Tuesday, February 16, 2021
I.E. Exoneration By An 'Earthly Tribunal'...But Sadly for Donald J Trump, NONE OF THAT Will IN ANY WAY Debar Him From Being Eligible To Come Up For Due Inspection and Investigation Before the Divine Tribunal Upon That Great Day of The LORD, And - If Things Don't Go According To (His) Plan (I.e. The Well-Laid Plans of Mice and Men), And He Proves Ineligible For Heavenly Translation (Neither Having Ever Undergone Genuine Biblical Conversion, And Henceforth Walked That Out In His Subsequent Earthly Life) - Experience the Ultimate And Inescapable Impeachment: That Of The One Who Is Truth Incarnate And In Whose Very Presence All Evil and Evildoers Will Not Be Able To Stand A Single Moment...
Yes, the 'judgments of God' are abroad in the land, and I for one do not regard the diabolical wintry weather now engulfing large swathes of America from Texas through New York state - following the legal exoneration of President Trump by both branches of the U S legislature - as mere coincidence...
...but maybe I'm just a superstitious fellow...
Too Cute By Half: Some Deft Side-Stepping, Side-Splitting Semantic Dissimulation By Trump Legislative Loyalists and Partisan Troopers Leads to The Inevitable Result...
You have to give it to Trump loyalists and assorted partisan fanatics, they'll try absolutely anything if not everything to *avoid and evade the obvious and clear-cut, plain as day facts upon any matter...
...to avoid and evade, through technical finesse and a side-stepping routine far more worthy of some fancy dance-floor manoeuvre, the conviction by a two-thirds Senate majority in Trump's (second/re-) impeachment trial, securing of which would of course effectively debar him from a future presidential run.
Manoeuvres far more 'worthy' (or rather, befitting) of a previous president, none other than Bill (William Jefferson) Clinton, in his own technical, hair-splitting **self-defence, as he declared - at the risk of perjury, which many actually believe he did in fact commit -
"No, I did not have sexual relations with that woman!"
*Much like income tax, which is why Trump's well-known, notorious antics vis-a-vis the same are just ditto...
**He was required to give testimony under oath, if I remember rightly, and if anyone would be able to be completely, 100% congizant of all that that involved/entailed and understood the full implications thereof, it would have to be Clinton, as, after all, I believe he like Barack Obama was previously a constitutional lawyer.
Postscript:
This was all coming to a speedy climax as I prepared this for e-print, and has of course now been rapidly superseded by an official (non-legal, mind you) 'verdict' of exoneration by selfsame Senate, but it's important enough for me nevertheless to get the preceding observations down 'on the record'...
Monday, February 15, 2021
As My Good 'Ole Dad Would've Put It: You Pays Your Money and You Takes Your Choice...Or As My Would've Been (Replacement) Dad (Richard Welch) Might've Expressed Things: You Can't Have Your Cake and Eat It Too: Yes, America's Republican Party Has - Inexorably - Made Their (Overall, Collective) Decision...and America and Our World Will - Ultimately - Never Be the Same Again...As Such Leads Inexorably Ever Onwards Towards the Very Last Days of (Pre-Advent) Human History: The End of All Things...But Woe Unto That Man - Or Woman - Who Tries to Second-Guess His/Her Maker and Attempts to Precipitate That Fateful Judgment Day...To His/Her Own Ultimate Destruction...
But there were voices - aplenty - in the U S Republican Party itself - in open and active dissent from its Trump-centric outlook over recent days, weeks, months and years...
...but of course these have all been effectively ignored and marginalized and demonized...
see, for instance, the shameful treatment of Louisiana's Bill Cassidy, North Carolina's Richard Burr et al...
A tome or two would hardly suffice to even begin to cover off such shameful if only all too predictable *'developments', however it's nevertheless 'pleasing' to see the **sort of 'folks' whose voices have been raised in (unavoidably) impotent protest against the same...
The likes of the long-time and well-respected conservative Time columnist George Wills. One-time prospective Republican presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as former California Governor Arnold Scwarzeneeger. Ten former Defence Chiefs of whom five (half), as appointees of Republican presidents, would doubtless have (usually) been Republican Party members/ 'subscribers'...
Numerous others utterly unknown to me (as of course are all the preceding and following, but as in not being names one generally hears of in the media), nonetheless - from online posts and U-Tube videos let me at least name - and anything but shame! - one Chris Vance, evidently a former chair(man) of the ***(one-time great) Washington state Republican Party, and these days a political independent. For now suffice for me to refer to a (January 21, 2021) 'Special to the (Seattle) Times' by Mr Vance, entitled 'Principle over Power: Let's form a new Republican Party' (accessed c/o www.seattletimes.com after I 'googled' 'Republican Party Senator(s) Dissent' etcetera.
Alongside this may I also highly recommend a brilliant (extended) opinion piece by Anne Applebaum, contributer to The Atlantic, whose 'The Collaborators: History Will Judge the Complicit: Why Have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?'
Excellent stuff, indeed...and sorely, desperately needed in this ever-so-fraught day and age of petty partisan politics...
...and no - although I know it's not the done thing to speak ill of the dead - and I wish him well for his day of reckoning before the Almighty - I for one do not consider that the late talkback show host Rush Limbaugh added one iota to the American (let alone global) political conversation...
*Of course these movements are anything but progress in the classical understanding thereof, rather a reactionary retreat into 'neanderthalism' and 'medievalry'...
**Including if only 'in spirit' one-time Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, to whom I have referred recently (and probably awhile ago on a couple occasions also)...and, obviously, one-time presidential nominee Mitt Romney...
...and, of course, the two former (President) 'Bushes' (though Yours Truly is not exactly the greatest fan of either, one cannot but help respecting and even admiring their willingness to 'go on the record' as not supporting, as in voting for, Donald J Trump at one or other or both of Presidential elections 2016 and 2020. especially in view of the dire public denunciations and excoriations which they would most assuredly have known they would subsequently and consequently be liable to experience, and indeed did verily undergo...
***I'm thinking here of the long-time Washington state Senator (****whose name temporarily eludes me) who (the ultimately ill-fated, Richard Milhaus Nixon-trounced) 1972 Democratic Party hopeful George McGovern evidently had seriously considered placing upon his own presidential ticket...
****I believe it's Mark Hatfield, who had the gonads to stand up to President Bush Senior, as indeed did the oft-derided Barry Goldwater to President Ronald Reagan, no less...