You Will Anyway: Notes on the Judiciary impeachment hearing (taken in real time)

Monday, December 9, 2019

Notes on the Judiciary impeachment hearing (taken in real time)

The Judiciary Committee folks are clowns compared to the Intel people both sides. After an opening fiasco that Nadler doesn't seem equal to, the Dems' counselor gave his presentation. Poorly. Is this the best guy they had?

His use of Trump clips is good, though.

The Republicans are making the hearing an absolute circus. As Kevin Kruse tweeted, they're "interrupting each other's interruptions." This is what was expected in Wednesday's hearing but didn't happened. They must have gotten marching orders from Trump on over the weekend.

One of Republican presenter Steve Castor's complaints is that during the early closed door hearings, Democrats interrupted Republican witnesses. I got a chuckle out of that, since that's what the Republicans have been doing in this hearing from the start.

When the Dems switched to Daniel Goldman, the attorney who sat with Adam Schiff on the Intel hearings, things got real. This guy is good.

Republicans are kicking up a ruckus, with Matt Gaetz shouting out shit without being "recognized" to speak. Somebody online suggests they're doing all this so people will give up and quit watching. Possibly. But they're also doing it beause they're dicks.

The hearing is on a break (objected to by the Republicans) after 2-1/2 hours. When they come back, they'll have Castor again. I'm going to pass on that, and go back when they do the 5-minute rounds questioning the witnesses. I want to see Goldman take down the Republicans, but I have a feeling they won't be questioning him - they'll just be giving ranting speeches for five minutes each.

More later perhaps.

Yes.

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"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

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"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.