Bluebelle, thank you for your post. Reminder that earlier this week I heard Barr telling Trump (in my mind), "I can't totally muffle this thing. You have to face some of this." (I posted this Wednesday.) It implies that Barr will help Trump but not completely.
As far as the SCOTUS is concerned, since Thomas has said he will resign before Trump leaves office, it will stay 5-4, however, if the Democrats take over the Senate and WH, they can play GOP dirty and add 2 seats to the court and take it back over. It sets bad precedent, but after Trump all the norms are out the door anyway.
Bumping this thread now that House has voted 420 - 0 unanimously for release of full Muller report. https://www.npr.org/2019/03/14/703369516/house-votes-almost-unanimously-for-public-release-of-mueller-report. The vote is not binding but it represents a huge bipartisan view that includes house republicans that they want the truth of Mueller's findings.
NY Times: "House Democrats are prepared to use subpoena power and other tools at their disposal to force the Justice Department to turn over anything Mr. Barr chooses to withhold."
I just wanted to say that I have come around to Nancy Pelosi's way of thinking. I have been vehemently in favor of impeachment from day one. After what she said the other day, I meditated on it, and I now think she's right, he's not worth it. I think she may have correctly judged the nutbars who are just itching to start Civil War 2.0. Better to hang tight, work to get Cheetolini out, and then come January 2021 we can throw him in jail and toss the key in a volcano. I rarely agree with her, yet somehow her words on this resonated in a way that has [surprisingly] calmed a lot of my fears.
Like Speaker Pelosi, I'm old enough to remember how Richard Nixon was forced to resign. Enough bad stuff came out that a critical mass was reached wanting him gone. At that point, his fellow Republicans were the ones who forced him out. My personal feeling is that Speaker Pelosi is confident that enough irrefutable evidence is about to come out that there will be no need for Dems to push for impeachment. Republicans will show Trump the door because that will be looking at a total wipe out in 2020 and they want to salvage something. Never underestimate Speaker Pelosi.
I can't help but turn this in to a teachable moment about intuition.
From the beginning, I have never seen impeachment for Trump in spite of so many psychics out there saying he would be impeached. The Internet psychics' impeachment predictions came in waves - a large number predicted it for 2017 and then again for March 2019 after the House turned blue last November.
When the House turned blue, I couldn't understand why they wouldn't impeach, but I still hadn't seen it in my own meditations. I felt the pressure to adjust my prediction but after screwing up the Hillary prediction by deferring to others, I have learned to stick with what I get. Good to trust one's personal intuition even when it conflicts with logic. Now, thanks to Laura and Paul's posts, I see the reasoning.
Jeanne, if there is decisive evidence against Trump and the Republicans throw him out, or make a deal they won't prosecute him if he agrees to not run in 2020, do you or anyone on the site see Nikki Haley as the nominee? She does look like she has the inside track to replace Pence. I'd seen her in some of the read the future classes though I find it hard to believe the patriarchal Rs would nominate a woman. Still...
Laura, I agree. Just want to add that there was a commentator on CNN recently who made a very insightful point that illuminated for me the wisdom of Nancy Pelosi's position. He said that it's important to wait until a more complete picture of the evidence comes forward. Otherwise, rushing to impeach on relatively minor crimes will end up being a lost opportunity to bring more major crimes to light -- missing the forest for the trees. Further, rushing to impeach now would make it seem like a one-sided political interest/maneuver by the opposition, but if we wait until we can impeach bilaterally (or prosecute after his term ends) with full evidence available, it will be more obvious for all the world and for posterity that justice is indeed and truly being served.
Ever since Trumpty became President, I've had a sense that his "rise to office" is really his karmic punishment. Yes, I did worry a little bit in the beginning, but deep down I've had confidence in the strength of the Constitution and the commitment of the many agencies and layers of the U.S. government to preserving its rule of law -- that the U.S. democracy will survive this fascist authoritarian in the White House. As time goes on, my confidence in our government institutions and the wisdom of our founding fathers grows deeper yet, especially as the karma continues to emerge:
If Trumpty never ran for President, and if he hadn't gotten elected, would the world have known about how he cheats and cons the people and small businesses who work for him? Would we have known the extent to which he lies pathologically? How much of a weak, insecure narcissist he is, and the fact that that he really is quite an incompetent businessman, relying primarily on bullying and scams (such as not paying his bills for services rendered, and tax evasion) to make profits? How heavily involved and indebted he is to the Mob, especially Russian organized crime? How deeply bigoted and sexist he is, and all the reports of women being sexually assaulted by him that have come forward?
I had grown weary of his TV show, after watching it for several seasons, but I had simply been indifferent to him back then, before his official entry into politics. I had seen him as just another successful businessman who was dabbling in becoming an entertainment celebrity. Having surrounded myself with a bubble of intellectual and critical-thinking social justice discourse, I had tuned out the birther nonsense and was thus not aware of Trump's bigoted earlier political rumblings. All that began to change as soon as Trump pompously descended his golden escalator to announce his candidacy and opened his mouth. And all I could say ever since then is -- wow, wow, wow, I had no idea he was such a monster. Let justice be served, on its own time, such that it is served fully!
@Yofisofi: You pretty much said it about impeachment. The froth the left-leaning news media got into after the "not worth it" comment only underscores the need for an elder stateswoman like Pelosi, someone who counsels restraint amidst a cacophony of partisan bloodlust. The impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton were a product of that same hyper-partisanship, and the theatrics of 1998 are still highly divisive. The same cannot be said for the Watergate scandal; almost every American today agrees that Nixon was a crook. As you say, be patient and let karma do its work.
I can't help adding though that this isn't just about Donald Trump. Ever since November 2016 I've been struck by the degree to which Trump mirrors everything that's toxic in contemporary American society. Just the fact that he was the star of a highly-rated reality TV show is thick with irony; the nation that pioneered television, mass entertainment, and modern artifice suddenly has a thoroughly made-for-TV president, and it ain't so pretty. The irony is heaped on even more when taking into account the fact that foreign actors aided Trump's ascent to office. One could make a hefty list of countries whose democratically-elected leaders were picked off during the Cold War by US-backed militants (or the US military itself) because said leaders were perceived by Washington as being too cozy with the Soviet Bloc. Then add in Trump's hunger for wealth, power, and shiny things (a bit like your average smartphone obsessed individual who is constantly updating his/her social media profiles), and you have the makings of what could be a teachable moment for all Americans.
I'll admit the notion that we "are getting what we deserve" is hard to maintain when considering people whose lives are at the sharp end of the Trump Administration: the Standing Rock Sioux, the family of Heather Heyer, the asylum seekers being held in detention. But one of the things that's kept me sane these past two years is looking to the executive branch and seeing how all of that ugliness currently on full display might reveal a thing or two about my own psyche that I was previously unwilling to acknowledge.
I had always known that he was a monster. Even now, most of his disgustingness is not talked about. The public doesn't get how disgusting he is and has always been. That he was elected president has always been difficult for me to process. That he has access to our most sentive information is a travesty. I can't believe we allowed him to even enter the race. Like so many others, his electoral college victory had me weeping for weeks. How could we have fallen so low? He doesn't represent any part of the American psyche. He is just a selfish criminal. He has no respect for anything at all. Nothing. No part of me is reflected in him or his administration. I am sorry to hear that people are still being conned into believing that he is what we deserve. He is not representative of Americans in any way, and if people want to pick up on the refracted images of him and fit them into their world-view, then they fool themselves or they are stateless mafia garbage like him. As for someone using him to make money on a reality tv show, just remember, all that glitters isn't gold. Read a book, instead.