If you watch only one of the testimonies in the Impeachment Inquiry, the testimony of Dr. Fiona Hill would be the one to watch.
A woman of obvious integrity, courage, intelligence, self-confidence, patriotism, and a respecter of truth.
You’d have to live under a rock with no wifi signal to have missed the meat of what she said, and she all but named Nunes when she said it.
Chuck Todd threw up his hands on Meet The Press and asked how is it each side is not seeing what the other is seeing? One of the answers was, it’s a difference in strategy. That’s about as nice as you can put it, and it’s also accurate. One strategy is factual and tries to determine what “bribery” means in the Constitution and then if bribery took place. The other is about intentions and feelings. It’s basically the type of arguing that has occurred around dinner tables and in living rooms for the last 50 years, more if you count the people who argued against Japanese internment, nuclear weapons, or fighting World Wars at all. It’s supposed to be that elected leaders have better ways of working out these differences, but those days are going to be hard to get back.
It is unfortunate that the party of flag wavers who wants to burn people alive for burning the flag in protest is the party willing to just trash the country to get and keep power. The narrative Nunes has been pushing is one which Congress was briefed on as a Russian disinformation campaign. Republicans KNOW it’s our enemy pushing it. And they know Russia is our enemy. But they don’t care because Putin is helping their side. Not only do they not care, they are willing to jump on the disinformation created for the purpose of damaging our country because it helps the Russiapublican party. It is both sad and terrifying that one of the most powerful political parties in the country is completely willing to sell out American and its values for their own personal gain.
It’s even more terrifying when you realize that one of the reasons they’re doing it is that very betrayal of our country is actually what gets them elected. Standing up to Trump and Putin would lose them their office because the voters care more about their little baubles, like abortion or freedom to discriminate laws, than they do about the country. It actually makes sense when you think about it, though. They actually want a country with “moral standards”, which basically translates into “authoritarian rule”.
I’m wondering how much of a broken record I am becoming. I think we need to take more of a Sam Harris approach to this. That is, when lefties were saying we shouldn’t profile Muslims because they don’t really say they are going to kill us, he was saying, listen to what they really say.
Republicans are saying that everyone spies on each other, takes money from each other and meddles in each other’s election. If George Soros can run campaigns in Kyrgyzstan, who are we to say it’s wrong for Russia to do it here? They say we shouldn’t be the police of the world, and don’t seem too bothered by the consequence of pulling out of our police actions. They think we have the people here that we need, no more, so restrict immigration. I’ve known people who want to take down our government, but these people are not saying that. They are saying they are saving America. They really believe that saving billionaires will save them. They say that once someone is in office, they can do whatever they want until they are voted out.
It’s hard to take them at their word because it doesn’t make sense. But if you call them liars or power grabbers, you’ve lost the conversation, they are now in control and beyond reason. I heard this morning that in 1787 one of the founders didn’t want there to be an impeachment clause, then another explained that a President could use his office for bribery and self promotion, and he went, “oh yeah, that’s right”. What I see in interviews is, no Republican will directly answer the hypothetical question of how they would vote if Trump was shown to be acting in his own interest only. They dodge it every time.
That reminds me of the Republican “free market” argument where you can just let corporations do anything they want and if they do bad things people just won’t spend money with them any more and they’ll go out of business. They make these “fairy tail arguments” which sound reasonable on the surface, but really only work if you don’t have things like patents and Slapp lawsuits and don’t live in a world where corporations are people, money is speech and only the rich can afford justice.
Not sure what reminded you of that Widdershins.
I think it was the argument style. They tend to use arguments which “sound reasonable” on the surface but cannot stand up to even minimal scrutiny, targeted at people who will not give them even minimal scrutiny. The start of your second paragraph.
I’m not even getting to the “scrutiny” part, what matters is, to them, the arguments are valid. Scrutinizing them is the problem. If you do that, for you, you are addressing the argument, for them, you are addressing the underlying value of the argument. Something like “men are the head of the household” to take an argument from a few decades ago. That’s weak and now that women are actually heads of households and controlling larger markets, it’s not an argument you hear much. But at the time, if you questioned it, you were questioning the very fabric of society. There was not economic argument or human rights argument, either you were on board with an entire suite of moral standards or you weren’t.
There was a little hope with the Clintons, that they could talk Christian values and apply them to helping the poor and marginalized. But, then, well, you know.
Agree with them or not, your posts always make me think. For the record, I’m taking that one as “wisdom”.
I’ve known people who want to take down our government,You mean like Gingrich (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/), Nunes, Jordan, Trump etc, etc, the philosophy behind the Teapartiers movement which was funded by the likes of the Kochs, who like it or not are making good on their dream of destroying our American government of the people, for the people, by the people with their hostile corporate takeover focused on bringing about an genuine oligarchy.
HOW BIG OIL AND BIG TOBACCO PARTNERED WITH THE KOCH BROTHERS TO TAKE OVER THE GOP
BY JEFF NESBIT
<a href="https://time.com/secret-origins-of-the-tea-party/">https://time.com/secret-origins-of-the-tea-party/</a>
The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party
By FRANK RICHAUG. August 28, 2010
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html
Americans for Prosperity is a little-known, billionaire-funded organization that has pushed US politics to the right. How did it happen?
by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Caroline Tervo, Theda Skocpol
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/26/koch-brothers-americans-for-prosperity-rightwing-political-group">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/26/koch-brothers-americans-for-prosperity-rightwing-political-group\</a>
There’s also The Family. Netflix has a docu-drama about it, based on Jeff Sharlet’s books. It was less directed than Koch brothers type efforts, almost organic.
I wasn’t familiar with that.
From Wiki: The Family is an American documentary web television miniseries that premiered on Netflix on August 9, 2019. The series examines a conservative Christian group—known as the Family or the Fellowship—its history, and investigates its influence on American politics.[1][2][3]The series was executive produced by Jeff Sharlet, who previously wrote books about the same organization, including C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy and The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.[4]
Looks like something I should watch, but am afraid it’ll make my head explode - all the wasted runway behind us - when we should have been objecting to the “Jesus is the Only Way to Heaven” delusional xenophobic bullshit when it first started rearing it’s ugly power-politics head, first with the gentle Carter, then with the MovieStar who figured out how to weaponize Evangelical delusional self-certain thinking along with it’s Prosperity based Judgmentalism.
The T rump supporters in the congressional hearings are the ultimate hypocrites, constant prevaricators, users of manipulative and false assertions, champions of alternative facts (BIG LIES), and dirty tricksters, and often owners of really stupid sounding colloquial accents. They try one line of attack after another. When one of their lines of attack is shown to be absurd, they go to the next line of attack, until its absurdity is revealed, then on and on, often returning to previous lines of attack. Tho this is not done with any logical flow, on their part, except to be relentless in denying the validity of the evidence of T rump’s high crimes and misdemeanors.
The reality is that T rump will have articles of Impeachment sent to the Senate in the relatively near future. The Senate will no doubt attempt more dirty tricks. But they don’t need to in order to protect T rump. They just need 34 Senators to NOT vote to remove T rump from office.
This will be an opportunity for T rump to declare victory. He will claim to be totally exonerated. He will say that the crazy Dems failed yet again in another “attempted coup”. But worse, he will claim that he was right about him being able to do whatever he wants. He will be irrevocably above the law. He will re-assert his claim that he has the authority to do whatever he wants and that Congress cannot Impeach him, and that his DOJ will not investigate him. Another bulwark against the loss of our Republic will have been taken out. Trump can continue to make up crimes to accuse his political opponents of, and he can continue to use our aid to other govts as a cudgel to extort them into coming up with fake opposition “investigations” of whichever opponent T rump wants targeted. In fact T rump will be able to do any dirty trick, or crime, without concerns of even being investigated. Our 2020 election will be subject to being corrupted by whatever T rump decides to do, between now and then.
It is not hyperbole to warn all Americans, that our great experiment in a Democratic Republic is most likely coming to an end.
Sad but true, looks like for about 40% of our country truth, honesty, FairPlay, respect, cooperation, owning up to mistakes, learning from experience and facts, all that seems out the window.
All they seem to have now is a rabid fabricated fear of “liberals” that they believe with all their souls.
They believe they actually know God’s will, so they are absolutely self-certain, which is the neighbor of absolutism and totalitarianism.
Then to top it off, Democrats keep blowing key teaching moments, such as the GOP’s motions related to Hunter Biden - why not finally explain to GOP and American what the story is there. Including a stress on ‘following American policy’ and ‘in the open’ and following US governance rules/regulations. As opposed to this Imperial President mentality of Trump who believes he has some right to complete secrecy and that none of the laws that apply to everyone else that apply to him.
The terrifying part is, damaging our government is what he’s after, so he wins, Americans lose, no matter how horrendous this works out for him in the long run.
So NOW we are at the point in the Impeachment of Donald John T rump in which all the Senators have taken the Oath to be impartial (lots of sarcastic laughter is in order for that). We don’t know whether even 4 Repubs will vote with the Dems to have rules that even remotely resemble a fair hearing. We don’t know if there will be witnesses. The Trumpublicans still want the Bidens brought up as witnesses (which would ironically achieve T rump’s plan all along, which was to extort dirt on the Biden’s). This would make it look to the public as if Joe Biden had actually done something wrong. This is the deal they want to make in order to allow legitimately associated witnesses to appear.
If anyone has not seen one of Lev Parnas’s interviews from yesterday from CNN or MSNBC, it is a must see. More and more and more corroboration of T rump and Giuliani’s plot.
Evidence on top of evidence that T rump is guilty, and a lot of it might not be allowed in the Impeachment hearing. And obstruction of Congress by the president continues unabated.
Tim: It is not hyperbole to warn all Americans, that our great experiment in a Democratic Republic is most likely coming to an end.If Trump was removed from office, would our great experiment in a Democratic Republic be back on track?
I believe that T rump’s leaving the office is a requisite 1st step to the redemption of our nation.
Sree: If Trump was removed from office, would our great experiment in a Democratic Republic be back on track?For one, we'd get our Constitution back and IMO, that is an important part of re-establishing a functional Democracy. Right now we have Dictatorship.