President Donald Trump lashed out at Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats yesterday on the eve of today’s impeachment vote. The letter, which can be read here, unleashed invective and angry responses to the expected impeachment. While the President quotes me in the letter, most of the letter has the signature style of the President and immediately drew objections over its tenor and assertions. Pelosi called the letter “ridiculous” and “sick.”
The President declares “It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American People. While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.”
This letter will certainly prove indelible.
Much of the letter is hyperbolic and clearly directed at voters with statements like “You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!”
However, the President also insists that “This impeachment represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat Lawmakers, unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American legislative history.” I will note that I testified in the impeachment hearing (and most recently in a column) that this impeachment has striking similarities to the 1868 impeachment of Andrew Johnson. I would not say that this is worse. Rather both in my view are disturbing in their underlying claims and records.
There is obvious anger in a number of the lines like “You dare to invoke the Founding Fathers in pursuit of this election-nullification scheme?” and “It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!”
Some lines however reflect the expected defense in the Senate trial including “I said to President Zelensky: would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it? I said do us a favor, not me and our country, not a campaign.” He also stressed “You are turning a policy disagreement between two branches of government into an impeachable offense.”
One of the most interesting aspects of this letter will be its impact on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell is not someone who will want to turn over the Senate floor to an unpredictable or sensational trial. If he believes that the trial could become a spectacle, he is more likely to limit witnesses and other elements.
The next time conservatives win the House, Senate and Presidency, they need to conduct unlimited and final, total war agaisnt the anti-American, anti-Constitutional communists (i.e. liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats).
The communists (i.e. liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats) have shown the way.
Michael Tracey tweet:
“Invade countries on false pretenses: don’t impeach
Engineer coups to topple governments: don’t impeach
Send weapons to murderous despots: don’t impeach
Illegally surveil Americans on a mass scale: don’t impeach
Temporarily withhold but then disburse some military aid: IMPEACH!!!
3:32 PM – 18 Dec 2019”
https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1207443664118730754
Americans: indelibly killing themselves due to lack of self-regulation from US Congress down to average Americans:
sloth, gluttony, pride, wrath, greed, envy, lust…..
Projected U.S. State-Level Prevalence of Adult Obesity and Severe Obesity
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1909301
…four BMI categories from 1990 through 2030: underweight or normal weight (BMI [the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters], <25), overweight (25 to <30), moderate obesity (30 to <35), and severe obesity (≥35).
We found that nearly 1 in 2 adults nationwide will probably have obesity by 2030, with large disparities across states and demographic subgroups. Using our model, we projected that by 2030 the majority of adults in 29 states will have obesity and that the prevalence of obesity will approach 60% in some states and not be below 35% in any state. These results are similar to previous estimates showing that 57% of children 2 to 19 years of age in 2016 are projected to have obesity by the age of 35 years.7
Especially worrisome is the projected rise in the prevalence of severe obesity, which is associated with even higher mortality and morbidity25 and health care costs.9 Using our model, we projected that by 2030 nearly 1 in 4 U.S. adults will have severe obesity, and the prevalence will be higher than 25% in 25 states. Severe obesity is thus poised to become as prevalent as overall obesity was in the 1990s.
Josh Jordan tweet:
“This video of Trump praising Pelosi and saying W Bush should’ve been impeached for lying is so great I can’t stand it.”
https://twitter.com/NumbersMuncher/status/1207387098136940556
(Trump’s right about that Bush and that f’ing war.)
(Trump’s right about Bush and that f’ing war.)
….. “One of my favorite scenes is when Bowie calls Travis a ” prissy jackass”.
This is a viewer’s comment about the 1960 movie THE ALAMO; the characters of Richard Widmark ( Bowie) and Laurence Harvey (Travis) were polar opposites and hated each other.
Bowie’s character in the movie was a roughneck, and the Col. Travis character was an aristocratic, stiff, formal, humorless commander.
I thought about that movie line when watching Schiff, Nadler, and Pelosi during this process.
And on the “Bowie side”, Trump, Collins, Nunes and others.
Most people’s perception/ approval/ disapproval of these political characters and their characteristics will be largely shaped by where they are at on the issues.
Those without particularly strong views on the issues may find the “Bowie” characters more realistic and believable than the robotic, solemn Schiff or Nunes.
Bad at Alice Springs:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/18/too-hot-for-humans-first-nations-people-fear-becoming-australias-first-climate-refugees
David:
You might enjoy Brad Lancaster’s books on Rainwater Harvesting. It has quite a bit of reference materials, and he was able to interview the Water Farmer of Zimbabwe, Zephania Phiri Maseko.
As Europeans migrated outwards, they applied high water strategies to drylands. They couldn’t resist grading lands to maximize runoff…even in arid lands.
Native brush that rooted water deep were cleared, and land was graded for settlements, maximizing runoff. This circumvented the very processes that accumulated those underground water resources in the first place. Removing the native brush excises that route of plant respiration that releases trace moisture and oxygen in the air. Increasing runoff dries out the land further, until a vicious cycle of desertification and erosion begins. CA is a particularly sad example of this, with manmade fires thrown in.
I think you will find Phiri’s story particularly interesting. He was blacklisted for being an activist against his government. He lost his job, and all prospects of ever being employed again. He sat out on his desolate dry lot farm, where he barely managed to raise a few animals, and contemplated God and starvation. Inspiration hit, and he felt a certainty that God already gave him everything he needed for his family to survive.
Long story short, he learned how to “plant” rainfall deep into the ground. He created a system of terraces, cisterns, and eventually ponds to delay that runoff so it could nourish his land. His land flourished, to the point that he even has ponds stocked with fish.
People travel from all over the world to study his techniques.
Here is a link to a brief article on Mr Phiri and another to Lancaster’s books. I recommend volumes I and II.
https://cals.arizona.edu/OALS/ALN/aln46/lancaster.html
https://www.amazon.com/Rainwater-Harvesting-Drylands-Beyond-2nd/dp/0977246434
Karen S, thank you.
There was a guy shown singing some diatribe outside the hall of Congress just now. He sang:
“I’ll impeach, I’ll impeach!
I’ll impeach all the way!
From my first cigarette ..
To my last dying day!
If smoking don’t kill me I’ll pull out my gun.
All of the Repubs are out on the run.”
Couln’t find an single item wrong in his statement and after all the majority of votes that elected The President did so with the mission to expose and destroy the left. So what’s the big deal he’s doing his job, much to our delight, in accordance with his Oath of Office. More than iyou can say for Comrade Pelosi
When Democrats compared Clinton’s impeachment to Jesus’s crucifixion
Steny Hoyer, a congressman from Maryland and now the No. 2 House Democrat, blasted the House’s vote to impeach Clinton as “a Pontius Pilate-like act, presumably designed to rationalize the profoundly precedent-setting action that this House now contemplates.”
Washington Rep. Jim McDermott also invoked Pontius Pilate, pointing out that then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich was absent during the impeachment debate. “The lack of leadership reminds me of Pontius Pilate, who washed his hands at the crucifixion,” McDermott said.
It seems that Congress has a long history of making absurd analogies between a president being impeached and a savior being crucified.
Wash Examiner
That’s got to be the most stupid of all the sick jokes the leftist propaganda machine could come up with . It kills itself in the first lines claiming to be religious
This is the real government: “Since the Fed turned on its money spigot to Wall Street on September 17, not one hearing has been called in Congress to examine what gives the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, the legal authority to provide cheap loans to the trading houses on Wall Street. These are the same Wall Street trading houses that blew themselves up with derivatives in 2008 and took down the U.S. economy in the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. Why should the Federal Reserve encourage more of that activity by providing cheap money?
Most of these trading houses are units of mega Wall Street banks that have publicly traded shares. If a publicly traded company cannot obtain loans from anywhere other than the cheap money spigot of the Federal Reserve, it needs to publicly disclose that to its shareholders and potential buyers of its stock. That’s a material fact that legally must be disclosed. The legal argument could be made that the Federal Reserve is aiding and abetting a fraud upon the investing public by failing to name the trading houses that are receiving these massive loans. The loans started out as just overnight loans but they have since morphed to include 15-day and 42-day loans, strongly suggesting that one or more of these firms can’t obtain long-term funding elsewhere.
The United States has historically bragged about its free and transparent markets. But what the Fed is doing today is pulling a dark curtain around the financing of this so-called free and transparent market. The public has no idea which Wall Street firms have received this $3 trillion or why they can’t borrow it elsewhere.” (from Wall Street on Parade) also see Michael Kreiger.
Pull back the curtain and see!
“Since the Fed turned on its money spigot to Wall Street on September 17, not one hearing has been called in Congress to examine what gives the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, the legal authority to provide cheap loans to the trading houses on Wall Street
An explanation of repo agreements undertaken by the Fed is to be found here. No clue why this man fancies they are outside their competence.
https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed04.html
Here’s an explanation of the practice here, issued five years ago.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/overnight-reverse-repurchase-agreements.htm
“Much of the letter is hyperbolic and clearly directed at voters with statements like “You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!”
Professor, didn’t the Democrats do just that, cheapen “the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!”? You claim later how disturbing this impeachment is. …And why shouldn’t there be anger to such injustice?