Biden bragging about threatening the Ukrainians never raised any alarms in Washington, because it was the new normal. Hunter getting a no-show job at a foreign company raised no eyebrows because everyone was doing it....Umnnnhhhh, yes. Yes, indeed!Where is "Clean Jeans" Paul Ryan? Bill Barr, the self-proclaimed 'ultra-Catholic'? We know McConnell can't possibly come out of his Red Chinese-owned shell on this, but what about Tester? Tuberville? Hawley?
I'd like to add something else to that: Ukraine was the proximate cause of Trump's first impeachment. At that time we learned that the one thing the Congressional leadership would not tolerate was poking around with Ukraine and corruption.
This was all before the Russian war, but at the time there were claims that Pelosi and Romney also had family members working with Ukraine's gas and oil industry. Fact check organizations attempted to say this was dubious, although at least one of the claims remains unprovable either way:
Pelosi did visit Ukraine in 2017 — as another video shows — in which he said in an interview he was visiting on behalf of an organization he was running called the Corporate Governance Initiative (he served as executive director). Hammill told us the visit was “a vacation at personal expense.” It’s unclear if the Corporate Governance Initiative — a company registered in Arizona with a stated purpose of helping organizations develop structures and policies — is still active. Attempts to contact it were unsuccessful.
Russia's war has only increased the opportunity for corruption, as vast sums of money -- we really have no idea how much, as the Pentagon has admitted it is billions of dollars off in its estimate and the intelligence budgets are black -- have flowed to various programs, classified and otherwise.
The odds that members of Congress have had the opportunity to arrange kickbacks or other payoffs to themselves, friends, or family are close to 100%. The odds that our Congress' members are above taking advantage of such opportunities? Eh, somewhat less than 100%.
Another reason next year's elections cannot be lost by the establishment is that it might open up the opportunity to look under the hood. They dodged the bullet last time, but only through an unwinnable impeachment coupled with a trial designed to make it look like treason to try to pressure Ukraine to get answers about it.
5 comments:
They are correct for saying it, but it is unfortunately just one more confirmation of the fact that No One Cares About It. Whoever has some power thinks they can stomp on the other party for this. But in this instance, all of them have a friend or two in their own party they don't want to see hurt.
One of Trump's weaknesses - and it still is a major weakness of his we should keep in mind - is that is is utterly clumsy about such things, sticking out his jaw and saying "Hit me!" This is not because he is more honest, except that money doesn't much matter to him because he reached the point where he buys the things he liked years ago. It is status in other ways that matters now. But he doesn't cover his tracks and will never be able to attract people clever enough to help him with that again, because he has no loyalty to any of them. We sigh and say "If only he didn't keep having to answer all these inflated charges and accusations, imagine the good he could have done," but we should also know that was always inevitable - and it will happen to him again because he can't stop. This time we know it.
I offer the Dominic Cummings theory for Republican (and Democrat) congressional behavior again. They devote their energy to positioning themselves within their party. Attacking Democrats or their legislation or their ideas is simply a game board for being seen as part of one faction or another in the party. They may mean it at some level, because that much hypocrisy is hard to fake morning after morning. But basically, they don't mean it. The game is not to root out corruption or bring the Democrats down, but to position oneself as such, if necessary. If a power swing within the Republican party comes to depend on actually going after Biden on this, a few of them will do it. Not until.
Attacking Democrats or their legislation or their ideas is simply a game board for being seen as part of one faction or another in the party. They may mean it at some level, because that much hypocrisy is hard to fake morning after morning. But basically, they don't mean it. The game is not to root out corruption or bring the Democrats down, but to position oneself as such, if necessary.
Mutatis mutandis the same applies to the Legislating Game. For the last 50 (++) years, laws were written specifically to be passed off to regulators, so when the regulators crack down on gas stoves, diesel fuel, arm-braces, (whatever), legislators can evade blame for their laws--which were written PRECISELY to be interpreted the way regulators interpret them.
Yeah, I wasn't trying to suggest that Trump was the (or even 'a') solution; I was just noticing that when he got close to this particular tripwire, they all freaked out.
My guess is that there isn't an honest politician left who merits support, which seems like a change from when I was younger -- not a big change, but there used to be at least a few. At this point the only really honest ones are the crazy ones, which has its own problems in terms of supporting them.
Not Crazy.
What you interpret as Crazy is entirely justified.
Extream times require extream measures
When nobody goes to ?Jail, they all deserve to go to jail or worse.
Greg
I didn’t even say who I thought the crazy ones were.
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