Category: Politics

The legal experts have varying opinions.

To me it’s not a legal question at all, but a practical one. The answer is obviously “no,” because no conviction removes him from office, no matter how serious the crime. If President Trump, for example, held a Black Mass and sacrificed a virgin to Satan on the White House lawn, and were then convicted of murder, Trump would still be President of the United States, in charge of the nuclear codes, the military, the CIA, the FBI, etc. It doesn’t matter if he were on death row – he’d still be running the executive branch, and for all practical purposes, the country.

(And you know that Republican senators are still going to say that he was convicted by Obama judges and refuse to impeach him, even as he sits in The Big House.)

He also called first-daughter Ivanka Trump “dumb as a brick.”

Steve, you have to stop pulling your punches!

Mr Bannon is not doing well at accepting his fall from grace.

According to Wolff, Mueller’s team drew up both the three-count indictment of Trump and a draft memorandum of law opposing an anticipated motion to dismiss.

Mueller’s spokesman has responded:

The special counsel’s spokesman actually said, “The documents that you’ve described do not exist.” The complication is that they do exist. Wolff has allowed journalists to see them, and says they are “based on internal documents given to me by sources close to the Office of the Special Counsel.”

Therefore, either the special counsel’s office is lying, or Wolff’s documents are forgeries, or some of Mueller’s underlings created them without his knowledge. The special counsel’s office has always shot straight, so it’s hard to believe they would lie now. If they are not forgeries, why was Mueller’s spokesman unaware of them and who created them? If they are forgeries, who forged them? Those questions are more interesting than Wolff’s actual book. It appears that there are more secrets waiting to be revealed.

Here’s the story from The Guardian.

You can study the numbers and take away many different conclusions.

Two I came up with: (1) Beto O’Rourke is pretty much dead in the water; (2) de Blasio was never in the water to begin with.

Beto’s net favorability rating is about as bad as Trump’s, and that’s worse than it sounds, because Trump at least has 38% of the country who know him and approve of him. Beto, on the other hand, is largely unknown to the general public, and those that do know him don’t really care for him! To put it bluntly, he is at the Mendoza line, which for politicians is the Hickenlooper line.

There is nothing positive to say about de Blasio. He is almost universally despised. How the hell could he have studied his chances and decided to run?

Favorability among those who have an opinion:

Biden 56% (49 positive – 39 negative)
Buttigieg 55% (23-19)
Harris 47% (27-30)
Sanders 46% (41-48)
Kloubuchar 46% (16-19)
Warren 44% (32-41)
Booker 43% (23-31)
Trump 40% (38-57)
Gillibrand 40% (17-26)
Hickenlooper 38% (8-13)
O’Rourke 38% (20-32)
de Blasio 15% (8-45)

NOTE: Given the poll’s margin of error, Cory Booker is more or less in the same boat as O’Rourke.

“He said it was over, that he wasn’t going to do infrastructure or anything else until [investigations] were over.”

This is odd. An infrastructure bill would be a signature accomplishment for his Presidency, and is totally non-partisan. In essence, it’s good for America and even better for Trump.

“Justice Department willing to hand over counterintelligence if Schiff backs off ‘enforcement action’”

Now this is where the Dems need to start playing from the Republican playbook. First, they should make the deal and agree not to hold Barr in contempt for his failure to testify, if they get the materials they seek. Then, after they get the materials, they should subpoena Barr again, because he’ll have to explain why many things were redacted, and why his summary was misleading. It will be even more embarrassing for him to explain why certain things were redacted after they are known, so he will of course refuse to testify again. Then they hold him in contempt for the second refusal, thus honoring their part of the deal on the first refusal.

Now THAT is the art of the deal.

“Kobach’s demands included a promise for Trump to nominate him to be head of the Department of Homeland Security by November of this year — provided Kobach did not want to instead continue in the czar role — as well as around-the-clock access to a government jet and generally being able to take weekends off at his home in Kansas.

Kobach also demanded to be the main television spokesman for the administration on immigration, a guarantee of deference from Cabinet secretaries on immigration and symbols of top White House status, including a staff of seven, being able to walk into the Oval Office at will and a commensurate title at the highest pay level for White House senior staff.”

That would be a presumptuous list even if he were qualified!

From his Wikipedia entry:

“In August 2018, The Kansas City Star reported that none of the towns where Kobach helped to enact anti-immigration ordinances over a 13-year period still had those ordinances on the books. The ordinances were costly to defend in court, with some localities going bankrupt. At the same time, Kobach personally profited, earning more than $800,000 on legal work for the localities over a 13-year period, paid both by the localities and an anti-immigration advocacy group.”

“Michael Cohen told lawmakers earlier this year that one of Donald Trump’s personal attorneys asked him to falsely testify to Congress and told him the president was considering granting him a pardon to “shut down” the Russia investigation“

That means very little at this distant point from the election, but for what it’s worth, Fox News found:

“Overall, 28 percent of voters would ‘definitely’ reelect Trump, while 46 percent would ‘definitely’ vote for someone else.”

“His racism and intolerance have always been in evidence; only slowly did he begin to understand how to use them to his advantage.”

Yup, he’s intolerant and racist. And that, in a nutshell, is why he will probably be re-elected.

I’ve never been a fan of AOC, but she’s starting to grow on me!

At a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez asked Daniel O’Day, chairman and CEO of the pharmaceutical company Gilead, why an HIV prevention drug costs nearly $2,000 a month in the United States but only $8 in Australia.

That made a Republican cry. Literally.

Rep. Chip Roy’s meltdown about profit is wild. Just wild. Never seen anything like it. pic.twitter.com/FrSKTzWGE0

— Jason Rosenberg (@mynameisjro) May 16, 2019

Sidney Blumenthal’s analysis of the political climate surrounding each of the three cases. He eschews the conventional interpretation of the situation.

“Former national security adviser Michael Flynn told investigators that people linked to the Trump administration and Congress reached out to him in an effort to interfere in the Russia probe, according to newly unredacted court papers filed Thursday.”

Thank heaven. I thought no Democrat would ever come forward.

(I think the officially tally is now 24.) There are six or seven in there that I’ve never heard of. Only six of the candidates are polling at 3% or more, per RCP:

Biden 40
Sanders 16
Warren 8
Harris 8
Buttigieg 7
O’Rourke 5

Only 15 candidates are above the Hickenlooper line (0.2%). The rest are at virtual zero.

These arguments are obviously incorrect. They are based on the premise that multiple investigations in the House serve no legislative purpose, and that Congress cannot exercise law enforcement powers.

The argument is false in two ways:

1. It starts with the false assumption that Congress is only empowered by the Constitution to create laws. That’s obviously wrong. The Constitution specifically details at least one other important purpose – the removal of a President through the process of impeachment! Their investigations need not serve a law-making purpose if they serve the purpose of the impeachment process!

2. It assumes that no matter how evil a President might be, if he orders the Justice Department not to investigate him, he therefore cannot be investigated at all!

Let us posit that the Justice Department policy is correct, that a sitting president cannot be indicted by law enforcement. (And I’m not saying that is correct, but since that is the current policy, let’s take it as a given.) What do we do if a hypothetical Joe President is the Antichrist? He is funneling our tax dollars into offshore bank accounts. He is ordering the murder of political opponents. He rapes children of both sexes on the White House lawn. He praises Satan. He shuts down any investigation of him within the Executive branch – a simple matter since he is their boss.

Since it is a given that the Justice Department cannot exercise law enforcement powers against the President, and the President also has the authority to shut down any investigation of himself, it follows that the only way a Satanic President can be brought to justice is if the House takes on the mantle of law enforcement, investigates the President, impeaches him, and the Senate convicts him, thereby rendering him vulnerable to criminal prosecution. If the Congress can’t exercise law enforcement power in this case, including any and all investigatory powers, then we have determined that an evil President is completely above the law.