TGIF 11/22/19

Here we go again -- the good week/bad week list - and a bountiful week it was!

I'm sure Senator Lindsey Graham (R-Trump) thinks he had a good week. He announced an investigation into his old friend Joe Biden. Graham's letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas) requests certain records to determine he "played a role in the termination" of a world-renowned ineffective Ukrainian prosecutor "in an effort to end the investigation of the company that employed his son..."

Anyone know what Lindsey's quid pro quo is?

Graham's letter to Pompeo inexplicably notes that (emphasis added)

...on February 4, 2016, Hunter Biden began "following" then-Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, a longtime advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, on Twitter, indicating that the two may have initiated conversations regarding Prosecutor General Shokin's investigation into Burisma...

Um, I just added Graham to the group of people I follow on Twitter. I'm pretty sure he doesn't think that he and I have "initiated conversations" about anything. I'm guessing Graham got his understanding of the Interwebs from Rudy Giuliani - and for that reason alone, I'm putting him on the bad week list.

Opening statements had a good and bad week. On the good side? The fact witnesses at the impeachment hearings; whether or not you agree with what they said, or believe them, they stated their cases clearly and for the most part, provided facts as they experienced them, even if that means some of what they had to say would be hearsay in a court of law. Kudos to those who appeared, and a Bronx cheer to those who can't decide on their own what's the right thing to do.

On the bad side? Adam Schiff and Devin Nunes. The former went overboard trying to lay the foundation for the witnesses that were to testify. The latter ridiculously suggesting that the Dems would have impeached George Washington for sending Supreme Court Justice John Jay to negotiate with the British.

If anyone would ever equate these two presidents, their emissaries, or their respective causes - hurting a political rival vs. trying to avoid a war - well, let's just leave it at that.

Questions also had a mixed week. During Wednesday's debate, we heard questions on new topics. For example, Sens. Klobuchar and Harris were asked to defend their family leave plans (three months and six months, respectively). Andrew Yang was asked what he'd do to ease the burden of high child care costs. Several of them got to talk about how they'd address the lack of affordable housing.  There were some silly questions, too -- there always are - but at least they got to talk about real issues faced by real people for a change.

During the impeachment hearings,we heard good and bad questions. We also heard some that, if we were watching a crime show on TV instead of our government in action, a witness could logically ask the Representatives to just say whether or not there was a question at all. But there were also times when the Dems failed to close the deal. Here are just a couple of examples:

• Trump and Zelensky haven't met at the White House, which is what Zelensky wanted as part of the 'deal' with Trump. Sure, they met at the UN, but that's not close to the same thing. The Republicans tried to pretend the UN meeting was an equivalent session, but everyone knows it was not - and none of the Dems pressed that point.

• When Ambassador Sondland testified that Trump wanted Zelensky to "do the right thing," we know that meant investigating Crowdstrike and the Bidens - that was the whole 'favor' part of the second call. The Rs focused on the Latin (no quid pro quo) - the Dems failed to focus on the English (do the right thing).

And finally, I'm going to suggest that the Pres of the U. S. had a bad week. Speaking to the pained group at Fox & Friends this morning, Trump said this  about former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch:

This ambassador, that, you know, everybody says is a wonderful, she wouldn't have my picture in the embassy. Okay she's in charge of the embassy. She wouldn't hang it. It took like  a year and a half or two years for her to get the picture up... This was an Obama person who didn't want to hang my picture in the embassy. It's standard is you put the president of the United States picture in the embassy. This was not an angel, this woman. She's an Obama person.

Never mind that the Washington Post reported on the absence of the portraits in September 2017 and again when they were finally released on Halloween. And never mind that the US Embassy in London also didn't have the president's picture hanging for months, either. Because, according to Lewis Lukens, who was a former acting ambassador to the UK and deputy chief of mission in London from 2016 - 2019, 

It took the White House almost 15 months to get official photos sent to embassies to hang. And we were instructed not to print other photos. 

TGIF everyone -- TGIF.