Mediaboss Marketing

Perhaps the strangest part of the impeachment process against President Donald Trump is its origin: Trumps own false belief that somehow the government of Ukraine has been secretly working against him.

It is difficult to state, without exaggeration, just how bizarre this notion is. Trump will be tried in the Senate over the actions he took based on an idea that doesnt exist in reality.

The idea Trumps idea is that Ukraine is responsible for pushing a false narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, to his benefit. (Theres no evidence for this idea. The opposite is true: Russia did interfere in the election, and Ukraine had nothing to do with it.)

Even on its own terms, the idea makes no sense. Ukraine needed the USs help in its fight against Russia. Why would it be simultaneously sabotaging an election while asking for help?

Nonetheless, Trump believes it.

They tried to take me down, Trump said of the Ukraine government, at a meeting in the Oval office in May, according to the Washington Post. They are horrible, corrupt people.

His staff, including Energy Secretary Rick Perry, tried to give him good advice. After all, Ukraine is a country that desperately needed US military aid at the time.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo couldnt find any evidence for the theory either, and he ended up calling Fox News for clues.

Trump was having none of it. We could never quite understand it, a former senior White House official told the Post. There were accusations that they had somehow worked with the Clinton campaign. There were accusations theyd hurt him. He just hated Ukraine.

Trumps impeachment isnt the only real-world consequence of the fictional belief that, for some squirrelly reason, Ukraine was sabotaging Trump while simultaneously relying on him for help. Trumps personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, has spent so much time in Ukraine in search of the truth that he is now under federal investigation for possibly failing to register as a foreign agent of Ukraine, and possible violations of campaign finance law, according to Bloomberg.

This has potentially serious consequences for Giuliani. The penalty for failing to register as a foreign agent is up to five years in prison.

Yet Giuliani is doubling down. He spent early December in Ukraine interviewing former prosecutors in hopes of finding something anything that might demonstrate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Bidens son was somehow involved in corruption in Ukraine. So far, nothing.

Previously, conservatives pushed false conspiracy theories precisely because they knew the theories were false. Airing theories that are false has several tactical advantages:

There is a great story by BuzzFeeds Joe Bernstein that describes how alt-right conspiracy web sites create their news. Activists see their lies as a form of entertainment, in much the same way that liberals used to enjoy Stephen Colberts fictional conservative persona on The Colbert Report.

In the story, Nora Ralph, one of the editors of the Ralph Retort (a conservative conspiracy site) describes how she feels about Infowars Alex Jones, another prolific pusher of political fiction. To me, thats entertainment. We dont really think the frogs are gay. I dont think the protein powder works. I never thought some people watch this stuff and are like, yes, this is hard-hitting journalism. I thought most of us could distinguish between entertainment and facts. I never really thought people were stupid enough to get caught up in this stuff.

It comes as a surprise to discover that Trump is not in on the joke. Hes not blathering on about Ukraine because he enjoys triggering Trump Derangement Syndrome among his enemies. He really believes this stuff.

And its not just Ukraine. Consider:

Trump isnt pushing conspiracies as part of an elaborate game with the media. He is genuinely unable to tell fact from fiction. That makes the crisis inside the White House a level more dangerous. Dangerous for him in terms of the legal consequences. And dangerous for the country, whose foreign and domestic policies are being derailed by things that dont exist in real life.

I asked Travis View, a longtime observer of the QAnon conspiracy movement, why anyone would voluntarily gull themselves into such a tight corner that they might, like Giuliani, be prosecuted.

For Pizzagate believers, it was satisfying to think that Hillary Clinton would be arrested for child sex trafficking. For Alex Jones, spreading baseless conspiracy theories gained him a large audience and wealth, he told me.

For Trump, believing that Ukraine was responsible for election meddling absolves Russia, and therefore removed the taint from Trumps election victory. It takes less emotional effort to believe in a baseless conspiracy theory that uplifts your allies and condemns your enemies than a difficult, hard, complex truth.

The embrace of fictitious beliefs regardless of the real-world consequences is a step-change in conservative thinking. You can see it in climate science denial, QAnon, the anti-vaxx movement, and believing that the water supply is contaminated with chemicals that make frogs gay. False ideas are no longer being pushed as a strategy of distraction. Now they are required as articles of faith, facts that require belief regardless of the real-world consequences.

As Giulianis legal situation indicates, there are real dangers to this line of thinking. Alex Jones, too, has been successfully sued for pushing the line that the Sandy Hook shooting never occurred.

Trump, however, clearly doesnt care.

The question is whether conservatism as a whole wants to follow him off this cliff.

Read more:
Trump's very real impeachment is based on his own false beliefs and it represents a suicidal step-change in conservative thinking - Business Insider

Every December since 1927, TIME's Person of the Year award has recognized the most influential person (or group of people) on the global stage.

Its ranks include almost every sitting US president since the award's inception, alongside world leaders, business moguls, and activists. The magazine does not necessarily endorse every winnersometimes their pick for most influential person (i.e. Adolf Hitler in 1938 and Joseph Stalin in 1939) reflects the destructive ends of global influence. But regardless, for most recipients, especially those in the activism space, the award is viewed as an honorand in 2019, it most certainly is.

Time's 2019 Person of the Year is Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate change activist who has traveled the world speaking to politicians, leading protests, and urging everyone to stop turning a blind eye to the myriad ways that humans are destroying the planet.

But even though 97% of climate scientists agree that global warming and climate change are both real and caused by humans, right-wing lunatics (read: very angry white men) hate Greta Thunberg, because...?

Much of their adult hatred directed towards a child dedicating her life to trying to making the world sustainable for future generations stems from the fact that they are, in reality, literal babies trapped in hairy, pale, man-bodies. But their main reason is the fact that their God-King (they're too stupid to understand how elected public officials are supposed to work), Donald Trump, hates her, too.

So because Donald Trump doesn't believe in climate change (putting his stupid ass in disagreement with his own government's science divisions), his even stupider supporters don't either. Now they're real mad on Twitter over Greta Thunberg being TIME's Person of the Year, so they're sh*tting their diapers for all to see. It's great. Let's meet some of the lowest-performing white men in the world up close and personal.

Oh, who's this angry white boy trying to compare Greta Thunberg to Hitler? Why, it's "Count Dankula," the Scottish YouTuber best known for teaching his dog to perform a Nazi salute gesture and respond positively when asked, "Do you wanna gas the Jews?" Apparently it was couched in typical alt-right "just a joke" bullsh*t, but Dankula, whose real name is Mark Meechan, later joined the right-wing populist UK Independence Party (UKIP) alongside frequent milkshake enthusiast Carl Benjamin, so...yeah, really funny! All that being said, when Meechan equates Thunberg to Hitler, he might be trying to give her a compliment.

Here we have Exhibit B: An angry boomer Trump stan/far-right stooge named Bill Mitchell who earned his blue checkmark by hosting a less successful online version of Alex Jones' show. While his opinions might only be relevant to people with actual brain damage, he does have a particular knack for defrauding his followers out of money. Which is to say that yes, at the very least he follows the right-wing ideals of preying on stupid people and attacking children.

Lastly, we arrive at the poster boy of white male mediocrity: Donald Trump Jr.a man so talentless that he needed his daddy's friends to buy up his book, a man so pathetic he got absolutely slaughtered on The View, and a man so self-unaware that he'll probably go his entire life without ever realizing that if his dad wasn't rich, he'd be just another schlub.

There's a reason pathetic white men spend so much of their time crying about the accomplishments of better, more useful people on Twitter. Because at the end of the day, they're absolutely worthless, and deep down they know it.

See the original post:
Pathetic White Men Are Big Mad That Greta Thunberg Is Time's Person of the Year - Popdust

God save the Queen / She aint no human being / There is no future / and Englands dreaming, sneered Johnny Rotten on the Sex Pistols single, God Save the Queen (1977), released during the silver jubilee of Queen Elizabeth IIs coronation. The sudden appearance of a wistfully placid England at the centre of this viciously sarcastic, rubbish-strewn national anthem is most curious. What is England dreaming of? Is this a complacent daydream or something more fantastical? The line, so resonant that Jon Savage used it as the title of his pre-eminent 1991 book on punk rock, is trapped provocatively between the archetypal romantic contemplation of an ennobled nation its landscape, its dignity, its ancient feet and the suggestion that the barbarians at the gate, in the form of the Sex Pistols themselves perhaps, are about to unleash a waking nightmare.

But these contradictions are easily subsumed into the dream of England. The Sex Pistols single could be heard during the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012. And cynical distance is inclined to collapse into sincerity. Interviewed on ITVs flagship Good Morning Britain show in 2017, Rotten dolled up in the kind of tweed suit favoured by supporters of the far-right political party UKIP said of Britains 2016 European Union referendum result: The working class have spoke [sic] and Im one of them and Im with them. He then went on to praise Brexit Party leader, Nigel Farage, and defend US President Donald Trump. Perhaps the song wasnt so sarcastic after all.

For all that England can wryly describe itself as crap, there has always been an immovable, dialectical tendency within that to find the heroism of living in it. Added to the countrys historical and persistent colonialism, chauvinism and feudalism, the impulse to resue the dream of England from its internal and external oppressiveness is just one more form of this ugliness. Attempts to reframe Englishness or Britishness have appeared across the political spectrum since the millennium, not least in the rush to defend and reclaim the wounded patriots who, it is endlessly assumed, cried out in the 2016 EU referendum. Yet, in his latest book, New Model Island: How to Build a Radical Culture Beyond the Idea of England (2019), Alex Niven rejects the modern discourse on rediscovering the green unpleasant land. The negative deadness of England and Englishness is a nightmare from which we are all trying to awake, Niven observes, neatly summarizing, We need to abandon England and start looking for a replacement.

This is not to say that Niven is against everything that has ever taken place and everyone who has ever lived on that particular landmass. For a book whose arguments are ultimately so uncompromising, there is a remarkable tenderness in its pages for people, places and histories. The problem, as Niven often points out, is: England doesnt really exist. As in his earlier book, Folk Opposition (Zero Books, 2011), he is affectionate towards his origin and home in the northeast, thoughtfully detailing the many ways in which the region no less so than England has been a distinct social and institutional territory for millennia. The book also has a subplot of autobiography, as Niven contextualizes his argument with reference to his life, career, family and social circle. Indeed, New Model Islands passages on the thoughts and lives of writers Robin Carmody, Mark Fisher and Joe Kennedy, as well as on the publishing houses Zero Books and Repeater, add a personal and historical dimension to Nivens milieu of left-wing cultural analysts, who started out as a network of bloggers in the 2000s and who, today, have never been more relevant or more widely read.

From Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to Guardian columnists, Niven tracks the discourse of Englishness through both deep and recent history, disentangling an early version that existed between the Dark Ages and the formation of the UK in 1707, as well as a more spurious version that emerged from a combination of postmodern nostalgia and the millennial devolutions of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The relationship between these two Englands, Niven maintains, is distant and tenuous. In the intervening time: England was meticulously de-essentialized and distorted so that it could subsume neighbouring and more distant lands. Today, the still ongoing dismantling of the British Empire means that its rump polity has been left with nothing but the distant echoes of a pre-capitalist feudal past with which to reimagine itself.

The ongoing, if eroding, sense in which England can signify the UK from its point of privilege as the colonial centre is particularly notable in the US. In a recent episode of NBCs magical-realist sitcom The Good Place (201619), for instance, one character gave as an example for weird shit happening the fact that England left Europe. In fact, while the UK voted overall to leave the EU, Scotland and Northern Ireland had opted to remain. And, although Wales also elected to leave, the right-wing backlash of recent years has been particularly associated with a love for, and defence of, England.

At a political rally in August 2018, Trump reflected: People call it Great Britain. They used to call it England. He had also told The Sun newspaper a couple of months previously: You dont hear the word England as much as you should [] I miss the name England. Earlier this year, standing next to the UK prime minister Boris Johnson, and in an even more confused state, Trump responded to a question about international relationships after Brexit by floundering: Wheres England? Whats happening with England? They dont use it too much anymore. Englishness is the depressingly proud heritage of Richard B. Spencer, the American alt-right figurehead, who became infamous following the 2016 US election for shouting: Hail Trump! Hail Victory! Hail our People! He subsequently told the Black British journalist Gary Younge that he would never be an Englishman in a 2017 documentary for Channel 4.

In the UK, the English flag has been adopted by the far-right English Defence League and is frequently eulogized by Farage. But Niven is not just suspicious of the co-option of Englishness by right-wing nationalism. There has also been a centre-left political shift intended to accommodate xenophobia in recent decades, of which the Labour Partys notorious 2015 election-campaign mug bearing the slogan Controls on Immigration is the most potent symbol. Even the melancholic association of England with the aesthetics of hauntology or class struggle both topics close to Nivens heart fall short in saving the moniker for him. Instead, he talks of these islands (incidentally, the term employed in documents jointly produced by the British and Irish governments) or the archipelago, which has a radical air when he uses it, as if all national territorializations have been wiped off the chart and only the various parcels of dry land on which we happen to be standing matter. But Niven is far from ahistorical: these islands have histories that are longer, broader and more surprising than any reductive, quixotic English framing. He argues that their future, too, can be just as promisingly diverse.

Looking to embrace the archipelagos various, multi-vocal identity and to suggest a more fluid, dynamic version of regionalism that retains some sense of history but does not fall victim to bogus nationalist essentialisms, Niven tries his hand at redrawing the map. In one manifestation, the first incision lies between, roughly, Lyme Regis and Middlesbrough, allowing for greater lateral integration between the non-English nations and peripheries of England (Cornwall and the north), as well as an escape from the orbit of London (the obscenely swollen hub of a radically concentric economy). As a southerner potentially left behind in a Tory-run, literal Little England, I would be burning with jealousy over the newly formed gang of cool kids to the north and west. But I could always emigrate.

In their 2019 election manifesto, the Labour Party has retained its 2017 promise of four new public bank holidays one for each of the UK nations patron saints in a clear gesture to traditional delineations of nationalism. But theyre also proposing a radical decentralization of power in Britain, with Local Transformation Funds and government offices in each region of England and a National Transformation Fund Unit in the north intended to shift the political centre of gravity. The party has also published regional manifestos that highlight how, to take the northeast as an example, a Green Industrial Revolution can echo the original industrial revolution, with new national parks founded in the region.

Both Niven and Labour (in a more moderate sense) see a future in which power can be redistributed not just economically but geographically, but without cleaving to centralizing nationalisms. It is in the regions that Labour will win or lose this weeks general election: the party has to convince voters that broad-based yet localized investment is preferable to the Conservatives quick and quite possibly hard Brexit. Yet, even if this election results in Labours defeat, such dreams are unlikely to fade. As Niven attests, a new left-wing generation is imagining a different future and making strong arguments for it. Perhaps, in order finally to dream of something else, we need to stop dreaming of England.

Main image: Pro-Brexit demonstration, London, December 2018. Courtesy: Getty Images; photograph: Adrian Dennis; AFP

Read the original:
Why We Need to Stop Dreaming of England - frieze.com

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Immortal Hulk #28, by Al Ewing, Tom Reilly, Matias Bergara, Chris O'Halloran, VC's Cory Petit and Alex Ross, on sale now.

Marvel comics are said to reflect the "world outside your window," although the degree to which the publisher has ever fully succeeded varies, often creating a question as to where that window is located as well as what it looks out upon.However, this idea of reflecting the world in which readers live also means, like in any other medium, providing relevant social commentary. The most recent issues of The Immortal Hulk reflect that "world outside your window" by approaching the political and social discourses surrounding such hot-button subjects as climate change, corporations and the news media, and the book is all the better for it.

RELATED: Marvel Drastically Changes Its Super Teens' Status Quo in Outlawed

The Immortal Hulk#26 seesBruce Banner announcing his intention to attack the main entities exacerbating major societal problems, and often profiting off of the very issues they create. His goal is to provide real consequences for the injustices of corporations and other organizations. In his monologue,Banner mentionsclimate change, and the way the actions of particular entities creates a loop that trades results in destruction for short-term gain. There's no ambiguity here: Bruce's world is dying because of the actions of predatory members of the economic elite -- and so is ours, with 100 companies responsible for the majority of the emissions that place Earth at risk.

Hulk's first target is -- and this isn't a coincidence -- Roxxon Energy Corporation. The company is led byDario Agger, who in The Immortal Hulk#27 explicitly explains that he actively moved Roxxon away from renewable energy when he became CEO. However, this isn't due to the villain thinking climate change isn't real. Instead, Aggerbelieves the science about climate change, but he plans to profit off of the resulting "resource war." There's an advantagein destroying the world.

RELATED: Old Man Quill Establishes a New Guardians of the Galaxy

Agger is certainly an exaggeration of a CEO who prioritizes profit over the greater good (although when the science is as irrefutable as it is in regard to climate change, the choice to ignore reality in favor of profits is certainly not much different). However, he's an expression of present anxieties and frustrations about the ultra rich and the CEOs of massive companies and whether they're doing enough to save our world.

In The Immortal Hulk#27, Agger explains he won't be hiding his true form anymore, remarking nobody will care that he's literally a monster. People also seem to have forgotten Aggersided against humanity in the War of the Realms. For Agger, there are no consequences for publicly being a monster. Roxxon's stock price is actually rising when the story begins, meaning Agger is making more money than he was before. Even though the CEO behind the company is a literal monster, people continue consuming Roxxon's products and services, which include Roxx News, YouRoxx and RoxxFace. Like in Hulk's explanation, there are no consequences for Agger's actions to enrich himself at the expense of others.

RELATED: Marvel Celebrates 750 Issues of Incredible Hulk With... The Thoughtful Man?

As those aforementioned names imply, Roxxon itself is a composite sketch of various corporations, including Fox News, Google and Facebook. The critique of these three organizations are particularly important for understanding how Immortal Hulk explores the role media places in further perpetuating broken systems. Fox News is often critiqued as something of an uncritical mouthpiece for conservative views and claims; Google owns YouTube, which hosts videos linked to increasing alt-rightradicalization;Facebook has come under fire for its handling of disinformation and fake news spread on the platform. These organizations have failed to take steps to address these issues in earnest, in part because there's money to be made from not doing so. And the effects are clear:Fox News is still one of the most-watched cable brands in North America, Facebook reported record profitsdespite controversyand YouTube has 2 billion monthly users.

The Immortal Hulk#26 and #27 lay the groundwork for understanding the larger system, but #28 takes a more ground-level approach in showing how the aforementioned media organizations affect people. The Immortal Hulk #28 explores the story of a white, middle-aged security guard. His story draws on conservative, if not specifically alt-right, understandings of the world, which are a result of a steady diet of Roxxon's various media products. The security guard believes his purpose is to take back his country "for our children," even if that means taking it back from them when they choose to protest what they find wrong in the world.

The media the security guard consumes shapes his understanding of himself as right and righteous, while those who disagree with him as wrong and, in this case, worshipers of the devil. In turn, the security guard's views remain unchallenged, and he's unable to see the problems with his own beliefs, Roxxon's behavior and the general issues plaguing his world. By reinforcing his views and ideas, Roxxon has effectively created support for its attempts to profit off of disaster.

The Immortal Hulk#28 also explores the idea of dissent getting repackaged and undermined for the sake of profit.Before heading off to get his own Hulk, one of Dario Agger's lackeys reveals that Roxxon is actually using a shell company to sell Hulk masks with the intent of eventually leaking the company's involvement and the environmentally unstable nature of the masks so as to "dampen enthusiasm with the 12-18s." Here, Roxxonis actually planning to make money off attempts to protest while simultaneously undermining those working against them and for a better world.

However, don't mistake The Immortal Hulk's critique as a simple oneof good versus evil.Immortal Hulk has never shied away from graphically rendering the horror of the title hero's actions, making readers wonder if he has, in fact, become too brutal, and the book isn't starting now. Plus, the entire arc has the events ofImmortal Hulk#25, which sees Hulk as the Breaker of Worlds laying waste to the universe, priming readers to wonderjust how far his rampage, left unchecked, could go.

Most importantly, The Immortal Hulk#26 features a conversation between Amadeus Cho and Bannerexamining whether the latter's destructive plansare correct, and if he'd transformed from hero to villain. Cho serves as the voice of hope, believing that there are other potential ways to make the world better. The intersection of Banner's race and rage also play a role in the conversation, as it has in previous entries in the run. Although Banner's rage is a powerful tool, the aforementioned security guard is also angry. That doesn't mean he's right or that his attempts to make a better world mean one will come about. Amadeus subtly warns Bruce to check his privilege in how he's approaching his next endeavor, as he's "an angry middle-class white guy talking about revolution. That doesn't always end so well."

RELATED: X-Men: How Apocalypse Turned Gambit Into His Horseman

However, Amadeus never says Bruce is wrong in his evaluation of how corporations are destroying the world. This conversation doesn't change the fact that what Roxxon is doing is wrong or that destructive, self-perpetuating systems are risking everyone on Earth for profit. This then leaves the question of how best to fix the problem which, if left unchecked, will lead to catastrophe. Bruce's experience reflects the frustration so many feel about watching the world around them collapse and feeling powerless to act, which is why Hulk's actions inspire a new Teen Brigade: The young and disaffectedfinally have someone who can dosomething about the problem.Immortal Hulkwants readers to question the title character and his methods while making the problem he's addressing clear and unambiguous.

The Immortal Hulkis engaging with some of the most difficult questions about the future of humanity and how to fix problems that threaten everyone.As new issues release,there will certainly be twists and turns that further complicate Bruce's quest and the politics of the book. All of this works together to create an urgent book reflecting some of the biggest anxieties of the world of its readers. Thisalso leaves one major question: When the system can only be fixed through radical intervention, does Hulk have any other choice?

The Immortal Hulk #29 releases Jan. 8, 2020.

KEEP READING: Al Ewing's Immortal Hulk Confronts Roxxon - and the Marvel Universe

Superman & Wonder Woman's Daughter Is a Total A-Hole - and It Works

Tags:feature,immortal hulk

More here:
Immortal Hulk Is Unabashedly Political - and That's What Makes It Great - CBR - Comic Book Resources

ONE MANS OPINION-Trump constantly lies for two reasons: (1) He suffers from a Histrionic Personality Disorder, which makes him mentally incapable of telling the truth; (2) No one really cares that Trump lies.

The claim that the Dems care about Trumps lies is disproved by the adage actions speak louder than words. In fact, Pelosi and other Dems love the fact that Trumps is so mentally ill that he cannot help but tell outrageous lies. Trump must be the center of attention; he must always receive cheers and praise and if he must always attack anyone who displeases him. We experience his daily Twitter Insanity, which is chock-full of lies and incoherency, but the Dems only care to the extent they can raise money from Trumps mental deficiencies. If Pelosi and the other Dems cared about the nation, they would have cooperated with the moderate GOP in early 2017 to Nixonize Trump. Look at the timeline. Only after the Dems would not Nixonize Trump, did the GOP make a pact with the lunatic Alt-Right, i.e., The Freedom Caucus.

Trump is a clear and present danger to the nation and the idea that the Dems care is another gigantic lie. All Pelosi cares about is raising money and winning her ferkata Group Rights War. Anything which raises money is fine for Pelosi, who has flung open the doors for the Dem Party to vile anti-Semites.

The Entire Impeachment Process Has Become a Farce Wrapped in Multiple Lies

There are two truths about impeachment: (1) Trump has committed numerous impeachable offences including treason; (2) Nancy Pelosi is working as hard as she can to prevent Trump from being removed from office. The moment Trump is gone, Pelosis power drops into the basement and there is nothing in the universe more important to Nancy Pelosi than her personal power.

Washingtonese

When the GOP on the House committees act badly, they are sending two messages one to their Alt-Right base and the other to the Congressional Dems. When the GOP complains that there is no evidence, they are signaling for the Dems to call more witnesses, especially the Three Fat Ladies (Giuliani, Pompeo, and Bolton).

After America finally saw honest men and women do that very un-American thing of telling the truth to power, the public praised them and gave them standing ovations. Then, Adam Schiff stabbed them in the back. The testimony of Vindman, Hill, Holmes, Sondland, etc. laid a fantastic foundation for the GOP to Nixonize Trump. The GOP responded by signing, Yes, give us more facts so we can get rid of the lunatic. (In Washingtonese, you have no facts means gives us more facts.)

Adam Schiff Let Speaker Nancy Pelosi Stop All the Evidence Gathering

That means Vindman, Holmes, Hill, Sondland, etc. appeared for nothing. Vindmans family is in danger and Schiff let Pelosi stab him in the back. Schiff could simply have announced that the subpoenas for more fact witnesses were being issued to the Three Fart Ladies and others. Then, let Pelosi publicly counterman what Schiff announced. (Memo to Schiff: Weenies have no business in elected office.)

The Dems complain that the GOP will not stand up to Trump, while they all cower in fear of Nancy Pelosi. The GOP laid out a road a map of the additional evidence which the House needs to produce so that the GOP can turn on Trump.

Even Senator Mitch McConnell is placing pressure on Pelosi to let Jerry Nadler call more fact witnesses by saying the Senate is unlikely to call new witnesses. In other words, the GOP is telling others who understand Washingtonese: In order for us to Nixonize Trump, you Dems have to produce all the evidence in the House because we will not allow you to introduce one iota of new evidence in the Senate. Remember, removal only will happen while the case is in the House.

Pelosi, McConnell and Other Congressional Members Know This. . .

Under Senate rules, a majority of the Senate will not approve more witnesses to testify against Trump. Unless the Dem House bucks Pelosi and calls heavy hitting fact witnesses, there will be no new evidence allowed in the Senate and Trump will not be removed.

OJ Redux

Heres another big Pelosi lie which the Dems are shamelessly spewing: There is overwhelming evidence against Trump. Like with the OJ Trial, the evidence in the record is little more than paltry. Vindman and the others gave us a wonderful foundation, but the evidence to turn the tide against Trump is being intentionally excluded. We will know when the evidence is overwhelming. The GOP will Nixonize Trump.

More evidence to convict OJ existed, but it was not introduced before Judge Ito. (Remember, OJ talked to LAPD for hours after which his attorney Howard Weitzman quit.) Prosecutor Marcia Clark talked about the mountain of evidence and had her chart of a pyramid of evidence, but it was mostly fantasy. Yes, OJ did it. He later told us how. The point is that when incompetent or corrupt prosecutors handle a case, the guilty go free. That is what Pelosi is doing right now. (Marcia Clark did not want OJ to go free; it was pure incompetence at the highest levels of the LA DAs office.) If you want an OJ Redux, let Pelosi stop the evidence gathering. Chairman Jerry Nadler can do what Schiff was too chicken to do issue subpoenas to more fact witnesses.

As explained previously, Prof. Noah Feldman said, impeachment is essential to the Republics survival when the election process is inadequate. That is why we cannot let Nancy Pelosi truncate the impeachment process by allowing the most damning witnesses not to become part of the official record. Pelosis clear goal is to aggrandize her personal power as her power rests in her fundraising for elections. If Trump is Nixonized by the GOP, her power evaporates.

The Real Culprits Are We the People

The reality is that we elect two types of people to political office: (1) crooks like Eric Garcetti, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and (2) craven cowards like Adam Schiff. There is no courage for a Dem to complain about a GOP and vice versa. What neither will do is tell the truth about their own party. Both parties are in a race to the ethical gutter and both parties are winning. Why? Because We the Sheeople condone outrageous lying. Whatever our group says is A-OK and whatever the other group says is 100% bad and facts play no role in our judgments.

Who thinks the Republic can survive when We the People are habituated to lying crooks and cowards so that decent people quit Congress?

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at:Rickleeabrams@Gmail.com.Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Photo: Doug Mills/New York Times. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

More:
Truth, Justice, and the American Way Have Been Assassinated by We the People - City Watch