Replies to post #338946 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[arizona1]

GOP senators alarmed by firing of Sondland, a Republican donor—but not by the rest of Trump's purge



We now know that a handful of Republican senators were, in fact, alarmed by Donald Trump's Friday firings of government officials who testified to House impeachment investigators about Trump's Ukrainian extortion scheme. More accurately, we now know that a bare handful of Republican senators were concerned only about the firing of U.S Ambassador Gordon Sondland, while remaining unconcerned by Trump's removal of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his brother, who did not testify.

The likely reason? Gordon Sondland, unlike the others, was a big-money Republican campaign donor.

The New York Times is reporting that Republican Sens. Susan Collins (yes, Susan Collins), Thom Tillis, Martha McSally and Ron Johnson contacted the White House to try to halt Sondland's firing. Sondland, who was made a U.S. ambassador after giving $1 million to Trump’s own inaugural fund, was signaling he was planning to resign; the Republican senators wanted Sondland to be given a graceful exit. That was not to be: a vengeful, frothing Trump was insistent on making a public example of him.

Why were the senators concerned about Sondland but not the others? Sondland, reports the Times, was "a donor to Mr. Tillis and other Republicans."

So there you go. We now know the one, the only thing that would get the slightest pushback from the now-fascist Republican Party: Trump humiliating a top-dollar donor. The rest of it they're fine with.

That's not hyperbole. Sen. Susan Collins, in particular, made a special point of telling the Times that her prior "hope" that perhaps Trump would learn a "lesson" from impeachment was excruciatingly narrow. It didn't apply, she explained, to Trump's purge of the witnesses who spoke out to confirm the Trump-Giuliani Ukrainian plot.

“The lesson that I hoped the president had learned was that he should not enlist the help of a foreign government in investigating a political rival,” she told the Times. “It had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not he should fire people who testified in a way that he perceived as harmful to him.”

So yes, Susan Collins is fine with Trump retaliating against those who testified to his "perfect" actions. It was just the Republican donor whose plight roused her enough to make a simple phone call.

Her new statement is, yet again and of course, another reversal of a prior Susan Collins statement of supposed principles. On Friday she told a Maine crowd that "I obviously am not in favor of any kind of retribution against anyone who came forward with evidence." This new statement clarifies that she is not specifically against such retribution either.

In a non-authoritarian, non-fascist movement, Dear Leader retaliating against those who testified under oath about his own actions would be astonishingly corrupt. It would be close to the very definition of corrupt, in fact. It is now considered an acceptable act, by Republicans, subject to mild private pushback only if the purge happens to touch on one of their own campaign donors. And even the most "moderate" of Republicans, Susan Collins, is now releasing statements clarifying that she is in fact not expressing any concerns about that.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/9/1917976/-GOP-senators-alarmed-by-firing-of-Sondland-a-Republican-donor-but-not-by-the-rest-of-Trump-s-purge#read-more

[BOREALIS]

In the Long Run, Romney Wins

The Utah senator’s speech was the stuff of American myth.

1:18 PM ET
Eliot A. Cohen
Contributing writer at The Atlantic and Dean of SAIS at Johns Hopkins University

It is a useful exercise to think about our current moment not from where we are, or even where we will be in five years, but where we will be in 50. Viewed from that perspective, the most important thing about the impeachment of Donald Trump will probably be Mitt Romney’s speech explaining his vote to convict the president of abuse of power.

In the near term, that speech will do neither Romney nor his cause any good. The armies of trolls and sneering louts will come after him, their jeers all the louder because they emanate from a terrified emptiness within. Shambling, tongueless, and invertebrate politicians who deep down know better will resent Romney for having the courage to say what they believed, but dared not utter.

But that speech will last.
When future anthologies of great American political speeches are published by the Library of America, Romney’s remarks will be there. The language was American rhetoric at its best: not flowery and orotund, but clear and solid and stark.

Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine …

Does anyone seriously believe I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me? …

With my vote, I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability, believing that my country expected it of me.

That’s neither polished marble nor gold filigree, but New Hampshire granite.

Political speeches derive their power and durability from authenticity, from the way in which phrases and sentences seem to emanate directly from a personality and its vision. That is why Lincoln’s speeches will never lose their force: They captured the dignity, simplicity, and courage of the man who made them. Romney is no Lincoln, but he wrote the speech, and the voice is his.

Yet more is at work here than the powerful words. The speech contained all the elements of drama: the man of quiet faith, whose presidential campaign underplayed his charitable works; the handsome politician, whose political career involved both high office and the failure to achieve it; the public figure, who briefly became a hero to opponents who had shamefully vilified him seven years earlier; the successful businessman, who returned repeatedly to public affairs; the patriarch of a large and loving family, whose own niece repeatedly yielded her conscience to the man he rightly condemned. Comparing Romney with the grifter president and his venal clan yields an instructive contrast.

The Romney story plays to something very deep in the American self-conception, to myth—not in the sense of fairy tale or falsehood, but of something Americans want to believe about who they are and who, because of what they want to believe, they can become. Americans embrace the story of the lone man or woman of conscience who does the right thing, knowing that the risks are high.
They remember Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat for a white passenger on a Montgomery bus in 1955, but forget the three other passengers who prudently moved. They relish the staple theme of Western stories and films—John Wayne in Stagecoach saying, “Well, there’s some things a man just can’t run away from.” They honor John Adams for defending British soldiers accused of shooting down his fellow Americans, in an era when tar and feathers could be the consequence of that act. In an altogether different vein, they laud Henry David Thoreau for choosing civil disobedience and marching to the beat of his own drum, resolved to remain indifferent to what his fellow Yankees thought of him.

In this style of lone heroism, the motif is not bravado or impetuous courage. Gary Cooper in High Noon plays a marshal awaiting the return of four killers seeking to settle scores with him. He refuses to abandon a town that abandons him, which leaves his new Quaker bride bewildered:

“Don’t try to be a hero. You don’t have to be a hero, not for me,” she says.

“I’m not trying to be a hero. If you think I like this, you’re crazy,” he replies.

And this may be why the lonely man or woman of courage is so endearing. Such heroes are not crazy, not cheerful, and not necessarily optimistic. The story may turn out well in the end, but it might not. Indeed, John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, and even more so the fine television series that spun off from it in the mid-’60s, featured plenty of politicians whose careers ended in ruin after they took deeply unpopular stances, like battling the Klan, defending the Union, or opposing the creation of NATO

Communitarians of the left and right have a point. In a very narrow sense, Barack Obama’s 2012 speech in which he said “You didn’t build that,” to small-business owners may have been correct. Somebody has to pay for the roads and the airports, provide the water and the sewer services, keep the police and the courts functioning. But it grievously missed a large point about what Americans want to be, or at least believe in, even when it is not exactly who they are.

Americans, of course, don’t have a monopoly on the lonely figure of faith who sticks to his or her principles no matter what the personal cost: Other peoples have their Wilberforce, their Zola, their Bonhoeffer, or for that matter their Socrates or Cicero. A distinguishing feature of real civilization is that it produces such people, and admires them. But from Anne Hutchison and Roger Williams refusing to yield to the zealots of Puritan Boston to Romney standing on the Senate floor, these have been figures that Americans more than most have admired, even if in many cases they have taken some time to do so.

The trial of Donald Trump taught us nothing new about the man. Similarly, the sycophancy and cowardice of so many senators, their open disregard of their oath to be impartial jurors, taught us nothing new about those who acquitted him. Nor should it be assumed that had the circumstances been precisely inverted many Democrat senators would have exhibited Romney’s fortitude. Almost by definition, the kind of courage on display in Romney’s speech is a rare, and therefore precious, commodity.

But here’s the thing. In the short run, Donald Trump won his trial. He is now attempting to wreak vengeance on the underlings who spoke the truth, and will be supported by his inflamed mob and a craven political establishment. In the short run, they will crow and seem ascendant, while Romney will be a marginalized and probably harassed figure. All true.

From our grandchildren’s point of view, however—and it is safe to assume that the other senators know this—those who voted to acquit will leave at most confused and shallow smudges on the sand. Romney will leave footprints.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/mitt-romneys-remarkable-speech/606307/

[BOREALIS]

Schumer calls on 74 inspectors general to investigate witness retaliation after Vindman ouster

By Zachary Cohen and Paul LeBlanc, CNN
Updated 10:41 AM ET, Mon February 10, 2020

1:44
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/10/politics/schumer-letter-retaliation-protected-disclosures/index.html

Washington (CNN)Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a letter on Monday to all 74 federal government Inspectors General requesting investigations into "any and all instances of retaliation" against witnesses who have made "protected disclosures of presidential misconduct."

The letter comes days after President Donald Trump fired two key impeachment witnesses, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine expert at the national security council, and US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. An adviser to Trump told CNN the firings of the major impeachment witnesses was meant to send a message that siding against the President will not be tolerated.
"Flushing out the pipes," the adviser told CNN. "It was necessary."

Acting Department of Defense Inspector General Glenn Fine was among the IGs who were contacted by Schumer.

Schumer writes in his letter to Fine that although Vindman "lived up to his oath to protect and defend our Constitution by bravely stepping forward to tell the truth, he has been viciously attacked by the President and forced to endure threats to his and his family's safety."

"These attacks are part of a dangerous, growing pattern of retaliation against those who report wrongdoing only to find themselves targeted by the President and subject to his wrath and vindictiveness," he said.

The New York Democrat asks Fine to inform his office and the public of the date "when personnel at your agency or department were last notified of their legal rights to make protected disclosures anonymously" along with a request for written certification "from your agency or department's general counsel that he or she has not and will not permit retaliation or reprisals against anyone who has, or in the future makes, protected disclosures of presidential misconduct."

Amid uncertain futures, other witnesses .. https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/07/politics/trump-impeachment-witnesses-where-are-they-now/index.html .. in the impeachment investigation have already left the administration or distanced themselves from the White House by moving into roles at different agencies as Trump.

Still, Vindman is expected to return to the Pentagon, though it's still unclear what his assignment will be until he's expected to attend war college this summer.

"We welcome back all of our service members, wherever they serve, to any assignment they are given," Defense Secretary Mark Esper had said Friday when asked about Vindman's expected ouster.

Drawing on Trump's Ukraine conduct, Schumer said in concluding his letter to Fine that "without the courage of whistleblowers and the role of Inspectors General, the American people may never have known how the President abused his power in the Ukraine scandal."

"It is incumbent on you that whistleblowers like LTC Vindman -- and others who put their lives on the line to protect our freedoms -- are protected for doing what we hope and expect those who serve our country will do when called: tell the truth."

[fuagf]

REVENGE - Donald Trump fires Inspector-General Michael Atkinson, who sparked US President's impeachment

""Chris Matthews is an idiot.
Benjamin Wittes
@benjaminwittes
First he came for @comey, and I said nothing because I was mad at @comey because of the Clinton email investigation and I blamed him for Trump’s election.""

More from the one this replies to below.

Updated about 7 hours ago


Donald Trump wearing a suit gestures with his hand as he speaks.
Photo: Donald Trump has fired inspector-general Michael Atkinson. (AP: Evan Vucci)

Related Story: Unemployment in US doubles in a week as coronavirus bites down hard
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-03/covid-19-sees-record-us-unemployment-claims-to-6.6-million/12116594

Related Story: Trump's oscillating approach to coronavirus follows an old pattern of leadership
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-03/trumps-approach-to-coronavirus-is-eerily-familiar/12114128

Related Story: Trump can’t cancel the US election. But he could convince this group to do it for him.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-01/coronavirus-can-donald-trump-cancel-the-us-2020-election/12105346

Donald Trump has fired Michael Atkinson, the Inspector-General for the intelligence community
who handled the whistleblower complaint which triggered the US President's impeachment.

* Key points:

* Mr Trump said he no longer had "full confidence" in Michael Atkinson

* Mr Atkinson had told Congress the complaint made against Donald Trump was "credible" and "urgent"

* Donald Trump was impeached for asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, but was acquitted in February

More - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-04/donald-trump-fires-inspector-general-who-sparked-impeachment/12122012

Mr Trump has lost confidence in Mr Anderson? Well, well, surprise, more bullshit. How about

"Trump’s ‘Friday night massacre’ is just the beginning. I fear what’s to come.
[...]

President Trump at the 68th annual National Prayer Breakfast, at the Washington Hilton on Thursday. (Evan Vucci)
ByMax Boot
Columnist
Feb. 9, 2020 at 7:17 a.m. GMT+11
[...]
In case there was any doubt what the president was up to, Donald Trump Jr. explained on Twitter ..

Allow me a moment to thank—and this may be a bit of a surprise—Adam Schiff. Were it not for his crack investigation skills, @realDonaldTrump might have had a tougher time unearthing who all needed to be fired. Thanks, Adam! 🤣 #FullOfSchiff

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 8, 2020

: “Allow me a moment to thank… Adam Schiff. Were it not for his crack investigation skills, @realDonald Trump might have had a tougher time unearthing who all needed to be fired. Thanks, Adam!” The president himself himself tweeted Saturday that he fired “Lt. Col.” Vindman — note the scare quotes — for being “very insubordinate” by complying with a House subpoena to testify. Thanks, Trumps, for confessing to an apparent violation of 18 U.S. Code § 1513 .. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1513 , the federal law protecting witnesses from retaliation — not that the president will ever be prosecuted.
-----
INSERT: Yes, he's crazy and a criminal - more impeachable behavior

H/T, Aycock - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=153728572
[...]
What happened Friday was the political equivalent of one of those mob-movie montages where the don’s enemies are gunned down to the accompaniment of an operatic score. And the Don in the White House isn’t done yet. He reportedly is interested in firing Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, who brought to Congress a whistleblower’s complaint. The whistleblower required a security detail ..

The damage this President is doing to our professional civil service — and particularly to civil servants focused on national security — is serious and likely to be catastrophic if he wins reelection. That so many R members of Congress seem ok with that is the part I can’t abide. https://t.co/KIKDkVbvyW

— Nicholas Rasmussen (@NicholasRasmu15) December 26, 2019

.. because he or she has been smeared by the president and his minions. Sen. Rand Paul (R.-Ky.) read the name of the person alleged to be the whistleblower by many on the right .. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/04/rand-paul-reads-alleged-whistleblowers-name-senate-floor-110684 .. on the floor of the Senate this week. What possible purpose can this serve save to bring retribution down upon that person?

Who is next on Trump's political hit list.

Did you notice the above photo of Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast?

So what is the big boss's view of some of the good Christian people of the man's cult?



That's from a guy who is supposed to know it all.