A report card on the Biden administration

House managers ended their presentation today. Trump's lawyers will be present their case on Friday, their entire case. They will be brief.

Why is that? Is it because Senate Republicans are going to ignore a mountain of evidence and vote to acquit? Is it because the mountain of evidence leaves Trump's second rate team of lawyers with very little to say? Is it because both reasons are in play?

Republicans just want this to end.

Trump told members of the far right like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and Turning Point USA for two months that the election was stolen from him, and that he won by a landslide. Are Trump's lawyers going to argue that was an example of free speech?

Trump used the lie as a motivational tool on Jan. 6 to get his mob to sack the capitol. Was his call to arms another example of free speech?

Trump's lawyers may offer videos of Democrats using fighting metaphors at political rallies. Unfortunately for Trump their are two major differences. First, the Democratic speakers had no intention of starting a riot; obviously, Trump did on the sixth. Second, no riots followed the rallies. There is a great deal of difference between a political rally and the events on Jan. 6. Will Trump's "B" team try to equate the two?

 

When insurrectionists occupied the US Capitol on Wednesday, they did not alter the outcome of the presidential election, but they did ransack the offices of lawmakers, rifle through computer files and emails, and steal personal electronics and documents.

Those actions could pose serious harm to the United States.

A full accounting has yet to be completed, but US Attorney Michael Sherwin said during a news briefing Thursday that materials were stolen. “We have to identify what was done, mitigate that, and it could have potential national security equities.” Sherwin said, adding that “a large amount of pilfering at the Capitol” had occurred. On Thursday evening, CBS News reported that a laptop possibly containing sensitive national security information was among the objects stolen.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/capitol-mob-national-security

 

Trump played golf today.

That is exactly what his lawyers and advisors want him to do, play golf and keep a very or non-existent profile. In other words, Trump should keep his mouth shut for once.

Thank God for small miracles his lawyers are saying. Twitter banned him for life.

We are being told that the only reason why Senate Republicans are going to ignore all the evidence and acquit Trump is their fear of Trump's base and their Senate longevity.

That is very confusing. The kind of voters Trump has attracted were on full display in our capital on Jan. 6. One would think that the GOP would love to get rid of such voters.

Also, Senate Republicans have very low opinion of the American Republican voter. No doubt many of them favor convicting a President who led an insurrection against our government.

On the other hand, we will never know. Trump's followers aren't saying about his issue. Their silence is deafening.

 

Trump's defense is so shallow that his followers on this forum will not repeat them for fear of being laughed at.

Defense team to argue that Trump's rhetoric is no different to that used by Democrats

 

See, I told you so.

Can lawyers do this? Trump's lawyers lied, obfuscated, and created an alternate reality. Their primary weapon in their defense of Trump was to attack opposing counsel personally. That is a typical Trumpian tactic.

Notwithstanding disbarment because of the many lies, one should give the lawyers some slack. Trump didn't give them much to work with. Indeed, they largely pretended the real Trump didn't exist and, heaven forbid, actually dealing with the evidence provided by opposing council. It's far easier focus directly on opposing counsel.

Besides, they did not have come up with any miracles of jurisprudence. If Hitler was a former Republican President, Republicans would vote to acquit despite the existence of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

 

This has really gotten old.

The Post reports, "Defense attorneys, seeking to downplay the former president’s role in the violent attack, accused House impeachment managers of being motivated by hatred of Trump." That statement came directly from Trump.

For four years his followers have completely ignored what Trump did or said and accused his critics of being motivated by hatred. It is a farcical argument used by the guilty so they can avoid what Trump did or said.

Such is the case with Trump's lawyers in his second impeachment trial.

For three days House managers presented overwhelming evidence of Trump's guilt, using Trump's own statements and videos of the consequences of those statements. Five were killed in the capitol riot and a national security threat was created by the theft of documents and at least one computer with sensitive information.

Trump's lawyers used three hours to defend Trump. 16 hours were allocated to them.

Can you blame them? Anyone defending Trump wants to get out of there as quickly as possible.

What do we get from Trump's followers on this forum as it relates to these issues? I have no idea why Congressional Republicans are afraid of them. They don't talk.

 

The Republican Party has given a free pass to future Presidents for anything they might do in January. A former President incited an insurrection against our government in January. It doesn't get worse than that.

The Republican Party acquitted the former President!

ABC News reports, "Exactly a month and a week after insurrectionists incited a riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, former President Donald Trump's second impeachment trial came to a climactic end on Saturday afternoon, with Trump being acquitted for his alleged role of inciting the deadly event. A majority of senators voted to convict the former president, but failed to reach the super majority threshold needed for a conviction."

To provide an example of the perfidy of the Republican Party one need only look at the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Despite the opinions of nearly all Constitution experts Constitution lawyers to the contrary, McConnell said "he voted "not guilty" because he believes Trump is "constitutionally not eligible for conviction" given that he is no longer president," NBC News.

Also, a Senate resolution on Tuesday established the Senate's jurisdiction in the impeachment trial. McConnell and most Republicans violated a Senate resolution. McConnell said nothing about the evidence. He couldn't. The evidence was overwhelming.

The American people have already spoken. The Republican Party is not paying attention. Under their leadership, the Republican Party has lost the House, Senate, and the White House.

Now this. A Republican President committed an act of sedition, and the Republican Party freed him from consequences, and, by their precedence, all future Presidents for any action they might take in the closing days of their term.

It is easy to surmise this might be opening act of the decline of American democracy.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedoms it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within. Abraham Lincoln

The American people will remember this day. The Republican Party lost today.

 

NBC News reports, "Moments after voting to acquit Donald Trump, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a speech excoriating the former president for a "disgraceful dereliction of duty" and said he holds him responsible for "provoking" the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol.

"McConnell was among the 43 Republicans who voted that Trump was "not guilty" on the charge of incitement of insurrection."

"There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it," the Kentucky Republican said Saturday. "The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president."

"And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet earth," he continued.

It's too late. The damage has been done. How many times in the last four years have Republicans tried to un-ring a bell?

 

What a refreshing change.

I have largely abandoned this thread because Biden is boring.

He is in the business of governing, not creating hostilities and controversies like his predecessor. Biden is busy putting together a Covid relief package to help millions of Americans in this time of pandemic and massive unemployment. At the same time he is fighting the scourge of this pandemic by putting vaccines into arms as quickly as possible. He desperately wants to reopen schools as he working hard on that as well.

Trump became a recluse after the election then led extremists groups loyal to him in an assault on our capital. From his den in Mar-a-Lago he made a personal attack on the single most powerful man in his party, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

 

Biden campaigned on restoring an accord limiting Iran’s nuclear program. It remains unclear if Tehran, which is demanding that sanctions be lifted, will accept the offer to talk.

The Times reports, "The United States made a major move on Thursday toward restoring the Iran nuclear deal that the Trump administration abandoned, offering to join European nations in what would be the first substantial diplomacy with Tehran in more than four years, Biden administration officials said.

"In an effort to make good on one of President Biden’s most significant campaign promises, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke with European foreign ministers and agreed that the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran “was a key achievement of multilateral diplomacy,” and one worth pursuing again, according to a State Department statement."

The Iranian nuclear agreement, or JCPOA, permanently barred Iran from making a nuke and severely restricted uranium enrichment. It was agreed upon during the Obama administration between the five permanent members of Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) and Iran.

Trump destroyed the agreement.

Iran followed suit, left the agreement, and resumed her nuclear research. Currently, she is closer than ever to making a nuke. It only depends on whether or not she wants to.

 

NBC News reports, "For four years, the rest of the world watched with frustration and a sense of irony as the U.S. walked away from the Paris Agreement, the global climate pact it had painstakingly pressured other countries to join and then abruptly abandoned during the Trump administration.

"Starting Friday, the U.S. is back in the deal but with plenty of catching up to do to meet its emissions-cutting commitments and restore its diminished standing on the world stage.

"This is a global existential crisis," President Joe Biden said as he touted the U.S. move during remarks Friday to the Munich Security Conference. "We can no longer delay or do the bare minimum to address climate change."

I wonder if Trump's followers are interested in what real governance is.

Or, are they just interested in chaos and anarchy that befits their intellectual level and their cult leader?

 

NPR reports, "President Biden on Friday sought to turn the page on former President Donald Trump's "America First" ethos, declaring "America is back" and vowing to rebuild trust with European allies by working on challenges like arms control, COVID-19 and climate change.

"It was Biden's first speech since taking office aimed at an international audience. He spoke from the White House to a virtual crowd at the Munich Security Conference — a who's who of global national security officials — who he has met with many times in person over his decades in public life."

"America is back, the transatlantic alliance is back, and we are not looking backward. We are looking forward together," Biden said. He called the partnership between Europe and the United States "the cornerstone of all we hope to accomplish in the 21st century."

The silence from Republicans is deafening. They don't know how to react to a President who is actually leading the nation forward.

 

I know you are not talking about "Let's circle back/I'll get back to you on that" Jen Psaki.

Gas is already going up. And with it, so does everything else: groceries, building materials, etc.

 

Yes. This called openness and truth. I know most Republicans are not used to that.

Attempts to place blame on Biden has gotten laughable. Republicans are trying hard to make Biden look bad when all Biden is doing is his job, and his administration is communicating with the American people.

Republicans who endured four years of the Trump administration aren't used to that, either.

Next Republicans will blame Biden for the nasty weather arguing that he is ineffective in his fight against climate change.

 

There is a chance that we might actually end up with an attorney general who is not doubling as the President's lawyer as was the case with Bill Barr.

Merriick Garland asserted that he would rebuff any attempt by the White House to politicize the Justice Department, declaring: “I am not the president’s lawyer; I am the United States’ lawyer.”

“My job is protect the Department of Justice,” Garland said.

Following his misbegotten excursion to Cancun while his state was in a deep freeze, the disgraced Sen. Ted Cruz asked Garland about the independence of the A.G. In doing so, Ted forgot the elephant in the room -- the past four years of the Trump administration. Trump thought the A.G. was his personal lawyer, and, more times than not, Barr assumed that role. Barr considered protecting Trump was part of his job.

USA Today writes, "Very few GOP lawmakers mentioned Trump's Justice Department, and the accusations Attorney General Bill Barr faced for using the power of the agency to help President Donald Trump politically."

Garland stated that Biden has pledged that he would not intervene in Justice Department investigations, indicating that he expected the department would remain free from partisan political interference.

He told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday that he hasn’t discussed a pending federal investigation into the President’s son, Hunter Biden.

“I have not,” Garland said. “The President made abundantly clear in every public statement before and after my nomination that decisions about investigations and prosecutions will be left to the Justice Department.”

Garland called the Capitol attack the “most heinous” assault on American democracy.

“This was the most heinous attack on democratic processes I’ve ever seen,” Garland told the Judiciary Committee.

"As one of his first acts, if confirmed, Garland would meet with prosecutors and pledge to provide all the resources necessary to push the inquiry forward, he said," USA Today reported.

Garland was particularly concerned about the leaders of the insurrection. The followers of the insurrection were being handled at lower levels.

 

A+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The man is a rock star! (If he were orange, you would understand)

 

ABC News reports, "Razor wire on fencing and National Guard troops still deployed on Capitol Hill on Tuesday are haunting reminders of the deadly assault on Jan. 6 that left 140 police officers injured and five people dead.

"The fallout from the attack continued as the Senate held the first public meeting into security failures as part of a joint investigation by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

"Top officials responsible for security at the Capitol on Jan. 6 testified and three of them -- former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, former Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger and former House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, -- resigned in the immediate wake of the attack."

Capitol security officials defended their actions and pointed fingers elsewhere but agreed the attack was planned.

Sund called the attack on the Capitol "the worst attack on law enforcement and our democracy" that he’s seen in his 30-year-career and laid blame on various federal agencies for poor preparation, not the Capitol Police.

"Based on the intelligence that we received, we planned for an increased level of violence at the Capitol and that some participants may be armed. But none of the intelligence we received, predicted what actually occurred," Sund said.

ABC continued, "Homeland Security Committee Chairman Gary Peters, highlighting communication failures, asked Sund about a Washington Post account that "the FBI Norfolk field office issued a threat report on January 5th that detailed specific calls for violence online in connection with January 6th, including that protesters, quote, 'be ready to fight,' end quote, and, quote, 'go there ready for war,' end quote."

"Sund testified he never saw the threat warning email, which he said had gone to an officer on the joint terrorism task force the night before the assault and that he learned of it only on Monday. The House and Senate sergeants at arms said did not get the email either."

No more needs to be said.

 

Some of Biden's choices are in trouble in the Senate confirmation hearings.

Biden’s choice to the lead the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, apologized Tuesday for spending years attacking top Republicans on social media as she tried to convince senators she’ll leave partisan politics behind if confirmed. It doesn't look good for Tanden.

Tuesday marked the first of two challenging confirmation hearings for Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California and Biden’s nominee for secretary of health and human services.

In contentious questioning, Republican members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee sought to portray Becerra, who has little experience in public health, as unqualified, while painting his positions on abortion and health care as radical.

Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico, Biden’s pick for interior secretary, faced a litany of questions over the fierce stance she has taken in the past against fossil fuels, particularly from senators who represent states still reliant on fossil fuel extraction.

Haaland sought to down play her past activism.

“If I’m confirmed as secretary, it’s President Biden’s agenda, not my own agenda, that I would be moving forward,” she said.

Most of Biden's choices are being confirmed. That includes Biden's choice for attorney general. Merrick B. Garland's confirmation is a near certainty.

 

They should be. Some of them are terrible choices. Betsy Devos terrible.

 

The stock market is bullish on the Biden administration. It is setting records nearly every day. Today the Dow gained over 424 points for a new record.

Those predicting economic doom because Biden was elected are making complete fools of themselves.

CNBC reports, "The market has powered higher, fueled by expectations of a period of strong growth after vaccines are widely distributed and the economy fully reopens.

"Those same expectations have helped draw in a different cohort of investors, many of them young and new to investing. JMP estimates the brokerage industry added more than 10 million new accounts in 2020."

“One of the things that the pandemic has underscored more than anything else is that the stock market is a forward-looking mechanism,” said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors.

As in the new administration versus the Trump administration.

Arone continued, “That’s been the tagline all year long as investors continue to scratch their heads wondering why the stock market could perform so strongly while the economy, labor market and earnings face such challenges. It’s more about future expectations than current conditions. It’s something that investors were loosely aware of in the back of our minds always.”

The Biden administration is in the next four years of our future.

 

As if the Republican Party didn't have enough problems with Trump as their leader and his record of losing elections for the past four years, Republicans face significant political risk by forming a unified front of opposition to Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan.

There is broad public support for the package and a new push by business leaders to get it passed. Business leaders form the bulk of financial support for the GOP. Distressing them is not a wise option.

Nearly 7 in 10 Americans supported the bill in a Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this month.

CNN reports, "After losing control of the White House and the US Senate in November, and still relegated to the minority in the US House, Republican leaders hope to win back suburban voters in 2022, in part by earning their trust that they would do a better job than Democrats easing the transition back to normal life after the Covid-19 pandemic. One area the GOP has been heavily focused on is getting kids back into school, for example, because they see it as a winning issue at the ballot box in 2022. Yet their opposition to Biden's legislation could complicate those efforts, since many members will likely end up on the record voting against a Covid relief bill that would provide money for exactly that purpose."

Adding to the misery, the vast majority of Republican lawmakers still believe in Trump's lies about the election, ignored the evidence and acquitted Trump for the Jan. 6 insurrection, and on Sunday Trump will speak to CPAC with predictably disastrous results.

Providing a clue as to the hypocrisy of Republicans today, the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who condemned Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection said today he would support Trump if he is nominated by the party.

Republicans are out of step with today's world and on the wrong side of nearly everything.

Trump is the worst thing that could have happened to the Republican Party. I know that from personal experience. I once was a member, driven out by Trump's lies and sheer incompetence.

 

Should Trump ever become President again I don't see how anyone can doubt for a second that he would have the 22nd Amendment repealed and run for Office in 2024 and until he dies to be succeeded by a picked successor forever. The "elections" would be the very models of cheats, each more corrupt than the last. Has the Republican Party gone insane? When will this nightmare end?

Their futile opposition to this Covid relief bill will be their final downfall. I predict they will lose so badly in the 2022 elections that they don't even have the wherewithal to field a candidate in 2024. The pitiful remnants of Q-Anon will try to run Trump from his prison cell and after that, we will probably never hear from the once Grand Old Party again.

 

The United States launched airstrikes in Syria on Thursday, targeting facilities used by Iranian-backed militia groups. The Pentagon said the strikes were in retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops.

The airstrike was the first military action undertaken by the Biden administration, which in its first weeks has emphasized its intent to put more focus on the challenges posed by China, even as Mideast threats persist.

“This proportionate military response was conducted together with diplomatic measures , including consultation with coalition partners,” the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, John Kirby, said in announcing the strikes.

“The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel. At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to deescalate the overall situation in eastern Syria and Iraq.”

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/b...inst-iran-backed-militia-in-syria-01614299858

 

· A report card on the Biden administration ✔

 

Under Trump's leadership the Republican Party is rapidly making itself irrelevant in general elections. Problem: They can't see beyond the primaries.

NBC News reports, "The nation's largest conference of conservative activists will prominently feature former President Donald Trump's false claims of voter fraud weeks after his stolen election lie fueled a riot that led to the deaths of five people.

"The agenda for the Conservative Political Action Conference, the influential right-wing summit best known as CPAC taking place in Florida this weekend, provides attendees multiple forums that appear to perpetuate conservative mythmaking around the 2020 election as well as ways to discuss the new wave of voting restrictions pushed by the Republican Party. The featured speaker is the former president himself on Sunday.

"The event includes seven speeches and panels about “protecting elections” over the long weekend, with 2020-specific themes like "Other Culprits: Why Judges & Media Refused to Look at the Evidence," and "The Left Pulled the Strings, Covered It Up, and Even Admits It."

This is surreal. It is difficult to accept that the GOP leadership could be so foolish.

Even Trump's followers know it. They aren't saying a word.