Toilets and Light Bulbs

Merrily We Roll Along:  The impeachment process continues on its not so merry way today.  Starting at 9 ET this morning, Democrats, represented by their counsel will present their argument to the Judiciary Committee that no US president in history, that is no president until now, has abused presidential powers in order to attack our Democracy and corrupt our elections.  They will say that Trump did those things that the founders “found alarming and most worthy of impeachment,”  that he abused power through self-dealing, that he betrayed national security in the service of foreign interests and that he’s been endeavoring to  corrupt the elections that undermine our democratic system.  Republicans will argue something along the lines of he didn’t do anything wrong and if he did it wasn’t proved and if was proved, so what.  Once again the meat of the hearing will outsourced, this time to Barry Berke who will make the Democrats opening arguments and Stephen Castor who will do the same for the  Republicans. They will be followed by Daniel Goldman, who we previously saw during the Intelligence Committee hearings, who will present the evidence for impeachment, with Castor appearing again to present the evidence against it.  Then the Judiciary Committee members, Democrat and Republican, will get their chance to set the place on fire with their diatribes. On Friday night, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone made it clear that Trump would not participate in this phase of the impeachment process by sending Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler a two paragraph letter that called the impeachment a time wasting “charade,” that should be ended ASAP because in his and his master’s view “Adopting articles of impeachment would be a reckless abuse of power by House Democrats, and would constitute the most unjust, highly partisan, and unconstitutional attempt at impeachment in our Nation's history.” Later in the week, the Judiciary Committee is expected to work up its articles of impeachment which are expected to accuse Trump of abusing his power, obstructing Congress and obstructing justice, setting the stage for an impeachment vote by the full House before Christmas,

Trump Dump: For his part, Trump remains Trump, on Friday he announced that it was time to rid the country of ecologically correct low flow toilets because guys with his dietary habits and intestinal fortitude, or lack thereof, have to flush them 15 to 16 times, bigly ick, and because what’s the point of water if you don’t get to use a lot of it every time you go.  He also went back to kvetching about energy efficient light bulbs, you know the ones that make him look orange.  For the record, one of the undocumented immigrants who worked for years at his NJ golf club reports that Trump’s orange glow is due to his Boo Sting Orange, Bronx color concealer in BHC o6, but creature of habit that he is, Trump would rather blame that pumpkin glow on energy saving light bulbs that switch his hue.  Over the weekend, he mustered only muted outrage over the Saudi pilot-in-training who killed three and injured eight others at the Pensacola Florida Air Station in what most now acknowledge was a terrorist incident, saying instead that the Saudi King was very sad and would write really big checks to help those families manage their sorrow.  While also trying to downplay the Saudi terrorism charge, Defense Secretary Esper, who earlier said that he’d cooperate with Congress on the investigation into the hold up in Ukraine military aid, said he couldn’t, claiming that the internal memos that could shed light on things are privileged. Getting back to the Saudi pilot, even some of Trump’s most loyal Republican cronies had a hard time understanding his low key response but then again they probably aren’t all that concerned about keeping their past, present, and future financiers happy.   Anyway, it turns out that initial reports that some of the shooter’s classmates had, 9.11 style, skipped out of town are untrue, though at least one of them did use his phone to photograph the shooting barrage and a few did attend a pre-murder party at the shooter’s house where they watched mass shooting videos because doesn’t everyone entertain their guests that way?  By the way, the 9mm Glock gun used by the assailant was purchased legally through a provision in Federal law that allows for certain types of foreign visitors to do so. Sticking with the Florida theme, though further south and east, Trump used a few of his usual arguments to convince the attendees of an Israeli American Council event that they had no choice but to vote for him in 2020, essentially arguing that Democrats hate Israel, Jews who vote for Democrats aren’t being loyal to Israel and besides why would “rich” American Jews ever consider voting for “Pocahontas” suggesting that as Jews, their attachment to money would trump morality.  Sadly, a number of people in the audience appeared to find his schtick funny.  Not so much the rest of us.  

Tweet Storming:  In addition to ranting about toilets and light bulbs, throwing anti-Semitic tropes and being easy on Saudi killers, Trump found time to tweet endlessly.  So yesterday he fired off 105 tweets, attacking the impeachment hoax and going after his usual “do nothing” Democratic targets Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler and Biden.  Additionally, he attacked “low ratings” CNN, celebrating the fact that Devin Nunes, who due to his phone calls with Giuliani crony Lev Parnas, the calls that Nunes alternatively denies, has forgotten or says were really with Parnas’ wife, is suing the media outlet for defamation. That defamation lawsuit is in addition to the one that Nunes has against the person who routinely mocks him on twitter using the @DevinCow handle because who doesn’t sue cows?  And it wouldn’t be fair to end this section without mentioning that Texas Senator Ted Cruz, whose wife Trump once slammed as ugly and whose father he accused of helping killing JFK, came to Trump’s defense on Meet the Press by going with “but Ukraine blatantly interfered” in the 2016 election on behalf of Hillary, the Republican’s disingenuous argument that Trump’s holding up of needed aid to Ukraine was justified and not done to press President Zelensky to investigate the Bidens.  That false equivalency argument cites an op-ed written by a Ukrainian official who, upset about Trump’s statement during the 2016 campaign that the Russian’s had every right to invade and keep Crimea, expressed a preference for Hilary.  To be clear, no DNC hacking, no black-ops  just a public statement of preference, and something that the Republican chaired Senate Intel Committee investigated and dismissed.  While Cruz was going the “but Ukraine” route, South Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows, just went with the Trump never asked Zelensky to investigate the Bidens and if he did, so what.  On the Russian front, this morning the World Doping Agency banned Russia from officially competing in the next two Olympics as a punishment for all that Putin mandaged drug doping.  Tweets from Putin’s buddy to come soon?

Rudy, Rudy, Barr:  Rudy’s still doing his Rudy thing, working on an explosive Ukraine documentary for an extremely right wing conspiracy network OANN, one that will “prove” that all the allegations against Trump that are true aren’t but that the Bidens are the corrupt ones.  Trump says he has no idea what Giuliani has been doing in Ukraine, but insists that the one time NYC Mayor has gotten “a lot of good information” that he will share with Congress and the Justice Department and to be fair, Rudy testifying under oath would be priceless, though we all know it ain’t gonna happen.  For his part, Attorney General Barr will be busy this week.  The Inspector General Report related to the allegations of FBI Russia/Trump related FISA abuses is due out today, a release neatly timed to divert attention from today’s impeachment hearings.  Though the report is likely to point out some FBI abuses, sloppy work, and poor judgement calls the word is that the highly respected and historically tough Inspector General Horowitz didn’t find that anti-Trump bias influenced the investigation but don’t expect Barr to say that.  He’s expected to question Horowitz’s conclusion on fairness while concentrating on the FBI abuses because that’s what Barr was hired to do.

Democrats:  Joe Biden has been out punching, literally and figuratively though he’d be better off sticking with a pithy, slap back against the spurious accusations that he facilitated Ukraine corruption because though he finds the repeated attacks frustrating they aren’t going anywhere.  With her polls drooping, Senator Warren has started beating up on Mayor Pete Buttigieg, going after his days working for those nefarious profitable corporations while at the McKinsey Consulting firm.  Frankly I think she does better when she takes the high road but apparently she disagrees. She’s not the only one going after Buttigieg, Biden is too, during a weekend interview, he pointed out that Buttagieg doesn’t even have the support of Blacks in his own community, which sadly for Mayor Pete is true.  And both Cory Booker and Julian Castro are criticizing the Democratic primary schedule, saying that putting Iowa and New Hampshire first disadvantages people of color.  Booker has been raising funds on that argument though it’s worth noting that it was Obama’s victory in Iowa that propelled his 2008 campaign.