FairAndUNbalanced.com

 

From Jon Perr at PERRspectives:

This is the legal landscape now before the man who must be identified as the attorney general of the United States: The unanimous consensus of the American intelligence community, the findings of the Mueller investigation, and the bipartisan conclusion of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence all agree that the Russian Federation interfered in the 2016 presidential election “by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin.” Special counsel Robert Mueller documented numerous interactions between Russian actors and Trump campaign officials and laid out 10 instances of obstruction of justice committed by President Donald Trump. And now Trump faces impeachment over his illegal solicitation of foreign intervention for his 2020 reelection campaign and his shocking quid pro quo withholding of military aid to Ukraine unless its government publicly promised to investigate groundless allegations against his potential opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.

In response, William Barr, the man columnist William Safire aptly called the “Cover-up General” almost 30 years ago, is functioning as Donald Trump’s consigliere, not as the chief law enforcement officer for the American people. Barr’s mission now is to manufacture evidence to paint the very investigations into Trump’s lawlessness as illegitimate themselves.

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From Jonathan Bernstein:

One side took a serious approach aimed at persuading the undecided. The other doubled down on conspiracy theories and debunked claims.

House Democrats have finally figured out how to hold a hearing.

The first public congressional session of the impeachment inquiry aimed at President Donald Trump probably wasn’t compelling television for most voters. Most people just aren’t very interested in fine details. Nor did Democrats bring a lot of drama or theatrics.

And yet I suspect that for those who are interested in government and public affairs — including the news media — there was plenty of substance in the testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday of two State Department officials responsible for U.S. policy in Ukraine.

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From Batocchio, the Vagabond Scholar:

The Beltway gang – or the Village, as Digby’s sometimes called it – generally doesn’t like accountability for their own, regardless of political party. The powerful rarely learn the error of their ways unless they are held to account. And when they’re not held responsible, it also sends the message to other powerful people that they can get away with misdeeds as well. Even if no one served jail time for lying the U.S. into the Iraq War or the Bush administration’s torture regime, at least we still could have a truth and reconciliation commission or something similar. But even that would go way too far for Beltway insiders like Peggy Noonan, who in 2009 said in reference to the torture regime:

Some things in life need to be mysterious. Sometimes you need to just keep walking. . . . It’s hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, oh, much good will come of that.

Noonan, of course, was concerned with “good” coming to people in her social circle, of her class, not about justice for torture victims or all the other harm caused by the torture program. Nor was she concerned about ordinary U.S. citizens who might be bothered by abuses of power and might suffer the effects, later on if not immediately. She needn’t have worried; no one was held accountable, and indeed no good came of it, if not the way she meant.

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From Green Eagle:

From the Washington Post (passed off as a paragon of the liberal press) today:

“On eve of open hearings, GOP and Democrats lay out competing cases

The memos show the parties are fundamentally at odds over everything from key pieces of evidence to the legitimacy of the process.”

I heard the same thing on NPR this morning, which did a long segment on the “competing narratives” about impeachment coming from our two political parties.

Neither one of these miserable excuses for journalists thought it worth mentioning that one of these “narratives” is true and the other, as they all know damned well, is a compendium of vicious lies.

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Jay-Z is the most popular rap artist ever. Everybody who matters loves the way he moves rap into and out of accompanying music. Which actually means, I guess, that I love the way he makes the music part of the rap. He moves rhythm and rhyme into words from the heart that just happen to rhyme. That’s art.

That’s what made Jay-Z into JAY-Z.

So when he introduced Hannah Williams to the world, and did it as part of his musical apology to Beyoncé, it was worth waiting for her own work.

Hannah Williams & The Affirmations are a British band with music described as retro-rock or retro-soul or rock or soul. I hear more than a touch of gospel, but maybe I’m just possessed.

I just like what I hear.

Want to see the words?

I can’t find them. We just have to listen, I guess.
Worth it, don’t ya think?

 
From PZ Myers:

Wow. An openly racist man was teaching at Medgar Evers College…how did the poor fellow cope? Every day he walked through those doors he was rebuked by the name of a black civil rights activist, and in all of his classes he had to teach young black students. It must have been so hard for him. At least he could go home at night and vent his feelings on the internet, vomiting up all his hate and inadequacy for an adoring audience of fascists.

He’s losing that now. His allies are tearing down his videos, his website, TheDietzMethod, where he promoted his hypnosis and life-coaching business, is gone, and you can bet that no university is going to hire him, even for those awful little adjuncting positions, ever again. It turns out you can’t be trusted to teach if you think a lot of your students are inferior subhumans because of the color of their skin. Before you start bewailing the loss of free speech at modern universities, keep in mind that my dream of being a professor at Liberty University has also been crushed. Oh, woe.

One might wonder how he came to be this way, and sadly, he followed a common and predictable trajectory.

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From John Scalzi at Whatever:

Don’t send me money directly for the books I write, actually go ahead and buy them from a bookstore.

For one thing, I get paid more than adequately that way. For another thing, my publisher is not my enemy — my publisher is my business partner, and my business partner does a lot of things for my book.

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From Frances Langum:

Probably time for Sean to go on a “scheduled vacation.” And lawyer up with someone better than Joe DiGenova

So Michael Cohen’s Client Number 3, Sean Hannity, is once again in the spider’s web of Trumpdom.

Don’t pretend you didn’t climb in there all by yourself, Sean. Hannity has autographed MAGA hats at Trump rallies. He’s in up to his eyeballs in Trumpworld.

But this same Sean Hannity is mentioned in the testimony transcripts of George Kent.

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From Dorian de Wind, Associate Editor, The Moderate Voice:

Every Memorial Day and every Veterans Day we read essays meant to explain the differences between the two Days; to clarify whom exactly these Days honor and celebrate; to clear up “misconceptions” about them; to provide historical and legislative context; to compare them to similar Days in other countries — even to clear up confusion about the correct spelling of Veterans Day:

A lot of people think it’s “Veteran’s Day” or “Veterans’ Day,” but they’re wrong. The holiday is not a day that “belongs” to one veteran or multiple veterans, which is what an apostrophe implies. It’s a day for honoring all veterans — so no apostrophe needed.

Simply – but not lightly – said, our Veterans Day is a day meant to thank and honor all the brave men and women, both living and deceased, who answered the call to serve in our armed forces both in war and peace. But, the Defense Department adds, “…it’s largely intended to thank living veterans for their sacrifices…”

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• Infidel753 is happy with Tuesday’s election results. It is a cautious glee. We should curb our enthusiasm a little and apply three useful lessons for 2020 and beyond.
   
• Science fiction writer John Scalzi is mildly happy with Tuesday’s results but warns not to read too much into it. Off year, local, and so on.
   
• Jonathan Bernstein looks at Tuesday’s numbers and finds the real winners: Medicaid expansion and education.
   
• Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass warns that, while the Democrat won the governorship in Kentucky, Republicans won two important offices that may be even more important, and may overturn the election result for Governor as well. Seems there is a little known election provision that will let them do it.
   
• Tommy Christopher watches as Fox News host Laura Ingraham twists into a human pretzel explaining how Republican Governor Matt Bevin lost but Donald Trump was actually the winner in Kentucky.

Continue reading “Not So Ruby Tuesday, Lies, Fraud, RasPutin, Shutdown, Sean Melts”