January 31, 2020

Of all mornings I am now stuck in a dentist's waiting...

... room as a G.O.W.G. ... grumpy old white guy.. got up and turned the TV from CNN to Fox.

I went out into the hall.

January 31, 2020

Pelosi, "You cannot be acquitted if you don't have a trial," she added.

Pelosi says Trump's acquittal won't be legitimate without witnesses

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/trump-impeachment-trial-01-30#pelosi-says-trumps-acquittal-wont-be-legitimate-without-witnesses

Pelosi says Trump’s acquittal won’t be legitimate without witnesses.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said on Thursday that regardless of the outcome of his impeachment trial, if the Senate refuses to call new witnesses or subpoena more documents, President Trump’s acquittal will not be legitimate.

“He will not be acquitted,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference, when asked whether the president is likely to be chastened or emboldened by the all but certain verdict in his favor, which could come as early as Friday.

“You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial,” she added. “You don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation and all of that,” she said.

“The fate of our nation is riding on how this is resolved,” Ms. Pelosi said. “It isn’t about just one person. It’s about the precedent that it sets for the future.”

“The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming,” Ms. Pelosi warned. “And the president has led a clear path for them to interfere, once again, in our elections, as they are currently doing.”

“I just pray that the senators will have the courage, and the ability, to handle the truth,” she added.

It was not the first bid by Ms. Pelosi to ensure that regardless of the outcome of the Senate trial, the public does not see an acquittal as an exoneration.

“This president is impeached for life, regardless of any gamesmanship on the part of Mitch McConnell,” she told ABC News this month. “He will be impeached forever.”

Thanx to DUer Dalton for posting this yesterday.

January 30, 2020

My nightmare going forward

After McConnell's show trial is over Trump is gonna walk after the republicans stop all witnesses
and or evidence from being introduced because "they" know he is guilty and "they" also know that
2016 was rigged and that Russia installed Trump.

Trump will then be out for pay back after having been acquitted by the Republican Senate.

Michael Flynn will do zero jail time thanx to Bill Barr, Trump, and a Trump appointed judge.

Trump will pardon Roger Stone before he is sent to prison.

Trump will have more and more of his "Bund Rallies" @ which he will call out "the enemies of the American people."
Some kind of violence will be the result of the incitement of the low IQ people who attend these "Bund Rallies."

BTW many of the people who attend Trump's Bund Rallies travel and attend more than one.

Massive Russian hacking and rat fucking into our elections will re-install Trump into the White House.

After the election both Manafort and Gates will get pardons.

And then our democracy will be D.O.A. and an international mob organization headed by Putin will have even more power.

A must read. Putin told Trump what to do as per the Ukraine and President Zelensky.
This article is why shutting down the senate trial and not letting Bolton speak has been job #1. Bolton knows that Trump
did his "drug deal" with the Ukraine (Ukrainian mobsters) after speaking w/Putin and a far right Hungarian politician.

https://medium.com/Simon_Rosenberg/where-bolton-is-headed-putin-71e09cff2e0c

Thanx to DUer Denisovan for posting this article 1st.

January 30, 2020

Oh for God's sake what pure bullshit on impeachment and subpoenas from Trump's lawyer.

"The House delegates subpoena authority to committees on a regular basis. And the constitution says flatly that the House has sole power over impeachments. So the argument is bullshit." Norman Ornstein

January 29, 2020

Tampa Bay Times: Donald Trump and Lev Parnas discussed Rick Scott in secret recording

A spokesman for Scott said the Florida Republican ‘meets a lot of people and has no recollection of meeting Parnas’


At the same April 2018 dinner where President Donald Trump ordered the removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, he also discussed Florida Sen. Rick Scott with Ukrainian-born South Florida businessman Lev Parnas.

The conversation was captured in an 83-minute video obtained by Reuters from Parnas’ attorney Joseph Bondy. About halfway through the recording, Parnas mentioned he lived in Florida, prompting Trump to ask how Scott, then Florida’s governor, was faring in his U.S. Senate campaign.

“Rick Scott’s good,” said Parnas, who was indicted in October on charges that he and his business partner, Igor Fruman, steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors. Both are now key figures in Trump’s impeachment proceedings.

https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2020/01/28/donald-trump-and-lev-parnas-discussed-rick-scott-in-secret-recording/

(Funny how many times Trump has "not met" Parnas)

January 29, 2020

Daily Kos New poll: 82% of voters say Bolton must testify in impeachment trial

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/28/1914676/-New-poll-82-of-voters-say-Bolton-must-testify-in-impeachment-trial?detail=emaildkre


Donald Trump's lawyers and Senate enablers are doing their damnedest to pretend that former national security adviser John Bolton is just some guy making stuff up in "An unpublished manuscript, that some reporters, maybe, have some idea what it said. If you want to call that evidence." They might want to rethink that considering new polling from Navigator research showing that a whopping 82% of registered voters think Bolton should testify at the impeachment hearing.

What's more, and this is something, that question was included in a poll in the field last week, before the report from Bolton's leaked manuscript which says flat-out that Trump withheld aid to Ukraine for his own political gain. From the toplines of the poll, respondents were asked "If John Bolton has firsthand knowledge of Donald Trump's actions relating to Ukraine and investigating Joe Biden, how important is it for John Bolton to testify in the Senate impeachment trial?" A total of 82% say yes—56% say it's very important and 26% say it's somewhat important to hear from him. That includes 70% of Republicans, with 33% saying it's very important and 37% somewhat important.

https://twitter.com/LawWorksAction/status/1222226496527400960

January 27, 2020

GOP Sen. Ron Johnson: 'My guess' is John Bolton is telling truth about Trump and Ukraine

Source: Raw Story

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who once personally lobbied President Donald Trump to release the hold on military aid to Ukraine, seemed to give former national security adviser John Bolton some credibility while talking with reports on Monday.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports that Johnson said that “my guess is John Bolton tells the truth,” although he said he still wanted to hear the Trump administration’s full case and also questioned the “exquisite” timing of the leak about Bolton’s upcoming book, in which he reportedly says Trump told him he was holding up military aid to Ukraine until it agreed to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.

Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/2020/01/gop-sen-ron-johnson-my-guess-is-john-bolton-is-telling-truth-about-trump-and-ukraine/

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January 27, 2020

NY Times 5 Takeaways on Trump and Ukraine From John Bolton's Book

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/26/us/politics/john-bolton-trump-book-takeaways.html

* Mr. Trump tied his willingness to release aid to Ukraine on investigations he sought.

* Mr. Trump was at odds with his senior national security officials.

* Mr. Bolton says he talked to Mr. Barr and Mr. Pompeo about Mr. Giuliani.

* Mr. Bolton is willing to testify. The White House doesn’t want him to.

* The manuscript introduced a significant twist to the impeachment trial.

If the Senate does vote to hear from Mr. Bolton, the trial could stretch deep into February.

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And despite overwhelming evidence that Trump sold out his country and his office republican
senators are still gonna let him walk and not call Bolton to testify. They know he is guilty, a
con man, and working for Putin but they don't care.

The Rude Pundit has summed it all up very nicely.

"And, frankly, Republicans are more obsessed with 2016 now than Democrats are because they know, they fucking know, that Trump's victory is illegitimate and they have to do everything in their power to not let that fact become viral."

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212904164

Oh well time for me to call Rob Portman's office again.

January 26, 2020

Please tell me I am wrong and Trump tweeted the ...

... wrong # of people killed along side Kobe. He posted something like 3 others when it was 9.