Open Forum, Post Impeachment Edition.

/ Jack Marshall

I’m off to the hospital, and who knows what may befall, so let’s do another Open Form.

I’m sure you can find something to argue about, ethically and civilly, of course.

I’ll be back after a sandwich, or maybe three…

59 thoughts on “Open Forum, Post Impeachment Edition.”

  1. Warren To Discuss Native American Policy With Tribal Leaders

    In related news, corpulent pediatricians to discuss childhood obesity.

    A satire wrapped in a parody wrapped in a mockery wrapped in an absurdity wrapped in a sham wrapped in a caricature wrapped in a spoof wrapped in a farce wrapped in a charade wrapped in a laughingstock wrapped in a tragicomedy.

    Reply

    • What is there to discuss? We cannot change the past. Pandering to the shattered remnants of a native culture that was sometimes treated unfairly by our ancestors solves nothing.

      Reply

      • ”What is there to discuss?”

        Unless something mortally wounds the Biden candidacy (not all that unlikely), nothing; Warren will be an afterthought/also-ran.

        IMO, Warren is attempting a little triangulation because she’s justifiably mortified that someone like Twila Barnes, et al will be enlisted in what will be a brutal, yet deserved, assault on her tripling/quadrupling/quintupling down on her bogus, nonexistent Native American heritage.

        “Any man (or Tyler) who thinks [they] can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of [them] better take a closer look at the American Indian.” attributed to Henry Ford

        Reply

        • That was a great article. Warren’s own attempt at portraying herself as as a political mascot,while ignoring the very people she claimed to represent and speak for is succinctly described in this article. Thanks

          Reply

        • Remember, Biden’s polling (this is the kind of thing where polling helps) has never topped 25%. At some point, all the socialists/social justice warriors/ candidates older than dirt will coalesce into one “woke” opponent, while Joe is talking about malarkey and feeling up women and girls. Maybe it will be Buttigieg, whose sexual orientation makes him special, but I still believe the Democrats can’t nominate a white male after all their rhetoric and #MeToo nipping at their nose. Biden’s not going to be the candidate.

          Reply

          • Jack wrote, “Biden’s not going to be the candidate.”

            I’m not so sure about that, this whole Ukraine fiasco has put an entirely new twist on the Biden candidacy. Clearly most of the political left have been propagandized into paranoia thinking that Trump was politically fearful enough of Biden that he was willing to do impeachable things to interfere with the 2020 election so he could beat Biden in the election. I think the Biden campaign will start to capitalize on this irrational paranoia and promote himself as the only one that Trump “knows” can beat him.

            Reply

    • Warren Reverses Her Position On Preserving Indigenous Culture And Reservation Hegemony.

      “Since I discovered I am not a Native American my whole relationship to the so-called Native Peoples has changed. I am now proudly working with private mining interests to open up these markets to exploitation and to bring much needed jobs to the reservations.”

      Read the rest here.

      Reply

      • “Can we hope that there will be an updated edition of Pow Wow Chow forthcoming?”

        When you say updated, do you mean ”authentic?”

        While not something she prefers to discuss, Lieawatha’s recipes were LIFTED.

        Elizabeth Warren’s Pow Wow Chow ‘Cherokee’ Recipes Were Word For Word COPIES Of Famous FRENCH Chef’s Techniques

        What a freakin’ phony!

        Reply

        • Wa-tsi wi-lo-hi ku-na! Injun Liz a fake? Ce n’est pas possible! Her grandmother assured her the recipe for Vautour au Fumet in Larousse Gastronomique was an old family dish.

          Reply

  2. I’ve been constantly hearing the following in some way, shape, or form from the political left:

    1. The fact that President Trump hasn’t offered any defense is “proof” of his guilt.

    2. President Trump stopping others in the Executive branch from testifying is “evidence” of his guilt.

    3. President Trump has no civil rights in regard to impeachment.

    4. The executive branch of government has no Constitutional right to challenge Congress when confronted with a Congressional subpoena.

    5. The burden of proof does not apply to the accusers in an impeachment.

    6. President Trump must prove his innocence.

    7. Using quid pro quo in foreign policy is illegal and an impeachable offense.

    These signature significant statements from people show that they are either political hacks, ignorant, or both.

    Reply

  3. What I’m having a really hard time digesting is the kabuki elements of this process.

    When I was around 8 years old, my grandmother took me to her Pentecostal church, which my father referred to as “The Holy Rollers”, although I didn’t understand the reference at the time. It was fun! There was singing, and dancing, and then like 10 minutes of boring talking, followed by a couple minutes of adults talking in gibberish speak… It was a million times more engaging to 8-year-old me than the three hundred hours of “And also with yous” that I was used to (probably more like two, but it felt like 300). That is, until one of the faithful was “touched” and fell to the floor shaking. This was terrifying to 8-year-old Jeff, who didn’t understand. I thought that everyone around him had been playing too, that they were having fun. This was my first introduction to an idea: That not all people think the same way.

    That idea has grown and matured over time; even when faced with the exact same experiences and information, people can come away with vastly different takes on the situation. People’s risk appetites are different, people’s tolerances are different, people’s biases are different. And so it’s important when looking at how other people are acting to try to step outside your paradigm and to try to understand what the other side is thinking. For the most part, it works; Even if I deeply disagree with someone, I can generally at least see where they’re coming from.

    In these proceedings, I’m at a loss. I don’t get it. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Despite putting on airs like they’re a couple steps away from an old folks’ home, Pelosi and Schumer aren’t stupid people. (Although, I think it’s telling that they put on those airs, I think that while Republicans respond positively to sharks like Jim Jones or Devin Nunes, Democrats value a harmless, doddering quality to their candidates.) And so, I don’t understand the game plan. Impeachment as a topic seems to have imploded spectacularly in their faces; The senate won’t, and was never going to, cooperate, so they aren’t actually going to remove him. I had an inkling that they thought perhaps that they’d discover something akin to the Nixon tapes that would blow the lid off this thing, but they had to know that was unlikely, so what was plan B? I’ve said before that I thought it was a multi-year, eight-figure, taxpayer funded PR campaign, but with the artificially stated Christmas deadline for impeachment, the Democrats weren’t able to even call all of *their* witnesses, they’ve hideously understated their case, when their own witnesses weren’t blowing their own narrative out of the water. And it shows: Public perception is turning against them and pundits at CNN are losing it.

    Did they know, I wonder, that this would happen if they didn’t find their smoking gun, and so decided to sewer their investigation quickly so as to get the embarrassing loss out of the way a year before the election so as to give the electorate the most time to forget that it happened? Were they pressured by an ever more bubbled base to do something in regard to impeachment? Are they just so deranged by Trump that they didn’t see this coming? I really don’t know.

    To be frank, I don’t even know if they believe their own narrative. I don’t think they do, but just like 8-year-old me standing in the midst of a shaking adult while other adults gibbered around her, I don’t have any conception on Earth what the hell these people are thinking. They’ve let the masks slip a couple of times, and they seem really happy about this, but I don’t understand why. It really undercuts the whole “sad and solemn” narrative they’re attempting, but more than that, I cannot fathom what outside a visceral hatred of Trump has them so happy. It’s not a political win, it’s not a legislative win, it’s not even a polling win, this seems *really* hollow, and now they have to live with all the fallout. Is this a win for them?

    Reply

    • My thought is that the House will never transfer the Articles to the Senate. Instead, the Democrats will use the Articles as a campaign issue throughout 2020. “You can’t vote for Trump; he was impeached!”

      Reply

      • Interesting…maybe it’s a way for House Democrats to claim a win without an outright acquittal to sully it. Way to aim high, Democrats.

        I wrote it in the “Impeachment” thread: if the House really had a case they thought should be heard by the Senate (even if knew acquittal was coming, like in 1998), they would pass the articles of impeachment to the Senate. If they don’t, it only adds strength to the idea that their case is baseless and this is more about political spectacle than legal recourse for actual high crimes and misdemeanors committed by the CIC.

        Reply

        • I think in large part that the Democrats will count on the media to push the “Impeachment” message. So many people are misled that way.

          Reply

        • I’ve characterized this as the Democrats are facing a 4th down and 25 yards to go on their own 1 yard line. They’ve played horribly this whole time. Their only option is to punt or throw a Hail Mary.

          Opting to “withhold” the articles of Impeachment (whatever that even means) is equivalent to the punt here. Only, the likelihood, following the analogy, is their punt won’t go past the 50 yard line and still puts the Republicans well within scoring territory.

          Reply

        • Nope. When Pelosi passes the articles to the Senate, the media will all nod their heads and say that impeachment is moving on to the “next phase”: The Senate Trial. Everything is going according to plan, why would question it?

          Reply

            • Charges would probably be dismissed. But prosecutors may ne subject to ethical discipline by the bar for bringing charges without basis. Of course, ethics apparently have no place in Congress at the moment.

              Reply

              • It’d be awesome if, we had a really awesome Chief Justice, that at the co conclusion of this wreck, the Chief Justice went Barney Greeenwald on the whole lot of those responsible for this fiasco.

                And no, I don’t intend the entire movie in all its components is analogous here.

                Reply

      • The best response Trump can make is to state before the vote it was imperative to impeach me because I was threat to the Constitution but now the are willing to violate my 6th amendment right to a speedy trial for political gain because they do not want me to present a defense with the likelihood of an acquittal. Imagine if you were publically charged but never given an opportunity to defend yourself. That is what the progressives will do to you if you get in their way.

        Reply

    • HT,
      Lots of good points in your comment.

      About your last paragraph; think a little about history and how the political left has been morphing government leftward and what they’ve been doing in Congress for over 50 years. The political left has shown a pattern of thinking about their end goal that’s more inline with socialism. The Democrats don’t do anything without their next “logical” step towards socialism already firmly in their mind. They been taking one little step at a time then they pile on that one little step with another and another and another etc. Based on their patterns I believe that this impeachment is just another one of their steps towards their end goal. During the Obama administration they kicked up timeline to achieve their goals.

      I think they want to create a serious Constitutional crisis so they can directly challenge the things in the Constitution that directly impede their end goals.

      Reply

    • Comment of the Day, HT. The decision to, apparently, freeze the process is evidence of more confusion. I wrote recently that this phenomenon may end up in the psychiatric journals, and you convince me that I may not have been as hyperbolic as I thought…

      Reply

  4. I am reminded these days of a line from a Southern comedian of the ’60’s–Brother Dave Gardner: “You’re from the South; you must be a Democrat.” “Nah, I learned to read.” He also said “I’m neither Republican nor Democrat, lest I forget the country.”

    Reply

  5. If I were in the Senate, I would vote to summarily dismiss the impeachment. And I would say this.
    “Let’s assume arguendo that President Trump threatened to withhold military aid to the Ukraine unless they smeared Joe Biden.

    So what? It is not wrong. Threats to withhold aid is how we do foreign diplomacy. Smearing people is how politics is done! Working with others to smear political opponents is how politics is done! How can this be wrong just because they are done together?

    If you want to talk about abuse of power, how about Obama? He threatened to withhold funding from universities unless those universities violated the due process rights of male students. And he did that to gain extra political support from feminists and anti-rape activists in the upcoming election! The Democrats sure did not have a problem with that, but they sure had a problem with Trump and Education Secretary DeVos in undoing that egregious abuse of power, an abuse that threatened civil rights, an abuse done solely for Obama’s political benefit.

    So fuck Nancy Pelosi, fuck Jerrold Nadler, fuck Adam Schiff, and most of all, fuck the Woketarian Left that corrupted an entire political party!”

    Reply

  6. Here is an article.

    http://reason.com/2019/12/19/the-other-impeachment-article/

    Over at the New York Times, I have an op-ed on Article II of the impeachment of President Trump. This article charges the president with obstruction of Congress because of his refusal to provide witnesses and documents to the House as part of its impeachment inquiry.

    The House Democrats have not done a particularly good job of laying the groundwork for this article. They devoted hardly any time in congressional committees to the issue of presidential obstruction. They largely ignored it in their presentation of the president’s misconduct. They muddied the waters by also pursuing a lawsuit hoping the courts will weigh in in favor of their right to this material. They are “threatening” to sit on the articles of impeachment unless the Republicans agree to hear in trial the very testimony that forms the basis of the obstruction charge.

    Nonetheless, the president’s unusual and extreme defiance of Congress demands a response if Congress is going to be able to preserve its own constitutional prerogatives. Impeachment is not the only possible response to such obstruction, but it is a possible response. Hopefully, the Republicans in Congress will not succumb to the temptation to defend the president by arguing that it is actually a good thing for a White House to engage in blanket obstruction of congressional oversight, up to and including impeachment inquiries.

    Reply

    • The response is to challenge it in court. If Congress abuses its oversight role, what is the President’s option? The position that POTUS has no obligation to cooperate with a partisan exercise using the oversight process to fish for excuses to impeach him is only “unusual and extreme” because the “resistance” in the House has been behaving outrageously. This is where the Johnson impeachment becomes relevant. He took the “unusual and extreme” measure of deliberately breaking an unconstitutional law passed to neuter his power, The Tenure of Office Act. Congress impeached him for it, and almost removed him, but he was right, as SCOTUS confirmed after he left office.

      Reply

    • Great. Now I have to watch it as a matter of professional integrity. Loved the bonkers TV series. Detested the movie version with Dr. Smith (Gary Oldman) as a real villain. I felt like watching the latest remake would be a betrayal to old faves from my childhood, like Guy Williams (Zorro!), June Lockhart (Lassie!), Jonathan Harris (“The pain! The pain!”), Billy Mumy (“Wish him into the cornfield!”) and especially Angela Cartwright. That show was so bats ethics never came into it. Why didn’t they just leave Dr. Smith on a rock? Why did anyone trust him? Why didn’t the Robot get rid of him? WHY DID EVERY FREAK IN TH GALAXY DROP IN ON THAT GODFORSAKEN PLANET???

      Reply

        • I’m torn as to whether LIS makes the list of TV shows from that era that are required viewing for cultural literacy. Let’s see: The Beverley Hillbillies, Star Trek, Hogan’s Heroes, Get Smart, Laugh-In, Mission Impossible, Bewitched, Bonanza…it probably doesn’t make the cut.

          Reply

          • Well, me, born in 1981.

            I’m very familiar with, via reruns:

            The Beverley Hillbillies
            Star Trek
            Hogan’s Heroes
            Bewitched
            Bonanza

            Familiar with via movie remakes but not the original series:
            Get Smart
            Mission Impossible

            Not familiar with:
            Laugh-In

            Reply

            • That’s not bad at all, though the film version of “Get Smart” wouldn’t give any sense of the TV show’s vibe. Tom Cruise’s version of MI is on steroids, but the original’s spirit (credit sequence and theme music) lives on.

              Laugh-in was arguably the best and most culturally important of all of those shows. I recommend the DVDs.

              Reply

                • Oh, absolutely. I was working off a published list of all the TV shows of 1967, and for some reason The Smothers Comedy Brothers Hour (its official name) wasn’t on it. so I assumed it arrived in 1968. Wrong, and it belongs on the list anyway. It was a true cultural force, and more openly political than any prime time TV show up to that point. And, of course, the show’s audacity got them fired by CBS.

                  Laugh-in and the SCBH set up a friendly rivary, though Laugh-In’s political satire was much less pointed, and also tangential to the show’s main theme, which was vaudeville-type comedy. (It did score the bigger political coup, however, with Richard Nixon showing up in cameo, saying “Sock it to ME?” The ploy might have gotten him elected…

                  Reply

      • Dr. Smith was a real villain at the very beginning of the TV series…an agent of a foreign power plotting to destroy the ship. He was intended as a throwaway character in a “serious” sci-fi story.

        Supposedly, Harris was bored with playing a straight bad guy and started hamming it up, to the point where that version of the character was retained, and the plot shifted to a campy (Batman!) focus on Dr. Smith, Will, and the robot.

        The freaks generally didn’t drop in on one particular planet, they appeared as the injured ship hopped from planet to planet on its attempt to return home.

        Reply

          • Now, the Robinsons may have moved in some episodes that I missed, I guess, but other than when it switched to color, there were no discernible differences in the terrain. It was funny, but if they had moved many times, it would have been ridiculous.

            Reply

            • I should know better by now than to depend on my increasingly unreliable memory, and I can’t swear to have seen all the episodes. Checking the fan wiki, it appears that there were between 12 and 16 different planets (some unnamed) visited over the three years, depending on how certain info was interpreted. Guess we were both sort of right.
              A lot of it was pretty low budget; props and monsters recycled, including some from other programs by the same company.

              Reply

Leave a reply to Jack Marshall Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.