Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

https://democraticunderground.com/1016364001

If there was any doubt that the Republican House was no more sophisticated than a preschool playground, last week’s opening of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden settled it with a nasty kick of sand in Democrats’ face.

How else can you describe the pretext for this fishing expedition other than “You started it”? If our guy got embroiled in impeachment and protracted legal proceedings during election season, well then, damn it, so will yours.

Whereas Democrats began the first Trump impeachment inquiry after it was revealed that he tried to extort a political favor from the president of Ukraine in exchange for military aid, and the second impeachment after an insurrection, the Biden inquiry is proceeding with no clear evidence of any misdeeds by the president.

This is just the latest asymmetric tit-for-tat by Republicans.

Even many Republicans in Congress don’t buy into this kind of baloney, as we’ve learned from a series of Washington confessionals and from several Republicans who have questioned whether their side has the goods or if this is the best use of their time. As Kevin McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry, you could almost see his wispy soul sucked out Dementor-style, joining whatever ghostly remains of Paul Ryan’s abandoned integrity still wander the halls of Congress.

But this isn’t the first time we’ve witnessed this kind of sorry perversion of Democratic precedent. What Democrats do first in good faith, Republicans repeat in bad faith. Time and again, partisan steps that Democrats take with caution are transmogrified into extraordinary retaliation by Republicans.

And so, Al Gore’s challenge of the 2000 election results, ending in his decorous acceptance of the results after a bitter court ruling, is reincarnated as an unhinged insurrection at the Capitol in 2021.

In exchange for the brief moment after the 2004 election when some Democrats claimed irregularities with the Ohio ballot process, we get Republicans taking baseless claims of voter fraud in 2020 to thermonuclear level.

In June 1992, Biden, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on President George H.W. Bush not to nominate any candidate for the Supreme Court until after the fall election, saying it was “fair” and “essential” to keep what could be a sharp political conflict out of the campaign’s final days — as well as the nomination process itself. Of course, with no vacancy at hand, the stakes in that instance were nonexistent. But just after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, Mitch McConnell took the extraordinary position that he would not submit any Supreme Court nominee from President Barack Obama for Senate consideration in an election year. By ignoring that nominee, Merrick Garland, Republicans maintained a conservative majority on the court. McConnell, of course, disingenuously cited the “Biden rule” in his decision.

It is a bitter paradox that Biden, long a careful moderate, has suffered the brunt of this vindictive one-upmanship. The trouble with being around for so long, as Biden has been, is that there is always someone who remembers “the time when you” and holds a grudge.

And while there’s no direct connection between the 1987 defeat of Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork for the Supreme Court and the current impeachment inquiry, I can’t help thinking that the rage that set off among conservative Republicans helped ignite the flames of animosity that have only intensified over the years, yet another instance of a Democratic precedent being grossly misinterpreted as a political ploy rather than as a principled stand.

It was Biden, who as chair of the Judiciary Committee and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, was compelled to lead the fight against Bork. There was plenty of reason to block Bork: He had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the principle of one-person, one-vote; the judicial protection of gay rights; and the idea of a constitutional right to privacy as the foundation of not only Roe v. Wade, but also the right to contraception.

But the fight made even some Democrats nervous. “Will Democrats Self-Destruct on Bork?” the liberal columnist Mark Shields asked.

At that time, for one party to lead the fight to reject a Supreme Court nominee on ideological grounds was extraordinary. The vehemence with which some senators, like Ted Kennedy, approached it exacerbated the rancor. This sort of process became known as “Borking,” which, for Republicans, meant using someone’s record to destroy their character. To their minds, even though six Republicans voted against Bork, Democrats had politicized and poisoned the nomination process.

It’s hard not to see the unhinged attempt to take down Biden now as some kind of warped reincarnation of “Borking,” yet another twisted abuse of Democratic precedent.

The misdeeds Trump committed in office clearly warranted an unprecedented double impeachment. They certainly did not warrant this inquiry into Biden.

We are left to hope that the effort will now blow up in the G.O.P.’s face. Considering the shameless stuntathon of today’s House Republicans, this may be the closest we get to what’s fair.

I’ll tell y’all what keeps jumping out at me. It’s the gaslighting the media does to us - and themselves.
The narrative seems to be that we have to see these court cases against Trump through, to let our legal and judicial processes work, and thereby prove that Donald Trump is not above the law.

But that’s already just so much bullshit. Donald Trump has THIRTY-TWO charges of ESPIONAGE against him. Have you ever heard of an individual charged with CRIMES AGAINST THE COUNTRY just allowed to blithely travel around the country, as opposed to being in a cell awaiting trial? That is unheard of. He is already being proven to be above the law.

Look at how daintily they’re treating his flaunting the judges orders to shut up
about his cases. A warning. A statement to the press. A written warning. A tersely worded warning.

Any other person ignoring a judge’s orders would be put in JAIL the first time as a warning. After that if he kept on, he would simply be held in custody until his trial.

And what are the reasons given, when you ask people why he gets special treatment? They say things like, “action taken against him might be perceived as political”. What the unmitigated **** is that about? The courts and judges are NOT SUPPOSED to concern themselves with how enforcing the law is perceived!

It makes me crazy.

The Senate has confirmed three top defense leaders. Last night it confirmed Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr. to replace Army General Mark A. Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he retires at the end of the month. Today, it confirmed General Randy A. George as Army chief of staff and General Eric M. Smith as Marine Corps commandant.

The Senate filled the positions at the top of our military by working around the hold extremist senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has put on more than 300 military promotions, allegedly because he objects to the government’s policy of providing leave and travel allowance for service members who have to travel to obtain abortions.

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post focused on the House Republicans today, though, when she wrote: “The GOP completely gone off its rocker—incapable of passing House spending, ranting and raving at AG, cooking up ludicrous and baseless impeachment, unable to greet Zelensky with joint session. This is not normal. This is egregious. You'd think the reporting would reflect it.”

Indeed, the House Republicans remain unable even to agree to talk about funding the government, let alone actually passing the appropriations bills Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed to four months ago. Today, right-wing extremists in the House blocked a procedural vote over a Pentagon funding bill, keeping what is normally an easily passed bipartisan bill from even reaching the floor for debate. McCarthy acknowledged to reporters that he is frustrated. “This is a whole new concept of individuals who just want to burn the whole place down. It doesn’t work.”

The extremists do indeed appear unconcerned about the effects of their refusal to fund the government, and since they have the five or six votes they need to sink the measures McCarthy wants to pass with only Republican votes, this handful of representatives are the ones deciding whether the government will shut down.

McCarthy could pass clean funding bills through the House whenever he wishes, but he refuses. To do so would mean working with Democrats, and that would spark a vote to throw him out of the speakership. And so, rather than keep the members in Washington, D.C., to work on the appropriations bills over the weekend, McCarthy recognized he did not have the votes he needs and sent them home.

The extremists are bolstered by former president Donald Trump, who posted on his social media platform today that the Republicans in Congress “can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government…. This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots. They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!”

Experts say shutting down the government would not, in fact, end the former president’s legal troubles, but he is actually doing more than that here: he is trying to assert dominance over the country. As Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said: “Let’s be clear about what the former president is saying here. House Republicans should shut down the government unless the prosecutions against him are shut down. He would deny paychecks to millions of working families & devastate the US economy, all in the service of himself.”

Extremist leader Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) responded to Trump’s statement with his own: “Trump Opposes the Continuing Resolution” to fund the government,” he wrote. “Hold the line.” Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch noted: “House Republicans refuse to fund the government to protect Donald Trump.”

Trump’s accusation that President Biden is weaponizing the Justice Department against him and others who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election is the opposite of what has really happened. Not only has Biden stayed scrupulously out of the Justice Department’s business—leaving in place the Trump-appointed leader of the investigation into Biden’s son Hunter, for example—but also we received more proof yesterday that it was Trump, not Biden, who weaponized the Justice Department against his enemies.

Nora Dennehy, who abruptly resigned from former special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, explained in her confirmation hearing to Connecticut’s state supreme court yesterday that she quit because Trump’s Department of Justice was tainted by politics. Before joining the probe, she said, “I had been taught and spent my entire career at [the] Department of Justice conducting any investigation in an objective and apolitical manner.”

But Trump and his loyalists expected Durham’s investigation to prove that there was a “deep state” conspiracy against him, and then–attorney general William Barr seemed to be working to support that fantasy, even though there was no evidence of it (as shown by the fact the investigation ultimately fizzled). Barr was, she thought, violating DOJ guidelines in his public comments about the investigation and in his consideration of releasing an interim report before the 2020 election.

“I simply couldn’t be part of it,” Dannehy said. “So I resigned.”

The resistance of the extremists to McCarthy’s leadership is spilling over into foreign affairs as well. Today, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky was in Washington, D.C., where he met with President Biden at the White House and with leaders at the Pentagon, and spoke to a closed-door session for the Senate. But he did not speak to the House of Representatives. While McCarthy met with him privately, the speaker maintained that “we just didn’t have time” for him to address the House.

As part of their demands, House extremists want to cut funding for Ukraine’s defense. This would, of course, work to strengthen Russian president Vladimir Putin’s hand in his war against Ukraine. Earlier this month, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan told MSNBC that it is “absolutely essential” to Putin that Trump win back the White House in 2024. “I think it is Putin's main lifeline in order to find some way to salvage what has been a debacle in Ukraine for him," Brennan said. "If Trump is able to return to the White House...Putin could have a like-minded individual that he can work with, detrimental to U.S. interests certainly and detrimental to Western interests overall.” The intelligence community assesses that Putin worked to help Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections, and is pushing pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine propaganda now.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III assured Zelensky that the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine and work with allies and partners to make sure it has the weapons it needs. Lara Seligman of Politico reported today that the Pentagon will continue to fund Ukraine operations even if there is a government shutdown. Military activities deemed crucial to national security can be exempted from being shuttered during a government shutdown.

And finally, 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch announced today that he will be stepping down as chair of his media empire, including both Fox Corporation, which includes the Fox News Channel (FNC), and News Corporation, which owns the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, among other newspapers. In 1996 the Australian-born mogul launched the Fox News Channel with media specialist Roger Ailes, who had packaged Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon in 1968 by presenting him to audiences in highly scripted television appearances.

The Fox News Channel initially presented news from a conservative viewpoint, but over time its opinion shows, delivered as if they were news, came to dominate the channel. Those shows presented a simple narrative in which Americans—overwhelmingly white and rural—wanted the government to leave them alone but “socialists” who wanted social welfare programs demanded their tax dollars. Isolated in the fantasy world of FNC, its viewers became such fanatic adherents to right-wing politics that FNC wholeheartedly trumpeted Trump’s Big Lie after he lost the 2020 presidential election because viewers turned away from FNC when some of its personalities acknowledged that Biden had won..

Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, said today that “Murdoch created a uniquely destructive force in American democracy and public life, one that ushered in an era of division where racist and post-truth politics thrive.” Margaret Sullivan, formerly the Washington Post’s media critic, wrote in The Guardian that FNC was “a shameless propaganda outfit, reaping massive profits even as it attacked core democratic values such as tolerance, truth and fair elections.” Murdoch, she wrote, wreaked “untold havoc on American democracy.”

Murdoch sees it differently. In his resignation letter, he attacked “bureaucracies” who wanted to “silence those who would question their provenance and purpose” and “elites” who “have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class.” “Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth,” he wrote.

Forbes estimates that their media empire has enabled Murdoch and his family to amass a fortune of more than $17 billion.

Sen. Menendez (D) and wife indicted on bribery charges

Bob Menendez and wife Nadine Arslanian Menendez are accused of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes” in exchange for the senator’s influence, according to the newly unsealed federal indictment.

Prosecutors allege the bribes included gold, cash, home mortgage payments, compensation for “low-or-no-show job” and a luxury vehicle.

Also charged are Will Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes.

This is the second set of corruption charges levied against Menendez by the Justice Department in a decade. He previously fought off conspiracy, bribery and honest services fraud related to alleged personal favors.

Menendez is up for re-election next year. He has been in the Senate since 2006.

Senate Democratic Caucus rules will force Menendez to step aside as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, but he can still serve on the panel.

If he’s not above the law, he should be treated like anyone else.
At the very least, I want everyone to give up all pretense that with his trials, we’re somehow testing the proposition that “no one is above the law”.

You and others keep bringing up that putting him in jail for contempt will piss people off. Why do people keep wringing their ******* hands about what people like those who **** in the Capitol think about judge’s decisions ?

When exactly is enforcing the law supposed to take that kind of thing into consideration? Just for Trump? Would we tiptoe that carefully if Obama had been caught performing 32 acts of espionage? How about Biden? Would we forego enforcing the law for a really powerful media mogul? A super popular entertainer? No? So, we should only be selective about when to follow the precedents of law enforcement when it’s Donald ******* Trump?

Make it make sense.