Finding the Way Forward.....

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As the hearings came to an end last week, we all realized that we had been holding our collective breaths, and so we slowly exhaled and tried to figure out where we were going next.  To many of us, it was so clear that the evidence was there to impeach, and yet, here were the Republicans who simply refused to evaluate the evidence.  Even though their faulty defenses crumbled day after day as the testimonies shattered them, apparently all Republicans simply ignored the facts as presented in the testimonies.

It is clear that Trump’s supporters are fighting a political battle and the Democrats are fighting a legal battle.  There simply is no intersection between the two points of view.  But more than that, the attitude and aggressive attack tactics during questioning revealed the Republican’s bias.  Any type of inquiry of this type should be approached by all parties as a somber exercise in trying to uncover the truth. 

Instead what we got from Nunes and Jordan and all the rest was character assassination, devaluing and undermining of a whole roster of patriotic State Department employees, and promotion of fallacious conspiracy theories without presentation of any evidence.  The Republicans were simply mean!  There was no interest in finding out what really happened.

Make no mistake, what is at stake here is nothing less than the future of our democracy.  The Republicans in Congress apparently endorse obstruction of legal requests for documents and the testimony of key figures who have first-hand information as to the facts of the case against President Trump  .  Moreover, they are endorsing the ignoring of constitutional mandates to obey subpoenas issued by Congress in its constitutionally mandated oversight responsibilities.  If that is allowed to stand, then there is no oversight of the Executive Branch.  That means that that responsibility of Congress is nullified and the Constitution of the United States is nullified.  That is a bad thing.  That is why this exercise is important to complete.

To return to the question of what happens next, we must keep the preceding notion in mind.  The Democrats, and more specifically the House of Representatives, need to proceed to present Articles of Impeachment if the House has evidence of High Crimes, Treason or Misdemeanors.  To abandon this process at this point is to surrender the Constitutional right to oversight, which then makes the occurrence of these types of behaviors by the President more likely to continue by this President and future Presidents.  It also rejects the concept of the rule of law and deconstructs the US Constitution.

And more to the point, it needs to be on the record that this man was impeached for innumerable reasons.  He needs to be ‘stained’ with this badge of impeachable wrongdoing so as to mitigate what will surely be his claims of total exoneration when he is most probably acquitted by the Senate.  There will not be much else the majority of us can do.

Then we must steel ourselves for the difficult and perilous path to election day in November 2020.  That will most assuredly be the last chance to reverse the course that Trumpism has set us on since 2015 when he announced his candidacy.  The majority of Americans must coalesce into a force of rejection to sweep Trump and his sycophantic supporters from the scene so we can restore rationality and the rule of law to the United States.

 

And, it will be a prolonged period of restoration and reconstruction from the pervasive damage he and his advocates have wrought upon our Republic.

Applause

They wanted to know why she was even there testifying, since she wasn’t even our ambassador when the infamous phone call was made on July 25^th.  I can answer that:  because she was part of a story of which the phone call was only one incident half way through a much longer story.

Marie Yovanovich taught us what true diplomatic work is.  Her description of how she approached her job and why diplomacy is important in the furtherance of the policies of the United States was inspiring.  It also showed all of us how important diplomacy is to the security of our country when done properly. ‘ Masha’s’ quiet sincerity, innocence and competence shone through the haze of corruption and misdirection being spewed across the hearing room by the Republicans on the committee every time they opened their mouths.

And then, as if on cue, the ‘bully’ weighed in from afar with his fetid attack on her while she was actually testifying!  His claims of not being interested enough to even watch the hearings were shattered in that one clarifying moment.  She was dangerous to him.

This is a story about a conspiracy that started many months before that infamous phone call in July.  When the cabal of Trump, Giuliani, Parnas, Fruman, Perry, Lutsenko, et. al. began planning the corruption of the Ukrainian government in the interest of using a foreign government to enhance Trump’s run in the 2020 US elections, it was even before the outcome of the Mueller probe.  They started spreading lies about Ukraine’s purported role meddling in the 2016 elections in the US, while working with known corrupt Ukrainian politicians/state prosecutors to spread conspiracy theories about Burisma and Joe Biden’s son Hunter. 

Since Yovanovich was actually working to clean up the corruption that Ukraine was suffering from, she was in the way of this nefarious backchannel plan.  The only option was to get rid of her, which is why Giuliani and his henchman were in Ukraine in the first place.  So, they initiated the smear campaign and engineered her removal just prior to the elections when the new Ukrainian President arrived on the scene. 

All Zelenskiyy wanted was to assure the United States’ continued military support in his dealing with a ‘hot war’ with the Russians on his eastern front.  After Yovanovich was gone, Giuliani and his cronies had an open field to manage and misdirect Zelenskiyy’s attention and create the conditions for the July 25^th phone call.  You know the rest of the story.

As I listened to the Republican’s insidious attempts to misdirect and interrupt her testimony, and watched Ambassador Yovanovich during the hearing; heard her recounting the events leading up to her dismissal, I was overcome with anger.  That all of these creeps would devalue this incredibly competent and loyal patriot and undermine her efforts while sabotaging the mission of our democracy is a crime.  That they were operating in my name as an American is despicable!

This tawdry story is being revealed piece by piece, and we are learning just how corrupt our own government has become at the hands of perhaps the most detestable person to ever set foot in the White House.  If we are unable to rid ourselves of his degenerate presence in 2020, there will be no redemption for the US.

If he survives a vote in the Senate to remove him, and somehow wins the next election, he will be unbridled.  The damage done thus far will be insignificant compared to what will ensue for the next four years.  Our precious America that we all grew up believing in will be over.  Even if he loses, the struggle to get him out of the White House will be monumental since he will claim the election was rigged and unfair.  Unless he is beaten soundly, the country is in for an excruciating effort to rid ourselves of him and his minions.

Perhaps the most welcome moment of yesterday's hearing was when Yovanovich's testimony ended and she was showered with an unsolicited standing ovation.  That applause, for a moment anyway, shattered the lies and said more than any spoken word.

Keeping the Truth in View

We can get lost in the weeds on all these impeachment distractions that we are hearing from those who can’t seem to find any real defenses for the actual alleged crimes.  Just listening to all the Republican’s harping on the ‘process’ that apparently was just fine for them during the Benghazi hearings; and the rules that they promulgated when they were the party in majority, and now for convenience sake are apparently invalid, is exhausting.  Now they want to call witnesses that have nothing to do with the actual alleged crime.  After complaining bitterly that the initial inquiry was held in secret (with Republican members of each committee present during the depositions), they now think that public hearings shouldn’t be held.  Good grief—the hypocrisy is stunning.

If you cut away all the bullshit and positioning, the fact is that a crime was committed here by the President of the United States.  He and his minions bribed and extorted a foreign government by withholding appropriated military aid in exchange for their announcing a bogus investigation into the President’s chief rival for his re-election in 2020.  The real crime is the abuse of power for personal gain at the expense of our country’s national security.  Plain and simple.

All those who make excuses for it, who rationalize that ‘everyone does it’, who now say that his offenses don’t rise to the level of impeachment are manipulating the facts for retention of their own power—again, at the expense of our national security.  They should be ashamed of themselves. 

Just watch Lindsey Graham twist in the wind, changing his reasons for making excuses for Trump’s actions with each revelation of new facts.  And after whining that the depositions were done in secret, he declares that he will not even read the transcripts now that they are released to the public.  What a creep and what a hypocrite!

Trump will no doubt be impeached by the House, and then the senators who piously proclaim that the whole process is a ‘sham’, will be faced with going on record by serving as jurors in the trial of the accused.  Each senator’s verdict will cement their legacy and hypocrisy for history to record.

In the meantime, what we are learning about Trump’s modus operandi in the Oval Office is frightening.  You can decry the anonymous writer of the new novel, A Warning, but just for a  minute digest the possibility that what he writes is true.  When in the history of this country has there been a description of the Chief Executive that is so appalling and unsettling?  He doesn’t read, has the attention span of a flea, refuses to inform himself of the issues that are critical to the country’s future and is demeaning to his staff. women in general, and attacks anyone who disagrees with him.  He is a horrible human being who does not believe in our Constitution and flaunts the rule of law.  If he is elected to a second term, the United States as we knew it will not survive.

 

The fact that the Republicans in Congress support this behavior is a crime in itself, and my fervent wish is that the electorate will flush as many members as possible down the toilet of electoral defeat next November. 

Watch this week as the Republican’s try to destroy the reputations of patriots who have served their country for decades in some cases and were appointed by the Trump administration.  They can’t even claim they are Democrats, and yet they will be accused of being ‘Never Trumpers’!  The people who will testify are the true patriots.  Let’s hope that the public will be able to discern the truth and see the Trump administration for what it is: a lawless bunch of people who are only interested in  power, money and themselves.