0817blog

Annoying Facts

“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?”

“Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”

“The rules!” shouted Ralph, “you’re breaking the rules!”

“Who cares?” ― William Golding, Lord of the Flies.

We now know that former, former, former president donald trump was prescient when he said famously at a 2016 campaign stop, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible” or to paraphrase, “I could stand at the podium outside the White House and call on my people to storm the capitol and they would follow in a heartbeat.”

Predictably, the great majority of Republican Senators are simply gushing crocodile tears after seeing the gut-churning, ghastly video of the Capitol assault that has formed the basis of trump’s second, yes, second, not first, but second, impeachment trial and yes, he was acquitted by the Republican majority Senate in the first trial and yes, he will be acquitted in the second trial unless something extraordinary happens, like senators becoming ethical, which is rather unlikely.

BTW. Crocodile tears is defined as a false, insincere display of emotion and it derives from the ancient belief that crocodiles shed tears while devouring their prey. If the foo shits.

Anybody who is honest and has the intelligence of a flea or better has to admit that there is no question but that trump fomented the rebellion and committed treason. But “honest” is the operable word and the better adjective would be those Republicans who are scared to death of losing reelection amid drastic reductions in the all-important Do Re Mi.

There have been a few GOP senators, six to be precise, who have not yet gone to the dark side and who voted to support the constitutionality of trump’s trial. And they will surely pay. But the Democrats need 17 Republicans to convict and that gets back to that stubborn ethical dilemma.

Like the Praying Mantas, the Louisiana Republican Party attacked one of its own, GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, who signed his electoral death warrant when he voted to support the constitutionality the impeachment. Maybe he’s hoping the right winners of Louisiana have short memories when he comes up for re-election in 2027. Fat chance. The party said it was “profoundly disappointed” that Cassidy would support a “kangaroo court” that amounted to an “attack on the very foundation of American democracy.”

Compared to the attitude of the vast majority of GOP senators, Sen. John Tune of South Dakota was a downright flame-throwing revolutionary when he said the Democrats “had a strong presentation put together in a way that I think makes it pretty compelling.” The good senator will like be singing a different tune come his next re-election bid.

One GOP lawmaker without one, single, solitary drop of ethics, Sen. James Inhofe, also would give the video an Oscar but this isn’t the Academy Awards but Inhofe said he’s already seen it all, anyway.

“And I can’t imagine what else is out there. We’ve had all this time for everyone to use every possible argument they could use. So I’ve heard them all,” said the ethics-challenged senator.

Lawmakers like to argue about words, twisting them and squeezing them into any shape they want.

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who moonlights as Darth Vader, acknowledged in his down-home, I wouldn’t ever lie to you, drawl that the presentation by the Democrats “was powerful and emotional reliving a terrorist attack on our nation’s capital.

But, sorry, said Cruz, there was “very little said about how specific conduct of the president’s satisfies the legal standard” of convicting him of high crimes and misdemeanors.

“The result of this trial is preordained,” said Cruz. “President Trump will be acquitted. I think the trial is a waste of time and is the result of seething partisan anger on the part of congressional Democrats.”

Reminds me of another impeachment trial of long ago when Bill Clinton told a grand jury that there was nothing unsavory going on between him and Monica Lewinsky.

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the — if he — if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not — that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement. … Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true,” said the saxophone-playing ex-president. So yes, the Democrats can be somewhat sleazy, somewhat?

One thing you can say about the right wing media, is that they are consistent in their reporting from a parallel, diametrically opposed universe.

Take Tucker Carlson, please. He bragged on Feb. 10 that he could care less about the trial which he labeled, “the great impeachment distraction.”

That night, another shining light from dark side of the parallel universe, Sean Hannity, labeled the impeachment a “show trial” while he brought out Donald Trump Jr. to warn Republicans that they have to “play hardball.”

Eric Metaxas is a right-wing author, commentator, and Trump cultist. His radio program guest last week was Amanda Grace, who calls herself a “prophetess.” A queen of logic, Grace declared that the impeachment trial is evidence that Trump is still the president, because why impeach a person who isn’t president. Grace also said it remains God’s plan for Trump to resume the presidency.

In an interview on the One America News Network, and put “news” in quotes, Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee said it is misleading to say trump was “unmistakably and directly responsible” for the attack. But if the senator was not operating in that pesky parallel universe, he would have to say that yes, trump is “unmistakably and directly responsible.”

And then you go to Breitbart News and its leader, Steven Bannon, who looks like he always just rolled out of bed after a two week bender. The trial is consuming the nation and the world and Breitbart’s lead story was that Disney had fired its “Mandalorian” star for social media posts. So there you go again.