The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Good enough

    By Flavius on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 1:08pm |

    A friend summarized his career " Nixon had greatness thrust upon him...And he ducked."

    We've reached the half way point in Mueller's testimony with Nadler and the democrat's not having ducked. Providing  a coordinated opportunity for Mueller to demonstrate to a-I hope- substantial chunk of the country that the President 

    has earned several more years  after 2020 in a Federal involvement.  . Behind bars.

     

     

     

    Comments

    Wishful thinking. I wouldn't describe the Democrats as ducking. More like failing to rise to the occasion.


    by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 5:09pm

    Not sure exactly where that "failure to rise" is. This isn't 1973 with a reasonable number of Republicans who might be persuaded by logic to do the right thing and a heavy Democratic majority in both houses.

    While in some ways Mueller's investigation seems a disappointment, I don't really see where Democrats could have successfully short-circuited it or done an end around, especially before the new House majority took office around Jan 5, even knowing Trump was up to no good with the Whitaker and Barr appointments (while January we were still preoccupied with the government shutdown). The Mueller Report was submitted 1 1/2 months later (Mar 22), with a public redacted release a month later (Apr 18). Yes, it's been 3 months since then, but there have been a number of Congressional investigations going all this time, including outrageous non-cooperation and claims of executive privilege from the Executive Branch that further begs for impeachment.

    In the latest Pew poll, 60% of Republicans now view the Mueller Report as fair, up from 39% in January (before released) and 33% last September. So exactly what Pelosi's been begging for - bring the public along, educate them - has been happening. Today was another defining moment - perhaps not as good as it could have been, but likely good enough that opening impeachment hearings doesn't come across as a stretch, and a better chance that at conclusion the public will be putting pressure on their Senate representatives to follow through.

     

     


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 6:06pm

    Good points. Failure to rise? Impeachment commitee can be started early next year. It all must be timed to account for:

    1. The election is still more than a year away.

    2. Most impeachment reasons are already out there, who cares?..

    3. The beltway media will inevitably do the "but both sides partisan blah blah" opinion argumer "Bill Clinton, even worst behavior?, but helped him", relegating the whole thing to the need for the magic center Party David Brooks has fantasized about for 15 years (this shows the krupt duopoly!).

    4. Bombshells from (successful) subpoenas kept under wraps until close enough to the election so the beltway media can't bury it with "but whatabout Biden's Ukraine blah , Warren's corporate stuff/genetic test tribal blah, .....plus Newt and endless Republicans on TV calling it a sinister and unfair attack on a President, almost "like an assassination attempt" .

    5. Vote for impeachment should be close enough to election to energize Dems and remain in the brains of fence sitters long enough to discourage a vote for Trump.

    6.Since there is no requirement for the Senate to actually schedule and hold a trial, McConnell won't, he'll say it is a despicable  cowardly partisan attack and Trump doesn't need a trial, let the voters decide.

    That's why impeaching too early will be a losing proposition, it will be ancient history by the election as to voter impact if done too early, and discouraging to many Dems ('!eadershjp b!ows it again. outsmarted by McConnell" ..etc)


    by NCD on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 8:47pm

    Daily Beast is busy documenting/exaggerating 10 years of Epstein trying to schmooze Clinton as if there were an actual relationship - Epstein gives $10k to White House renovations, $20k to Clinton Foundation, but meanwhile there are *thousands* of people giving that much up to 100x ($20mill from the big hitters for AIDS in Africa, etc.).


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 07/25/2019 - 1:51am

    Speaking of 1973, John Dean retweeted these earlier today:

    and tweeted this 4 hrs. ago


    by artappraiser on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 8:43pm

    "Rest of the punditry" , beltway media, a!ready relegating this to the trash bin, as they would impeachment, see above.


    by NCD on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 8:50pm

    Meanwhile Trump posed with the new Presidential seal celebrating the Romanoffs and his golf clubs:

    (great security team you got there - shame if ...)


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 07/25/2019 - 2:00am

    & unveiled the infantruppen


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 07/26/2019 - 1:34am

    It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas? 

    Edit to add: Just askin', not concluding. One thing I learned in the past: the bubble of what was once known as "the progressive blogosphere", it can get to be a delusional influence if one is not careful about bias confirmation. Sometimes can get nearly as crazy as Qnon types. I read something a rightie wrote about the Rachel Maddow show a couple of weeks ago, how she appears to be feeding a need for her audience to have this and that gleeful new bit of discovered info. every day, that it's become like a reassuring daily ritual--this struck a cord with me. Sometimes I come across it playing and feel the need to scream "don't you ever cover anything else?" It also strikes me similar as months of nightly Geraldo show during the Clinton "vast right wing conspiracy."


    by artappraiser on Thu, 07/25/2019 - 1:35pm

    Daily Howler's been complaining about Rachel for .>10 years.


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 07/25/2019 - 2:38pm

    Now Daily Beast:

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-msnbc-host-krystal-ball-msnbcs-russia-c...


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 07/27/2019 - 12:54am

    thanks I like that, it sort of pegs what I felt about it especially this line Russia conspiracy was great for ratings among the key demographic of empty nesters on the coasts with too much time on their hands. Though she is doing some hyperbole herself there with the "irreparable damage to the left" thing. Sort of giving MSNBC more power than it has, methinks. It's more like this--the longer these show memes go on, the longer they milk it, just like Alex Jones or Qnon, eventually everyone hears about it and it becomes a label or a "brand" that the whole population understands. While if it's just milked for like a month or so, you're still only talking about a brand that only a very few news junkies and fans recognize. Here's the way I see it: junky fans wake up from gorging after months and go: what kind of bender did I just go on, why did I do that, lose all perspective and sense of balance?


    by artappraiser on Sat, 07/27/2019 - 2:02am

    I rarely watch tv news. Just the Sunday round table shows and occasional videos linked in the news articles I read. It likely that there was too much time and focus on Mueller and the collusion story. It may be they predicted too much from the probe. But I dislike calling it Russian conspiracy stories equivalent to infowars. I'm convinced there was real criminal activity and sufficient coordination with Trump's campaign to warrant impeachment. Impeachment in the end has to be somewhat political in that the process needs to educate the people about the crimes and convince them it warrants removal. Perhaps democrats don't want to do that but that doesn't mean the allegations are not real and supported by the evidence. They are not conspiracy theories.


    by ocean-kat on Sat, 07/27/2019 - 2:49pm

    The problem was the Louise Mensch "the Supreme Court has sent out special Marshals to deliver sealed indictments" kind of craziness, which Maddow likes latching onto. The accusations themselves have never been as unlikely as the thigh-rubbing certainty that Mueller was about to bring the whole government down with his super-exposé, but the end product while damning is a lot less sexy and wow-factor than predicted - it's a terribly damning lawyer's piece, but hard to get us out of our overwhelmed catatonic state, and still short a "he raped an underage girl on Main Street" super-bullet that we seem to require. (yes, Epstein may give us that yet, but then again, Roy Moore still ended up with nearly half the vote, so the new normal's shifted quite a bit)


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 07/27/2019 - 3:37pm


    by artappraiser on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 9:46pm

    Considering Mueller has taken oaths to defend the Constitution, and risked his life leading others in combat, for which he was decorated for valor, his performance was not exactly courageous, John Dean level.

    If he had said he personally believes the President has lied to him and the American people (hoax, witch hunt etc) there would be the usual gasps from the apparatchiks of the GOP, but no one, no one, could deny with his record, he has the absolute right to say that.

    All in all, a disappointment.


    by NCD on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 10:07pm

    Chekov: "God sees the truth. And waits."


    by Flavius on Wed, 07/24/2019 - 10:40pm

    At least some  Trump supporters who would have resisted a both -guns- blazing    Mueller presentation may have been convinced by his apparently reluctant stance. We'll see.


    by Flavius on Thu, 07/25/2019 - 7:42am

    Strikes me that Kristof is making a good point with this from his op-ed today:

    Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado: “Could you charge the president with a crime after he left office?”

    Mueller: “Yes.”

    Buck (sounding startled): “You believe you could charge the president of the United States with obstruction of justice after he left office?”

    Mueller: “Yes.”

    I wonder how that went over in the Trump family. This shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it creates one more reason Trump will be desperate to win re-election: Winning might keep him out of prison.

    And I'd add I think it's important to never forget that Trump is a narcissist uber allles. That there's no ideology there. I.E., in six months time he could be bashing Putin and Russia and claiming he can execute Elizabeth Warren's plans for the country better than she can...


    by artappraiser on Thu, 07/25/2019 - 1:55pm

    I am sure DT has the "moral flexibility" to swing that way. But doing so would belie the evidence of Kompromat from the Russians and the GOP.

    All the rational sounding parts of the 2016 campaign have been subsumed by the need for a corral filled with Jordans, Meadows, and Mitch. The cabinet filled with Lobbyists also puts a clamp on much freedom of movement with actual policy.


    by moat on Sat, 07/27/2019 - 3:41pm

    Unfortunate that people find it useful to spend energy this way, but there is a group of scholars who have expertise at Trump Twitter now and I am finding that they can always attest to his flexibility as to ideology and policy. For example, today:

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 07/28/2019 - 4:16pm