The Hardest Hitting Headline In The History Of The Washington Post

Alexandra Petri waxed dramatic in her opinion piece at The Washington Post.  I kid you not.

The whole landscape was barren, and the fires burned everywhere. And in the smoldering remains of the Senate, Mitch McConnell sat on a throne of skulls making preparations to confirm his 8,999th judge. Mitch McConnell would leave no vacancy behind. 

The people were long gone. The streets were empty, and some old scraps of burned newspaper tossed on the hot, sulfurous wind. And Mitch McConnell was still confirming judges. 

The sky was a dark, angry red. The sun was not visible and had not been visible for a long time. There were no longer any rhinoceroses whatsoever. There were exactly three birds. The halls of Congress were empty except for John Quincy Adams’s ghost and one hoarse buzzard perched on a cracked torso in Statuary Hall. And Mitch McConnell was still confirming judges. 

“Just one more,” he muttered. His voice echoed in the rows of bones all around him. He had been assiduously confirming judges for a very long time, although night and day were now the same and were difficult to measure. Clocks had ceased to exist. “Just one more lifetime appointment.” 

Someone crawled toward him through the dust on hands and knees. “Why?” creaked forth from his chapped lips. “Mitch, why?” It might have been Chuck Grassley. No one could say. There was no one there to say. 

“Is there some curse you are trying to break? Is there some reason?” the voice asked. 

“We can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Mitch McConnell said, as though that were an answer. There had not been chewing gum for a long time. 

Surely there had been a reason long ago. Power, or the desire for power, or the desire to build a legacy. Or a judicial vacancy had gravely insulted his father. Or he had been told by a sea-witch that if he just confirmed a hundred judges to lifetime appointments, his brothers would all be restored to their human form. Or was it 200? He had forgotten. He had to keep confirming them. There would be no vacancies. 

Once there had been other things to do with this power that might have helped people in their brief spans on the globe. Those things were all gone. All that remained was vacancy, and Mitch McConnell was determined to fill it with judges. 

What was a judge? Where would the judge sit? What would the judge uphold or overturn? What did any of it matter? It was not even very clear what he was confirming, except that he was confirming something and would continue to do so even after the sun burned out and the whole world was cast into ice and shadow. 

“Just one more,” Mitch McConnell hissed. “No vacancies. Leave no vacancies.” 

The Fates gave up spinning and measuring and cutting the threads of human lives. Perpetual motion machines wound to a halt. The world tree Yggdrasil cracked and a great serpent swallowed the Earth. Mitch McConnell continued appointing judges. This would be his life’s result. This would be his legacy.

Free Manure

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell admonished Senate Minority Leader Cuck Schemer on the Senate floor Thursday morning for comments he made about Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. 

“By now, many already know what the Democratic leader shouted outside the Supreme Court yesterday morning. I'm sorry to have to read it into the record.”

“First, he prompted a crowd of left-wing activists to boo two of the Associate Justices, as though Supreme Court Justices were professional athletes and Senator Schumer were jeering from the stands.”

“And then the senior senator from New York said this: ‘I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you've released a whirlwind, and you -- you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions,’ end quote.”

"Contrary to what the Democratic leader has since tried to claim, he very clearly was not addressing Republican lawmakers or anybody else. He literally directed the statement to the justices, by name and he said, quote, 'if you go forward with these awful decisions,' which could only apply to the court itself. The minority leader of the United States Senate threatened two associate justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Period. There's no other way to interpret that."

McConnell went on to claim that "those kinds of threats are sadly nothing new from Senate Democrats."

"If any American had these words shouted at them from a sidewalk outside their office, they would hear those threats as personal and most likely they would hear them as threatening or inciting violence."

He closed his eight-and-a-half minute speech by declaring that Republicans "are absolutely and unshakably committed to the core constitutional principle of an independent federal judiciary."

"As long as this majority holds the gavel, we will never let the Minority Leader’s dangerous views become policy," McConnell said. "This majority will ensure the only casualties of this recklessness are the reputations of those who engage in it."

A short time later, Schumer defended himself, denying any intention to threaten: “I’m from Brooklyn, we speak in strong language,” Schumer said. “I shouldn’t have used the words I did, but in no way was I making a threat. I never, never would do such a thing. And Leader McConnell knows that, and Republicans who are busy manufacturing outrage over these comments know that too.”

If Schumer claims he misspoke why did his spokesperson call Roberts a liar for properly conveying what he said?

— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) March 5, 2020

The spokesperson misspoke after Schumer misspoke. Schumer was actually talking about bagels.

— RightlySkeptical (@RightSkeptic) March 5, 2020

"Misspoke" is quite the understatement

— Steve Coleman (@altidude3) March 5, 2020

Dear Sen. Schumer, In An Era Of Video, Everyone Has Receipts

Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is painfully aware his colleagues in the House of Representatives failed so miserably in their impeachment inquiry that they managed to steer public opinion away from removing President Trump.

Democrats are staunchly in favor of impeachment.  Republicans staunchly disapprove of the farce.  Among independents, their support for impeachment, much less removal, erodes by the day.  Worst of all for Democrats, the battleground states and Congressional Districts won by President Trump in 2016 are even less supportive.

His pleadings to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to compel testimony from witnesses the House didn’t pursue through the courts and additional White House documents fell on deaf ears.

The House Intelligence Committee through the malignant liar Adam Schiff insisted “the evidence of the President’s misconduct is overwhelming, and so too, is the evidence of his obstruction of Congress.”

Not so fast.

On the very same day Sen. Schumer was playing the role of the Red Queen in Alice In Wonderland (Sentence First…Verdict Afterwards), Judge Rosemary Collyer of the FISA Court blistered the FBI declaring it misled the Justice Department and the court when it sought permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign aide.

"The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable," Collyer wrote. 

The judge ordered the FBI to outline by Jan. 10, 2020, any changes it has made or plans to make to improve surveillance allowed under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The law, enacted in 1978, outlines procedures investigators must follow when they ask judges for permission to conduct electronic surveillance of people suspected of acting as foreign agents. 

Sen. McConnell isn’t going to give in to Schumer's demands. "The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury, to hear a trial, not to re-run the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rushed sloppily through it," he said.

Let’s hop in the Wayback Machine after the House took its historic vote to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998 when Schumer warned, “We’ve lowered the bar on impeachment so much that it will be used as a routine tool to fight political battles.  My fear is that when a Republican wins the White House, Democrats will demand payback.”

Democrats Consumed With Trump Hatred Experiencing Abject Disappointment

If the House approves articles of impeachment against President Trump, there would be a trial in the Senate.  Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that discussions with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have not yet begun noting, “If the House acts, I think the place to start would be to take a look at what the agreement was 20 years ago in the Clinton impeachment trial as a starting place and then discuss how we may be able to agree to handle the process.  How long it goes on really depends on how long the Senate wants to spend on it.”

On Monday, McConnell told reporters in Kentucky, “I can’t imagine a scenario under which President Trump would be removed from office with 67 votes in the Senate.”

Republican senators including McConnell have criticized the House process arguing the President has not been allowed to defend himself in the inquiry.  Consideration is being given to dismissing the inquiry, a move that would require a simple majority of 51 votes.

Every moment of every waking day, Democrats have been searching for any pretext to remove this president.

As I noted in a previous post Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has had impeachment papers on his desk for three long years.  No one believes that the fix hasn’t been in since Trump took the Oath of Office.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) conducted focus groups in key battleground states to find a more compelling word to replace the Latin term “quid pro quo”.  The groups found “bribery” to be most damning.

Nothing underscores the fact that impeachment is a political process, not a legal remedy, intended to turn public opinion against the President.

CNN’s Legal Analyst, Jim Baker, pining for a real life Orwellian “1984” scenario tweeted:

I’m sorry if some people think these hearings are boring. As American citizens we have a solemn obligation to pay attention to this process no matter what side you’re on. You’re not being asked to storm the beaches at Normandy after all. Suck it up and watch.

— Jim Baker (@thejimbaker) November 13, 2019

Democrats and the legion of Trump haters are demoralized over impeachment hearings being tuned out by Americans.

“One of the most important aspects of the televised hearings is how many people watch them,” said Darrell West, Director of Governance Studies for the Brookings Institution. “During Watergate, millions watched and learned new things about President Nixon, which ultimately turned them away from him. For Democrats to have any hope of altering public opinion, they need robust viewership levels.”

Has the manufactured hatred of Trump hit a ceiling?  Oh, I think so.  San Fran Nan and her henchmen met privately about the prospects of a dramatic shift in opinion according to CNN.

“How impeachment plays in key districts has been an issue that Democrats have discussed repeatedly behind closed doors. At a meeting in late October, DCCC officials discussed focus group research that showed voters wanted the inquiry to be a fact-finding mission—not a foregone conclusion, according to a source in the room.” 

UPDATE:  Welcome readers of Whatfinger News.

Did Schumer Bend The Knee?

Democrats lost the shutdown war. They declared for weeks they would not back any funding bill without a bipartisan agreement to protect so-called Dreamers. As Day Three of a government shutdown dawned, Democrats folded like a cheap suit voting to reopen the government.

The White House labeled the government closure the “Schumer Shutdown” sending the Democrats into a bit of a panic.  The label stuck and the stench of fear clung to them like a skunk had sprayed them as the New York Times and the Associated Press blamed them for shuttering the government.

What did the Democrats get out of the shutdown?  Not a damned thing.  President Trump has managed to show Republicans how to show some spine and in so doing they, I strongly believe, have managed to erase some of the stigma of past shutdowns.

“Today's cave by Senate Democrats—led by weak-kneed, right-of-center Democrats—is why people don’t believe the Democratic Party stands for anything,” said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “These weak Democrats hurt the party brand for everyone and make it harder to elect Democrats everywhere in 2018.”

Oh, dear Stephanie. The Night King called for Schumer to bend the knee or he would destroy him.  Senator Schumer’s formal act of submission was a glorious sight to behold.  Crying Chuck will be treated with leniency, but there will be no trust in this lying 10 lb. blivet in a 5 lb. sack.

I tweeted this to Sen. Schumer early this morning:

@SenSchumer If this is what you’re asking true citizens of the United States to do you are egregiously mistaken senator. pic.twitter.com/4JROUqgxVL

— PoliticalClownParade (@PoliticalClownP) January 22, 2018

And now for some comedy gold I present disgraced poodle, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz:

Dem spin on the shutdown is hilarious today. Brooke Baldwin asks DWS to name one thing Dems got to justify shutting down the government:

"The potential for momentum." pic.twitter.com/JtlhB3SHI6

— Eric Hartmane (@erichartmane) January 22, 2018

UPDATE:  Welcome readers of Evil Bloggerlady.  We thank her for linking to this post.