Mark Zaid, JFK and Trump

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

But to my knowledge, there has been no verbatim, certified transcript. 

This is entirely due to his obstruction of Congress. A verbatim transcript would probably confirm what is circumstantially proven, he withheld funds to Ukraine for political purposes.

The nuance that many don't seem to get is that POTUS is withholding documents and communications from Congress that it is CONSTITUTIONALLY REQUIRED to have access to as it informs their decisions regarding its CONSTITUTIONAL OBLIGATIONS regarding appropriations. That is, when the President orders OMB to not release records for Congressional review, and in this case by order of a subpoena, you and the idiotic Republicans (who know better) on the hill should be very, very worried. In effect, the President is REWRITING the constitution with the support of a Republican Senate majority. These records are public property and have no privilege exemption nor are they protected from disclosure to Congress by statute.

The call we're referencing here may have a privilege exemption but that can be claimed from the chair. It does not release the administration appointees and employees from appearing before the committees. The necessity of Congress to query the delay in appropriated funds (from DoD and State) is entirely with their Constitutional purview and won't be controversial in the slightest in the Supreme Court.

Whether previous administrations were objectively worse or better is not relevant. It surprises me that when the opportunity strikes and someone (Trump) can be held to account, instead of saying "Finally! One of these Bozos is going to have to pay!" we hear ridiculous arguments about US Grant, Taft, Hilary, GW, ad nausea who, I grant you, may be much worse and didn't get their just desserts. The hidden message behind that argument is "you're being hypocritical" without directly saying it, but I for one believe quite a few of these clowns should have been called out on the carpet during their reigns and like you have said so at the time.

If Trump is left standing when the music stops, so be it.

[Bob Ness]

41 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Repeat:  there is no certified, verbatim transcript of the call that I know of.

This is from Kirk's own source:

A New York Times report added that there is no audio recording of the Trump/Zelensky call, but White House notetakers and voice recognition software created a rough transcript. At that point, the document went to Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the White House National Security Council, to help fill in gaps, especially as they relate to proper nouns and technical terms that would be unfamiliar to notetakers and the software.

 

Right. But what they've been calling a "transcript" was further edited after the fact. Why they keep referring to it as a transcript is beyond me. I know why Trump would but it's really just disinformation. The day of call out was worse.

[Bob Ness]

16 hours ago, Robert Wheeler said:

Obstruction of Congress impeachment charge is dead in the water with today’s Supreme Court ruling.

Alan Dershowitz: Look, the most important development happened TODAY. The Supreme Court of the United States absolutely pulled the rug out of part two of the impeachment referral by granting certiorari, by granting review in a case where Trump challenged a congressional subpoena! And the Supreme Court said we’re going to hear this case!… 

After thinking about this I wonder if the dumb a$$ Democrats blew it by not chasing the subpoenas first. The Supremes may not have taken it up and sent the cert back. Hmm... Probably not but I'm sure Dershowitz will get the job he's been pining for.

[Paul Brancato]

1 hour ago, Bob Ness said:

After thinking about this I wonder if the dumb a$$ Democrats blew it by not chasing the subpoenas first. The Supremes may not have taken it up and sent the cert back. Hmm... Probably not but I'm sure Dershowitz will get the job he's been pining for.

You are a voice of reason. 

The Democrats do not yet have to send articles of impeachment to the Senate for the mock trial it is sure to be. They don’t have to give MCConnell air time to strut his turtle dance. Let’s call it McConnell’s Mock Turtle Trial. They can stand pat and wait for court decisions, hold hearings in other committees, and take it all the way to the election. They should only be considering their own base when making these decisions, and to the extent they don’t, they lose. 

I think Joe Bauer is right. We argue the merits of some particular instance of Presidential Malfeasance while he mocks the press, the courts, the FBI, and anyone else who dares to put up a fight. The only way We the People could hope to change things is to march in huge numbers to Mar Lago and the White House and completely shut down business as usual. Trump is a huge threat, as he is doing the work of the Internationalist billionaire class, following the destructive script of Steve Bannon, another tool. We are watching a power grab by the people who already control one party and half of the other, an attempt to dismantle any possible legal resistance to their grand designs, which are the privatization of everything and the military domination of the planet to that purpose. They largely control the debate on the right, in the center, and also in the radical left, as we can see here on this forum. The only place where there is any sense of reason in government is in the progressive side of the Democratic Party, and in career officials who have dared to speak out. So how about we stop spinning minutiae. 

Boris Johnson’s victory was accomplished by dividing the Labor Party. The Democrats here are being divided too. But it doesn’t have to be so. We could nominate Sanders, or Warren, add a black progressive to the ticket - I could name a few - and drag the Center kicking and screaming to the left. It’s fine to imagine we know their faults and can predict their presidency, but we won’t ever really know until we put them in office. Is Warren really an Israeli hawk? How will she react to world crises? How will she communicate with world leaders? What would the UN look like with a progressive administration? We simply don’t know. But at least there is a chance for something better, like there was with JFK.

The reason I object to the position of some here that compare the taking down of Trump to taking out JFK is that they are polar opposite individuals. Enormous harm was done in 1963 when JFK was murdered, and enormous harm is being inflicted now by not taking Trump out. And hey, if it was the same venal deep state forces in both cases, what’s with the attempted constitutional remedy? Why not just off him? The comparison of the two ‘takedowns’ is worse than useless, it’s propagandistic, engineered by those same venal deep state forces. It’s sleight of hand - ‘don’t look here, look over there’. 

Edited December 14, 2019 by Paul Brancato

[James DiEugenio]

Look, how can anyone have any faith in a party that cannot even get its own members to have any discipline at all?

The Democrats had like 20 candidates running for president.  If instead, some of those people--who had little or no chance of winning anyway--had run for the senate, then they would have likely been able to take back that chamber.  The senate is a really powerful body.  For instance, in debating foreign policy and also in judicial appointments.

If you control the senate it helps you with the Supreme Court.   The problem with the Democrats is they do not seem to understand how important that is.

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, Robert Wheeler said:

CONFIRMED: Democratic Rep. Jeff Van Drew (NJ) has informed staff he is SWITCHING PARTIES and will become a Republican, following a lengthy meeting w/ Trump.

Bad news on this. Everyone knew this and he's been considered a DINo since day one. He'll lose his primary battle and the Dems are saying good riddance.

[Bob Ness]

2 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

The Democrats do not yet have to send articles of impeachment to the Senate for the mock trial it is sure to be. They don’t have to give MCConnell air time to strut his turtle dance. Let’s call it McConnell’s Mock Turtle Trial. They can stand pat and wait for court decisions, hold hearings in other committees, and take it all the way to the election. They should only be considering their own base when making these decisions, and to the extent they don’t, they lose. 

 

The problem with the Dems is they're always saying "Put up you dukes, Buster!", all Marquis d'Queensbury -  then the Rs walk up and kick them in the balls. Look at how beta Tim Kaine is for Christ's sake. I was working with a guy from Costa Rica in 2005 who said they had call centers there that phoned likely Dem voters in Cleveland and Ohio and told them to go vote at the wrong polling places. Standard Republican procedure.

My thinking is drag everything up to the top of the toilet bowl and spend the rest of the time before the election making Trump and his supporters defend themselves. Paint every single one of them in the House and Senate as hard core Trump sycophants in every media campaign imaginable and let the chips fall where they may. It can't be worse than it is now and that way the DNC controls the news cycle. They're not likely to lose the house this time around and have a good chance of picking up the Executive.

I may be wrong of course - Trump has an amazing aptitude for making unforced errors which may be the better strategy - but I for one think they keep looking weak which often times is mistaken/interpreted as incompetence.

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, Kathy Beckett said:

I'm not really clear which side you are speaking of. Anyway, I am going to use the first line of your post above,

" Look, how can anyone have any faith in a party that cannot even get its own members to have any discipline at all? "

and this might be bringing up something else entirely but the total lack of discipline awards goes to the Republicans!  Here are just a couple of "I cant' believe they really did that" moments:

The Matt Gaetz Pizza Party:            I heard he left a mess. I wasn't surprised.

Doug Collins throws a hissy (I'm sure part of it was because he was not appointed Senator from GA). I bet that disappointed him.And I'm sure Nadler was disappointed as well that he didn't get it.

 

Anything Louie Gohmert says.

Jim Jordan too.

They do this all the time. These high school antics are disgusting.  I can't believe that elected officials act like this, but then again, the President can't even conduct himself in a proper manner.  Thank God for "mute" buttons.

I  am ashamed of the conduct of our Congress. Look at Lindsey--says he's not going to pretend to be a fair juror. McConnell? WTH?   The way he is acting is horrible.

And I'll probably get busted for this, but I don't care.  I'm figuring the Senate will acquit the president, so when that happens I won't be surprised.   But the good thing is that this will not get to the Senate until 2020.  That means that these Republican folk will be hacked off and complaining through their holiday vacation.  For a couple of years, I've been hacked off about the actions of that party. Shoe is on the other foot, even if it's only for a couple weeks. I think that's awesome!!! Merry Christmas! 

 

 

Merry Christmas Kathy.  I need reminding of that at times.  Thanks.

[James DiEugenio]

This is  powerful stuff by a guy I usually do not like.

The Lawfare site was a fixer for Comey and NSA.  Steele's major source denied what was in his dossier.  

https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/the-inspector-generals-report-on-2016-fb-i-spying-reveals-a-scandal-of-historic-magnitude-not-only-for-the-fbi-but-also-the-u-s-media/?fbclid=IwAR2cGMdq9Ye9Uut9UxQooiGgzJhA1N8V_chWoJMWCPAnxsWzmKpLmlhfTYo

Edited December 15, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Kirk Gallaway]

Quote from Jim's article.

  If it does not bother you to learn that the FBI repeatedly and deliberately deceived the FISA court into granting it permission to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign, then it is virtually certain that you are either someone with no principles, someone who cares only about partisan advantage and nothing about basic civil liberties and the rule of law, or both. There is simply no way for anyone of good faith to read this IG Report and reach any conclusion other than that this is yet another instance of the FBI abusing its power in severe ways to subvert and undermine U.S. democracy. If you don’t care about that, what do you care about?

But over the last three years, the strategy of Democrats and liberals – particularly their cable outlets and news sites – has been to venerate and elevate security state agents as the noble truth-tellers of U.S. democracy. Once-reviled-by-liberal sites such as Lawfare – composed of little more than pro-NSA and pro-FBI apparatchiks – gained mainstream visibility for the first time on the strength of a whole new group of liberals who decided that the salvation of U.S. democracy lies not with the political process but with the dark arts of the NSA, the FBI and the CIA.

**********

Whew! Quite a hard sell, Jim.  I don't think I like these people.And the writing is just so overdone., just straining every nerve to convince me.

Maybe you can get sucked into  this strident,redundant,  pounding. super divisive , me and them stuff.Jim. Ok, Ok, whatever floats your boat. Maybe you're trying to convince yourself.

As for reality, let justice be done! Maybe it will go really far, or maybe it will die as Trump inheriting  413 million and having 6 bankruptcies. Bring out the facts.

 

Hey I heard about it all week, I didn't realize that Daniel Steele and Ivanka Trump have known each other 10 years!

Pretty cool!

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/ivanka-trump-and-dossier-author-christopher-steele-maintained-a-years-long-correspondence/

  

 

Lis-ten to Mike Bloom-berg laugh!                      ----    Reference to 60's song

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 15, 2019 by Kirk Gallaway

[Douglas Caddy]

7 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

This is  powerful stuff by a guy I usually do not like.

The Lawfare site was a fixer for Comey and NSA.  Steele's major source denied what was in his dossier.  

https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/the-inspector-generals-report-on-2016-fb-i-spying-reveals-a-scandal-of-historic-magnitude-not-only-for-the-fbi-but-also-the-u-s-media/?fbclid=IwAR2cGMdq9Ye9Uut9UxQooiGgzJhA1N8V_chWoJMWCPAnxsWzmKpLmlhfTYo

This is an excerpt from the preface to my 2018 autobiography, Being there: Eyewitness to History. Robert Merritt about 18 months ago testified before the Mueller Grand Jury in Washington about the FBI's illegal pre-FISA activities that were part of the Huston Plan.

     One of the great mysteries of Watergate is the role played in it by the controversial Huston Plan. Robert Merritt was the sole employee of the secret Huston Plan. White House Counsel John Dean took over administration of the Huston Plan after Tom Huston was eased out. Merritt recently recounted to me a key aspect of the plan that has never before been revealed.  This was the existence of a secret court that convened in a secret location in Washington before which Merritt appeared on at least twelve occasions in 1971 and 1972. Each time he submitted to a three judge panel there an affidavit sworn to by him but which was actually written by the FBI that was shown to him only fifteen minutes before the court convened. Invariably the court would issue a warrant for wiretapping or search or surveillance or a combination of these aimed at a specific target. In at least three cases the target was a law firm. The only law firm Merritt remembers today was Arnold & Porter for which a wiretap warrant was issued. Another target was the Institute for Policy Studies. The secret court always convened a 1 A.M. and was located beneath an apartment building on P Street, NW, three blocks west of Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. Entrance was gained through the garage beneath the apartment building. Inconspicuously located there was a small elevator that held only three persons that descended two stories further down beneath the apartment building. The elevator opened onto a small corridor that led to a door that had three separate locks on it, each of which required a separate key. Once that door was opened there were two other unlocked doors that ultimately led to a small courtroom. On each side of where the three judges sat were American flags. The judges wore black suits, not judicial gowns. “In God We Trust” appeared on the wall behind the judges. Merritt, following the orders of the FBI agents, recited to the judges the basic contents of the affidavit prepared by the FBI of which he had no personal knowledge. He then submitted the affidavit to the judges who read it and then handed it back to Merritt to sign. Lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice were always present. The proceeding usually lasted 45 minutes after which Merritt was escorted out by the FBI agents and subsequently driven back to his residence.

     When President Nixon fired John Dean as White House Counsel in April 1973, Dean took the only copy of the 31-page Huston Plan with him and submitted it to Chief Judge John Sirica. To this day this copy has remained among the federal court’s sealed records beyond the reach of a subpoena. Its contents are unknown to the public.

[Joe Bauer]

19 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

 

 

I think Joe Bauer is right. We argue the merits of some particular instance of Presidential Malfeasance while he mocks the press, the courts, the FBI, and anyone else who dares to put up a fight. The only way We the People could hope to change things is to march in huge numbers to Mar Lago and the White House and completely shut down business as usual. Trump is a huge threat, as he is doing the work of the Internationalist billionaire class, following the destructive script of Steve Bannon, another tool.

>>>>>> We are watching a power grab by the people who already control one party and half of the other  <<<<<<

an attempt to dismantle any possible legal resistance to their grand designs, which are the privatization of everything and the military domination of the planet to that purpose.

They largely control the debate on the right, in the center, and also in the radical left, as we can see here on this forum. The only place where there is any sense of reason in government is in the progressive side of the Democratic Party, and in career officials who have dared to speak out. So how about we stop spinning minutiae. 

 

When the real powers to be see certain candidates emerge as front runners that they deem as real threats to their number one agendas ( their personal wealth and control ) They then start the REAL power plays to diffuse their leads.

The media went bananas attacking Howard Dean after he won the Iowa caucus primary vote in 2004. Headlines: DOUBTS ABOUT DEAN!"

 

The DEAN SCREAM was replayed 1,000's of times on radio and TV.

Dean was made to look like a complete nut with a massive disinformation campaign. And it worked. Dean was too much of a common working man defending threat to the top 1% to be allowed to be the 2004 presidential candidate.

This election it's Elizabeth Warren. Exaggerated negative stories being planted everywhere about her. 

She made over a million dollars! She's not an honest candidate for the working person!

Warren made that amount over several years! Any $80,000 a year person in the country makes almost a million dollars over the course of years.

Trump's "kids" make many times that amount!

Can you imagine the amount of money the Student Loan industry will pay to keep Warren out of the final candidacy?  Same with the drug and medical industry? And Wall Street and on and on and on?

The 1% and billionaire class of this country has their Golden Boy in office with Trump.

Warren Buffet stated that Trump's tax cut made him  $29 BILLION dollars instantly!

My wife and I lost any benefit of the tax cut with constantly rising gas, food, utility and other basic necessity cost increases to a laughable degree.

Warren is a threat to this massive wealth status quo.

And Paul is right.  This super wealth influence is a big part of "both" parties power bases.

 

Edited December 15, 2019 by Joe Bauer

[Jeff Carter]

8 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

maybe you can get sucked into  this strident,redundant,  pounding. super divisive , me and them stuff.

the writing is just so overdone., just straining every nerve to convince me.

So it’s Greenwald’s pompous authorial tendencies and not the FBI’s abusing “it’s power in severe ways to subvert and undermine U.S. democracy” that’s the takeaway here...

Along with the dismal performance of most of the American mainstream media, the past three years have seen concerted efforts to impose censorship on internet platforms and social media. Google and Twitter are aggressively removing or marginalizing information from both left and right margins as well as antiwar and anti-imperialist groups. Facebook came under concerted attack just a few weeks ago for its reluctance to do the same. This censorship regime is justified by reference to false narratives of Russian interference, conspiracy theory and fake news, against which the public must be “protected.” Soon enough it will be the democratic system itself that citizens need be protected from. Its been a psychic meltdown promoted by lies. (realize that sounds pompous too, but its still the case)

[James DiEugenio]

The way the MSM leaped to support this Russia Gate narrative was really  puzzling to me.

What made it worse is that this concept then engulfed and buried all the things Trump did that I thought were really objectionable, or at least should have been so.

For example, his giveaway tax plan, the Pentagon budget, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, appointments like Betsy DeVos, loading up the judiciary system with rightwing crazies,  his non existent support for antidotes to global warming etc. etc.

All of this was drowned out by Russia Gate.  Which now appears to have been a false alarm.

Not only was it a terribly missed opportunity, but it now provides a chance for the GOP to take advantage of a  misfire.

To say this was all badly played does not really do it justice.  

Edited December 15, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Dennis Berube]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

For example, his giveaway tax plan, the Pentagon budget, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, appointments like Betsy DeVos, loading up the judiciary system with rightwing crazies,  his non existent support for antidotes to global warming etc. etc.

All of this was drowned out by Russia Gate.  Which now appears to have been a false alarm.

I completely agree with that and would add that any possible normalization of tensions between America and Russia was made politically impossible by Russia gate as well. I'm not saying Trump would have definitely done so, but he certainly was less hawkish to Russia than Hillary, verbally anyway.