By Pie Guevara
Pie Guevara appears in Post Scripts courtesy of Jack Lee and Tina Grazier. Pie Guevara is an unregistered trademark of Engulf and Devour Investments LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Walton Industries which, in turn, is wholly owned by David Walton. So there!
Please feel free to comment. I will be monitoring comments from time to time.
Pie here 08:20 PST — So far Ambassador has been a long winded blow hard, a circuitous and circumstantial testimony with no 1st hand knowledge of any White House communications with Ukraine.
The show trial is off and running.
Pie here 08:42 PST — Schiff questions on national security: Now were are getting a lesson in international relationships, which has nothing to do with the issue.
What? International relationships have nothing to do with the charge that the president abused an international relationship by trading foreign military aid for a political favor? They have nothing to do with evaluating whether Trump and Giuliani went through the proper channels in implementing foreign policy? Are you kidding?
Mr. Souza was not listening. (As usual Mr. Souza hears only what he wants to hear, international relationships were the subject of the Q&A! What the heck does he think the “proper channels” interrogations were all about? Ordering Chinese take out?)
By the way “proper channels” are NOT what some unelected bureaucrat in the state department says they are. Is he kidding??? The state department serves the president, not the other way around. There is no “state department” in the Constitution. To be sure, the state department has “proper channels” rules for state department employees. The president is not a state department employee.
Try this on for size: The head of the executive branch is the president, not some unelected bureaucrat in the state department.
As for Souza’s the president abused an international relationship by trading foreign military aid for a “political favor”, that is a bs narrative from the president’s political opposition.
That said, the president can do anything he damn well pleases to pressure any foreign government for any reason.
What??? Did Pie Guevara just say that? Yes I did, folks.
This nonsense from Mr. Souza is a PERFECT example of how ignorant some people are. Mr. Souza believes that unelected state department employees define what the “proper channels” in international relations are for the head of the state department! Maybe Mr. Souza does not know who the head of the state department really is. It would not surprise me.
This is EXACTLY what this politically motivated, farcical, Soviet style show trial is all about — influencing the ignorant to try and influence the next election.
I only ask — Will it work? What do you think?
[Editor Pie Guevara here: My edits are addendums and appear in bold brackets. Souza’s comment appears in its totality, but God knows why I bother.]
The head of the State Department is Mike Pompeo. [So?]
The head of the executive branch is the president, not some unelected bureaucrat in the state department.
But those unelected bureaucrats exist for a reason, [Yes, to serve the head of the executive branch, duh.] and it isn’t so that POTUS can lend out their jobs to their personal lawyers. [The president can assign any person to any position he pleases.] (I mean, do you really think sending Rudy on these missions was appropriate? [Appropriate? Who are you to decide what is appropriate?] Especially given his clear conflicts of interests, [Does Souza mean like Joe Biden’s conflict of interests?] i.e. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two men whose names you still dare not mention?) [I DARE NOT MENTION? That is truly a funny comment. Who is Souza? A comic book character?]
As for Souza’s the president abused an international relationship by trading foreign military aid for a “political favor”, that is a bs narrative from the president’s political opposition.
It is the only logical conclusion based on the evidence we have. The alternate theory is to assume that Trump cares deeply about corruption in Ukraine, even though he asked for no other anti-corruption measures (and actually cut funding for such measures) other than ones that personally benefitted himself. [Logical conclusion? Alternate theory? This is so full of fallacy I will not bother to address it all. But I should as an exercise. Nevertheless, I will simply mention post hoc ergo propter hoc.]
You know how I know you don’t believe this alternate theory? Because you won’t articulate it. [Articulate? WTF does this have to do with anything? I do not give a hoot what Mr. Souza thinks I believe. Moreover, why does he think it is important to tell me what he thinks I believe and what I articulate? This has degenerated into sheer lunacy and absurd nonsense. I almost want to vomit. I should have just trashed his whole comment as bizarre crap]
That said, the president can do anything he damn well pleases to pressure any foreign government for any reason.
Ah, even if that reason is personal gain, rather than the national interest, as you have repeatedly attempted to deny, unconvincingly. [Personal gain is not an article of impeachment. Moreover personal gain is what Mr. Souza presumes, but not in the case of the Bidens, of course.]
Legally, you may be right, though whether the laws forbidding most other government employees from cashing in on their positions apply to the president is a question worthy of debate. [Then, Mr. Souza, go debate it with some other English major who has no clue about the Constitution.]
Ethically and politically, the answer may be different. [Oh God, here we go with more garbage.] And since impeachment is a political matter, rather than a legal one, [Will the nonsense and ignorance never end? This is what passes for “critical thinking” these days. No wonder California education sucks. Impeachment IS a legal matter, it is invoked by the very body that enacts law. This impeachment farce is entirely of political manufacture and in its implementation goes against the very spirit of the law and the Constitution. Thank you Democrats!] whether the president is as above the law as you suggest [More garbage. In no way am I suggesting the president is above the law. It is the letter, intent and spirit of the law I am concerned with. More blather follows.] is really irrelevant here. What matters is whether the president abused his power, [Oh really?] and whether a majority in Congress will care. [More inane blather follows. Pie out.] A majority of Americans do, but Republicans need no longer care what a majority of Americans think and want. And if most conservatives adopt your position that it doesn’t matter whether the president pressured Ukraine for personal gain–which, come on, he totally did–then I hope those conservatives will stop pretending that they are in favor of “small government,” and concede that the only thing they care about conserving is their own power.
[Pie here, my edits appear in bold italicized brackets] The head of the State Department is Mike Pompeo. [So?]
So you said I might not know who the head of the State Department is. Keep up. [This is pretty funny and perfect, Mr. Souza actually does not know who is the head of the state department. It is the president. Thus proving my point about ignorance.]
But those unelected bureaucrats exist for a reason, [Yes, to serve the head of the executive branch, duh.]
No, to serve the country. [Well, duh, at the pleasure of the president who was elected the head of the executive branch. I suggest Mr. Souza try and get that through his thick skull.]
and it isn’t so that POTUS can lend out their jobs to their personal lawyers. [The president can assign any person to any position he pleases.]
The president assigning personal lawyers to handle matters that he claims are in the public interest is evidence that those matters are not, in fact, in the public interest. [Oh, really? Like being a personal lawyer excludes a person from “handling matters” for the president. Who wrote that law. Please cite the federal code.] The presidency exists to serve the nation, not the other way around. It is amazing that I have to explain this to a supposed “small government” conservative. [Ohhh, this is positively dripping with condescension! I am HUMBLED! It is amazing that the pedantic Mr. Souza tries to make this an issue. This ludicrous “small government” conservative statement is as completely a non sequitur as Mr. Souza has ever uttered. It has nothing to do with the issue. Is Chris insane or just a tedious idiot?]
(I mean, do you really think sending Rudy on these missions was appropriate? [Appropriate? Who are you to decide what is appropriate?]
The question was for you, not for me. I am asking you to decide. Why are you chickening out of that? Because you can’t answer without admitting the president was wrong here.
[I am not going to waste my time on the rest of this inane blather. (That is probably the bloviating blowhard Souza’s intent.) If you wish to read the rest of Souza’s turgid ramble, be my guest.]
Especially given his clear conflicts of interests, [Does Souza mean like Joe Biden’s conflict of interests?]
I have already admitted Biden’s conflict of interest, and explained why it ultimately could not have been a deciding factor in his actions regarding Ukraine.
i.e. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two men whose names you still dare not mention?) [I DARE not mention? That is truly a funny comment.]
It’s a serious comment. Their arrest was a major news story with major implications for the president’s lawyer and perhaps the president himself, and not a single conservative here has anything to say about it.
You know how I know you don’t believe this alternate theory? Because you won’t articulate it. [Articulate? WTF does this have to do with anything? I do not give a hoot what Mr. Souza thinks I believe. Moreover, why does he think it is important to tell me what he thinks I believe and what I articulate? This has degenerated into sheer lunacy and absurd nonsense.
I don’t know why you play dumb. You continue to say that the theory that Trump withheld aid in exchange for political gain is nonsense, but you refuse to say why he was so adamant about an investigation into the Bidens, because you know there is no other plausible explanation.
I almost want to vomit. I should have just trashed his whole comment as bizarre crap]
If this is the best response you can muster, I’m not surprised this is your reaction. Is that what you’ve been doing with my other comments that aren’t posting?
[Personal gain is not an article of impeachment.
What are you talking about? There are no articles of impeachment yet.
Moreover personal gain is what Mr. Souza presumes, but not in the case of the Bidens, of course.]
It’s a presumption based on evidence that you cannot refute, which is why you do not try. I have already explained why personal gain could not have been the motive behind Biden’s actions, again in ways that you cannot refute.
Legally, you may be right, though whether the laws forbidding most other government employees from cashing in on their positions apply to the president is a question worthy of debate. [Then, Mr. Souza, go debate it with some other English major who has no clue about the Constitution.]
I have no idea what you are talking about, and now I’m sure that you don’t, either. Legal violations are not constitutional requirements for impeachment, and every previous impeachment has involved at least one article that outlined conduct that was not technically illegal.
Ethically and politically, the answer may be different. [Oh God, here we go with more garbage.]
Yes, someone as invested in defending Trump as you are would find ethical considerations “garbage.” And you will continue to deny that you are defending Trump, for some reason, even though everyone knows that’s what you’re doing.
And since impeachment is a political matter, rather than a legal one, [Will the nonsense and ignorance never end? This is what passes for “critical thinking” these days. No wonder California education sucks. Impeachment IS a legal matter, it is invoked by the very body that enacts law. This impeachment farce is entirely of political manufacture and in its implementation goes against the very spirit of the law and the Constitution. Thank you Democrats!]
No. There are zero impeachment experts who agree with you.
Half of these weren’t even attempts at rebuttals, but just empty, baseless snark. You have nothing. Why not reconsider your position here? It won’t kill you.
The head of the state department is the secretary of state, as a basic Google search will confirm for you. Of course, the secretary of state does answer directly to the president. So this is an irrelevant semantic game.
That the secretary of state and others in the State Department serve at the pleasure of the president is both true and irrelevant. They take these jobs with the understanding that the policies set by the president will be, at least in the president’s opinion, based on the national interest rather than the president’s own political gain. When that is clearly not the case, as in this instance, they have not only the right, but a patriotic duty to blow the whistle.
Oh, really? Like being a personal lawyer excludes a person from “handling matters” for the president. Who wrote that law. Please cite the federal code
Another diversion. As I have explained multiple times, the issue here is ethics and abuse of power, not law. I have asked you to defend the ethics of sending Rudy on these missions, and you have refused, because you know you cannot do so.
The “small government” crack is relevant because you are defending levels of presidential power and abuses of government position that you absolutely would decry if this were a Democratic president.
This is only a waste of time because you make it so. You can’t rebut, so you just deflect. You could easily choose to spend your time more wisely by actually engaging the rational arguments I am making, but you refuse to do so.
Pie here 08:54 PST — Now were into building the narrative that Trump was pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens for political purposes sans any actual knowledge.
This is what the DOJ and Ukraine should be investigating.
So…why didn’t Trump direct the DOJ to investigate it, then? Why did he instead threaten to withhold congressionally approved military aid to a country unless they investigated Joe Biden? Why did he ask for no other anti-corruption measures other than ones that would directly benefit himself?
Pie here 08:58 PST Oh for crying out loud, now all questioning is about hearsay and Taylor’s interpretation of hearsay. I wonder how much more of this I can stomach.
Uh-oh. He might explain what hearsay is, and that would be bad for your attempts to pretend that all of the witnesses are relying on hearsay. I can see how that might upset your digestion.
Pie here 09:02 PST– Now Taylor is being questioned about what he thought Trump was thinking! This is beyond ridiculous.
It isn’t, since Taylor was the top ambassador to the Ukraine, and would need to understand the president’s thinking in order to do his job.
This portion seems rather damning:
REP. LEE ZELDIN (R-N.Y.): So where was this condition coming from if you’re not sure if it was coming from the President?
TAYLOR: I think it was coming from Mr. Giuliani.
ZELDIN: But not from the president?
TAYLOR: I don’t know.
The president’s personal lawyer was running a shadow foreign policy, in part to help his mobbed up buddies Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. And the president went along with it. Why are you OK with this? Why are you trying to tear down actual patriots who had a problem with this abuse of American power, and said something about it?
Pie here 09:13 PST — Given all the hearsay, no wonder they do not intend to introduce any of the “whistleblower” testimony. His “1st hand knowledge” of White House communications was… zero, just like Kent and Taylor.
Incorrect.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/impeachment-hearing-11-13-19/h_43020ab40edf76c23ece0435bba9acad
Read both my comment and your link retort again, Mr. Souza, this time with brain engaged.
Perhaps more people with firsthand knowledge would testify, if the president would let them.
Pie here 09:16 PST — Now Kent is being asked what he thinks Trump, Zelenskyy and Ukraine think and interpret the transcript. Good lord. This is truly is a Soviet style kangaroo farce. I am out to do some other business.
Calm down and stop being so emotional. A “Soviet-style farce” would be a lot worse for your guy than this.
Good man for holding out as long as you did.
If today’s performance by BullSchifft was in a real court, he would have already been charged with prosecutorial misconduct. Hearsay evidence indeed!
This is not a court of law and you don’t know what hearsay is.
Ha, Nunes is still trying to make this about the whistleblower, and brings up the conspiracy theory that Ukraine–not Russia–meddled in the 2016 election. Pathetic. He has nothing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/08/gop-theory-that-ukraine-set-up-trump/
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jul/12/did-ukraine-try-help-clinton-way-russia-helped-tru/
Schiff points out that the aid was only released once the White House knew that the whistleblower complaint was going to be seen by Congress. Good point. Republicans have tried to argue that since Ukraine eventually got the aid without investigating the Bidens, there could be no “quid pro quo,” even if one were attempted. But obviously, such a thing was attempted; Trump simply backed down and released the aid anyway because he got caught.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. But then an English major wouldn’t be expected to know that. In this farce Democrats will not be able to establish quid pro quo nor establish that an impeachable offense have been committed. But it doesn’t matter, they will impeach him anyway.
You always seem to know just enough logic to mislead. Correlation is not causation, but without a compelling alternate theory for why the aid was released around this time, after such a delay, my conclusion remains the most logical one. You have presented no such alternate theory. Nor have you presented any alternate theory for why so many diplomats believed there to be a quid pro quo here–aid and meetings in exchange for announcements of investigations–if Trump did not intend there to be. Your refusal to present alternate theories suggests that your entire case rests on hoping the American public won’t draw the most logical conclusions from the evidence we have. The polls show that your hope is misplaced.
You believe correlation is causation when it suits you. For example, you believe the fact that Viktor Shokin was once tasked to investigate a company whose board Hunter Biden sat on means that Biden only pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin to protect his son. Which would be a logical assumption, if you ignored the fact that Biden, as VP, did not have the power to make this call himself, that he was supported by a bipartisan majority in Congress as well as by our allies, that there is tons of evidence that Shokin was really corrupt, that there is no evidence he ever took steps to seriously investigate Burisma, and that Shokin was under fire for not investigating corruption enough.
You ignore these facts because you really, really want correlation to mean causation here.
I have presented a compelling alternate theory to your case, a case that relies on the very fallacy you criticize me for. You have presented no such compelling alternate theory to the accusation that Trump wanted Biden investigates to help himself politically, perhaps because you’re smart enough to know that such theories—like Mark Meadows’ claim today that Trump has a “deep-rooted concern about corruption,” are laughable. Unfortunately, you’re also cynical and partisan enough to put your own intelligence aside, because your hatred of liberals drives you more than what you know to be true.
It reminded me of a Saturday Night Live skit except it wasn’t funny……….. Well…………….. it wasn’t funny so I guess it was exactly like a Saturday Night Live skit.
I have a common sense question for you, More Common Sense.
As I understand it, the strongest pro-Trump argument is that Trump was right to make military aid and meetings conditional on Ukraine announcing a public investigation of the Bidens because the Bidens were genuinely corrupt, and Trump wanted Ukraine to make a real commitment to fighting corruption before he gave them what they wanted. This is, such an argument would posit, why Trump instructed Vice President Pence not to attend President Zelensky’s inauguration, because he wanted such a commitment first.
How is this argument not undercut by the fact that Trump invited Erdogan into the White House today, going as far as to lavish praise on the dictator, while asking for no such anti-corruption commitments from him?
If such meetings do not generally come with conditions about fighting corruption, then why is it irrational to assume that Trump’s demands on Ukraine were based not on a general anti-corruption stance, but on what would be personally and politically beneficial for Trump himself?
Not at all surprising to find out that Lurch had his fingers in the Burisma pie as well.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/11/huge-exclusive-bombshell-documents-released-by-ukrainian-general-prosecutors-office-reveal-millions-funneled-to-hunter-biden-and-the-john-kerry-family/
Wonder what Obumble’s cut was . . . . . . . . . . .
Taylor and Kent sounded like disgruntled employees, during their opening statements, who had their nose out of joint because they didn’t like the way their new boss was running things. Taylor even said when Pompeo asked him to return he’d do so only if HIS agenda from the past would continue.
Sorry bud, no employee no matter how many awards and honors are hanging on their walls would get away with telling their boss how to do their job. Wouldn’t fly in the private sector or public.
It’s my understanding that you used to work in college admissions, correct? What would you have done if you knew your boss was making admission decisions not in the best interests of the school, but to personally enrich themselves?