There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!
Meanwhile, on fox news....
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ex-...ment-testimony
"And, Ambassador Volker, I presume you got a readout of the call. ... Was there any reference to withholding aid? Any reference to bribery? Any reference to quid pro quo? Any reference to extortion?"
"No, there was not," Volker replied, again and again.
The answers underscored a problem facing House Democrats as their impeachment inquiry continued into its second week of public hearings: As more witnesses have testified, more soundbites have emerged that may help Republicans and the Trump campaign argue that the proceedings were politically motivated theater, long in the works and foreshadowed openly by Democrats for months, if not years.
X-Books Forum Mutant Tracker/FAQ- Updated every Tuesday.
On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of the U.S. House Representative from North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, Mark Meadows, the current U.S. House Representative for North Carolina's 11th District, who currently possesses the most right-leaning, gerrymandered seat in all of the Tar Heel State (and that's saying something). Prior to taking office in 2012, he pandered to Birthers by saying that President Obama should “go back to Kenya”. One of his first votes upon arriving in the capitol was to vote against disaster relief funding for Hurricane Sandy victims, an amazing precedent for a freshman Congressman whose own district is in a state notorious for being hit by hurricanes and wanting disaster relief of their own. Meadows is also a confirmed climate change denier, says that gay marriage will cause a Constitutional crisis, and voted against a new version of the Violence Against Women Act because it provided protections towards lesbians. He’s also prone to jumping on faux scandal bandwagons, as we evidenced by his comments about Hillary Clinton’s original Benghazi testimony, and calling for IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to be held in contempt in the middle of his testimony, getting rebuked by Koskinen for doing so. Perhaps his most infamous moment, though, came during Congressional testimony over healthcare plans for the Affordable Care Act, where he raged against the idea that men should have to pay an equal amount for insurance plans as women, and they have the nerve to also ask that they get maternity coverage on their insurance, when he doesn’t need it… the physician testifying, and trying to explain this to him was a Dr. Mindy Cohen, who was… wait for it… 8 months pregnant at the time. If that isn’t “GOP’s War on Women” optics in a nutshell, I don’t know what is. Oh, maybe the fact that Rep. Meadows still paid his chief of staff thousands of dollars months after he was fired for sexually harassing female staffers, because he really can't have any less respect for women. Meadows’ is so out of sync with American opinions and attitudes right now, where even after a White Nationalist like Steve Bannon was forced out of the White House, Meadows has continued working with Bannon, and he was one of the most vocal people who endorsed noted pedophile Roy Moore for Senate in Alabama, and after Moore’s history of diddling kids came to light, Meadows would only go as far as to say he should drop out of the race “if the allegations are true”, immediately putting on that caveat to cast some doubt on Moore’s accusers.
Since being re-elected in his conservative district in 2018 (that could very well be ordered by the Supreme Court to be redrawn for 2020), he has returned to the House to continue to produce an unflinchingly partisan voting record:
- May 2nd, 2018: Mark Meadows is one of 18 Republicans who sign on to a letter asking to nominate Donald Trump for a Nobel Prize for meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
- July 24th, 2018: Rep. Meadows is one of the few Republicans insane enough to defend Donald Trump after the disastrous summit he had with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
- July 28th, 2018: Mark Meadows calls for the impeachment of Rod Rosenstein for not ending the Mueller investigation, one of many broadsides he makes against Rosenstein or FBI investigators through the fall of 2018.
- October 3rd, 2018: Meadows begins spreading conspiracy theories about how the FBI had undercover agents secretly taping the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
- January 22nd, 2019: Meadows votes against HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
- January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Meadows voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
- February 28th, 2019: Meadows votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
- March 7th, 2019: Meadows votes against HR 183, a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism as a hateful extension of intolerance.
- March 14th, 2019: Rep. Meadows votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
- April 4th, 2019: Mark Meadows is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
- May 17th, 2019: Meadows votes against The Equality Act, which would have prevented discrimination towards Americans based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
- June 4th, 2019: Rep. Meadows votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
- July 16th, 2019: Mark Meadows votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
- October 17th, 2019: Meadows is one of 60 Republicans who vote against HJ Res 77, which opposed Donald Trump’s disastrous decision to abandon Syrian Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria to the mercies of a Turkish invasion.
- October 23rd, 2019: Meadows is one of 41 Republicans who, while staring down the possibility of Donald Trump being impeached, stage a ridiculous publicity stunt in response by crashing a classified impeachment inquiry hearing for a “protest”.
Mark Meadows is currently one of the most fever-pitch fanatics in defending Donald Trump during the Ukraine impeachment inquiry, where he’s so easy to set into a rage-fueled meltdown that he can simply overhear a report how Republicans are struggling to defend Trump and he’ll stupidly dive into a live television interview to embarrass himself further. (And he tried denying only one witness had said there was a quid pro quo, when now after Ambassador Sondland “amended” his testimony, and no one is saying that.)
Between that moment and participating in Rep. Matt Gaetz’s “protest” of the closed-door hearings on impeachment… we’re expecting Mark Meadows to make a mockery of himself during the proceedings as public hearings continue. Considering just yesterday he asked to speak "off the record" while live C-SPAN cameras were rolling, we're pretty sure we're all going to be able to point and laugh.
X-Books Forum Mutant Tracker/FAQ- Updated every Tuesday.
GOP-Requested Witness Rejects Trump ‘Conspiracy Theories’
Kurt Volker said he has known former Vice President Joe Biden as an honorable man for decades while rebuffing debunked corruption allegations. This **** is ridiculous!
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Rex Tillerson: Asking A Country For Personal Favors Is ‘Wrong’
The former secretary of state said “everyone understands” that using American aid as a bargaining chip isn’t right. Well, everyone except for THIS pathetic crew....
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Republicans Will Never Be Convinced Trump Did Something Wrong
You’ve heard of “Never Trumpers.” Meet “Never Impeachers.” The See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil gang! Trump could gun down a troop of Girl Scouts in Times Square on live TV and these shitheads would say those kids had it coming for getting in the way of his bullets.
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The Day Impeachment Threatens McConnell’s Senate Job Is The Day Trump Is In Big Trouble
The Senate majority leader is likely to abandon the president if it appears that keeping his role is more assured if Trump is gone. Honor among scumbags? Not even!
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Ilhan Omar Asks Judge For ‘Compassion’ In Sentencing Man Who Threatened Her Life
“Who are we as a nation if we respond to threats of political retribution with retribution?” the congresswoman wrote in a letter.
Avatar: Here's to the late, great Steve Dillon. Best. Punisher. Artist. EVER!
One guy's take...
The outcome isn't even the point(although I do worry that Democrats might not have a plan for what comes after). Seeing the process through when most Republicans have their clown shoes on during a perfectly valid attempt at a Congressional duty seems like it's the point.
Sondland Hearing is going to be very interesting.
Original join date: 11/23/2004
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.
Josh Marshall@TPM's take.If you saw this morning’s testimony, I don’t have much to add. It speaks for itself. From every direction, Sondland confirmed the existence of a corrupt enterprise, directed expressly by the President. According to Sondland, everyone was in the loop – the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, the President, the Vice President, everyone. If you didn’t see or want to review it more closely, here are the prepared remarks. We’ll have more as we go on the key revelations from this morning.
The Republicans still won't convict in the Senate, of course.
Probably not, but Sondland even just admitted that there was never the intent to investigate, Trump just wanted Zelensky to publicly smear Biden.
Trump's guilty as f*************ck.
The GOP are still going to claim that asking a foreign country to interfere in the election and dangling foreign aide as a bribe in exchange for that help isn't a "high crime".
They're apparently gonna ride King Lemming all the way off the cliff. Hell, they rolled up their sleeves to smear a Purple Heart winner yesterday, so it's pretty much a lock they're in until the bitter end.
X-Books Forum Mutant Tracker/FAQ- Updated every Tuesday.
Of course Trump didn't really want to investigate. If he did, wouldn't he have set the Justice Department on the case? Oh no, they wouldn't have time would they, what with defending Trump on a dozen other charges, right?
Republican Counsel, Castor's line of questions are leading to trying to throw Rudy under the bus. As in, this was all Rudy's idea, not Trump's.
Original join date: 11/23/2004
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.