In Case You Missed It (v20)

Another busy week for news watchers (and news avoiders), so here's a recap in case you missed any of this week's posts.  

The week started with news from the Update Desk - we had another update on the long, sad saga of Rep. Chris Collins, who last Friday was given a 26-month sentence stemming from his guilty plea on insider trading and other charges.

Saying that he believes "there is a need to both show respect for the law and to inflict just punishment," Judge Broderick added a $200,000 fine and a year of supervised release to the prison time, ending what the paper called "an unusually long three-hour sentencing hearing" which included a very emotional statement from Collins in which he said, among other things,

I violated my core values...  People feel sorry for me. They shouldn't. I did what I did. 

For this week's Sunday School, I sat in on an economics lesson, given by former Trump director of the National Economic Council. In addition to telling us he's not worried about a recession and he doesn't like tariffs, he also talked about some Democrats and their gimmicky policy proposals on raising revenue. And, for a while there, he sounded a lot like me.

You know, we look at spending and we look at revenue and we don't talk about them in the same sentence. We collect taxes and we spend. And Congress never thinks about how much money they have to spend. They just go spend... you wouldn't run your household like that. I wouldn't run my household like that. 

In the Extra Credit post, I looked at what some of the House Managers had to say; and there was Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Trump), who came in from the golf course to chat with Chris Wallace. Graham actually agreed with managers Hakeem Jeffries and Jerry Nadler, the letter who said about Hunter Biden testifying, that Biden

"has no knowledge of the accusations against the president," which is true. Anyone on the Senate side suggesting he be called would be absurd. Jeffries echoed that thinking, saying that the standard for calling witnesses is "relevance to the central allegation in this case," that being Trump pressuring Ukraine. 

Graham himself said

Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and the whistleblower, we can look at those allegations of misconduct outside of impeachment." 

I hope he remembers that exchange, since later in the week he seemed to be changing his tune on that.

Following an op-ed by Greta Van Susteren, I went back and looked at my posts related to Making Political Debates Better, and compared them with that Van Susteren said. She and I have very similar positions on this, aiming to put educating voters front and center in the debates. We focus on driving one-liners, sound bites, and pitting the candidates against each other, instead of allowing for a nuanced discussion on key issues, some of which have been around, unsolved or unaddressed, for years.  As Van Susteren said,

... If we don’t want the Oval Office to operate like Twitter, why do we test our candidates as if it does? 

Turning to my weekly Wondering on Wednesday, I spend some time wondering about things Rand Paul was saying about John Bolton, and what he might say if he were called to testify in the impeachment trial.

Which one is the guiding light for John Bolton at this point? Axe to grind and books to sell? Or, be a player and say, 'even if I'm gone, he's doing what I want on Iran and other things?'

To which I responded, 

Hey, Rand Paul, here's an idea: maybe Bolton is going to be a patriot, and say, 'even if I'm gone, and even if Trump's doing what I want on Iran and other things, I don't care - and I'm going to do the right thing and tell the truth?'  

On Thursday, in addition to the Email of the Week from one of the Dem presidential candidates - this week's winner was That Guy From Vermont - I re-opened the Trump in Transition theme to consider what would happen in a post-Trump administration if a Democratic president had the full and unfettered power of the presidency, unlimited either by criminal statute or Constitutional power.

... picture a President Sanders asking a foreign country to investigate an opponent of 'Democratic Socialism' or a President Biden having a friendly foreign government dig up dirt on all of the nepotism hires in the government, or a President Buttigieg having an equality-centric foreign country go after anti-gay politicians and their families, or a President Warren asking another country for help in digging around in DNA databases for dirt on political opponents... 

I'm pretty sure we all can picture the look on the Republicans' faces under those circumstances, can't we?

For this week's TGIF, in addition to some thoughts on impeachment, we had fun with the new Space Force logo (and the old ones, which were even more fun when introduced to help raise money for the Trump/Pence gang).  Here's how I closed the post.

To which George Takei - Sulu on Star Trek - said, "Ahem. We are expecting some royalties from this..."

So, there you go - you're up to date on the veritable pastiche for the week. If you'd rather stay up to date on posts when they happen, drop your email in the Instant Gratification box on the right sidebar on the blog.

See you tomorrow for Sunday School.