Unlike most guilty pleas, though, Trump's admission that he did ask the president of Ukraine get dirt on the Bidens was not entered in the spirit of contrition or with the abject aim of getting off with probation or a plea deal. It was entered in the spirit of Bite Me.
From the gobsmacked Guardian newspaper report:
Trump was asked what he thought Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy – who Trump was recorded pressuring to investigate the Bidens – should do.
“If they were honest about it, they would start a major investigation into the Bidens,” Trump said when asked what he wanted Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to do.
“I would say President Zelenskiy, if it was me, I would start an investigation into the Bidens.”
Trump then discussed his trade war with China, before adding:
“China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened in Ukraine.”
He and his minions will keep asking foreign governments to investigate the political origins of the Russiagate story, and to get the Bidens while they're at it. Trump will continue acting with impunity, triple dog-daring the other side of the Duopoly to just try and stop him. All on national TV. So much for the "it's not the crime, it's the cover-up of the crime" trope. It's the exact opposite of Nixon's "I am not a crook" ploy. Trump is boasting "I am a crook. Whaddaya gonna do about, my fellow American crooks, chumps, and swamp creatures?"
Meanwhile, not even his administration's boastful fascistic announcement that it will forcibly take DNA samples from imprisoned migrants and refugees for inclusion in a racist data base is distracting the Democrats from their Sublime Message. Nor is the simultaneous blockbuster report that Trump had ordered refugees and migrants to be shot in the legs if they try to swim alligator and snake-infested moats or to scale electrified razor-topped walls painted just the right dystopian shade of black.
To show just how solemn she is and how seriously she takes her sworn constitutional duty to consider to impeach Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared on ABC-Disney's Good Morning America on Thursday to trade impeachment quips with the hosts and to inform the TV audience that "we have some serious repair and healing to do in our country for what he's done so far."
Just the day before, she'd insisted that she is still eager to chat with the world's most dangerously unhinged criminal leader on long-overdue repairs to the nation's crumbling infrastructure. She's also pushing prescription drug price-tweaking as a feeble substitute for the single payer health care system demanded by the vast majority of Americans. It behooves both right wings of the Duopoly to go through the motions, if for no other purpose than to keep the rabble in line.
Pelosi carefully made no mention of any serious repair or healing for what 40 years of neoliberal austerity, coupled with the record enrichment of the Military-Carceral-Surveillance Complex, have done to our country. To confess this would be to implicate herself. Boasting of criminality is not her style. The closest she comes is her frequent praise for the vicious Ronald Reagan and her appearances at Pete Peterson austerity conferences for the punishment of the poor and the self-glorification of the plutocracy.
But like Trump, Pelosi was also making a bee-line to "battleground state" Florida on Thursday. He was pandering to well-heeled retirees in The Villages, a kind of Disneyland for the right-wing geriatric set. She was attempting to seriously heal an elite group of well-heeled Venezuelan exiles, and to show continuing support for the cruel economic sanctions leveled (beginning under Obama) against the less well-off citizens of Venezuela. She was and she is fully on board with the Trump administration's attempted overthrow of the socialist Maduro government. As such, she planned to huddle with high-ranking representatives of Juan Guiado's US-backed right-wing opposition to plot their next moves. The violent US-backed coup attempt is hideously euphemized by Florida Rep. Donna Shalala as "a peaceful return to democracy."
A discussion forum for "invited guests only" was to include such elite Cold War 2.0 concerns as "Russia’s growing military presence in Venezuela" and the spread of uninvited (or bottom-up) citizen protests against US-backed political corruption in Haiti. As reported by Jacobin,
Last January at the Organization of American States, Haiti voted with the United States against its longtime former benefactor, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. The resolution said the body did not recognize the Maduro government, noting it was concerned “about the worsening political, economic, social and humanitarian crisis” and “the breakdown of democratic order and serious human rights violations.” It was part of a gambit to legitimize opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s claim to power.The vote was a quid pro quo, according to Gilles.Unlike Trump, the last thing Pelosi wants is to be seen actually meddling in foreign countries for crass political gain right in the middle of a virtue-signalling impeachment gambit. Ergo, she was barring the media and the public from important parts of her taxpayer-financed junket to Florida. Otherwise, the Quid Pro Quo accusation that the Democrats are hurling at Trump might boomerang right back at them as pertains to the Haiti-Venezuela connection. Ironically, Trump fans were planning to protest her visit on the silly grounds that she is a pro-Maduro democratic socialist rather than the exact opposite.
“The US is supporting Moïse because of the vote against Venezuela,” she noted.
Whether or not the vote is a main reason, it is clear to any Haiti observer that Moïse — who came to power in races where only about 21 percent of the population even bothered voting — has remained in office only because of the support of Washington and its partners.
That's how the two right wings of one bird of prey envisioned by Upton Sinclair stay aloft. For all the mutual ruffling of their feathers, they always give each other protective cover where it counts the most: the talons and the beak.
Trump brags about his corruption and skips the platitudes. Pelosi embraces the platitudes and hides her corruption.
And both of them paste on the obligatory grotesque grimace whenever the spirit of bellicose bipartisanship in service of Oligarchy demands it.
12 comments:
Congressional job approval consistently ranges from 14%-18% while Trump's is in the 40's.
Congress' reputation for lying and corruption has been long-standing, starting well before Trump became President. I haven't seen polls regarding the approval of the mass media, but I'm pretty certain they'd be even lower. So Trump's standing isn't nearly as bad as they make it out to be, at least compared with them.
When Congress and the media attack Trump for lies and corruption, the public sees it as them not liking competition - they're trying to drag Trump down to their level and the fact that he's fighting back fearlessly wins him points with the rabble. I seriously doubt any of them care one bit about all these many hyped-up 'scandals'. So what else is new in the swamp? The Dems have cried wolf too many times while acting like wolves themselves.
In this battle of the Deplorables, led by Trump, vs. the Contemptibles, made up of the hopelessly clueless and highly unpopular mass media and Congresscrats, the Intelligence Community is proving their smarts by positioning themselves to look like unsung heroes - providing they stay in control. Whether or not impeachment efforts succeed, the Contemptibles are going to take the hit.
I hope Bernie keeps his distance from the batshit crazy Dems and maintains his rating as the most trusted member of Congress. That's his trump card.
Hunter Biden was nothing more than a snowflake on the Ukrainian iceberg of corruption. The Bidens merely pasted their little scheme onto the great big real deal, that of the US government aiming to shut down Russia's gas lines into Western Europe while simultaneously encouraging Ukraine to frack its eastern plains.
Details of this international power play and ugly environmental initiative, pushed along by the Obama/Biden Administration (among others), can be found on Moon of Alabama, October 3, "When Ukraine's Prosecutor Came After His Son's Sponsor Joe Biden Sprang Into Action." I also recommend the many informed comments.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/
To repeat, the Biden involvement in Burisma was a miniscule side deal, a flea on the American grizzly. Let the investigations begin. Don't be surprised if "following the money" and re-reading communications circles back on the doorsteps of the White House, Pentagon, CIA and State Departments of the last three administrations. Why not impeach them all?
Although I loath Trump and his henchmen –– there, got that out of the way –– my hat is off to him for initiating investigations, wittingly and unwittingly, into the crimes and underhanded policies of the crazy and venal elites in and out of government. If only Saint Barack and his altar boys had done as much when they assumed office.
Within the overlapping circles of the dark state, the crime is not a crime. The one and only crime is shining a light on the dark state's crimes. Gone are the days when the Senate might create a Church Committee to flick the lights on at least for a moment. The only time the lights go on now is when a whistleblower like Manning or Snowden risks all to point out how fast the US is morphing into tyranny.
Second Jay's recommendation of Moon of Alabama - I discovered that site several years ago via Karen's blogroll sidebar, along with Black Agenda Report (that I believe Jay also occasionally references). Interesting reading for interesting times.
As of today, Ukraine did open an investigation that could indict the employer of Hunter Biden, and which will look at the Biden role.
So now, it will either find something or it won't. If it doesn't, it could be to clear them, or it could be to disappear the investigation like so many others.
So what happens if they bust Biden's company? The US can jump in with a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charge, based on corrupt violation of Ukraine's law.
If Trump/Giulani can engineer that, it would turn this all upside down. If they can't, it won't really change anything.
Hence, this is actually a shot at the Democrats. They could get hurt. I don't have any idea what Ukraine will do with this, but there is this opening, with huge consequences.
Satirist C.J. Hopkins of Consent Factory has a new essay on this ongoing horror movie psy op - Trumpenstein Must Be Destroyed'.
(Spoiler alert) "What we’ve witnessed over the the last three years (and what is about to reach its apogee) is a global capitalist counter-insurgency, the goal of which is (a) to put down the ongoing populist rebellion throughout the West, and (b) to crush any hope of resistance to the hegemony of global capitalism … in other words, a War on Populism."
https://consentfactory.org/2019/10/04/trumpenstein-must-be-destroyed/
Satirist C.J. Hopkins reviews the situation in a roundabout way because that's the only way he can hold his audience to the end. What he's referring to has often been said through time by others but with a different vocabulary.
The most recent and expansive explication of the situation was done by Karl Marx and friends. But if Hopkins were to utter the word 'Marx' by way of shorthand at any point in his essay, half the US audience would reach for their pearls or trusty sidearms.
Populists, globalists, shmobalists –– such a loose categorization of forces set against each other, apparently to the death when dealt with seriously.
History has been repeating the same old story since Eridu. Not that I've ever entered a disciplined study of Marx's writing, but from the bits and pieces gathered over the decades, it appears to me that the overarching, precise and challenging title for what civilization has been going through down to the present moment is class war.
There, I've said it: Class War, Class War, Class War. What you're saying, doing, buying or boycotting, supporting or undermining tells us which side you're on.
"Surely, in the history of lies told to the population, this is the biggest lie. In the history of secrets, withheld from the American people, this is the biggest secret: that there are classes with different interests in this country. To ignore that — not to know that the history of our country is a history of slave owner against slave, landlord against tenant, corporation against worker, rich against poor — is to render us helpless before all the lesser lies told to us by people in power."
~ Howard Zinn
"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.”
~ Warren Buffet
Now that you mention it, who needs Marx if you have a Zinn and a Sardonicky?
I wholeheartedly endorse this comment posted at Naked Capitalism:
Henry Moon Pie
October 6, 2019 at 12:31 pm
If the people that run the Democratic Party make it the political arm of the CIA, I will vote Republican from the top of the ticket to the bottom until the Democratic Party has gone the way of the Whigs.
Annie talks of "until the Democratic Party has gone the way of the Whigs."
I had expected the Republicans to go the way of the Whigs, after Trump split off their voter base from their money base. They may still.
Yet the stark drive to overcome their own progressives and re-install neo-liberal hawks suggests the Democrats too may go the same way. The faction that forced Hillary on the party is still there, and still forcing the same things, now by Biden and behind him perhaps Harris.
The Whigs found that they had factions which could not live with each other. Those factions split, and recombined in new ways with others, most famously behind the Republicans who put up Lincoln. He was troubled by the Radical Republicans throughout the War, but they were far more cohesive than the Whigs had been. The causes that split the Whig factions also sent some to the Democrats who like George McClellan in 1864 were not for slavery so much as for compromise with it and the South for their other purposes.
Today, the Whiggish factions seek compromise with everything anathema to Progressives, in favor of protecting their own wealth and privilege from things like taxes and economic equity.
Whigs, twigs, the point is that the Democratic Party has become the political arm of the CIA. We're only seeing half the picture right now, the half that is targeting Trump. Wait until the primary and convention and we'll likely see the full picture.
First let's recall that the DNC asserted in court that they have the absolute right to pick a candidate in back room deals. Any semblance of the primary process to 'Democracy' is purely coincidental and cosmetic. All they want is for voters to stay on the Democratic Team like good Germans.
Since that revelation, they've helped bring in 5 new Congressional Democrats who are associated with 'Intelligence/National Security'. A 6th, CIA agent Valerie Plame of New Mexico, is now running with a little help from her friends. This group has been labeled the 'CIA Democrats' by WSWS and others.
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Now we know that there are at least 2 CIA operatives in the White House itself. One, a Democrat, has claimed secondhand knowledge and now a second 'whistleblower', political affiliation unknown, is claiming firsthand knowledge. So how many CIA Democrats work in the White House?
The MSM isn't asking but then again, they employ CIA and could also be on the receiving end of funds from Obama's domestic propaganda division. It was Obama's regime that started this ball rolling.
What we do see means that the Deep State has come out of the Deep, out of the Swamp. It's all out in the open to see but not to speak about without being labeled a crackpot conspiracy theorist. Even Congressmen are being attacked by the MSM for simply pointing out what has been in the press, i.e. what NYT and Politico published back in early 2017:
'Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire - Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton'.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446
So who/what was behind the Ukrainian interest and efforts in helping Hillary defeat Trump? Only the CIA knows for sure.
Just think, if Trump hadn't been elected, the Deep State would still be Deep. It's all out in the open now.
... just put your lips together and blow. ---
"The ‘Whistleblower’ Probably Isn’t —
It’s an insult to real whistleblowers to use the term with the Ukrainegate protagonist."
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/whistleblower-ukraine-trump-impeach-cia-spying-895529/
October 6, 2019 ~ by Matt Taibbi
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