Tag: impeachment

This Week in News (Impeachment Season Finale, Iowa Debacle, Ripped up Speeches, & Clowns of the Week)

This was an eventful week and one that was a complete disaster for the Democratic Party. Impeachment finally ended, unsurprisingly, with an acquittal which was slightly overshadowed by the Dem elites showing their incompetence when they couldn’t figure out what happened in Iowa. Bernie Sanders won Iowa’s popular vote and it looks like he’ll be tied with Pete for delegates but the data looks riddled with errors so who knows. Sometimes I honestly think the leaders of the Democratic Party are trying to lose that way there’s no pressure on them to actually do something.

Impeachment Finale

After being impeached in the House, President Trump was acquitted by the Senate after no witnesses were called and with Mitt Romney being the only Republican voting to convict. Like usual in Washington, neither side looks good in what happened, but the Democrats certainly look worse. There were no witnesses called as some Senate Republicans admitted the President did what he was accused of but that it was a simply a “policy difference” and not worthy of impeachment. As always it was very funny watching the goalposts move from Republicans from “he didn’t do it” to “But, but, but, Joe Biden” to “it wasn’t that bad” and then it just moves to the next outrage. The one thing you kinda have to respect the GOP for is that no matter how many times they change their story or contradict themselves they stand firm and it works as they don’t get called out by the media for any of it. Other Senators (Susan Collins) are saying they didn’t vote to convict because Trump learned his lesson from this whole thing (no joke needed for that claim). However, even with all the goalpost moving and spinzones coming from the right, the Democrats look manage to look worse. As I’ve been saying from the beginning it was incredibly stupid to focus something as big as impeachment on Ukrainian aid. No real, actual person gives a shit about that. The Democrats STILL DON’T HAVE HIS TAXES. They’ve controlled the House for over a year and can’t do something as simple as that. If they really wanted to take him down they should’ve gotten those and said hey look how much money he’s making off being President. Maybe investigate assassinating a couple of foreign officials? Look at paying off a pornstar? Planning a Trump Tower Moscow? The scam that was Trump U? Obstruction of Justice? Nope….the geniuses in the House leadership chose fucking Ukraine aid to hang this whole charade on and because of that, they got the result they deserved.

Debacle in Iowa

Speaking of Democratic incompetence, the candidates running to face off President Trump had the first contest in Iowa this week. Now of course the party that’sbeen sooooo concerned with election interference used the unhackable tech of paper to count the votes right??? Of course not….instead they decided to use a fucking app designed by some Hilary for America grifters. The company that designed this app was legitimately named SHADOW….because nothing says transparency like allowing a company named Shadow to handle the results. They then decided to double down on their stupidity by releasing only 62% of the vote while they tallied the rest. Now ignoring how stupid that is, if you’re gonna do that you do it must be because you’re positive those votes are 10000% correct. Obviously, they were riddled with errors and the media reported them because they apparently have nothing better to talk about than incorrect data. The whole thing is such a shitshow it’s hard to believe these people in charge ever got power over anything let alone an entire fucking political party. If you fuck up and don’t have the results that same night, then wait until you have every single vote counted and have tripled checked their accuracy before releasing it. Heads have to roll after this whole thing. The leader of the Iowa Democratic Party has to go and so does Tom Perez (DNC chair). Lucky for Tom though it would make the Dems look worse if they fired him after only 1 contest so he’ll get to stay in power a little longer. It’s ironic though that for over 4 years Democrats have been clinically paranoid about Russia, seeing Putin behind every dark corner, but when it came down to it the biggest threat to elections was their own incompetence.

Trump Admin Blowing Up National Monument For “The Wall”

The Intercept ran a good story, about how the Trump administration is setting off dynamite in a national monument, UNESCO biosphere, and land sacred to local Native Americans in order to build more of his wall in southern Arizona. This is the type of story that the national media and Democrats should focus on more. Even when Republicans controlled Congress for 2 years they couldn’t pass funding for the wall. But no one seems inclined to try to stop this or any other building of the wall. Regardless of you’re stance on immigration, everyone should be in agreement that the wall is an incredibly dumb idea. You know you’re “solution” to a problem is bad when there are several easy ways to avoid it. Even ignoring tunnels (the most used way to get into the country) anyone looking to get in the U.S, faced with a wall can get past it with a couple shovels, a ladder, a fucking trampoline, or even a Bluth Company stair-car.

Trump Admin Bringing Back Landmines

Yes you read that correctly, the Trump admin is bringing back LANDMINES. Honestly between a wall and landmines what fucking year does Trump think it is??? However, there are some odds of what outdated thing Trump will bring back next and knowing him one of these will be brought back before his term is up.

My Pick: Tar & Feathering +325

Nancy Pelosi Rips Up Trump’s Speech

Now I didn’t watch the State of the Union speech but it must’ve been pretty inconsequential if the big story coming out of it was Nancy Pelosi ripping up Trump’s speech afterwards. My only take on this is…..I don’t give a single shit and neither should you. There’s an infinite amount of more important things going on in the world. Plus it’s not even close to the worse thing Pelosi did this week…

Juan Guaido Goes to Washington

The Venezuelan opposition member was a guest of the President for the State of the Union and Nancy Pelosi proceeded to welcome him as a guest to Congress. She praised him for his “courage” and as a “friend to democracy”. Now for those who have not followed the Venezuela saga, the U.S, among other imperialists, have called for the removal of President Maduro citing irregularities in his election. Guaido tried to claim himself President but when that foolproof plan somehow didn’t work he stuck around still trying to gain legitimacy. All the puppets of the Military Industrial Complex are backing him and it seems like a sensible plan as whens the last time a CIA backed leader ever failed or did anything bad??? Now in spirit with Guaido, after the embarrassment in Iowa, I am declaring myself the leader of Iowa and I’m sure that once the CIA gets back to me on my endorsement request I too will be celebrated and welcomed to Washington with open arms as a legitimate leader.

Clown Take of the Week

As always there were a lot of contenders for this award. Everyone who suddenly doesn’t care about Iowa after Bernie won was in contention but there were too many to single out just one. Instead the winner of the Clown Take of the Week is former Senator and current MSNBC talking head Claire McCaskill. Talking about Mitt Romney’s Impeachment Vote, she said “He’s going to sleep soundly. His children are going to look at him with pride. And at the end of the day, isn’t that way more important?”. This quote is the perfect showcase for the how shallow the liberal ideology is. All you need to do for these neoliberals or establishment figures is just 1 thing and you’re past is forgotten and you’re a hero. Previously it was John McCain for his vote against repealing ObamaCare. Then every #Resister built a shrine to lifelong Republican Robert Mueller and treated him as their deity. Now people are doing the same with Mitt Romney. Forget Bain Capital and everything else they went after him for in 2012 and forget him tucking his tail between his legs and interviewing for a job with Trump after 2016. Now that he made this vote that literally accomplishes nothing he is the epitome of courage and morality.

Person who was deemed out of touch by people they are accountable to: Nothing
MSNBC: Take our money…We need your expertise

Clown of the Week

Nancy Pelosi did everything she could to win this, as did another moron MSNBC talking head Jason Johnson (quick thread on his incompetence this week). But the only person that could be the Clown of the Week is DNC chair Tom Perez. Either Perez was in the dark about the app that would be used in Iowa or he thought it was a good idea….either way he looks like an idiot. Then he came out of the blue right before the final results came in and called for a recount. Now this is not something the DNC can actually do as it must be called for by a campaign. Perez (and the DNC by extension) just looks so bad through all of this as if he was actually concerned about the legitimacy of the results he would’ve called for none of the results to be released until they were confirmed accurate. Coincidentally Perez made this call right as Bernie was catching up to Pete in State Delegates (and extending his popular vote lead). Honestly the fastest way for Perez to get me to respect him would be to say he was trolling. Clearly he wasn’t though and even if you ignore all the shadiness that occurred in Iowa (the app was developed by people with clear links to the Democratic establishment, Pete paying the company that developed it, releasing partial data with Pete leading, & Perez’s timing) it is still a complete disaster. While I do think there was some nefariousness going on, I think the main problems here were greed and stupidity. This is one of the biggest reasons people like Perez and the DNC despise outsiders like Bernie….cause they know if someone like him was in charge all the cash going to idiot strategists and consultants will dry up. It’s seems impossible now that after the election Perez will be in charge of the DNC but honestly if he makes it that far he should be thankful.

Leader of the “People’s Party”

Impeachment Update

*Full disclosure I haven’t watched much of the Impeachment proceedings cause I’m not a huge reality TV guy and if I was I’d tune into the experts at E! or VH1 or Survivor before I turn on C-SPAN* But there are 2 main things that seem to be the focus right now. Calling Witnesses and John Bolton’s book. A story from the NYT claims that in Bolton’s book he says the President tied Ukrainian aid to a Biden investigation. Some on the left are treating Bolton as their new deity (move over Mueller) while some on the right are claiming he’s lying to sell books…..seems to me like there’s only one way to find out. Which segues perfectly into the next topic, calling witnesses. Regardless of what side you are on, you should want witnesses to be called….get Bolton, Pompeo, Guiliani, and whoever else on the stand under oath and figure out what happened. Is Bolton telling the truth? Is he lying to sell books? Did the President do something or did nothing happen? It’s unclear whether that will happen but if it does let’s hope some Senator has the balls to ask what every American really wonders with this John Bolton stuff…….what’s the deal with his mustache.

#NoFilter

The other question regarding witnesses is whether either Joe or Hunter Biden will get called. In theory I don’t mind either one of them getting called because there was probably some shady stuff going on there and no one in the media really wants to talk about it for some reason. But in reality if they actually get called it will just become a shitshow and Republicans will shift the focus to them instead of Trump.

One thing that I’ve notice is how far Trump supporters have moved the goalposts during this Impeachment thing. It follows the same pattern with almost everything other controversy starting with “He did nothing wrong” then its “maybe he did but it’s not a big deal/doesn’t matter” then to “what about Clinton/Obama/Biden” culminating with “Yes we know he did it but [fill in the blank] (no one cares/Liberal Media/Obama/Hillary”. Yet although we’ve seen this playbook routinely, the media still treats each phase with good faith like the great stenographers journalists they are.

I think most people suspect the President will be acquitted, with or without witnesses, from the beginning. Do I think he held up aid to get a Biden investigation….probably yes. But do I also think he has done far worse things….also yes. This is why Impeachment just hasn’t done anything for me from the start. If Democrats wanted to impeach him they should’ve really gone after him…look at his corruption and the stuff from the Mueller Report (obstruction, Trump Tower Moscow). They should’ve finally got his taxes, look into the assassination of Soleimani and go after everything, not just some foreign aid that no one really gives a shit about. I know people are saying “but he’s trying to get foreign help in the election” yes but he already admitted he would in a ABC interview last June! This whole thing has been a clownshow from the beginning with the Democrats choosing to focus on this one dumb issue while the Republicans don’t have the guts to stand up to Trump or his base and vote against him. The bottom line is the Democrats should of approached the whole thing differently, and shouldn’t try to claim the moral high ground, while the Republicans just look like morons going from being “deeply concerned” and saying foreign interference or using the aid to get an investigation are both wrong to now trying to spinzone their way out of it by saying it’s not enough to impeach or just hoping that yelling Biden, Obama, or whistle-blower enough times will somehow get them out of it.

House Passes War Powers Resolution/Impeachment disaster

In honor of the Jeopardy GOAT tournament, this is a daily double blog……here’s one blog on two of the more under-covered topics in the media today……..Iran and Impeachment.

Yesterday the House passed a War Powers Resolution in an effort to disprove of the recent assassination of Iranian General, Qasem Soleimani. This vote was bipartisan and it comes after members across the spectrum condemned the intelligence briefing given on the attack. But while this resolution seemingly has some merit, let’s look back at the not so distant past, when Congress passed a similar resolution on the U.S involvement in Yemen. That was subsequently vetoed by the President and *spoiler alert* Yemen is still subject to U.S produced bombs, U.S backed starvation, & U.S approved cholera.

After this, along with years of calling the President all kinds of dangerous or reckless,did the Democrats in the House use any of their power to vote for a progressive amendment to the NDAA like removing funding for the U.S backing of the Saudis in Yemen, repealing the 2002 Authorization of Military Force, or even barring military action in Iran without Congressional approval???? No of course not. The Democratic leadership folded, not wanting to seem partisan or have to actually fight for something. And their reward for not causing any fight or struggle with Republicans/the White House was………you guessed it the deescalation/ assassination of a top Iranian General.

Side Note: Somehow there is controversy over whether this should be labeled an assassination because, even though Soleimani was a government representative, he was also a bad guy with blood on his hands. To anyone who thinks this I’ll simply leave this:

If Hitler could be assassinated, anyone can

Now if the Democrats were smart, they would use this situation to solve their latest fuck-up, impeachment. The great minds of Democratic leadership, and their top consultants, decided not to focus on the Mueller Report (obstruction of justice or the talks to build a Trump Tower Moscow well into the campaign) or the Emoluments Clause/Corruption (Trump still making money from his businesses) but chose to focus impeachment solely on an issue no actual human being gives a shit about, the all-sacred military aid to Ukraine. This brilliant focus has generated such incredible support across the spectrum that the articles of impeachment still haven’t been sent to the Senate. No need to question the genius of the Democratic leadership though, I’m sure there’s a good reason the articles haven’t been sent yet like they’re just doing an encore in the House or something like that.

The official line from the Trump administration was the strike was to prevent an imminent attack. However, Secretary of State Pompeo said that they didn’t know “what or when” the attack would take place. Former Republican Justin Amash and Republican Senator Mike Lee were both unhappy with the intelligence they were briefed on. The administration has gone on to contradict itself with Trump saying 4 embassies were being targeted which was subsequently dismissed by Trump’s own Defense Secretary. Later the President tweeted that while people were looking to prove whether there was an imminent attack that it “doesn’t really matter”. Now it seems fairly plausible that this imminent attack defense is a lie for 3 reasons. 1. The administration’s abundant history of lying, 2. The fact that the Secretary of State is claiming to not know what that attack was or when it was occurring (which seems important) and 3. the fact that if there was an imminent attack, killing Soleimani wouldn’t stop it unless he was carrying it out himself. So with everything we know so far, it seems like the Trump Administration didn’t act totally on fact or reality, shocking I know.

Now if the Democrats had any balls they would vote to impeach the President on this and sent all 3 articles over to the Senate. Get all the top people in the Senate to testify, under oath, and tell the American people what happened. Will this work? No it probably wouldn’t but is the Democrats current strategy gonna do any better? A second strategy could be to just punt impeachment all together and vote to censure Trump over the assassination of Suleimani and pass something attempting to take back their Constitutional authority over approving military action. The whole point of the impeachment seems to be that the President misused his office for personal gain but if they impeached him for this assassination as well they could send the message that not only is he misusing the office but is doing so in a dangerously reckless way.

I want to end this blog with a criminally under-discussed clip from Nancy Pelosi in an Impeachment Town Hall. This clip highlights the hypocrisy on display by Democratic leadership. Now her main argument for Impeachment surrounds Trump abusing his office, but in trying to make this point she states that back when she was Speaker of the House in 2006 she knew George Bush lied us into the Iraq War and she took impeachment off the table:

Pelosi Logic:
Lying the country into a Catastrophic War=not impeachable
Temporarily Withholding Aid for Political Dirt=impeachable

Biggest Mueller Report Takeaway: Democrats are still huge pussies

Afters months and months of Democratic leadership claiming they needed to wait for Mueller report before making a judgment on impeachment (ignoring the numerous reports claiming illegal behavior, the President already being an unindicted co-conspirator and all the obstruction that took place in plain sight). Now that the (redacted version) of the Mueller Report has been released laying out the connections between members of the Trump campaign and Russian nationals as well as Trump’s numerous attempts to slow or dismantle the investigation. Even after this report was released the Democrats are still unwilling to do anything.

Steny Hoyer came out saying that impeachment is “not worthwhile” after seeing the report (echoing something Nancy Pelosi previously said). Hoyer wants to let the American public decide in the 2020 election. Today’s political landscape is increasingly impossible to parody and the Democratic leadership’s cartoonish levels of cowardice is one example. The courage of the Democratic Leadership makes the lion from the Wizard of Oz look like a fucking Achilles/Rambo hybrid by comparison. Even without the Mueller Report, the President was an unindicted co-conspirator in the campaign finance violations Michael Cohen was caught up in. There are also shocking levels of corruption with the Trump properties seemingly selling influence and allowing the President to profit off his position.

Instead of making that argument, along with the findings of the Mueller report, the Democrats are pussying out of the situation and shifting the responsibility to voters. Not only is this cowardly and an abdication of power, its also politically stupid. By not making the case against the President the Democrats seemingly concede the main tensions during the majority of this President. In addition, Democrats don’t have a great recent track record of making their case to voters and they will undoubtedly have more trouble if after 4 years of arguing about how horrible Trump is, they ignore the findings and refuse to impeach him for criminal actions.

If the Democratic leadership had any balls or will to make their case, they would have already started impeachment proceedings, they would issue way more subpoenas and not be trigger shy in issuing them, and they would try to impeach Barr and show how he is not objective or up to the standard of an Attorney General.

Now its no surprise to anyone who pays attention to politics that Democrats are rolling over like this but maybe they will face enough pressure to surprise everyone.