Before modification by Tom at 02/02/2020 06:49:28 AM
Hunter Biden was completely unqualified for the position that he got. He speaks no Russian, no Ukrainian, knows nothing about the oil & gas industry, nothing of the region, and nothing about really much of anything except how to smoke crack and get strippers pregnant. The fact that a company paid him up to $83,000 a month to perform a no show job makes mafia union jobs look real. The fact they CONTINUED TO PAY HIM THROUGH APRIL 2019 means they were getting what they were looking for from him.
You know what else happened in April 2019? Ukrainian Presidential Elections. Pyotr Poroshenko, the sack of shit oligarch who had been looting the Ukrainian treasury since he replaced the previous Thief in Chief, Viktor Yanukovich, left power in May, but he lost the election in April. He was the one who may or may not have made a deal with Joe Biden. He was the one who was desperate for Hillary to win because she was going to keep allowing him to thumb his nose at Russia and demand that Ukraine get natural gas below market rates because the pipelines go through Ukraine (note that the US establishment hates the Russian pipeline that goes directly to Germany because it will mean that propping up the failed state of Ukraine will be more expensive without all those gas transit fees). He was the one who supported Alexandra Chalupa's efforts. He knew he needed Joe Biden, and Burisma realized that Hunter was their insurance policy.
Then Zelensky came in. Poroshenko never would have investigated the Bidens. In the theory Trump was operating under, Poroshenko knew the terms. You want US aid? Stay away from Burisma as long as my son is there. The Trump theory is that Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma, was fired to get him away from Burisma.
Perhaps Trump was wrong. Perhaps this was all innocent. I doubt it, but it's possible. The point is that no one really conducted an impartial investigation into the matter.
First of all, saying Shokin was "corrupt" is irrelevant. What was that line from Apocalypse Now? Shit ... charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. It's the same principle with corruption in Ukraine. The notion that somehow Shokin was different from his boss, Poroshenko, is laughable. They're all corrupt. So when someone is arrested for corruption, you know that they're guilty, but you also know that the only reason they've been arrested is because their little group lost a power struggle of some sort.
Second, Poroshenko's lackey, Yury Lutsenko, the guy who replaced Shokin, said there was "no evidence" of wrongdoing. No shit. You don't want to end up like Shokin, do you? Lutsenko sat as a Poroshenko holdover until the end of August 2019. His successor barely had time to move into his office and put up a picture of his wife and kids, hire a secretary/mistress and figure out what was going on, when Eric Ciaramella, a/k/a Pajama Boy, a/k/a Whistleblower, who is good friends with the Bidens, starts talking to Schiff and initiates the impeachment process. By this point Zelensky told everyone "stay out of this shit with the US, keep your heads down and let's let it pass".
So Pajama Boy and his friends, the Vindmans, work with Yovanovich (whose parents' biography sounds like they were Nazi collaborators in World War II - that's the only way you got to Canada in 1945) and spin this whole thing to make Trump, and not the Bidens, seem like the guilty party. Note what all these people have in common: a conflict of interest. They're conflicted because they're friends with the Bidens. They're conflicted because they're blindly pro-Ukrainian. They're conflicted because they're blindly anti-Trump. But no one cares.
The President, however, wanted an investigation of the Bidens or at least for Ukraine to announce one so he could kick DOJ and get them to open something too. That's entirely legitimate.
The argument that it isn't legitimate has to ignore everything I've just written and assume that because the President COULD derive benefit from putting that pressure on Zelensky, it was inappropriate. By that same standard, we should impeach Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders. They will likely vote to remove President Trump from office and from the 2020 ballot, which since they are running for President means they CAN derive benefit from voting to remove him from office.
The other arguments hinge on an absurd theory that the President has no right to invoke executive privilege - ever - in foreign policy, which is an area of explicit executive competency under the Constitution.
The Democrats are so removed from all reason that they just make no sense. Every proposal of theirs is more and more divorced from reality, a basic understanding of economics, and the principles of representative democracy that I'm surprised anyone would consider voting for them. Sure, Trump can be rude and unpresidential in his bearing, but his policies are fairly predictable and rational.
One reason I am not bothering to pay attention to the Senate trial is that I've already made up my mind. I don't care how many witnesses are called or what arguments are made. Even stipulating all the alleged facts (not the subjective issues, like motive or implications), so what? What is Trump accused of doing? Pushing around the head of state of another country? Withholding aid until that politician fell into line? GOOD! Give him another term! We have to respect China, to a certain extent, because they are rich and powerful and have nukes. Same thing with Russia. Maybe to a lesser extent, India, because numbers & nukes. EVERY OTHER COUNTRY can get bent and take their orders from the President of the United States, no matter who he is or what party he is from. Sorry guys, you DON'T COUNT (and that includes our glorified protectorate floating alone in the North Sea, if it is not currently in the process of sinking under the waves. Or maybe devolving into a disease- & poverty-stricken post-apocalyptic wasteland. The Guardian isn't super clear about its predictions for what's going to happen this month). If the US wants something, you do it. If Joe Biden had anything more than a job for his son in mind, I'd have approved of HIM doing it too.
Foreign Aid has been defined by one of the few US Legislators I ever really respected as taking money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country. When that is going on, the rich people getting our money can damn well dance a jig if the President elected by these United States wants him to. Especially if it's a made-up bullshit country not even as old as I. Oh, Mr. President of the Ukraine, do you LIKE being a head of state, instead of a regional politician within the Russian Empire? Then you are our butt-monkey, or Putin's. You don't like it? Win a war.
Honestly, I've about had it with the existence of that place, what with it being an excuse for the politicians most beholden to the Military Industrial Complex using it as an excuse to get into it with the legitimate power into whose geopolitical sphere of influence Ukraine naturally falls, for the last several years.
But the President did it with less than pure motives, they say. So what? What politician does NOT do anything with less than pure motives? What politician does anything with any agenda other than getting reelected? If Barack Obama had done ANYTHING against Trump as many months before the 2016 election as the Ukraine phone call was to the 2020 election, a claim that he did so to derail a possible GOP contender would be laughed at. And everyone knows he would have, if he was half as politically astute as he is supposed to be, and anticipated Trump's nomination, let alone win. He used the IRS to harass conservative organizations. Clinton used the Justice Department to harass the NYPD when his wife was anticipating the mayor of NYC opposing her Senate bid. The alphabet soup Democrats used the FBI for surveillance on their political opposition (as did Obama). The difference between them, is they were doing it to elected officials and political groups that were at least representing the interests of some American citizens, rather than a dilettante private citizen's unethical income. And it isn't like Trump needed a Ukraine investigation to smear Joe with Hunter's shenanigans, either. But even if Trump DID withhold aid (prove that it WAS delayed longer than it should have been, solely at the President's order and solely in reaction to recalcitrance on the part of the Ukraine, which is still irrelevant without the successive points proven), solely (prove it) for political advantage, because he's afraid (prove THAT, too) of a malaprop-spouting former VP, whose own party didn't consider him as a successor to his former running mate, at a time when there were other candidates getting far more attention, so what?
Does this mean that from now on, no administration can lift a finger against anyone affiliated with the opposition party? (Remember, Hunter Biden is not even a candidate for elected office, let alone a public official - he's a grown, middle-aged man, whose father has no legal responsibility for him; if HE can't be touched without raising the specter of undue partisanship, what official or candidate CAN? )
The President of the US has the power to conduct foreign policy. He has the power to investigate allegations of wrong-doing, and he has the discretion to select which ones (If there was an infallible triage chart for that sort of thing, we wouldn't need the executive branch). He has the power to use one of those powers to further another. He also has the right to appeal legal issues to a court. That's what checks and balances mean. Not Democrats checking Republicans, but one branch of government handling a dispute between the other two. Congress can pass laws to override Supreme Court decisions. The President can sign or veto such laws. The Court can rule on the constitutionality of Congressional actions or Presidential orders. And the President appealing a Congressional subpoena in court is that system working. Do some law professors think otherwise? Well, they can damn well get a president to believe in them enough to take the political risk of appointing them Attorney General or to the Supreme Court and then they get a say. Are there foreign policy experts who think that Trump's policies toward Ukraine are so outrageous and so detrimental to the well-being of the (only) country (that matters), that only the most venal motives could explain them, they can get themselves elected President and then they'll be able to conduct foreign policy as they wish. But during the events in question, Donald Trump was the President. Until you can show me which law directs the motives under which he must act and how he broke it, as far as I am concerned, he hasn't done anything wrong.