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Does that have a Dorito shell?
"Let it not be said that we did nothing."-Ron Paul
"We have set them on the hobby-horse of an idea about the absorption of individuality by the symbolic unit of COLLECTIVISM. They have never yet and they never will have the sense to reflect that this hobby-horse is a manifest violation of the most important law of nature, which has established from the very creation of the world one unit unlike another and precisely for the purpose of instituting individuality."- A Quote From Some Old Book
Politics
Three False Claims Muddying the Impeachment Debate
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Even though public hearings on the impeachment of President Donald Trump have just begun, the subject has already become encrusted with legends and myths on all sides. In a polarized country, each side has its own talking points — and isn’t paying enough attention to the other side to know when those points are based on errors. So far, three stand out.
Take White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s famous remark that Trump’s critics should “get over it.” This was widely taken to be a brazen statement that it was fine for Trump to use foreign policy to seek to harm his political opponents. But that’s not what Mulvaney was saying. Nor was CNN accurate in reporting, “Mulvaney confirmed the existence of a quid pro quo and offered this retort: ‘Get over it.’”
Mulvaney’s press conference was on Oct. 17. He mentioned news accounts about the previous day’s testimony from a former State Department adviser, Michael McKinley. Those reports said that McKinley had quit because he was, as the Associated Press put it, “disturbed by the politicization of foreign policy.” If you check out the transcript, you can see that Mulvaney was saying that of course politics affects foreign policy. He mentions McKinley and says: “Get over it. There’s going to be political influence on foreign policy.” Practically in the next breath, he says, “foreign policy is going to change from the Obama administration to the Trump administration.” He then faults some career government employees for seeking to prevent this.
At least one reporter understood this context, because the next question for Mulvaney drew a distinction: Political influence over foreign policy is one thing, the reporter said, but is it OK for the president to try to pressure a foreign government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden? Mulvaney then stoutly denied that Trump did any such thing, maintaining that the administration’s holding aid to Ukraine “had absolutely nothing to do with Biden.” Like a lot of what Mulvaney said at that press conference, that statement is dubious. But he didn’t admit to using foreign policy for partisan ends and then tell people to get over it.
Trump supporters have myths of their own. One is the claim that in September, Representative Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who heads the House Intelligence Committee, tried to pass off a phony version of what the president told Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy in their July 25 phone call as the actual words of the conversation. Trump accused Schiff of fraud and mused about charging him with treason: “He was supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call, but he completely changed the words to make it sound horrible.” House Republicans tried to censure Schiff for it, and other Trump supporters keep claiming that Schiff lied.
What Schiff actually did was provide a paraphrase of Trump’s remarks, and he was completely open about it. He described how Zelenskiy opened the call and then said, “Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates.” Then he gave his version of the gist of Trump’s comments. After finishing, he says, “This is in sum and character what the president was trying to communicate with the president of Ukraine.” Anyone who listened to that and thought Schiff was directly quoting Trump should quit trying to follow the impeachment debate.
Republicans have gotten agitated over another distorted comment recently. They say that Mark Zaid, the lawyer for the Ukraine “whistle-blower,” called for a “coup” against Trump soon after he took office. The background to this was a tweet of Zaid’s in January 2017, reacting to Trump’s dismissal of the acting attorney general, Sally Yates. Although Zaid has muddied the waters in trying to defend himself, he appears to have been saying that it was Trump who was starting to perpetrate a coup. It was a dumb tweet: Trump was well within his rights to fire Yates, who had refused to defend his travel ban. But it doesn’t support the Republican case that Ukrainegate is an undemocratic plot by Trump’s enemies.
All of these mangled and misunderstood remarks are, in a sense, peripheral to the main debate. Whether Trump should be removed from office shouldn’t turn on a three-year-old tweet from one government employee’s lawyer. Each of these exaggerated stories is, however, helping to create an atmosphere in the minds of fans and foes of the president. Each side can not only interpret events in keeping with its favored narrative — Trump’s corruption or deep-state plotting - but also tell itself that the other side secretly knows it’s wrong.
People who are following the impeachment hearings and trying to make up their minds should read and listen to both sides, carefully. It’s not just that each side is trying to spin the facts. It’s that each side is spinning itself.
To contact the author of this story: Ramesh Ponnuru at rponnuru@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net
The Creature from Jekyll Island:
We're being governed ruled by a geriatric Alzheimer patient/puppet whose strings are being pulled by an elitist oligarchy who believe they can manage the world... imagine the utter maniacal, sociopathic hubris!
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
To contact the author of this story: Ramesh Ponnuru at rponnuru@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net
The Creature from Jekyll Island:
We're being governed ruled by a geriatric Alzheimer patient/puppet whose strings are being pulled by an elitist oligarchy who believe they can manage the world... imagine the utter maniacal, sociopathic hubris!
"Let it not be said that we did nothing."-Ron Paul
"We have set them on the hobby-horse of an idea about the absorption of individuality by the symbolic unit of COLLECTIVISM. They have never yet and they never will have the sense to reflect that this hobby-horse is a manifest violation of the most important law of nature, which has established from the very creation of the world one unit unlike another and precisely for the purpose of instituting individuality."- A Quote From Some Old Book
Adam Schiff is Jewish and Democrats are known as 'Party of Israel'. As heat is being increased on Trump by Dems this week in the impeachment hearings, could his today's pro-Isael policy shift (Trump reverses longstanding policy on Israeli settlements ) also be a 'carrot' for Dems to incentivize them go soft on him (by projecting himself as a great supporter of their major cause)?
The Jewish American Lawmaker Who Has Become Trump’s Greatest Enemy — and May Yet Bring Him Down
Charged with leading the impeachment inquiry into the president, Rep. Adam Schiff finds himself at the center of the biggest scandal of Trump's presidency. Is he the right man to lead the high stakes process?
Amir Tibon Washington
Oct 05, 2019
haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-the-jewish-lawmaker-who-has-become-trump-s-greatest-enemy-and-may-bring-him-down-1.7947048
Potentially Related
McConnell: Senate Will 'Have to Have a Trial' if House Votes to Impeach Trump
LewRockwell.com: U.S. Senators Are Nearly All Stooges for Israel
Last edited by enhanced_deficit; 11-18-2019 at 08:13 PM.
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People on Fox news (including Ken Starr etc), other news outlets, are suggesting Sondland's testimony is somehow a bombshell, but all I've heard is the same old assumptions about what Trump must have been thinking. Is there something I'm missing?
Hearing took a bit of dramatic turn today:
Name "Rocky A$AP" triggered Amb. Sondland memory recall that could sink Trump Presidency
10:39 A.M. —Sondland when asked if he told Trump the Ukrainian president "loves your ass"– "That's how President Trump and I communicate. A lot of four letter words. In this case a three letter word"10:34 A.M. — Sondland says a change in his impeachment testimony was triggered by reference to rapper A$AP Rocky.
— Dorey Scheimer (@DoreyScheimer) November 20, 2019
55 min ago
Sondland: Rapper A$AP Rocky was initially the "primary focus" of the July 26 call with Trump
CNN
House Democrats' counsel Daniel Goldman pointed out that Sondland's testimony is that he now remembers that infamous July 26 phone with President Trump he had while sitting in a restaurant in Kiev.
This is the call where they discussed investigations that President Trump wanted Ukraine to announce.
Sondland, who said he isn't a notetaker, said, "What triggered my memory was someone's reference to A$AP Rocky, which I believe was the primary focus of the phone call."
impeachment
'The answer is yes': Sondland affirms 'quid pro quo' in Ukraine dealings
Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland.
Updated: 11/20/2019 11:25 AM EST
President Donald Trump’s handpicked Ukraine adviser Gordon Sondland told House impeachment investigators Wednesday that Trump conditioned a valuable White House meeting for Ukraine's new president on his willingness to launch investigations into Trump’s Democratic adversaries, including former Vice President Joe Biden.
“Was there a ‘quid pro quo?’” Sondland — the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, a close Trump ally and longtime GOP donor — said in his opening remarks to the House Intelligence Committee. “The answer is yes.”
Donald Trump Reportedly Was Told To Let A$AP Rocky Sit In Prison
November 18, 2019
A$AP Rocky and the Sweden incident that left the rapper behind bars for a month is back in the headlines after the on camera scuffle was included in the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.
According to the New York Times, the United States Embassy in Kiev official David Holmes testified that he overheard Trump on the phone with Gordon D. Sondland, American ambassador to the European Union.
Holmes confirmed that Trump spoke with Sondland about getting Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to conduct an investigation into Joe Biden; he also said that Sondland and Trump spoke about Rocky’s then-ongoing legal troubles in Sweden. Trump publicly commented that he wanted to help free Rocky, expressing disappointment in Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s perceived lack of action prior to the rapper’s release. In the call, as Holmes recollected, Sondland loudly told Trump that Rocky “should have pled guilty.”
In a tweet posted by Washington Post senior political reporter Aaron Blake, Holmes stated that Sondland told the president that Rocky was “kind of f*cked there” and that he “should have pleaded guilty.”
U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday during a public impeachment hearing of President Donald Trump's efforts to tie U.S. aid for Ukraine to investigations of his political opponents. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
That was the day after Trump’s infamous phone call to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he demanded a “favor” of launching investigations into his Democratic rivals.
But Trump wanted Sondland, who is ambassador to the European Union, to tighten the screws on Sweden to let A$AP go free.
Timeline of the impeachment inquiry against President Trump
The president had assured supporters Kanye West and Kim Kardashian that he would win freedom for the rapper, and was irritated that little apparent progress was being made.
Related
US warned Sweden of 'negative consequences' if A$AP wasn't released
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfbV...ture=emb_title
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Obama-Clinton Years: A Violent Chapter in World History
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Delta variant, death of 9 Chinese engineers in terror attack led to airport chaos & quick Kabul fall?
He's a former Trump donor and has revised his previous testimony and now says there was 'quid pro quo' after he recalled among other things his phone conversation with Trump about Rocky A$AP.
Have not validated but saw other reports that even Republican witnesses are not defending Pres.
Not very dramatic but it's a shift and accumaltive 'opinions' advertized as testimonies of witnesses and current path seems to be leading towards impeachment. Removal from office may not happen still though. New developments in weeks ahead could ofcourse change things.
MAGA Allies: 'Bully Israel with undeclared nukes steals land'
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Obama-Clinton Years: A Violent Chapter in World History
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Delta variant, death of 9 Chinese engineers in terror attack led to airport chaos & quick Kabul fall?
And lies:
Even taking this at face value, Sondland’s testifying that (a) he believed that there was a linkage between the military aid and the investigations, (b) Pence “nodded” when Sondland aired his opinion, and (c) the topic of aid came up in Pence’s conversation with Ukraine. That’s not very compelling in terms of a dictated quid pro quo. Sondland’s testimony is just that Pence “nodded” at the notion, not that he got any indication of confirmation or even factual knowledge of Sondland’s belief.Pence’s office didn’t let it slide, however. In a statement sent out widely to media via e-mail, including Hot Air, chief of staff Marc Short blasted Sondland’s testimony as false. The conversation that Sondland described “never happened,” according to Short:
“The Vice President never had a conversation with Gordon Sondland about investigating the Bidens, Burisma, or the conditional release of financial aid to Ukraine based upon potential investigations.This should be rather easy to determine. Does anyone have the security logs for Pence in Poland, which would likely document Pence’s movements and those around him? Surely Pence had his staff around during this trip, too. If Sondland wasn’t alone with Pence, then his story begins to look a little suspect.
“Ambassador Gordon Sondland was never alone with Vice President Pence on the September 1 trip to Poland. This alleged discussion recalled by Ambassador Sondland never happened.
“Multiple witnesses have testified under oath that Vice President Pence never raised Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden, Crowdstrike, Burisma, or investigations in any conversation with Ukrainians or President Zelensky before, during, or after the September 1 meeting in Poland.”
But even if he was alone with Pence, this still doesn’t prove much of anything. Sondland didn’t testify that Pence told him anything about a quid pro quo, just that he “nodded” at Sondland’s concerns over the potential for one. As Short notes, no one has suggested that Pence pushed anything of the sort; indeed, testimony already exists that Pence never linked anything to aid, nor was inclined to do so.
Short and Pence better hope it stays that way, of course, but in this they are helped by Sondland’s continually changing recollections. Key parts of his story keep evolving, which Sondland blames on a lack of cooperation from State over his notes and his documents. That may well be the case, but it’s not making Sondland look more reliable as time wears on.
Update: Republicans on the panel are already making hay over Sondland’s shifting recollections:
Sondland says he doesn’t remember things because he has lots of meetings with many important people and they “tend to sort of blend together.” He says he’s not a notetaker. “You’re a trifecta of unreliability,” GOP counsel Castor says. Sondland says he “filled in a lot of blanks”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 20, 2019
More at: https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morri...ever-happened/
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
Don't mind him, hes only here to parrot DNC talking points. And of course, when the narrative does not fit his "vision" he will throw in something irrelevant, like ASAP ROCKY, to distract from the facts at hand.
Here is how @enhanced_deficit 's mind works
CNN : Sondland confirms quid pro quo in impeachment hearing
And then there is what really happened, directly contradicting the DNC/CNN talking point.
@enhanced_deficit, do you just not feel embarrassment?
Last edited by eleganz; 11-20-2019 at 09:23 PM.
THE SQUAD of RPF
1. enhanced_deficit - Paid Troll / John Bolton book promoter
2. Devil21 - LARPing Wizard, fake magical script reader
3. Firestarter - Tax Troll; anti-tax = "criminal behavior"
4. TheCount - Comet Pizza Pedo Denier <-- sick
@Ehanced_Deficit's real agenda on RPF =troll:
Who spends this much time copy/pasting the same recycled links, photos/talking points.
7 yrs/25k posts later RPF'ers still respond to this troll
I had missed Sondland's opening statement this morning, but saw most of the rest of his testimony - I was totally mystified when I saw media people suggesting there had been some kind of bombshell. I guess that opening statement is what they latched onto - but it didn't hold up.
That's a very misleading statement, with the exact opposite actually being true.
The fact is this guy is trying to play both sides, because he's afraid the left is going to prosecute him if he doesn't give them something. Hence the, "well, no, there is zero proof Trump ever did anything he's being accused of" and "but I presumed he did". His statement of fact is the truth, and his statement of opinion is completely fabricated, giving the leftist tyrants something to chase and potentially saving himself a lifetime prison sentence.
The sad thing is he might even be making the right move here in the sense of protecting himself the best he can, even though he's only compounding the nonsense. It's not Republicans you have to fear here. We have all seen what the left does to anyone with an association with Trump who makes even the slightest incorrect statement. They die in prison.
Last edited by fcreature; 11-20-2019 at 07:59 PM.
Any chance Barr is taking notes of all the confirmed liars giving testimony over the last few days and will hit them with the Rodger Stone / Michael Flynn treatment?
Highly unlikely, but one can only hope.
If so, he will have to write them really big so Trump can read them without his glasses- like from his press conference earlier today:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...-Investigation
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Last edited by Swordsmyth; 11-21-2019 at 07:20 PM.
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
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