Comments on the End of this Phase of the Impeachment Show

Schiff’s public impeachment hearings have concluded.  I watched the entire show.  I have a few comments, but first, I would refer everyone to Devin Nunes’ closing argument which pretty well summarizes the context of these hearings and what is really going on.  Here is the LINK.  

Now, my comments.  It’s pretty clear that these hearings are changing no one’s opinions about the President.  The Democrats will twist and turn bits and pieces of evidence until they think they have something to justify in their own minds the fact that they are trying to overturn the will of the electorate and remove a president they don’t like from office.

The real problem is that the Democrats’ actions are enabling the belief that if you don’t like the person who wins an election, if they are not whom you voted for, or if you simply don’t agree with their policies, then you can simply remove them from office.  I think the enabling is intentional, for that is exactly what the Democrats seek to do.

Democrats claim that they are defending the Constitution, but in reality their very actions thwart not only the Constitution but essentially all the core principles upon which this country is based.  They are, and have been since 2016, trying to overturn the results of an election – results that they did not like.  They seem not to understand that in America we have elections.  Some people are disappointed with the outcome; they may be upset that the person who won has different priorities or policies than did their candidate.  But, disappointed as we may be, we support the President and the Office, even while voicing our dissent to polices we do not like.  And, we remove a President not by calculated coup, but by voting.

That is America.  Refusal to acknowledge the President as President is not American.  Nancy Pelosi calling the President an “imposter” is not American; it is not the proper exercise of her oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States of America.  The untold thousands who refuse to call Donald Trump “President Trump” because they state “he is not my president” do not understand how our democracy works.  Rather than exploiting that lack of understanding, the Democrats should be educating and setting an example of how we respect elections in this country.

The Democrats also disrespect our Constitution and our laws in the manner in which they handle these hearings.  Schiff, we know, is not uncomfortable lying to the American people with a straight face, but the entire Democrat party is behind the unfairness of these hearings.  Key witnesses who have actual facts are not allowed to appear, selective transcripts (mostly only favorable to Democrats) are released, Republican requests for key witnesses are denied, hearings are held in secret, laws and rules are not followed.  Instead, Schiff has set himself up as some sort of king who will run things along, overrunning all semblance of a fair and just hearing, until he reaches his goal which is to destroy the President and with him the will of the electorate.

I also want to comment generally on the witnesses who appeared at the hearings.  What we had was a parade of opinion and feelings and hearsay and individual interpretations of hearsay.  That was the “evidence” presented by the Democrats.  Incomplete testimony has been reported by the Democrat PR department (also known as the mainstream media) that seems to imply the President to be guilty of something, but if complete and full answers of witnesses are examined, one sees that any evidence of guilt is completely lacking.

The witnesses to varying extents all seemed to be upset or hurt because they no longer held the same power that they did before the current administration.  Sad they were re-called; sad their friend was re-called, upset they were no longer included in this or that meeting, upset that they were not listened to as they had been in the past, sad that their opinion about this or that policy was not adopted.   What they don’t seem to understand is that the President, not the career public servant, sets policy.  Again, this is why we have elections – so that the people can express which policy they favor by electing the person who represents that policy.  We are a government of/by/for the people and the way the people express their will is through elections.  We expect those who work for our President to understand that and not to think that we elected them instead.

Finally, the hypocrisy of the Democrats is stunning.  They want to investigate this President for every move he takes; yet they do not want an investigation of anyone else.  They seem to think that the entire Biden family should have some sort of immunity just because Joe Biden is a candidate.  The fact that Ukraine and Burisma may have used his son to seek some leverage when Biden was vice president cannot be investigated; the Republicans cannot call Hunter Biden as a witness, even though every witness said there was possible corruption involving Hunter Biden during the time that Joe Biden was vice president.

The Democrats claim it is their duty to investigate a phone call in which the actual evidence shows nothing untoward happened, but object to the President’s attempt to investigate actual corruption in a country to which we give a wealth of taxpayer dollars.  Whether the President’s concerns about the connection between Ukraine and the 2016 election or the possible Burisma corruption turn out to be accurate or not does not mean that he does not have the right as well as the duty to investigate.  That the Burisma corruption investigation might lead to questionable actions by a vice president who now happens to be a candidate for president does not mean that the investigation cannot or should not occur. Nor does it mean that the request to investigate was for political purposes, especially when every witness said there was at least an appearance of impropriety in the Burisma-Biden connection.  And, there is absolutely no evidence of any kind of quid pro quo or bribery or extortion on the part of the President.

The Democrats claim that the President was trying to influence an election.  It is they who are actually trying to influence two elections.  First, they are trying to overturn the legitimate results of the 2016 election, something they have been trying to do since before President Trump was sworn in.  Second, they are trying to influence the 2020 election with this ridiculous impeachment show.  Indeed, several Democrats have asserted that “If we don’t impeach the President he will be re-elected.” 

This impeachment show is nothing more than a political campaign strategy by a party that has nothing else to campaign on.  The current President’s policies and actions are helping ALL the people of this country and improving our status in the world while in many ways making it a safer place.  His style is not soft but often abrasive and that seems to be all that the Democrats can attack.  And so they do.  They make up stories and try to convince the American people that our vote was a mistake and we should defer to the Democrats who claim to have superior knowledge and intelligence than do we (they make their perceived inferiority of those who voted for or who plan to vote for President Trump clear by the names that they call us).   The Democrats seem to think that because they are better than we are, that we should therefore simply allow them to overturn our will and our vote, allow them to remove a duly elected President from office based on rumor, innuendo, and hurt feelings, and place themselves in power – they, the people who have no policy to run on, who rather than do the work of the American people have frittered away hours and dollars on ridiculous investigations and hearings.

The thing I find most amazing is that so many are allowing this to happen, to move forward.  That so many are allowing their voice to be stolen.  That may be the most frightening revelation of this whole process.  And, if President Trump is not reelected then I truly fear we will be facing the end of all that has made this country the shining star of the world for over 200 years.

The Impeachment Show

So, tomorrow the Impeachment Show begins – live TV entertainment.  You may watch if you like that sort of thing – a crusade based on hatred of an individual, not unlike the bullying by the “in-crowd” against a successful outsider. This is a not so good sequel to the Russian Collusion show.  If you don’t realize that this is all just part of the ongoing coup/now revolution jihad then you have not been paying attention.

Yes, it is really that ridiculous, and if it weren’t so frightening for the survival of America and all for which it stands, then it would simply be a rather poor comedy.   But it is not.  Last month I wrote about how we were no longer in a coup, but now a revolution (LINK).  My final words (before quoting “Revolution) in that post were

America is under attack.  What was an angry outburst against election results has moved from a childish outburst to a coup and now a revolution - a full out challenge to the established political order, government, culture, and their related associations and structures.   This matters.  This is a challenge to every American.  And every American who is involved in this revolution needs to be very clear on what they are doing while those of us not involved need to do everything we can to educate those warriors and defend our country from their attack.

The revolution is going full force ahead.  The frightening results that we face as both individuals and as a nation are made woefully clear in an excellent piece by historian and scholar Victor David Hanson; LINK  .  His final lines in this essay read, “One side will say, “”Just give us more power and we will create heaven on earth.”” The other says ““Why would anyone wish to take their road to an Orwellian nightmare?”” The 2020 election is that simple.”

Why, you may ask, am I quoting something about the 2020 election when this post’s title and beginning are focused on impeachment?  The answer is very simple:  the Impeachment Show is nothing more than a Democrat campaign strategy to keep Donald Trump from being re-elected.  Anyone who examines the alleged evidence realizes there is just nothing there – nothing other than innuendo and gossip and perhaps some actual disagreement about policy.  But nothing impeachable.  Let me repeat that: NOTHING.  Just as there was nothing there in the Russian collusion show; nothing there in the Kavanaugh #metoo show, nothing there is the daily diatribes against the President.  NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING.

The Impeachment Show is a campaign strategy and part of the overarching campaign to remove the president from office (the original coup attempt) and now the broader campaign to completely remake this country (the ongoing revolution).  As a campaign strategy it allows the Democrats to justify not doing what the people sent them to Washington to do (things like pass laws that benefit the people and the country, debate important issues, etc.).  They are too busy with impeachment to do anything else, and so they justify a failure to serve the people who elected them.  And, by their doing nothing, the President’s agenda becomes stalled, so they can argue that he did not accomplish what he should.  Further, it allows Democrats to throw all sorts of dirt at the President and the Republican party – the sort that you see and usually object to in the ugliest campaign ads – claiming that they must release this hearsay and innuendo as part of an open impeachment.

Of course, you must realize that this is anything but an open and fair process.  The key witnesses are avowed anti-Trumpers who consult with Democrats before coming forward.  Adam Schiff (who salivates every time he even thinks about removing Trump from office) has been running and continues to run a Star Chamber sort of process.

For those not familiar with Star Chamber, it was a court process that existed in England from the 15^th to mid-17^th centuries.  While it was originally created to fairly enforce laws against socially and politically prominent and powerful people whom ordinary courts were reluctant to convict, it became synonymous with social and political oppression through the abuse of the power it wielded.  Its proceedings were secretive and its judgments arbitrary.  It became an instrument of oppression rather than justice.

One can see why Schiff’s impeachment show is often linked to Star Chamber.  He is using what in the past has been generally a fair process and corrupting it to his purposes of removing the President from office, or failing that objective, of destroying his chances for re-election.  This is in effect both social and political oppression as it attempts to remove a duly seated president and overturn the will of the people with absolutely no valid legal basis for doing so. 

Until tomorrow the hearing has been in secret with even Republicans (and through them the people they represent) denied access.  Questions by Republicans have been disallowed.  Schiff met with the “whistleblower” before he became a whistleblower, and both are avid anti-Trumpers.  Schiff determines what witnesses can be called and which can be cross-examined.  He suggests written questions to the whistleblower instead of live testimony.  Yet it is a basic principle of American justice that one is allowed to face his accuser.  No one knows what went on in Schiff’s secret hearings – what Schiff may have said or how he may have coached witnesses.  His selectively leaked information must be viewed as tainting any future testimony and his ability to selectively allow or prevent witnesses and testimony makes the who process more of a show trial than an actual quest for justice.

The list goes on; you need only consult the daily outpouring of information.  The problem is, however, that the mainstream media fails to report much of what is happening if it even sounds, let alone is, averse to the Democrats’ position.  This is not surprising since they also fail to report the many positive accomplishments of the President for our country, or, when they do, they couch them within something portrayed as negative.

Those who hate the President will simply accept without question the narrative of the Democrats.  Yet, anyone who gives it the slightest thought will see how weak and contrived this impeachment claim is.  First, we don’t just give away taxpayer money to other countries without expecting something in return.  Any taxpayer who thinks we do should be screaming in objection. There is always some sort of exchange (“quid pro quo”) and hence that alone is certainly not an impeachable offense.

Second, the country has a valid interest in learning about foreign interference in our elections, and the President’s request that Ukraine investigate that was valid.  Similarly, if a sitting Vice President used his influence to benefit himself or a family member financially or to demand the firing of someone within a foreign country who was investigating his son, the country has a right to know about that and the President was within his right and it was his duty to ask the Ukraine to investigate. 

Third, if a sitting Vice President might now become a candidate for President, that does not negate the justification of investigating questionable acts made during his Vice-presidency. 

Fourth, there is absolutely no evidence of direct request for “quid-pro-quo” of aid for investigation, and certainly not simply for political reasons.  Indeed, not only the transcript reveals no quid pro quo, but also some very credible witnesses have clearly asserted there was no quid pro quo.

The bottom line is clear.  There is absolutely no evidence (unless you consider someone’s addition of their own narrative to actual concrete fact to be “evidence”) that the President asked for an investigation of his possible opponent in return for our foreign aid.   It just didn’t happen. 

What is happening is a group of people, led by Schiff, want to unseat a sitting president that they think the people should not have elected.  This has been their goal since 2016.  And the Impeachment Show is just their latest episode in their on-going drama.  Watch it for entertainment if you wish; but, understand that the underlying concept is based on hatred and malice the intent of which is to overthrow that which we know as America.  The Impeachment Show may look like a comedy, but if it is allowed to reach its sought-after conclusion, we will see that it was really both a horror show and a tragedy.

Coup or Revolution? Does it Matter? And Do You Really Want a Revolution Anyway?

America, its way of life and its governmental structure, is clearly under attack.  This post addresses three questions about that attack:  1. Is it a coup or a revolution? 2. Does It matter? And 3. Do the warriors even understand what they are doing?

Anyone who doesn’t see that America as we know it is under attack from within has been asleep for at least 4 and probably more than 12 years.  That attack has been called a witch hunt and a coup.  I would add another possible label: a revolution. 

A coup or coup d’etat (literally blow to state) is usually defined to include both suddenness and violence in the overthrow of an existing government.  One of the chief prerequisites for a coup is that those waging the coup have control of a major part of the peacekeeping and military elements of the government.  

A coup generally does not alter the country’s fundamental social or economic policies; rather, its purpose is to either remove a leader by force or to maintain a current leader or his successor by force.  It is a change in power from the top that merely results in the abrupt replacement of leading government personnel.

A revolution, in contrast, is a challenge to the established political order, government, and its related associations and structures.   It is generally radical and profound, establishing a new order that is radically different from the preceding one.  For example, both the French and Russian revolutions changed both the system of government as well as the economic and social structures and the cultural values of those societies.

Historian Clarence Crane Brinton in 1938 wrote the Anatomy of Revolution, likening a revolution’s dynamics to the progress of a fever.  He described a pre-revolutionary society as having both social and political tensions caused by a breakdown of the values of the society.  He saw that as leading to a fracture of political authority.  As the existing political order loses its grasp on authority, diverse forces of opposition band together to topple the existing authority. 

Socialist doctrine believes that social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes to society.  That is, socialism believes that revolution is a necessary precondition for the transition form capitalism to socialism.  Socialism does not believe that revolution is necessarily violent; rather, it is seen as a seizure of political power by mass movements. 

I would argue that while the political battles that we see going on may have started out as a coup attempt by Democrats and Never-Trumpers simply to remove President Trump from office and replace him (and the will of the people) with someone of their own choosing, the battle they are waging is becoming, if it has not already become, more in the nature of a revolution.  That is, there is a war being waged against our fundamental system of government with the hope of replacing our society with a radically different one.

We now see not just the attempts to remove the President from office.  We see attacks on our very system of government.  Our Constitution is no longer valued by those waging this war.  The First Amendment, and especially free speech, is easily dismissed when ideas expressed are not those of the revolutionaries.  The second amendment is being similarly dismissed.  Constitutional protections such as freedom from unreasonable searches, privacy rights, the belief in innocence until proven guilty are all ignored when it serves the revolutionaries’ purposes.  Hence, we have significant violations of such things as protections against wiretapping or other surveillance of U. S. Citizens; we have political assassinations being staged based on testimonies unsupported by any real facts (not unlike the encouragement of the Soviet regime of neighbors to inform on neighbors without any factual investigation or regard for truth). 

We have the continuing attempts to overturn the results of an election, not by vote but by investigation upon investigation, the current one being conducted in secret by Adam Schiff and his cronies with hearings to which he bars Republican members of his committee and, other than telling us what he chooses and claims is true, he keeps all evidence secret from any and all who are not on his team; he denies the people’s right to know. 

We have attacks on our Supreme Court:  threats that if it does not render decisions acceptable to the revolutionaries that they will “pack the court” – that is, add enough justices of their own persuasion that any and all contrary voices will be silenced.

Silencing the opposition, ignoring the facts, making up the narrative as they choose.  These are key tactics of the revolutionaries.  Their intolerance has no exceptions.  While America has always demanded tolerance while allowing individual and diverse views, the revolutionaries would deny the holding of any view, value, or belief contrary to that which they approve.  And, their attacks on many traditional values, the mere right to hold such values, is increasing every day.

Yes, this is a revolution, not just a coup.  It’s intent, whether there at the beginning or not, is now to fully replace our government and our culture with something new.

Brinton, in his study of revolutions, also observed the different stages of a major revolution.  After the government is overthrown, there is usually a period of optimistic idealism; however, this phase does not last long.   A split usually develops between moderates and radicals which ends in the defeat of the moderates, the rise of extremists, and the concentration of all power in their hands. For one faction to prevail and maintain its authority, the use of force is almost inevitable. The goals of the revolution fade, as a totalitarian regime takes command.   Again, one can see this pattern played out historically in both the French and Russian revolutions.

Hence, it is significant that this initial anti-Trump movement has now morphed into an all-out revolution.  It would have been bad enough to witness a coup in which unhappy Democrats wrested the presidency from the people and took it for their own.  But, if that had been all they accomplished or sought to accomplish, the country could have been put right again at the next election.  With a revolution on the other hand, things cannot and will not be rectified so easily or so quickly.  The Russian revolution began in 1917, the resulting Soviet Union did not fall until 1991, and Russia still feels its effects today.

America can survive a coup; it cannot survive a revolution.

The final question posed at the start of this essay is whether these revolutionaries even understand what they are doing.  That is, did the warriors enter this revolution blinded by a hatred of Donald Trump and now are being pulled along by those who do truly seek the demise of America as we know it to fight the revolution?  Do these warriors even realize what they are fighting for? 

I come back to the description of a revolution as the progression of a fever.   When President Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, many people were angry; this anger was ginned up into a hatred.  That hatred is the fever which continues to progress; its flames are fanned by those who do truly hate America as we know it and would happily see it destroyed.  This fever, this illness, was simmering before 2016 as identity politics and challenges to those holding traditional values were being used by astute politicians to begin tearing the country apart into warring factions.  Those factions and their fever are now uniting into a dangerously combustible whole, encouraged to band together to topple the existing form of government and the very fundamentals of our society.

America is under attack.  What was an angry outburst against election results has moved from a childish outburst to a coup and now a revolution - a full out challenge to the established political order, government, culture, and their related associations and structures.   This matters.  This is a challenge to every American.  And every American who is involved in this revolution needs to be very clear on what they are doing while those of us not involved need to do everything we can to educate those warriors and defend our country from their attack.

So, you say you want a revolution?  Perhaps we should end by reconsidering the lyrics of the 1968 Beetles song “Revolution”:

You say you want a revolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world

You tell me that it's evolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world

But when you talk about destruction

Don't you know that you can count me out

Don't you know it's gonna be

All right, all right, all right

You say you got a real solution

Well, you know

We'd all love to see the plan

You ask me for a contribution

Well, you know

We're doing what we can

But if you want money for people with minds that hate

All I can tell is brother you have to wait

Don't you know it's gonna be

All right, all right, all right

You say you'll change the constitution

Well, you know

We all want to change your head

You tell me it's the institution

Well, you know

You better free your mind instead

But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao

You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow

Don't you know it's gonna be

All right, all right, all right

All right, all right, all right

All right, all right, all right

All right, all right

Columbus Day; Indigenous Peoples Day

Today I am celebrating Columbus Day.  It is a Federal holiday.  It celebrates the courageous feat of a daring and persistent explorer Christopher Columbus who, with his 3 small ships the Pinta, the Niña, and the Santa Maria, discovered or rediscovered the land we now call America.  He found this place that the people of Europe did not know existed.

His discovery was enormous and something to be lauded in the same way that we laud the manned moon landing.  The consequences of this discovery were not all positive, and those people who were living here already, their ancestors having discovered it much earlier, suffered many negative consequences as the result of European exploration that one can argue would not have occurred but for Columbus’s journey.

But that does not diminish Columbus’s feat itself.  And, I celebrate his courage and ability to seek beyond what is known and to fearlessly go where he believed no one had previously been.  

Most every action has both foreseen and unforeseen consequences.  I do not believe that many of the negative consequences experienced by Native Americans were  foreseen or intended by Columbus.  For example, how would he have known that people living in this country would contract smallpox?  How is he responsible for the actions of Spaniards 100 or more years after his journey?

My state, like some others, has replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.  The intent is to celebrate those peoples that we refer to as Native Americans who believe that Columbus’s journey resulted in a variety of negative consequences for them.  I have no problem with the concept behind this.  I believe that Native Americans can and should express their perceptions of and feelings about Columbus and his consequences and should educate those of us who are not Native American about those views.

But, why do we have to blot out Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day?  Why not have both?  We can celebrate and learn about the feat of a great explorer on one day, and on another day we can celebrate and learn about the people who were living here before Christopher Columbus.  Both are a part of our country’s history.  And history is important not only as a way to understand the past, but to understand why the past unveiled itself as it did and what effects that past still has on us in the present.  And history can also help us to make more thoughtful and better decisions in the future.

Moreover, I think that the use of the word Indigenous is erroneous.  In my state we have several Pueblo Peoples as well as other Indian Reservations, all inhabited by people whose ancestors were in this country before Columbus, but who, it is believed, originally came to this country from elsewhere – mostly from Asia across the land bridge that once existed during the Ice Age. 

Indigenous means something that occurs naturally in a given place or environment.  Merriam Webster clarifies the difference between the terms NATIVE, INDIGENOUS, ENDEMIC, ABORIGINAL, all of which refer in one way to something or someone belonging to a locality. NATIVE implies birth or origin in a place or region and may suggest compatibility with it.  INDIGENOUS applies to that which is not only native but which, as far as can be determined, has never been introduced or brought from elsewhere.  ENDEMIC implies being peculiar to a region.  ABORIGINAL implies having no known others preceding in occupancy of a particular region.   

I would argue that the Native Americans whom the Indigenous Peoples Day is intended to honor, are not indigenous since they originally migrated to this country from elsewhere.  The better term would be Native or Aboriginal.  I think that this misnomer does not cloud the current understanding of the purpose of the day.  But, it does blot out another key fact of history – the fact that while the Native Americans were likely the first to settle in this country, they are not indigenous but simply arrived well before any others.

Many years ago, when I was in elementary school, I learned about Columbus and his great voyage of discovery.  I learned about the negative impact that his discovery had on many native peoples.  I learned about the Asian origins of our Native American populations.  I learned about the positive and the negative consequences of European settlement of this country.  But, this fuller version of history is no longer acceptable.  Instead we seem to want good guys and bad guys and no grey area in between.  We blot out those whom we have determined to be “bad” (in this case Columbus, making him the representative for every perceived evil of European exploration and conquest in this country).  We ignore facts that don’t fully fit our purposes or our narrative (for example,  that Native Americans are ultimately not indigenous, having migrated here from Asia centuries ago). 

History, like life, is complicated.  We can celebrate Columbus, his exploratory feat and the fact that without his introduction of this part of the world we likely would not have the United States of America, probably the greatest country ever and a shining beacon of democracy for the rest of the world.  And, we can understand that other consequences of Columbus's journey brought great pain to those people already living here; we can listen to their stories and try to understand their feelings and why they may not want to rejoice in Columbus and his “discovery.” 

But, that is the beauty of America.  We allow and are tolerant of many viewpoints.  We can have Columbus Day and we are free to celebrate or not.  We can also have Indigenous Peoples Day as a time to celebrate and understand those who lived here first.  We can have both.  America does not blot out one view, one piece of history, in favor of another.  It accepts all.  And we should too.  So, while I am not opposed to Indigenous Peoples Day, I am opposed to it replacing Columbus Day.  Both Columbus and our indigenous or native peoples are a part of our history to be both celebrated and understood.  Our feelings or judgments about one should not and cannot eradicate the other.

So, happy Columbus Day and happy Indigenous Peoples Day.  May you celebrate one or both or neither as you choose, but may you learn about the people and the history of both.

We’ve Seen This Scam Before – Don’t Be Fooled – It’s Just A Weapon in The Ongoing Coup Attempt

Today we learned that Adam Schiff had advance knowledge of the whistle blower’s potential allegations.

Haven’t we seen this story before? 

You will recall that Diane Feinstein and other Democrats had advance knowledge of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Justice Kavanaugh and she, along with other Democrats, helped her to prepare her presentation, find lawyers, etc.

Now we learn that Adam Schiff, the Democrat who will be in charge of the impeachment investigation based on the complaint of a whistleblower, had advance contact with and knowledge of the whistleblower’s possible allegations.  We can reasonably assume that Schiff gave the same sort of “assistance” to the whistleblower that the Democrats gave to Ford.

These two cases are frighteningly similar.  A few days ago the mainstream media was upset that President Trump re-tweeted the comment that impeachment would result in a coup.  At that time I noted that we were already in the middle of a bloodless coup. That fact, if it wasn’t clear then, just gets clearer every day.

Coup, short for coup d’etat, literally means stroke (death) of state.  It has come to refer to the overthrow of an existing government, an illegal and unconstitutional seizure of power.  While coups are usually quite violent, they can be carried out in other ways.  And it is a coup that the Democrats are pursuing.

Let’s just look at their impeachment push.  They have a complaint from a whistleblower that we now know they consulted with before the whistleblower actually came forward with any complaint.  They are basing their impeachment push on the fact that the President had a phone call with the leader of another foreign country, the Ukraine, in which he asked that leader to investigate both that country’s involvement in any interference in the 2016 election and the known fact that the son of the former vice president received certain favors from Ukraine while his father was in office and made some questionable demands upon Ukraine and its leaders.  The Ukrainian President has said that he was not coerced or compelled to do anything by President Trump.  There is no evidence of any demand or quid pro quo in the transcript of their phone conversation.  The whistleblower says that second hand sources told him there was some sort of demand or quid pro quo.  The evidence simply does not support the whistleblower’s claims.

That’s it.  Not unlike the claims that Ms. Ford made against Justice Kavanaugh.  After meeting with Democrats she came forward with allegations that initially sounded damning.  But once the evidence was revealed – evidence that the Democrats did not expect to be presented – her story fell apart.

And, here we have the allegations of a whistleblower that initially may sound damning, but then, the President released the transcript of the actual call – an act that the Democrats surely did not expect – and the whistleblower’s complaint does not match the facts.

But facts don’t matter when you are waging a coup.  The goal is not to find truth or to stand for and protect our country.  The goal is to destroy this country or at least its form of government.  That is perhaps why Rep. Schiff felt empowered to read into the record in a serious committee hearing, a “transcript” of the phone call that included statements by Trump that were not there and which Schiff knowingly made up.

Everything that the Democrats have done since the election results of 2016 has been an attack on our form of government.  First and foremost, they have sought and continue to seek to overturn the will of the people.  That alone is an attack on our form of government - it is the people who vote for and choose our president and their voice and their vote should be protected, even when you do not like the result.

Beyond their attack on the people, the Democrats are attacking our government.  The President is under constant attack from his enemies – not a political disagreement about policy, but a full out attack.  Every action he takes is assaulted from every direction possible – filing of innumerable and at times frivolous lawsuits to stop or at least stall legitimate presidential directives; media that rather than objectively report facts serves as simply an opinionated mouthpiece for the President’s enemies; demeaning and attacking the character of the President’s supporters in a continued effort to silence them. 

Beyond the President and his office, the Democrats attack the other departments and personnel of the Executive Branch of government.  They are currently threatening to take action against the State Department and Department of Justice if they investigate questionable and possibly unconstitutional actions of the prior administration or that might implicate Democrats.  That is, they want to silence any possible investigation that might reveal their illegal and coup-directed actions.

The Democrats also fail to respect and support the judicial branch of our government when they threaten to impeach judges and justices whenever they render an opinion that the Democrats do not like and when the Democrats threaten to pack or otherwise change the makeup of the Supreme Court if it does not render decisions that the Democrats find acceptable.

In addition to direct attacks on the President and his supporters (i. e. the people),  the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch of our government, the Democrats are more than willing to ignore constitutional and legal requirements when it serves their purposes.  Hence they persist in silencing speech, denying due process, ignoring presumptions of innocence, selectively enforcing laws, etc. 

We could go on and on.  But the point is that we have clear evidence that the Democrats are not only attacking President Trump himself but are attacking the office of the President along with the Executive and Judicial branches of our government.  Our form of government requires the three but equal branches along with the concept that the government is of/for/by the people.  The Democrats’ attacks on two of the three branches along with their attempts to overthrow the will of the people are nothing more than an attempt to overthrow an existing system of government and to unconstitutionally seize power – that is, the Democrats’ actions are the very definition of an attempted coup d’etat.

The current impeachment probe is nothing more than a well-staged battle in their attempted coup.  A coup requires support, and the Democrats along with their media spokespeople will use the whistleblower allegations along with the many claims that Democrats will create as growing out of those allegations to try to gain support for their impeachment push which they envision as providing support (perhaps unwitting) for their overthrow of our form of government.

There has been no impeachable offense committed by the President unless an impeachable offense is now defined to mean anything that the opposing party says it is.  Anything.  Just a way to overturn the will of the people and accomplish a coup.

The Democrats have a president whose style many do not like.  The Democrats use his style to fault the many accomplishments that it has achieved.  And they will try to convince the American people that an unlikable style is somehow an impeachable offense that will allow them to overturn the will of the people.  Yes, they are using the people to destroy the voices of those very same people.

At this point it doesn’t matter if you like President Trump or not.  It doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree with his policies.  What matters is that there is a coup in process and if the people do not stand up for the Office of the President of the United States of America, if they do not stand up for our Constitutional form of government, if they do not stand up for our Constitution itself and our Laws and the rights of the People, then they will have no right to complain when the will of the people is no longer a voice in our government.   Because if the Democrats succeed they will have destroyed our form of government which gives voice to and listens to the people; they will have stolen our voices and our power and instead will speak and make our decisions for us. 

If the Democrats succeed in their coup attempt, they will have replaced our form of government with one in which a select few who think they know better than we the people will have overpowered, usurped, and stolen the will of the people.  That is, we will be at the mercy of people like Adam Schiff and other Democrats who are willing to lie, cheat, and destroy lives in order to obtain and maintain ultimate power over all of us.  That sounds too much to me like a dictatorship, and not the Democratic Republic that gives us a voice and the power and the right to make our own decisions and have our own individual voices.  And, for that reason if for no other, every American should stand against the ongoing coup attempt and stand for our American Democratic Republic.

Credible Is Not Necessarily Truthful

 As you read the whistleblower complaint HERE  and listen to carefully selected soundbites from today’s Intelligence Committee hearing with the National Intelligence Director, it may be useful to keep some definitions in mind.

“Credible” means something able to be believed or capable of persuading people that something did or will happen.  It is synonymous with the word “believable” which means something that is able to be believed.

“Truthful” has a very different definition from “credible.”  It means something which expresses the truth.

When a person files a complaint against another alleging some sort of injury or damages (e.g. someone alleges an injury because the person against whom the complaint is filed ran a red light), that complaint when filed with the court will be viewed as credible.  Then, facts will be investigated and the “credible” complaint may or may not be proven to be truthful (e.g., maybe the facts will show that the light was in fact green, or that there was no light, or that the light was not working, or that the person filing the complaint had no injury). 

Generally, those facts that prove something initially seen as credible to be truthful or not will be based on people with actual knowledge of the event and other direct evidence, and not on third party information.

When the whistleblower complaint was filed about the President’s phone call with the Ukraine, the allegations were labeled credible.  That is, they were able to be believed but they were not at that time proven to be truthful.    The Democrats have latched onto that word “credible” and keep repeating it over and over hoping to somehow create the impression that “credible” means that it is truthful and factually supportable.  That is simply not the case.

When you read the whistleblower complaint it should immediately strike you that the whistleblower has no direct knowledge of that about which he is blowing the whistle. While what he alleges is “credible” – able of being believed, it has not been proven to be truthful.  His sources are second and third hand and even the media.

We now have direct evidence – the actual transcript of the phone call. HERE   That proves that many of the “credible” allegations about the President’s phone call are not truthful.  There was no quid pro quo offer made; there was no attempt to interfere with the 2020 election.  The President asks if Ukraine could investigate a variety of things that involve Ukraine and possibly affected the United States, including interference in the 2016 election and the possibility that the son of a former Vice President may have received special favors.

One would think that the Democrats, so enamored of never-ending investigations, would laud the President for seeking to investigate these issues.  But, actually the Democrats only care about never-ending investigations that might allow them to remove the President from office – to overturn the will of the people because they don’t agree with the people’s choice of whom they voted for.

Reality and facts and truthfulness do not matter to the Democrats.  Credible complaints are enough for them in their war of hatred against the President.  We saw it in the Kavanaugh hearings.  We see it now.  Even with the actual transcript of the phone call in his hand, Chairman Schiff in his opening statement in the hearing portrayed the phone call as including things that were not said.  Challenged, he and other Democrats now take the position that we should all know that even though the words are not there, we should know that they were meant – there is apparently a secret code involved that only the Democrats understand.

So, we have another show trial underway in which the Democrats will hear and read and see that which is not there.  Anyone who makes allegations that are aimed against the President or his administration or his supporters will be seen as not only credible, but also as truthful, whether or not there are actually any facts to support those allegations.  They don’t care – they continue to grasp at anything in the hopes of ridding themselves of a president they do not like while at the same time destroying our country.

The Democrats' attacks on our President hurt both his administration and all future administrations.  Essentially, they are attacks on the office of president itself and as such an attack on our country.  Take for example the fact that we have now been made aware of the content of at least three conversations between President Trump and a foreign leader beginning with his conversation with the Mexican president at the very start of his term.  This must certainly have a chilling effect on both current and foreign leaders’ willingness to speak openly with the president.  Countries’ leaders need to be able to speak openly and freely with one another for the good of the entire world; the Democrats care more about destroying President Trump than they care about the good of this country or the world.

I also find it interesting that the Democrats seem to launch their new attacks or create a new media circus nearly every time the President goes abroad or is in some way engaged with foreign leaders.  This certainly is an attempt to weaken his position with any foreign negotiations or other foreign policy matters.  Their goal is not concern for our country but an intent to weaken and then destroy the President that they hate.

So, not only would the Democrats subvert the will of the electorate, they would subvert and destroy the office of president itself if not the entire executive branch.  Think of this in conjunction with their attacks upon the judiciary and thinly veiled threats against the Supreme Court to impeach or in other ways change the Court’s makeup if the Justices render opinions that the Democrats find too conservative.

There is a hashtag #DemocratsHateAmerica.  That title “Democrats Hate America”  is a credible statement.  Sadly, the actions of the Democrats provide us with evidence that this credible statement may also be truthful.

Maybe They Are Hypocrites; Maybe They Just Do Not Care

Like Pavlov’s dogs, the Democrats jump at the sound of any bell that sounds useful in their never-ending quest to remove President Trump from office.  Do they know what hypocrites they are or do they just not care, or is it both?

The latest sound that caused them to jump for joy was the unproven claim that the President had offered something to the Ukraine in return for their investigation of Biden’s son.  They jumped at this, seeing no need to wait for facts.  But now, the documents emerge.  The truth – something that the Democrats are not well acquainted with lately.

HERE  is the full transcript of the President’s conversation with Ukraine.  Pretty innocuous – he asks that they investigate a variety of things, including the DNC server hack as well as Biden’s son.  There is no discussion of, let alone any quid pro quo of foreign aid in return for such an investigation.    But, without waiting for facts and based on their slavering hope that there was such an offer, the Democrats have once again gone off half-cocked (and yes, this gun analogy is quite appropriate for these anti-gun folks). 

But, beyond the innocuous, and certainly not impeachable transcript, is a letter written by the Democrats to the Ukraine in May of 2018.  HERE  In this letter Democrats Menendez, Durbin and Leahy specifically ask the Ukraine to investigate Trump and his administration as they continued to seek some sort of evidence of the now debunked Russian collusion.

So, it is OK for the Democrats to ask a foreign power to investigate a president that they hate and will do anything to remove from office, but it is not OK for a president to have a discussion with a foreign leader in which he asks them to investigate a variety of things with which that power is connected and which in one way or another involve our country.  Hypocritical?  YES.  Ridiculous?  YES

This is just another example that the Democrats are totally and completely consumed by their hatred of Donald Trump.  I have previously pointed to things such as prison reform, etc., which the Democrats always favored, which Trump actually got done, and which, the Democrats now no longer support, solely because it was Trump who accomplished it.  Many of the actions of former President Obama regarding illegal immigrants which the Democrats either ignored or supported are now condemned when Trump enforces the same policies and laws. 

Not only are the Democrats focused exclusively on their hatred of Donald Trump; they are happy to let that hatred hurt the American people. They will not work across the aisle, not even to further policies for which they have in the past voiced support.  They will use their time and the taxpayers’ money to hold hearing after hearing in their never-ending desire to satiate their hatred of Donald Trump.

The Democrats do not like President Trump because, though not one of them, he bested them.  They hate him for this and that hatred has taken over.  So, maybe they do not realize what hypocrites they are.  Maybe they do not realize that their hatred is hurting if not destroying America and its people.  Or, maybe, they just do not care.