Tag Archives: devin nunes

November 15, 2019 · 23:32

Public Impeachment Hearings: Damning But Not a Sure Thing

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

This week we witnessed something that hasn’t been seen since I was in 9th grade, televised public impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives, and we saw the President’s defense shredded as witnesses, all members of the State Department gave damning testimony without a creditable defense, either by his Counsel, or by House Republicans. To make matters worse, the President began tweeting attacks against the woman he had appointed as Ambassador to the Ukraine, which only could be construed as witness intimidation.

Unfortunately for the President he ran into a Congressman who is an experienced and sharp prosecuting attorney, Representative Adam Schiff of California. Instead of letting the President’s unhinged Twitter assaults go, Schiff quoted them in real time allowing the former ambassador the chance to rebut them in real time.


It was something that we will probably never see again because no future President would lack the self control to avoid further incriminating him or herself and adding charges against themselves. But this is Donald Trump, a pathological narcissist who cannot shut his mouth to save himself. Today in real time he threatened and attempted to intimidate former Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in real time, something that Congressman Schiff was quick to point out and read those tweets within seconds during the hearing. This is something that has never happened before.

What happens next? More hearings, both public and secret, and then a vote on whether to move to an impeachment trial.

After that the drama moves to the Senate. In normal times, Senators like Barry Goldwater would go to the President and demand he resign in the face of certain conviction, as he and others told Richard Nixon in August 1974. but these are not normal times. Instead of principled men like Goldwater the GOP Senate is stocked with spineless men without any ethics who will only break from supporting Trump if their constituents show a clear indication to do so or face defeat in their respective Senate races in 2020.

I for one do not know how it will end, but I do know that the President is not coming across well.

So, until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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February 2, 2018 · 00:01

The Everlasting Groundhog Day that is Trump’s America

groundhog day clock

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today is Groundhog Day, but in this strange new world of the United States of Trump I always feel like I am waking up to Groundhog Day. A President and administration that has been the subject of numerous real scandals, a President who has told over 2000 verifiable lies and counting barely a year into office, and a Congress, especially the GOP majority in the House of Representatives that has bound themselves to those scandals, lies, and possible treason by their actions that appear to be assisting in the obstruction of justice.

I could go into all of that but there is so much going on. The biggest event will happen today Congressman Devin Nunes releases a secret report with the approval of the  President  attacking the veracity and integrity of the investigation of Special Prosecutor  Robert Muller  of potentially illegal and maybe even treasonous actions by numerous members of the Trump Campaign staff.  Including some who became members of the administration like the Bungee-National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn. As a former Republican I never in a million years expected Republicans to so shamelessly discredit the FBI, other intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice. So much for all that I believed about Republicans respecting the Rule of Law.

Then there is the mutual admiration society that White Supremacists and neo-Nazis like former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke , Richard Spencer and the publisher of the neo-Nazi The Stormer  Andrew Anglin  seen to have with the President.

But that’s not all, we have a Republican Paul Nehlen running to oppose Paul Ryan in Michigan who is so anti-Semitic that he divides his critics into two categories; Jews and non-Jews. We have the leader of the GOP controlled Pennsylvania State House who is refusing to implement the order of the State Supreme Court to redraw gerrymandered congressional districts before the 2018 mid-term elections.  In Missouri there is a GOP State Representative named  Rick Brattin who has stated that human beings are different than LTBTQ people.

Even after the defeat of Roy Moore in Alabama there are two Federally convicted felons running for the Senate, Joe Arapaio in Arizona, and Don Blankenship, former Chairman & CEO of Massey Energy in West Virginia. Arapaio was convicted of civil rights violations as Sheriff of Maricopa County and pardoned by President Trump. Blankenship was convicted for conspiracy to violate mandatory federal mine safety and health standards, conspiracy to impede federal mine safety officials, making false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as securities fraud after 29 coal miners were killed in Upper Big Branch Mine disaster.

Then there is the GOP Congressman Scott DeJarlais  from Tennessee who paid a mistress to have an abortion despite the fact that he is a married supposedly “pro-life” Evangelical Christian. He wasn’t alone Congressman Tim Murphy , another pro-life Republican did the same. But that doesn’t matter because Christian preachers like   Tony Perkins and  Franklin Graham are willing to give the President a “gimme” for an affair with a porn star after his third wife and now First Lady Melania had given birth to his son, and that he has been a serial adulterer cheating on all of his wives.

If all of these events were were isolated instances or aberrations one might be able to shrug their shoulders and sigh, but they are just a few of many more that could be named.

Thus today when I think of Groundhog Day I realize that I and yes you too are doomed to endure it for I think will be a minimum of three more years, and by that time the damage to the very fabric of our Republic will surely last for the rest of my lifetime, if not far longer.

I wish that things were different, but as Timothy Snyder noted, it only takes about a year for an authoritarian to take over or fundamentally change a country.

It’s been a year and the President’s attacks on the Constitution, the legal system, the judiciary, Federal Law Enforcement, the free press, African American sports figures, America’s allies, as well as any opponent while backed by his party and a third of the electorate mean that this is not going to end anytime soon.

I am not optimistic and wonder when the President will be afforded the chance for his own Reichstag Fire event, something that he seems to  have its upsides.  Let’s not even talk about the coming war with North Korea tonight.

So anyway, until tomorrow, Happy Groundhog Day.

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

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January 30, 2018 · 00:01

The State of the Union, the Surrender of Principal, and a Historical Coincidence: Trump, Nunes, Schacht, Hungenberg, and Von Papen

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today is a curious day for a minor historian like me.hopefully someday I will be considered a major historian but that aside I love the study of history and its connections to the present day, but I digress…

Today is the day that President Trump will deliver his State of the Union Address reading from a teleprompter, talking about bipartisanship, and how great he has made America. Until he begins his Twitter Storm tomorrow morning his speech will be hailed by members of the mainstream media as being “Presidential,”  in the same kind of language that Fahreed Zakaria praised the tele-Trumpter speech the President made at Davos. For eight hours tonight the mainstream media will be lost in Presidential  praises even as the Fox News Pundits break into chants of “Seig Heil!,” but I digress, because by noon Wednesday things will be back to normal.

But it is also a day where Congressman Devin Nunes will release a report attacking the veracity and motivations of FBI and Justice Department officials involved in the investigation of the President and his advisors attempts to collude with a hostile foreign power and obstruct justice before and after the 2016 election. This is actually very remarkable because it is something that has never happened in the history of the House of Representatives regarding a case involving national security. Personally, back during my 32 years as a Republican I always thought that House or Senate Democrats might do something like this but they disappointed me by never stooping to release information that might obstruct justice while at the same time kneecapping Federal law enforcement agencies. Honestly I used to think that undermining national security was something that Democrats did, I never, even after I left the GOP in 2008 thought it was something that Republicans would do; but Congressman Nunes and is compatriots are determined to ruin my fantasy that the GOP was really a pro-law and order and national security party. I mean really, even after I left the GOP their arguments about being strong on national security and pro-law enforcement gave me a hard on, but even with the blue pill I don’t think that I could get it up again after Mr. Nunes’s antics.

Coincidently today is the 85th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s accession to power, something that happened quite to the surprise of Hitler as well as the leaders of the non-Nazi political parties on the German Right and Left. The non-Nazi German conservatives thought that they could control him, just like GOP stalwarts thought that they could control then Candidate Trump in 2016.

You see I don’t think of the GOP as a new version of the Nazi Party. No, they aren’t that clever. I see them as more akin to the German conservative parties who less than six months after they helped Hitler become Chancellor, dissolved themselves in hope of keeping a place at the table in the New Germany. They are the Von Papen’s, the Hindenburg’s; they are Alfred Hugenberg, Hjalmar Schacht, and the other leaders of the DVNP (German People’s Nationalist Party), the Catholic Center Party, and others who sacrificed their honor, integrity, and self-respect to gain a place at the table of Hitler. By and large Nunes and the other members of the GOP who engage in what they are doing doom their party and very likely the country.

So today go out and lift a glass and maybe even light a tiki torch to men like the President, Congressman Nunes, his committee, and their supporters at Fox News. Let Nunes and other be like Hjalmar Schacht who proclaimed his loyalty to and defended Hitler’s Third Reich internationally, but who in the words of Supreme court Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson was “The most dangerous and reprehensible type of all opportunists, someone who would use a Hitler for his own ends, and then claim, after Hitler was defeated, to have been against him all the time. He was part of a movement that he knew was wrong, but was in it just because he saw it was winning.”

Be assured; tonight I will raise a glass and I will drink, maybe until I will am legally drunk; but it will be to bolster myself for the struggle for the Constitution and country that lay ahead. I can do no less.

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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