Former Ambassador William Taylor heads into the House impeachment hearings chamber to face the Reeptard clowns.
"Journalists are already keenly aware that there's mountainous evidence, mostly coming from officials who worked in the Trump administration, that an attempted bribery of Ukraine took place. They also know that Republicans have been utterly incoherent with the various Trump defenses they have tried to float, including the claim that the White House is too inept to pull off an international bribery scheme. So it's imperative that news reports do not pretend the hearings revolve around a Both Sides claim, or that it's just not possible to tell which side is dealing with established facts and which side is basically making stuff up. " Eric Boehlert, 'Memo To Media: Don't Screw Up The Impeachment Hearings'.
"Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio set their (GOP) tone and pace, apparently betting that a sustained note of incredulity and a motor-mouth delivery could distract listeners from the fragility of his arguments". NY Times editorial today, 'Republicans Best Defense Is A Bad Offense'.
"Republican Rep. Jim Jordan is a god-awful human being. His positioning on the House Intelligence Committee during the impeachment hearings is a mystery in as much as he’s dumb and has nothing but enormous skeletons in his own closet. There are the numerous lawsuits and allegations that while an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University, Jordan knew about multiple young men being sexually assaulted and molested by Dr. Richard Strauss." Daily Kos, 'Twitter Has A Field Day With Jim Jordan's Craven Behavior At Impeachment Hearing'.
Janice became distraught after viewing the first day of the House impeachment hearings yesterday. She was flustered by Trump butt licker Jim Jordan's high octane performance, and that it may have "moved the polls" in the wrong direction. I told her anyone with sense and intelligence could see it was all an act, a performance, to solidify Trump's zombie base. Keep them in line. Still, after watching Maddow and the other evening political shows she worried, "No one is taking on what Jim Jordan said about it all being second hand and hearsay".
I told her I would do that with this blog post and that's what I'm here to do: Skewer Jordan and his GOP Jokers' trope that everything the witnesses said was based on hearsay and 2nd hand info, so doesn't count.
First things first. As expected the House Republicans sought to blunt the impact of the testimony yesterday by pointing out that the witnesses had not had direct conversations with Trump about his intentions. They also argued that in asking for investigations, Trump was pursuing a legitimate anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine. Democrats responded that Trump had not expressed any anti-corruption initiative not having to do with Biden.
Kudos to William Taylor who said: “I am not here to take one side or the other, or to advocate for any particular outcome of these proceedings. My purpose is to provide the facts as I know them.” Taylor then described his concern to discover, last spring, an informal policy channel in Ukraine led by Giuliani, and advanced by US officials close to the White House, including Gordon Sondland
But this didn't sit well with the likes of Reeptard flame thrower Jim Jordan - carrying on like an ape on a mix of crystal meth, THC candy and angel dust- continually yelping "You weren't there, so you don't know anything! You got no evidence, only hearsay!"
Which is balderdash because one does not need direct experience to have evidence. Not at all, and the media should not fall into this rat trap. We already have "mountainous evidence" as blogger Eric Boehlert notes. That the two witnesses yesterday did not directly interact with Trump or directly hear his phone calls is irrelevant.
A lot of the deviousness of the Reep imps' cynical strategy is tied to conflating subjective and objective evidence. So if person A (say one witness like William Taylor) doesn't have direct evidence or contacts or information it's the same as having no evidence or useful information. But this is codswallop and in many ways similar to the daft claims made in the book, 'The Knowledge Illusion' by cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach which, in the words of one breathless reviewer (Yuval Harari):
"hammers another nail into the coffin of the rational individual... positing that not just rationality but the very idea of individual thinking is a myth."
Hence, just as individually valid experience of an event or indirect knowledge of it is a "myth" (as the Reeptards quizzing witness William Taylor claimed yesterday) so is individual thinking. The problem is embodied in one statement from an Amazon reviewer:
"The Knowledge Illusion tells us something depressing – we don’t know nearly as much INDIVIDUALLY as we think....Day in and day out we use objects, such as a ballpoint pen, about whose inner workings we know nothing. On more complex issues, such as climate change, we may have strong positions – but who among us could describe how global temperatures are measured, what the albedo effect is, what the main sources of greenhouse gasses are, and how climate models (which run on super computers) work?"
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Each of which contributes to the notion of an individual impotence regarding knowledge, of what constitutes clear evidence, and indeed knowing history itself (If we were to allow ourselves to follow down the primrose path of rational nihilism proposed by the authors, and invoked incessantly yesterday by the Reep inquisitors)
Discounting the feasibility of getting in touch with the actual sources the claim is we truly can't know anything- and that wipes out nearly all of history as well!
"Did you actually go back and fight in the Civil War? Say the Battle of Bull Run? Then how do you know it happened?"
Uh, because I can read - and have read 14 different American history books that agree on it. That ok with you, Roscoe? Nope? Too bad, now go back to your comics and fake news!
In the same sense, I need not have been in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 to know JFK was assassinated and it was accomplished by a conspiracy, see e.g.
A Hard Fact: All Necessary JFK Files HAVE Been Rel...
A comparable argument is this hypothetical one from a climate change denier who might blab:
"Have you actually accessed the climate satellites and thermal buoys and used them to make temperature measurements and detected the global temperature changes? Did you acquire that data yourself? Did you actually go to see the West Antarctic shelf collapsing and glaciers melting? No? Then why should I accept any climate change you propose based on human agency or cause?"
Uh, because over 3,000- peer-reviewed papers have made that case, and one merely requires some basic understanding of thermal physics to read most of them.
And so again, we return to the position of rational nihilism: i.e. because an individual hasn't actually accessed the original sources, the actual devices, their direct measurements or conducted the primary observations on x or y phenomenon then any arguments made for human-incepted climate change must be untenable. Of course this is balderdash. If that claim were true then very few academic papers would be published. The reason? Most academic, peer-reviewed papers depend for their existence on already published other peer-reviewed papers. I.e. second hand sources. It is then the peer review process itself which bestows scientific trust that published work has been properly vetted and is imbued with an inherent level of quality assurance. If that were not the case, virtually no intellectual advance in any sphere would be possible.
In like manner, House Democrats have had to enlist secondary witnesses like George Kent and William Taylor to testify - as well as provide their depositions - because Trump and his cabal have refused to allow the primary sources to appear. Or provided the original documents, records which have been subpoenaed. But that doesn't mean the secondary sources are useless or non-evidentiary. After all, their testimony and records have already been confirmed by other secondary sources (i.e. William Taylor's accounts by Tim Morrison), in depositions. Also his account of Gordon Sonderland's cell phone call to Trump - to be confirmed by Gordo next Wednesday- unless he wants a perjury charge.
In like manner, House Democrats have had to enlist secondary witnesses like George Kent and William Taylor to testify - as well as provide their depositions - because Trump and his cabal have refused to allow the primary sources to appear. Or provided the original documents, records which have been subpoenaed. But that doesn't mean the secondary sources are useless or non-evidentiary. After all, their testimony and records have already been confirmed by other secondary sources (i.e. William Taylor's accounts by Tim Morrison), in depositions. Also his account of Gordon Sonderland's cell phone call to Trump - to be confirmed by Gordo next Wednesday- unless he wants a perjury charge.
So the whole insistence that people, witnesses be in direct contact with an event, source, transgression, or personality - say to make a case for prosecution, reality or impeachment - is pure bollocks. It is a blatant effort to hoodwink the casual observer or anyone watching but lacking in critical thinking skills.
Jordan's and John Lee Ratcliff's performance about "hearsay" and "no direct knowledge" yesterday was essentially lame and irrelevant. The transcendently transparent offense was out in the open (objective evidence) when Trump suspended $391 million in American security aid approved by Congress at the same time he pressed Ukraine to help him with his domestic battles against Democrats like Joe Biden.
Thus the sheer weight of already exposed evidence of Trump's solicitation of a personal favor, i.e. to investigate the Bidens, skewers the Reeptards' sordid efforts to deflect and distract- or diminish the value of the two witnesses' testimony.
As I pointed out in my Sept.. 25th post, 'Don't Be Misled By Overthinking - Donnie Dotard Brought This On Himself':
"As FOX's own judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano informed anchor Shepherd Smith yesterday afternoon, Trump basically openly admitted to committing bribery which is an impeachable offense. To jog memories, recall this all began when Trump pressured the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a July phone call to investigate the son of Joe Biden, the former vice-president and the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to compete for the White House in the 2020 presidential election.
Indeed, Judge Napolitano noted the Founders ranked bribery right up there with treason - which crime Trump is also likely guilty of. Napolitano was referring to the fact that Trump sought the help of a foreign country (Ukraine) to gain leverage to destroy his potential political opponent - Joe Biden. And worse, he used the withholding of over $450m in already taxpayer- allocated foreign aid as an extortion tool.
As Napolitano put it, in an earlier historical time "beheading was the punishment" - though he would "hesitate to prescribe such for Trump". Well, I wouldn't. But I would hang him first, or maybe electrocute him in an old electric chair- as he earlier insisted ought to be done to Joe Biden. . Anyway, impeachment will do so long as the Dems carry it through and not cop out when crunch time comes as it surely will."
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My point? If this FOX- based judge Andrew Napolitano could recognize the objective evidence for bribery and an impeachable offense, then any other sentient person could as well, including Jim Jordan and the retinue of Reep clowns trying to assert William Taylor was "wrong" in his concerns about the quid pro quo. All their sound and fury of rapid blabber and oral gymnastics not withstanding, they accomplished nothing but appeasing the Trump base.
While we're at it let's quash this horse manure that a quid pro quo is even essential to have an impeachable offense. No it is not. All that was needed is the solicitation, the attempt. If you attempt a murder even though it didn't succeed, you are still guilty, same for attempted robbery. The failure of the effort does not absolve anyone, least of all Trump.
As for the claim by some legal pundits, like Jonathan Turley, that the Dems are basing their impeachment case on a very narrow "sliver" of evidence, hardly! Corey Brettschneider, the author of The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents and a professor of constitutional law at Brown University, has categorically stated that a president’s powers do not include exercising foreign policy for his own personal benefit. In an interview with the UK Guardian, Brettschneider said:
“The framers dedicated a significant amount of time to thinking about this. They made a deliberate decision to say ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’, emphasizing that if the president abused power – not just committed a crime – then he or she would be removed.”
Something the Reepo gasbags, goobers and distractors would do well to remember when the hearings resume Friday.
Given our fractured media universe it wasn't clear whether voters were watching in even half the numbers they viewed the Watergate hearings (45m) yesterday. Never mind. History certainly was, and how Americans react to the hearings - and whether they 'move the needle' in polls to now remove Trump as unfit - will mark this generation, which is on trial like Trump. Having committed the most colossal electoral misfire in history in 2016, are they prepared to enable a constitutional process to deal with the walking orange pestilence - and hold him accountable? We shall see.
We had better not blow it. By "we" I mean genuine citizens knowledgeable about our Constitution - as opposed say to followers of the right wing troll clown called Lisa Benson - who regularly generates ignorant offal like that shown below
to appease the Trump knuckle draggers. Incredibly this waste of space buffoon and Trumper crank regularly has her toons appear in the WaPo which has delivered some of the best stories on the impeachment.
See also:
Republicans carry forward Trump’s effort to make lies into truths
And:
And:
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