The Carpentariat

Now it's Warren's night in the barrel

CBS News:

Fresh out of the University of Houston, Warren was hired by the Riverdale Board of Education in New Jersey as a speech pathologist for the 1970-1971 school year. Since she began her campaign for the presidency, she has repeatedly said that she was "shown the door" after just a year as a result of her pregnancy….

The "showed me the door" anecdote came up often on the campaign trail until recently. And now some outlets have found a 2007 interview Warren gave in which she presents the story in a different light…. "I was pregnant with my first baby, so I had a baby and stayed home for a couple of years."

I now report on CBS News' report on the Washington Free Beacon's reporting — that's how this racket works — on "a transcript from contemporaneous local school board meetings":

...

"Asked about [the change in her] in her stump speech, Warren told CBS News she 'actually hadn't noticed' she does not reference her [sexist ] firing … anymore."

To be clear, I could not care less that Warren created her story for political reasons and later changed her story for political reasons. That's what experienced politicians and smartly aspiring politicians do. 

My point, rather, is as simple and self-evident as politicians' tergiversations:

The media subdued its attention to Warren as frontrunner Joe Biden was taking sensationalist beatings from Trump; the bruised-Biden coverage also included, without fail, cringeworthy stories on his negative "baggage"; those stories have withered from readers' familiarity with them; it's now time for possibly frontrunner Warren's sensationalist beatings, soon to be accompanied by cringeworthy stories on her negative baggage — which emerged and accumulated, of course, from the media's overblown attention to her beatings.

Those who believe that Biden is unfavorably unique because of his "gaffes" and other rhetorical missteps, intended or not, have been paying insufficient attention to the troubled marriage of American politics and American media for roughly the last four centuries.

The new (mob) boss? Just like the old boss.

White House aides insist that the greatest danger to humanity and least competent presidente of a fledgling banana republic, Donald J. Trump, never gave fellow despot-in-training, Recep Erdogan of Turkey, the go-ahead to cross the Syrian border and whack our last remaining ally, the Kurds. But like all pronunciamentos that vomit from this White House, their insistence is a lie. Erdogan "told Mr. Trump [on Sunday] that he was finally moving forward" against the Syrian Kurds, reports the NY Times.

As a formality, Trump replied that that was something he could not endorse. "But rather than hold back Mr. Erdogan anymore, Mr. Trump got off the call and promptly issued a late-night statement" saying he would withdraw American troops near the Syrian border which had served to discourage Turkey's murderous aggression.

This, as we know from — as we are told by — sundry news sources, is something up with which Republican lawmakers finally would not put. Senate Majority Obstructionist Mitch McConnell saw extraordinary peril in a "precipitous withdrawal." Sen. Marco Rubio lambasted the president's "grave mistake that will have implications far beyond Syria." Sen. Lindsey Graham rang up Trump's top national security advisers, "Fox & Friends," to grumble that the commander in chief's treachery is "shortsighted," "irresponsible" and "unnerving."

The prince of darkness' spawn, Rep. Liz Cheney, declared that a "catastrophic mistake" way underway. And when it came to outsider disgruntlement, included was GOP spiritual adviser of cosmic befuddlement, Pat Robertson: "[Trump] is in great danger of losing the mandate of Heaven," he prattled, in what has to be evangelicalism's unintentionally funniest sarcasm ever.

But Trump's superlative threat is, reportedly, Sen. Mitt Romney — and all that relates to him. Of the president's unmistakably reckless decision to abandon the Kurds and pull out of Syria, the senator correctly labeled the act "a betrayal." This came on the heels of Romney's criticism — "wrong and appalling" — of "the president’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden."

Any criticism of the hypersensitive president is, of course, unbearable to same. But, we're further informed, what makes Romney such a peerless threat to the president is the senator's potential to sway the more cowardly toward an openly anti-Trump position. Writes Vanity Fair's Gabriel Sherman: "Romney has been reaching out privately to key players in the Republican resistance, according to a person briefed on the conversations. 'Romney is the one guy who could bring along Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Ben Sasse. Romney is the pressure point in the impeachment process." The kicker, as reported: "That’s why," continued the person briefed, "the things he’s saying are freaking Republicans out.'"

And there is this, also from Sherman: "'The Syria decision is a much bigger deal,' [a] former West Wing official said. 'No one on the inside can hold Trump accountable. The Senate Republicans are the only check on power right now.'"

Both quotes — from the "person briefed" and the former West Winger's reinforcement of that person — are the cause of my having earlier emphasized "reportedly" in connection to Trump's superlative threat: the collective threat of Romney; Romney's possibly persuasive powers; the potential senatorial results of those powers; and Trump's self-destructive behavior toward China, Ukraine and Syria, which, far worse, threatens U.S. security.

Why, reportedly, is the president only now threatened by these personalities and events? Well before inauguration day and then beyond, Trump has consistently demonstrated his absolute unfitness for the office he holds. From his mocking of the disabled to siding with Vladimir Putin's charade versus the factual findings of U.S. intelligence, never has there been an instance of Trump's presidential fitness. Never. His unfitness has not become worse. It's of the same extreme, just more reported.

Just as consistent has been his radical, profoundly nonconservative and intellectually barren base of support, which is what threatened Republican lawmakers should they ever threaten Trump. That was true yesterday, it's true today, and it will be true tomorrow. Like Trump's screaming unfitness for office, so are Republican lawmakers silently unfit for national service.

Notwithstanding Mitt Romney, a handful of other Republicans, and the most recent upheavals, nothing has changed. Not a damn thing. Trump and his party are, and will remain, an affront to decency, a contemptible negation of American values, and a threat to humanity. All of which is just more reported.

Trump's god-resistant stupidity, and journalists' worrisome reinforcement of it

It's not merely ignorance on his part. It is, rather, a rare kind of stupidity that makes Fabulinas, the Roman god who teaches children to speak, wish he could quit his otherwise rewarding job, since some of his charges grow up to be Trumps.

....This makes Nervous Nancy every bit as guilty as Liddle’ Adam Schiff for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and even Treason. I guess that means that they, along with all of those that evilly “Colluded” with them, must all be immediately Impeached!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2019

We draw on our powers of interpretation, granted us by Wen Qu, the Chinese god of "flourishing language," in discerning that by impeachment Trump means expulsion from Congress, since there is no constitutional provision for impeaching its members. Nor does this backward child of maltemperament possess any White House aides willing to tell the irascible toddler that he sounds like a real idiot, which he is.

However something of nearly equal concern is that I've yet to read a news piece on Trump's Impeach-Pelosi-Schiff babble in which the reporter troubles him- or herself to inform readers that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS IMPEACHING A CONGRESSPERSON. 

Perhaps Articles, the Mycenaean god of journalism, simply hung up his sharply pointed stones and clay tablets when he realized, upon the deaths of H.L. Mencken and Jimmy Breslin, that his supernal aspirations had vaporized beyond all mortal hope. 

As if there were legitimate grounds for appeal

Bloomberg Politics:

A federal appeals court granted President Donald Trump a last-minute reprieve in his effort to block a New York subpoena for his tax records, delaying a federal judge’s ruling from taking effect....

The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York granted an emergency stay, after U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero earlier in the day rejected Trump’s request for an injunction blocking the subpoena for the records. Trump asserted broad claims of presidential immunity from criminal investigation, extending to his company and business associates as well. But the judge found the assertion overly broad and dismissed Trump’s argument, saying it 'would constitute an overreach  of executive power.'"

To which, no doubt, Trump's lawyers promptly responded, Well what in hell is wrong with that? What else, Judge, do you think we've been doing for the last three years? No one has bothered us till now.

But not to worry, my little Trumpian chickadees. In rather short order the president's personal Supreme Court will adjudicate the issue in a fair, nonpartisan manner. And then find for Trump.

A sunny day for ISIS, a dark day for the U.S.

This shameful act should enhance the U.S.'s three-year, whiplash reputation for America and Foreign Dictatorships First — allies last:

In a major shift in United States military policy in Syria, the White House said on Sunday that President Trump had given his endorsement for a Turkish military operation that would sweep away American-backed Kurdish forces near the border in Syria…. Kurdish fighters … have been the United States’ most reliable partner in fighting the Islamic State in a strategic corner of northern Syria….

Many Syria experts criticized the White House decision and cautioned that American abandonment of its Kurdish allies could widen the eight-year Syrian conflict and prompt the Kurds to ally with the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad to combat the much larger and more technologically advanced Turkish army.

Trump's typically ill-considered order and betrayal of the Syrian Democratic Forces, among whom Kurdish fighters are a major contingent, should serve as yet another and indeed final warning to every pro-democracy movement that the United States has checked out of the freedom business, and gone as roguish as Putin's Russia. Its word means much more than nothing, as many critics will contend. Its word is now a reliable precursor to global treachery — and no one at home can stop this sociopathic, touched-by-madness commander in chief:

"Trump’s decision goes against the recommendations of top officials in the Pentagon and the State Department who have sought to keep a small troop presence in northeast Syria to continue operations against the Islamic State, or ISIS, and to act as a critical counterweight to Iran and Russia" (emphasis mine).

Meanwhile, chalk up another win for Trump's villainous friends of the world. His villainy is but proof, as the NY Times puts it, of increasingly dictatorial Recep Erdogan's "influence with Mr. Trump on Syria policy."

**

Incidentally, another betrayal in progress:

"In his phone call in June with Chinese President Xi Jinping — in addition to seeking his involvement in our election, which he then publicly repeated — Trump reportedly sold out the people of Hong Kong, who for months have been rallying in the streets for the democratic rights they are owed."

— from Joe Biden's Saturday, Washington Post op-ed

American ignorance is now bipartisan

The American electorate is up to its usual, crackerjack comprehension of the news beyond sensationalist headlines. Although Joe Biden did nothing untoward, unethical or illegal in Ukraine when he was vice president — an uncontested fact that has been corroborated by Ukraine's judicial system and unrelentingly researched, printed and broadcast by journalists — the average voter is buying into Trump's rancid lies about the former vice president.

This short story, for instance, from a Las Vegas Biden volunteer is anecdotal, nonetheless ringingly true. "I know it’s getting in the way," said the volunteer about Trump's propaganda war against Biden. "When I do the phone banking, at first people said 'Well, I’m thinking about Joe or I’m leaning toward Joe.' Now, the people that do pick up the phone, they say, 'Well if he wants to collect money, why doesn’t he just get it from Ukraine?'"

This helps to explain Biden's comparatively poor, third-quarter fundraising total of $15 million — Bernie Sanders raised $10 million more, even though he's never been the frontrunner, and never will be — and even though the third quarter of summer is, empirically, a difficult one. What the volunteer's tale unconditionally explains, however, is that the average American voter is by now indifferent to truth and about as well informed as a fungus beetle.

Including his candidacy, it would seem that 4.5 years of Trump's prima facie buffoonish and prodigious falsehoods have taught the average voter virtually nothing. Moreover, the average voter in the volunteer's story is defined by average Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, since local party organizations would call no one else. And evidently those voters as ill schooled, unread and out of touch as your average Trumpeteer.

"My sense is the person who is getting the best of this is Elizabeth Warren. She’s not being attacked. And she’s raising money," said former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu. “She has a plan for everything except for how to beat Donald Trump…. She says she can do all these things. There’s a thing called political reality…. Aspiration is wonderful, but you can’t eat aspiration for lunch and send your kids to college on it. That’s a fundamental decision that Democratic primary voters need to make a decision on," concluded Landrieu.

Well, they're making that decision, and so far they're deciding in droves to support perhaps the least electable candidate, excluding Sanders, in part because Trump has spooked Democrats — ill read in the truth and most else of current value — about Biden's profoundly untrue, corrupt past.

Warren's tireless campaigning and sprawling proposals may be impressive, but her endorsement of Sanders' deeply unthoughtful Medicare for All plan won't be so impressive when Trump's deafening Socialism! alarms go off and moderate voters in the general election choose Trump as the lesser of evils.

Reports the Washington Post: "If it starts to look like Warren will win the party’s nomination, a longtime Democratic bundler said, 'there will be efforts to stop that.'" Good luck. Democrats have largely obliterated the principal means to a sane nomination in the face of potential-nominee disaster: superdelegates.

What could stop all this foolishness? An informed Democratic base, which also thinks strategically. But ...

Only Democrats would give the president the opponent he wants. https://t.co/fCjjg6GFsD

— The Carpentariat (@CarpenterPM) October 5, 2019

The genius of Virginia Woolf

"Auto-Theory as an Emerging Mode of Feminist Practice Across Media" — an incomprehensible string of words which are followed by, for instance, "Joan Hawkins describes Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick (1998) as 'theoretical fiction,' meaning not simply fiction informed by theory but fiction in which 'theory becomes an intrinsic part of the "plot,'" a mover and shaker in the fictional universe created by the author"; "a trans-medial, feminist and queer feminist practice that manifests across fiction, critical writing, sound" … and so on, until you're lost in a wicked wonderland of little but words, and even less meaning. 

Virginia Woolf would have been appalled by such boilerplate gibberish. She sought simplicity and directness in the written language, which she discovered not in James Joyce's modernism, but her own. Entirely her own and, to my taste, a better "her own." This uniqueness of voice and style made her an extraordinary novelist of such masterpieces and minor masterpieces as Mrs. Dalloway, The Voyage Out, To the Lighthouse and Night and Day, any one of which one can pick up and wallow in a day or two of sheer joy.

In this post, however, I'd prefer to recall Woolf's foundational feminist work, which, in contrast to the opening quotes of this post, must have enthralled her readers by its straightforward profundity. Her chief non-fiction volume was a combination of two lectures delivered at the University of Cambridge's women's colleges, published in 1929 and written in simple, which is to say, difficult, English under the title, A Room of One's Own.

Having just now fruitlessly searched for my copy, I recall I loaned it to my daughter. Telling you that is in truth my excuse for having to resort to Wikipedia to excise a few exemplary quotes from A Room of One's Own. 

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." (I suppose plentiful money would have secured a woman a room of her own in the 1920s, thus designating money the senior partner; further putting an impoverished woman of unplumbed literary talent at an almost insurmountable disadvantage. That remains true today, to her loss and ours.)  

Historically, "to have a room of her own, let alone a quiet room or a sound-proof room, was out of the question, unless her parents were exceptionally rich or very noble, even up to the beginning of the nineteenth century."

On lesbianism — in the still-culturally muffled 1920s! "Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women."

Woolf's most insightful passage? What follows is a strong contender, perhaps the strongest.

"Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time. Indeed if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some would say greater.

"But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out, she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room. A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words and profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read; scarcely spell; and was the property of her husband."

Born in 1882, Virginia Woolf drowned herself in 1941 just after writing a brief letter to her husband, saying "You have given me the greatest possible happiness…, [but] I can't fight ['this terrible disease,' depression] any longer."

Yet her legacy and influence on both women and men writers will endure forever. 

GOP to America: Trump's been a bad boy. But impeachment?

If you have watched any of Tucker Carlson's primetime show on Fox News lately, you'll know that his 3 Oct. opinion piece in the Daily Caller, cowritten with the publication's publisher, Neil Patel, is a nearly pivotal shift in his impeachment presentations. Sweepingly titled "The Truth About Impeachment," it's also schizophrenic, since it diverges in sentiment from Carlson's on-air ravings of obliviousness and denial — his non-stop coddling, that is, of the most devoted Trumpeteers.

"Donald Trump should not have been on the phone with a foreign head of state encouraging another country to investigate his political opponent, Joe Biden," write Carlson and Patel. "Some Republicans are trying, but there’s no way to spin this as a good idea…. Once those in control of our government use it to advance their political goals, we become just another of the world’s many corrupt countries."

That's an astounding passage, with Carlson moving from "Why all the fuss?" to acknowledging Trump's corruption and debasement of American foreign policy. What follows, though, is more of the shifty Tucker we all know. He asks the "key question" of "whether the president’s actions, advisable or not [he just wrote they are not], rise to the level of an impeachable offense"? You'll be less astounded to read Tucker's answer: "It’s hard to argue they do."

He then fortifies his embattled position with gross misrepresentations. "The president did not, as was first reported, offer a quid pro quo to the Ukrainians. He did not condition any U.S. support on a Biden investigation" — which is but a restatement of the first statement. And "the Justice Department has already looked at the totality of the call and determined that Trump did not break the law."

Yes, and in 2002, every last one of Iraq's 11.5 million voters reelected Saddam Hussein as president. Had Bill Barr been in charge of that glorious event, Saddam would have won by 110 percent.

Of course Trump broke the law, as even a cursory reading of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act tells us — along with extortion, bribery, witness tampering, wire fraud, obstruction of justice and obstruction of Congress — and that's before we get to the Constitution's fundamental precepts of foreign perils. In addition, the far right is still hammering at the "no quid pro quo" excuse, while even though one is not needed to prosecute a strong impeachment case, Trump brazenly coughed one up on the phone with Ukraine.

In fact, as James Madison would also tell us, Trump's wretched behavior and demonstrable unfitness for office have been quite enough — by themselves — to justify impeachment. Said a "former White House official" to the NY Times: "There was a constant undercurrent in the Trump administration of [senior staff] who were genuinely horrified by the things they saw that were happening on these calls. Phone calls that were embarrassing, huge mistakes he made, months and months of work that were upended by one impulsive tweet."

Carlson himself detracts from what he suggests is "the political class's" detraction from what is really important: "They definitely don’t want to address seriously the issues that drove voters to the radical step of voting in Trump as our president — issues such as income inequality, economic stagnation and our broken immigration system."

These are peculiar issues to raise in Trump's defense. He has only exacerbated income inequality, is sponsoring the economic stagnation to come, and has turned a broken immigration system into a scandalous outrage.

Carlson and Patel close with a somewhat conventional argument: Having acknowledged Trump's assorted malfeasances, "how about we let [the 'American people'] sort all this out? There’s no need to come up with thin excuses for a purely partisan impeachment process when we have an election right around the corner."

Which is pathetically laughable, since the cowriters have conceded not merely a touch of Trumpian wrongdoing, but the squalid advancement of the president's "political goals," thus rendering us "just another of the world’s many corrupt countries."

Still, Carlson and Patel's singularly convoluted argument is a notch above the multiplicity of convoluted arguments presented by Republicans so far — and almost certainly the one, in the end, they'll stick with. Just as House Democrats will narrowly concentrate on Trump's impeachable offenses in connection with Ukraine and China, so will Republicans concentrate on the per-force inadequate yet solitarily comprehensible defense of let-the-election-substitute-for-impeachment.

What else, after all, can the party of unindicted co-conspirators really do?

Fox is on this

Friday, 7:06 p.m. EST

Fox News, top of the hour, is covering all the latest, breaking news on Trump's wide-ranging corruption by interviewing ...

Rudy Giuliani!

"We may find out the Obama administration was one of the most corrupt in American history."

"This could have been stopped in 2015 if we had [had] an honest president."

Women's reproductive rights to be abused again by their Male Masters of the Unibench

Politico was the first to report today that the Supreme Court "will review Louisiana abortion restrictions [June Medical Services v. Gee] that could leave the state with just one abortion provider, in a case that gives the high court's new conservative majority a chance to redefine abortion rights.

"The Louisiana law would require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges to a nearby hospital. It is similar to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down in 2016, finding it posed an undue burden on a woman's constitutional right to access an abortion."

Chief Justice Roberts ruled in favor of upholding Texas' undue burden. Justice Kennedy opposed it in a 5-3 ruling. Kennedy has since been replaced by anti-reproductive-rights Justice Kavanaugh, joined earlier by fellow anti-rights Justice Gorsuch. The Court's present composition almost unquestionably means a 5-4 ruling in favor of Louisiana's undue burden.

And for that we can thank Russia, the Electoral College, 63 million unAmerican ignoramuses and unChristian evangelicals, Democratic idlers, racism, and misogyny.

Ukraine's saddest day since regaining its … freedom?

That inevitable story, from the Wall Street Journal:

Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office said Friday it is reviewing past investigations into the owner of a gas company linked to former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s son….

The Burisma cases, closed in 2016, didn’t focus on Hunter Biden but rather tax irregularities at the company, as well as money-laundering and illegal-enrichment allegations related to the owner….

Following the call [of 25 July, Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky has said that he wouldn’t abide by pressure from Mr. Trump and stressed the independence of Ukraine’s law-enforcement agencies.

And so a once-proud and sovereign nation, now groaning under the relentless strains of Russian expansionism and U.S. bullying, is, in effect, reduced to a fiefdom of Trump and his malignant, metastasizing corruption. The country has simply exchanged one historical master for a present other, even if we're not bombing it or patrolling its streets with armed militia.

What was Ukraine to do? Extortion victims are, well, victimized precisely because they have no choice. It's do, die, or have both legs broken — which in Ukraine's case would mean substantial military defenselessness against Putin's imperialist brutality. Yet surely Ukrainians have no problem with being extorted by the U.S.' top mob boss, rather than Russia's, don't you agree?

The questions remaining are: In the post-Trump world, how long will it take the U.S. to reestablish a global reputation for the good? And among the Democratic presidential candidates, who has the most international-relations experience to pave that particular long road?  

The fetid chronicle of Trump's extortion

The Washington Post:

"House Republicans emerged from Volker’s day-long deposition saying that nothing Volker had said damaged the president and that there was no proof Trump had sought a quid pro quo [which he did, although that's irrelevant to the impeachment inquiry]. Rep. Jim Jordan, one of Trump’s most aggressive defenders, said on Twitter that 'the facts we learned today from Ambassador Volker undercut the salacious narrative that @RepAdamSchiff is using to sell his impeachment ambitions.'"

Without shuffling into all the weeds, let's review the evidence provided to the House by former special U.S. envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, which Jordan claimed is presidentially exculpatory. Other figures mentioned here are U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland; U.S. charges d’affaires in Ukraine, William Taylor; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; and Andrey Yermak, an aide to Zelensky.

"Most impt is for Zelensky to say that he will help the [Burisma, and by extension, Hunter Biden] investigation," texted Volker to Sondland on July 19.

"heard from White House — assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate / 'get to the bottom of what happened' in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington," texted Volker to Yermak, July 25, the day of Trump's notorious phone call to, or from, Zelensky.

A fortnight later, Trump remained opposed to a Zelensky meeting — until he publicly promised the aforementioned investigation would ensue.

"I think potus really wants the deliverable," Sondland texted to Volker, 9 Aug. "To avoid misunderstandings, might be helpful to ask Andrey [Yermak] for a draft statement (embargoed) so that we can see exactly what they propose to cover."

Aug. 10, Zelensky appeared agreeable to committing to the Burisma/Biden investigation in conjunction with a Zelensky/Trump meeting. "Once we have a date, will call for a press briefing, announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of US-UKRAINE relationship, including among other things Burisma and election meddling in investigations," texted Zelensky aide Yermak.

Sept. 1: "Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?" texted Taylor to Sondland. Replies Sondland: "Call me."

Sept. 9: Another Taylor text to Sondland: "As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign." Taylor added that Trump's withholding of military aid to Ukraine had produced a "nightmare scenario."

Sondland's text response to Taylor, in which he again realizes the damning digital trail he and Taylor were leaving: "The president has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind. The president is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that president zelensky promised during his campaign I suggest we stop the back and forth by text."

After all that, Rep. Jim Jordan could still tweet that "the facts we learned today from Ambassador Volker undercut the salacious narrative that @RepAdamSchiff is using to sell his impeachment ambitions."

What better evidence of Jim Jordan's certain knowledge that the great majority of his Twitter following resides in an Earth-unaffiliated solar system? He knows that, later that day, those harder-core Republicans will be tuned to Tucker Carlson's oblivion, Sean Hannity's viciousness, and Laura Ingraham's sarcasm — anything but the facts of Trump's perfidy.

A GOP jackass and his fountain of lies

In Rep. Jim Jordan, Trump has a worthy rival in the prevarication department. Jordan's specialty, outside of his mountainous bamboozlement of the right-wing rabble, is his inhuman ability to hold forth for several minutes without ever taking a breath. (Or, perhaps he has studied under professional saxophonists, who possess the dazzling skill of breathing out as they breath in, thus enabling them to hold a single note for a mesmerizingly long time.) 

I missed Jake Tapper's 29 Sept. interview of this respiratory marvel, so I looked it up on YouTube. It's a valuable 11 minutes, in that Jordan manages to compactly though repetitiously spew every Trumpian talking point in machine-gun succession, which largely overpowers Tapper's opportunities to let loose with a few actual facts. This, I'm sure you've noticed, is a common tactic among the right's more notable crackpots.

Nevertheless, the CNN host does an admirable job — when permitted — of kicking bits of the real world into Jordan's cesspool of a brain. While it's disconcerting that such a prevaricating windbag serves in the U.S. House of Representatives, it's positively ghoulishly dreadful that voters put him there. Imagine what little of iconic America would be left if there were 435 Jordans in the House and 100 in the Senate — which is precisely the kind of Reichstag assemblage today's Republicans so much desire. With the hellish fascist in the White House, they'd have their heaven on earth.

First pour a drink, pop some Valium and grab a barf-bag, if you so choose to watch the following freak show of immense disingenuity:

Below is Trump's considered strategy to battle impeachment

 

 

 

 

Is this the end of the Sanders campaign?

Something doesn't add up, here:

"Sanders, who is 78, has canceled all of his campaign events 'until further notice" [following a stent procedure]….

"Wednesday morning, the Sanders campaign canceled $1.3 million in television ad buys in Iowa."

Either the Sanders campaign doesn't know what it's doing or its spokesperson was fibbing about the ad cancellation being "just a postponement."

Wouldn't Sanders' on-air presence be more vital than ever now that he can't be present himself? In addition, his rosy health status (as his spokespeople would have us believe) is incommensurate with the standard recovery from his stent procedure:

"People are generally out of bed and moving around within a day or two," said cardiologist Daniel Munoz to NBC News. "We tell people to take it easy for about a week before returning to a full schedule."

Something is rotten in Las Vegas.

Oh, and I'd wager Joe Biden is flying the world's best cardiologists to Bernie Sanders' bed today.