Writing on the Double Yellow Line

Militant moderate, unwilling to concede any longer the terms of debate to the strident ideologues on the fringe. If you are a Democrat or a Republican, you're an ideologue. If you're a "moderate" who votes a nearly straight party-ticket, you're still an ideologue, but you at least have the decency to be ashamed of your ideology. ...and you're lying in the meantime.

Name:
Location: Illinois, United States

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

The Care and Feeding of a Palace Coup


The Care and Feeding of a Palace Coup
− or −
When the Schiff Hits the Fan
©2019  Ross Williams



Some people just don’t like Donnie Combover even if they don’t know why and − as so profoundly articulated by democrat House Squad-member Rashida Tlaib − insist they must impeach the mother fucker.  Even if there is no cause to.

It all started late one Tuesday night in early November of 2016.  Hillary “Medusa” Clinton lost the election to Donald “Cheeto” Trump.  Calls for his impeachment began mere hours later.

Why? doesn’t matter.   Based on what? matters even less.  We’ll find something, even if we have to pull it out of our ass” became the plan of action.
 
First, they went after “emoluments”.  Emoluments are prohibited by the same section of the Constitution that prohibits accepting titles of nobility from foreign governments.  Emoluments are gifts or donations of anything of value from a foreign government or individual which would make a US government official beholden to that foreign entity, and hence open to foreign control.

An example of an emolument might be, f’rinstance, an ex-First Lady who was also a major party candidate for president who ran a charitable “foundation” which accepted millions of dollars at a time from Russian, Ukrainian and Arabian government officials and corporate CEOs.  …it makes us feel better about ourselves to call corporate CEOs from much of the world “oligarchs”, because what does much of the world know about business?  At any rate, it would be especially suspicious if those foreign donations suddenly dried up the moment she lost her sure-fire bid for president.  One might think she had been selling US foreign policy futures, or something.

Another example of an emolument might be if a vice president, who controlled US foreign aid distribution, had a drug-addled son working for a foreign company which received that foreign aid, and any of that foreign aid money came funneling back into the vice president’s personal or party coffers.  It would be particularly suspicious if the foreign aid was leveraged against the government of that foreign nation halting a criminal investigation into the son’s foreign employer.

Those would be legitimate examples of emoluments. …if they weren’t entirely hypothetical, naturally.

Needless to say, nothing Donnie Combover has done comes anywhere near a violation of the emoluments clause.  Yet he is still criticized by that section of his detractors who learned “emoluments” is a word, and who like to show off that they can say it.  Because repeating buzzwords is all they know how to do. 

Emoluments is, quite literally, a dead subject.  But every once in a while you’ll still hear a democrat who doesn’t know when the hand has been over-played trying to resurrect it.  Read your party memos, guys.  That tack is over.

Next up was Russia! Russia! Russia! and an investigation led by the Dean Wormer of the senile set, Robert Mueller.  Every rock Mueller looked under for more than two whole years contained a democrat franticly inventing Russian connections to Orangeman to show that he had colluded with Russia.

Familiarity with this term is necessary to understand this portion of the plot.  Collusion means: “to plan, usually in secret.”  Trump was accused of colluding with Russia.  It doesn’t matter if he was or wasn’t; collusion isn’t a crime and hence it’s not legitimately impeachable.

Surprise birthday parties, for example, are preceded by collusion.  So’s the whole Santa hoodwink, the Tooth Faery fantasy, and the Easter Bunny balderdash.  If what is being secretly planned is a crime − such as bank robbery − then the secret planning preceding it is called conspiracy, but only if the criminal act is actually carried out or attempted.  If the crime being conspired is not attempted, then it’s nothing more sinister than a plot pitch from a future feature film called Ocean’s Twenty-Six.

Indeed, collusion isn’t even listed in Black’s Law Dictionary as a thing.  It is, as far as the impeachment farce is concerned, little more than the Congressional democrats’ cynical attempt to convince enough voters that a criminal Tooth Faery exists.  To the degree that any American truly believes collusion is a crime is the degree to which Americans are ignorant morons and the democrats are manipulative shysters.

And what was Donnie Combover accused of colluding with Russia to do?  Why, rig the 2016 election contrary to all polling data, of course.  There’s no way he could have won.  All the numbers were against it.  As I mentioned elsewhere, when you insult those who give wrong answers to your polling questions you tend to get misleading information.  There is nothing to see here except a whole bunch of tear-stained democrats.

In the end, not even Robert Mueller could keep track of the irrational contortions necessary to dodge all the democrats and their Deep State operatives working with Russia to make it look like Trump was working with Russia.  The thing died a slow, painful, deserved and ignominious death, which should have been embarrassing to those who concocted it, but − lack of self-awareness being what it is − managed to completely evade the democrats.

Which brings us to Ukraine, Russia’s neighbor and enemy that Russia had been attempting to woo − where “woo” means conquer − back into the neo-Soviet Union for close to two decades.  And once again, it is necessary to become familiar with terminology to understand this part of the script.

The term to know here is quid pro quo, which is a latin phrase meaning “this for that”.  One exchanges this thing of value in return for that thing of value.  I quid pro quod my neighbor a few months ago, exchanging a half dozen pints of my homebrew beer for him running his tractor up and down my gravel driveway to remove the hump between the tire tracks that my wife’s car doesn’t have enough clearance to avoid scraping.  I got a flat, hundred yard long driveway, he got some damned good English-style pale ales.

Quid pro quo, in contrast to collusion, actually has a legal definition in Black’s Law Dictionary.  It is the “mutual consideration which passes between parties to a contract, rendering it valid and binding.”  There’s nothing illegal about it; it is actually mandatory in contract law to form a valid contract.  But that possibly explains why democrats have such hemorrhoidal inflammation with it: quid pro quo is the basis of all economics that devolve upon a free market.  …a free market like the barter my neighbor and I engaged in with my beers for his tractoring.  Or, perhaps, commerce ; formal capitalism.  Democrats hate capitalism.

What democrats appear to prefer, instead, is the opposite of quid pro quo, which is − in latin − pro bono: “for good”, typically understood as “for the common or greater good”.  It is even frequently shorthanded to mean “for free”.  Pro bono is a concise synopsis of the Marxian mantra: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

But this issue is about this for that, not something for nothing.  When either or both of the this or the that in a quid pro quo is an unlawful action, the legal terminology changes from quid pro quo to extortion or bribery, or such other term as describes the specific unlawfulness.  It is illegal to trade money for murder, for example, because murder is illegal. Making that trade would not be called commerce, barter or quid pro quo.  It would be called solicitation for murder.  

The only wrinkle in the democrats’ delusions regarding Ukraine is: neither of the actions claimed to be involved in Cheeto’s Ukrainian quid pro quo, nor the methods of suggesting the actions, qualify as unlawful.  It cannot, therefore − not even if the quid was actually offered pro the quo − be the “treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors” that is required to legitimately impeach a government official.

The asserted this for which the that was to be extracted was military aid being given to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into Joe Biden, Vice President under Barry Hussein.   Creepy Joe is the father of the drug-addled son who had been given a $600K/year do-nothing job at a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.  This energy company was receiving a huge share of the billions of dollars per year of US foreign aid provided to Ukraine by the Barry Hussein administration.  Creepy Joe was the handler and distributor of US foreign aid to Ukraine, and he leveraged a billion dollars of US aid to Ukraine against the firing of the prosecutor who was investigating junior Biden’s employer, thus ending the investigation.

Say what you will about US foreign aid buying policy or personnel changes in foreign governments; Creepy Joe was not the first to use this leverage, nor will he be the last.  It only becomes an issue worthy of investigation when the money disappears and looks for all the world as if it’s funneling back to the US in the pockets of American politicians, particularly when they are the politicians responsible for giving that money away.  This is called a kickback, it’s illegal under federal law, and is one of the specific crimes identified in the Constitution: receiving emoluments.  It is legitimately impeachable.  And once again: the further anyone looks into Donnie Combover’s impeachable offenses, the more we find democrats doing the impeachable things.

Do you see where this is heading?  If you do, you’re leaps and bounds brighter than any democrat in the land, none of whom see anything particularly troubling about it.

Skipping over several compacted layers of hearsay allegations specifically scripted by left-over Barry Hussein administration apparatchik, one of whom − Eric “Charlie” Ciaramella − is wistfully and optimistically referred to as a whistleblower, we come to the Double-Secret-Probation-style “impeachment inquiry”.  A parade of disgruntleds entered the basement star chambers of Congressional committees where they tearfully imparted their individual tales of woe.  Several employees of the executive branch were told not to participate, because the inquisitions were not open to the American public.

At this point, the American public, even those largely indifferent or even antithetical to our bombastic boor of a president, increasingly began to criticize the democrats’ choreography.  If what President Cheeto did is so awful that democrats were insisting on going nuclear about it, Americans wanted to see the mushroom cloud.  So the same exercise previously conducted in secret was played out, again, this time on live TV.  And the American public was treated to a litany of supposition and policy quibbles that any third grader would be embarrassed to be part of.  Most of it boiled down to President Cheeto being a big poopy head.

One witness [sic - she witnessed nothing], Yovanovich, the Ambassador to Ukraine, prefaced her comments with a personal biography of such stunning bravery that it would make a decent action movie.  Her Foreign Service career saw her getting shot at in multiple locations at multiple times by multiple nefarious forces, and she came through each encounter without a scratch or dent in the fender.  Yet Donnie Combover was mean to her, and his personal loyyer was rude.  Those two things combined to rattle her so badly that she couldn’t do her job effectively.  And then President Cheeto *>sob<* fired her.

Poor baby.

Next, the witness upon whose testimony the democrats sought to hang their impeachment hat, the US Ambassador to the European Union, testified that … well, the testimony went roughly as follows:
Ambassador: Orangeman specifically directed me to deliver a quid pro quo to a Ukrainian representative tying military aid to an investigation of Creepy Joe.
Republican committeeman question: Did he really?
Ambassador: No he did not.

For his part, the Ukrainian official who was named as receiving this ultimatum says the conversation never occurred.  However, because the democrats are in charge of the investigation, the official report concluded that this this and this that were both officially offered up, because facts are annoying things and democrats don’t like being annoyed.  In the end, all the testimony from the Foreign Service functionaries in [and, now, out] of the State Department consisted of nothing but contradictory assertions built upon presumption and policy gripes.  They didn’t like the way Donnie Combover wanted the United States to interact with Ukraine; they were perfectly happy with the way it was before when Barry Hussein let them do what they wanted.

The testimony of the Constitutional Law “experts” skewed heavily in favor of policy beefs being impeachable offenses.  Cheeto’s foreign policy made us “look bad” to the rest of the world. …as if we were seen as saints as angels prior to January 2017.

These “experts” are apparently from the same school of Constitutional Law expertise as Barry Hussein, who taught the subject, and who single-handedly discovered the Article II “phone and pen” clause, which he used extensively when given the opportunity.  None of these “experts” seemed to be aware that the President has sole Constitutional authority to conduct foreign policy, only needing Senate approval in formalizing any deals he makes. The president specifically does not need the permission of his employees in the State Department on which foreign policies to pursue.

Nor were they aware that the executive branch has the Constitutional obligation to enforce US law to the extent of its jurisdiction, and to elicit foreign assistance in the investigation of acts criminal under US law done by US citizens which occur in those foreign nations. …no matter who the alleged perp may be. …even if it is an opposition party politician. …even if he may be the candidate for president running against the current seat-holder.

To suggest what the “Constitutional experts” suggested is to declare that opposition party politicians are not subject to law, and thus above it − which calls into question the whole Barry Hussein administration “investigation” of candidate Combover thing.  The Constitutional Law “experts” appeared, ironically, to be completely unaware of this pillar of American Jurisprudence.

No matter.  The democrats created Articles of Impeachment containing two charges.  Charge the first: Obstruction of Congress.  Charge the second: Abuse of power.

Neither are infractions of any law and are not rationally considered the necessary “high crime or misdemeanor” required by the Constitution.  “Obstruction of Congress” isn’t even a thing.  If White House Loyyers advised Executive Branch employees to not testify in closed-door, Star Chamber inquisitions, and Committee Chairman Torquemada had an issue with it, his recourse is to take it to the courts and let − ultimately − the US Supreme Court decide whether those Executive Branch employees have to testify.

Only … and here’s the thing … this has happened countless times in the past.  The courts have always decided these pissing contests between co-equal branches of government in favor of the one being compelled by the other to do something.  Because “co-equal” does not require subservience.

Who knew?

This leaves “abuse of power” as the only meaningful [sic] case for impeachment, and it devolves entirely upon career Foreign Service wonks plying their tales of professional woe about the guy who’s got the Constitutional authority to direct foreign policy ordering his employees in the Foreign Service to do things his way and not his predecessor’s way.  Maybe elections do have consequences.  If the abuse of power were something specific, say, for instance, a president negotiating a treaty with Iran, in exchange for several billion dollars, to not build nuclear weapons [please] until that president left office, and then the president enacted that treaty without the approval of the Senate…

Ah, but that’s easily dismissed as partisan wutaboutism, isn’t it.  “Barry Hussein did it too!!!”  No, Barry Hussein did it at all; Donnie Combover did not.  But if what Barry Hussein did was so anti-constitutional, why didn’t his opposition raise a stink about it when it occurred?

This is a very good question.


The most obvious answer is: the opposition is in on it.  What exactly “it” is is the subject of numerous conspiracy theories and psychotic ramblings that I won’t go into.  The second-most obvious answer is that the opposition − republicans − are craven weenies.

The measure of all this will not simply be a procedural Senate reversal of the Articles of Impeachment based on failing to fulfill Constitutional requirements of having a “high crime or misdemeanor” charged.  Nor will it be a Senate acquittal − the foregone conclusion − of an Impeachment trial.

It will be based entirely upon whether or not Adam Schiff, Eric Ciaramella, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Hunter Biden, Creepy Joe Biden, Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Christopher Steele, any number of people at Fusion GPS and Cloud Strike, Hillary Clinton and Barry Hussein himself will be subpoenad as witnesses, under oath, in the Senate Impeachment trial, and later charged with fraud, forgery, prosecutorial misconduct, obstruction of justice, perjury, extortion, conspiracy to commit any and all, and oh, why not? an odd treason or two.

And then punished accordingly.