Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Russia’s intervention in Syria is Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical trump card, heading off the imminent defeat of Syrian president Bashir al-Assad’s regime under multiple Western-backed rebel forces.

His goal was explained this October in Foreign Affairs, the distinguished journal of Washington DC’s Council on Foreign Relations.

“Most of the foreign belligerents in the war in Syria are gas-exporting countries with interests in one of the two competing pipeline projects that seek to cross Syrian territory to deliver either Qatari or Iranian gas to Europe,” wrote Professor Mitchell Orenstein of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.

I had reported on the competing gas pipeline plans for the Guardian in 2013. Two years later, Foreign Affairs is finally catching up.

As Orenstein explained, “in 2009, Qatar proposed to build a pipeline to send its gas northwest via Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria to Turkey… However, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad refused to sign the plan; Russia, which did not want to see its position in European gas markets undermined, put him under intense pressure not to”.

Russia’s Gazprom sells 80 per cent of its gas to Europe. So in 2010, Russia put its weight behind “an alternative Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline that would pump Iranian gas from the same field out via Syrian ports such as Latakia and under the Mediterranean.” The project would allow Moscow “to control gas imports to Europe from Iran, the Caspian Sea region, and Central Asia.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Shepard Smith, the chief news anchor of Fox News, said on Friday that he was leaving the cable news network, an abrupt move that left some of his co-workers openly stunned.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The White House letter of October 8 refusing all executive branch cooperation with the ongoing House impeachment inquiry is, simply put, a public relations exercise. The legal arguments it intersperses between insults to members of the House Democratic leadership and appeals to the President’s base voters are without foundation.

The errors and mischaracterizations are so numerous that they cannot all be addressed in this space. Instead, I will consider only the fundamental misconceptions at the heart of the White House argument, as well as a single illustrative historical incident – the impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson.

The White House justifies its refusal to respond to the House’s investigative demands on three basic grounds:
First, it claims that the House impeachment inquiry is “constitutionally invalid” because the full House has not passed a resolution specifically authorizing an impeachment inquiry of this president.
Second, it maintains that the House inquiry now underway is illegitimate because it does not afford the president “due process” rights the letter suggests are required under the Constitution.
Third, it asserts that the first two points are established by “every past precedent.” All these assertions are wrong.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

THE CORRUPT PUMPKIN
The Corrupt Pumpkin

Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine who was forced out by Rudy Giuliani and his fellow goons, testified before Congress yesterday. She was told that Trump had lost trust in her and had wanted her out since 2018, though he extended her term to 2020 less than two months before. On the same call telling her to get on a plane to Washington immediately, she was also told she had “done nothing wrong.”

Yes, she did. She stood in the way of Trump’s corrupt henchmen pretending to seek out corruption. They were afraid she was going to stand in their way. In her prepared testimony, she said, “Although I understand that I served at the pleasure of the president, I was nevertheless incredulous that the U.S. government chose to remove an ambassador based, as best as I can tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.”

Clearly questionable motives.

Yovanovitch is still an employee of the State Department, though she may be fired now under false pretenses because the administration sought to block her from testifying. The House issued a subpoena for her, and obeying the law, she complied.

The senior adviser to Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, resigned this week. Two others followed. Kurt Volker, the special envoy to Ukraine, had already resigned. Yesterday, the acting head of the Department of Human Services resigned (the fourth in Trump’s first term to lead that agency). Two of Rudy’s goons were nabbed trying to flee the country. Rudy is reportedly under investigation for illegal lobbying. Donald Trump, who lost five court cases yesterday, is going to be impeached.

The State and Justice Departments are defying subpoenas as the White House is blocking all testimony that will incriminate Donald Trump, though he’s already incriminated himself by admitting he asked Ukraine to interfere in our next election.

Yesterday, he said the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, said bad things about Yovanovitch. If you read the summary of the transcript, he didn’t. In fact, Zelensky never mentioned her. Donald Trump, who tried to praise her a bit yesterday, was the only one who mentioned her and said bad things about her on that call.

Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, needs to issue subpoenas as if they’re PEZ. After all, it is the Halloween season. As the White House continues to defy subpoenas, Schiff needs to take them to court, again and again.

Eventually, he’ll catch the Great Pumpkin.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]