I was just lying awake with a dismal headache, as “Iolanthe’s” Lord Chancellor memorably sung, when it suddenly came to me, like a bolt from Olympus. I realized what it was that the unethical impeachment-rattling strategy of Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats reminded me of. It’s the same trick Saddam Hussein attempted regarding his elusive “Weapons of Mass Destruction” charade.
If you recall, Hussein tried to pull off a dangerous bluff. Having removed, shipped away to allies, or destroyed all of his WMDs to avoid the Gulf War against him resuming (it was only a cease fire, remember, with conditions that were supposed to be enforced by U.N. members), he flamboyantly behaved as if he still had them. The despot refused to allow the full inspections that the cease fire deal required, and also interfered with air surveillance. These were flagrant violations of the cease fire, but Saddam was certain that he could forestall any military action because the U.N. leadership, and notably Russia and France as well, were profiting from bribes and under-the-table deals to help Hussein get around U.N. sanctions, enriching both him and them while the Iraqi people suffered. His corrupt pals assured him that they were capable of keeping the United States at bay.
Why was Hussein playing this dangerous game? As he explained to his captors after his government was overthrown, he was bluffing to keep Iran from attacking, which he was certain it would do if they knew he had disarmed.
Now, you well might ask why anyone would admire a plan that not only got hundreds of thousands of people killed and wasted billions of dollars, but that also ended up with the planner being captured in a “spider hole” and ultimately executed. Remember, we’re not talking about entirely rational people here. We’re talking about “the resistance,” and those a party that is hostage to it. The circumstances of the Democrats’ lack of metaphorical WMDs are different in their details: the “resistance” had convinced themselves that they would get damning evidence from the Mueller Investigation (Trump is a bad guy, so he must be guilty of something), but it provided nothing useful. The Democratic leadership is now trapped in a dangerous game that they think requires them to pander to and mollify a fanatic, anti-American, anti-democracy, furiously anti-Trump base, that is, as that description might suggest, irrational and destructive.
The fanatic base wants Trump impeached because they refuse to accept the results of the election. The Far Left also sees him and his party as impediments to such nation-wrecking agenda items as restricting free speech, eliminating the Second Amendment, gutting Due Process under the law, encouraging and justifying anti-white, anti-male and anti-Christian bigotry as well as erasing the distinction between illegal immigration and immigration. There’s more, like making an abortion right up to the moment of birth (and maybe after) as easy as buying a Snapple, and sending the U.S. down the same glorious socialist path as Venezuela, but I assume you get the idea.
Pelosi knows that the rational Democrat Party—I am assuming, without being at all certain, that there still is such a thing— cannot win without this group, as dangerous as they are, and also that its mouth-foaming members will not accept no for an answer regarding pursuing the dream its members have had since November 2016: overthrowing President Trump. Thus, like Hussein, Congressional Democrats are pretending that they do have the metaphorical WMDs, sufficient justification for impeachment, to avoid an attack—not by Iran, but by its wackos.
This explains Pelosi’s manipulative and dishonest remarks that begin with the presumption that they could successfully impeach Trump now, when it is obvious, or would be if the news media wasn’t assisting her charade, that they do not have what they need. Impeachment articles passed by the House, absent the kind of true smoking gun evidence that the surprise discovery of Nixon’s tapes provided, will not result in conviction by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. The claims that Trump has committed impeachable offenses is so weak that it is even possible that enough Democrats would vote against them to defeat impeachment in the House, a disaster for the party.
Meanwhile, the hearings would also be a political disaster for Democrats. Not only is Rep. Gerald Nadler objectively repulsive, he’s also a likely hypocrite, saying exactly the opposite in 2019 of what he told the nation when he was denying that Bill Clinton had done anything wrong during those impeachment hearings. He, Maxine Waters and other fringe characters whose lack of competence and fairness would be on display are hardly Sam Irwin, and Pelosi knows it. C-Span is a wonderful remedy for even the most vigorous media spin.
At some level, an irresponsible and Machiavellian one, the Republican leadership probably does want to see the Democrats take this suicidal course, despite the toll these spectacles wreak on the nation and its government, just as many Republicans were not sorry that the U.S. was duped by Hussein’s act, since it gave them a reason to do what they wanted to do anyway–destroy him.
[Continued in PART II]
Ethics Alarms 
Posted today on facebook, to barking seal approval, by a high school buddy I’ve known since 1964 who’s evidently lost his mind:
IF INNOCENT, I would be urging EVERYONE to PLEASE read ALL those documents and hear those investigators exonerating me…
Either my buddy’s trolling or he’s turned into an idiot. Depressing.
Oh, he’s an idiot, all right.
Julie Principle predicates should allow OB to keep a pal of 55 years in the fold, am I right?
Not so sure, Paulie. Mrs. OB has always accused me of being too nice and loyal to people who don’t warrant such, and as usual, she’s probably right. This guy hound-dogged me with a girl I was dating in high school. I think I’ll let this friendship just slip quietly beneath the waves. Next time he calls for free legal advice, I’ll pull the old “You’re breaking up !” and hang up. We’re never too old to make beneficial changes in our lives. [ — the sage Mrs. OB] Cheers.
I hear spring should be coming to Wesconsin any month now.
”I hear spring should be coming to Wesconsin any month now.”
Do tell!
Can’t recall bulbs (tulips, daffodils, jonquils, hyacinths, early day lilies) this late.
Glass half full? Late bloomers, especially the lush ones, are a rare treat; heck, I’m one myself. I’ll cut several huge bouquets for my Dear 91 1/2 year old Mother throughout the weekend,
We WESsconsinites make Mother’s Day a whole weekend.
Some of us do, leastways
Trump’s “Sad!” seems apt. I usually avoid Facebook like the plague but I made the likely mistake of jumping in with this (we all went to Catholic boys high school in Cuban refugee Miami of the mid to late ’60s):
“Yeah, this “innocent until proven guilty” thing really does have to go. I mean, it’s absolutely ancient. We’re talking Magna Carta stuff, whatever that is. Something written by a bunch of old, wealthy, Catholic white guys. Probably in their late sixties. I’m with Joe Stalin (or even the high integrity guy, Fidel Castro and his wonderful brother): “Show me the man, I’ll show you the crime!” We need more of that kind of thinking! Right on! Trump’s gotta go by any means necessary.”
But most of the time I keep my mouth shut convinced that resistance to the Resistance is futile. What a goat rodeo.
This is a tragic question to have to ask, but is this “irresponsible and Machiavellian” supposed Republican desire to see Trump impeached and the Democrats thereby humbled and presumably set up to lose the election actually worse for the country than the prospect of a Democratic victory if maybe they don’t and make rational noises?
It’s a rhetorical question, but I think perhaps too important to ignore.
#22, no?
Yes, no doubt. But the question is still relevant. What if the harm to the country is in fact objectively worse in one case than the other?
It’s only a rationalization if it’s a matter of debate. I’m not so sure that’s the case here.
The fanatic base wants Trump impeached because they refuse to accept the results of the election
My impression is that they want to — they must — keep the pressure up against Trump. No matter how he seems vindicated on a given day they continually resurrect the issues. Anything that seems legitimate is used.
There exists a large proportion of the US population that *hates* him. What Trump is, or what he represents, is what must be defeated. It does not seem to matter to them (the D Party), and many different players in the US system, how Trump and what he represents is defeated, but will impeachment ever go forward? Seems doubtful. Is it really necessary if they can continue to discredit him and, importantly, create a rift between him and his *base*. (Articles today in the Times seem to be working this angle). Is it possible that they are merely doing all that they can to ensure that he is not reelected? That’s what it seems like to me.
The Far Left also sees him and his party as impediments to such nation-wrecking agenda items as restricting free speech, eliminating the Second Amendment, gutting Due Process under the law, encouraging and justifying anti-white, anti-male and anti-Christian bigotry as well as erasing the distinction between illegal immigration and immigration.
During A. Lincoln’s presidency, there came about a ‘state of exception’ and the use of executive power when the Nation was in a dangerous and shifting circumstance. The use of the executive for ‘dictatorial’ purposes which were deemed ‘necessary’ to ‘save the Republic’.
It is not the Far Left in America right now that seems to okay the invocation of such a ‘state of emergency’ and a ‘state of exception’ to confront what Trump represents. That is if Trump is seen, in certain ways, as representing the demographic that Pat Buchanan, for example, seeks to defend: White people and their interests, and America as their nation (“for ourselves and our progeny”) which is being attacked from various angles as it is undermined and restructured not by ‘the Left’ but by groups of powerful domestic governmental and industrial players, that is, by capital interests of a global nature and focus.
I suggest that the shrill, hysterical, clamor against *Trump* is in reality an engineered movement to defeat what Trump represents in the former senses (take Buchanan’s vision as a template). It is imperative that the New America defeat the more or less displaced Old America, and the New America is a multicultural and multi-ethnic conglomeration of diverse individuals, and as such represents a deviation from established notions of ‘nationhood’, and certainly the former understanding of what America was.
Whereas the nation was traditionally brought together and defined by a people with the same ancestors, speaking a common language, united by a religious faith, attached to the same principles of government, as well as sharing customs and mores in common, it is being re-configured so that it simply rests upon principles of government. It is interesting to note that, predominantly, on this Blog, that is the ‘America’ that is defended: a propositional America of disparate, disconnected ‘units’.
If you and anyone else were interested in defending Whites as Whites, one would read more of that here. But one does not read here any such thing. In this sense *you-plural* share a common vision with the Progressives.
There is a necessity among those working to undermine the hierarchies of yore to attack and undermine the men who built the nation and who made it possible (in fact); the white men who built the nation and make it possible (in fact), and certainly the Occidental Christian because that Christian has a connection to the metaphysical structures that allowed a nation like America to come to exist. Naturally, these must be attacked and undermined!
Please be so kind as to erase the above, and this.
[I messed up, here is the correct one]
The fanatic base wants Trump impeached because they refuse to accept the results of the election
My impression is that they want to — they must — keep the pressure up against Trump. No matter how he seems vindicated on a given day they continually resurrect the issues. Anything that seems legitimate is used.
There exists a large proportion of the US population that *hates* him. What Trump is, or what he represents, is what must be defeated. It does not seem to matter to them (the D Party), and many different players in the US system, how Trump and what he represents is defeated, but will impeachment ever go forward? Seems doubtful. Is it really necessary if they can continue to discredit him and, importantly, create a rift between him and his *base*. (Articles today in the Times seem to be working this angle). Is it possible that they are merely doing all that they can to ensure that he is not reelected? That’s what it seems like to me.
The Far Left also sees him and his party as impediments to such nation-wrecking agenda items as restricting free speech, eliminating the Second Amendment, gutting Due Process under the law, encouraging and justifying anti-white, anti-male and anti-Christian bigotry as well as erasing the distinction between illegal immigration and immigration.
During A. Lincoln’s presidency, there came about a ‘state of exception’ and the use of executive power when the Nation was in a dangerous and shifting circumstance. The use of the executive for ‘dictatorial’ purposes which were deemed ‘necessary’ to ‘save the Republic’.
It is not the Far Left in America right now that seems to okay the invocation of such a ‘state of emergency’ and a ‘state of exception’ to confront what Trump represents. That is if Trump is seen, in certain ways, as representing the demographic that Pat Buchanan, for example, seeks to defend: White people and their interests, and America as their nation (“for ourselves and our progeny”) which is being attacked from various angles as it is undermined and restructured not by ‘the Left’ but by groups of powerful domestic governmental and industrial players, that is, by capital interests of a global nature and focus.
I suggest that the shrill, hysterical, clamor against *Trump* is in reality an engineered movement to defeat what Trump represents in the former senses (take Buchanan’s vision as a template). It is imperative that the New America defeat the more or less displaced Old America, and the New America is a multicultural and multi-ethnic conglomeration of diverse individuals, and as such represents a deviation from established notions of ‘nationhood’, and certainly the former understanding of what America was.
Whereas the nation was traditionally brought together and defined by a people with the same ancestors, speaking a common language, united by a religious faith, attached to the same principles of government, as well as sharing customs and mores in common, it is being re-configured so that it simply rests upon principles of government. It is interesting to note that, predominantly, on this Blog, that is the ‘America’ that is defended: a propositional America of disparate, disconnected ‘units’.
If you and anyone else were interested in defending Whites as Whites, one would read more of that here. But one does not read here any such thing. In this sense *you-plural* share a common vision with the Progressives.
There is a necessity among those working to undermine the hierarchies of yore to attack and undermine the men who built the nation and who made it possible (in fact); the white men who built the nation and make it possible (in fact), and certainly the Occidental Christian because that Christian has a connection to the metaphysical structures that allowed a nation like America to come to exist. Naturally, these must be attacked and undermined!
I vehemently disagree. Buying Snapple is not easy. I haven’t even seen a Snapple since my college days. I just now overlaid the percentage of year over year growth for Snapple sales across the year over year growth for partial birth abortions and the two are nothing alike. A fetus’s chances of being born alive are statistically slim to begin with (27% chance of being miscarried or aborted) and their chance of finding a Snapple after being born? Less than 2.9%. I only know that because I read it on a Snapple cap. Over a decade ago.
No, I do not recall that ever happening – to my knowledge, though of course that does not show that it did not happen (absence of evidence, and that). I do, however, recall frequently seeing unbacked statements that it did happen, which of course is also consistent with the very same argument by repeated assertion of “the unethical impeachment-rattling strategy of Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats”.
Can you or any other readers point me towards substantive evidence that any of that ever happened (not yet more repeated assertion), rather than that Saddam Hussein complied fully but refused to let compliance monitoring be used as a stalking horse for follow up destabilisation via what used to be called “peaceful penetration”? That is a different unsubstantiated explanation I have also seen that is consistent with what I actually know.
You can do your own research, PL. I’m not going to waste time documenting what has been well-documented. Saddam did not “fully comply,” and did a great imitation of someone trying to hide his weapons. His statement that indeed he was bluffing to keep Iran at bay is a matter of record.
Funny, I expected you to cavil that while Saddam was pretending to have what he didn’t have, the Democrats are pretending to have what they don’t have.
Oh—since compliance monitoring was part of the compliance conditions, your statement makes no sense whatsoever. He could not block monitoring and be in compliance.
Bleep. Digression and distraction, thus:-
– Nowhere, nohow and nowise was there ever any suggestion – from me just there or from the people I was summarising, that Saddam Hussein blocked monitoring. They just asserted that he didn’t let monitoring be “give them an inch and they’ll take an ell”. The claim was that he didn’t let it be “a stalking horse for follow up destabilisation”, i.e. using monitoring as a pretext for getting into all sorts of other things. That is, things that weren’t monitoring but would have been carried out under a sort of monitoring false flag (false, as in “fake”, not the real thing). Think Rambouillet Accords, and why the Serbs didn’t sign off on those.
– Regardless, even if he had done just that, it’s non-responsive: so far I see no pointers towards evidence that he ever bluffed that he had that sort of weaponry after he committed to not having it (I’m pretty sure that he concealed how far along or not it was, earlier on and before all that while Iran was his only worry, but without necessarily claiming anything about just what he had). After a certain amount of diligent enquiry, absence of evidence starts to amount to evidence of absence – and, so far, I don’t see evidence.
You really shouldn’t present something that wasn’t there and makes no sense to justify not looking at what really was there and really does make sense.
You don’t think his own confirmation that he was trying to keep Iran and other nations guessing whether he still had WMDs constituted evidence that he was trying to keep Iran and other nations guessing whether he still had WMDs? Interesting. It was, as they say, in all the papers. It had also been widely speculated, since it seemed mysterious that he would put his rule in peril by refusing to allow his compliance to be definitively confirmed.
Do you mean, confirmation as reported by the same sources that were so incorrectly sure he had such weapons to begin with, reported via the very same media that you yourself have noted are unreliable whenever their own agenda is in play, and at best made while he was being interrogated under duress and with every incentive to please his captors? That’s at least two levels of unreliable hearsay right there, plus an implausible choice of which time he was lying even if he really did admit that.
Doesn’t that make it yet more plausible that that other scenario fits, the one about him not blocking compliance but being misrepresented as doing so to get that same opportunity of “peaceful penetration” that had not been agreed?
I have done my own research. I am trying to lead readers to do likewise, since they have cognitive dissonance reasons not to take anything that does not reinforce what they have bought into – even though:-
– “well-documented” and “matter of record”, so far, only points to what I describe above: double hearsay prepared with an agenda. The same media and intelligence agencies who you do not trust over Trump, I do not trust over other demonised persons.
– Failure to comply was never reported by anyone without such an agenda, to the best of my knowledge.
Now, none of this proves the contrary, but it does mean that we do not know yet, and it certainly seems foolish to assume that the least sensible of two possible behaviours was the one Saddam Hussein chose.
Why would you expect me to choose the least sensible of two possible behaviours?
Oh, and I still see no pointers to evidence, rather than pointers to unsubstantiated assertions made by the media to destabilise Saddam Hussein – you know, the very thing that the media would never, ever do to destabilise Trump.
Again, Saddam said what he said. Making up quotes whole cloth is not the biased media’s MO. Your argument boils down to “don’t confuse me with facts, my mind’s made up.” Never persuasive.