the upcoming election and undermine our democracy to further his own personal gain? Don’t you want to hear the witnesses and see the documents that would give the full story and make this a fair trial rather than a mock one?
Fair trial? Bullshit. The Truth? Bullshit. Even the Bidens will hide their crookery behind "we did it for America"… We know the truth here. Go and watch:

“As he voted against witnesses and documents, Lamar Alexander, McConnell’s pal, said Trump did something inappropriate but they just did not accept that it was impeachable, and they did not want to tear up ballots and “pour gasoline on cultural fires that are burning out there.”

Hey this is hot partisan politics, not a picnic nor a church fete...

So why not shut it down and cover it up? The books were cooked from the start.
As with so many other pivotal moments in modern history, Republicans wanted to win, not look for the truth. And history, God help us, is written by the winners.

Yep, this has always been the case, since Adam and Even-stevens…

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/opinion/sunday/trump-impeachment-tria...


God help us?… Isn’t Dowd a practising Catholic?*

While proclaiming his commitment to America First, President Donald Trump has treated Saudi Arabia with extraordinary obsequiousness. He has turned American military personnel into royal bodyguards and whitewashed that country’s most outrageous human rights abuses, including the slicing and dicing of journalist and American resident Jamal Khashoggi.

Perhaps the president’s worst hypocrisy, however, is treating one of the world’s leading religious persecutors with such tenderness. Despite his strong evangelical support, rarely does a word of criticism of the Saudi royals pass his lips, or those of any of his officials. (Sam Brownback, the ambassador-at-large for religious liberty, is a notable exception.)

Administration officials must understand they are defending the indefensible. The Kingdom is at the bottom of virtually every freedom list of countries. For example, Freedom House ranks Saudi Arabia as “not free,” failing in both political rights and civil liberties. Reports FH: “Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy restricts almost all political rights and civil liberties.”

The State Department documents a thoroughgoing totalitarian state: unlawful killing, forced disappearances, torture, political prisoners, censorship, and “severe restriction of religious freedom.” That latter topic inspired a separate 21-page report from Mike Pompeo’s department, which has designated Saudi Arabia a “Country of Particular Concern.” State concludes the obvious: “Freedom of religion is not provided the law.”

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-ignores-the-saudi...

 

Read article above...

 

Of course, Trump isn't the first Prez to have suckered the holes of the Saudis. Even Obama was doing the Saudis' bidding by infering Syria's "regime change" through a Sunni/Wahhabi/Saudi inspired revolution that lead to the invention of Daesh — so that the Saudis could push a pipeline through Syria and other stuff.

 

And the missing link in the Maureen article is:

UkraineGate

 

 

See also:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/opinion/sunday/trump-2020-democrats.html

 

by Bill Martin, philosopher, Alain Badiou follower, (satarist) and bass-guitar musician... 

...

Is there a “real Left” out there somewhere, a Left that still connects to the radicalism of the last two centuries, that connects to the great wave of global revolt of the Sixties, that hopes to contribute to the radical recasting of all existing social conditions? I’m sure there are pockets out there, but even these seem either narcoleptic, folded into the Democratic Party agenda, or at least trailing along behind this agenda.

Now we are at a moment when “the Left” is recognizing the role that the CIA and the rest of the “intelligence community” is played in the impeachment nonsense. This “Left” was already on board for the “impeachment process” itself, perhaps at moments with caveats about “not leaving everything up to the Democrats,” “not just relying on the Democrats,” but still accepting their assigned role as cheerleaders and self-important internet commentators. (And, sure, maybe that’s all I am, too—but the inability to distinguish form from content is one of the main problems of the existing Left.)

Now, though, people on the Left are trying to get comfortable with, and trying to explain to themselves how they can get comfortable with, the obvious role of the “intelligence community” (with, in my view, the CIA in the leading role, but of course I’m not privy to the inner workings of this scene) in the impeachment process and other efforts to take down Trump’s presidency.

People are even talking about “getting used to accepting the help of the CIA with the impeachment,” and the like. (I realize I’m being repetitious here, but this stuff blows my mind, it is so disturbing.) At least they are recognizing the reality—at least partially; that’s something. But then what they do with this recognition is something that requires epic levels of TDS—and, somehow, a great deal of the Left is going down this path.

They might think about the “help” that the CIA gave to the military in Bolivia to remove Evo Morales from office. They might think about the picture of Donald Trump that they find necessary to paint to justify what they are willing to swallow to remove him from office. They might think about the fact that ordinary Democrats are fine with this role for the CIA, and that Adam Schiff and others routinely offer the criticism/condemnation of Donald Trump that he doesn’t accept the findings of the CIA or the rest of the intelligence agencies at face value.

The moment for the Left, what calls itself and thinks of itself as that, to break with this lunacy has passed some time ago, but let us take this moment, of “accepting the help of the CIA, because Trump,” as truly marking a point of no return.

*

There were two major themes in the House impeachment testimony of Prof. Pamela Karlan of Stanford Law School that bear further discussion.

One of these themes is the extension of what I call “State Feminist” and “State Identity Politics” methods beyond academia into U.S. society and legal structures broadly.
The other theme, which goes to what is supposedly the most “urgent” reason to remove Trump, feeds into the Russia narrative—and this was underlined again in Schiff’s Jan. 22 speech.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States and NATO have been pressing ever-closer to Russia with high-powered weapons systems, something that presidents since George H. W. Bush have said they would not do. President Trump has distinguished himself from both Democrats and Republicans on this question. In his typically-craven style, Schiff said,

Russia is not a threat … to Eastern Europe alone. Ukraine has become the de facto proving ground for just the types of hybrid warfare that the twenty-first century will become defined by: cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, efforts to undermine the legitimacy of state institutions, whether that is voting systems or financial markets. The Kremlin showed boldly in 2016 that with the malign skills it honed in Ukraine, they would not stay in Ukraine. Instead, Russia employed them here to attack our institutions, and they will do so again.”

Schiff also quoted Prof. Karlan’s statement that the Ukrainians are “fighting the Russians so that we don’t have to.”

Schiff argued that any inquiry into what Joe and Hunter were doing in Ukraine and with Burisma now has to be set aside, and cannot be a part of the impeachment hearings, not only because it is “completely-debunked conspiracy theory,” but also because Russia will “weaponize” the results of any such inquiry and deploy it against presidential candidate Joe Biden.

(Obviously we can note once again the crazy irony of the fact that, apparently, being a presidential candidate—against Trump, that is, though certainly against Bernie Sanders as well—is an excellent cover for abusing the Vice-President’s office, but being President does not confer enough status to ask about this abuse and corruption.)

As Daniel Lazare writes at AntiWar.com:

We must all put such sentiments behind us now Russia is seeking to “weaponize” such information, according to Schiff, and deploy it “against Mr. Biden just like it did against Hillary Clinton in 2016 when Russia hacked and released emails from her presidential campaign.” If Russia wants to weaponize it, then it’s best for the rest of us not to breathe a word of it lest people think we’ve been weaponized as well.

Bottom line: we must impeach Trump, according to Schiff’s epic presentation, not only because he’s overstepped his proper constitutional bounds, but because he’s part of a grand Russian conspiracy to spread disinformation, undercut US security, undermine faith in US intelligence agencies, and “remake the map of Europe by dent of military force.” 

In order to counter this all-encompassing threat, it is our patriotic duty to do the opposite by believing the CIA and redoubling US defense. If anyone tells us that Biden was guilty of a flagrant conflict of interest, we must stop up our ears because that’s what Moscow wants us to think. If anyone says that the entire Russian-interference narrative is just a silly conspiracy theory based on a paucity of facts and an abundance of paranoid speculation, we must do likewise because it’s just the Kremlin trying to worm its way into our minds.”

– “Adam Schiff’s Very Scary Warmongering Speech,” January 24, 2020; originalantiwar.com

*

To further emphasize, Prof. Pamela Karlan did an excellent job of laying out what the impeachment “inquiry” has been all about:

America is not just ‘the last best hope,’ … it’s also the shining city on a hill. We can’t be the shining city on a hill and promote democracy around the world if we’re not promoting it here at home. This is not just about our national interests to protect elections or make sure Ukraine stays strong and fights the Russians so we don’t have to fight them here, but it’s in our national interest to promote democracy worldwide.”

The aforementioned point of no return has arrived when one has to try to explain to Democrats and leftists what is wrong with this reactionary crap—and finding that one cannot do it. For most Democrats, in fact, there is nothing wrong with the content of this statement; what is incredibly shameful is that leftists do know what is wrong here, but they go along (trail along, that is) with the Democrats because no price is too high to pay for getting rid of Trump—especially when they are not the people paying the price. Once again, the moving line of bullshit.

An added bit of reactionary garbage here is that Democrats and some who at least call themselves “leftists” are hailing Prof. Karlan as a feminist and Identity-Politics hero, because she is a woman and, apparently, bisexual or lesbian or something. I state this last part a bit glibly because one might wonder how this matters. But of course it does matter if you are using Identity Politics to advance both the agenda of trying to get rid of Trump, and at the same time using the impeachment agenda to put the “procedural” methods of Identity Politics on display, in the hope that contempt for and abrogation of due process can become the way things are done in general, just as they have been done in academia since the “Dear Colleagues” (Title IX) letter of 2011.

Prof. Karlan scored a brilliant point with the IdPol Left with her stunning analysis of the difference between a name and a title: “President Trump can name his son Barron, but he cannot make him a baron.” To any ordinary working person Karlan simply demonstrated that it doesn’t seem to take much to make one a respected genius-scholar at Yale (from which Karlan has her law degree) and Stanford. I’m sure, though, that Prof. Karlan is so smart that she knows that ordinary, deplorable people are in no position to judge what counts as wisdom in elite institutions.

Of the three constitutional scholars who were brought in to make their case for impeaching President Trump (yes, clearly, their case), the other two besides Karlan were white males—so why people should listen to them, it’s hard to know. The other scholar, Jonathan Turley from George Washington University (sniff), testified that, while he is no fan of Trump, did not vote for him, and champions a “socially liberal agenda” (his term), the case for impeachment was very weak....

 

Read all:

https://off-guardian.org/2020/02/29/the-trump-impeachment-looking-back-a...

 

 

Read from top.

 

 

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/32971

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35235

especially:

biden's sacrifice...