Thursday, November 21, 2019

 Well, that is that. We've heard all the testimony concerning the impeachment of the President of the United States of America, the third time it's happened in the nation's history and only the fourth time proceedings have gotten this far. Now it's all over but the crying.



 Well, that's not exactly true. The House Intelligence Committee, along with two other panels, will work on a report that could be the basis of articles of impeachment. Or they could just throw their hands up and drop the whole thing. If they do decide to impeach Trump, scuttlebutt is saying it could be sometime around Christmas before the vote could come up. Me, I like that. One, it lets the dumb bastard twist in the wind, saying all sorts of silly shit to pull him further in the muck, and, B, the waiting will drive him and the faithful nuts.

 Of course, that'll also mean a whole month of liberals building themselves up for another disappointment like they got with the Mueller Report. Just as an aside, that Report didn't exonerate the crooked bastard by any means. Mueller just said that he couldn't find enough to file charges, not that there wasn't some shenanigans going on nor that the House Democrats couldn't do some sniffing around on their own. In any event, cautious optimism should be the watchword here, but I know that'll be ignored, particularly on Twitter where everyone is a political science genius. I don't even know why that's a major in college anymore, since we're all Noam Chomsky/G. Gordon Liddy thanks to social media.

 Anyway. If impeachment does go forth, the House will hold a vote before it's moved to trial. I can't stress this often enough, but impeachment does not automatically equal a butt-first exist from the White House for Trump.

 You'll have to forgive me. I just saw a "sexy calendar" Twitter ad featuring David Wohl, the extremely skeevy father of pathetic wingnut geek Jacob Wohl, en flagrante nekkid with someone who goes by the handle "MagaBlonde". Both of them are in different stage of undress in what looks like his garage, and they really ought not be doing that. If I've got to see it, so do you. I hope his son doesn't get any ideas, all I got to say.

 Okay, where was I? Oh, yes. So, even if Trump is impeached he still has to go through an actual trial held by the Senate, which means all the yowling he and wingnut dingbats have been doing about "due process" and "cross examinations" will actually have some merit. Again, no president has ever been removed from office and, given the make up of the Senate, I doubt Trump will get the ax. Fact is, the base are still rabidly pro-Trump and the GOP overall knows which side their bread's buttered on.

 You know how you'll occasionally see the liberal version of polisci geniuses wonder what "they have" on Lindsay Graham or Rand Paul or, the newest member of that club, Elsie Stefanik, inferring that the Russians or some other nefarious group has blackmail that's keeping them from putting country before party. The answer is, of course, there is absolutely no blackmail on any GOP congress critter. This is what they are.

 Indeed, this is what they were when Trump was still a joke they told each other back in 2015. Now, the base they've been manipulating to become blind fanatics for an authoritarian grifter have found their boy and the party's stuck with all of it. It's their own fault they let someone so dumb and ham-handed slip into their spot, but don't pretend there's a noble soul buried under all that graft, 'cause there ain't.

 Today saw testimony from State Department official David Holmes and Fiona Hill, the former senior director for Russia and Europe at the National Security Council, and they both twisted Republican nuts. Holmes shot holes in complete twit Devin Nunes' favorite conspiracy theory that doesn't involve cows. Concerning a "black book", the idea was it had evidence of collusion between current felon Paul Manafort and future felon Rudy Giuliani, in re: dirty deals in Ukraine.

 Mueller didn't find it worth charging Trump over, which Nunes took as a slam dunk. Holmes, however, said it was not only worth digging into, but that it flat existed. It basically makes a paper trail, proving that Trump had sought foreign aid to dig up dirt on his rivals, rather than the other way around as Nunes and the rest of the sniveling toadies claimed.

 For her part, Hill came in with guns a-blazing, saying without even a hint of of question that U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Soundland's involvement with Ukrainian officials about Burisma, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden was Trump's "pursuit of a domestic policy errand at the expense of American foreign policy". She knew what Soundland was trying to pull and while she didn't move to stop it - claiming her anger was dismissed as "just being a woman," essentially - she knew it was going to blow up. And it did, in doing so torpedoing the claim that Trump was being ratfucked and, indeed, give a reason to give the whole "Russian interfered in the 2016 election" a fresh look.

 Really, check out Hill's testimony because there's way more to it than that, and it's all interesting as hell, son. And as it's a running theme with this hearing's witnesses, she's pretty pissed off. See, what most of us don't get is that the vast bulk of the actual nuts-&-bolts of governing, both domestic concerns and especially foreign entanglements, aren't done by politicians or elected officials. We may sneer at bureaucrats and bemoan their power and influence answerable to no election, but they're the ones that get shit done. That's just a fact of government, all governments. Complain if you want, change it if you can, but ignoring reality won't make it inconsequential.

 Okay, that's enough for tonight. This is admittedly a difficult nut to crack. Beyond it being so rare in history - and this is the first time it's happened in a president's first term - the very nature of it makes it a garbled, complicated beast. Makes me wonder why his handlers let someone as dumb as Trump try this and just who's running that monkeyhouse.

 In any event, it'll be nice to step away for a day or two. My brother and his wife are coming in to visit for Thanksgiving and they're bringing me some more medicine. That, plenty of good Doug Sahm on the stereo and knowing that, if nothing else, Trump's stomach has to be tying itself in knots makes this an okay night indeed.