RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-expected-to-vote-to-acquit-trump-on-impeachment-11580908525

WASHINGTON—The Republican-led Senate acquitted President Trump of charges stemming from his efforts to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations that would benefit him in this year’s election, concluding a four-month drama that has consumed Washington and intensified the nation’s sharp divide over his presidency.

On the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, all 47 Democrats and one Republican voted to convict the president, falling short of the 67 needed to remove the president from office. On the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress, the vote also failed, with all Democrats and no Republicans finding the president guilty.

The presidential impeachment trial, the nation’s third in its history, grew out of a July 25 phone call in which Mr. Trump asked Ukraine’s president to announce certain investigations just as he was holding up U.S. aid to the country. Mr. Trump has defended the call as “perfect” and has said he did nothing wrong regarding Ukraine. The aid was later released after bipartisan outcry from lawmakers.

“The American people, and frankly, people all over the world, know it’s a hoax,” he told supporters at a recent rally in Des Moines, Iowa.

Mr. Trump had hoped for vindication in the Senate trial after a House investigation that he had decried as politically motivated. What he got was something less: Amid strong support for his acquittal from his own party, several Republicans also said Democrats had proved that he acted improperly regarding Ukraine.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bolton-and-the-first-law-of-leaks/

I’d guess that the most common kind of news article out of Washington would be an article reporting something breathless that was leaked to the reporter by an anonymous source. This is usually gussied up with frills and flounces, like “a source close to the Administration” or “a source with knowledge of the situation”.

I’m not one to say that all leaks should be eliminated, even if they could be eliminated. Which they can’t. Leaks can serve a good purpose — there are a lot of times a leak makes public some real issue. But we always should keep in mind the First Law of Leaks:

Every leak is being leaked to promote the agenda of the leaker, and is being shaped to the leaker’s advantage.

So once you see something that’s been leaked, you should ask yourself five four questions:

How is it being reported?
Whose agenda does the leak serve?
How surprising is it?
So?

That last might be called the “Andrew Breitbart Answer.” Not too long before he died, Andrew made the point that often the right answer to the accusations of the left was “So?” or “So what?” Craig Biddle wrote excellently on Andrew’s question back in 2012. He has a lot more to say about it, but his central point is that “So?” directs the discussion to fundamental issues.

The recent leaks purported to be from John Bolton’s upcoming books — and, for that matter, Bolton’s book itself — have been just begging for someone to ask these questions, so let’s.

How is the leak being reported?

The House has its share of infamies, great and small, real and symbolic, and has been the scene of personal infamies from brawls to canings. But the conduct of Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the State of the Union address this week will go down as a day of infamy for the chamber as an institution. While it has long been a tradition for House speakers to remain stoic and neutral in listening to the address, Pelosi appeared intent on mocking President Trump from behind his back with sophomoric facial grimaces [texting, speaking, mouthing epithets, shuffling papers, nodding, then shaking her head as if she were conducting a speech, tilting her head up and down, moving her microphone, raising her papers high, rearranging and fluttering them repeatedly, and her signature lip-smacking] and head shaking, culminating in her ripping up a [government property] copy of his address [in violation of Federal law].

Her drop the mic moment will have a lasting impact on the House. While many will celebrate her trolling of the president, she tore up something far more important than a speech. Pelosi has shredded decades of tradition, decorum, and civility that the nation could use now more than ever. The House speaker is more than a political partisan, particularly when carrying out functions such as the State of the Union address. A president appears in the House as a guest of both chambers of Congress. The House speaker represents not her party or herself but the entirety of the chamber. At that moment, she must transcend her own political ambitions and loyalties.

What followed was an utter disgrace. First, Pelosi dropped the traditional greeting before the start of the address, “Members of Congress, I have the high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you the president of the United States.” Instead, she simply announced, “Members of Congress, the president of the United States.” It was extremely petty and profoundly inappropriate. Putting aside the fact that this is not her tradition, but that of the House, it is no excuse to note that the president was impeached.

No sooner had Nancy Pelosi disrespected both the office of the President and the American people, the spin doctor mainstream media allies of the Democrat Party began equating President Trump’s not accepting Speaker of the House Pelosi’s hand shake to Pelosi ripping up her copy of the State of the Union Address before numerous millions of people watching on television around the world

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/he-snubbed-her-handshake-she-tore-up-his-speech-trump-pelosi-drama-on-full-display-at-state-of-the-union/ar-BBZEF8L?li=BBnb7Kz .

While the American State Department and many other folks are famous for such alleged moral equivalency claims as well, it’s the media of various sorts which is of concern right now https://ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2010/6/article38.htm.

Whatever the President’s real or alleged shortcomings may be, any reasonable observer cannot help but notice that the attempt to attack and get rid of Donald J. Trump began the day the Clinton team, whose Foundation has been the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars from often questionable and controversial sources (including Russian, Arab, and Ukrainian), lost the election in 2016. Besides Hillary, Slick Willy was chomping at the bit to be the First Dude back in the White House.

https://spectator.us/trump-state-union-address-touching-moments/

One of the many things that F. Scott Fitzgerald said that sound good but aren’t true is this: ‘There are no second acts in American lives.’ Consider the life of Donald Trump. Five years ago he was a dubious real estate developer and professional celebrity. Now he is not only president of the United States, but he is, three years into his first term, the most ostentatiously successful president in memory. Donald Trump is a walking refutation of what is perhaps Fitzgerald’s second most quoted line.

Possibly Fitzgerald’s first most quoted line is this: ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.’ That isn’t true, either. On the contrary, espousing or embodying contradictory ideas is generally a mark of pedestrian intelligence, on the one hand, and defective character on the other. In this context, uncharitable people might be inclined to adduce people like Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, and Eric Swalwell (remember him?). They spout certain platitudes about the importance of Constitution, the rule of law, etc., but then do things that utterly betray their fine sounding sentiments.

Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address tonight brought both of Fitzgerald’s sayings to mind. The announced theme of the evening was ‘the great American comeback’. And the president indulged in a litany of what that comeback has encompassed. But as in his 2018 and 2019 State of the Union addresses, a major theme of his remarks was unity: the importance of working across the aisle to achieve what is good for the whole country, not just one party. In 2018, in a column called ‘Trump restores the We‘, I wrote that a major theme of the evening was the call to put aside ‘the partisan passions that divide us in order to go forward as a people united in the goal of making a better America’.

In 2019, the president sounded a similar note. The choice before us, he said, was between the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution, on the one hand, and cooperation, compromise, and the common good, on the other. ‘Victory,’ he said ‘is not winning for our party. Victory is winning for our country.’