Tag Archives: impeachment

national news

There’s actually limit to what Barr would do for POTUS?

What do you know about this?

Donald Trump reportedly asked Attorney General William Barr to call a press conference and declare in front of the entire world that the president didn’t do anything wrong with regard to that phone call with the Ukrainian president.

However, the AG reportedly declined. “No can do,” or words to that effect he supposedly told the president, who — naturally! — has denied Barr’s rejection.

I am deeply disappointed so far in Barr since he became attorney general. I thought he would have conducted himself in keeping with his role as the “people’s attorney,” rather than acting as personal counsel for the POTUS.

Reports, though, of Barr declining to do what the Liar in Chief sought gives me a glimmer — and that’s all it is — of hope that there are limits to what Barr would do on behalf of Donald Trump.

The president is facing a near-certain impeachment in the House over that phone call with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy, in which Trump asked Zelenskiy for political help in exchange for weapons the Ukrainians  would use against Russian-backed rebel aggressors.

The AG is now being dragged into this matter over reports of a favor sought by the president who, it looks to me, is trying to cover up the impeachable offense he committed.

Hey, and to think it’s all going to be made public in just a few days.

Hang on, folks. The ride is about to get even rougher.

national news

What in the world is this ‘Deep State’?

Get ready for it.

The term “Deep State” is about to take its place near center stage in about a week. That is when the U.S. House Intelligence Committee convenes public hearings that will reveal to Americans what they have heard in private.

What have committee members — Democratic and Republican — heard? They have heard evidence that Donald Trump sought a quid pro quo from Ukrainians; he asked them for a political favor in exchange for releasing weapons they want to use to right Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine.

That is a crime, ladies and gents.

Oh, the Deep State? That is the canard we hear from right-wing backers of Trump who say all this impeachment talk is a product of the Deep State.

I have looked it up. I had to find what they mean by the Deep State. I found this on — where else? — Google: The idea of a deep state in the United States is a conspiracy theory whose adherents assert that there exists a coordinated effort by career government employees to influence state policy without regard for democratically elected leadership.

Doesn’t that sound nefarious? Evil? Conspiratorial?

Sure it does. It’s also phony and fraudulent.

I have long adhered to the notion — quaint as it might sound — that “career government employees” work in public service to do good for the country. They wear military uniforms; they serve to protect us; they manage huge bureaucratic agencies; they work in the foreign service as diplomats and embassy staffers; they seek to provide our children with good educations; they want to clean our air and water; they provide affordable health care.

This idiocy we hear from the far right about a Deep State conspiring to undermine the government and, oh yes, impeach the president of the United States would be laughable if it weren’t so damn dangerous.

The House Intelligence Committee is going to trot out career diplomats, some of whom have fought on battlefields against our enemies. They will ask them to repeat what they said in private. Some of their testimony is going to damning in the extreme.

However, their testimony is going to prompt some peanut gallery epithets — perhaps even from members of Congress who subscribe to this Deep State nonsense.

The term “Deep State” is meant to frighten Americans into believing that a constitutional action being taken by Democratic members of the House of Representatives is an evil act.

It is nothing of the sort. It is serious. It is grave. The impeachment inquiry is legal and it is in keeping with the U.S. Constitution.

I am looking forward to hearing what these career government employees have to say about how our president has conducted himself while holding our nation’s most exalted public office.

national news

What about ‘due diligence,’ Chairman Graham?

Dang! I always thought U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham was a competent lawyer, even if he was a shallow, callow politician.

Sen. Graham, one of Donald Trump’s staunchest Senate defenders, now says he won’t look at the transcript of interviews given by two key individuals linked to the potential impeachment of the president of the United States.

He calls it “BS,” and declares he has no intention of reading the text of the interviews collected by House committee members looking into the impeachment inquiry.

The testimony comes from European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Kurt Volker. The men reportedly have said they knew of a quid pro quo struck between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy over a request Trump made to Zelenskiy to dig up dirt Joe and Hunter Biden; if Zelenskiy delivered the goods on the Bidens, then he would get the military hardware Congress had approved, but which Trump withheld as part of the deal he sought to strike. It’s at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.

The transcript is now seen as crucial evidence that Trump has committed an impeachable offense.

Graham, though, won’t have any of it.

I believe the senator/chairman is committing an egregious error. It involves a commitment he has made to perform due diligence as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This is bad news, Sen. Graham. You need to do your job, even if it means reading material that does damage to Donald Trump.

environmental news

Climate change needs candidates’ attention … all of it!

When in the name of environmental sanity are the candidates for president of the United States going to devote their attention to what I believe is the world’s greatest existential threat?

Climate change, man!

Accordingly, Donald Trump — one of those presidential candidates — has declared that he has made the greatest mistake of his presidency. He said via Twitter that he has begun the nation’s formal withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. The United States was among more than 200 nations to sign the agreement to aggressively battle the effects of climate change and global warming.

So help me, this is the action of an incompetent fool. An imbecile. The president of the United States has turned this nation into effectively an “outlaw state” in the fight to stem the devastating impact of a changing global climate.

What in the world are any of the men and women who are seeking to defeat this goofball going to do about it?

I want to hear from all of them that they intend to sign an executive order the moment they sit down behind the big desk in the Oval Office that restores this nation’s commitment to fighting climate change.

I also want to hear specifics on how they intend to restore our nation’s commitment to alternative energy sources. I want them to tell us how they intend to replace fossil fuel-producing jobs with jobs related to the development of certifiably clean energy sources.

If we are able to get past this impeachment madness and if we ever could get Donald Trump focused on issues that actually matter and yanked away from the nonsense that pours routinely out of his mouth, then there might be a serious discussion and search for answers for what I believe is the issue that threatens every human being on Earth.

Let’s get busy!

national news

‘Quid pro quo’ to become part of our lexicon

I’ll make a prediction: When the tumult over Donald Trump’s time as president is over, millions of Americans will develop a thorough understanding of the term “quid pro quo.” 

It might even become of those “cool” phrases that we’ll actually enjoy reciting.

It’s a Latin phrase that means “something for something.” Donald Trump’s current troubles involve his asking a foreign government for “something” in exchange for “something.”

The “something” Trump sought was dirt on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Joe Biden is the former vice president who might become the Democratic Party presidential nominee in 2020. The “something” Trump would deliver in exchange for the dirt would be weapons for Ukraine, which is fighting Russia-backed rebels.

The quid pro quo has become a central part of this impeachment inquiry. It’s a bad scene, man, if you’re the president of the United States and have sought this quid pro quo while serving as head of state of the world’s mightiest nation.

You see, the Constitution forbids a quid pro quo. Presidents aren’t allowed to solicit foreign governments for political help. Therein lies the impeachable offense that House of Representatives Democrats believe they have on the president.

The discussion going forward is going to involve plenty of references to quid pro quo. Americans might get sick of hearing the phrase. Or, they might decide that a president who sought to offer “something for something” is a serious enough offense to warrant getting tossed out of the White House.

national news

Whistleblower is entitled to keep ID a secret

Donald Trump and a number of prominent Republicans want the whistleblower who tore the skin off the impeachment fight to reveal his or her identity.

Trump says the individual is a “Never Trumper,” a former Barack Obama campaign or administration aide. Senate Republicans want the individual’s identity made public and they want the person to testify in public.

I want to dial this back.

I have always understood that the law creating the whistleblower allowed for people with information to share about government abuses to remain secret. That is why they’re called “whistleblowers,” isn’t that right? They are afforded a level of protection from those who would bully them, coerce them, intimidate them, force them to take back what they say.

The individual who, um, “blew the whistle” on the president seeking foreign government help in his re-election bid did so on information he or she obtained. One can challenge the veracity of what the person has revealed. There’s no need, though, to identify the individual, who is entitled to the level of protection that the whistleblower law provides.

There will be plenty of opportunities to challenge the testimony of other individuals with even more direct knowledge of what occurred, who did it and for what purpose.

Let’s all stay tuned and primed for when it all hits the fan.

2016 election, national news

Voters are facing a ‘fool me twice’ challenge in 2020

I have been proud to proclaim for the past three years that I was among a plurality of Americans who did not vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

I proclaim yet again. There. I said it.

However, the 2020 election is going to present Americans with another challenge. It deals with that saying you’ve likely heard: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

A minority of Americans got fooled in 2016 by the huckster posing as a presidential candidate. A quirk in the U.S. election system enabled Donald Trump to win the presidency on the strength of the Electoral College system; he won enough electoral votes to win.

So, what might this mean for the 2020 election? It well might mean that Trump is in a position to stage the same kind of victory he scored four years earlier.

Which compels me to invoke what I believe was arguably the nation’s most profound political mistake with Donald Trump’s fluke election in 2016.

A man with no public service experience, or the lack of any shred of public involvement in his entire adult life managed to win the only public office he ever sought. He tapped into some dark national mood to win enough votes in just the right states.

What’s more, he has governed the same way he campaigned. He has appealed to Americans’ anger at, let’s see, the media, something called “The Deep State,” socialists, political correctness, immigrants (legal and illegal).

Granted, the economy has continued to do well under Donald Trump’s time as president. However, he inherited an economy in good shape, so I’ll give him credit for not shredding it.

It’s all the other stuff that has me hoping that he gets the boot in 2020 that he avoided getting in 2016. He treats allies like enemies; he disparages our institutions; he trashes presidential tradition.

And of course he abuses the power of his office. The House of Representatives is likely to impeach the president. He’ll stand trial and is likely to avoid conviction on a constitutional “technicality.” Then he will get to campaign for re-election.

Is this nation really and truly ready to return this man — who is replete with his myriad idiotic pronouncements — to the Oval Office?

My goodness. Let us not get fooled again.

national news

Impeachment: Problematic, but necessary

I have traipsed all over the proverbial pea patch in trying to assess whether the U.S. House of Representatives should impeach Donald J. Trump.

At this moment, and it appears to be a permanent view, I stand in favor of impeachment as a necessary evil. Will a House impeachment result in Trump’s removal from the presidency of the United States? Probably not. The Senate’s Republican majority isn’t likely to follow the House Democrats’ lead in determining that Trump committed impeachable offenses that merit his ouster.

My former view was that impeachment would be an exercise in futility. So, my thought held, what is the point?

I have determined that the point is that Congress cannot let stand what it believes are acts that constitute egregious abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

It is all but proven that Trump sought personal political help from a foreign government. That’s a crime. The president of Ukraine and Trump spoke on the phone. The Ukrainian thanked Trump for supplying his country with military weaponry, but Trump then said he needed a “favor, though” in return for delivery of the weapons to be used against Russian aggressors.

Trump has sought foreign government help in digging up dirt on Joe Biden, a potential political foe in 2020. How in the world is that not an impeachable offense?

The president’s ouster as a result of impeachment remains unlikely at this moment. The Senate will hold a trial. Republicans occupy 53 of the body’s 100 seats. The U.S. Constitution requires a two-thirds vote to convict a president for him to be kicked out of office.

The way I see it, it is entirely possible for most senators to vote to convict Trump, just not enough of them to kick him out of the White House. I can think of possibly four Senate Republican votes to convict: Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander and Johnny Isaakson; the latter two are not seeking re-election in 2020 and are immune from any retribution Trump might seek to level against them. Then again, a slim majority to convict Trump presumes all Senate Democrats vote to uphold the House impeachment.

Yes, this impeachment inquiry remains highly problematic. However, I believe now that it must proceed and it should result in articles of impeachment against the president.

Donald Trump has richly earned the inglorious title of “the nation’s third president to have been impeached.” Whether he can parlay that epithet into a winning re-election strategy remains to be seen.

If he does, then there will be something terribly wrong with our nation’s political system.

national news

Trump’s hypocrisy on full display … imagine it!

Donald Trump now is insisting that “the whistleblower” whose comments have helped trigger the move toward presidential impeachment must testify in public. He or she must sit in front of Congress and answer questions out loud.

Written testimony “is not acceptable,” according to the latest version of Trump’s doctrine.

Really? He said that?

Why do you suppose he refused to answer questions posed to him directly by former special counsel Robert Mueller III during the investigation into alleged Russian collusion during the 2016 presidential campaign? Why, the president only responded in writing to Mueller’s team of investigators.

Hypocrisy, anyone?

national news

POTUS works overtime to hide ‘nothing’

Donald J. Trump keeps insisting he has done nothing wrong. He calls the Democratic effort to impeach him the “greatest witch hunt in our history.” The president calls it a hoax. He calls the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution a “phony” proviso.

All that said, why in the name of presumed innocence does he keep acting like someone who’s trying to hide things from congressional inquisitors?

The House is getting ready to impeach the president. They have a trove of issues on which to decide. They include obstruction of justice, abuse of power, violating his oath of office, possible bribery.

However, the president says he has done nothing wrong. That July 25 phone conversation with the Ukrainian president in which he sought a “favor, though” in exchange for weapons was “perfect,” as Trump has described it.

His newly installed press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, said Trump “has nothing to hide.”

C’mon, gang! With nothing to hide, with there being no “there” there,” why does Trump keep acting like someone who’s trying to keep the goods out of Congress’s hands?

He did the same thing when special counsel Robert Mueller III was trying to ascertain “collusion” with Russians who interfered with our 2016 election. Trump is continuing the same tactic now as House Democrats proceed with their impeachment inquiry.

Hey, I am sitting in the peanut gallery. I get that I am nowhere near the center of the action. Still, from my perch out here in Trump Country, Donald Trump is acting far more like someone with plenty to hide than the victim of a “witch hunt.”