Beyond the Event Horizon...
(This is an excerpt from my personal correspondance. The second image referred to in the text did not load. G13)
There are now too many separate 'moving parts' involved and participating in the American Debacle for any one person or corporate entity to contain, direct or control. The articles of impeachment have been ratified and passed into both law and the public record. The chief executive, DJT, now awaits trial in the senate, at the convenience and agreement/compromise of the lower house and the senate. And, just to make things more complicated/moving parts; said trial will be presided over/backstopped by the senior officer of the third co-equal branch of government (under their Constitution.) the Judiciary, in the person of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
That one's (CJ/Scotus) personal politics, even if known (and down there, they would be.) do not enter into it at all. I could sketch this out further but; A) it is a side issue, and; B) it immediately devolves into two or more branches of formal/legal/judicial logical threads of thought.
His (or Her) 'job' is simply to "Preside". Disenable disputes. Adjudicate contested points of law as final arbiter, knowing full well that every other judge and wannabe judge in the country is going to be studying his "ruling"s both immediately and long hereafter.
To ensure both sides abide by the rule of law as set forth both in the "Constitution" and by legal precedent/s derived from 3 precedent presidential impeachment processes. Judges worldwide will be watching this play out. With magnifying glasses and k**d gloves on.
Which brings us to the 4th and 5th, or 5th and 6th, corporate 'moving parts', independant of those already named, and either 'party' or any single individual involved in this kerfuffle.
The "Fifth Estate" (see first meme below) or "media"s, print, radio & televised, of every flavour, have been following this intensely ever since the "impeachment inquiry" became the "Impeachment Process" around 3 months ago.
Televised public hearings. As the senate trial will be also.
Which brings us to the last or Least Estate. The general public/narodni/ proletarian/plebian/corvee/sans culottes.
And on that inconclusive note I will resume tomorrow. Climate change aside, this is the biggest political contest currently at issue....
What does or does not happen elsewhere, to Vlad (and others. . ) will play out in their own jurisdictions, under their own local ecosystemic rules of law.
Friday night, 3rd of Jan/20) Event Cascade. I don't know if you know the term or not but it's what's happening, or just about to happen down there, right now or very sooon, in judicial & governmental time. Not quite glacial, but nearly so.
Too many moving parts, moving faster and faster, and all in the same direction. It is the science of how avalanches start.
on that note I'm gonna leave this go tonight, still many other things to do..
Saturday night; Some thing/s must be said about the Senate (Lords. Upper House of Parliament. One half unit of the 'Legislative Branch' of Govt.) .. Senate and the Republican (Faction/Tories/Conservatives/Bexiteers. Party. No overt governmental unit at all) Party. If what follows is going to continue to make sense.
The Senate - though co-equal with 'the House' in many ways - is a much much smaller and more easily observed unit of government. There are near or more than 500 congresspersons (Members of Congress/MPs) in office at present but there are only 100 Senators in the Upper House.
Two from/for each state. Congresspeople are elected by population demographics. X contiguous population density equals X number of 'congressional districts' within any given state/province/shire. So NY & California have like 40 representatives 'in congress'; where as States like the Dakotas, the Carolinas, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, West Virginia & Vermont have only 3 to 5 or 7 at best, Representatives in Congress.
Congresspeople get 2 or 4 yr' "terms in office" depending upon each individual state's internal legislative norms/rules. Senators serve in office 6 yr's, universally, before having to stand for re-election. More status, higher paygrade. They work towards their individual state's interests rather than answer to a universal demographic constituency.
So Vermont, West Virginia, New Mexico et alii all have two Senators in the Upper House just the same as states like California and New York.
Nuances. But not uncertain. And on that note I have to go, other nearer matters call.
Sunday near noon. At this point in time these nuances matter very much indeed. The republican majority in the senate is very thin, almost razor thin, 52 - 48 I believe at present, and 3 (now) republican senators have artificially recused themselves, made public statements directly contradicting or repudiating the spirit and wording of the Impeachment Trial Jurors Oath.
It's a process eh! Been done before.
It gives them an out to play with their backers should it all go pear shaped, as I think it will, and their perfect puppet DJT get's frogmarched out the back door of the presidency.
I can think of one regional senator for sure that knows they'll be out of a job in 11 months time if they vote to acquit on Impeachment. There are almost certainly others in the same situation. And the general public down there is now well over 50% in favour of "Removal from Office", and becoming increasingly vociferous about it.
Any congressperson who voted to acquit in the lower house can simply get lost in the - 500 odd - shuffle. At that level in government the "I-was-simply-following-orders" thing could work; get them off the hook with the voters for enabeling further criminality in office, so long as they themselves - several congresspeople come to mind - were not too egregiously involved in The Coverup/s.
Senators don't have this option. And the oath itself - ITJO - individuates and obligates senators from 'party' or regional influence. Makes them personally culpable.
At this point; Sunday Jan 5th 2020, with the "trial" not even yet scheduled, there is already so MUCH hard evidence of criminality, corruption and unconstitutional practices in the executive branch, DOJ & DOS in plain sight on the table, with MORE emerging daily, that any senator who votes for acquittal may be signing off on their own further careers in public office.
The "Republican Party"; is in tatters. Recievership. Lost all credibility with the thinking public. Unless you're in the billionaire boyz club, and some of them have chosen to do the right thing too.
Since DJT's election nearly 50% of the listed republicans then in office have been voted out of office, resigned office or are in the process of (end of term, 2020) resigning, or simply defected, changed 'sides'. Often very publicly, and this last is a thing previously unknown in American politics; one might vote against the party line on any given issue (either party) in favour of one's local constituency or regional interests, but one Did Not change sides unilaterally.
It started immediately following his election and continues unabated because the republican party is increasingly percieved as the Marie "let them eat cake" Antoinette party. The WE DON'T CARE if you're hungry or homeless or a refugee or simply tired of having to worry about your k**s coming home in body bags on their way back from school? party.
(off the wall, how SICK is that!?! The Columbine thing I could kind of get my head around because it was - armed to the teeth - c***dren themselves doing the shooting, and they both died in the course of it. But all the stuff since then . . The place is too crazy entirely, and I'd be dead now if I had'nt got out of there when I did, I have no doubt, but there is no time for that here.
I heard long ago that the Marie Antoinette quote is a misquote in that it was not a declarative statement at all but rather an interrogative statement. Along the lines of - spokesman for the People; "The people are Hungry your Majesty, the bakers have no flour to make bread." Marie A; "Well can't they use cake flour instead?" Simple ignorance of how the other 98% lives. The truth of this I've never bothered to ascertain as it is minor anecdotal from 2 and a half centuries ago.)
Now I gotta do some stuff around here but this line of thought I will finish later tonight.
Later tonight. I am so glad I live here or there . . . now. I am gonna have t'write that bit about what it is really like down there. It's been eating at me for yr's. The reality of it all. Or unreality.
Pfui! Onwards, V'peryod.... this sketched out above is the dynamic in play au courant, the governmental units, processes & factional entities now seemingly (see second graphic) in freefall at the moment.
Discounting global corporate entities interests and those zanies of the billionaire boyz club, both eastern (ex soviet bloc) and western (and not also counting islamic bloc zillionaires) oligarches. Zuckerborg springs immediately to mind, Murdoch has simply been lost in the 1950's since the 1950's...
Nuances. I will start out again tomorrow. This above being the mainframe or 'box' within which the action takes place. We move on to the dramatis personae, the people actually enmeshed, deliberately or by chance in office, at this point in local american History, and coincidentally World Hist. Since America is one of the Main players . .
Manana, and I will re read this first.
Hmmm.. too wordy, repetitive, in the middle section perhaps, but I'd rather be overprecise deliberately than quick and slangy and leave you scratching your head over exactly How Do these-parts-all-fit-together?
Adding another meme or set of pie graphs. Not my work, but tells the tale of how and why the current republican party is falling apart. Done.
And tonight is Tuesday Jan 7th.
There are only 5 people who 'count' in this affair at this point. Inherently compelled by their own prior actions or "chance in office" to play a leading part in this present Impeachment Process.
By chance in office, I mean just that, no choice or luck or foresight at all, it just happened to occur on their beats, on their watchs.
In order of importance, and why, at the present moment.
Nancy Pelosi. Speaker of the (lower) House and leader of the democratic party. She is from California I believe. Chance in office.
Mitch McConnel. Speaker of the Senate, senate majority leader and de facto leader of the Republican party. Both chance in office and his own prior acts & acts of ommission. That last is catholic logic but I'm sure it is taught elsewhere and you get the gist.
Chuck Schumer. Senate minority leader. Chance in office.
DJT. The accused. President & head of the executive branch. Titular leader of the republican party.
Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin. Foriegn national and de facto autocrat of an un allied state.
Vlad is on the list simply because he can pull the plug on the whole affair - flush DJT down the loo entirely - at any time simply by releasing some portion (like 31 yr's worth) of the more lurid and 'unamerican' kompromat/blackmail material, he undoubtedly has on DJT.
DJT. Is up a tree. And can't get down it. A quintessentially stupid man. And I think I will continue this tomorrow, my cat is bitching at me and there are other things I've got to do...
Wednesday night. Yes DJT. Bottom of the American list, as to his own future.
If DJT had not been born into a very great deal of money, smack dab in the middle of the biggest financial center of the american empire, I doubt anyone would have ever heard of him, outside of his immediate family, neighbours, and workmates.
If someone, anyone, had caught him by the scruff of the neck, before age 16, and made him think about Growing UP rather than dummying down he might've made a good RSM or even DSM. Or minor general even, at brigade or divisional level.. He's certainly combative enough, if ineffectual in real world encounters unless his opponent (more like Victim) is much smaller and weaker than him.
It makes me tired to think about. He's just tried, and failed, again, to start a 'war' with Iran. (the saudi's have been trying to inveighle the 'west' - USA or Israel - into a "war" against Iran since day one. No former president has allowed it. No former president - the Bushes included - have been so deep in the Saudi's pockets as this one is.
Iran is unassailable. Or else the Sunnis would have eradicated it long ago. It is another one of those parallell universes/ecosystems I have been telling you about. Their language and culture - Farsi or "Persian" - is older than Islam and formal Arabic. And they are the champions of the Shia'a [ formerly Shi'ite] heresy, by Sunni lights, for 13 or 1400 yrs now. A political - of 13 - 1400 yr's ago - argument about who can or cannot be elected "Caliph"; or supreme heaven sent ruler.
And you spent 7 yrs in those parts, you probably already know all this stuff better than I do ...) . .
The iranian plateau is a plateau, mean elevation between 5 and 7,000 feet ASL, and as different from the lowlands and highlands around it as the Thibetan plateau (12 - 13000 ...) is from the Chinese, Indian, Afghani & north central Eurasian drainage basin lowlands surrounding it. The Iranian Plateau ecosystem has been internally regulated by the Farsi speaking peoples since past 500 BCE. In this regard Afghanistan should be mentioned. Afghanistan and it's small Babel of local tribal tongues is as it is and as it always has been because it too is a discretely different geographically crafted ecosystem.
Except Affanistan (phonetic. the 'g' is silent locally) is the opposite of Iran & Thibet - The Andean SA countries spring to mind.. - except Affanistan is a "basin", like the Great Basin of NA known locally as Utah. Sinkholes. No navigable rivers flow through them to anywhere else. Rivers flow into them from surrounding heights - the Iranian plateau, the Rocky Mtns - and dwindle away into salt marshes, lakes and 'pans'. Where it is hottest and driest, and everyone lives on and around the higher outer edges. And both are hotbeds of religious fundamentalism, the locals having nothing better to do and nowhere better to go...
Phew! Back to Trump. Lets get this over with before the trial starts!
At this point, watching current events unfold this past two weeks and longer, I think it as likely that he will be carried out of the White House on a stretcher to the nearest medical facility before or after the senate throws him out of office. He had an unscheduled, hushed up and quickly whitewashed over 'medical event' 6 or 8 weeks ago. It is thought by many to have been a small stroke. And then there is his adderal addiction, pretty much a known fact, though some still allege cocaine use, the late Carrie Fisher among others.
He is a 70 yr old obese choleric man with very poor dietary habits and an affluent indolent lifestyle; and he is used to having his own way in everything as sole proprietor/autocrat, and he is now irreversibly stuck in a situation he cannot control or direct at all.
Physically, from what little I've seen and heard (I don't watch his 'stuff') these last 3 yr's - use of a golfcart at public events, etc - I doubt very much that he could walk more than 4 or 500 hundred steps unaided, if that. He is a (barely) walking (barely) talking posterc***d for POP! Goes the weasel . . . any minute now.
Chuck Schumer. Chance in office. Senate minority leader. Can act in opposition to McConnel in the senate both as an equal in that chamber and as an agent of his own party's leadership cadre. And in this last regard Adam Schiff - chance in office - must also be mentioned as before Impeachment was passed his part was greater in the whole affair, and as a sitting involved committee chairman he is still very much a part of the ongoing process.
Mitch McConnel. Is in Hell. No doubt about it. He just has'nt physically died yet. His own fault. What happens when you go around telling people you're the Grim Reaper eh! So where exactly is it you work that gig out of?
A thoroughly corrupt and venal man, his millionairess chinese trophy wife Elaine Chao sits on DJT's cabinet as secretary of something or other.
Has just swung a 3 million or billion dollar aluminium manufacturing plant in his home state of Kentucky by the kind offices of one of the Soviet privateers/Russian oligarches. Has been and is definitely in on the Ukraine bourse/Russian money tit since certainly (IMHO) 2016 at least.
But is much better insulated in every respect than DJT, whose ass, in the form of tax returns and the Deutsche Bank - one of who's senior senior officers of which concerned in all of this took his own life 6 or 20 weeks ago -
'whose ass, in the forms of legally subpoenaed tax returns and legally subpoenaed Deutsche Bank documentation on his loan guarantors is hanging in the wind being pecked apart by legally empowered harpies and eagles even as we speak.
McConnel has much cleaner, or at least better manicured, public hands in regards to the Russian money/Kompromat, but as the de facto head of his party for at least 8 yr's until non politician DJT was forcefed into office and titular leadership of ... McConnel - or, and, his Office was the local (American politics, Republican party) bursar/purser reciever and purveyer of record of the various street legal & white/grey and black Super PACs - however thatz spelt - campaign donations. There is no way McConnel want's THAT particular money trail investigated one inch further than it already has been or soon will be. 'Cause all roads lead back to him.
And if that requires Yeo Heave HO captain Kirk, DJT, he will do it. He was the first of the now 3 republican artificial recusants to the Senate Trial.
Because 2 things are apparent in the here and now of 2020. One is that active Russian subversion of the American election process must have begun much earlier, and that DJT could not possibly have been the only agent of, acting alone . . . and the second is that the Mercer/Putin/Zuckerborg think tank/"Political Consulting Agency" Cambridge Analytica had masterminded the Brexit less than a yr before very openly shadow managing DJT's cyber electioneering campaign in 2016. Above and beyond active Russian covert interference.
No stopping these things. The facts just keep on happening. And I think I'll try to finish this up and send it on tomorrow. Too many twists yet to go to keep straight in my head and spell out correctly tonight.
Too crazy my friend, and yet not untrue. Manana . . .
3 PM Saturday afternoon Jan 11. . .
Mitch McConnel is in hell because he, and his party are now forced into a new year election cycle with his own, the presidency itself and numerous other senate & congressional seats in play, up for election or re election; and forced into this new (minus 11 months NOW and counting . . .) national election cycle with the albatross of a presidential impeachment trial hung around their collective necks;, and the president in question is of their own party, at the worst possible point in the yearly news cycle.
The fact that numerous billboards have sprung up in his home state with his face, and other newer nickname on it "Moscow Mitch", simply that, in black white and red, is probably not helping his after dinner digestion either.
The more the senate trial is delayed the more horrendously it will impact all the elections in November, and the sooner it takes place the more nakedly transparent it must be. Because Speaker of the (lower) House Pelosi has publicly stated repeatedly that she will not present the current (2) bills of Impeachment to the senate until and unless a full and fair trial process is stipulated to in the senate. No mere show of hands, guilty or not guilty?..
With witnesses called, examined, cross examined, documents produced or entered into evidence, etc, the full 9 yards of a presidential impeachment trial which has already been played out 3 times before. This she has publicly stated.
Nor can McConnel force her to do so or change the rules in all of this in any way. To change the rules contingent upon the senate's own duties and processes themselves requires a 2/3rds majority vote, and McConnell barely has a simple 52-48 majority by the skin of his teeth.
Moreover, the various investigative and adjudicatory committies in the lower house have not abandoned, curtailed or adjourned their offices at all, new witnesses and evidence are coming forth daily; court battles over contested witness testimony and subpoenaed documentation continue unabated. Congress can and may pass further Articles of Impeachment at any time up until the entire process/es itself achieves closure and termination.
And just to make the monkey go blind entirely, more salt on McConnells wounds and hair in his undershirt, banana peels galore popping up everywhere in sight; DJT himself is now loudly clamouring for as soon a trial date as possible with subpoenaed witnesses, and completely irrelevant and (uninvolved) innapropriate witnesses at that, the Biden's, father and son.
You could not make this up because nobody would believe it except for the fact that it is happening on the world stage and playing out in real time for everyone to see.
Trump can no more alter or direct the course of further events than McConnell can. Less so in fact as he is the accused. An officially impeached de facto lame duck president, soon to be ex president. One way or another.... There are already 4 plus ways that this will or will not transpire.
Nancy Pelosi. Chance in office. And it is her second or third time or tenure in that office, that of Speaker of the (lower) House. She has brilliantly captained the Impeachment event from it's inception 5 odd months ago to it's coming execution sometime this new year.
More telling still, a month or two before the process - impeachment - even officially began, she made a public statement, thus; "I don't want to see him (DJT) impeached, I want to see him in prison".
Which goes towards what I related to you about 2 yr's back. That DJT, had, even back then, screwed things up so badly and deliberately that an example would have to be made...
Nixon got off with a slap on the wrist and a Pardon, thus tacitly aceding to a "Guilty" verdict, but no time because his involvement in the crime at issue was both factually minimal and ex post facto. He niether authorised nor had any knowledge of the break-in at the Watergate hotel at the time of it's occurrence. He did however try to make the whole problem go away aferwards, i*****lly or ex officio, and it was for that crime, Obstruction of Justice, that he was impeached.
And that is most manifestly not the case in this current instance.
More instructive still, In Nixon's debacle, his much more complicit attorney general John Mitchell, got 3 yr's in a federal prison in the aftermath. Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo & Mick Mulvaney - all 2nd string bit part players at this point - should all think real hard about that. That precedent has already been set.
What will happen next? Your guess is as good as mine. These above are the facts at issue, as fair as I can ascertain them, of all these matters at this time.
There are now too many separate 'moving parts' involved and participating in the American Debacle for any one person or corporate entity to contain, direct or control. The articles of impeachment have been ratified and passed into both law and the public record. The chief executive, DJT, now awaits trial in the senate, at the convenience and agreement/compromise of the lower house and the senate. And, just to make things more complicated/moving parts; said trial will be presided over/backstopped by the senior officer of the third co-equal branch of government (under their Constitution.) the Judiciary, in the person of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
That one's (CJ/Scotus) personal politics, even if known (and down there, they would be.) do not enter into it at all. I could sketch this out further but; A) it is a side issue, and; B) it immediately devolves into two or more branches of formal/legal/judicial logical threads of thought.
His (or Her) 'job' is simply to "Preside". Disenable disputes. Adjudicate contested points of law as final arbiter, knowing full well that every other judge and wannabe judge in the country is going to be studying his "ruling"s both immediately and long hereafter.
To ensure both sides abide by the rule of law as set forth both in the "Constitution" and by legal precedent/s derived from 3 precedent presidential impeachment processes. Judges worldwide will be watching this play out. With magnifying glasses and k**d gloves on.
Which brings us to the 4th and 5th, or 5th and 6th, corporate 'moving parts', independant of those already named, and either 'party' or any single individual involved in this kerfuffle.
The "Fifth Estate" (see first meme below) or "media"s, print, radio & televised, of every flavour, have been following this intensely ever since the "impeachment inquiry" became the "Impeachment Process" around 3 months ago.
Televised public hearings. As the senate trial will be also.
Which brings us to the last or Least Estate. The general public/narodni/ proletarian/plebian/corvee/sans culottes.
And on that inconclusive note I will resume tomorrow. Climate change aside, this is the biggest political contest currently at issue....
What does or does not happen elsewhere, to Vlad (and others. . ) will play out in their own jurisdictions, under their own local ecosystemic rules of law.
Friday night, 3rd of Jan/20) Event Cascade. I don't know if you know the term or not but it's what's happening, or just about to happen down there, right now or very sooon, in judicial & governmental time. Not quite glacial, but nearly so.
Too many moving parts, moving faster and faster, and all in the same direction. It is the science of how avalanches start.
on that note I'm gonna leave this go tonight, still many other things to do..
Saturday night; Some thing/s must be said about the Senate (Lords. Upper House of Parliament. One half unit of the 'Legislative Branch' of Govt.) .. Senate and the Republican (Faction/Tories/Conservatives/Bexiteers. Party. No overt governmental unit at all) Party. If what follows is going to continue to make sense.
The Senate - though co-equal with 'the House' in many ways - is a much much smaller and more easily observed unit of government. There are near or more than 500 congresspersons (Members of Congress/MPs) in office at present but there are only 100 Senators in the Upper House.
Two from/for each state. Congresspeople are elected by population demographics. X contiguous population density equals X number of 'congressional districts' within any given state/province/shire. So NY & California have like 40 representatives 'in congress'; where as States like the Dakotas, the Carolinas, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, West Virginia & Vermont have only 3 to 5 or 7 at best, Representatives in Congress.
Congresspeople get 2 or 4 yr' "terms in office" depending upon each individual state's internal legislative norms/rules. Senators serve in office 6 yr's, universally, before having to stand for re-election. More status, higher paygrade. They work towards their individual state's interests rather than answer to a universal demographic constituency.
So Vermont, West Virginia, New Mexico et alii all have two Senators in the Upper House just the same as states like California and New York.
Nuances. But not uncertain. And on that note I have to go, other nearer matters call.
Sunday near noon. At this point in time these nuances matter very much indeed. The republican majority in the senate is very thin, almost razor thin, 52 - 48 I believe at present, and 3 (now) republican senators have artificially recused themselves, made public statements directly contradicting or repudiating the spirit and wording of the Impeachment Trial Jurors Oath.
It's a process eh! Been done before.
It gives them an out to play with their backers should it all go pear shaped, as I think it will, and their perfect puppet DJT get's frogmarched out the back door of the presidency.
I can think of one regional senator for sure that knows they'll be out of a job in 11 months time if they vote to acquit on Impeachment. There are almost certainly others in the same situation. And the general public down there is now well over 50% in favour of "Removal from Office", and becoming increasingly vociferous about it.
Any congressperson who voted to acquit in the lower house can simply get lost in the - 500 odd - shuffle. At that level in government the "I-was-simply-following-orders" thing could work; get them off the hook with the voters for enabeling further criminality in office, so long as they themselves - several congresspeople come to mind - were not too egregiously involved in The Coverup/s.
Senators don't have this option. And the oath itself - ITJO - individuates and obligates senators from 'party' or regional influence. Makes them personally culpable.
At this point; Sunday Jan 5th 2020, with the "trial" not even yet scheduled, there is already so MUCH hard evidence of criminality, corruption and unconstitutional practices in the executive branch, DOJ & DOS in plain sight on the table, with MORE emerging daily, that any senator who votes for acquittal may be signing off on their own further careers in public office.
The "Republican Party"; is in tatters. Recievership. Lost all credibility with the thinking public. Unless you're in the billionaire boyz club, and some of them have chosen to do the right thing too.
Since DJT's election nearly 50% of the listed republicans then in office have been voted out of office, resigned office or are in the process of (end of term, 2020) resigning, or simply defected, changed 'sides'. Often very publicly, and this last is a thing previously unknown in American politics; one might vote against the party line on any given issue (either party) in favour of one's local constituency or regional interests, but one Did Not change sides unilaterally.
It started immediately following his election and continues unabated because the republican party is increasingly percieved as the Marie "let them eat cake" Antoinette party. The WE DON'T CARE if you're hungry or homeless or a refugee or simply tired of having to worry about your k**s coming home in body bags on their way back from school? party.
(off the wall, how SICK is that!?! The Columbine thing I could kind of get my head around because it was - armed to the teeth - c***dren themselves doing the shooting, and they both died in the course of it. But all the stuff since then . . The place is too crazy entirely, and I'd be dead now if I had'nt got out of there when I did, I have no doubt, but there is no time for that here.
I heard long ago that the Marie Antoinette quote is a misquote in that it was not a declarative statement at all but rather an interrogative statement. Along the lines of - spokesman for the People; "The people are Hungry your Majesty, the bakers have no flour to make bread." Marie A; "Well can't they use cake flour instead?" Simple ignorance of how the other 98% lives. The truth of this I've never bothered to ascertain as it is minor anecdotal from 2 and a half centuries ago.)
Now I gotta do some stuff around here but this line of thought I will finish later tonight.
Later tonight. I am so glad I live here or there . . . now. I am gonna have t'write that bit about what it is really like down there. It's been eating at me for yr's. The reality of it all. Or unreality.
Pfui! Onwards, V'peryod.... this sketched out above is the dynamic in play au courant, the governmental units, processes & factional entities now seemingly (see second graphic) in freefall at the moment.
Discounting global corporate entities interests and those zanies of the billionaire boyz club, both eastern (ex soviet bloc) and western (and not also counting islamic bloc zillionaires) oligarches. Zuckerborg springs immediately to mind, Murdoch has simply been lost in the 1950's since the 1950's...
Nuances. I will start out again tomorrow. This above being the mainframe or 'box' within which the action takes place. We move on to the dramatis personae, the people actually enmeshed, deliberately or by chance in office, at this point in local american History, and coincidentally World Hist. Since America is one of the Main players . .
Manana, and I will re read this first.
Hmmm.. too wordy, repetitive, in the middle section perhaps, but I'd rather be overprecise deliberately than quick and slangy and leave you scratching your head over exactly How Do these-parts-all-fit-together?
Adding another meme or set of pie graphs. Not my work, but tells the tale of how and why the current republican party is falling apart. Done.
And tonight is Tuesday Jan 7th.
There are only 5 people who 'count' in this affair at this point. Inherently compelled by their own prior actions or "chance in office" to play a leading part in this present Impeachment Process.
By chance in office, I mean just that, no choice or luck or foresight at all, it just happened to occur on their beats, on their watchs.
In order of importance, and why, at the present moment.
Nancy Pelosi. Speaker of the (lower) House and leader of the democratic party. She is from California I believe. Chance in office.
Mitch McConnel. Speaker of the Senate, senate majority leader and de facto leader of the Republican party. Both chance in office and his own prior acts & acts of ommission. That last is catholic logic but I'm sure it is taught elsewhere and you get the gist.
Chuck Schumer. Senate minority leader. Chance in office.
DJT. The accused. President & head of the executive branch. Titular leader of the republican party.
Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin. Foriegn national and de facto autocrat of an un allied state.
Vlad is on the list simply because he can pull the plug on the whole affair - flush DJT down the loo entirely - at any time simply by releasing some portion (like 31 yr's worth) of the more lurid and 'unamerican' kompromat/blackmail material, he undoubtedly has on DJT.
DJT. Is up a tree. And can't get down it. A quintessentially stupid man. And I think I will continue this tomorrow, my cat is bitching at me and there are other things I've got to do...
Wednesday night. Yes DJT. Bottom of the American list, as to his own future.
If DJT had not been born into a very great deal of money, smack dab in the middle of the biggest financial center of the american empire, I doubt anyone would have ever heard of him, outside of his immediate family, neighbours, and workmates.
If someone, anyone, had caught him by the scruff of the neck, before age 16, and made him think about Growing UP rather than dummying down he might've made a good RSM or even DSM. Or minor general even, at brigade or divisional level.. He's certainly combative enough, if ineffectual in real world encounters unless his opponent (more like Victim) is much smaller and weaker than him.
It makes me tired to think about. He's just tried, and failed, again, to start a 'war' with Iran. (the saudi's have been trying to inveighle the 'west' - USA or Israel - into a "war" against Iran since day one. No former president has allowed it. No former president - the Bushes included - have been so deep in the Saudi's pockets as this one is.
Iran is unassailable. Or else the Sunnis would have eradicated it long ago. It is another one of those parallell universes/ecosystems I have been telling you about. Their language and culture - Farsi or "Persian" - is older than Islam and formal Arabic. And they are the champions of the Shia'a [ formerly Shi'ite] heresy, by Sunni lights, for 13 or 1400 yrs now. A political - of 13 - 1400 yr's ago - argument about who can or cannot be elected "Caliph"; or supreme heaven sent ruler.
And you spent 7 yrs in those parts, you probably already know all this stuff better than I do ...) . .
The iranian plateau is a plateau, mean elevation between 5 and 7,000 feet ASL, and as different from the lowlands and highlands around it as the Thibetan plateau (12 - 13000 ...) is from the Chinese, Indian, Afghani & north central Eurasian drainage basin lowlands surrounding it. The Iranian Plateau ecosystem has been internally regulated by the Farsi speaking peoples since past 500 BCE. In this regard Afghanistan should be mentioned. Afghanistan and it's small Babel of local tribal tongues is as it is and as it always has been because it too is a discretely different geographically crafted ecosystem.
Except Affanistan (phonetic. the 'g' is silent locally) is the opposite of Iran & Thibet - The Andean SA countries spring to mind.. - except Affanistan is a "basin", like the Great Basin of NA known locally as Utah. Sinkholes. No navigable rivers flow through them to anywhere else. Rivers flow into them from surrounding heights - the Iranian plateau, the Rocky Mtns - and dwindle away into salt marshes, lakes and 'pans'. Where it is hottest and driest, and everyone lives on and around the higher outer edges. And both are hotbeds of religious fundamentalism, the locals having nothing better to do and nowhere better to go...
Phew! Back to Trump. Lets get this over with before the trial starts!
At this point, watching current events unfold this past two weeks and longer, I think it as likely that he will be carried out of the White House on a stretcher to the nearest medical facility before or after the senate throws him out of office. He had an unscheduled, hushed up and quickly whitewashed over 'medical event' 6 or 8 weeks ago. It is thought by many to have been a small stroke. And then there is his adderal addiction, pretty much a known fact, though some still allege cocaine use, the late Carrie Fisher among others.
He is a 70 yr old obese choleric man with very poor dietary habits and an affluent indolent lifestyle; and he is used to having his own way in everything as sole proprietor/autocrat, and he is now irreversibly stuck in a situation he cannot control or direct at all.
Physically, from what little I've seen and heard (I don't watch his 'stuff') these last 3 yr's - use of a golfcart at public events, etc - I doubt very much that he could walk more than 4 or 500 hundred steps unaided, if that. He is a (barely) walking (barely) talking posterc***d for POP! Goes the weasel . . . any minute now.
Chuck Schumer. Chance in office. Senate minority leader. Can act in opposition to McConnel in the senate both as an equal in that chamber and as an agent of his own party's leadership cadre. And in this last regard Adam Schiff - chance in office - must also be mentioned as before Impeachment was passed his part was greater in the whole affair, and as a sitting involved committee chairman he is still very much a part of the ongoing process.
Mitch McConnel. Is in Hell. No doubt about it. He just has'nt physically died yet. His own fault. What happens when you go around telling people you're the Grim Reaper eh! So where exactly is it you work that gig out of?
A thoroughly corrupt and venal man, his millionairess chinese trophy wife Elaine Chao sits on DJT's cabinet as secretary of something or other.
Has just swung a 3 million or billion dollar aluminium manufacturing plant in his home state of Kentucky by the kind offices of one of the Soviet privateers/Russian oligarches. Has been and is definitely in on the Ukraine bourse/Russian money tit since certainly (IMHO) 2016 at least.
But is much better insulated in every respect than DJT, whose ass, in the form of tax returns and the Deutsche Bank - one of who's senior senior officers of which concerned in all of this took his own life 6 or 20 weeks ago -
'whose ass, in the forms of legally subpoenaed tax returns and legally subpoenaed Deutsche Bank documentation on his loan guarantors is hanging in the wind being pecked apart by legally empowered harpies and eagles even as we speak.
McConnel has much cleaner, or at least better manicured, public hands in regards to the Russian money/Kompromat, but as the de facto head of his party for at least 8 yr's until non politician DJT was forcefed into office and titular leadership of ... McConnel - or, and, his Office was the local (American politics, Republican party) bursar/purser reciever and purveyer of record of the various street legal & white/grey and black Super PACs - however thatz spelt - campaign donations. There is no way McConnel want's THAT particular money trail investigated one inch further than it already has been or soon will be. 'Cause all roads lead back to him.
And if that requires Yeo Heave HO captain Kirk, DJT, he will do it. He was the first of the now 3 republican artificial recusants to the Senate Trial.
Because 2 things are apparent in the here and now of 2020. One is that active Russian subversion of the American election process must have begun much earlier, and that DJT could not possibly have been the only agent of, acting alone . . . and the second is that the Mercer/Putin/Zuckerborg think tank/"Political Consulting Agency" Cambridge Analytica had masterminded the Brexit less than a yr before very openly shadow managing DJT's cyber electioneering campaign in 2016. Above and beyond active Russian covert interference.
No stopping these things. The facts just keep on happening. And I think I'll try to finish this up and send it on tomorrow. Too many twists yet to go to keep straight in my head and spell out correctly tonight.
Too crazy my friend, and yet not untrue. Manana . . .
3 PM Saturday afternoon Jan 11. . .
Mitch McConnel is in hell because he, and his party are now forced into a new year election cycle with his own, the presidency itself and numerous other senate & congressional seats in play, up for election or re election; and forced into this new (minus 11 months NOW and counting . . .) national election cycle with the albatross of a presidential impeachment trial hung around their collective necks;, and the president in question is of their own party, at the worst possible point in the yearly news cycle.
The fact that numerous billboards have sprung up in his home state with his face, and other newer nickname on it "Moscow Mitch", simply that, in black white and red, is probably not helping his after dinner digestion either.
The more the senate trial is delayed the more horrendously it will impact all the elections in November, and the sooner it takes place the more nakedly transparent it must be. Because Speaker of the (lower) House Pelosi has publicly stated repeatedly that she will not present the current (2) bills of Impeachment to the senate until and unless a full and fair trial process is stipulated to in the senate. No mere show of hands, guilty or not guilty?..
With witnesses called, examined, cross examined, documents produced or entered into evidence, etc, the full 9 yards of a presidential impeachment trial which has already been played out 3 times before. This she has publicly stated.
Nor can McConnel force her to do so or change the rules in all of this in any way. To change the rules contingent upon the senate's own duties and processes themselves requires a 2/3rds majority vote, and McConnell barely has a simple 52-48 majority by the skin of his teeth.
Moreover, the various investigative and adjudicatory committies in the lower house have not abandoned, curtailed or adjourned their offices at all, new witnesses and evidence are coming forth daily; court battles over contested witness testimony and subpoenaed documentation continue unabated. Congress can and may pass further Articles of Impeachment at any time up until the entire process/es itself achieves closure and termination.
And just to make the monkey go blind entirely, more salt on McConnells wounds and hair in his undershirt, banana peels galore popping up everywhere in sight; DJT himself is now loudly clamouring for as soon a trial date as possible with subpoenaed witnesses, and completely irrelevant and (uninvolved) innapropriate witnesses at that, the Biden's, father and son.
You could not make this up because nobody would believe it except for the fact that it is happening on the world stage and playing out in real time for everyone to see.
Trump can no more alter or direct the course of further events than McConnell can. Less so in fact as he is the accused. An officially impeached de facto lame duck president, soon to be ex president. One way or another.... There are already 4 plus ways that this will or will not transpire.
Nancy Pelosi. Chance in office. And it is her second or third time or tenure in that office, that of Speaker of the (lower) House. She has brilliantly captained the Impeachment event from it's inception 5 odd months ago to it's coming execution sometime this new year.
More telling still, a month or two before the process - impeachment - even officially began, she made a public statement, thus; "I don't want to see him (DJT) impeached, I want to see him in prison".
Which goes towards what I related to you about 2 yr's back. That DJT, had, even back then, screwed things up so badly and deliberately that an example would have to be made...
Nixon got off with a slap on the wrist and a Pardon, thus tacitly aceding to a "Guilty" verdict, but no time because his involvement in the crime at issue was both factually minimal and ex post facto. He niether authorised nor had any knowledge of the break-in at the Watergate hotel at the time of it's occurrence. He did however try to make the whole problem go away aferwards, i*****lly or ex officio, and it was for that crime, Obstruction of Justice, that he was impeached.
And that is most manifestly not the case in this current instance.
More instructive still, In Nixon's debacle, his much more complicit attorney general John Mitchell, got 3 yr's in a federal prison in the aftermath. Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo & Mick Mulvaney - all 2nd string bit part players at this point - should all think real hard about that. That precedent has already been set.
What will happen next? Your guess is as good as mine. These above are the facts at issue, as fair as I can ascertain them, of all these matters at this time.
5 years ago