Monica Showalter:

Like week-old meat left in a hot car, the stench of defeat is starting to overpower the swag pens and stifled giggles in the Democrats’ impeachment project.

Axios has fresh news about how bad it is:

Officials in both parties tell me that — barring surprise new information — President Trump is on a glide path to swift acquittal at his Senate impeachment trial, despite a blizzard of evidence bolstering Democrats’ accusations.

• • • Why it matters: Trump has a decent chance of avoiding witnesses and of losing zero Republican votes on conviction.
    • Think about that: When the news broke, did anyone think every single Republican in the House and Senate would have his back? Bill Clinton pined for such unity.

A source close to House Democrats sounded morose after Trump’s defense team made its opening arguments yesterday: “I think our team feels like we did everything possible and are going to lose anyway.”

• • • “It feels like maybe we’ll still get a witness, but more likely not, and even if we do it won’t matter,” the source added.
    • “The GOP gamble is always that most voters don’t care about process … Up to us to make them pay for this.”

The whole thing, from Axios big Mike Allen, king of the swamp, in a column that almost always can find a silver lining for the Democrats otherwise, (and didn’t this time), can be read here…

…It wasn’t just public sentiment shifting decisively in favor of Trump on impeachment, as this RealClearPolitics poll of polls showed.

It wasn’t just Trump’s string of hardcore victories — over Iran, with our top trading partners in China and between the three amigos, as well on the Mexican border where illegal border crossings fell a staggering 90%. And don’t forget Brexit with an awesome U.S.-U.K. trade treaty in the wings.

It wasn’t just the lack of public interest in House impeachment manager Adam Schiff’s long, long, long speeches that kept even the Senate visitor galleries empty.

It wasn’t even a new poll out showing Trump’s public approval soaring to the highest level of his entire presidency…

…Nobody wants to be stubbornly identified with a losing cause, especially one as badly managed and executed, without even a cause, as this one. Reality now is sinking in to the Democrats that the public is repelled by this specter and rallying to President Trump, and they’d better extricate themselves from this before they are swept away in November.

This, by the way, is far from where it ends for them. As time goes on and the public rejects the Democratic impeachment obsession to a growing extent (and all signs point to this as the trend), more Democrats will flee like ‘rats from the sinking ship, and join the no-impeach side. It might just start to look like the burning Hindenburg for them.

Falling dirigible, sure, but maybe more like an avalanche, actually, in the best case scenario, leaving the impeachment fanatics all by their lonesome, and even better, maybe thrown out even from their safe seats themselves, come November. For Republicans, it’s time for hot pursuit…”

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Worth clicking over.

Brian C. Joondeph:

“…Deep state players in the Obama administration wove an elaborate tapestry of collusion, subterfuge, and electoral chicanery. While better suited for a Robert Ludlum novel, it played out in real time over the past four years.

Stars of the drama include familiar names such as James Comey, James Clapper, John Brennan, and Andrew McCabe. Supporting actors played an unwitting role, namely Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. The victim was then candidate Donald Trump. Heroes of the saga include Attorney General William Barr, U.S. Attorney John Durham, and a mysterious group simply called Q.

The plot was simple. The Obama administration, in 2016 and before, wanted to preordain the 2016 electoral outcome. What better way to do this than to spy on the rival presidential campaign? Since spying is illegal, a pretense was needed.

That’s where the Steele Dossier came in. The DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and top Obama administration officials colluded with multiple foreign governments to fabricate opposition research on the Trump campaign alleging treasonous activities. This allowed the FBI to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, and likely others as well.

The Obama administration colluded with foreign governments to influence an election. How ironic that this is exactly what President Trump was impeached for, and why he is a “dictator” and an “existential threat to democracy”. Can you say projection?…”

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This from Salon

MICHAEL LIND:

“…The Russian money spent to influence the election was negligible. Its persistence as an explanation is bad for Dems.

The populist wave in politics on both sides of the Atlantic is a defensive reaction against the technocratic neoliberal revolution from above that has been carried out in the last half century by national managerial elites. Over the last half century, the weakening or destruction by neoliberal policy makers of the intermediary institutions of mid-twentieth century democratic pluralism, particularly labor unions, has deprived much of the working class of effective voice or agency in government, the economy, and culture. Populist demagogues can channel the legitimate grievances of many working-class voters, but they cannot create a stable, institutionalized alternative to overclass-dominated neoliberalism. Only a new democratic pluralism that compels managerial elites to share power with the multiracial, religiously pluralistic working class in the economy, politics, and the culture can end the cycle of oscillation between oppressive technocracy and destructive populism.

That is the thesis of this article. It is a minority viewpoint within overclass circles in the US and Europe. A far more common view among transatlantic elites interprets the success of populist and nationalist candidates in today’s Western democracies not as a predictable and disruptive backlash against oligarchic misrule, but as a revival of Nazi or Soviet-style totalitarianism. One narrative holds that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s regime, by cleverly manipulating public opinion in the West through selective leaks to the media or Internet advertisements and memes, is responsible for Brexit, the election of Trump in 2016, and perhaps other major political events. A rival narrative sees no need to invoke Russian machinations; in this view, without aid from abroad, demagogues can trigger the latent “authoritarian personalities” of voters, particularly white working-class native voters, many of whom, it is claimed, will turn overnight into a fascist army if properly mobilized. These two elite narratives, promulgated by antipopulist politicians, journalists, and academics, can be called the Russia Scare and the Brown Scare (after earlier “brown scares” in Western democracies, with the color referring to Hitler’s Brownshirts).

The reductio ad absurdum of this kind of mythological thinking is the adoption of the term “Resistance” by domestic opponents of President Donald Trump, which implies an equation between Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans and the heroic anti-Nazis of the French Resistance. The anti-fascist theme also provides the name for the Antifa movement which, like the earlier “black bloc” anarchist movement, is made up chiefly of the privileged children of the white overclass who abuse leftist ideology as an excuse to dress up as movie-style ninjas, vandalize property, and harass people.

It is no doubt emotionally satisfying for members of the embattled managerial overclass to identify antiestablishment populism with pro-Russian treason, fascism, or both. But this kind of paranoid demonological thinking has the potential to be a greater danger to liberal democracy in the West than any particular populist movements.

To begin with, both the Russia Scare and the Brown Scare betray a profound contempt on the part of members of technocratic neoliberal national establishments for voters who support populist causes or candidates. These voters are assumed to be gullible dimwits who are easily manipulated by foreign propaganda or domestic demagogues. Even worse, attributing populism to the irrational impulses of maladjusted voters prevents embattled establishments on both sides of the Atlantic from treating specific grievances of those voters as legitimate…”

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Frank Miele:

“…You can take your pick for the most famous liars in history — people who are willing to say anything for the sake of gaining and keeping power — but surely Rep. Adam Schiff has earned a place on that list.

I won’t call Schiff a “congenital liar” — as Fox News personality Sean Hannity does nightly — but only because the term excuses Schiff of personal responsibility for his behavior. I don’t think it was his genes that made Schiff into a consummate liar but rather his narcissistic personality.

Watching Schiff spin his yarns as chief House manager for the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump reminds me of the great dissemblers of Shakespeare, such as “Honest Iago,” who is only comfortable in his own skin when he is making the skin of others crawl. The “motiveless malignity” that poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge ascribed to Iago is writ large in the perfunctory perfidy that Schiff practices with unassuming ease. He would destroy a king, but he assures us he takes no pleasure in it, wink-wink, nod-nod.

Perhaps I am giving Schiff too much credit. He might be more akin to Monsieur Parolles of “All’s Well That Ends Well,” the arrogant know-it-all whose own words come back to haunt him: “He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool.”…”
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Trump Attorney Philbin on the Whistleblower and Schiff

Democrats nightmare. Close, unemotional scrutiny of their actions and their charges against the President. Their actions and charges will not stand the scrutiny that a defense attorney would give them. That is why the President was not allowed normal due process in the House. Click over to watch video of one of the President’s attorneys question Manager Schiff’s actions. It lasts about 7 minutes. If you have not followed the proceedings closely, this may be a revelation to you.

Related:

https://twitter.com/GregNorberg/status/1221447067496660993

“…We all know that from the moment he was elected the Left has intended to see President Trump impeached. The Washington Post called for impeachment nineteen minutes after the forty-fifth president was inaugurated. Numerous irresponsible members of Congress and the media are on record demanding that he be impeached before they had even an inkling of what kind of President he would be.

As it has turned out, Donald Trump has been a magnificent President. He has accomplished things his predecessor in office, Barack Obama, said could never be achieved. He has brought manufacturing back to the US. Unemployment is the lowest in decades. Many of the regulations that have strangled the economy have been rolled back.

The list of the benefits his leadership has brought to the American people is too long to list here, but his many successes have driven the Democrats to mass distraction. Their mission to see him removed from office became an obsession as their grief over Hillary’s loss took root in their psyches. They have wanted revenge from day one.

But like all people who believe themselves to be smarter than those for whom they have only contempt, they planned badly. What began with the Clinton campaign and a few self-appointed commanders-in-chief in our once-premier law enforcement agencies quickly drew in fellow collaborators from around the world: UK, Italy, Malta and who knows where else? They paid a pack of Euro-trash lowlifes to create condemnatory but entirely false information about Trump to amplify Hillary’s claim that Russia was responsible for her loss.

Even Adam Schiff was on board when he was pranked by those two Russian comedians who promised him “naked pictures of Trump.” Schiff was so excited at the prospect of getting his hands on some Trump dirt that he was easily deceived. Aside from Hillary and the DNC, Schiff is the only other person to have actually colluded with Russians for political advantage.

Schiff is a fool. That should be obvious to everyone by now, especially after the President’s own lawyers’ first chance to present his side of the story on Saturday. It was not only gripping but brief and revelatory. Schiff, Nadler, Pelosi and their co-conspirators have perpetrated the biggest fraud on the American people in American history for wholly bogus reasons. And they are all such legends in their own minds, they were certain they would get away with. Their plan would see President Trump removed from office. They never gave a thought or a bit of respect to the millions of people who voted for him — precisely to be rid of people like them…

…Counselors Cipollone, Sekulow, Purpura, Philbin were spectacular without being theatrical, unlike the performing seals that were the House managers. They actually did focus on facts, not mind-reading, and the facts they addressed were all drawn from Schiff’s and Nadler’s own witnesses, since the President was not allowed any defense or witnesses.

In under three hours, as opposed to the 23 hours Schiff’s pack of overseers spent repeating themselves, these four men eviscerated Schiff’s very poorly-planned narrative.  The House Dems spent most of those 23 hours harking back to Russia collusion!  Even though the Mueller report dispensed with that hoax, Schiff cannot let it go…

…Those who had the time and inclination to watch the first words of defense of the President spoken on Saturday are sure to be revolted by what went on, not just over the previous three days but the for the past three years. This entire debacle should be over by Wednesday. Schiff’s two silly articles should be dismissed out of hand. We can all now see clearly who and what Schiff and his impeachment cultists are: pompous, angry traitors to our Constitution. They will be outsmarted by the Founders and the scholars who actually do know and revere our founding document and the law. Their petty vindictiveness will condemn them to failure and a legacy of bumbling malfeasance.

When the history of this attempted coup is written, all those who participated in this monstrous crime will be forever known as the Benedict Arnolds of the early 21st century…”

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“…Watching the impeachment theater (or rather reading about it to save time and avoid being influenced by the hypnotic effect of television) I’ve concluded that the congressional Democrats and their base live in a postfactual “inner child” world  of fact-free enthusiasms and conniption fits. In their world, a Republican president they cannot manipulate to their will must be impeached and removed from office. That a Republican president must be stripped of his clear constitutional right to shape foreign policy instead of Democratic plants in the Civil Service. That words are not entitled to their clear and normal meanings but can be restated fraudulently to fit the removal goal. That Congress, not the President, can determine what constitutes executive privilege. That witnesses with no direct knowledge can impute whatever meaning they choose into the events and such hearsay and mind readings must be credited. That the House that decides whether to institute impeachment proceedings can, claiming urgency, speed through them in secret, deny the president the right to a defense and can keep hidden from him and his defenders evidence which totally exculpates him. That having expedited a star chamber proceeding, the Democratic House can then demand the right to drag out the process in the Senate under rules they, not the Senate, set. In sum, that none of the long-established guides to evidence and fairness and constitutional protections should be followed when Democrats have a multiyear temper tantrum because they lost status and power…

…How to wrap your thinking brain around such nonsense as the claim that the President abused his authority when he briefly delayed aid to Ukraine to encourage them to reinstitute corruption investigations Joe Biden had blackmailed them into abandoning? How to register the dissonance in the claim that Trump is Putin’s tool when he provided to Ukraine lethal aid that Obama refused to provide for fear of upsetting Putin? How is it an “abuse of power” for Trump to investigate Joe Biden and the overwhelming evidence of his corruption because Biden is running for election but not an “abuse of power” for House Democrats to investigate and impeach him while he’s running for reelection? Even more crazy is how is this is an “abuse of power” when the entire Obama and Hillary Clinton teams illegally spied on Trump’s campaign and filed false reports with the FISC (Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court) to obtain warrants for this purpose and generously paid people like Stefan Halper out of the Treasury to spy on Trump’s team and leak anti-Trump stories to the Washington Post…”

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And establishment Republicans in general. Not a pretty picture.

“…One of the more fascinating developments of the Donald Trump era is the exposure of the Washington conservative elitists as frauds who are superficial, flighty, and lazy. Peggy Noonan and the rest have exposed themselves as people who play conservatives on TV. If they were conservative, they would now celebrate the great awakening in America headed by President Trump.

Instead the petty pundits stand behind Democrats 100% in this impeachment scam. They learned nothing from the Russian collusion hoax because they do not want to admit that Donald John Trump schlonged Hillary, 30 states to 20.

Oh she got a few more votes. Big deal. That is not how we elect presidents. We are a collection of states, not a nation carved into states. We also are a constitutional republic, and not a democracy. The wisdom of the Constitution shone through on November 8, 2016 — a date we voted to Brexit the Establishment.

The Trump presidency has revealed them as reality TV show people. Their conservatism is as fake as a Kardashian breast. The very people we thought were our friends led us astray…”

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Not a fan of the hat

https://youtu.be/S-hYAg7MKD4