Pots and Kettles

Impeachment: Yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on the articles of impeachment of Trump went on forever, or at least it felt like forever.  Both sides were given opportunities to propose amendment to the two articles. Aside from some clean up to make sure that references to Trump’s name were consistent, the Democrats had no amendments but of course the Republicans had many, most of which involved things like replacing the text of the articles with odes to Trump’s greatness. The process involved letting each member speak for up to five minutes on each and every amendment but even before the amendment process began the Republican contingent attacked Committee Chairman Nadler for refusing to allow them to hold their own minority hearing, for refusing to let them invite their own witnesses and for being associated with Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, who has achieved full enemy of the state status.  In order to try to blunt further protests, Nadler permitted the Republicans to propose as many amendments as their hearts desired.  As a result the amendment process went on and on with Republicans using their five minute slots to argue that Trump had done nothing wrong, if he’d done wrong things they weren’t bad enough to constitute impeachable offenses, that Democrats didn’t understand the Constitution, and my personal favorite, that Trump who just this week had to pay $2 million for his faux charity crimes is a long time champion against corruption.  In turn, the Democrats, responded by citing the Constitution, repeating the events comprising the Ukraine fiasco and pointing out that all of the witnesses who had appeared before the Intelligence Committee were Trump’s very own appointees.  Kudos go to Democratic Congressman and once and likely future presidential wannabee Eric Swalwell.  A former prosecutor, he’s been doing a really good job of hammering home Trump’s offenses into digestible soundbites.  Also deserving of praise are NY’s Hakeem Jeffries who has a succinct staccato style that effectively delivers power point like jabs and Maryland’s Jamie Raskin, a former Constitutional law professor who ably punched back at Republican assertions in an easily understood way.  I believe that it’s fair to say that across the board, the Democrats were far more impressive than their Republican counterparts, possibly because they really are more impressive but also because the facts are on their side and they, unlike some of their Republican counterparts don’t buy into the “he who shouts loudest and speaks fastest wins” philosophy, the approach employed by Republicans Doug Collins and Gym Jordan. Screaming aside, for some reason Trump acolyte Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz thought that reading the sections of a New Yorker article in which Hunter Biden discussed his struggles with drug abuse was a good idea. Clearly Hunter Biden has issues and should not have been on Burisma’s board but, as Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson, the Democrat who spoke after Gaetz pointed out, that was the “pot calling the kettle black” as in people with problems of their own should avoid going in that direction, an obvious reference to Gaetz’s DUI arrest and related viral mug shot. Someone else also managed to squeeze in a brief aside about Trump’s adult children and their interesting career paths.

Tune in at Ten: Somewhere around midnight, just as it appeared that the votes on the two articles of impeachment were imminent, Chairman Nadler surprised everyone by announcing it was bedtime.  He sent everyone home saying that the committee would reconvene at 10 AM this morning at which time the final votes will take place.  That decision shocked the Republicans and the TV hosts who were hoping to report the vote.  Most notably ranking member Collins went ballistic, crying that Nadler’s decision to put off a final vote until daylight hours was a travesty, just a Democratic ploy to maximize attention.  Apparently Nadler’s decision upended some travel plans.  Though Nadler didn’t explain his decision, reports are that Collins and the Republicans had promised to stop with their nonsense amendments by 5 PM with the votes following shortly thereafter.  Nadler, who until his recess shocker had actually gotten compliments from some Republicans for yesterday’s process, had shown great restraint by letting the Republican contingent propose amendment after amendment but when it became apparent to him that they were stalling so that the votes would take place in the middle of the night he decided to call their bluff by rescheduling the votes to the daylight hours.  The ranting Collins claimed that was all about maximizing the TV audience, and to a certain extent that’s true, but it was also because Democrats didn’t want to be accused of voting under the cover of darkness, something that the Republicans, who are already running ads about Democratic cowardice would use to their advantage.  Bottom line, it’s ugly out there and it’s unlikely to get better anytime soon.  As of yesterday, the editorial boards of six major newspapers including the Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Globe, Orlando Sentinel, Philadelphia Inquirer and USA today have come down on the side of impeachment.  Notably, some of them, including WaPo had previously been skeptical.              

The Lev and Igor Show:  Prosecutors are now investigating whether Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman (who for some reason I keep wanting to call Oleg) were working with Rudy Giuliani and/or using their connections with him and Trump to change the management of Ukraine’s huge state owned gas company Naftogaz, not to be confused with Burisma, the much, much smaller company that the Bidens are accused of corrupting.  Apparently Lev and Igor wanted to better their business prospects with Naftogaz and needed their corrupt people on the company’s boards to do so. To the extent bribes were involved, that would mean that Lev, Igor, and possibly Rudy had violated the Corrupt Foreign Practices Act. Why is it that the crime the Trump universe accuses others of doing is so frequently a smaller version of the ginormous crime that they are actually doing?  Don’t be surprised if former Energy Secretary Perry, who actually did get some of his long-time political patrons into lucrative arrangements with Ukrainian energy companies soon gets pulled into this mess.    

Be Best:  A very twitchy Trump tweeted in excess of one hundred times yesterday.  In one notable tweet he attacked Time Magazine’s person of the year, teen age climate activist Greta Thunberg, repeating his oft used assertion that she has an anger management problem.  What leader of the free world doesn’t bully a committed teen who also happens to have Asperger’s syndrome?  UK’s Boris Johnson’s Conservative party easily won a majority of seats in parliament, solidifying his position and making it far more likely that Brexit will happen.  No doubt Trump will take full credit for Johnson’s victory, but it had much more to do with the unpopularity of his opponent Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn.  In any case, Brexit will be the easy part, negotiating new trade packs will be difficult to say the least so lots of uncertainty and market turbulence lies ahead.  It’s also quite possible Brexit will result in Scotland voting to leave the UK and the reemergence of Ireland “troubles.”  It appears that the Trump administration has reached some sort of phase one trade agreement with China, one that rolls back some tariffs and provides for sales of US farm goods, a rollback of some, but not all of Trump’s trade war without the concessions that the trade war was supposed to achieve.  And the Senate finally passed a resolution recognizing the mass killings of more than 1 million Armenians in Turkey that took place a century ago.  The resolution which Trump tried to stall for as long as he could will infuriate Turkey President Erdogan. Because the resolution is non-binding, it does not require Trump's signature.