I Come to Bury Not to Praise...

This is essentially the obituary of Joe Biden's
campaign for president. Even if there is
'no there there'.  I seriously doubt the campaign
will ever regain the momentum it had going in.
The old saying 'where there's smoke there's fire'
will dog the campaign going forward, and even
those who are Biden's fans will harbor that nagging
feeling that something is not right.  The question
will come up again of why isn't Obama openly supporting
him.  What does he know that we should?

The current President and the Republicans will keep
up the drumbeat of 'investigate Joe Biden' at every
rally.  The Committee to reelect the President is
planning to spend $10 million on television and
internet ads beginning today, and when they are done,
Biden's mother wouldn't vote for him.  But perhaps we
should look at what all this fuss is about.

Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's, second born son, is a graduate
of Yale Law School, class of 1996.  He has had a rather
checkered career, in and than out of the Naval Reserve
for testing positive for cocaine.  He registered as a lobbyist
in 2001, and was appointed to the Board of Amtrak in
2006, by then president George W. Bush.  He left the
Board in 2009 when his father, Joseph Biden, became
Vice President.  That is also when Hunter gave up
lobbying, and founded the law firm Rosemont Seneca
Partners.  Hunter Biden also founded the venture capital
firm of Eudora Global, and in 2013, Hunter partnered
with Chinese businessman Jonathan Li, to form a business
that invested Chinese capital outside of China.

After the Ukrainian revolution of 2014, the largest natural
gas company in the Ukraine, Burisma, formed a high-profile
International Board and invited Hunter Biden to join, evidently
to make use of the name of Biden, and paid Hunter a handsome
salary of $50,000 a month for the privilege.  There is no evidence
that Burisma ever sought favor from either of the Bidens.  However,
Victor Shokin, the Prosecutor General of the Ukraine from
February 2015 to March 2016, began an investigation of
Burisma.  The investigation was thought to be nothing except
extortion against Burisma's owner, Mykola Zlochevsky,
and the case was quickly closed.  Hunter Biden was never a
subject of the investigation.

While Joe Biden was Vice President, the United States joined
with a large consensus of Western Nations to encourage the
Ukrainian government to oust Shokin for blocking corruption
investigations in the prosecutor office.  The deputy prosecutor,
Vitali Kosho, had resigned, citing corruption and cronyism in
Shokin's office, and after that, Joe Biden threatened the
Ukrainian government. on behalf of the United States, to
withhold American loan guarantees until Victor Shokin left.
The International Monetary Fund also threatened to withdraw
financial support from the Ukraine. One-month later the
Ukrainian Parliament voted Shokin out.

 While Shokin was still in power, the investigation of Burisma
was suspended before the Vice President made the threat to with-
hold the loan guarantees, and there was no evidence found that
Joe Biden did anything to thwart the effort to investigate Burisma.
Shokin's successor, Yuriy Lutsenko, also investigated Burisma, but
closed the case after ten months.  After meeting with Rudy Giuliani,
in 2019, Lutsenko reopened the case, the reason was unclear and
nothing came of it.  The new Ukrainian President, Volodymyr
Zelenski, requested Lutsenko's removal.  There has never been a
tie-in found between Joe Biden and any dealings with Burisma.
However, in politics perception becomes reality.

Now Biden is making his third run at the presidency.  His first
attempt was in 1988, when he was then accused of plagiarizing
from a Scotsman politician, Neil Kinnock, in Kinnock's run against
Margaret Thatcher, it was not the first time.  Biden admitted he did
plagiarize the speech and withdrew his candidacy.  He ran again in
2008, and left the race after doing poorly in the Iowa caucuses, and
was later selected to be Obamas running mate.  Biden contemplated
running again in 2016, but he was still grieving the death of his son.
Beau, who died of brain cancer the year before.

In Washington D C, Joe Biden has been know as being squeaky clean,
but I don't know anyone who could survive todays investigations
of the candidates. I know I couldn't get elected dog catcher, as the
saying goes, and I would not put myself through it.  Though the
present occupant of the White House survived three divorces,
five bankruptcies, several accusations of extra-marital affairs with
women of dubious character, and being an admitted sexual
predator.  Some resume!

Now Donald Trump is being investigated for trying to influence
the Ukrainian President-elect at the time, Zelenski, to; one, find
the e-mail server used by Hillary Clinton, and two, dig up dirt
on Joe and Hunter Biden.  At the time, Trump was holding back
$250 million in military aid that had already been authorized.

This has all come to light because a whistleblower filed a complaint
with the inspector general's office after receiving complaints from
numerous people about suspected conversations of Trump with various
leaders of foreign countries.  As a result Speaker of the House, Nancy
Pelosi, has opened an impeachment inquiry, and Trump has more than
suggested that Joe Biden is guilty of the same thing, if not worse.

So here we are, Joe Biden will either be a hero or a goat.  There is a
long way to go and a lot of testimony before the full story comes out
on exactly what Trump did or did not do.  Meanwhile the first caucus
is in Iowa in February, followed closely by New Hampshire.  In the
meantime the accusations against Biden will be unanswered, and the
doubt will be foremost in people's minds.  Elizabeth Warren is already
charging Biden's supremacy.  Is there a limit to how much the man can
take before the smile dims and his step loses its buoyancy, and he goes
quietly into history?  Will America be poorer because a gentleman and
a scholar was once again cast aside?  I can't answer that question, only
the voters can.  But then I came to bury him...

I'm just sayin'  

 

These Are the Times That Try Men's Souls . . .

the summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in
this crisis, shrink from the service of his country;
but he that stands up now, deserves the love and
thanks of man and woman.   Thomas Paine, 1776

Nancy Pelosi has directed the House Judiciary
Committee to open an impeachment inquiry against
President Trump.  This is not how things are usually
done.  In other - and there have been many - impeach-
ment inquiries the whole House votes to open the
inquiry.  The House of Representatives may
open an inquiry at any time, it may also file
Articles of Impeachment at any time.  It is
usual, however, to defer to the Speaker of the
House.  It may surprise you to know that certain
Representatives attempted to bring impeachment
proceedings against; John Tyler, Grover Cleveland,
Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman Ronald Reagan, and
G. H. W. Bush.  All of these attempts failed to get out of
Committee and on to the whole House.  Only three succeeded;
Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and, had he not resigned,
Richard Nixon.  So, we should not get that excited about
yesterday's events we still have a long way to go.

Perhaps it would behoove us to get some background
on just what impeachment is.  Impeachment was first
established in Britain in the thirteen-hundreds.  Britain
has no formal constitution, so impeachment, as such,
was an unwritten law.  When the framers were writing
our Constitution, there was considerable discussion
about including impeachment at all.  The biggest
roadblock was the wording of just what constituted
an impeachable offense.  In the end they settled on
'treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misde-
meanors'.  It is the second half of that statement which
legal scholars still argue over today.

Let us define impeachment; impeachment is a process
by which a legislative body levels charges against a
government official.  Impeachment is written into the
the constitution of twenty-five nations, among then
are Russia, South Korea and of course the United States.
Impeachment is delineated in Article 2, Section 4, it
simply says:  The President, Vice President, and all
Civil Officers of the United States shall be removed
from Office on impeachment for, and conviction of
Treason, Bribery, or other high crimes and
misdemeanors.  Thirty-one words, that's all, nothing
more.

The House of Representatives and the Senate each set
their own rules regarding impeachment procedures,
as none were set down by the framers.  The procedure
begins with the Judiciary Committee of the House of
Representatives, they hold hearings, take evidence, and
hear testimony.  After which time the Committee may
formulate Articles of Impeachment - which may contain
one or more counts - then the Committee takes a vote.
If the Articles pass the Committee, they are referred to the
full House, which will then debate the matter and take a vote.
If the House votes to impeach, the Articles go onto the
Senate.  The Articles of Impeachment may die at any
point from the Judiciary Committee to the full House,
as six of the Articles we noted did.

The Senate is judge and jury in the case of prosecution
of impeachment, but if the officeholder charged is the
President, then the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
sits as judge, as William Rehnquist did during the
Clinton trial.  There are attorneys for each side as in a
regular court proceeding. After both side present their
case, the Senate debates the issues and votes.  It requires
a 'super majority', or two-thirds of the Senators present
to convict the President.  The word present is stressed here
as any Senator voting abstain, would be counted as a vote
against impeachment.  It is thought, a vote to impeach
would trigger a Constitutional crisis, in that; would the
convicted president have the right to appeal - and if so -
to whom would they appeal.

The question has been, for years, what is an impeachable
offense?  Some jurist say; any bad act, though not necessarly
a crime, however they also say, not all crimes are impeachable.
In 1970, then Representative Gerald Ford said this, in part,
"what ever the majority of the House of Representatives
considers it to be at any given moment".  This would mean that
impeachment is not a legal proceeding, but a political one.
This is what the framers feared, that the president would then
be serving at the pleasure of the Congress.  James Wilson, one
of the delegates to the Constitutional Congress and later one of
the first Supreme Court Justices, argued that impeachment
procedures are "of a political nature. . . confined to political
characters, to political crimes and misdemeanors, and to
political punishment".

And so here we are today, there are those who rejoice that their
wish has come true, those who wanted from day one to impeach
Donald Trump.  Christopher Lewis Peterson, Professor, College
of Law, whose main  body of work is banking and lending, wrote
extensively on the subject. He feels strongly that Trump should
have been impeached on the day he was sworn in, based on his
prior bad acts, i.e. bank and insurance fraud.  I, myself, am torn.
There have been presidents whose politics I disagreed with, and
some that I didn't feel were up to the job, even some I disliked
personally, but never have I ever felt this strong a dislike about
a president.  It is visceral, I cannot watch him on television. and
the sound of his voice is like fingers on a blackboard.  Everyday
when I wake up, I think it can't get any worse, but it does.

It will be a long road going forward, and I fear for the country.
I fear even if, and that is a big if, Trump is convicted, he will
not go quietly.  He has intimated as much on more than one
occasion.  When the House of Representatives voted for the
Article of Impeachment for Richard Nixon, he did the right
thing for the country, he resigned.  Nixon knew a trial in the
Senate would be very harmful for the country, especially in
light of the outcome of the Viet Nam war.  His first thoughts
were for America.  Donald Trump has ho such compunction,
he only sees things in relation to himself.  He does not believe
he could be convicted.  When things begin to go bad for him,
he instructs his lawyers to 'buy them out'.  Well, Donald, buy
yourself out of this!

I'm just sayin'

Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife?

There have been allegations by a whistle blower that President
Trump made improper suggestions during a phone call to the
president-elect of the Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenski.  Trump
supposedly asked Zelenski to 'look into', then Vice-president
Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and his connections with a
natural gas firm where Hunter sat on the board. The
accusations had been examined and were found to be
baseless.  How thorough and unbiased the inquiry was
is not the question at this time.

Over the weekend, during an impromptu news conference
- aren't they all - Trump stated to the twenty-five or so
reporters in attendance that during that phone call he
congratulated the Ukrainian President, Zeleinski, and that
he might have mentioned Joe Biden and Hunter.  He told
reporters,  "It was largely the fact that we don't want our
people, like Vice President Biden and his son, creating
to (sic) the corruption already in the Ukraine".  WOW!
Trump is the master of the complex fallacy, he managed
to make not one, but two, false accusations in one
sentence.  He threw suspicion on Joe Biden and his son
Hunter, while also painting the Ukrainian government as
corrupt.

There is a saying, 'when you point a finger at me, you have
three fingers pointing at yourself'. Trump has elevated that
to an art, and he does it with aplomb.  He uses cognitive
biases with the skill of a surgical laser, he has created his
own subjective social reality.  He is a product of, so called,
reality television where Trump envisioned himself the mammoth
business tycoon who could berate job applicants and belittle
prospective employees, and still have them fawn over him,
groveling sycophants inflating his ego, until he turned on them
and said, "You're fired!'". There remains the question whether
Trump suffers from narcissism or solipsism.

Trump has elevated evasionary tactics to new heights, he uses
half-truths, out-right lies, red herrings, and straw men to
obfuscate and complicate any question of impropriety on his
part. His repeated declaration of 'no collusion, no obstruction'
was his answer to the Mueller Report.  He said it so often,
even the House of Representatives apparently believed it.  he
is capable of turning any question around, and diverting it back
onto the questioner.  The deflection of his statement that he
'could grab any woman by the p***y' and get away with it,
was pure terpsichory, oooooh, dance a little sidestep.  He
simply turned it into a discussion on ISIS.  He uses nick-
names like; little Marco, lyin' Ted, low energy Jeb, crooked
Hillary, sleepy Joe and Pocahontas, instead of dialogue in
the debates, and when the unwitting press picks up the
ad homs, they become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Claims of corruption and out-right illegality have had no effect
on his candidacy or his presidency.  It helps that he is shielded
by a willing Senate that is compliant in his wrong-doings,
a Senate that fears his ability to marshal his followers and to
'primary' anyone who dares to challenge him, though there are
House members who are feeling the pressure and some are
folding their tents and calling it quits, or maybe, just maybe
they have developed a conscience.

Trump uses false dichotomy to strike fear in the hearts of his
dedicated band of MAGAs; build a wall or have open boarders,
Chinese tariffs or no more jobs, vote for him or face a recession,
restrict Muslims or sharia law, the list is endless.  There is no grey,
only black or white.  When Trump says Mexicans are murderers
and rapists, and Muslims are terrorists, and Chinese are thieves
he is building a masked man fallacy.  He offers a false dilemma,
it is one way - his way - or disaster of immense proportion.  You
have only two options, which one do you like?

When faced with exposure, he cries 'fake news', when confronted
with logic, he argues from incredulity.  And when all else fails, his
fall back is; argumentum ad lapidem, appeal to the stone, or as your
mama used to say 'because I said so'.    

And, I'm just sayin'.