Tom Toles for December 01, 2019

Par for the course when it comes to any debate for conservatives.

Environmental debate. Social equality debate. Economic equality debate. Economic spending debate. Rule of law debate. Election security debate. Gun violence debate…

It’s always the same.

Evidence, truth, facts and reality vs. conservative talking points, nutty conspiracy theories and projection.

Keep in mind that when the impeachment comes to trial in the Senate, that trial will most certainly be completely rigged. At least half of the “jurors,” the senators, will themselves be co-conspirators with the accused. Um… And I can hear Moscow Mitch exhorting those senators with the stirring words of Benjamin Franklin: “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

In fact, the Senate impeachment trial will almost certainly bear a terrible resemblance to those trials, mostly of yore, in the South where an all-white jury simply would not convict the local Klansmen of murdering or lynching some black person. The evidence presented simply did not matter. Not only will the jurors in the Senate be co-conspirators with the accused, the evidence against our latter-day Grand Dragon, Benedict Donald, won’t matter for much the same reason the evidence didn’t matter to those Southern juries.

Add contempt to the charges, what he holds for the Constitution, the law, and the people of the United States. That anyone can hold anything but contempt for Bonespurs at this point, is ludicrous.

The facts may be on the side of the Democrats but the Republicans have the best lies.

The RepCong’s Mindset – {limerick}

Evidence is quite [irrelevant] irrelevunt

to a Republican-in-Congress [elephant] elevunt

who’s wary of {1} a mouse

and {2} a Democratic House

and {3} facts which the Rs deem [malevolent] malevolunt.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Fair and Balanced {Not} – {rhyme}

We’re “fair and balanced,” reporters declare, …

… but it’s prefixed by “un”: – “unbalanced, unfair”.

Of “balanced” write-ups we oughta beware.

“Balance” distracts from the impeachment affair.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Many of the resident’s supporters are wealthy non-college educated whites who do not distinguish between fact and fancy (or democracy and authoritarianism).

{Off-topic:}

Aprés-Trump – {a rhyme}

CAN our governance be somehow corrected

when Trump gets impeached &/or dis-elected?

CAN we reverse

the effects of his curse?

NO? – Have we TOO much by Trump been infected?

… Coda:

Has he made EVER’thang so bigly adverse

that aprés-Trump it’ll git even Worse?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Meanwhile, the Democrats ignore the bulk of Trump’s crimes. The result will be that the impeachment will not only fail to move the country, it will flop.

Only what Fox News says, counts.

How offensive do the offenses have to be? I think they are doing an amazing job of offending everybody.

Stephen Colbert (before the “Report”) to Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” – “We repeat what the Democrats said and we repeat what the Republicans said, that’s objective journalism, Jon!”

Looks pretty damn accurate to me!

All that Republicans do these days is lie cheat and steal.

The postscript is the relevant part here. Liars are always going to lie, but the way the press dances around it is more than revolting: It’s a danger to us all.

The Republicans have never found a fact they couldn’t ignore. It makes them above reproach for their acceptance of CORRUPTION as a good part of their life. It’s a right of passage in their party’s DNA. V O T E 2 O 20 .

WE need to hit them from every legal angle.

When you can google for whatever “facts” you want, pretty quickly you start to think that reality’s fungible.

It isn’t.

Statistics, on the other hand are measures of reality that are basically fungible because you can diddle the parameters. For instance, it’s apparently† true that there’s been less major crime during Trump’s administration than during Obama’s. But it’s also true that crime rates have been falling for about 25 years, and the angle of the slope has been flattening in the last few years. And it’s also also true that most experts believe that administration policies have somewhere very close to zero impact on crime rates.

† One of issues is whether the raw data is good. FBI, for instance reports only on crimes that are reported to the cops, but only “about” (depending on which reports you study) half of all crimes are reported. And of those, only about 18% are “cleared” (someone arrested, or the like).

Flummoxed by Fox, those rulers of TV/ trapped in a vortex of chicanery/ one look at Donald’s face/ SHOULD quite erase his "base../ But none is so blind as him who will not see !

Evidence? 90% of which is inadmissible anywhere in the US. Except Congress.