BREAKING: The soul of the new stampede!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2018

"Lock him up" versus "move on:"
We start today with a front-page report from yesterday's New York Times.

The report, by Baker and Fandos, seems accurate and well reasoned. It's the content of this accurate report that pretty much blows our weak minds.

The report concerns "the latest revelations" by special counsel Robert Mueller and by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. It concerns "the portrait" those officials are currently sketching.

The headline goes like this:
Prosecutors Effectively Accuse Trump of Defrauding Voters. What Does It Mean?
Since claims of felonies are involved, that question needs to be answered. In the following passages, Baker and Fandos start to describe the claims those prosecutors are making—claims they're advancing with the help of tiny violins:
BAKER AND FANDOS (12/9/18): In the narrative that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and New York prosecutors are building, Mr. Trump continued to secretly seek to do business in Russia deep into his presidential campaign even as Russian agents made more efforts to influence him. At the same time, in this account [Trump] ordered hush payments to two women to suppress stories of impropriety in violation of campaign finance law.

The prosecutors made clear in a sentencing memo filed on Friday that they viewed efforts by Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to squelch the stories as nothing less than a perversion of a democratic election—and by extension they effectively accused the president of defrauding voters, questioning the legitimacy of his victory.

[...]

In the memo in the case of Mr. Cohen, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York depicted Mr. Trump, identified only as “Individual-1,” as an accomplice in the hush payments. While Mr. Trump was not charged, the reference echoed Watergate, when President Richard M. Nixon was named an unindicted co-conspirator by a grand jury investigating the cover-up of the break-in at the Democratic headquarters.

“While many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows,” the prosecutors wrote.

“He did so by orchestrating secret and illegal payments to silence two women
who otherwise would have made public their alleged extramarital affairs with Individual-1,” they continued. “In the process, Cohen deceived the voting public by hiding alleged facts that he believed would have had a substantial effect on the election.”
The lawmen sawed on their violins concerning phone banks and door-to-door visits by unpaid campaign workers. Their complaint against Cohen (and Trump) was this:

Through his payments to two women, Cohen "hid alleged facts that he believed would have had a substantial effect on the election.”

We agree with the lawmen in one way. It's possible that the "alleged facts" in question could have had an effect on the way voters decided to vote.

It's precisely for that reason that we have suggested that Michael Cohen receive highest national honors for what he did in this instance. (He could still be sent to jail for the tax evasion in which he engaged, and for his shady conduct in running his taxicab business.)

Why should Cohen receive highest honors? Why do we feel a bit contemptuous of the portrait painted by the high-minded prosecutors in the Southern District?

Again, you're asking good questions! As we start to answer, consider one of the "alleged facts" lying at the heart of this brain-dead sex chase.

Stephanie Clifford alleges that she had consensual sex with Donald J. Trump on exactly one occasion, back in 2006. (He says it didn't happen. That explains the word "alleged.")

Not too long after Clifford did or didn't engage in this one consensual act, she began trolling about, looking for ways to acquire cash for telling the exciting story of her exciting adventure.

Eventually, a presidential election was under way, thus raising the presumptive value of Clifford's exciting story about this exciting act. As Election Day neared in 2016, she tried to score some cash from Slate, then ended up taking $130,000 from Barrister Cohen.

Can we talk? We're among the laypeople who don't understand why Clifford isn't being charged with extortion. There may be a very good legal reason, but we don't know what it is, and the question will never be raised on our own tribe's corporate cable channels.

That said, it's hard to avoid being scornful of those high-minded prosecutors in Gotham. Apparently, they actually want American citizens to cast their votes on the basis of pointless slimy bullshit like this, rather than on the more substantial considerations our culture's elites love to downplay and avoid.

In 2016, Stephanie Clifford was saying that she had had sex, on one occasion ten years before, with Candidate Donald J. Trump. According to the Southern District, this is what we should be thinking about when we select our presidents.

In our view, it's hard to have sufficient contempt for the mindset which pimps such conclusions. To which we'll only add this key point:

It's all anthropology now!

This brings us to something which happened on yesterday's Kasie DC program. To watch the segment in question, click here, then click again on "Court filings reveal Trump as key figure in federal investigation."

Steve Kornacki was guest hosting for Kasie Hunt. At one point, breaking every rule in the book, he asked a skeptical question as he spoke with MoveOn.org's Karine Jean-Pierre:
KORNACKI (12/9/18): Let's take the Cohen campaign finance piece of this.

MoveOn.org—the foundation of MoveOn as an organization was twenty years ago when the president of the United States, at that time Bill Clinton, was accused of committing a felony, of lying under oath, committing perjury to cover up a politically damaging extramarital affair. And MoveOn.org came into being by saying, "You should not be impeached over this. You should not be impeached over committing a felony to cover up an affair. You should be censured and we should all move on from that."

...I'm just asking specifically about Cohen, campaign finance violations, Trump and women. Does that apply here as well?
Uh-oh! If we were supposed to "move on" when Clinton covered up an affair, why should we call out the dogs when Trump does something similar—in the case of Clifford, concerning one consensual act?

So Kornacki surprisingly asked! And in a brilliant non-response, the wonderfully presentable Jean-Pierre spoke for roughly 50 seconds, addressing every conceivable question except the one her host had raised.

At home, we tribals weren't supposed to notice the fact that Kornacki's question had been completely avoided. As for Kornacki himself, he simply "moved on" to a different question. Such behavior is required by Partisan Cable Law.

Every scripted liberal journalist is now jumping up and down about the felony Trump is said to have committed by shutting up a bald-faced hustler who was trying to hijack a White House election. We're expected to be as excited as Charles Blow is at the start of his new column:
BLOW (12/10/18): It is very possible that the president of the United States is a criminal. And it is very possible that his criminality aided and abetted his assumption of the position. Let that sink in. It is a profound revelation.

Last week, prosecutors made clear in a sentencing memo for Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, that Trump himself had directed Cohen to break campaign finance laws.

[...]

[W]e now have an actual, and one assumes provable, crime. A federal crime. And the president is its architect.
Please note: Like all good liberals, Blow now takes allegations by federal prosecutors and treats them as established facts. This is one of the things we "humans" do when we stage a stampede.

Do we now have "an actual federal crime," as Blow thunders today? It's true that Cohen has pled to a crime in this matter. But that's where Alan Dershowitz's recent statements come in.

As everyone knows, violations of campaign finance laws have rarely been prosecuted as felonies. It's also true that Al Capone was pursued on a highly convenient income tax rap.

Blow goes on and on and on, thundering about this "actual crime" and assuming the accuracy of everything any prosecutor has ever said anywhere on earth. This brings us back to the fact that Cohen has pled guilty to a felony in this matter.

Here's what Dershowitz would probably say. And no, this isn't crazy:

Cohen was seeking leniency in his sentencing. For that reason, he pled guilty to the crime the prosecutors wanted him to plead to.

The fact that Cohen pled to that crime doesn't mean that any jury would ever convict that behavior as criminal. As everyone knows (but Blow doesn't say), when John Edwards was prosecuted in a similar way, the jury refused to convict.

That said, we liberals are on a stampede, chasing convenient sex acts. In truth, we're trying to get Donald Trump locked up because we we're too lazy, uncaring and unattractive to create a winning politics.

Have 28,000 children starved to death in a U.S.-linked war in Yemen? As Rachel Maddow proves every night, we liberals don't care about that. We like to chase The Others around. Our species had always been like this.

(Are children being starved to death in your name? See Nicholas Kristof's Sunday column, "Your Tax Dollars Help Starve Children." And no, we won't see this column discussed by our favorite stars tonight. Despite our tribe's famously lofty ideals, it simply isn't done.)

At present, we're trying to reward a two-bit hustler like Clifford for trying to hijack a presidential election. Trust us:

If we keep playing the game this way, before too long our federal elections will be about nothing except the candidates' sex acts, actual or alleged. Beyond that, our system will cease to run on elections. It will run on impeachments instead, and soon it won't run at all.

Men and women will come forward talking about consensual sex acts with Candidate X, Y or Z. Some of these people will be lying and some will be telling the truth, but you can forget those starving children. We'll be entertaining ourselves to death with this excitement instead, much as we're doing today.

Our species is strongly inclined to be silly, unintelligent, fatuous, tribal and low. Within the realm of the mainstream press, we've been proving that for at least thirty years. (In 1987, top journalists literally hid in the bushes to try to catch Gary Hart.)

How silly can our species get? We give you the Dimmesdales of the Southern District, conning us good as they play their silly sad though high-minded songs on their small violins. They care about those phone bank folks, or so they may even believe.

Extra-credit assignment: Our prisons are full of innocent people. Making reference to the current excitement, compare, contrast, analyze, dice, puree, dissect and discuss.

48 comments:

  1. "Apparently, they actually want American citizens to cast their votes on the basis of pointless slimy bullshit like this, rather than on the more substantial considerations our culture's elites love to downplay and avoid."

    Bravo, Bob. There's hope for you yet.

    Still, all this hysteria, this never-ending orgy of hatred, it presents a clear message: the establishment, your zombie cult leaders, they don't believe they can win in 2020. So, it's good, it's all for the best, Bob.

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  2. If one attaches enough weight to this blithering nonsense to
    believe it achieves irony, then surely there is some in the silence
    Bob's demonstrated on the rewriting of recent history the
    LIBERAL media has engaged in on the the matter of say,
    Paula Jones. The Republicans hired her to function as a
    professional, paid witness (after George Conway got her to
    gin up her story) that paid off when Clinton had to retreat
    in the panic of Monica. Jones and others lied through their
    teeth many times, and still take money to do so.

    Well, let's calm poor Bob down.

    First, Trump has admitted paying of the porn star, I guess Bob
    gives one out as a freebee, but apparently in terms of conduct this
    was nothing, it's a lifestyle Trump has bragged about
    on Howard Stern and elsewhere. The Playboy playmate apparently
    was more than a one time thing. BUT, if these prosecutors are idiots
    and go into court with no case, they will suffer mightily for it.
    This is what liberals don't get who just wanted some Wall Street
    conmen dragged into Court for 2008, or conservatives, of course,
    drove themselves insane over regarding The Great Noncase
    against Hillary Clinton. It's Court, you have to prove things
    and such. It's not perfect, but you have to better than some
    dunce on Fox News drooling until it's coming out of their
    noses.

    Bob hates liberals much more than he cares about the U.S.
    Otherwise, he would not be able to pretend this was all about
    the tacky sex life Bob doesn't want to be reminded of. Trump
    has denied having sex with that woman he too would probably
    like to brand "Horseface," but he has admitted paying her off
    and that's where the possible illegality lies. But, Bob doesn't
    want those prosecutors holding Trump accountable for that
    OR ANYTHING ELSE.
    The sad coda should have Bob committed. That there are
    innocent people in jail somehow exonerates Trump? From a
    legal standpoint Bob is now Walter Matthau from "The
    Fortune Cookie." Keep that face straight, Bob.
    "And no, this isn't crazy." John Edwards did not plead
    guilty to crimes and they were only remotely similar to
    this. What a freakishly lazy thinker Bob has become.
    Again, a grant from a "libertarian" sugar Daddy which
    repositioned Bob seems a sadly, likely explanation.

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    Replies
    1. Fraud is prosecuted every weekday in the courthouses of America. The idea that Wall Street conmen, who perpetrated fraud on such a massive scale it crashed the world's economy, can't be prosecuted is nonsense. Fraud is a felony, punishable by prison time. Try being a black man and commit fraud in the USA, and let me know how that works out for you.

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    2. Well, who, specifically did you want to see prosecuted, and for what? I find the idea that the legal system was sitting on evidence they chose not to use is nonsense. But I'm open minded on the subject. The fact that you jump to race tells me
      you don't really know the subject and have just heard a lot
      of blather on left wing radio. Again, it's COURT. You have to
      prove things, or you are supposed to have to.

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    3. Here are two articles to get you started.

      https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2010/10/13/maybe-it-was-fraud-after-all

      https://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/the-two-documents-everyon_b_169813.html

      William Black has been explaining this stuff for a decade. You should read him, before repeating what you here from un-indicted felons.

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    4. Again, I note your inability to simply say who you want indicted and for what. My views on this are not based on anything I've heard from anyone on Wall St.

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    5. The executive teams of the 49 financial institutions that have paid various government entities and private plaintiffs nearly $190 billion in fines and settlements, would be a good place to start.
      It wasn't the corporation papers, the General Ledger, or the brick and glass buildings that perpetrated the fraud. People did it.

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    6. Greg - your writing sucks cocks. Talk about blithering. Your post defines the word.

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    7. Counter arguments to whether or not it is "likely" Bob is getting paid by a libertarian to write what he does? Your perspicacity and reasoning are worse than your writing. But bleat away though man. It doesn't get you anything. You haven't changed him at all. He won't stop writing what he does. Maybe you're poorly reasoned, poorly written comments can fill some sort of inward psychological hole or satisfy some sort of an all-ramifying need to procrastinate or give you a feeling of being a part of a group, because outwardly, they are an embarrassing waste of time.

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    8. "Your perspicacity and reasoning are worse than your writing"

      Hey, the dembots are not here to reason or to produce eloquent writing. They are here for one purpose only: to spread and amplify hatred.

      And since it is being organized, surely it's not a waste of time. I would classify it as an exercise in voter suppression. Making people feel so disgusted with the current conditions of the political process that they stay home -- so that only zombies vote...

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    9. Liberals hate themselves because they know they are weak and powerless. And in their defense, they have to deal with the ridiculous nefariousness, hypocrisy and mendacity of Republicans for all these years. They just can't see their representives are mostly the same. But it all comes, right and left, tea party and the fools here, from a frustrated lack of freedom and power that is a result of the industrial age and division of labor. Men have not been able, fir the last 100 years, to live like men have lived for all of history which creates enormous confusion and grief that they project in to politics and "others".

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    10. This may be true for illiterate men like yourself, but men who learn English have more options.

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    11. So, go learn it, dembot. I see you're so proud to be able to copy-paste a one-liner, but there's much to learn before you manage to string two phrases together, dear...

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  3. President Clinton did not commit a felony by lying about a consensual relationship. No one had any business asking him about his consensual sex life.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Yeah, dembot. Except for the judge in the Paula Jones harassment suit. Remember "kiss it"? Remember the "distinguishing characteristics"?

      Remember how the suit was settled by Bubba The Demigod (or Bubba The Loser?), for $850,000 - exactly the amount she asked for?

      Share your thoughts, dembots. Please.

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    2. Remember her telling friends that She had a great time meeting the Governor, and didn't mention any of the other stuff until setting with with her right wing lawyers. Eat it, Republoscum.

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  4. Also, it is particularly scummy of Bob to reference "Lock Him Up." because of course no one ever chanted that. The mob "lock her up" stuff was all on the right. Liberals at large have no power over our legal system, and understand why they should not have it. There have been demonstrations against Trump and his scandals,
    Finally, Bob's point about censuring Trump is well taken, but it has nothing to with laws he seems to have broken. He should be censured simply on his appalling conduct in the Office, "Horseface" etc. etc. etc......

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  5. "Not too long after Clifford did or didn't engage in this one consensual act, she began trolling about, looking for ways to acquire cash for telling the exciting story of her exciting adventure."

    Once again Somerby distorts the timeline and the facts of the consensual sex between Trump and Daniels. She is not charged with extortion because (1) she didn't ask him for any money, (2) the NDA wasn't her idea, (3) she has the right to tell her side of a story to whoever she pleases, including publishing her experiences in any format she chooses. Trump is the guy who kisses and tells, as he has done for decades, including making up lies about women who had no relationship with him whatsoever. When a man engages in sex with a woman, there is no inherent right to keep it quiet, to pretend it didn't happen. Daniels had the right to tell whoever she wanted about it and she did not ask Trump for money to keep quiet. He approached her via an attorney and offered her money for her story. That isn't extortion of any kind.

    It is wrong for Somerby to keep accusing Daniels of being a con artist and scammer, and now extortionist, simply because of her large body parts. Trump is the one who offered money to keep their mouths shut -- it is money for nothing if you have no plans to tell your tale. It is far from appropriate compensation compared to what the media might offer, and she was ill-advised to accept it. A true money grubber would have asked for more. That is the best evidence she wasn't seeking payment in the manner that Somerby suggests. An agent would have been involved in such a transaction, not a Trump-connected attorney.

    But why is Somerby back to writing these posts that do nothing more than excuse Trump, Cohen and their ilk? The President and his associates are criminals. They will be proven to be such in a court of law, eventually. Pretending that Daniels is a con artist but Trump is not is ludicrous. Somerby is once again displaying his dislike of women with large body parts who get paid more for their journalism than he does.

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  6. The Judge, Susan Weber Wright, in the only legal conclusion reached in this case, said that Jones did not prove sexual harassment, or did you mis that, you Republican ignoramous.

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  7. According to the Slate article linked above, Daniels was going to make the affair public at a press conference or on a talk show, and she was not necessarily seeking compensation for it.

    Slate says:

    "She didn’t allege any kind of abuse, insisting she was not a victim. The worst Trump had done, she said, was break promises she’d never believed he would fulfill. She claimed he’d offered to buy her a condo in Tampa, Florida, and that he’d said he wanted to feature her as a contestant in an upcoming season of Celebrity Apprentice. Daniels, who is far from naïve, says she did not take him seriously, but Trump had insisted his NBC contract let him do whatever he wanted on the show. Eventually, she said, he’d told her the network wouldn’t allow her on the air because of the objections of an executive’s wife."

    She continues that she expected Trump to delay payment on the NDA until after the election and then refuse to pay at all, as was his way of doing business. She was also motivated by his political positions to go public with her account.

    None of that adds up to the bilking con artist Somerby has accused her of being. Somerby still hints that the affair didn't even happen, as if Trump were a choir boy. He has a strong interest in portraying the women who have been abused by Trump as bad people. Sleeping with Trump is its own punishment, but I don't think Stormy Daniels or certainly any of the women Trump out-right assaulted, deserve the kind of language Somerby has been using against them.

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    1. The article says Daniels wanted to be paid for her story. She thought it might come out anyway. Daniels said she wanted, in her words, something to show for her experience.

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    2. @5:22
      That doesn’t make her a con artist, nor does it show that she tried to extort anything from Trump.

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    3. It also doesn't not make her a con artist. It also doesn't show that she didn't try to extort anything from Trump.

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    4. It also doesn’t not make her a murderer or child molester. So what? Anyway, Cohen approached Clifford, not the other way round.

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    5. The original poster falsely claimed that she was not seeking compensation for her story about the night she fucked Trump. Just pointing out that the claim was false based on the link from Slate.

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    6. Trump offered her money after sex and she turned him down. She was approached to sell a story she had been telling socially for years, for free. She asked the media to pay her for interviews. When slate told her they don't do that, she decided to hold a press conference to get the story out during the election. That's when she was approached by Cohen via Davidson. She was not seeking compensation, not grifting, not shaking down celebrities, as Somerby stated. His own libk to slate doesn't support that. Five years went by after her sex with Trump before any media approached her about her story and she turned them down. Some grifter!

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    7. The slate article says "Daniels wanted to be paid for her story." What is the matter with you? You ok? Davidson is notorious for arranging that kind of thing. We're dealing with scumbags here baby

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    8. Why did she take compensation from Cohen? Why didn't she just tell her story?

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    9. She said she and her family were threatened by a goon in a parking lot.

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    10. She claimed that was in 2011 after she agreed to sell the story of her affair to a magazine for $15,000. if she wasn't seeking compensation in 2016, why did she take a money from Cohen? Why didn't she just hold the press conference you mentioned?

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    11. " why did she take a money from Cohen?"

      Hey, pourquoi demander pourquoi? The dembots are not here to be logical or even minimally convincing, they are here to spread and amplify their zombie hatred. Tsk.

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    12. Trump has a pattern of demanding NDAs and paying off women, not just Stormy Daniels. It is what Cohen did, part of his job. Attacking Stormy Daniels doesn't clear Trump. Somerby's motives are not simply to clear Trump, but to smear Daniels. His choice of words to do so is revealing of his own psyche. Something about those large body parts, which he just can't stop describing every time he wants to portray her as a con artist and Trump as an innocent. Just as today's troll cannot exonerate Trump because of his pattern of silencing women during the election, Somerby's problems with women extend to a pattern here on his blog, so a single isolated incident involving Stormy Daniels cannot clear Somerby of ambivalence toward women (at best) and hostility more likely. His pattern of behavior betrays him.

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    13. "why did she take a money"

      Why don't they teach trolls English before turning them loose on blogs?

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    14. Why did Daniels take money from Trump if she "wasn't seeking compensation"?

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    15. Daniels was not seeking, Trump offered the money. This is bone simple stuff folks.

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    16. Why did she take the money? Why didn't she just nobly tell her story? Why did she take the money when he offered it? if she wasn't seeking compensation and simply wanted to tell the world about it, why didn't she do a?

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  8. Why does Somerby disappear the fact that there are *two* women who were paid off by Cohen and detailed in the sentencing document?

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  9. One imagines the SDNY knows the law, and recognizes campaign finance violations when they see them. Are they the final arbiter? Perhaps not. But they nonetheless made their case, and Cohen admitted to it.

    Somerby makes the argument that a jury, as in the Edwards case, might not convict. Perhaps. But that doesn’t change the law. Many legal scholars agree that what SDNY describes is indeed a violation, a felony, which would make Trump’s actions impeachable, even by Alan Dershowitz’s standards. But Jerry Nadler, incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said this: "They would be impeachable offenses. Whether they're important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question,"

    That doesn’t sound like a stampede to me. Nor does it sound like Nadler is “chasing convenient sex acts.” He is more interested in things like abuse of power, obstruction of justice, violations of the emoluments clause, in other words, performing oversight over a potentially law-breaking President.

    Now, perhaps Somerby would be happy if the Democrats in the House set up a Committee to Determine the Sanity of The President, since he keeps pushing the notion that *that* is the discussion we should be having about Trump, and not whether he and/or his family are in the pay of Saudi Arabia, which has a vested interest in continuing that war in Yemen that Somerby grieves over.

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  10. “In 2016, Stephanie Clifford was saying that she had had sex, on one occasion ten years before, with Candidate Donald J. Trump. According to the Southern District, this is what we should be thinking about when we select our presidents.”

    This is just...mind-boggling for Somerby to type something like this. SDNY cares about the laws that were broken. Full stop. In the case of the campaign finance violations, those occurred, not 10 years ago, but DURING THE CAMPAIGN.

    And, did he read the rest of the sentencing document? It’s 40 pages of crimes Cohen admitted to, of which the campaign finance violation section takes maybe four pages. It is Somerby who is obsessed with the “sex” aspect of this, not SDNY.

    The utter illogic of Somerby’s claim is astounding. He needs to get his head examined.

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  11. Principles hardly matter in this affair, and Congress is free to impeach for any reason it chooses. Still, it is arguably the case that in order to be grounds for impeachment, the "high crimes and misdemeanors" should have been committed when the person was President. Clinton's wrongdoing was committed when he was President. Trump's was not.

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    1. We don’t yet know what crimes he is currently committing. And Clinton was impeached for lying. Trump does that every day.

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    2. It also bears repeating that two independent counsels looked into the minutiae of Whitewater, trying to find an impeachable offense. If they had found even a shred of a crime, you can bet your life that the GOP would have impeached for that. And that Whitewater bull all happened well before Clinton took office. Given 7 years, Starr found Lewinsky, and thanked the Lord.

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    3. Finally: “Certainly, they're impeachable offenses, because, even though they were committed before the President became President, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office." —- Jerry Nadler

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    4. Nadler is a very smart guy. I once met him at a cousin's birthday party. They were old friends. Someone decided to introduce me to Nadler, as a curiosity. I was the only Republican in the room, which made me a kind of 2-headed wonder. Nadler had no interest.

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  12. Something for Somerby to reflect on: The Manafort jury convicted Manafort on many of the charges he was facing, and this despite the fact that there were at least two die-hard Trump supporters on that jury. The weight of the evidence made conviction inevitable. This should give anyone pause who wishes to attack Mueller’s credibility, or accuse him of bringing spurious charges in a haphazard way.

    And why would the SDNY be any different? Their actions are always reviewable by higher courts, and these courts are not in the habit of issuing blank check approval of lower court decisions. And if their cases go before a jury, isn’t it likely they want to make sure they have the strongest possible case, especially if Trump is intent on trying to influence the jury’s decision with his tweeting?

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  13. Yes, Donald Trump only ever had sex (allegedly!) that one time 12 years ago with that one porn star. It’s not like the guy made a habit of doing things like that, and bragging about it to whomever would listen!

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  14. “That said, we liberals are on a stampede, chasing convenient sex acts. In truth, we're trying to get Donald Trump locked up because we we're too lazy, uncaring and unattractive to create a winning politics.”

    Apparently winning the House, with the largest gain of seats for a minority party ever, doesn’t count as winning in Somerby’s book.

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  15. Have you read the indictment? Cohen and Trump were not indicted for paying off Trump's girlfriends. Cohen and Trump are guilty of campaign fraud. It is illegal to contribute more than $2700 to a campaign. These contributions were hundreds of thousands of dollars.

    Further, Trump took a tax deduction for the payoffs, calling them "legal fees". That is tax fraud.

    The fact that this involved Trump's girlfriends is only incidental, although bait for the salacious media. The fact is that Trump and Cohen committed serious fraud.

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