'Twas the Night Before New Years'

‘Twas the night before New Years’, two thousand and twenty

The year past had brought us news items a-plenty.

What could we say about twenty-nineteen

Except, "Gee, what a wild one the last year has been."

The Democrats started the new year in power,

Having reclaimed the House. It was Pelosi’s hour.

Caressing her gavel, she vowed at each turn

To oppose the Republicans, and her heart burned

With desire for impeachment, though she claimed it must be

Bipartisan; then along came AOC.

Apparently owning the party’s left base,

She persuaded the Speaker to move with no case.

“Impeach!” cried the left wing, “Accuse him of treason!

If that doesn’t work, let's just make up a reason!

He’s mean; we don’t like him; he’s orange – that hair!

Impeach ‘cause winning in ’16 he did dare!”

So the Intel Committee, chaired by Adam Schiff

Held their secret hearings, secured in a SCIF.

No transcripts released; we the people weren’t able

To learn what was happening at that SCIF table.

Schiff, meanwhile, leaked out the bits that looked damning

To a media ready to take up the shamming.

When finally hearings were held in plain sight,

Schiff tried to paint the Prez in a bad light.

But in spite of made-up rules that favored the Dems,

Their hearings failed to reveal any new gems

That would bolster their case to impeach and remove,

Let alone give them any high crimes they could prove.

So, the best they could do was “Abuse and Obstruction

Of Congress,” who just seemed hell-bent on destruction

Of due process, fairness, and our Constitution –

How sad that our legislative institution

Could stoop to such lows, in a desperate quest

From their opposition, all power to wrest.

This is how partisan we have become;

Just thinking about it makes moderates glum.

Now, on to the Senate – but wait, Nancy balked!

As in a most strange turn, of fairness she talked.

But she has no leverage left, as we see;

In the Senate, the Dems aren’t the majority.

Meantime hints of new Articles started to rise,

Leaving voters to wonder, “What’s up with these guys?

Do they not think we see that they’re grasping at straws?

That their case for impeachment is so full of flaws?”

So while all of this nonsense is being conducted,

No new legislation is being constructed.

The Dems gained in ’16 on talk of health care,

But since, all their promises have gone nowhere.

Their primary field started with more than 20

Candidates vying to spend people's money,

But one by one, out of the race they did fall

(In the end, if we're lucky, there'll be none at all).

One of the hopefuls was Eric Swalwell,

But it seemed just a week before his campaign fell.
These days he's supporting his pal Adam Schiff
In another gambit doomed to fall off a cliff.

Next out was Beto - "Hell, yes," he once vowed,
But he couldn't keep pace with the rest of the crowd
In spite of his stunts and his gesticulations.
Guess it takes more than skateboarding to lead a nation.

DiBlasio followed soon after O'Rourke,
But he isn't even liked back in New York.
Harris was next, hoist with her own petard,
Though she, in denial, played the gender card.

So who will it be? Bernie? Spartacus? Liz?
Bloomberg or Steyer? Or Yang, the math whiz?
Or will it be Klobuchar, or Mayor Pete?
Or can Joe Biden help the Dems stave off defeat?

Whoever winds up at the top of the pile,
When they debate Donald Trump, don't touch that dial!
For whoever the winner from this crowded bunch is,
Will need to be able to take verbal punches.

Meanwhile, new trade deals are now getting done,

Thus the stock market’s been on a heck of a run.

A new budget deal was agreed to by all,

Including some funding for Trump’s border wall.

(Why fund the wall if you’re going to impeach?

Are you not confident in your plot’s reach?

Are you protecting your red-state comrades

From election results that will likely be bad?)

The numbers show strength in the economy,

So it's unlikely that a recession we'll see,

At least 'til November, then it just depends

On voters, and how the election night ends.

So - what to expect? What will this new year bring?

To be sure, a lot more partisan bickering.

More posturing from both the left and the right;

Relief from our divide is nowhere in sight.

But where does that start? Well, with you and with me.

Can we re-learn to respectfully disagree?

To accept other views without intolerance?

Or must we maintain such a divisive stance?

I hope that we can, but if we cannot,

Our differences still needn’t leave us distraught.

We’ve survived political divides before,

So I’m sure that we’re able to survive one more.

Just remember: we have more that keeps us united

Than those things that may serve to make us divided.

So let me express to all folks, red or blue

A happy and prosperous New Year to you!

A Symbolic Gesture

I love to walk my dogs, and they love their walks. Being males, they spend more time stopping, sniffing and marking territory than they do walking, but it's more about their experience than my exercise.

Their usual routine is to run helter-skelter to the island in our cul-de-sac, or to the first corner across from it, and mark the first spot. This is probably TMI, but that first stream is generally a pretty healthy one.

They continue down the street, marking pretty much every tree along the way (we have at least one street tree in every front yard in our neighborhood). After less than a block, there's nothing left in the tank. Yet they continue to stop, sniff, and lift their leg.

It's a symbolic gesture.

The House Democrats' vote to impeach Donald Trump on December 18 was the same: a symbolic gesture.

You see, the Dems have been pissing on Trump since he beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential election (read that again, snowflakes: he beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential election - not the Russians, not James Comey, not gender, just one candidate that the electoral majority favored over the other, for reasons that should by now be evident).

They emptied their tank with the Mueller Report, yet they had to lift their collective leg one more time. So they did.

And nothing came out. It was purely a symbolic gesture, like a dog trying to mark a tree with nothing to show for it.

What did we gain from the full House hearing, in which each member got a minute or two to state his or her position for or against impeachment?

Did someone toss out a revelation that made another Representative - or voter, for that matter - suddenly say, "Hey, I never thought of that before! By golly, I'm now for (or against) impeachment!"

No. It was just the same old recycled talking points, with the Dems throwing in a lot of crap they don't like about Trump, but aren't in the articles of impeachment they drafted (and yet constitute the real reasons they want him impeached): civility, decency, things he said on the campaign trail, "ripping babies from their mothers' arms," ad blauseum.

In fact, to that last point, Al Green (not the singer; the one without talent who takes up space in the House), who infamously set the stage by saying we have to impeach Trump so he doesn't get reelected, brought up the now-debunked photo of a little girl crying because she was purportedly separated from her parents at the border.

Hey, Al: 1) You weren't impeaching Trump over his border policy - in fact, you can't, any more than the GOP could have impeached Obama for any of his policies. 2) It's been proven that the picture you used had nothing to do with the propagandized message it was used for in the media. 3) If you truly believe that we the people cannot be trusted to decide who our President is, then you can't be trusted with public office, and should be sent back to wherever you came from, if they'll have you.

In short, the entire day was a waste of time, unless you count the one- to two-minute soundbites each Representative got as a free campaign ad for the constituents back home.

In the gospel according to Mark, we read, "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?"

Let's paraphrase, to put those words in context: "For what does it profit a political party to gain a symbolic victory, but forfeit its ultimate objective (and indeed, its soul)?"

In other words, what did the Democrats gain from this symbolic gesture that is akin to a dog lifting its leg without result?

Obviously, I can't ask my dogs what they get from this gesture. Are they hoping another dog will see them, and realize the territory being symbolically marked is now theirs? Is it reflex, as ingrained as turning around and around before they lie down? I don't know.

For the Dems, however, we can find some evidence of what they gained, in the polls. Now let me just say that I don't place much stock in political polls - haven't since 2016, at least. By the same token, I don't place much stock in economic surveys, like Consumer Confidence or the various manufacturing surveys. I prefer hard data, like retail sales, or industrial production, or construction spending.

Or electoral votes.

On the other hand, both economic surveys and political polls can be useful in identifying trends, shifting tides, if you will.

At the time a giddy Nancy Pelosi first announced the impeachment proceedings, 90% of Democrats polled favored impeachment and removal of President Trump. The most recent poll showed that number had shrunk to just 77%. Now, 77% is still a lot, but these are Democrats, after all, who are still in denial over the results of the 2016 election, don't need a valid reason to want Trump impeached, and most of whom don't understand the process to begin with. So while 77% is significant, it isn't surprising. What is surprising, and is even more significant, is the large shift between then and now.

I've been accused of saying there are no reasonable Democrats. These results prove that there are at least a handful. The shift probably represents those Democrats polled that actually do understand the purpose and process of impeachment.

Also at the time of Pelosi's announcement, head-to-head polls between Trump and various Dem primary candidates showed several of them beating Trump in 2020: Biden, Warren, Sanders, and in at least one early poll, Mayor Pete. (I can't spell his last name. Don't ask me to try.)

Granted, these are national polls, which mean nothing given the Electoral College (right, Hillary?) And, they're still a year out from the election. Still, and again, shifts in polling can indicate shifts in sentiment.

And guess what? The latest U.S. News poll (hardly a Trump-friendly media outlet) showed Trump beating all Democrat comers head-to-head, some quite handily.

Dollars represent another strong indicator. And the GOP raised a record $20.6 million in November.

Who'da thunk the Democrats could turn Donald Trump into a sympathetic figure?

Yes, what Pelosi and Co. have gained through their symbolic gesture is what appears to be almost certain defeat in 2020. They have achieved the goal held since 2016 of leaving a permanent asterisk on Pres. Trump's legacy, but likely at the cost of losing their House majority and the White House in 2020. And given the nature of this proceeding, that permanent asterisk might look more like a badge of honor than a scarlet letter.

So now what? After harping on the urgency of impeaching Trump, to avoid him doing "further irreparable harm to our Republic," suddenly Pelosi is putting on the brakes. She wants Senate Majority Leader McConnell to show his hand. Her Senate lapdog, Chuck "I love TV cameras" Schumer, is already complaining about not getting his witnesses approved, before the Senate process has even begun.

Sorry, Nancy and Chuck, this is in the Senate now. You no longer get to make up the rules to suit you. It's the GOP's turn.

Personally, I'm torn between two options. The first is a prolonged trial in the Senate, in which the GOP calls Adam Schiff, his pal the whistleblower, Joe and Hunter Biden, Loretta Lynch, Bill Clinton (to talk about his tarmac meeting with Lynch, during which they purportedly talked about soccer), Eric Holder, James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, John Brennan ... you get the idea. Keep Bernie and Warren and Klobuchar and Spartacus (not that the latter two are still relevant in the race) off the campaign trail and in the Senate chambers. Give Mayor Pete an "edge-edge" to "boot."

However, that could lend credence to this whole charade (plus there are too many Republicans who would insist on playing by the rules; the reason the Dems can more easily unify in these pitched partisan battles is that they're more uniform in their unscrupulousness).

So my second option would be for McConnell to rightly call this what it is and has been, a verdict in search of a charge, a partisan charade, payback for impeaching Bill Clinton and for defeating his wife, and say, "Enough! We're not going to legitimize this nonsense with a trial; we're going straight to a vote. And then we're going to get back to doing what the people for whom we work sent us here to do."

As much as I'd like to see the trial, enough of my tax dollars have been wasted watching the Democrats dry-piss on a tree. Let's not mark the rest of the block. There's nothing in the tank, and there is real work to be done.

This is It - Make No Mistake Where You Are

You'll have to read to the end to understand the title of this post. Sorry.

After my last post, I received a number of comments and messages, as is typical. Usually, I'll get some comments and messages agreeing with what I've said, some that may correct minor points, and some that flat-out disagree with me.

That's okay; I encourage that. Diversity of thought is under attack in the media, on our college campuses, in some cities, and elsewhere in our lives, so if I can provide a forum for it, I'm more than willing.

This time, however, no one disagreed with my premises regarding the impeachment process, nor with my comparison between the House's committee impeachment hearings and the Senate Judiciary Committee's questioning of IG Horowitz. No one even took exception to my assertion that Trump was never worried about Biden as a serious political adversary, because even the Democrats are fearful that Biden can't beat Trump.

No, this time there were but two camps: those who agreed with my points, and those who ignored them altogether to point out other awful things about Trump, most notably his mean-spirited tweets, although one messenger went on at length about all the names Trump called his Republican primary opponents.

Most of whom support him now, but apparently somebody is still pissed about it.

The most common theme related to Trump's ill-advised and wholly unnecessary tweet about Greta Thunberg a few days ago. Now, I have friends with autistic kids, and I'm very compassionate about that particular condition. I would like to tone down the emotion, however, and point out a couple of facts.

First, while Ms. Thunberg may be considered by some to be a "child," she is sixteen years of age. Still too young for Trump to be targeting her in a tweet, just as Barron Trump - who is kept out of the public eye - is too young to be publicly targeted by a law school professor who would rather cross the street than walk in front of a Trump hotel, so deep is her hatred of the man. (I don't recall any of the same folks calling out that behavior as unacceptable. Maybe it's okay, depending on who the child is.)

Second, Ms. Thunberg has Asperger's syndrome, which is within the autism spectrum, but is a particularly high-functioning manifestation. No matter; these may well be distinctions without differences. However, it seems to me that to use the characterization of "autistic child" when that isn't quite accurate is merely an attempt to evoke sympathy and vulnerability in making Trump out to be even worse than he is, when it comes to his tweets, which comes across as exploitative.

It's not necessary - he's bad enough on his own. I'll state yet again for the record: I do not defend his tweets. I find them churlish, ill-mannered, unnecessary, immature, inappropriate, bombastic, superlative, braggadocious, crude, distasteful and hyperbolic. Write it down. I don't want to keep repeating it. And I don't need to defend myself to anyone, thank you (see Matt. 7:5).

However, there is something that folks should be aware of regarding young Ms. Thunberg, and then I'll make a few observations.

There are at least a couple of left-wing climate change groups behind her, one of which paid her way across the pond on a boat to address the U.N. on the topic. (What, you thought she paid her own way by flipping burgers at a Swedish McDonald's?) And why would they do that?

Because she is indeed a sympathetic and vulnerable face on the radical fringe of the climate change movement - you know, the "we'll all be dead in 12 years" faction.

To disagree with her is to be perceived as attacking her, and it's despicable to attack a child with a disability. So she's held up in front of the climate change extremists as a human shield, so that if you attack the cause, you're a reprehensible cad.

Just as Christine Blasey Ford was held up by Dianne Feinstein et al in defense of preventing Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court: none of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee dared question her allegations, though her own witnesses couldn't corroborate them, for fear of being seen as attacking a victim of assault. Never mind that the myriad allegations against Kavanaugh probably set the Me-Too movement back years.

And just as former Ambassador Yovanovitch was held up by Adam Schiff et al as a poor, sympathetic woman who was *gasp* fired from her job! No one dared call her a disgruntled former employee, in spite of the fact that she clearly came across as one; no one dared question her service record in the various hot-spots in which she served, no matter how things turned out in those places. She is, after all, a woman.

Vulnerable as they may be, neither Amb. Yovanovitch nor Ms. Thunberg seemed as triggered by Trump's tweets about them as were their defenders. The Ambassador, after Schiff read Trump's tweet about her to her, proceeded to testify against him for hours. And Ms. Thunberg, who herself refers to Asperger's as a "superpower" that contributes to her ability to stand strong for her cause, responded with her own clever tweet, which was a pretty solid counter-punch. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Trump read it, chuckled, and said to himself, "Well played, Greta."

Now, some observations. First, regarding Greta's being named Time Magazine's person of the year, I offer my congratulations. I do, however, wonder how many trees are cut down every year to print magazines. Seems that if she's serious about the environment, Greta might want to thank Time for the honor, but admonish them for deforestation.

Second, I find her chosen form of protest curious: she stages school strikes, wherein students skip school to protest against climate change. If it's fine with her parents, it's fine with me. It just seems ironic that she's skipping science class to protest against climate change. Maybe she already knows everything there is to know about climate science.

Third, none of the above should be misconstrued by anyone as attacks on her. They're just curiosities I have, born of the irony of their circumstances. I am probably more bothered by her being exploited by her handlers and her defenders than her defenders are. I will, however, bar no holds in taking shots at adults who take their climate science policy cues from a 16-year-old non-scientist.

Back to Trump's tweets. Look, I wish he wouldn't tweet at all. To some extent, he has to in order to get his message across; CNN, MSNBC and ABC will never report positive economic data, or cover Trump visiting our troops in Afghanistan on Thanksgiving (instead letting themselves be hilariously trolled into saying he's playing golf, a clever gambit which exposed the media for what they are), or show the applause he received at this year's Army-Navy game. So he has to resort to Twitter to get those messages into the mainstream.

But I'd be happy if he just closed his account, or turned over control to a cooler head within his press team.

And yet -

None of his tweets constitute an impeachable offense.

So the fact that his mean tweets were universally invoked as a response to my post about the sham of an impeachment process Congress is now wasting its time and our money on, rather than any substantive defense of "abuse of power" or "obstruction of Congress," or any argument in support of Joe Biden's prowess as a threat to Trump's re-election, is pretty much evidence that -

This is it - make no mistake where you are. If you believe that Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office, your basis for that action - which should be reserved for the most egregious and serious of offenses - is that you don't like the guy.

That's a slippery slope down which we as a nation do not want to venture, but I fear we're headed that way. This may well become how we wage political campaigns in the future, and how our legislators spend our hard-earned tax dollars.

A final note: I have been remiss, as the author of a blog originally devoted to economic and market topics, in not weighing in on the equity market's take on this impeachment imbroglio.

In a word, the market's reaction is *yawn*.

Now, during the Nixon impeachment process, the market was tanking, but the economy was in recession, and there was a looming oil crisis. (Today, the U.S. is the #1 energy producer in the world. You won't see that on MSNBC.) And during the Clinton impeachment process, the market was rallying, but Alan Greenspan was busy inflating the dot-com bubble.

More recently, the market has fluctuated, but only due to trade concerns or hopes, and overwhelmingly positive economic data.

What's significant about that, especially in light of the market's apparent nonchalance over the Nixon and Clinton impeachments?

Under Nixon, the economy was in the toilet - it wasn't going to matter who was President.

Under Clinton, the market was rallying, but thanks largely to the Fed. Plug in Al Gore, and the market likely doesn't suffer greatly, not with interest rates at then-record lows.

But remember what happened when Trump was elected? The market, which had been trading sideways based on an economy that could barely average 2% growth under an administration with decidedly unfriendly policies toward business, sold off in overnight futures trading by some 800 points after it was announced that Trump won.

Then, not only did the market recover those losses by the open, but it finished the day up 300 points.

An 1,100-point swing in 24 hours' trading is unprecedented, and undeniably triggered by an event - in this case, the election of Donald Trump as President. And the rally has continued, with major indices having set about 100 new records since that day. The business sector likes the guy, whether you do or not.

If the market were fearful that Trump would be removed from office, knowing that the Dems would then likely go after VP Pence, it would be spooked into record lows by the prospect of Pres. Pelosi.

But the market is betting that Trump won't be removed. And the market usually isn't wrong about these things.

A Tale of Two Hearings

Let's get right down to it, and contrast the House Intel Committee's impeachment hearing process - start to finish, including the private depositions taken in a SCIF in the basement of the House - and the House Judiciary Committee's more recent "hearings" on articles of impeachment, to the Senate Judiciary Committee's questioning of Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

The Intel Committee, chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA; as if we couldn't have figured that out from the way he handled the process), began its proceedings by holding private hearings in said SCIF, instead of in front of the American people. Republicans were not allowed to call witnesses, nor were their questions allowed in most cases. No transcripts were released, but Schiff did selectively leak anything that he thought the media could turn into points scored for his cause - his verdict in search of a charge.

It then proceeded to public hearings, in which no fact witnesses were called save one, and his testimony directly quoted the President as saying he wanted no quid pro quo from Ukraine in exchange for U.S. aid. The Republicans' requested witnesses were denied, and a number of their questions were struck down by Schiff.

Next, we heard from three so-called constitutional law experts on the Democrat side, and one on the Republican side. The Republicans' witness testified that he is a registered Democrat and opposes Pres. Trump's policies; presumably that's the only way he cleared Schiff's extreme vetting process. All three of the Dems' law prof witnesses were proved to have bias against Trump; one was so vociferous that, in a previous interview, she claimed to have had to walk across the street rather than walk down the sidewalk in front of a Trump hotel. When asked if she would stay there, she said, "God, no!" No bias there.

The Republicans' witness, despite his party affiliation and opposition to Trump, warned that if the Dems proceeded down this ill-advised, unsupported impeachment path they, not Trump, would be guilty of abuse of power.

In Hollywood, they call that foreshadowing.

On to Rep. Jerry Nadler's (D-NY; as if we couldn't have figured that one out too) House Judiciary Committee "hearings." Mostly we got to hear from the Dems' lawyer interpreting all the second-hand hearsay testimony from the Schiff-show, and the Republicans' lawyer refuting it. Then we got to hear all the committee members spend a long day "debating" the two flimsy articles of impeachment: "Abuse of Power" and "Obstruction of Congress." It was pretty far-ranging, going well beyond those two topics. The Dems kept throwing out all these things that they don't like about Trump, which left one to ask, "So what is it you're impeaching him for? Trump University? His charity? His family? His tweets? His hair? Beating Hillary Clinton?"

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) had the most succinct, factual and logical point of the day (a low bar, to be sure), when he said that it is the Dems in the House that are guilty of abuse of power and contempt of Congress. Abuse of power, for denying the minority due process, and contempt of Congress, for refusing to hear relevant testimony from true fact witnesses.

We did learn at least one interesting thing from the Democrat side, however: Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell's sister is a yoga instructor. Wow, thanks for that nugget, Debbie - it's very much germane to the matters at hand, and your bringing it to America's attention is a damn good use of the taxpayers' money. Really? Is that all they've got? Hey, I have a cousin who teaches music - can we get that on the record?

What happened to bribery? (You know, the charge that the Dems paid even more of the taxpayers' money on a focus group to come up with.) What happened to extortion? What happened to the vacuous Eric Swalwell's attempted bribery and extortion? What happened to quid pro quo?

"Dust in the Wind," as the old song goes. And once the dust has cleared, we're left with "abuse of power" and "obstruction of Congress," which the Dems can't even stay on point to defend.

But I digress - on to Sen. Lindsey Graham's Sen. Judiciary Committee's questioning of IG Horowitz. The latter's report seemed to give the DOJ and the FBI a pass, much to the dismay of some Republicans and the delight of all Democrats. But wait - there's more.

Sen. Graham and the Republicans on the Committee masterfully got to the more troubling matters behind the IG's findings, which were limited in part by the scope of his investigation. Horowitz clearly stated that an FBI lawyer flat-out lied in doctoring an email that was used as the foundation for the application for the FISA warrant that resulted in going after Carter Page. He further stated that he knew of no previous example of that being done, and conceded that if a private citizen had doctored evidence in such a matter, it would be grounds for prosecution.

Also, after Horowitz' report was released, former FBI Director James Comey said it "vindicated" him. When asked if that was the case, Horowitz replied that his report vindicates no one.

This ain't over. Look for the FBI (under new leadership; Wray is rightfully toast after this) and the AG to investigate further. Heads may yet roll, and charges may yet be on the way.

Where Schiff was smarmy and Nadler bumbling, Graham was professional. Where Schiff and Nadler were secretive and obstructive, Graham was transparent and open. Where Schiff and Nadler were vague and arbitrary, Graham was precise.

At the end of the long day of House Judiciary Committee hearings on Thursday, one important thought came to mind. This is the crux of this matter, so consider it carefully. The Dems' entire premise is that Trump sought a quid pro quo from Ukraine (or committed bribery or extortion or attempted bribery or attempted extortion or ... well, ah, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress - yeah, that's the ticket!) in withholding aid from Ukraine (that was paid to Ukraine in a timely manner), in exchange for a personal favor.

What favor? He allegedly wanted Ukraine to dig up dirt on a political rival, namely Joe Biden, for Biden's admittedly - indeed, braggadociously - having held up aid to Ukraine unless it did him the personal favor of firing a prosecutor who was investigating the matter of Biden's son being paid $50,000 a month to sit on the board of a company whose product he knew nothing about, and he had no experience in Ukraine (but Joe, as then-VP, was responsible for dealings with Ukraine). Quid pro quo, anyone?

Now, why did Trump supposedly want Biden investigated?

Several Dems, throughout these proceedings, have asserted that it was because polls showed that Biden would beat Trump head-to-head in the general election.

National polls. We learned in 2016 how reliable those are, when Hillary Clinton was leading Trump in national polling right up to Election Day, when he handed her her pant-suited arse in the Electoral College. And these polls cited by the Dems are more than a year out from the election, even well before the Democrat nomination. So we don't even know if Biden will remain the front-runner (he hasn't consistently been).

So, here's the key question for Democrats: If you're so sure that Trump sought dirt on Biden because Trump was afraid Biden would beat him in the general election -

Why are you so afraid that he can't??

See, if the Dems were confident that Biden could beat Trump, they wouldn't be seeking out new candidates at this late date. They had a field of 20+, but apparently they were concerned that none of them could win in 2020. So along comes Michael Bloomberg. There are rumors - pleas, even - for Hillary Clinton to once more enter the fray, or for Michelle Obama to try "Becoming" President (see what I did there?).

No one, not even the Dems, is afraid that Biden might beat Trump. In fact, quite the opposite is true: Dems are deathly afraid that he can't. 

And that, my friends, is the reason for this fallacious and fruitless attempt to remove him from office.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back On C-Span

Holy cow. I thought that the Intel Committee hearings were laughable: "fact" witnesses who weren't a party to the "facts" about which they testified (except for one, whose testimony reluctantly sealed the case against impeachment), witness-leading, and a committee chairman hell-bent on showing only one side of the story.

The biggest difference between those hearings and today's puzzling proceeding is that Jerry Nadler is not nearly as masterful as Adam Schiff in orchestrating and controlling a biased attack effort.

There were, again, no fact witnesses. The Dems called three liberal law school profs who bill themselves as Constitutional law experts to testify that the Schiff report provides grounds for impeachment under the Constitution. There are two problems with this:

1. That assumes that the Schiff report is factual and based on credible testimony from knowledgeable fact witnesses, with the defense permitted to cross-examine and call its own witnesses. That was not the case. It's a good thing those three law school profs are in academia, because if that's the extent of their knowledge of the law, they wouldn't last a day before or behind the bench. (It also illustrates their lack of understanding of the Constitution, which provides protections for the rights of the accused. On second thought, maybe it's a bad thing that they're profs, as they're influencing the minds of a generation of attorneys and potential jurists.)

2. All three of those professors have a history of anti-Trump comments and behavior, and campaign contributions to Democrat political candidates including Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. One of them even dragged the President's 13-year-old son into her attack on Trump (can you imagine the outrage on the left if that had happened with Chelsea during Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings?). And note that the question from a Democrat on the committee that led to that tasteless comment was very much a leading one. At least the Republicans on the committee handed her her arse for it.

The GOP called one witness to the Dems' three (that's okay, though; the three were largely interchangeable as none of them offered one iota of originality, so it was really one-to-one). So who did they call - a Scalia-esque staunch conservative originalist who strongly supports Donald Trump?

No. They called a registered Democrat, who admitted on the stand that he voted against Donald Trump (and the wording is key: not "I didn't vote for Donald Trump," but "I voted against Donald Trump" - active vs. passive in his non-support). And that witness, rather than devolving into anti-Trump emotion, as did the other three, remained focused on the impeachment process as envisioned by the framers. He rightly noted that his feelings about Trump were irrelevant to the impeachment question, and that impeachment on this basis would not only be un-Constitutional, but would set a dangerous precedent in which impeachment is used as a political targeting tool.

Make no mistake: if, at this point, you believe Trump should be impeached, you do not understand the Constitution. You do not understand the law. And, most important, you believed he should be impeached long before the Mueller report was released. You wanted him impeached because he is President, and he is Donald Trump. I'm sorry, but that's not an impeachable offense. (And note that this comes from someone who voted against Trump - also, not "not for him," but "against him.")

At the end of today's ... whatever you want to call it, Ranking Member Doug Collins called out Nadler to provide some inkling of what his plan is regarding furthering this process in the Judiciary Committee. Nadler had no answer.

And that, perhaps, is the most telling fact of all. The Democrats have no articulated plan toward anything other than damaging Trump.

In light of that, one final consideration: given all of these shenanigans, and given that the accusation being leveled is that President Trump abused his office to gain political advantage over an opponent in the 2020 election ...

How is the behavior of House Democrats any different? They are abusing their offices, and their majority, to damage Donald Trump in advance of the 2020 election, because they know that the field of candidates they've assembled to challenge him have virtually no chance of defeating him in a free and fair election. And they know that they can't possibly win the case for his removal in the Senate. So to what end their efforts, other than to damage his chances in an election. This effort began when it became apparent that the Democrat primary field was critically flawed.

We don't need Russia or Ukraine as an enemy hell-bent on influencing our elections. We have our own partisan system, and the complicit media, to do that for us.

Meanwhile, Back in Washington

An even briefer follow-up to the follow-up. While Nancy's in Spain rubbing elbows with Greta Thunberg, and Nadler is wasting America's time perpetuating Adam Schiff's partisan fantasy, the work of America isn't getting done, other than what the President can get done on his own.

A couple of things that aren't being addressed? First, USMCA. We could easily pen a good trade deal for the entirety of the North American continent, but Nancy has other priorities, as do Nadler, Schiff, et al. Heaven forbid they should do the will of the people who put them in their lofty positions of entitlement.

But the bigger one is the appropriations bill. For the uninitiated, let me explain what that is. An appropriations bill lays out what Washington is going to spend money on. Never mind that the process is fraught with favoritism, quid pro quo, retaliation, and other political maneuvering. I won't go into great detail on the process. Suffice it to say that it's controlled by a bunch of recent college grads who work for key leaders of the two parties and negotiate for our tax dollars in a tit-for-tat game that would make us mutiny if we all truly understood it.

With the Dems firmly focused on this impeachment effort, the appropriations bill is lying fallow. So instead Congress will pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) to ensure continued government funding, so that we don't have another government shutdown. CRs are supposed to be used as a last resort to ensure that key government functions continue to be operational, and to avoid shutdowns that could result in our civil servants not being paid.

In reality, many of those civil servants are deemed vital, and thus continue to work through a shutdown and get paid. Others get paid in arrears due to collective bargaining agreements with their unions, meaning that a government shutdown just results in a paid vacation for those workers, though I imagine they might have a greater burden when they return to work.

But the bottom line is that CRs have become the norm, the way we fund the government, because there is political gain for each party in blaming the other party for each shutdown that occurs, and the implications for our civil servants get exaggerated to bolster the spin. Don't get me wrong; I'm not criticizing the civil servants. They shouldn't have to deal with this crap to begin with.

However, by passing a CR to fund the government instead of passing an appropriations bill to allocate spending, Congress is avoiding doing two things that are included in the proposed appropriations measure, but aren't covered in the CR, which just continues current funding.

First, they're withholding a pay raise for the military, including those brave souls who took down al-Baghdadi.

Second, and equally significant: the appropriations bill includes aid for Ukraine.

There is some banter in Washington that Pelosi is holding up the vote on the appropriations bill to ensure that no Democrats in the House break ranks on the impeachment vote, like two of them did on the initial vote to proceed with impeachment proceedings in Schiff's Intel Committee.

So consider this: Nancy Pelosi is potentially withholding aid to Ukraine as the quid for her Dem colleagues' votes on impeachment, as the quo.

Hmmm.

Nancy Fiddled While Washington Burned

I'll get to the topic implied by the title of this post shortly, but first:

Anyone who has read this blog previously knows that the Curmudgeon's modus operandi is to go directly to source documents, when available, and read those, then draw his own conclusion, rather than relying on the unreliable news media's spin on things.

To that end, I have read Adam Schiff's impeachment report in its entirety, and I've determined that -

Wait a minute. No, I didn't. Of course I didn't. Are you kidding me? Why would I waste my time wading through 300 pages of Schiff's allegations supposedly based on the public hearings that we all had the ability to tune in to? After all, Schiff's spin is even more partisan than CNN's or MSNBC's. I watched the hearings; I heard the testimony. THAT is the source document. The only possible value that could be derived from Schiff's report would be if he had printed it on Charmin Ultra Soft. (Of course, Schiff and the Dems would rather wipe their collective arse on the U.S. Constitution.)

However, I did read the table of contents, and I skimmed key sections of the report on that basis. I also tuned into both CNN and Fox News for their respective takes. Predictably, CNN saw the report as damning, and certain to get Trump removed from office, while Fox saw it as a partisan nothing-burger on the order of the Mueller report.

They're both wrong. From what I've been able to glean, Schiff's report makes the Mueller report look damning. Schiff missed his calling - he can write fantasy as well as Tolkein or Rowling. The edge they have over him is that, after reading their works of fantasy, you could almost bring yourself to believe in wizardry and hobbits.

The most laughably transparent bit of partisanship in the report is the implication of VP Mike Pence. Note that there wasn't one iota of testimony in the hearings to implicate Pence, or anyone else for that matter.

See, this whole thing was cooked up by the Dems because, after the Mueller report failed, and the slate of Dem primary candidates proved to be so wanting that newcomers keep joining the fray, like rats jumping ON a sinking ship, the Dems be like, "OMG! We gotta remove Trump from office, because we can't beat him!"

Then other Dems be like, "OMG! If we remove Trump from office, Pence is President, and voters will be faced with the option of the same policies that have resulted in a strong economy, the lowest minority unemployment in history, serious efforts at border security for the first time in five administrations, a first crack at prison reform, respect for the military and first responders, and good trade deals that don't disadvantage the U.S. - only without the polarizing hyperbole, bad hair and mean tweets! Pence would win by a wider margin than Trump!!"

(I used terms like "be like" and "OMG" in the previous paragraph only because the Democrat Party today takes its cues from the AOCs of the world. Don't worry, I can write better than that. I'm just going for broad bipartisan appeal here.)

So Schiff is hoping we can get Trump impeached and removed, then get Pence impeached and removed, leaving Nancy Pelosi as President. Nancy, power-mad as she is (remember how she lovingly cooed about "the gavel" in 2016?), would undoubtedly demand that the current slate of Dem candidates drop out so that she could run unopposed in the primary. In that scenario, you could pick some random person off the street to run against her and they'd win. Also note that all of this would have to happen pretty fast. Do the Dems not think this stuff through, or are they just making it up as they go along, until they arrive at the next "oh crap" moment?

On to the topic implied by the title. Pelosi is so committed to showing solidarity with Schiff and Nadler as the Judiciary Committee hearings get underway, so stalwart in her leadership of the august body that is the House of Representatives in this somber and reluctant impeachment process, that she's ...

Leaving Washington D.C. to fly (on a fossil fuel-burning jet) to Spain to attend ...

A climate change summit.

Maybe Greta Thunberg can help Nancy solve the problem of air pollution and human feces and spent needles on the sidewalks in her home district. (Nah. Let's just ban some other form of plastic, now that you can't get straws in San Francisco restaurants, nor can you buy bottled water at SFO. But you can buy canned water, and throw the cans in the trash instead of the recycle bins. And you can buy sodas and juice and other beverages in plastic bottles at SFO. Yeah, that'll take care of California's problems.)

What does that tell us? Nancy wants to distance herself from the Schiff-show that is now transitioning to Nadler, so she's leaving Washington - hell, she's leaving the country, for crying out loud. What, is she hoping this thing will blow over before she comes back? Is she sufficiently delusional to believe that Trump will actually be removed from office? Was she the mastermind behind implicating Pence? ("Be sure Pence looks bad too - I want to caress the phone in the Oval Office.")

I find that hard to believe. Even Pelosi doesn't believe this circus is going anywhere. She knew that from the get. So why she caved to AOC, I'll never understand. It'd be the stuff of history books in the future, except that history is now being re-written to fit a narrative. I have to believe that she just wanted to get the hell out of town.

We can only hope that she'll defect. Spain's loss is our gain.

A Verdict in Search of a Charge

It's been a long hiatus for the Curmudgeon, but I can't not weigh in given the current circus going on in Washington. It's hard for me to believe that even the most ardent, anti-Trump, far-left Democrat buys into their party's "case" for impeachment of a sitting President. Then I read various social media posts, or watch CNN, and I'm shocked back into the reality of the extreme partisan (and largely uninformed) world in which we live.

The title of this post relates to the irrefutable fact that the Democrat party has been hell-bent on impeaching this President since before he was inaugurated, before there could possibly have been legitimate articles of impeachment, grounds, or any reason for such action. The initial calls for impeachment began the day after the 2016 election, as I recall. No reason was given; those calling for impeachment simply refused to accept the fact that Trump was elected President. They couldn't defeat him, so they wanted to remove him. It’s the way of the Left: if you don’t get your way in an election, use some other means to get what you want, like the Supreme Court or impeachment.

However, the Dems soon began conjuring up “grounds” for impeachment. Let’s examine each in turn.

1. Colluding with the Russians to undermine the DNC and the Clinton campaign in order to steal the election. This is one of the many, many, many reasons (see what I did there?) that Ms. Clinton has given for her (second, let’s not forget) failed bid to win the White House. Baskin-Robbins must have been her campaign advisor, because she’s given more reasons for her loss than they have flavors.

So Robert Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel to the DOJ, and tasked with launching an investigation into the allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the election. To make a long story short, nearly two years and many millions of taxpayers’ dollars later, the Mueller report found no evidence of collusion. Not once was the word “guilty” used (bookmark this fact, as it will be important later).

2. Obstruction of justice. Early in the Mueller investigation, it was announced that the Special Counsel was also investigating the President for this alleged offense, in relation to the Russia probe itself. Again, the Mueller report showed no evidence of such obstruction in relation to the case.

Then came the vaporous “whistleblower,” who is apparently in possession of Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility. This alleged individual alleged that Trump, on a congratulatory call with Ukraine’s new President Volodymyr Zelensky, ordered Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, son of former VP and current Democrat Presidential candidate Joe Biden, related to Hunter’s role on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company. Said role paid the younger Biden more than $50,000 per month, and he landed the lucrative role while his dad was VP, in charge of U.S. relations with Ukraine. In fact, Joe bragged on camera that, during the corrupt administration of Zelensky’s predecessor, he himself had directly threatened to withhold a billion dollars in aid to Ukraine if they didn’t assure him, within a one-hour deadline, that a prosecutor who was investigating Hunter be fired. He was fired, and the aid was released. Interesting.

3. Quid pro quo was the third reason given, and it arose during the closed-door hearings with the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Adam Schiff. Those initial hearings were unprecedented, indeed bizarre; they were held in a SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) in the basement of the Capitol, and only the Democrats on the committee were allowed to participate. Initially, transcripts of the witnesses’ testimony were not released, but Schiff gleefully leaked out any testimony that seemed to support the case for impeachment to a media that was all too happy to run with it, in typically alarmist fashion. It's like a trial with no jurors, and no defense attorney or witnesses, in which the defendant is stripped of his right to face his accuser, and information is selectively released to the press during the proceeding, with the press playing the role of judge. There has never been anything like it outside of totalitarian systems.

So the initial allegation of quid pro quo was related to Trump allegedly having required Zelensky to investigate the Bidens -  presumably because Trump was concerned Biden would defeat him in the 2020 election – in order to secure the release of promised aid to Ukraine. So the quid being offered by Trump was the aid, and the quo being required of Zelensky was the investigation. Five problems with this theory: first, Trump trumped the Dems by releasing the transcript of the call, in which he asked Zelensky, “if it’s possible,” to look into corruption in Ukraine, including the suspicious payments to Hunter Biden and the former VP’s possible influence in securing them. (Seems plausible; Biden admitted to such influence, the payments to Hunter were far beyond what is normal for a board member’s compensation, and Hunter neither speaks Ukrainian nor knows squat about natural gas. Could be some corruption there, ya think?)

The transcript revealed no tie between the request that Zelensky look into corruption in Ukraine writ large, with the specific example of the Bidens mentioned, and the aid appropriated for Ukraine. (It’s not unusual to expect that a country receiving U.S. aid investigate and try to eliminate corruption; in fact it’s basic fiscal responsibility.) So the second problem was that there was no quid, the third was that there was no pro, and the fourth, that there was no quo. The fifth problem was that most Americans don’t speak Latin, were confused by all the quids and pros and quos being bandied about, and it just didn’t resonate with the voting public as grounds for impeachment. So –

4. Bribery. Instead of demanding a quid pro quo, Trump now allegedly bribed the Ukrainian President into investigating the Bidens, using U.S. aid as the payoff. There are three problems with this theory. First, the Ukrainian President already knew the aid was coming. Trump couldn't offer Zelensky anything that Zelensky didn't already have confidence in getting, and Trump never threatened to withhold it. It had been temporarily held up, for reasons that still can’t be confirmed – could be a desire on the part of Washington to ensure that the funds wouldn’t be compromised through corruption, or it could be a matter of one hand not knowing what the other was doing. By the time this allegation was thrown out, the public hearings had begun, and the testimony certainly produced evidence of a great deal of confusion around the delay in releasing the funds. But no matter; again, Zelensky knew it was coming, so Trump couldn’t offer anything new. Further, Zelensky didn’t know the funds had been delayed, Ukraine did receive them, and the Bidens have not been investigated to date.

The second problem with this allegation? Even if Trump had threatened to permanently withhold the funds from Ukraine unless Zelensky specifically dug up dirt on Joe Biden, which is what the Dems and their media outlets want you to believe, that doesn't meet the standard for bribery under the Constitution, which specifically mentions bribery as a potential reason for impeachment. The statutory definition of bribery would include a demand (which again, was never made) for something of value in exchange for something else of value. However, the Constitutional standard for bribery relates to effectively purchasing the President. It would be as if Zelensky offered Trump billions of dollars in exchange for Trump doing certain favors for Ukraine. And that didn't happen.

And the third problem, which is the most important and telling:  The Democrats actually used focus groups of voters to determine the charge that most resonated with them as grounds for impeachment. The focus groups were given the choices of quid pro quo, bribery, and extortion as possibilities, and they picked bribery, so Schiff and his minions went with that. You just can’t make this shit up.

5. Extortion, just in case bribery didn’t stick.

6. Attempted bribery or extortion. The argument made by the vapid Rep. Eric Swalwell – you remember him, he lasted about a week in the Democrat primary field – was that “If you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, then when it’s discovered that you have your hand in the cookie jar, you pull your hand out of the cookie jar without taking the cookie, you’re still guilty.” Really, Eric? Is that the best you’ve got? Your alma mater must be so proud.

Besides, there was no conclusive testimony in the public hearings that proved Trump ever put his hand in the cookie jar, to stick with Swalwell’s second-grade Sesame Street analogy. Former Ambassador Sondland’s opening statement alleged that Trump asked for a quid pro quo, but during questioning he admitted that he made that statement because he assumed it; the President told him directly on a call that he wanted “nothing, no quid pro quo” from Ukraine. Lt. Col. Alexander “don’t call me mister” Vindman alleged that Trump’s request was a demand, even though it was clearly worded as a request and couched with qualifiers such as “if that’s possible” and “if you can,” because of the relative position Trump supposedly holds as President of the United States vs. the President of Ukraine. Uhh, okay. Sounds like two Presidents to me, but then again, I’m just a “mister.”

7. Let’s count quid pro quo a second time, since the Dems tried to hang their hat on it after Sondland’s opening statement. Without a focus group, even.

8. Witness intimidation/tampering. During Ambassador Yovanovtitch's testimony, Trump sent out a mean tweet about her, saying that everywhere she was assigned during her diplomatic career turned bad. Never mind whether his assertion was true; it was mean-spirited. So Schiff read it to her during her testimony, and baited her into saying it was "intimidating."

Well, for one thing, she would never have known of the tweet during her testimony had Schiff not read it to her, so if anyone was guilty of witness intimidation, it was Schiff. In fact, she didn't call it intimidating until Schiff brought up the term and asked her to agree with him. Further, she didn't seem too intimidated. (Nor should anyone in response to a critical tweet from Donald Trump - it's de rigeur.) In fact, she continued to testify against him for the rest of the day. If Trump's tweet were enough to intimidate her, she probably shouldn't be in the Foreign Service.

A similar argument was brought forth during the Nov. 19 testimony of Jennifer Williams. Trump had tweeted about her the weekend before her testimony, and a Dem Representative brought it up. He mentioned "witness intimidation or tampering" before she had a chance not to. Again, she continued to testify, apparently not intimidated.

Look, I'm not a fan of Trump's tweets. They're churlish, childish, ill-advised, and extreme. But none of that constitutes an impeachable offense. If being a jerk was an impeachable offense, by all reports Hillary would have been impeached. Of course, she’d have to win an election first.

9. We've got to bring up obstruction of justice again, because the Dems resurrected that charge when Trump cited privilege in not allowing some senior officials to testify. Guess what? As the hearings move into the Judiciary Committee, where the GOP will actually have some semblance of due process, if they try to call one of Adam Schiff’s aides to see what contact Schiff had with the “whistleblower,” Schiff can – and, mark my words, will – cite privilege and prevent any such testimony. (He can take the stand himself, but he’s already lied about that topic and others, so he can just stay that course.)

So, to recap: Russian collusion, obstruction of justice, quid pro quo, bribery, extortion, attempted bribery or extortion, quid pro quo again, witness intimidation and/or tampering, and obstruction of justice again. All without any evidence that these “crimes” were committed, or of any impeachable offense.

As for the witnesses themselves, many of them clearly came across as disgruntled former employees. I’ve had to fire people, and I’ve wound up in arbitration with some of them, because that’s the nature of the brokerage business that I spent 21 years in. I know some of the things they’ll try to say, and I can pretty easily tell when somebody has a chip on his or her shoulder over being fired, or having some of their duties removed. Further, other than Sondland, none of the witnesses had ever met or spoken to President Trump. Few of them had listened to the call with Zelensky regarding which they were “fact witnesses.” And Zelensky himself said there was no quid pro quo, no bribery, no extortion, not even any pressure.

Regarding the conduct of the public hearings, it was nearly as absurd as the nature of the secret-chamber ones. If one didn’t know that Adam Schiff started his career as a prosecutor, it certainly was evident. He came across as a caricature of the most smarmy, attention-hungry, unethical, get-a-conviction-and-damn-the-truth prosecutor that has ever put innocent people behind bars. He led witnesses like a shepherd leads sheep, absent the concern for the sheep’s welfare. And while he cut off Republicans the nanosecond that their time expired, and blocked both their questions and witnesses’ answers if it looked like they’d hurt his case, he allowed witnesses like Fiona Hill to bloviate ad nauseum, ignoring the timer, if he thought it would help it. In short, he played the roles of prosecutor, judge, and jury.

Speaking of Ms. Hill (oops, I mean DR. Hill), she sowed a good bit of confusion related to the allegation of some Republicans’ assertion that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. I’d like to clear that up now, because it's really pretty simple.

Dr. Hill insisted that Ukraine is our ally, and that Russia is the enemy, and that it was Russia, not Ukraine, that meddled in the 2016 election. Here’s the thing: Ukraine is our ally now that Zelensky is President. However, his predecessor was a pretty corrupt guy, as tied to the oligarchs as Putin ever will be – moreso, in fact, because Putin has more power than the oligarchs. So back then, it is very likely (indeed, proven) that Ukraine played a role in trying to get Hillary elected over Trump. Isn’t it interesting that the former corrupt Ukrainian government favored Hillary as the U.S. President, and had ties to Biden and strong relationships with several of the “fact witnesses” in Schiff’s little moot court? Those same witnesses didn’t have anything good to say about Zelensky, who now seeks an alliance with the U.S. and against Russia, against resistance by our own diplomats who favored the corrupt guy. Makes you wonder why, no?

So it’s a tale of two Ukraines: yes, the current government is an ally. No, the previous one wasn’t. Thus it's perfectly plausible that the previous Ukrainian government tried to get Hillary elected, and the current one isn't meddling. End of story. (And I'm not even a Dr.)

So now it goes to the House Judiciary Committee for hearings. That committee is chaired by Jerry Nadler, who, like Schiff, has been calling for Trump’s impeachment since the Russia investigation began, on the basis of “clear and compelling evidence” that neither of them ever produced, nor did Mueller. Nadler has promised a fair hearing that will allow the President and the Republicans the opportunity to participate in the hearings, to call witnesses, and to ask whatever questions they want.

Riiiiight. Unlike Schiff, Nadler was never a prosecutor. In fact, he’d begun his political career before he got his law degree. However, he’s already threatened to take away the GOP’s rights to fairness and due process if the President dares continue to invoke the executive privilege that his office – like Nadler’s and Schiff’s – affords him.

Another brilliant analogy related to the invocation of privilege by Eric Swalwell (and I paraphrase): "An innocent person would just let everyone go ahead and testify. Only a guilty person would invoke privilege." Gee, I thought the law said "innocent until proven guilty," not "innocent until presumed guilty." Swalwell must have slept through law school.

Under the impeachment process, it’s up to the Judiciary Committee to draft articles of impeachment, which constitute the actual charges that will be alleged as grounds thereof. Of course, that’s assuming that the committee determines that there are grounds. There aren’t, but they will, because this verdict was delivered by the Democrats before Inauguration Day, 2017. They’ll probably conduct another focus group to draft the specific articles.

In the end, if articles of impeachment are drafted by the Judiciary Committee, the full House will vote on them, and the House will most surely impeach Trump on a near-party line vote. I say “near,” because a couple of Democrats broke ranks in voting on whether to proceed with the Intel Committee hearings, and at least that many will break ranks again, while no Republicans will vote to impeach, because there is no evidence. Part of this is partisan, related to the fact that Trump had the audacity to beat Hillary Clinton and become President, and the other part is payback for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. The former is Trump's "crime," the latter is that of the GOP a generation ago.

(As an aside, isn’t it ironic that Monica Lewinsky got to spend more time in the Oval Office than Hillary ever did, or will?)

From there, it goes to the Senate, which, of course, is under Republican majority. The Senate holds the legislative equivalent of a trial, in which both parties can call witnesses, and the President’s attorneys can question them. Unless, of course, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decides to curtail the Dems’ due process rights, a la Schiff.

He won’t, because he doesn’t want to make it look like the GOP wasn’t fair when it went to the Senate. After all, there's no need to not be. However, the Republicans could drag out the Senate proceedings, which wouldn’t go over well with the Democrat Senators who would much rather campaign for President than do their jobs: Cory “Spartacus” Booker, Kamala Harris (who has already all but conceded, citing excuses in the best tradition of Hillary Clinton), Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. See, while a Senator can miss as many votes as they want while campaigning (right, President Obama?), they can’t miss impeachment proceedings. It would be like jurors skipping out on the trial to go clubbing and take selfies.

In addition, Joe Biden might find himself being dragged off the campaign trail to answer questions about his influence over the former Ukrainian President in demanding that he fire the prosecutor that was going to investigate his son, or risk losing a billion dollars in aid. This is the only evidence that exists of a quid pro quo, bribery, and extortion with regard to Ukraine, and it will be investigated vigorously if this thing goes to the Senate.

In the end, if it does go all the way through a Senate trial, the Senate will not find the President guilty, and this whole fiasco will hurt the Dems in 2020. The American people understand that once the Mueller report found nothing and was a waste of taxpayer dollars, and once the Dems realized that none of the 20+ candidates they could throw in the mix (and continue to) could unseat Trump, they had to try this gambit. Americans are sick of it, and sick of the fact that while the Dems are busy with this nonsense, nothing is happening on healthcare, trade, or any other substantive issue other than what the President can do and is doing daily by executive order. So given this charade and a weak pool of candidates, the Dems are toast next November.

Impeachment by the House with a not guilty verdict in the Senate was also the case with Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton. However, this is quite unlike the Clinton impeachment. That matter also began with a report from a Special Counsel to the DOJ. A report that used the word “guilty” in relation to eleven specific charges, among them a felony that got the former President disbarred.

Guilty on eleven counts, and yet the 2019 Dems could only come up with nine charges – two of them repeated and none of them alleged to be true by a Special Counsel – of which to accuse Donald Trump? The Democrats clearly need to up their game.

The Great Race

Another day, another Democrat declares his or her intent to seek the party’s presidential nomination in 2020.

It’s way too early to handicap this thing, so I’ll start with a paraphrase of a very concise analysis offered by Ben Shapiro. (Yes, the same Ben Shapiro who’s been banned from speaking at college campuses because the liberals in those institutions’ administrations only believe in free speech for themselves; anyone who thinks differently must be silenced, especially on college campuses, lest our impressionable kiddos actually learn to think for themselves and perhaps become - *gasp* - conservatives.)

I’ll intersperse that with some general observations of my own, and wrap up with some creative ideas for choosing a single candidate from so crowded a field of contenders. All of this will be done with tongue placed firmly against cheek, so lest any of this offend – relax, already, and laugh along.

First, the summary of Shapiro’s analysis (with my own observations sprinkled in). Bernie Sanders owns the left lane of the party (meaning the uber-liberal, socialist faction). In a party that has elevated Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the improbable role of thought leader (and I threw up in my mouth a little bit just typing this sentence), many candidates see their best shot as bearing hard left, so some others are trying to crowd into Sanders’ lane, including Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren.

In doing so, they’re getting lost, because again, he owns the lane. To counter that, they’ve spawned a new “me-too” movement: one in which they jump on the Sanders bandwagon for whatever bat-poo crazy liberal idea he floats. Sanders wants to raise taxes on the wealthy (wealthier than him, presumably; now that he’s a millionaire he no longer attacks millionaires, just billionaires)? Gee, so do Harris, Booker, Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Julian Castro. Those same “me-too” Dems have also jumped on Sanders’ Medicare-for-all bandwagon.

In some cases, to draw a distinction, they’re trying to out-liberal Sanders and each other. Oh, Sanders wants to legalize marijuana? Cory “Spartacus” Booker will call your legalization of marijuana and raise you reparations for everyone incarcerated for marijuana possession. (Of course, Spartacus has already made a name for himself in terms of making outrageous comments.)

And in other cases, their me-tooism backfires and they have to back-pedal. Sanders recently said that convicted prisoners should be allowed to vote. An audience member asked whether that would include felons like the Boston Marathon bomber, and Sanders replied that yes, it would, stating that the right to vote is so fundamental that even “terrible people” convicted of heinous crimes should retain it (sidebar to come).

Later, Harris was asked whether she agreed. Proving that she can’t take a controversial position, but wanting to jump into the left lane and draft off Sanders, she said, “We should have that conversation.” (By contrast, “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg opposed the idea when asked, noting that when you’re convicted of a crime you give up some rights, and voting is one of them, but then he’s not navigating toward the left lane, he’s driving in the center – more on that later.)

After Sanders was universally blasted for his statement, Harris recanted in a statement that, as a former prosecutor, she believed that “people who commit murder, people who are terrorists, should be deprived of their rights.” No mention of the earlier comment, no explanation of the about-face. George Orwell would be proud.

(Sidebar: a better question for Sanders would have been whether the white supremacist who ran over and killed a woman in Charlottesville should have the right to vote. See, the only reason Bernie would want prisoners to be able to vote would be if the majority of prisoners were Democrats – let that sink in.

And a more rational approach to the question would relate the right to vote to the crime. Should a convicted abortion clinic bomber be allowed to vote for a president who’s likely to appoint conservative SCOTUS justices who might overturn Roe v. Wade? Should death row inmates be allowed to vote for a candidate for governor whom they think is likely to stay their executions? Should a convicted criminal in a given county be allowed to vote for sheriff of that county? Should any convicted criminal be allowed to vote for appellate court judges?)

To her credit, Warren is trying to set herself apart with her own ideas. The trouble is, they’re so crazy – like forgiving all student loans and making college tuition free – that they’re doing nothing to elevate her from the muck she mired herself in with her “23 and Me” stunt. (By the way, if she were to be elected and forgave all student debt and made tuition free, I’d demand reparations for that. I’d like my tuition and my student loan payments back. With interest.)

So much for the left lane, let’s shift to the self-proclaimed center. Now that Biden has officially declared his candidacy, we can presume he owns that lane. Biden’s problem is his platform: “Trump sucks, so vote for me.” Trouble is, every other Democrat in the race, as well as Howard Schultz, is saying the same thing. Hard to differentiate your product when all of your competitors have the same sales pitch.

Biden has already told the first lie of his young campaign, when he said that he asked President Obama not to endorse him, but to let the primaries play themselves out. Are you flipping kidding me? Anyone who believes that should look up, because it says “gullible” on the ceiling. An Obama endorsement would be gold for any of these candidates – no way would they refuse it. Obama was the one who said he’d let the primaries play out before endorsing a candidate, not Biden. When the time comes, Obama will likely endorse whomever can unseat Sanders, if he endorses anyone at all.

I think Beto is in the center lane too; it’s so hard to say as he doesn’t have a solid position on any issue, large or small. I suspect he’s actually as liberal as they come. But no matter, because Mayor Pete roared past Beto to position himself firmly on Biden’s bumper, and Beto will never catch up. Mayor Pete is also largely devoid of firm positions, and is also likely more left than center. But he talks a good game.

That’s reminiscent of another young candidate, who was equally devoid of ideas and experience (I mean, really, mayor of South Bend, IN?), but turned a pretty phrase. That candidate rode into the White House on identity politics, and Mayor Pete appears to be attempting the same feat.

But this is a guy who couldn’t get elected Indiana State Treasurer. Only three former mayors have ever been elected President; none of them advanced directly from the one office to the other; and all were President before 1930. (For the record, Calvin Coolidge went from mayor of Northampton, MA, to the state House, then the state Senate, then the Lt. Governor, then Governor before becoming Vice President, then President. Grover Cleveland was mayor of Buffalo, having been Sheriff, then became Governor of New York, before being elected President. And Andrew Johnson was mayor of Greeneville, TN, then was elected to the Tennessee House, then the state Senate, then the U.S. House, then the Tennessee Governorship, then the U.S. Senate, before being appointed by Abraham Lincoln as Military Governor of Tennessee, then becoming Lincoln’s running mate for his second term. After Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson became President, and of course was later impeached.) Suffice it to say that to get from mayor of South Bend directly to the White House, Mayor Pete will need a vertical jump to rival Michael Jordan’s.

Do any of these (and the many other) declared Democrat candidates have a snowball’s chance in hell of unseating Trump? Apparently the Republicans don’t think so. In many ways, this is the most vulnerable incumbent president this nation has ever seen. If there was any concern whatsoever in the GOP ranks that they’d lose the White House in 2020, especially to one of the many radical far-left candidates, a challenger would emerge to contest the GOP primary, and that hasn’t happened. Sure, we could still see a Flake or a Romney or a Kasich step up, but the complete lack of noise from any of them appears to reflect fear of getting thrashed.

Usually, a very crowded field of candidates trying to unseat an incumbent president means dim chances of one of them getting elected. It smacks of desperation. So many of them lack experience. Most of them lack ideas, and the ones that don’t have such crazy ideas they don’t stand a chance in a general election. The current number of Democrat candidates is unprecedented, but in 2004 the field was, by previous standards, crowded. The initial front-runner in that field was Dean, who ultimately blew himself up with his infamous “Yeah!!” screech – er, speech. The sharpest crayons in that box were Dennis Kucinich and Joe Lieberman. But the candidates canceled each other out right and left, until the last man standing was John Kerry, and we saw how he fared in the general election against an also-vulnerable George W. Bush.

In another crowded field, this one not facing an incumbent, 2016 saw 16 Republicans contest the primaries. Most observers believed that Donald Trump didn’t stand a chance, and that Jeb Bush was the most likely candidate. Yet again, other candidates canceled each other out right and left, and Bush exited early while Trump emerged as the nominee, then went on to win the general election.

That could well play out in 2020. Biden has the best chance against Trump. (Sanders polls well against him, but we learned in 2016 how reliable polls are. I’ll go out on a limb and say that Sanders is unelectable in a general election, and I’ll pray I’m right.) However, Biden likely can’t survive the primaries; his past failed presidential bids and his more recent “creepy Uncle Joe” image, combined with his advanced age and the fact that he just sounds tired all the time, will not help him against such a crowded field. I’m not convinced he has the energy to aggressively campaign – and that’s not a knock on him; I wouldn’t either at his age. And, again, he has no differentiating message.

If candidates do cancel each other out along the way, we could wind up with a Harris or a Gillibrand or a Mayor Pete as the nominee, and any of those would get crushed in the general. It’s virtually certain that the nominee will not be Warren (too much baggage), Booker (too much drama) or Beto (too little substance). (AOC would be running if she were old enough, and wouldn’t that be fun to watch?)

However, my money is on Sanders. But again, it’s too soon to tell.

With such a large field, though, it seems we can surely come up with something more creative than the current process to pick a winner. Can you imagine a debate with 20+ candidates? They’d only get one question each before all the TV viewers (and Biden) had to go to bed. And the Dems may not be done yet – Hillary earlier said she wouldn’t rule out a bid, though she will not run, IMO; NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio will probably throw his name in the ring; and we can’t eliminate the possibility of Alec Baldwin stepping in to play the Pat Paulsen role.

If the numbers reach 25 or more candidates, we could set up a bracket similar to the NCAA basketball tournament, which featured 25 teams from 1968-1974, before the bracket was expanded. (This approach could actually accommodate a field as large as 68 candidates, which is the current number of teams that contest the hoops tourney.) The long-shot outsiders could compete in the play-in round, then the others would be seeded according to polling position. Competition would take the form of one-on-one debates, with voters picking a winner after each. Fouls could be called, with free-throw questions granted. Major policy questions would be three-pointers. The winner would advance to the next round. Spike Lee, Samuel L. Jackson and Charles Barkley would provide commentary, or maybe even be the moderators. Definitely more fun than the current scheme.

A Starbucks in the White House?

I watched with interest the Town Hall with Howard Schultz a couple of weeks ago. Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, is considering a run for the presidency in 2020 as an Independent.

Sidebar: I also listened to the Town Hall with Bernie Sanders. Like the Schultz event, Sanders’ was hosted by Fox News. By way of a brief summary, Schultz performed far better than Sanders, who came off as combative, partisan and angry, and dodged challenging questions. The most comical exchange was when one of the moderators noted that Sanders, a self-avowed Socialist, wrote a best-selling book and earned millions of dollars, adding, “Isn’t that the very definition of capitalism?” There was a pregnant pause as the prey considered that either of the trap’s jaws would finish it, then Sanders replied, incredibly, “No.” After which he proceeded to divert the discussion to a different topic, rather than explain his obviously illogical answer.

I found Schultz to be intelligent and credible. Plus you have to respect a guy who turned mediocre coffee into an iconic brand with a cult following.

And he’s a likable, respectful man. In fact, that’s a lot of what he proposes to bring to the White House: respectability, decorum, character. At one point, he turned to the audience and polled them, asking them to raise their hands if they would want their children to emulate the behavior of Donald Trump.

Not one hand went up.

But, you know what? While I wouldn’t have raised my hand, either, I’m not necessarily looking for a President whose behavior I’d want my kids to emulate. I want a problem-solver, and I’ll live with churlishness to get that. I wouldn’t have wanted my kids to emulate the behavior of JFK or Bill Clinton, but both were decent Presidents overall. I would want my kids to emulate the behavior of Jimmy Carter when he was President, but other than appointing Paul Volcker to chair the Fed, Carter’s presidency was an unmitigated dumpster fire. So Schultz’s question to the Town Hall audience evokes a “so what” response from me in terms of the criteria for selecting a POTUS.

Schultz also took on Sanders’ “Medicare for All” pipe dream, correctly noting that 180 million people who currently get their insurance through their employer would lose that insurance.

Second sidebar: Sanders would have it replaced by government insurance, but he ignores the fact that, to keep premiums affordable, someone has to subsidize them, so under his plan the portion of premiums currently borne by employers would be borne by taxpayers, meaning the very people paying the premiums. In other words, we’d all pay 100% of our healthcare premiums, vs. paying a much smaller percent due to employer subsidies. Meanwhile, corporations would presumably save the expense of their share of employees’ insurance premiums, becoming even more profitable, which Sanders claims to be against, but no one is questioning him on that (which doesn’t matter; he’d dodge the answer). Sanders also doesn’t mention that the government would get to decide what treatments you can get, and what ones you’d be denied. O, Canada.

Schultz cited the fact that Starbucks was the first U.S. company to offer healthcare to all its employees, including part-timers. That sounds great, but what does it really mean? It means that Starbucks arranges private group medical insurance from Premera Blue Cross and Kaiser to be provided for its employees who work at least 20 hours a week (sorry, part-timers who work fewer hours), who pay at least $37 per paycheck for the benefit, depending on the plan (plans with lower premiums have higher deductibles, just like everybody else’s employer-provided plan). So a part-timer working 20 hours a week and making, say $15 an hour in Seattle, where Starbucks is headquartered, would see more than 12% of his or her pre-tax paycheck go to insurance coverage.

Now, I’m not saying that’s bad; it’s still a good benefit. What Starbucks does is pretty much what every other company does: use private insurance companies to provide benefits to their employees, and pay a part of the negotiated group premiums on employees’ behalf. I’m just saying that Starbucks isn’t doing anything revolutionary, and the only thing Schultz would need to do to expand the Starbucks healthcare “miracle” to the entire U.S. would be to just eliminate Obamacare and maintain the old status quo.

Schultz noted that 42% of Americans are “disgusted” with political fighting between Republicans and Democrats. (Count me among them.) He claims that, as an Independent representing neither party, he could bring both sides together and stop that fighting.

Yeah, that’s what another outsider said in 2016, but look what happened. The problem is that as long as the Congress and the electorate are made up of Democrats and Republicans, there’s going to be fighting between the two parties, and any Independent President has about as much chance of stopping that as PeeWee Herman has of breaking up a fight between Mike Tyson and Conor McGregor.

And again, while I’m fed up with the partisan bickering, I’m looking for policy solutions to specific problems, not a guy who can come in and get everyone singing Kum-Ba-Yah, but whose ideas I’m opposed to.

In terms of policy, Schultz is a much younger Joe Biden, without the creepy groping and with business acumen. And unlike Biden, Schultz is his own man. When asked whether he felt that President Trump had done some good things, Schultz replied that he had, and he has not since recanted that statement. After Biden called his successor, Mike Pence, a “decent guy,” he was lambasted by the gay community, and a day later he trotted along behind his critics like a dog on a leash, saying that no one who believes as Pence does can be “decent.” (Yes, this is the “tolerance” of the Left: I believe differently than you, and you must consider me decent; you believe differently than me, thus you cannot be decent.)

In other words, Biden is just another politician who will turn whichever way the winds of fortune blow. Schultz isn’t afraid to give some credit to those with whom he disagrees overall, which is as rare on the Left as a Honus Wagner baseball card.

Schultz’s ideological similarity to Biden represents the problem for Democrats. Even before he’s announced his candidacy, Biden is the front-runner in the Democrat primary polls, by a wide margin. Assuming Biden declares his candidacy (he will) and wins the nomination (by no means a certainty at this point), and further assuming that Schultz does run as an Independent, they will split the Democrat vote, and Trump will win re-election handily. Sure, Schultz may pick up some Independent voters who value character over results, but aren’t willing to pull the D lever. (Biden will get some of those Independent voters too, the ones who are willing to vote Dem.)

The potential to divide the D vote and give Trump an easy win is why Schultz has been castigated by the Left for considering a third-party run. Why would anyone discourage a fellow American from pursuing public office? Because Democrats don’t want democracy, they want totalitarian control. So they’ll target anyone who, in their estimation, threatens their ability to gain or retain power.

Why not just encourage Schultz to run, and put up a candidate so compelling that he or she can beat both Schultz and Trump? Because there is no such candidate among the Democrat field. In fact, there’s a good chance that a Democrat nominee could finish third in 2020.

For his part, Schultz states that he does not believe he would split the Democrat vote and usher Trump into a second term (he’s either wrong, or he’s lying). Schultz will most certainly run if Sanders is the nominee, as the moderate Schultz offers an alternative to the bat-poo left Sanders. But he’s also likely to run if Biden is the nominee, despite their similarities; when asked during the Town Hall if he would vote for Biden, he said, “I plan to vote for myself,” a pretty blatant show of hand. In any event, he will have had to declare before the Dem nominee is chosen, so given the possibility of a far-left candidate like Sanders, he’s very likely to run.

In that event, the Curmudgeon will make a bold prediction. Thus far, in the wake of the Mueller Report, the cooler heads on the Left (a relative term that means their hair is only smoldering, not an inferno blazing like Dante’s Fifth Circle of Hell) are not calling for Trump’s impeachment, knowing that the case therefor is weak and that there is no GOP support. However, if Schultz declares, look for Dems to mount a full-on impeachment effort, because at that point they will know with certainty that their chances of unseating Trump in November 2020 are as doomed as a Hillary Clinton presidential bid.