- Pelosi telling other Democrats: "I told you so"
Disaster, backfire, overreach, failure, schiffshow! Just some of the statements being used to describe how people expect these impeachment hearings to go! Even Democrats are asking... "where's the bribery" and questioning this horrible strategy!
IMPEACHMENT HEARING UPDATE!! To busy doing important things, so I am not watching it. But I just read on twitter (from liberals) that the first witness is a disaster for the Democrats and that nobody cares how "patriotic" he is!
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| Schumer is said to be furious! THEY ARE BLOWING IT! |
IMPEACHMENT HEARING UPDATE II !! Still too busy to watch, but hearing that Democrats are besides themselves with anger that Nunes was able to flip the narrative to be about Hunter Biden. Of course, how could Democrats "NOT" expect it to be about Hunter Biden, when he is at the center of why they think Trump should be impeached? DISASTER FOR DEMS!!!!
KEY WITNESS TURNS!!!! Says he warned that he was among many who raised concerns about Hunter Biden sitting on a board of a Ukrainian company and that those concerns about Hunter Biden were ignored. TOTAL SCHIFFSHOW!!
Ambassador Taylor is telling Congress that Tim Morrison told him that Ambassador Sondland told Morrison that the President told Sondland...— Lee Zeldin (@RepLeeZeldin) November 13, 2019
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| Things going very poorly for Democrats! |
Having argued only firsthand witnesses can know the truth, Meadows now suggests everything Sondland knows from his firsthand calls with Trump are just opinion.— emptywheel (@emptywheel) November 13, 2019
Committee Republicans are killing it at the hearing. Unmasking this entire fraud.
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) November 13, 2019
26 comments:
AND NUNES MADE A FUCKING FOOL OUT OF HIMSELF AND YOUR PARTY WITH TRYING TO MAKE THESE HEARINGS ABOUT THE BIDENS.....The voters other than assholes like you Lil Scotty will see right through the sham and you Have nothing to defend trump with....BTW, numb nutz ballz.....the R's can ask any question they like per opening statement you dumb fuck!!!!!
PROPAGANDA is being answered by professionally expressed and backed up facts.
Roger, will the retirement home you are housed in have the community TV on to watch the Socialist Democrat House Sarade ?
The Three Socialist Stooges of CHT have a party , you're clearly winning.
https://youtu.be/GDHK-qpTccM
To leverage military support to get negative information about his political opponent put our nation at risk.
The Republican jackass said that the Obama administration had given the Ukrainian army pillows.
Scott A**hole's talking points.
The top Republican on the panel, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, accused the Democratic majority of conducting a “scorched earth” effort to take down the president after the special counsel’s Russia investigation into the 2016 election failed to spark impeachment proceedings.
“We’re supposed to take these people at face value when they trot out new allegations?” said Nunes, a top Trump ally. He derided what he called the "cult-like atmosphere in the basement of the Capitol” where investigators have been interviewing witnesses behind closed doors for weeks. Transcripts of those interviews have been released.
Nunes called the Ukraine matter a “low rent” sequel to the Russia probe. “Democrats are advancing their impeachment sham,” he said.
Stumbling opening statement.
In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation's embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin's desire to rebuild a Russian empire. In the following years, thirteen thousand Ukrainians died as they battled superior Russian forces.
Earlier this year Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine on a platform of ending the conflict and tackling corruption. He was a newcomer to politics and immediately sought to establish a relationship with Ukraine's most powerful patron, the United States. The questions presented by this impeachment inquiry are whether President Trump sought to exploit that ally's vulnerability and invite Ukraine's interference in our elections? Whether President Trump sought to condition official acts, such as a White House meeting or U.S. military assistance, on Ukraine's willingness to assist with two political investigations that would help his reelection campaign? And if President Trump did either, whether such an abuse of his power is compatible with the office of the presidency?
The matter is as simple, and as terrible as that. Our answer to these questions will affect not only the future of this presidency, but the future of the presidency itself, and what kind of conduct or misconduct the American people may come to expect from their Commander-in-Chief.
There are few actions as consequential as the impeachment of a President. While the Founders did not intend that impeachment be employed for mere differences over policy, they also made impeachment a constitutional process that the Congress must utilize when necessary.
The facts in the present inquiry are not seriously contested. Beginning in January of this year, the President's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, pressed Ukrainian authorities to investigate Burisma, the country's largest natural gas producer, and the Bidens, since Vice President Joe Biden was seen as a strong potential challenger to Trump.
Giuliani also promoted a debunked conspiracy that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that hacked the 2016 election. The nation's intelligence agencies have stated unequivocally that it was Russia, not Ukraine, that interfered in our election. But Giuliani believed this conspiracy theory, referred to as "Crowdstrike," shorthand for the company that discovered the Russian hack, would aid his client's reelection.
Giuliani also conducted a smear campaign against the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. On April 29, a senior State Department official told her that although she had "done nothing wrong," President Trump had "lost confidence in her." With the sidelining of Yovanovich, the stage was set for the establishment of an irregular channel in which Giuliani and later others, including Gordon Sondland -- an influential donor to the President's inauguration now serving as Ambassador to the European Union - could advance the President's personal and political interests.
Yovanovich's replacement in Kyiv, Ambassador Bill Taylor, is a West Point graduate and Vietnam Veteran. As he began to better understand the scheme through the summer of 2019, he pushed back, informing Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent and others about a plan to condition U.S. government actions and funding on the performance of political favors by the Ukrainian government, favors intended for President Trump that would undermine our security and our elections.
A week later, on July 18, a representative from OMB, the White House agency that oversees federal spending, announced on a video conference call that Mulvaney, at the direction of the President, was freezing nearly $400 million in security assistance authorized and appropriated by Congress and which the entirety of the U.S. national security establishment supported.
One week after that, Donald Trump would have the now infamous July 25th phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. During that call, Trump complained that the U.S. relationship with Ukraine had not been "reciprocal." Later, Zelensky thanks Trump for his support "in the area of defense," and says that Ukraine was ready to purchase more Javelins, an antitank weapon that was among the most important deterrents of further Russian military action. Trump's immediate response: "I would like you to do us a favor, though."
Trump then requested that Zelensky investigate the discredited 2016 "Crowdstrike" conspiracy theory, and even more ominously, look into the Bidens. Neither of these investigations were in the U.S. national interest, and neither was part of the official preparatory material for the call. Both, however, were in Donald Trump's personal interest, and in the interests of his 2020 re-election campaign. And the Ukrainian president knew about both in advance — because Sondland and others had been pressing Ukraine for weeks about investigations into the 2016 election, Burisma and the Bidens.
After the call, multiple individuals were concerned enough to report it to the National Security Council's top lawyer. The White House would then take the extraordinary step of moving the call record to a highly classified server exclusively reserved for the most sensitive intelligence matters.
In the following weeks, Ambassador Taylor learned new facts about a scheme that even Sondland would describe as becoming more insidious. Taylor texted Sondland, "Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?"
As summer turned to fall "[i]t kept getting more insidious," Mr. Sondland testified. Mr. Taylor, who took notes of his conversations, said the ambassador told him in a September 1 phone call that "everything was dependent" on the public announcement of investigations "including security assistance." President Trump wanted Mr. Zelensky "in a public box." "President Trump is a businessman," Sondland said later. "When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check."
In a sworn declaration after Taylor's testimony, Sondland would admit to telling the Ukrainians at a September 1st meeting in Warsaw "that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks."
The President's chief of staff confirmed Trump's efforts to coerce Ukraine by withholding aid. When Mick Mulvaney was asked publicly about it, his answer was breathtaking: "We do that all the time with foreign policy . . . I have news for everybody: get over it. There's going to be political influence in foreign policy. That is going to happen." The video of that confession is plain for all to see.
Some have argued in the President's defense that the aid was ultimately released. That is true. But only after Congress began an investigation; only after the President's lawyers learned of a whistleblower complaint; and only after Members of Congress began asking uncomfortable questions about quid pro quos. A scheme to condition official acts or taxpayer funding to obtain a personal political benefit does not become less odious because it is discovered before it is fully consummated. In fact, the security assistance had been delayed so long, it would take another act of Congress to ensure that it would still go out. And that Oval Office meeting that Zelensky desperately sought -- it still hasn't happened.
Although we have learned a great deal about these events in the last several weeks, there are still missing pieces. The President has instructed the State Department and other agencies to ignore Congressional subpoenas for documents. He has instructed witnesses to defy subpoenas and refuse to appear. And he has suggested that those who do expose wrongdoing should be treated like traitors and spies.
These actions will force Congress to consider, as it did with President Nixon, whether Trump's obstruction of the constitutional duties of Congress constitute additional grounds for impeachment. If the President can simply refuse all oversight, particularly in the context of an impeachment proceeding, the balance of power between our two branches of government will be irrevocably altered. That is not what the Founders intended. And the prospects for further corruption and abuse of power, in this administration or another, will be exponentially increased.
This is what we believe the testimony will show — both as to the President's conduct and as to his obstruction of Congress. The issue that we confront is the one posed by the President's Acting Chief of Staff when he challenged Americans to "get over it." If we find that the President of the United States abused his power and invited foreign interference in our elections, or if he sought to condition, coerce, extort, or bribe an ally into conducting investigations to aid his reelection campaign and did so by withholding official acts — a White House meeting or hundreds of millions of dollars of needed military aid — must we simply "get over it?" Is that what Americans should now expect from their president? If this is not impeachable conduct, what is? Does the oath of office itself -- requiring that our laws be faithfully executed, that our president defend a constitution that balances the powers of its branches, setting ambition against ambition so that we become no monarchy -- still have meaning?
These are the questions we must ask and answer. Without rancor if we can, without delay regardless, and without party favor or prejudice if we are true to our responsibilities. Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of a country America was to become, "A Republic," he answered, "if you can keep it." The fundamental issue raised by the impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump is: Can we, keep it?
Schiff sounds so very, very factual and credible, ESPECIALLY in comparison to the statement that followed.
I guess Ch heard an opening statement from a parallel GOP universe.
Rep. Devin Nunes
Opening Statement for Kent and Taylor Hearing on Impeachment
November 13, 2019
In a July open hearing of this committee following publication of the Mueller report, the Democrats engaged in a last-ditch effort to convince the American people that President Trump is a Russian agent. That hearing was the pitiful finale of a three-year-long operation by the Democrats, the corrupt media, and partisan bureaucrats to overturn the results of the 2016 presidential election.
After the spectacular implosion of their Russia hoax on July 24, in which they spent years denouncing any Republican who ever shook hands with a Russian, on July 25 they turned on a dime and now claim the real malfeasance is Republicans’ dealings with Ukraine.
In the blink of an eye, we’re asked to simply:
forget about Democrats on this committee falsely claiming they had “more than circumstantial evidence” of collusion between President Trump and the Russians;
forget about them reading fabrications of Trump-Russia collusion from the Steele dossier into the congressional record;
forget about them trying to obtain nude pictures of Trump from Russian pranksters who pretended to be Ukrainian officials;
forget about them leaking a false story to CNN, while he was testifying to our committee, claiming Donald Trump Jr. had colluded with Wikileaks;
and forget about countless other deceptions, large and small, that make them the last people on earth with the credibility to hurl more preposterous accusations at their political opponents.
And yet now we’re supposed to take these people at face value when they trot out a new batch of allegations. But anyone familiar with the Democrats’ scorched-earth war against President Trump would not be surprised to see all the typical signs that this is just a carefully orchestrated media smear campaign. For example:
After vowing publicly that impeachment requires bipartisan support, Democrats are pushing impeachment forward without the backing of a single House Republican.
The witnesses deemed suitable for television by the Democrats were put through a closed-door audition process in a cult-like atmosphere in the basement of the Capitol, where the Democrats conducted secret depositions, released a flood of misleading and one-sided leaks, and later selectively released transcripts in a highly staged manner.
Violating their own guidelines, the Democrats repeatedly redacted from the transcripts the name of Alexandra Chalupa, a contractor for the Democratic National Committee who worked with Ukrainian officials to collect dirt on the Trump campaign, which she provided to the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
The Democrats rejected most of the Republicans’ witness requests, resulting in a horrifically one-sided process where crucial witnesses are denied a platform if their testimony doesn’t support the Democrats’ absurd accusations. Notably, they are trying to impeach the President for inquiring about Hunter Biden’s activities, yet they refused our request to hear from Biden himself.
The whistleblower was acknowledged to have a bias against President Trump, and his attorney touted a “coup” against the President and called for his impeachment just weeks after his election.
At a prior hearing, Democrats on this committee read out a purely fictitious rendition of the President’s phone call with President Zelensky. They clearly found the real conversation to be insufficient for their impeachment narrative, so they just made up a new one.
And most egregiously, the staff of Democrats on this committee had direct discussions with the whistleblower before his or her complaint was submitted to the Inspector General, and Republicans cannot get a full account of these contacts because the Democrats broke their promise to have the whistleblower testify to this committee. Democrat members hid these contacts from Republicans and lied about them to the American people on national television.
I’ve noted before that the Democrats have a long habit of accusing Republicans of offences they themselves are committing. Recall that:
For years they accused the Trump campaign of colluding with Russia when they themselves were colluding with Russia by funding and spreading the Steele dossier, which relied on Russian sources.
And now they accuse President Trump of malfeasance in Ukraine when they themselves are culpable. The Democrats cooperated in Ukrainian election meddling, and they defend Hunter Biden’s securing of a lavishly paid position with a corrupt Ukrainian company, all while his father served as vice president.
Despite this hypocrisy, the Democrats are advancing their impeachment sham. But we should not hold any hearings at all until we get answers to three crucial questions the Democrats are determined to avoid asking:
First, what is the full extent of the Democrats’ prior coordination with the Whistleblower and who else did the Whistleblower coordinate this effort with?
Second, what is the full extent of Ukraine’s election meddling against the Trump campaign?
And third, why did Burisma hire Hunter Biden, what did he do for them, and did his position affect any U.S. government actions under the Obama administration?
These questions will remain outstanding because Republicans were denied the right to call witnesses who know the answers.
What we will witness today is a televised theatrical performance staged by the Democrats. Ambassador Taylor and Mr. Kent—I’d like to welcome you here, and congratulate you for passing the Democrats’ Star Chamber auditions held for the last six weeks in the basement of the Capitol. It seems you agreed, wittingly or unwittingly, to participate in a drama. But the main performance—the Russia hoax—has ended, and you’ve been cast in the low-rent Ukrainian sequel.
I’ll conclude by noting the immense damage the politicized bureaucracy has done to Americans’ faith in government. Though executive branch employees are charged with implementing the policy set by our President, who is elected by and responsible to the American people, elements of the civil service have decided that they, not the President, are really in charge.
Thus, as we’ll learn in these hearings:
After expressing skepticism of foreign aid and concern about foreign corruption on the campaign trail, President Trump outraged the bureaucracy by acting skeptically about foreign aid and expressing concerns about foreign corruption.
Officials’ alarm at the President’s actions was typically based on second-hand, third-hand, and even fourth-hand rumors and innuendo.
They believed it was an outrage for President Trump to fire an ambassador, even though the President has full authority to retain or remove diplomats for any reason at any time.
Officials showed a surprising lack of interest in the indications of Ukrainian election meddling that deeply concerned the President at whose pleasure they serve.
Despite all their dissatisfaction with President Trump’s Ukraine policy, the President approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine, unlike the previous administration, which provided blankets as defense against invading Russians.
By undermining the President who they are supposed to be serving, elements of the FBI, the Department of Justice, and now the State Department, have lost the confidence of millions of Americans who believe that their vote should count for something. It will take years, if not decades, to restore faith in these institutions.
This spectacle is doing great damage to our country. It’s nothing more than an impeachment process in search of a crime.
f t # e
I provided Thecoldheartedtruth
Trump Slams Hearings as ‘Single Greatest Scam’
November 13, 2019 at 12:06 pm EST
NOTE: THE SURE DON'T SOUND THE LEAST BIT SCAMMY UP TILL NOW.
The White House shared a video of President Trump slamming the impeachment inquiry as the “single greatest scam in the history of American politics.”
He added: “They’re trying to stop me, because I’m fighting for you. And I’ll never let that happen.”
ACTUALLY, THEY'RE TRYING TO SHOW WHAT A POOR PRESIDENT YOU ARE, AND SUCCEEDING.
THERE'S A FIVE MINUTE BREAK NOW. MEANWHILE:
_____________
Erdogan Threatens to Buy Russian Jets
November 13, 2019 at 12:04 pm EST
As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan prepares for Wednesday’s White House meeting with President Trump, he’s threatening to further inflame tensions between Washington and Ankara by purchasing Russian military fighter jets, NBC News reports.
“The possibility of Turkey, a NATO ally, acquiring more military equipment from Putin adds a new dimension to the controversy around Trump’s decision to give Erdogan the prestigious platform of a White House meeting.”
Slain Trump Balloon Rises Again Three Days Later
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TUSCALOOSA, AL—The famous big baby Trump balloon was stabbed to death in Tuscaloosa over the weekend.
Followers mourned its death. But when some women came to pay their respects to the downed balloon three days later, they were shocked to find the balloon was rising again.
"It's a miracle!" cried awed onlookers as the balloon slowly began to reinflate itself and ascend into the heavens. "Just as it was prophesied!"
"Go, therefore, and make America great again," the balloon said. "And behold, I will be with you always. Or at least for another seven or eight terms."
The balloon rose and rose until it disappeared from sight, hidden by the clouds.
For the very stupid that covet
The Truth About Income Inequality
By Paul Caron
Never in American history has the debate over income inequality so dominated the public square, with Democratic presidential candidates and congressional leaders calling for massive tax increases and federal expenditures to redistribute the nation’s income. Unfortunately, official measures of income inequality, the numbers being debated, are profoundly distorted by what the Census Bureau chooses to count as household income.
The published census data for 2017 portray the top quintile of households as having almost 17 times as much income as the bottom quintile. But this picture is false. The measure fails to account for the one-third of all household income paid in federal, state and local taxes. Since households in the top income quintile pay almost two-thirds of all taxes, ignoring the earned income lost to taxes substantially overstates inequality.
The Census Bureau also fails to count $1.9 trillion in annual public transfer payments to American households. The bureau ignores transfer payments from some 95 federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, which make up more than 40% of federal spending, along with dozens of state and local programs. Government transfers provide 89% of all resources available to the bottom income quintile of households and more than half of the total resources available to the second quintile.
WSJIn all, leaving out taxes and most transfers overstates inequality by more than 300%, as measured by the ratio of the top quintile’s income to the bottom quintile’s. More than 80% of all taxes are paid by the top two quintiles, and more than 70% of all government transfer payments go to the bottom two quintiles.
America’s system of data collection is among the most sophisticated in the world, but the Census Bureau’s decision not to count taxes as lost income and transfers as gained income grossly distorts its measure of the income distribution. As a result, the raging national debate over income inequality, the outcome of which could alter the foundations of our economic and political system, is based on faulty information.
The average bottom-quintile household earns only $4,908, while the average top-quintile one earns $295,904, or 60 times as much. But using official government data sources on taxes and all transfer payments to compute net income produces the more complete comparison displayed in the nearby chart. ...
The average top-quintile household pays on average $109,125 in taxes and is left, after taxes and transfer payments, with only 3.8 times as much as the bottom quintile: $194,906 compared with $50,901. No matter how much income you think government in a free society should redistribute, it is much harder to argue that the bottom quintile is getting too little or the top quintile is getting too much when the ratio of net resources available to them is 3.8 to 1 rather than 60 to 1 (the ratio of what they earn) or the Census number of 17 to 1 (which excludes taxes and most transfers). ...
Any debate about further redistribution of income needs to be tethered to these facts. America already redistributes enough income to compress the income difference between the top and bottom quintiles from 60 to 1 in earned income down to 3.8 to 1 in income received. If 3.8 to 1 is too large an income differential, those who favor more redistribution need to explain to the bottom 60% of income-earning households why they should keep working when they could get almost as much from riding in the wagon as they get now from pulling it.
Republicans are struggling to go back to the 2016 election
The dossier the dossier the dossier
Diplomats disagreeing with the president is a crime
Here’s what you need to know:
The top Ukraine diplomat revealed he was told that Trump was more concerned about investigations of Biden than Ukraine.
George Kent testified that efforts to ‘gin up politically motivated investigations’ were ‘infecting’ U.S. policy toward Ukraine.
Adam Schiff invoked Mick Mulvaney’s ‘Get over it’ admission as he opened the hearing.
Devin Nunes accused administration witnesses of working against Trump as part of a ‘politicized bureaucracy.’
Four key issues are dominating the hearings.
Trump called impeachment a ‘new hoax,’ as aides insisted he isn’t watching.
Wow. Cali is giving us testimony from a talking balloon.
Sounds a lot more credible than what we're getting from the Repugs in this hearing.
I love the way, when Jordan tries to put the screws to Taylor, Taylor can't help smiling. That says volumes about the fact that he is not cowed or intimidated, but finds Jordan's questioning laughable.
Cali is giving us testimony from a talking balloon.
You use them to attract young children
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