monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I also didn't know about the flashers. I miss all the good stuff.

Republican leaders called out conservatives who have been attacking Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and other witnesses in the House impeachment investigation on Tuesday.

After complaining about Democrats’ handling of the investigation during a House Republican leadership presser, House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) switched tracks.

“Now I also want to say a word about something else that’s been going on over the course of the last several hours and last night which I think is also shameful,” she said. “And that is questioning the patriotism, questioning the dedication to country, of people like Mr. Vindman, Lt. Col. Vindman, who will be coming today, and others who have testified.”

The Republican lawmaker urged for Vindman’s critics to “show that we are better than that as a nation.”

“We’re talking about decorated veterans who have served this nation, who’ve put their lives on the line, and it is shameful to question their patriotism, their love of this nation, and we should not be involved in that process,” she continued.

Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the Senate’s second highest-ranking Republican, also chided Republicans who have been smearing Vindman.

“That guy’s a Purple Heart,” Thune told Politico. “I think it would be a mistake to attack his credibility.”

“You can obviously take issue with the substance and there are different interpretations about all that stuff. But I wouldn’t go after him personally,” he added. “He’s a patriot.”

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), the No. 4 Republican in the Senate, also told Politico he “wouldn’t be on board” with criticizing Vindam.

“This is the career military officer with a purple heart? I’m sure he’s doing his best to serve his country,” he said.

Though Cheney nor Thune did not specify who they were referring to, the last several days have seen President Donald Trump and his Republican allies bash Vindman and acting Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, two key witnesses in the impeachment probe who served in the Vietnam War...

If Trump Is Impeached or Defeated, Conservatives Will Call It a ‘Coup’

“At some point it won’t just be marches on Capitol Hill from a few Republican congressmen that the Resistance will have to deal with,” writes Mollie Hemingway. “It is unclear what the proper reaction to an unrelenting campaign to overturn the result of the 2016 election should be exactly, but they should stop expecting people to be as polite as they have been in response.”

Is that a threat? Well, it isn’t not a threat.

Hemingway, a senior editor at the Federalist, Fox News contributor, and senior journalism fellow at Hillsdale College, occupies an important place in the right-wing media universe. She sits at the nexus between the most transparently insane conspiracy theorists of the alt-right and blue-blood conservative institutions, and receives regular Twitter praise from Trump. Her opus provides a window into the party’s rage and a directional sign of its strategic course.

As the impeachment produces ever more redundant proof that President Trump corrupted foreign policy for political gain, Republican thoughts are beginning to turn toward what leftists delicately term “direct action,” and what conservatives usually call — at least when the other side is doing it — “mob rule.” The storming and disruption of a bipartisan House Intelligence Committee last week may just be a start.

At no point in her manifesto does Hemingway attempt even a cursory defense of Trump’s conduct in the Ukraine scandal. Instead, she repeats her oft-stated claim that the Russia investigation was a deep-state coup, and presents the Ukraine scandal as an extension of the same effort, sparing her the difficulty of explaining away the damning combination of internal communications, testimony, and on-camera confessions establishing Trump’s scheme to leverage American influence over Ukraine for his political ends. The closest she comes is to dismiss the entire scandal as “something something Ukraine.” (“Following a few returning visits to the 25th Amendment fever swamps, where Resistance members fantasize that they could get Trump’s cabinet to undo the 2016 election, or speculation that Trump might resign, they have landed on something something Ukraine.”)

Hemingway likewise makes no effort to support her premise that Republicans have been “polite” in response to impeachment. The White House sent out a raving, legally absurd note claiming for Trump the right to decide when Congress does and does not have the right to impeach him. It has accordingly refused any cooperation with the process, withholding, or attempting to withhold, all testimony and related documents it can block.

So what does Hemingway mean when she wants Republicans to stop being polite and start getting real? She cites as a model the infamous Brooks Brothers riot from 2000. During that episode, Republican staffers disrupted the vote recount in Miami-Dade, a process that they feared would increase the vote count for Al Gore. (It later turned out that Miami-Dade had few uncounted Gore votes.) Hemingway justifies the riot as a necessary response to a one-sided recount. Of course, if she were correct that the county was ignoring countable Republican ballots, there would have been legal remedies available. Instead, Republican staffers used mob tactics.

“The media attacks were written, not coincidentally, after the mini-protest was shown to have worked,” she argues, as if only media bias could explain why journalists covered an event shortly after it occurred. “Within hours, the Democrat-led board admitted that they couldn’t comply with state law by the Sunday deadline and stopped their attempted vote harvesting scheme.”

Whatever the ethics of her position, Hemingway is correct to cite this episode as a milestone in the ideological evolution that has brought the party toward Trumpism. Its increasingly right-wing character has been mixed with a conviction that Democratic elections are inherently fraudulent, and that extra-legal processes can be justified as countermeasures. Whether wise or not, the Constitution grants Congress indisputable authority to hold impeachment proceedings. Yet Trump has had little trouble bringing along with him the great mass of voters and elected officials to the position that it is illegitimate as process, a literal coup.

“If this coup succeeds — whether through impeachment proceedings, or through an election that (if the last three years are any indication) the other side is clearly willing to steal by hook or by crook — the nation will cease to be a constitutional, democratic republic,” she warns. Notice that Hemingway is casually endorsing the widespread Republican assumption that Democrats must steal elections in order to win. Since the perfidy of the president’s enemies is taken for granted, and the evidentiary standards for charges against them nonexistent, any Trump defeat is a coup. Trump himself has been stoking that lie since before the 2016 election. If he is impeached, and even if he simply loses reelection, Trump will call it a coup, and a large number of his followers will treat it as such.

The left has been trying to impeach him since the day after the election.

Russia collusion lies

A total of 272 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives have been identified, including at least 38 meetings. And we know that at least 33 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisers were aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition, including Trump himself. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them.

25th Amendment, people offering to wear wires

and now this desperate attempt with the Ukraine

You have evidence of this?

Since the Dems didn't win the House until the next election cycle I don't know how well that impeachment attempt would have worked.

Not lies — well documented by Mueller:

You mean he chose leftists to work in the White House and on his staff?

The only desperation is on the part of Trump's defenders — like you, comrade.

The forth coming report from Durham will be telling the tale, the report has since become a criminal investigation, the whole treasonous lot are going to be exposed.

Quote:

The only desperation is on the part of Trump's defenders — like you, comrade.

Someone who actively supports socialist/communist causes has the nerve to call me "comrade"? You're a ******* joke, save the "comrade" for your communist buddies, us Patriots will be standing firm.

“A former Joe Biden aide has filed paperwork to form a super PAC, called Unite the Country, that is set to boost the former vice president with millions of dollars in spending in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary,” Politico reported on Tuesday.

Records filed with the Department of Justice show that Rasky is also a registered foreign agent lobbying on behalf of the government of Azerbaijan. The records, which were filed pursuant to the Foreign Agent Registration Act, show that Rasky was hired by the Azerbaijani government on April 23, 2019. Federal documents signed by Rasky show that he reports directly to Elin Suleymanov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the United States.

He isent the only poster who thinks you might be a communist because your hero Trump thinks putin is the greatest.

Not since Bush looked into putin soul through his eyes has a president been so full of shyt.

No, holdovers from the Obama admin, our govt is still stacked with them. Why do you think so many high level intelligence people got fired or were forced to quit? They weren't working for the US govt, they were working with the DNC/Dems. The forth coming report from Durham will be telling the tale, the report has since become a criminal investigation, the whole treasonous lot are going to be exposed.

A House Republican who’s been parroting GOP complaints about the impeachment probe’s “closed-door” processes admitted on Tuesday that he hasn’t actually participated in any hearings–despite being allowed to attend them.

“No, I haven’t gone to those,” Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL), a member of the House Foreign Affairs committee, told CNN anchor Poppy Harlow. “We’ve had discussions in our Foreign Affairs committee on other aspects of what President Trump is doing, so I’ve been involved in those, not in these. I see these as kind of a sideshow.”