Columns, Congress, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Politics, Society

Have The Democrats Jumped The Shark On Impeachment?

Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the increasingly dramatic events on Capitol Hill in the aftermath of the release of the Special Counsel Report.

Here is the column:

Democratic leaders in Congress proved the perils of “jumping the shark” this month. The phrase comes from the 1977 episode of the television comedy “Happy Days” in which one of its leading characters, the “Fonz,” jumped over a shark in a water skiing stunt in swim trunks along with his signature leather jacket. That moment was viewed as a desperate ratings stunt by a dying television series struggling to keep viewers engaged. Today, the phrase has come to define similar instances of desperation.

With the many overhyped political moments of the last two years, it is not clear when the shark jump occurred. Soon after the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, legal experts and commentators on air began confidently declaring the crimes of Trump campaign “collusion” were obvious and established. As the report approached completion, commentators spoke widely of a finding of criminality as a virtual given.

Yet, Mueller then stated that his investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The Russia investigation without criminal Russia collusion was like Geraldo Rivera opening the safe of Al Capone only to find empty bottles. To make matters worse, Mueller did not reach a conclusion on obstruction but Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein found that the evidence would not support a criminal charge of obstruction.

Democrats then proceeded to try and shift attention from collusion to obstruction, but their unwillingness to actually open an impeachment inquiry has undermined their claims that obstruction crimes were well established. Almost instantly, you could feel national attention waning and lawmaker desperation growing. There have been some cringeworthy stunts during the past few weeks. Democrats tried to make redactions in the report be the focus, in order to avoid questions over the refusal to move toward impeachment. The problem is Barr released 92 percent of the report and 98 percent of the report to select members of Congress.

Barr was also willing to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, just as he did before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Democrats, however, then added a rare condition requiring Barr to agree to be questioned by the committee staff. Barr predictably refused, as most of his predecessors would have done. Democrats then held a theatrical hearing with an empty chair and a bucket of fried chicken on the table where Barr would have sat. Some ate up the fried chicken for the cameras as most of us winced.

Democrats had called for Mueller to appear before them on Wednesday. Mueller did not show, despite Barr showing a willingness to have him testify. Instead, the committee called for a hearing with constitutional experts to discuss the executive privilege claims raised by the White House. I was one of those experts, and the hearing did not exactly turn out as the Democrats planned. They have insisted that President Trump had already waived privilege to undisclosed evidence shown to Mueller. The committee witnesses, however, agreed that there is no such waiver.

Worse, the witnesses agreed that Barr could not release the “full and unredacted report” to Congress including any grand jury, or Rule 6(e), evidence. That is in direct contradiction to weeks of demands for the unredacted report along with a subpoena that demanded disclosure of the entire report. The committee maintained that “neither Rule 6(e) nor any applicable privilege barred disclosure of these materials to Congress.” Yet, the expert witnesses it called on have now testified that is not true.

As I noted to the committee, the subpoena, which is the very basis for the earlier contempt vote, was demanding an unlawful act from Barr, and the committee then held him in contempt for not committing that unlawful act. The key to setting up someone for contempt of Congress is to draft a subpoena that he might actually be able to legally fulfill. Notably, despite all of the punditry and cable news coverage of it, the contempt citation has not yet been submitted to the full House for a vote, let alone to a court for review. That is probably not because the contempt case is too strong.

The House committee also had problems with its demand for the other redacted material. I noted to the committee that roughly 2 percent of the redacted material was grand jury material barred under Rule 6(e). That leaves 6 percent, to which Congress, but not the public, has access now. However, most of that material was redacted as part of ongoing litigation and investigations. Indeed, the judges handling cases like those of Trump associate Roger Stone or resigned national security adviser Michael Flynn have imposed court orders. Barr could not simply release that material as demanded by Congress, and no witness disagreed during the hearing.

That would cover virtually all of the redactions that Democrats spent a week highlighting as the primary issue in their minds. Moreover, Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is presiding over the Flynn prosecution, issued an order to release some of the redacted material covered by that case. The order again supported Barr in showing that such grand jury information required an order from a court and could not be simply released by Barr.

The day following the hearing, Democrats held yet another spectacle of reading the Mueller report in a marathon for 12 hours on CSPAN.They even brought in a celebrity, although even my childhood friend, John Cusack, could not generate much buzz. The half day coverage of this Gregorian reading had plenty of us longing for the regular mind numbing CSPAN coverage of the “special order” speeches to an empty House chamber.

One reason for the waning audience is that Democrats are stepping on their own lines. The week that their witnesses were contradicting the position of the House Judiciary Committee and the staff was marketing Mueller CDs, Democrats held a closed door party caucus. In it, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly told Democratic members she has no intention of moving on impeachment. Imitating disgruntled Democratic voters, Pelosi said, “Some of our folks are a little bit ‘Why are we not impeaching the president?” She then added, “They get a little down.”

Well, they are a “little down” because Democratic members of Congress, including several presidential candidates, continue to assure Americans that Trump is guilty of impeachable offenses and that they want to open an inquiry. Representative Maxine Waters slammed Trump, saying he has “done everything that one could even think of” to trigger an impeachment vote in the House. Without impeachment, Democrats do not even have a shark to jump. Watching House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler leap over a bucket of fried chicken simply does not have that same “Fonz” cachet.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

184 thoughts on “Have The Democrats Jumped The Shark On Impeachment?”

  1. WSJ

    Australia’s Left Loses an Election It Was Sure to Win

    Voters shock the media in a result that echoes the victories of Brexit and Donald Trump in 2016.

    There’s nothing like a shock election result to force media sophisticates to eat their words. The triumph of the center-right Liberal-National Coalition government in Australia has caused plenty of verbal indigestion.

    A few days ago, polls and betting markets pointed to a Labor victory. Journalists and intellectuals insisted that ordinary Aussies wanted government to fight climate change and soak the rich. Prime Minister Scott Morrison couldn’t possibly win. The 51-year-old evangelical coal-cuddler was the wrong man for his times.

    But on Saturday the government, which has had three leaders in six years, tightened its hold on Parliament while a humiliated Labor Party lost crucial marginal seats in the eastern states of Queensland, Tasmania and New South Wales. The election will go down as the most dramatic failure of discernment in the history of Australian punditry. Sound familiar?

    In 2016 U.S. pollsters had to deal with the “shy Trump” factor. People feared admitting they’d vote for the Republican nominee because he was socially unacceptable. The same dynamic was at work in Britain during the 2016 referendum on whether to leave the European Union. Polls pointed to a Remain victory, but millions of shy Brexiteers crept into the polling booths and voted Leave. By depicting its opponents as backward and deplorable, the left intimidated them into going underground, making it impossible to gauge their strength before an election.

    Shy voters now shape Australian politics. During the past three years, television and social-media outlets created a climate of opinion in which it was politically incorrect to oppose identity politics, high taxes, wealth redistribution and costly climate-mitigation policies. In the privacy of the voting booth, “quiet Australians,” as Mr. Morrison calls them, decided that their interests lay in a low-tax and resource-rich market economy.

    Mr. Morrison’s path to victory was about as narrow as Donald Trump’s road to the White House. But he was helped by his opponents’ lurch to the left. The Labor Party, which did much to deregulate the Australian economy in the 1980s, was now pledging high taxes on property investors, self-funded retirees and high-earning wealth creators.

    In the name of reducing inequality, Labor wanted to raise government obstacles to the kind of risk-taking and hard work that allowed many Australians to climb the income ladder so rapidly. Since the mid-1980s, Australia has pursued market reforms that improve incentives to work and save. The result has been nearly three decades of sustainable economic growth—a record for longest uninterrupted economic expansion in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. On Saturday Labor learned that class warfare no longer appeals to the middle class, who aspire to become rich and who understand the perverse incentives of high taxes.

    Labor’s energy policy, meanwhile, pledged a 45% emissions reductions target and 50% renewables by 2030. The green agenda resonated in a few metropolitan seats in Victoria, Australia’s most liberal state, but fizzled elsewhere. Australia is a coal-producing powerhouse where command-and-control mechanisms lack broad public support. Mr. Morrison, famous for posing in Parliament holding a lump of coal, reminded voters that no renewable energy source is as efficient as carbon and that China’s annual emissions rise is greater than Australia’s total emissions each year.

    The opposition to Australia’s conservatives went all-in, with a concerted, well-organized left-wing campaign that culminated in former conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s loss of his formerly safe suburban Sydney seat. The danger is that Mr. Morrison might let those same opponents interpret his mandate for him.

    An effort is already under way to diminish his victory by demanding that he “move to the center,” which is media code for giving up the tax-cutting economic growth agenda the electorate just endorsed. “To those quiet Australians who are out there, now is not the time to turn back,” Mr. Morrison observed late in the campaign. Will he listen to his own words?

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/australias-left-loses-an-election-it-was-sure-to-win-11558294766

  2. Lucidity, intelligibility and the Fog Factor.

    That red herring you threw out is beginning to smell like dead shark.

    Please cut to the chase, Professor.

    Oh, and by the way, the noose is tightening on the Obama Coup D’etat in America. That may be of some concern to lawyers, constitutional scholars, legal bloggers and America at large. You may have noticed that the co-conspirators are beginning to implicate their accomplices. Mifsud said that Halper did it and Halper said that Downer did it and Downer said that Brennan did it and Brennan said that Clapper did it and Clapper said that Comey did it and Comey said that Rosenstein did it and Rosenstein said that McCabe did it and McCabe said that Strzok did it and Strzok said that Page did it and Page said that POTUS did it.

    Oops! There it is!

    Obama.

  3. Given the high crimes and misdemeanors requirement, ethical people who vote for impeachment do so because they expect the President to be indicted for a crime or crimes specified in the articles of impeachment after he is removed from office. The only legitimate impeachment proceedings we’ve had involved articles of impeachment against Nixon detailing criminal conduct. There is ample reason to believe Nixon would have been indicted afterwards had he not been pardoned by Ford. Hence, the Nixon impeachment proceedings were legitimate under the high crimes and misdemeanors requirement.

  4. Without impeachment, Democrats do not even have a shark to jump.

    Instead the party is playing leap frog to the left. Green New Deal, Post-birth Abortion, Free College, Open borders, Abolish ICE, Sanctuary cities/states, Illegal’s voting, Felons voting, Anti-voter ID, Illegals getting SS, Gun bans, No presumption of innocence, Pro-Muslim/Anti-Israel/Anti-Christian…

    Does the Democratic party have any sound foreign or domestic policy positions that they are promoting that would be better for the United States than what the current administration is doing?

  5. If the Democrats were smart (which, thankfully, they are not), they would cease any further investigations of Trump. Instead of implying that there is something crucial to be learned from the slender redacted portions of the Mueller Report, they would weaponize the Report and bring before the House articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice, based on the half dozen or so most compelling of the possible obstruction items in Volume II of the Report. Impeachment would pass the House, probably with no Republican votes (or maybe one). In the Senate, the House managers would propose that the “trial” be without witnesses but upon a stipulation that the facts recited in Volume II of the Report are true and the discussion of the evidence fair, leaving it to the Senate to weigh the latter in coming to its verdict, unless the Senate insisted on calling witnesses, in which case the House would have the right to call them as well. That to me would put Senate Republicans to a hard choice. In any event, there will never be the required two-thirds vote in the Senate for conviction, but there just might be a majority, reached with a few Republican defections. All of this process would embarrass and disgrace the President. Instead, the Democrats are embarrassing and disgracing themselves. More power to them.

    1. How do you know a Senate Trial wouldn’t turn into an expose of an entrapment plot involving Obama Admin CIA and FBI officers? Way too risky for Dems to set themselves up for an embarrassing bombshell during testimony. The die is already cast….Mr. Horowitz, Huber and Durham will complete their investigations into whether there were covert steps of commission or omission in furtherance of an entrapment scenario. By then, it will be election time, and the voters will weigh their alternatives, with foreign adversaries once again putting their thumb on the scale.

    2. If there’s an impeachment, then the defense would move to question the origins of the “investigation.” This would mean questioning Obama, Hillary, Lynch etc under oath by top lawyers who are antagonistic. I doubt it will happen, but it would be good for the country in the long run. Let the Dems make their case in front of the Senate and let Trump defend himself.

  6. This kind of Democrat political warfare is abusive.

    They lost the election. They need to get over it. They are behaving like a third world country trying to unseat a leader when their attempts to defraud an election failed. Democrats used a fraudulent dossier provided by Russian spies to try to discredit a Republican political opponent and defraud voters just before an election. Then Democrat activists in the intelligence community used this opposition research to spy upon a presidential candidate, and later try to de-legitimize his presidency. It has undermined the US position in geopolitics as well as our negotiating capability. It encourages and emboldens our enemies. It is shocking that Democrats had the gall to blame the victim of their scheme. Now that the entire affair is being investigated, suddenly they’ve had enough of investigations, a further one into their own actions isn’t warranted, and what’s in the past is past. Right.

    1. Karen, you post some ridiculous BS.

      The Democrats won the last election and also won the 2016 presidential popular vote, and it wasn’t even close.. Your low life leader took office by the luckiest vote breakdown ever – 77,000 margin across 3 bog vote states – and with the help of the Deep State you complain about sabotaging Hillary 2 weeks before the election.

      By enemies, surely you mean our European allies and NATO, given who you take your cues from p

      2. Only an NPC could’ve posted this:

        “Karen, you post some ridiculous BS…The Democrats won the last election…”

      3. Anon, do you need for me to explain again how the electoral college works, and why we have it?

        Winning the overall popular vote doesn’t matter. Each state has a say. If you look at the map, it is a swath of Red. Hillary lost most of America, clearly showing she is out of touch with most of the states in the Union. They voted accordingly.

        We are in a precarious position, with Russia supporting Iran, and us supporting the Saudis in their power struggle of Shiite and Sunni. Undermining our position during a tense situation with sworn enemy of the US that has nuclear ambitions is irresponsible to the extreme.

        There needs to be a thorough investigation of any abuse of power involved in this fraudulent dossier, and if Obama abused authority to spy on his party’s opponent.

        Meanwhile, the Democrat party seems hysterical and unhinged, still unable to grasp that they lost a fair election. This constant whining about the popular vote is desperate. I fondly recall how pundits across the mainstream media expressed grave concern that Trump might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, which was in the bag for Hillary. They worried that we would find ourselves in a Constitutional crisis in such a situation. I suppose their viewers must have been well trained to engage instant amnesia, and go on to the next desperate attempt to unseat a Republican president. I truely wonder if they will try every dirty trick in the book every time a Republican wins. It’s disgusting, really.

        Buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. #WalkAway #Blexit.

          1. Still obsessing about me? My name just keeps popping out of your keyboard, doesn’t it? I am very amused at the amount of real estate I take up in your head. Such power that I have over your thoughts. You probably dream about me, too.

            Dream on.

            1. “I am very amused at the amount of real estate I take up in your head.” So says Karen the narcissist.

              Only in YOUR dreams, Karen. I think of you for a few seconds when I respond to some of your silly comments. Other than that, you aren’t even a blip. You’re imagining things…, but that’s the world in which you reside.

              1. Oh, look. My name’s just popped out of your keyboard again. Over and over and over again. Every day, it’s my name all the time coming out of your thoughts in a stream of consciousness on your postings, often combined with endearments, which will remain forever on the Internet. There’s no use denying it. You’ve called me pet names multiple times today alone. Poor thing.

                I’m calling attention to this obsession so that you can address it. Get the help that you need. It’s creepy, really. It’s also inappropriate to keep calling a woman pet names and terms of endearment when they have repeatedly told you they are just not interested in you that way.

                If you are still in denial of your intense fascination with me, go through your posts and try to find a single day in which you didn’t mention my name.

                Now, I usually go long periods of time without reading your posts, because they are so disturbing and, frankly, confused. However, perhaps you are just unaware of the length of your fascination with me, and that it’s really gone into the realm of obsession.

                Good luck working on that. It must be very difficult to be so hyper focused on someone that is not interested in your or receptive, but if you apply yourself, with medication, you may get over it.

                How long can you go without longingly referring to me as your honey, or, for that matter, mentioning my name? Are you too far gone to get me out of your head? It’s been years of this. The power that I hold over your thoughts is remarkable, and purely unintended.

                1. All one can do is laugh at these silly comments of yours, Karen. No one is obsessed with you. But hey, thanks for the laugh.

                  1. And…there’s my name again out of your mouth. Oh, you poor, poor thing.

                    1. Aaaaaand 36 minutes later there’s my name again. You must be powerless to control your fascination. Poor thing.

                    2. Just to be clear, zero other people on the blog call me their honey. No one else obsesses over me. Just you. It’s on display forever. How many times did you longingly call me your honey today alone? It’s been years without waning.

                      #Single White Female movie

        2. Karen, 3 of the 4 most populous states in the country were ignored by the major party candidates in the 2016 presidential election. You don’t care about representation, you care about winning.

          PS It’s the Democratic Party, not the Democrat Party. Do us the common courtesy of calling our organization by the name we choose and we’ll continue to do the same. It’s not hard to come up with alternative names for Republicans if we wanted to be mindless partisans like you.

          1. No, Anon, I don’t. I accepted that Obama won the Presidential election, and that my healthcare was toast. Instead of trying every dirty trick in the book in order to overturn a lawful election, I instead have tried to educate people on what’s wrong with Obamacare. I’m quite used to sometimes voting for the winning President, and sometimes not. That’s how the electoral process works.

            If every citizen in the US was forced to have an individual Obamacare policy, I wouldn’t have to explain what’s wrong with it.

            Democrats just cannot seem to get past the ignominy of losing an election.

            1. Uh, Karen, Obama won the vote of the people twice, unlike Trump who hasn’t done that once.

              1. And yet, Obama wasn’t President because he won the popular vote, but rather the Electoral College. In his early years he was a great speaker. People hoped for change but it was for the worse.

                This wasn’t the first time a President lost the popular vote but won the electoral college. Life went on. This will happen more often as the population disparity increases.

          2. When a state essentially becomes a one-party state, candidates obviously will not strongly focus their campaign efforts on that particular state. It doesn’t mean that they are not represented…….when a one-party state like California has 55 Electoral votes and 55 members of Congress, it’s hard to argue that they’re not being represented.
            But since they are essentially a one-party state, there’s no reason why a presidential candidate would waste campaign resources on them.

            1. Tom, we’re talking about presidential elections – the House and Senate do not have electoral colleges. Also, Tom, Texas was ignored along with NY, making 3 out of the 4 most populous states without significant visits or other focus from the top candidates, except for fund raising efforts. The result is the loser won and the rocks, cows, and counties Karen is so protective of are well represented in the WH, but Americans.

              1. That’s right, we’re talking about presidential campaigns and elections. And the reality that one-party states are not going to get as many “visits” as battleground states. And the reality that these large one- party states have a large number of Electoral College votes, so it’s not as if they’re “not represented” in presidential election.

                1. And the reality [is] that one-party states are not going to get as many “visits” as battleground states.”

                  True.

                  And I would imagine that the members of majorities in large one-party states would actually appreciate their preferred candidates not wasting campaign resources paying visits to them. I mean, if they want their guy to actually, you know, win.

    2. No, Karen Honey: Trump LOST the popular vote and Republicans LOST the midterms in the largest turnover of the House since Watergate. The Senate would have gone Democratic, too, but for gerrymandering. Trump is NO leader, and his “presidency” is not legitimate. The US position in geopolitics is laughable because Trump is a big, fat clown who thinks everyone should bow down and worship him. For example: he’s going to force himself on Ireland in June. A recent poll found that 70% of Irish citizens want the Irish government to tell him to stay away. The “negotiating capability” of America is compromised because there is an ignorant narcissist is in the White House who doesn’t know anything about politics, people and how to get things done and won’t listen to anyone more knowledgeable. He thinks he can either bully or charm people with what he believes is his magnetic appeal. All any foreign leader has to do is play up to his yuge ego, tell him they agree with whatever he says, and then he claims “victory”, like he did with Korea that went right ahead with its nuclear weapons development program after the so-called de-nuclear agreement. Trump actually campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize for that caper. He is a big, fat joke, pure and simple.

      The American people were “defrauded” when Trump, desperate to borrow money from Russia because no one in the US will make any more loans, had his campaign feed sensitive polling data to Russians who used it to carry out a social media disinformation in key districts in a few states, and that swayed the Electoral College. Russians figured out the Electoral College scheme and used it to defeat the will of the American people. THAT is the Trump legacy, but disciples like you will never admit it. Instead, you listen to people like Hannity and Tucker, who keep telling you lies, like Trump is a “victim” of Democratic and main stream media. Thank God most Americans have him figured out.

      What is “fraudulent” about the dossier? WHAT? Name something. It was started by a fellow Republican candidate, who took the information gathered as of the end of the Republican convention to HRC’s campaign. Her campaign continued the investigation, and after contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russians were uncovered, this information was reported to the CIA and FBI, which is not only fully appropriate, but maybe even required by law. What were American intelligence agencies supposed to do? Ignore the fact that a presidential campaign is meeting with Communists and pumping polling information to them to be used against the opposing candidate? The FISA warrants produced dozens of indictments, convictions and guilty pleas, and Trump absolutely did try to obstruct the Mueller investigation. Read the report. This was no witch hunt, and all of the facts have not been developed. Trump won’t testify and won’t release his tax returns. The American people have right to know about his finances.

      Turley is wrong when he keeps claiming that Democrats or anyone else predicted what the Mueller investigation would uncover. I watch a lot of media, and I never once heard anyone make any claim that Trump would be indicted. Mueller never had Trump or any Russians under deposition, so he did not have all of the possible evidence to prove conspiracy. What he was able to uncover is disturbing, and certainly did not exonerate Trump.

      Turley keeps trying to push Democrats to impeach, because Turley is clearly trying to help Trump and he must find some reason to criticize Democrats. The American people overwhelmingly want Trump gone. If impeachment isn’t the most-effective way to do this, then Democrats are carrying out the will of most Americans by subpoenaing records and biding their time. Nancy Pelosi isn’t going to be bullied by Turley or anyone else.

      1. Senate elections are at large, not by districts, therefore they is no gerrymandering possible in a Senate race.

      2. The polling data was shared with Ukrainians, not Russians. Try to keep all the actors straight, and avoid narrative-driven mangling of facts.

        1. Try to keep all the actors straight, and avoid narrative-driven mangling of facts.

          The trolls get paid by the character including spaces so there is that to consider…and NYT CNN WahPutz screed count as double spaces

        2. pbinca,
          Your comment appears to be addressed to Natacha. I think you’ve probably read enough of her comments to know that mangling facts comes very naturally to her.
          One full- time fact checker would be overworked🤪 trying to deal with her wild inaccuracies and fantasies.
          I liked the part about “the Russians figuring out the Electoral College scheme”. As if they and they alone knew how the Electoral College works, and which states might be “flipped” from blue to red.

          2. Tom, Manafort shared polling data with a Russian agent in the Ukraine:

            “….The contested swing states that Trump narrowly—and surprisingly—won, such as Michigan and Wisconsin, were also places where both the Trump campaign and Russia’s Internet Research Agency focussed their efforts. Herein lies at least one answer to the question of why Russia would want the Trump campaign’s polling data: it potentially offered demographic targets for Russia’s bots and propaganda.

            In her analysis of five million paid, issue-based Facebook ads—which covered such hot-button issues as gun rights, abortion, gay rights, immigration, terrorism, and race—during a six-week period of the 2016 Presidential campaign, the University of Wisconsin professor Young Mie Kim discovered that “the most highly targeted states—especially Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—generally overlap with the battleground states with razor thin margins.” These were ads placed by two hundred and twenty-eight groups, many of which were later linked to the Internet Research Agency. Kim also found that these efforts were calibrated to appeal to certain demographics. Low-income white voters, for example, were targeted with ads focussing on immigration and race.

            An even more comprehensive analysis, by Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Project, which was released last month, shows just how pervasive Russia’s inflammatory targeting was. “On Facebook, the five most shared and the five most liked posts focused on divisive issues, with pro-gun ownership content, anti-immigration content pitting immigrants against veterans, content decrying police violence against African Americans, and content that was anti-Muslim, anti-refugee, anti-Obama, and pro-Trump,” the researchers wrote. The posts developed by the Internet Research Agency “tended to mimic conservative views against gun control and for increased regulation of immigrants. In some cases, terms such as ‘parasites’ were used to reference immigrants and others expressed some tolerance of extremist views.” These posts increased almost seven-fold between 2015—before Manafort joined Trump’s team—and 2016, when he, and the pollsters he hired, were guiding the campaign….”

            https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-would-paul-manafort-share-polling-data-with-russia

              1. DSS, do you think there is something in the water supply making people become so stupid? I don’t remember such stupidity in the past, but I wasn’t on a blog like this. Good blog but some people were shortchanged on brains.

            2. The researchers might be equally interested in David Brock’s army of paid trolls and speculating about how that might have impacted the 2016 campaign.
              Also, in the 6 week period leading up to the election, the margins of the Hillary lead in some of those key states were not “razor-thin”.
              Those margins did in fact narrow in the final two weeks of the campaign, but the reason Trump was given little chance of winning ( right up until election night) is because Hillary was still favored to win states that that historically went with the Democratic presidential candidate.
              There is plenty of archived election eve video online with predictions that Hillary would easily get far more than the 270 Electoral College votes than she actually needed to win.

              1. Tom, let’s see a mainstream media story documenting Dave Brock’s ‘army of paid trolls’.

                It seems the Trumpers on this blog repeat this crap so much they actually start to believe it.

                Regarding the 2016 race, Voter Suppression tactics used by Republicans could have easily made a difference in Wisconsin where Milwaukee Blacks were discouraged from voting. The entire thrust of Voter Suppression is to give Republicans a slight edge in really close races. Then they have the nerve to talk about Blacks and the ‘Democratic plantation’.

                1. Who cares if David Brock has an army of “trolls”. That’s legal if they are Americans and no doubt the right employs similar operatives.

                  1. please let me know where I can get paid to do what i do here for fun, that would be great. unfortunately not aware of any such opportunity

                    2. Mr Kurtz,

                      As I understand it Soros pumps money into Brook, then Brook runs it through a bunch of shell companies he owns to laundry it into tax free funds.

                      There were news reports a few years ago detailing Brooks financial structuring.

                      Not that all structuring is illegal but his appeared to be.

                2. I might provide “a mainstream media report” about Brock and his paid trolls; not for Hollywood Hill, but for the record. Virtually ANY source I provide for St. Peter will be questioned …….he has repeatedly found some way to discount citations regardless of sources, if the content dies not neatly match up with his theology.

                  1. ” Virtually ANY source I provide for St. Peter will be questioned ”

                    Peter’s underlying reason for rejection is that it is not from the NYSlimes or the WaPo. He quotes from those that write in those papers and have no expertise about what they write but discounts anything coming from alternate sources written by known experts who due to his ignorance he knows nothing about.

                    The best way to handle this is not to site the sources and let him learn how to look things up from other sources than the news feed he gets or the WaPO.

              2. Tom and absurd, the distinction is the work of agents of a foreign and hostile country in our election.

                Tom, as noted in another thread, long ago, 538 found that a drop of 3-4 points nationally followed the Comey sabotaging of Hillary’s campaign 2 weeks prior to the election. For a supposed Deep State operative,Comey inexplicably protected the Trump campaign from a similar revelation.

                1. 538 knows perfectly well polling is simply not that accurate.

                  As for a hostile foreign country, it’s Facebook ads of uncertain effect. Get over it.

                  1. Well, yes it was nationally. Hillary was up by 2-3 points and won by two points.

                    1. PS A 77,000 vote margin total in 3 states with a combined population of 28.6 million indicates it didn’t take much to turn it. The focus of Russian bots on these states – and Minnesota – could have easily caused that.

                    2. In the last month of the 2016 campaign, Trump visited 10 “battleground states” a total of 49 times. Hillary visited those same 10 states 33 times.
                      There were multiple factors at work in the final weeks of the campaign that had, or may have had, an impact. The “discovery” of a 10 year-old Access Hollywood out- take video that “just happened” to surface in October 2016. The Lisa Bloom Show/ No Show that “just happened” to be scheduled a few days before the election.
                      Trump’s c. 50% higher rate of visits to those 10 battleground states in the final weeks of the campaign. That is one factor that is usually, and conveniently, ignored.

                    3. I think a number of polls had Hillary up in the 3-6 % range on election eve. More importantly, she was not expected to lose all of the “Big 3” so-called swing States of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, plus other states that had not voted for a GOP presidential candidate in 25-30 years
                      The prospects for Trump appeared to be very grim before the results actually started rolling in.

          3. The Russians must have planted spies in a 5th grade government class.

            Clearly, Hillary Clinton didn’t understand how states can flip if and when they feel ignored. Maybe the Russians can explain it to her.

      5. “the largest turnover of the House since Watergate”.
        I previously noted that the 41-42 seat House turnover in 2016 was smaller than the 63 seat loss of Democratic House seats in the 2010 mid-terms, and less than the 50+ seat loss if Democratic seats in the 1994 mid-terms.
        I won’t try to explain to Natacha why the loss 63 seats or the loss of 50+ seats is greater than the loss of 41-42 seats in 2016.
        ( These complex mathematical matters🤔 are evidently beyond her grasp🙄).
        Nor will I try to explain to the very few “Natacha is right” boosters why repeating a false claim does not make it any less false. Nor does the “need to believe” a false claim somehow make make a false claim true.

        1. Tom, as I pointed out previously in response to an earlier post from you – maybe you missed it – the vote total margin for the House in 2018 was the largest since Watergate. Due mostly to gerrymandering, that didn’t translate to the House seats margin.

            1. One assumes Natacha heard the fact that the margin was the greatest in the House since Watergate and incorrectly assumed that meant seats. Not a hanging offense I don’t think, and the vote was indeed significant.

      6. The internet is forever. You continue to expose yourself with such degrading comments directed towards conservative women. When you have nothing of substance to contribute, you resort to ad hominem and the “oh honey.” As I’ve mentioned before, you really should work on your compulsive sexual harassment. I’m not ever going to date you or be your honey. Get over it and stop acting like Single White Female.

        Hillary was out of touch with most of the states in the Union. That big swath of red, showing that an overwhelming number of counties voted against her, must have been really humiliating.

        It sounds like you still can’t get over it. If you still can’t accept that you lost an election after 3 years, how are you ever going to psychologically handle the stress of an investigation into abuse of power.

        We have the electoral college for a reason. Our Constitution put this method in place to ensure that people like Hillary Clinton can’t get elected. Otherwise, Presidents would care about a handful of counties, and would fail to represent the entire country. Thank goodness the Constitution protects the country from such disenfranchisement.

        Apparently Democrats don’t particularly care about representative government, or ensuring a president had the best interests of the entire nation at heart.

        A candidate ignores any state at their peril. Rather than learn the lesson that All States Matter, Democrats are trying to go after yet another aspect of the Constitution. They share a lot of aspects with Fascist dictators, constantly trying to erode protective rights. Hopefully we will continue to be able to keep them in check so as to prevent the US going down the toilet along with a long line of other Leftist dictatorships that have come before.

        If a Democrat Socialist wins the next election, better start stockpiling food and toilet paper.

        Perhaps it would be a better use of your time to educate yourself on the issues, as well as the predictable outcome of eroding individual rights and Constitutional protections, rather than advocating what you don’t understand. Unless this is the best you can do?

          1. Oh look. There’s my name on your mouth again. How many times? OCD

        2. Karen posts more ridiculous BS.

          The major party candidates for President in 2016 ignored 3 of the 4 most populous states in the country. Yeah, that sure is representative – of rocks and cows and counties.

          Use your head Karen. Educate yourself.

      7. Oh, look, there’s my name again with another “honey”. You really need to try to fight the delusion that I’m your honey or any other pet name. I am not interested in you.

        1. Settle down, Karen S.

          Natacha called you “honey” once.

          You’ve called her out on it, now, multiple times, but you can count the references yourself.

          1. Oh it’s you again with another honey. All day every day. For years. Complete with sock puppets. Helpless to stop. Hopeless to change. Pity.

            No means no lady.

            1. “Natacha called you ‘honey’ once”.
              “Anonymous” evidently does not know how to count.

              1. Tommy:

                Natacha called Karen S. “honey” @1:50 pm today in this thread.

                Beyond that, I don’t know. Nor do I care.

                (As W.C. Fields said: “It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.”)

                1. Aaaaaand there’s my name again with another “honey”. Oh, the desperation of sock puppets. This is like one of those cringeworthy movies where you can’t bear to look at the screen.

                  1. The only thing here that’s cringeworthy is you and your ridiculous comments.

                2. I know that you know damn little, Anonymous . Making a dumb- ass statement like saying Natacha callled Karen S. “Honey” only once is only a recent demostration of your ignorance.
                  Given that you “don’t care” about learning anything, stick with things that you know; posting links, quoting others, cutting and pasting, and troll- worship.

                  1. “I know that you know damn little, Anonymous . Making a dumb- ass statement ”

                    Tom, that is why Anonymous is known as the Brainless Wonder.

      8. Ignorant comment of the day:

        “The Senate would have gone Democratic, too, but for gerrymandering.”

        OK, for the millionth time: Anybody who blames gerrymandering for the outcomes of senate races is just too poorly informed to pay attention to.

        1. Natacha, honey, no one who makes a moronic statement like that has any place to be condescendingly calling anyone else “honey.”

    3. Actually Karen, Democrats ‘won’ the last election. That is, in fact, ‘why’ The House is investigating. Because Democrats control the house.

      2. Was I talking about the midterms? No. I was talking about the Presidential election. Were you confused?

        1. Karen, I think you were and are confused. It’s not up to us to tailor reality to your imagination. You just lost the last election.

          1. No, Anon, Democrats lost the presidential election 3 years ago as I indicated.

            Sad.

          2. Anon, since you appear very confused, here is my comment again:

            “They lost the election. They need to get over it. They are behaving like a third world country trying to unseat a leader when their attempts to defraud an election failed.”

            Any questions?

  7. TRUMP ON DEUTSCHE BANK: PROTESTING TOO MUCH

    @realDonaldTrump 5h5 hours ago

    …..was very good and highly professional to deal with – and if for any reason I didn’t like them, I would have gone elsewhere….there was always plenty of money around and banks to choose from. They would be very happy to take my money. Fake News!

    @realDonaldTrump 5h5 hours ago

    ….Now the new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn’t need banks. But where did he get all of that cash? Could it be Russia? No, I built a great business and don’t need banks, but if I did they would be there…and DeutscheBank……

    @realDonaldTrump 5h5 hours ago

    The Mainstream Media has never been as corrupt and deranged as it is today. FAKE NEWS is actually the biggest story of all and is the true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! That’s why they refuse to cover the REAL Russia Hoax. But the American people are wise to what is going on…..

    @realDonaldTrump 5h5 hours ago

    ….fashioned, but true. When you don’t need or want money, you don’t need or want banks. Banks have always been available to me, they want to make money. Fake Media only says this to disparage, and always uses unnamed sources (because their sources don’t even exist)……

    @realDonaldTrump 5h5 hours ago

    The Failing New York Times (it will pass away when I leave office in 6 years), and others of the Fake News Media, keep writing phony stories about how I didn’t use many banks because they didn’t want to do business with me. WRONG! It is because I didn’t need money. Very old
    …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

    In case one missed the N Y Times story concerning odd transactions by Trump and Kushner at Deutsche Bank, here the president assures it’s all ‘fake news’. Thank God! One might have thought it was unseemly that bank compliance officers had to grapple with the quandary of reporting the president’s transactions as possible money laundering. But here the president simply waves it all away. And helpfully the president reminds us that those transactions involved Russian oligarchs. But again, it’s all ‘fake news’.

  8. What this has indicated generally (and discussion here indicates in microcosm) is that the Democratic Party as a social organism is both vicious and vacuous at the same time. Unfortunately for the rest of us. about 1/2 of the voting public appears to be quite satisfied with this dreck.

    Where are we with this? Well, for much of the political class in this country (and that includes employees of gatekeeper companies like Facebook and Google, as well as people active in the dregs of what were once professional associations), you have this TWANLOC problem. They don’t identify with their own countrymen, but with people in similar social strata abroad. They have also conceptualized much of the population as enemies properly subject to legal and extra legal harassment: open and prominent dissidents, non-Vichy evangelicals, gun owners, white people w/o post-baccalaureate degrees, &c. &c. You would think you could sell this sewage to a broad mass of the public, but evidently you can. I don’t think this is going to end well.

    1. . I don’t think this is going to end well.

      I had a discussion with a colleague recently who works in the same field I do. We agreed that resources are limited, we cant dispense them to everyone in our midst, and eventually we need to discern who should receive them and who must be left behind after we tried to help them. If people refuse to help themselves then we need to move on to the next individual who might benefit from our intervention

      As I have argued on this forum many times, natural selection is a great thing but we have to stop helping / enabling people who don’t want to cooperate with being fit to survive. Our current federal govt of social welfare is hopelessly pathologic for our country. I often think a meteor hitting the country would be a beautiful thing because it would accelerate a reboot of our world. I would rather people get on the stick and cooperate with their survival but I see little hope for our civilization if until people decide to engage themselves and their surroundings

      Return the dinosaurs and get everybody running again.

  9. Dems are aghast that there may have been elements of an entrapment set-up to catch Trump colluding with Russians, or if not that, goaded into a defensive process crime (perjury or obstruction) justifying impeachment. The “secret sauce” of such an entrapment plot on the part of a tiny cabal (or even a single plotter) is that, by “seeding” the situation with what looks like suspicious activity, actors in the counterintelligence sectors of government predictably swing into action. It is better that they don’t know about the plot, as their motives remain pure and professional. Other actors in the media and the Democratic Party will also act predictably to advance the plan, based on predictable biases and past behaviors.

    This is the “shape” of modern spy tradecraft. We should recognize it after the Bush Admin was duped into going to war against Iraq by Shiite elites in Baghdad. Chalabi and Co. were aware that the Bush Family wanted to get back at Saddam for the attempt on Bush 41’s life on a trip to Kuwait. They saw the US hurt emotionally by 9-11. They knew which buttons to press….a clever misinformation campaign stoking fears of Iraqi WMDs and “collusion” between Saddam and Al Qaeda. The actors all took up their predicted roles. The plot succeeded wildly.

    Now, US Atty. Durham will scour the inception of the Russia Collusion narrative for covert ops, either acts of commission or omission, that built or strengthened a predicate for FBI Counterintelligence to activate. This is very important to uncover if it exists, since the anti-Trump factions deserve to know if they were taken advantage of (duped). Long-term, it benefits journalism and free society at large to understand the types of covert tradecraft being taught and used to shape opinion and elicit desired behavior from the unsuspecting, based on behavior being just a tad too predictable.

    In the meantime, let’s not fall for the impulse to lay blame on Comey, McCabe, Strzok, and Ohr. It’s quite possible that they were duped, and were merely acting on professional responsibilities. Let’s wait for the full story to come out.

    1. “In the meantime, let’s not fall for the impulse to lay blame..let’s wait for the full story to come out.”

      After 2 1/2 years we have more than enough of the story to blame all sorts of people.

      1. OK, but what if these are “fall guys” that the CIA puppetmaster planned 2 years ago to be sacrificial lambs? Notice how Harry Reid has so far avoided Grand Jury examination for his role as a “standoff” insulating John Brennan from the FBI actors?

        All I’m saying is, maintain an open mind about the possibility that the Trump-Russia “narrative” was intensified in 2016 by CIA covert ops, and that the planner(s) are still maintaining cover.

    1. errant scolding which adds nothing to the debate. if you have something meaningful to say then spell it out

      1. With all due respect, Mr. K, his or her comment is just as “meaningful” as your critique. Perhaps JT needs some “errant scolding” from time to time. Why should you (or others) dictate what one is able to say in a comment.

        (I’m not the same person as the one who posted at 11:58.)

        2. “(I’m not the same person as the one who posted at 11:58.)”

          To those following the discussion you are the same person because you carry the same name. If you are different than the brainless one, though I think you are, then change your alias.

  11. Did Nancy Pelosi just jump the shark?

    https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Did-Nancy-Pelosi-just-jump-the-shark-13819531.php

    Did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) just jump the shark? By stating unequivocally that Attorney General William P. Barr lied to Congress and adding, as if for emphasis, that it is a crime, Pelosi may have thought she was just getting in front of her herd of angry Democrats. But inadvertently, the speaker also revealed, in stark relief, a disturbing new trend in our politics: If you don’t tell Congress what it wants to hear, then you are by default lying and, hence, a criminal.

    By this logic, truth is no longer an absolute. It is a relative norm. Barr is never fast and loose with the truth. His real sin, in the eyes of the shouting Democrats, may simply involve being too serious for a day in which men such as Michael Avenatti are able to look in the mirror and see a president.

    Some didn’t like the attorney general’s four-page letter to Congress on March 24, which drew key conclusions about the Mueller report. Some didn’t like that the attorney general didn’t tell Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) about the March 27 letter he had received from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, in which Mueller expressed frustration about the coverage of Barr’s March 24 letter. And some, such as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), were irked that Barr called the use of investigators using false identities and deceit to probe a Trump campaign employee overseas “spying.”

    Having patiently endured a show trial in the Senate, who could blame Barr for passing on the chance to repeat the experience in the notoriously more raucous House of Representatives? Just as the leak of Mueller’s March 27 letter set the stage for the Senate spectacle, Pelosi’s accusation that the nation’s top Justice Department officer has himself committed a crime sets the stage for whatever production the Democrat-controlled House is now frantically concocting. And it could be anything. We are talking about a group of elected officials who must have thought it was a real home run to use a plastic chicken for a photo op in hopes of making some point about the attorney general of the United States.

    It’s not clear that Democratic leadership knows what its endgame really is. Across the board, polling shows public support for impeachment dwindling, even among Democrats. Quinnipiac on Thursday showed that two-thirds of Americans overall oppose impeachment, with only 56 percent of Democrats favoring it — a drop of nearly ten points among Democrats in recent months. But some, such as Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) — who seems to have replaced Anthony Weiner as Pelosi’s new attack dog — want to impeach not only President Trump, but Barr as well.

    As Hiram Johnson, a progressive senator from California, noted more than a hundred years ago, the first casualty in war is truth. Feeling robbed by Mueller of the grounds with which to wage war against President Trump, the Democrats have been reduced to calling Barr a liar and to characterizing him as a chicken. What does falling apart look like? Fear and desperation have usually led us down the bumpiest roads in our history

  12. “Civilization is formed by men locked together in argument. From this dialogue, the community becomes a political community.”
    – Father John Courtney Murray SJ

    Fr Murray was quoting the English Dominican theologian Fr Thomas Gilby, OP.

    The use of reason in argument is the defining quality of a civil society. Yet while civil society is characteristically rational, Murray taught… “it is a need of human nature before it becomes the object of human choice.”

    Today the Democrats have cast our nation in an embarrassing black abyss. Like temper tantrum 2 year olds, they lost the 2016 Election and have never accepted the fact that their choices are rejected by Americans then and now.

    1. here is a well researched and fascinating book about Fr Murray and his endeavors

      https://www.amazon.com/John-Courtney-Murray-American-Proposition/dp/0929891155

      publisher’s blurb:

      “In 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his famous “Four Freedoms” speech. In that speech, FDR set forth a vision for the reengineering of societies around the globe. The means was psychological warfare, involving the manipulation of ideas, words and symbols to divide target societies and convince these societies of the ideology that formed America. The most important society America targeted was the Roman Catholic Church. Media mogul Henry R. Luce, founder and publisher of enormously influential magazines like Time and Life, used the CIA’s doctrinal warfare program to turn the Catholic Church into a promoter of American ideas. This struggle reached its culmination at the Second Vatican Council with the promulgation of the document Declaration on Religious Liberty. Catholic doctrine did not change, but, defeated at the Council, the Americanists used their media power to win the battle over who got to interpret the Council with significant consequences for both the world and the Catholic Church, whose leadership came to espouse the doctrines of Liberalism something its leadership had condemned just a few years earlier.”

      1. Thanks for the link. Never seen that book but one reviewer had this to say, nothing terribly new to me. It is impossible to reflect the Church’s Magisterium 100% 24/7 in all its magnanimity. Im willing to break bread with a thinking Jew and Muslim and enjoy our discussions. Authors like Murray were refreshing. Not even I agreed with Avery Dulles all the time but still, given the tenor of our public forum, Lucy Van Pelt would be a breath of fresh air.

        5.0 out of 5 starsThorough, Well Researched Book Making a Strong Case for For Catholicism, Not Americanism
        November 13, 2015
        Format: Hardcover
        This is a very unique book which thoroughly goes into detail making a strong case about how the US twisted the Catholic Church’s teachings which had been in existence for almost 2,000 years and wrongly said that church and state should be separate. Then, the US with the help of Time/Life went beyond simply corrupting the people of the US by presenting the United States as the supreme moral authority in the world, using propaganda to basically say if you stood for religious freedom and plurality, you were good. If you stood for the Catholic Church as being the pillar of truth like in Franco’s Spain, you were bad. Mr. Wemhoff presents his case very clearly and in chronological order. Early in the book, he gives a preview of things to come when he shows how Cardinal Gibbons strayed from the Church’s teachings and goes on to quote papal encyclicals from the 19th and 20th centuries and demonstrates how both prominent lay people and clergy such as Murray twisted the Church’s teachings up to the time of and including the 2nd Vatican Council, thereby leading many Catholics astray. The book has an extensive bibliography documenting clearly where Wemhoff got his sources from, showing he’s not just speaking from a soapbox, but taking the words right from the horses’ mouths, so to speak.

  13. they’re milking it. can one blame them?

    they’re probably trying to cover for their best hope for victory in the election, Joe Biden, who is reluctant to apologize for his caddish smooching and hugging of the ladies. this is not going over well with the feminist harridans of the mass and social media

    as a Trump supporter, I hope Joe loses, but as a man, I welcome Joe’s recalcitrance to apologize, even though I would never have pressed myself on the women like he does. I would have swatted his naughty hands away like Sessions did in that one video.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/even-if-its-not-sexual-joe-bidens-creepy-touching-crosses-the-line

    Cut the old creeper some slack!

    1. Sessions would have known Biden long enough to know what was coming.

      Biden’s inappropriate touching does not rise to the level of sexual assault. It’s sexual, because he does not do this to men. I’ve never seen him get behind a grown man and massage his shoulders while smelling his hair. I’ve also only seen him pet girls, not boys. So it’s an attraction motivation, and troubling that he also engages in this behavior with young girls.

      He appears to lack any awareness of how his behavior affects others. How many times has he hand his hands swatted away or heard critical comments about invading personal space? By his age, one would think it’s been brought up. Regardless, is he unaware, or does he just not care, that women and girls often lean away from his caresses? What about the photographs taken of young girls looking miserably uncomfortale while he smells their hair? Why was he not appalled when he saw those photos and changed his behavior?

      It is the fact that he’s refused to change his behavior for decades that’s concerning. He doesn’t seem to care how his caresses make others feel. If it’s supposed to be affectionate, then the recipient is supposed to enjoy it. If she’s not, then stop.

      It’s still not sexual assault, but rather really bad judgement. It reminds me of the character who rips a hank of hair off of female opponents to sniff and exclaim over in Charlie’s Angles.

      I am fascinated at the Teflon coating prominent Democrats. If a Republican ever said that Obama was surprisingly clean and well spoken for a black man, his career would be over. Instead, Biden is rather popular among African Americans and Democrats in general. Go figure.

      1. Paid to post? I suspect that this is Karen’s “telecommunity job” as she calls it — created just for her so that she has health insurance through an employer. Or so she says.

        Pithy is good, Karen. Unless one is paid by the word.

          1. You’re obsessed with yourself. You post here. You’re gonna see your name.

            1. I give “Anonymous” credit for at least having enough sense to remain anonymous in a sea of anonymouses here.
              Anyone that ignorant and that lazy probably would not want to take “credit” for the moronic comments that “Anonymous” posts.

              1. About the whole “anonymous” thing:

                What you’re telling us, Tom, is that you aren’t tech-savvy. You don’t understand how things work.

                1. No, that’s not what I’m telling you, **** for brains. I would try to explain what I’m telling you, but there is really no point in trying to explain anything to you.

              2. ” to remain anonymous in a sea of anonymouses here.”

                Tom, that low life lives among a sea of alter egos. Garbage pick-up is late so the numbers are climbing.

        1. What are you talking about, me accusing Biden? There are videos of his smelling women’s hair and massaging their shoulders. We’re not talking about hugs, but rather shoulder rubs, smelling women’s hair, and being inappropriate with little girls. Remember all the photos and videos of children looking creeped out while he stroked them?

          I actually said it was not sexual assault, but rather attraction driven bad judgement, and inappropriate. It was also concerning that he seems unaware that the recipients are not enjoying the caresses.

          Here is a short video of some of his caressing of children:

          https://youtu.be/k4XMvWIRmx0

          Or this one:

          https://youtu.be/xy07yHAgM4E

          “Spread your legs, you’re going to be frisked” was an apropos comment. Massaging the biker chick’s shoulders in front of the other bikers was a dumb move. Not assault, but bad judgement and an invasion of boundaries. Notice how he does not stroke men or smell their hair. We all get that he loves women. If he won’t keep his hands to himself and respect personal space, this is going to dog him.

  14. I think the Democrat politicians “jumped the shark” during the Kavanaugh hearings. I don’t listen to a word they spew any longer. I change the channel when one of them appears at a mic. They are all drowned to me along with a few Republicans lately. You know who you are.

  15. Professor Turley Assures Us This Is Going Nowhere..

    With A Column Adding Little

    One is hard-pressed to even think of a response here. Apparently Turley’s big day before the committee was spent reading comments on this blog just to pass the time.

    Turley probably noticed, with irritation, that Estovir has taken to posting prayers. Turley also wondered if Alan died sixty years ago and is somehow posting from the grave. But more than anything, Turley was left with the impression that Trump supporters are no saner than Trump himself. It was a thought that Turley struggled to discard. Yet it gnawed at Turley long enough that he half-considered abandoning this site.

    1. “hard pressed to think of a response”

      Translation: Peter Shill is out of crystal meth.

      1. Pizzagate: Why ‘crystal meth’..???

        Here in California we have legal cannabis. Crystal meth is strictly a red state thing. And because you live in a red state that was all you could think of. ..Sad..!

        1. I’m sure Peter is not a meth abuser.

          However, crystal meth has been cooked up by bikers in the desert for decades

          https://www.kqed.org/news/11737627/meth-mania-from-biker-gangs-to-the-psych-ward-how-speed-came-of-age-in-california

          “While the country’s attention has been focused on prescription opioids and heroin overdoses, methamphetamine has been making a comeback. The drug’s history is rooted in California — biker gangs like the Hells Angels manufactured and distributed it up and down Interstate 5 in the 1980s. Then Mexican cartels took over and kept Los Angeles as their national distribution headquarters.”

          1. Crystal Meth, Cocaine, Crack….all stimulants used by mentally ill people and hopeless addicts

            The trolls Anon, Anonymous, L4D, Peter ‘Believe me I live in California….Illinois….Washington DC” Shill…..all fit the profile of amphetamine / stimulant abusers

            1. Estovir, it’s refreshing to know that your insanity is unrelated to drugs.

        2. “Here in California we have legal cannabis.”

          We can tell Peter. Why don’t you stay off the cannabis for a few days so your postings make more sense.

          1. A little cannibis would be good for Allan. He runs around the blog like a dog trying to mark his territory.

            2. Anonymous, you sound like a dog in heat. Do something about it already.

        3. Shill:

          Crystal Meth and Oxy are huge here in CA. We have a lot of tweakers here. It is common to see addicts with their faces all picked and scabbed.

    2. “Turley also wondered if Alan died sixty years ago and is somehow posting from the grave.”

      A posting anyone provided from the grave would be better than anything Peter posts alive while brain dead.

  19. “Watching House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler leap over a bucket of fried chicken simply does not have that same “Fonz” cachet.”
    ***************************
    Yes, but it’s their nature. Also, they’ve jumped the shark on democracy and capitalism and tradition and history and the law and decency in public affairs and …. (Insert your own virtue)

    As for Nadler, I think his KFC Olympics would be a big reality TV hit. Heeeyyyy!

    1. Mespo, “decency in public affairs” caught my eye, of course, as an ironic values for a Trump fan, but democracy (he lost the vote), capitalism (he uses the power of the office to go after businesses who’s owners he has personal grudges with), tradition (say what? what tradition?), history (which he cares nothing about), and law (just spit out my coffee!). You were kidding with this post, right?

Comments are closed.