Wondering on Wednesday (v195)

Ready... Set... Wonder!

Oh yes, it's that time again!  I wonder, right off the bat, what Chief Justice John Roberts is thinking with the questions he's getting from senators? After all, he's the one who reminded us - and them - that they were the world's greatest deliberative body... and today he's reading questions about hypothetical Obama examples of corruption, and about grabbing things, if you know what I mean. And he's a lawyer, too - so what must he think of the arguments being made the the lawyers on both sides of the aisle?  What a book he could write on this...

And speaking of books, there appears to be a move underfoot to allow Senators from both parties (at least, I assume it's from both parties) to slink off to a bunker and read the manuscript of John Bolton's book. Now, we all know that doing anything in secure room is anathema to baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet, at least if Democrats do it, but what the heck?  Are they afraid of what John Bolton will say to their faces, I wonder?  

Remember, whatever he said in the book is a lie, the president told us - and there's nothing better than putting a person on the stand and making them lie under oath, or to try and prove that they're not. Well, nothing better than that - except hiding in a secure bunker, out of sight from the press and from your constituents...

One of the most interesting things I heard today was actually from Adam Schiff, who noted that it's kind of odd that various outlets filing FOIA requests are able to get documents that the House was blocked from receiving. I wonder how that happens, and how it's defensible? And I wonder if, going forward, the House will resort to that tactic to get information they need, instead of going the subpoena route? 

I also wonder how arguing whether president Trump is a better president vis-a-vis Ukraine than President Obama was is relevant here? The issue is that Trump asked a foreign country to interfere in our election by investigating a political rival - not who gave more money... And not only that, but if this article is correct, the big whoop-de-do about the Javelin missiles is really kind of a moot point, because the Trump administration makes Ukraine store the missiles away from the Russian front.

But a U.S. condition of these sales was that the Javelins couldn’t actually be used in the fight with Russia and had to be stored away from the battlefield, which means they’ve effectively had only a symbolic deterrent effect. 

It has nothing to do with who had bigger hands, or who had bigger crowd, or who has bigger anything else - except that with the current president, size ALWAYS matters.

And I wonder why, at times, Schiff fails to keep is eye on the prize? He was given an absurd series of questions from Ted Cruz and others about the whistleblower's bias, which the Intelligence Community Inspector General identified: did he work for Biden, did he work for Biden on Ukraine issues, and so on. Schiff spent more of his time defending his staff and whistleblowers in general, instead of simply quoting the ICIG directly. 

Michael Atkinson, the inspector general, said his review of the whistleblower complaint "identified some incidia of bias, of an arguable political bias on the part of the complainant in favor of a rival political candidate... such evidence did not change my determination that the complaint relating to the urgent concern appears credible particularly given the other information the ICIG obtained during its preliminary review.

There will be lots of time to defend his staff, and his Committee's staff, and the witnesses, after this is all over. Heck, he can even give them pens if he wants. But it's not relevant to the question, or to the inquiry.  FOCUS, people.

And one last point of wonderment: why is so much of the president defense based on reports from the "enemy of the people" the lying failing, lying, biased, traitorous, lying, #fakenews media?  For someone who's spent years trying to get us to believe that EVERYTHING the media tells us is a lie, his lawyers sure are making a lot of references to what the lying liars have reported. I wonder who am I to believe? The lying president, his lying defense team, or the truthful media?  This is SO confusing.