A Republican Congressman was asked by a reporter if he thought Michael Cohen would tell the truth to the committee this time.
"No," the man said.
So I guess the question is: Why bother to listen to the words of a known liar?
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for one, said it was laughable for anyone to take a convicted liar at his word.
Michael Cohen, who was for many years a "fixer" for alleged real estate titan Donald Trump, will shortly enter jail for, among other crimes, lying under oath to Congress about Trump's plans to build a residential tower in Moscow. It seems he lied to obscure the fact that the presidential candidate had financial interests in Russia that persisted for longer than he wanted folks to know.
Now Cohen is expected to testify he was influenced to lie by his boss, Donald Trump. The problem is getting folks to believe him.
In court, a person who changes his previous sworn testimony can expect to be asked the standard question by skeptical attorneys: "Were you lying then or are you lying now?"
The idea is to place doubt in the minds of jurors. And it works.
Either way, you see, the individual is (or was) a liar. And once a liar, always a liar. Nothing they say now will count for much.
About all a person can do is attempt to correct the record, then slink away. Maybe it will do some good in the long run. And maybe not.
People lie for a variety of reasons: to protect themselves, to protect loved ones, to make themselves look better (or worse) than they are.
People even confess to crimes they didn't commit, often to get away from an interrogator with an overbearing personality, many of which lie to the suspect, saying he'll be able to go home and sleep in his own bed tonight.
Once he has signed the confession.
That, of course, doesn't happen. But at least you can get out of that room and into a cell where the guy is not pounding away on you.
(A better way to get out of that room is to request a lawyer, but innocent folks don't want to look guilty. Cops can use that against you.)
Folks make false confessions out of desperation, but they still hold out hope. Surely the evidence of the case will exonerate them. Then they get to court and find out jurors fixate on confessions (which are simple) and ignore complicated physical evidence they can't understand.
The fact those confessions were later withdrawn hardly matters.
("Were you lying then or are you lying now?")
Once you start lying, you're doomed.
Michael Cohen will have to prove that his lies were so obvious nobody should be able to use them to impeach his current statements. Backing himself up with documentary evidence would help, but it probably won't be enough for Republicans bent on supporting their party's leader no matter what.
"More lies," they'll say.
And being politicians, they can maintain that position even if they secretly believe everything Cohen is now saying. Which, lucky for them, is a way of lying they won't have to be held accountable for.
Because when the dust settles, it's better to be thought an idiot than a liar. Plus you can say you were just being loyal, and that counts for quite a lot in politics.
Unless you're Michael Cohen and your loyalty was to Donald Trump.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
"IT'S A TRAP!"
In interviews promoting his new book, former Acting Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe mentioned the fact that his boss at the Justice Department (Rod Rosenstein) suggested Trump might be removed from office by means of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.
McCabe says the suggestion was one of many thrown out during a chaotic conversation following the election of Donald Trump (over which hung the possibility of Russian intervention).
Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican, South Carolina) jumped on this comment and demanded to know the details. He wants to know if these men committed treason by discussing the 25th Amendment. He wants to haul the gentlemen in question before a Senate committee and get to the bottom of it.
For his part, Rosenstein implied he was joking. Same when he suggested he wear a wire in his meetings with the new president. Just joking.
McCabe says he didn't get that impression.
According to the 25th Amendment, the president can declare himself unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, at which point the vice president will take over as acting president until such time as the president says he's ready to go back to work.
In addition, should the vice president and a majority of the executive department declare to the leaders of both houses of Congress that the president cannot do his job properly, the vice president shall become acting president. If the president objects, Congress has to vote on the matter. It takes a two-thirds majority in both houses to remove the president against his will.
It is not specified what sort of reasons might be valid for removing the president. In the case where the president himself ops out, it would probably be because of mental or physical impairment. (Woodrow Wilson was so wiped out by the death of his wife he was pretty much a basket case; at the time there was no way to deal with that.)
In the case of others piling on the president and trying to remove him, the reasons might not be limited to mental or physical health. If it could be shown the president was in the thrall of a foreign power, he might be considered unfit to do his job.
On several important issues (Russian interference in the 2016 election and the nuclear missile capabilities of North Korea), Donald Trump has ignored the opinions of the US intelligence community in favor of input from Vladimir Putin.
Something like this might be put forward as a reason why Trump cannot be allowed to remain president.
As usual, politics looms over the issue. Trump says he got no help from Russia in his election, and loyal Republicans just naturally agree.
But there are also mental health matters. Several Senators (including Republicans) have labeled the president a pathological liar. Is that a mental condition that might rise to the level of incapacitation? If not, can a tendency to lie repeatedly be seen as an impediment to the proper operation of the presidency?
These are all questions that might reasonably be discussed in the context of the 25th Amendment.
But here's a worrisome point: Senator Lindsey Graham, who supports the president in most things, appears to have declared the mere mention of the 25th Amendment a treasonous act.
Maybe the Senator would be okay with the president sidelining himself, but what if others make the move? If they failed to get a two-thirds vote in their favor, would the vice president and a majority of the cabinet end up in prison? Or worse?
You may recall Benjamin Franklin saying (in the run-up to the American Revolution) the plotters needed to hang together or they'd all hang separately. What they were doing was treason, don't forget, and punishable by death.
Is the 25th Amendment an invitation to treason? It could be, depending on how you look at it. You have to be careful around that thing.
In another context (and in another galaxy, far far away) Admiral Ackbar once famously said: "It's a trap!"
Might those words also be accurate in reference to the 25th Amendment?
McCabe says the suggestion was one of many thrown out during a chaotic conversation following the election of Donald Trump (over which hung the possibility of Russian intervention).
Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican, South Carolina) jumped on this comment and demanded to know the details. He wants to know if these men committed treason by discussing the 25th Amendment. He wants to haul the gentlemen in question before a Senate committee and get to the bottom of it.
For his part, Rosenstein implied he was joking. Same when he suggested he wear a wire in his meetings with the new president. Just joking.
McCabe says he didn't get that impression.
According to the 25th Amendment, the president can declare himself unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, at which point the vice president will take over as acting president until such time as the president says he's ready to go back to work.
In addition, should the vice president and a majority of the executive department declare to the leaders of both houses of Congress that the president cannot do his job properly, the vice president shall become acting president. If the president objects, Congress has to vote on the matter. It takes a two-thirds majority in both houses to remove the president against his will.
It is not specified what sort of reasons might be valid for removing the president. In the case where the president himself ops out, it would probably be because of mental or physical impairment. (Woodrow Wilson was so wiped out by the death of his wife he was pretty much a basket case; at the time there was no way to deal with that.)
In the case of others piling on the president and trying to remove him, the reasons might not be limited to mental or physical health. If it could be shown the president was in the thrall of a foreign power, he might be considered unfit to do his job.
On several important issues (Russian interference in the 2016 election and the nuclear missile capabilities of North Korea), Donald Trump has ignored the opinions of the US intelligence community in favor of input from Vladimir Putin.
Something like this might be put forward as a reason why Trump cannot be allowed to remain president.
As usual, politics looms over the issue. Trump says he got no help from Russia in his election, and loyal Republicans just naturally agree.
But there are also mental health matters. Several Senators (including Republicans) have labeled the president a pathological liar. Is that a mental condition that might rise to the level of incapacitation? If not, can a tendency to lie repeatedly be seen as an impediment to the proper operation of the presidency?
These are all questions that might reasonably be discussed in the context of the 25th Amendment.
But here's a worrisome point: Senator Lindsey Graham, who supports the president in most things, appears to have declared the mere mention of the 25th Amendment a treasonous act.
Maybe the Senator would be okay with the president sidelining himself, but what if others make the move? If they failed to get a two-thirds vote in their favor, would the vice president and a majority of the cabinet end up in prison? Or worse?
You may recall Benjamin Franklin saying (in the run-up to the American Revolution) the plotters needed to hang together or they'd all hang separately. What they were doing was treason, don't forget, and punishable by death.
Is the 25th Amendment an invitation to treason? It could be, depending on how you look at it. You have to be careful around that thing.
In another context (and in another galaxy, far far away) Admiral Ackbar once famously said: "It's a trap!"
Might those words also be accurate in reference to the 25th Amendment?
Friday, February 15, 2019
EMERGENCY
President Trump has now signed the spending bill presented to him by Congress, avoiding another partial government shutdown. In doing so, he has agreed to accept several hundred million dollars LESS than was on the table before he was "proud" to send the federal government into the longest shutdown in history.
That's a move that will not go down well with his supporters.
But he has a plan to turn all that around: declaring a national emergency.
Trump has repeatedly warned everybody that he has an "absolute right" to declare an emergency to bypass Congress for funds to build his big, beautiful wall.
(He's back to calling it a "wall" again, chastising folks for politicizing this vital structure by calling it anything else. Though he was the only one doing that.)
Now he's declared his emergency.
Why didn't he do it earlier? One reason was because he knew there was the risk of getting sued over his spurious declaration. And he will undoubtedly BE sued.
The other, nastier reason is this: He thought he could bully Nancy Pelosi into giving in to him. Thus proving he has the upper hand, like a strong president should have.
Like a strong MAN should have.
Instead, he proved he's merely devious. Not that we didn't already know this.
And here's the problem he's ignoring: Every twist and turn of this funding process only serves to remind folks that this country was NOT the one that was supposed to be paying for the wall.
At every campaign rally where he blasted out his key promise for a humongous border wall, the biggest response was always the second part, when he stated that MEXICO was going to be paying for the damned thing. Those guys were the problem, after all, sending their rapists and so forth into America, so it made sense they would be the ones responsible for ponying up the mazuma.
Trump will no doubt repeat his bizarre notion that because of his greatly superior new trade agreement, Mexico IS paying for the wall.
It's a position that makes about as much sense as his claim he meant to say "wouldn't" instead of "would" at the press conference in Helsinki, putting Putin ON the hook instead of taking him OFF the hook for meddling in our 2016 election.
Trump's biggest delusion is that he's so beloved by the people of America we all rush to buy whatever nonsense he deigns to let drop from his petulant lips.
He is, after all, a political Einstein. Who among us "wouldn't" listen to him?
That's a move that will not go down well with his supporters.
But he has a plan to turn all that around: declaring a national emergency.
Trump has repeatedly warned everybody that he has an "absolute right" to declare an emergency to bypass Congress for funds to build his big, beautiful wall.
(He's back to calling it a "wall" again, chastising folks for politicizing this vital structure by calling it anything else. Though he was the only one doing that.)
Now he's declared his emergency.
Why didn't he do it earlier? One reason was because he knew there was the risk of getting sued over his spurious declaration. And he will undoubtedly BE sued.
The other, nastier reason is this: He thought he could bully Nancy Pelosi into giving in to him. Thus proving he has the upper hand, like a strong president should have.
Like a strong MAN should have.
Instead, he proved he's merely devious. Not that we didn't already know this.
And here's the problem he's ignoring: Every twist and turn of this funding process only serves to remind folks that this country was NOT the one that was supposed to be paying for the wall.
At every campaign rally where he blasted out his key promise for a humongous border wall, the biggest response was always the second part, when he stated that MEXICO was going to be paying for the damned thing. Those guys were the problem, after all, sending their rapists and so forth into America, so it made sense they would be the ones responsible for ponying up the mazuma.
Trump will no doubt repeat his bizarre notion that because of his greatly superior new trade agreement, Mexico IS paying for the wall.
It's a position that makes about as much sense as his claim he meant to say "wouldn't" instead of "would" at the press conference in Helsinki, putting Putin ON the hook instead of taking him OFF the hook for meddling in our 2016 election.
Trump's biggest delusion is that he's so beloved by the people of America we all rush to buy whatever nonsense he deigns to let drop from his petulant lips.
He is, after all, a political Einstein. Who among us "wouldn't" listen to him?
Wednesday, February 6, 2019
SOTU#2
Donald Trump's second State of the Union address rumbled out onto the airways last night, one week late due to the shutdown and Nancy Pelosi's annoying grit.
The president harped on how well the economy was doing, and seemed to be taking most of the credit for that excellent situation. But we expect that from politicians. They never meet a chunk of good news they aren't eager to take credit for.
Trump had a lot of guests, mostly old military types and victims of various things the man has a solution for: stuff that could be built on the southern border.
One odd moment: a holocaust survivor sat next to a WWII vet who helped liberated a death camp. Behind them, the upholstery of chairs contained swastikas in the pattern. Well, it's an old Indian symbol, or so I've heard.
(In my junior high classrooms it showed up on the cast iron radiators. In town, it ringed the bottoms of street lights. Also, we hosted the headquarters of the American Nazi Party, but that might have been a coincidence.)
As expected, Trump spent a lot of time listing the crimes of illegal immigrants. One thing those guys do (he says) is hog American jobs. Nevertheless (he was forced to admit) we Americans are holding down more jobs than ever before in the history of this country. Including women.
Including women in Congress.
And that last superlative might come back to bite the man in his ass. A lot of those women are Democrats who came to office on a platform that countered Trump. And at least one of them is very hot to impeach the MF.
Trump took the opportunity to announce his next summit with Kim Jong-un. He also stated ("in my opinion") if he hadn't been elected president we would be deep in a very bad war with North Korea right now. That's hard to say (I mean in reality; Trump finds it very easy to say, and has done so repeatedly), but there's no question Trump's love affair with Kim has kept things mellow over there. No real progress on denuclearization, unfortunately, but nice and mellow.
By the end of the address, Trump had a warning for Congress. And he whipped it out twice.
The only things that could disrupt the stratospheric progress of America into a boundless future was "foolish wars, politics, and ridiculous partisan investigations." To repeat: "We could have peace and legislation or war and investigation."
No question Congress could get together and produce useful legislation. On fixing our crumbling infrastructure, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, and so forth. But if those folks want to see real action ...and a thick, spiky signature at the bottom of those bills, they're going to have to knock off the witch hunts.
This is not news. At a press conference following the 2018 midterm election, Trump implied he would not cooperate (i.e., sign bills passed by Congress) if those traitors kept up with their threatened investigations.
The man is calling for unity and cooperation. He just doesn't want to be the first item on the Congressional agenda: Send Trump packing, then get busy making America better without him.
But if he's true to his threats, this might be the only way it CAN be done.
The president harped on how well the economy was doing, and seemed to be taking most of the credit for that excellent situation. But we expect that from politicians. They never meet a chunk of good news they aren't eager to take credit for.
Trump had a lot of guests, mostly old military types and victims of various things the man has a solution for: stuff that could be built on the southern border.
One odd moment: a holocaust survivor sat next to a WWII vet who helped liberated a death camp. Behind them, the upholstery of chairs contained swastikas in the pattern. Well, it's an old Indian symbol, or so I've heard.
(In my junior high classrooms it showed up on the cast iron radiators. In town, it ringed the bottoms of street lights. Also, we hosted the headquarters of the American Nazi Party, but that might have been a coincidence.)
As expected, Trump spent a lot of time listing the crimes of illegal immigrants. One thing those guys do (he says) is hog American jobs. Nevertheless (he was forced to admit) we Americans are holding down more jobs than ever before in the history of this country. Including women.
Including women in Congress.
And that last superlative might come back to bite the man in his ass. A lot of those women are Democrats who came to office on a platform that countered Trump. And at least one of them is very hot to impeach the MF.
Trump took the opportunity to announce his next summit with Kim Jong-un. He also stated ("in my opinion") if he hadn't been elected president we would be deep in a very bad war with North Korea right now. That's hard to say (I mean in reality; Trump finds it very easy to say, and has done so repeatedly), but there's no question Trump's love affair with Kim has kept things mellow over there. No real progress on denuclearization, unfortunately, but nice and mellow.
By the end of the address, Trump had a warning for Congress. And he whipped it out twice.
The only things that could disrupt the stratospheric progress of America into a boundless future was "foolish wars, politics, and ridiculous partisan investigations." To repeat: "We could have peace and legislation or war and investigation."
No question Congress could get together and produce useful legislation. On fixing our crumbling infrastructure, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, and so forth. But if those folks want to see real action ...and a thick, spiky signature at the bottom of those bills, they're going to have to knock off the witch hunts.
This is not news. At a press conference following the 2018 midterm election, Trump implied he would not cooperate (i.e., sign bills passed by Congress) if those traitors kept up with their threatened investigations.
The man is calling for unity and cooperation. He just doesn't want to be the first item on the Congressional agenda: Send Trump packing, then get busy making America better without him.
But if he's true to his threats, this might be the only way it CAN be done.
Friday, February 1, 2019
ALL HAIL, PRESIDENT TRUMP!
After US intelligence officers testified before a Senate committee, contradicting the president on several key subjects (the viability of ISIS, Iran's nuclear ambitions, North Korea's likeliness to give up WMDs), Donald Trump first said they needed to go back to school.
A day or so later he said he'd been told by the intelligence officers that they had been "totally misquoted and totally taken out of context" by the lying fake-news press.
And now everything is fine; everybody's on the same page on these subjects.
What a relief! For a second there I thought the country was in trouble, but now I see everything is honky-dory!
Thank you, Mr. President, for making it all better.
The Senate needs to haul National Intelligence Director Dan Coats back in there and grill his ass for appearing to mislead the American people. I guess it would be understandable if he had given in to the temptation to make himself look more important. After all, you judge a hero by the nastiness of the villains who face him.
Still, the man needs to learn humility. He also needs to be able to make statements in his assessment of foreign threats to this country that can't be twisted out of context, especially when videotaped verbatim by the lying press. (They have their evil ways, obviously.)
Remember, this is the same Dan Coats who came to the president before the Helsinki meeting with Vladimir Putin and insinuated the Russian president might have been behind efforts to affect the American election that put our glorious leader in power.
Have you at long last no shame, sir? Never mind, it's off to the Re-Education Camp for you! Where you will no doubt learn (or re-learn) that our president is a very stable genius who possesses a far better understanding of world affairs than any military general or so-called intelligence professional.
While it's true Donald Trump has (under existing law) at best six more years to eliminate all external threats to this country (and repair all internal crises that might exist within the borders of other nations), at the rate he's knocking down these brush fires he should be able to create a perfect world with plenty of time left over for a victory lap (and maybe an historic journey to Mars, where he can lay the groundwork for an interplanetary wall that will keep those alien bastard Martians from coming to America).
These are indeed special times!
A day or so later he said he'd been told by the intelligence officers that they had been "totally misquoted and totally taken out of context" by the lying fake-news press.
And now everything is fine; everybody's on the same page on these subjects.
What a relief! For a second there I thought the country was in trouble, but now I see everything is honky-dory!
Thank you, Mr. President, for making it all better.
The Senate needs to haul National Intelligence Director Dan Coats back in there and grill his ass for appearing to mislead the American people. I guess it would be understandable if he had given in to the temptation to make himself look more important. After all, you judge a hero by the nastiness of the villains who face him.
Still, the man needs to learn humility. He also needs to be able to make statements in his assessment of foreign threats to this country that can't be twisted out of context, especially when videotaped verbatim by the lying press. (They have their evil ways, obviously.)
Remember, this is the same Dan Coats who came to the president before the Helsinki meeting with Vladimir Putin and insinuated the Russian president might have been behind efforts to affect the American election that put our glorious leader in power.
Have you at long last no shame, sir? Never mind, it's off to the Re-Education Camp for you! Where you will no doubt learn (or re-learn) that our president is a very stable genius who possesses a far better understanding of world affairs than any military general or so-called intelligence professional.
While it's true Donald Trump has (under existing law) at best six more years to eliminate all external threats to this country (and repair all internal crises that might exist within the borders of other nations), at the rate he's knocking down these brush fires he should be able to create a perfect world with plenty of time left over for a victory lap (and maybe an historic journey to Mars, where he can lay the groundwork for an interplanetary wall that will keep those alien bastard Martians from coming to America).
These are indeed special times!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)