What a Country!

The gentleman at the center of the picture below is Alexander Smirnov, a vital informant in the impeachment case against President Biden and his business connections to his surviving son, leaving the federal courthouse on an uncharacteristically rainy day in Los Angeles.  And no, he is not shielding his face because of the rain, and his two companions, it would appear, do not have COVID.  

So let's get a few things straight.  Hunter Biden is not the sort of fellow a woman would want to take home to Mother, unless of course her mother is Wilma McClatchie.  You wouldn't want Hunter Biden to teach a course in business ethics any more than you'd want Alina Habba to teach law.  And, he's a bad painter. But while Democrats have insisted that he and his father have no business ties with each other, the impeachment inquiry authorized by the Republican House of Representatives has produced little a bit of evidence to suggest otherwise, like Smirnov's damning testimony.  And that's why he appeared in court in LA recently.

Except for one thing: He appeared in court because he was arrested (and freed and arrested again) for providing the inquiry committee members with information that is totally fake!  

Made up.  Fictitious.  A story less credible than the legend of Atlantis.  Smirnov, an Israeli national, is an agent for the Russian government who was trying to make enough mischief to embarrass the Bidens.  All he did was embarrass . . . well, I was going to say the Republicans, but that isn't true, as the two rhymes-with-glass-pole House committee chairmen named Jim - Oversight Committee chairman Comer of Kentucky and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jordan of Ohio - weren't embarrassed at all.  In fact, they doubled down on their accusations against the Bidens, saying that Smirnov's lies don't change the underlying basis of the need for the inquiry.

Except for one thing: Smirnov's lies are the underlying basis of the need for the inquiry.

Comer and Jordan plan to continue to push for impeaching President Biden, convinced that the mere appearance of a business connection between him and his son Hunter requires an impeachment inquiry as long as special prosecutor David Weiss continues his investigation of Hunter.

Except for one thing: David Weiss was the one who had Smirnov arrested.   

What a country!

What the House of Representatives Did This Week

The U.S. House of Representatives continues to be very busy as it concludes the first session of the 118th Congress.  Which is precisely why the House didn't have time to vote on badly needed aid to Ukraine to the tune of $61 billion, despite a live-and-in-person plea from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to House Speaker Mike Johnson, or cut a deal with President Biden on border security.

What was so urgent that they had to put aside such important business? They had to vote on an impeachment inquiry against President Biden, which passed 221-212, based on evidence of . . . nothing. 

I think I'll check my passport now . . ..

The Crash Days

It looks like the federal government is about to be shut down by shadow Speaker Donald Trump to close down federal courts in which he is being prosecuted (that's not how it works).  The House Oversight Committee, currently run by Republicans, is still going to be working to continue its sham impeachment inquiry of President Biden - which produced less than nothing in today's hearing - while Transportation Security Administration employees and air traffic controllers will be expected to work for no pay indefinitely . . .which will put pressure and anxiety on these workers . . . which may mean that a few things may go wrong, like passengers boarding airliners with items not allowed on flights will air traffic controllers get distracted and pay less attention to what they're doing . . ..

All I can say is, I hope there are no plans by Islamic extremists to hijack an airliner and take over the controls in the next few weeks.  

Because there's a new target in Lower Manhattan . . . 

. . . as well as United Flight 93's unfinished business in Washington.

I'm going to come right out and say it - the shutdown could make it easy  for another 9/11 to happen!

And if another 9/11 does happen, Republicans will find a way to successfully blame Biden for it.  Joe?  No, Hunter.

They're that sick.

It Doesn't Matter

Donald Trump has 91 felony indictments against hm, he constantly lashed out at the prosecutors who have charged him, Jack Smith has felt compelled to request a gaga order placed against Trump to avoid a tainted jury in his cases, and in a recent interview (more of which later), Trump claimed full responsibility for the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Thanks to President Biden's troubles, however, none of that matters.

President Biden is dealing with headwinds of his own, and they're more relevant because he's President and Trump is not - yet.  Despite improving economic statistics, inflation is still making essential goods more expensive for Americans, dragging down Biden's poll numbers on his handling of the economy and his overall job approval.  His failure to address his son Hunter's troubles with his business dealings has led to six out of ten Americans believing the consistent Republican narrative that Biden must be in on his son's crooked deeds.  And with Hunter Biden having been charged with an illegal-gun felony - a charge no one named Biden would likely receive from a prosecutor - it reinforces House Republicans' charges of a corrupt family dynamic among the Bidens while House Democrats, relegated to the minority, can only complain about the real corrupt family dynamic among the Trumps, which includes Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.  Of course, being the minority, House Democrats can only looked forward to their complaints get drowned out by renewed calls among the far right for Biden's impeachment.       

Even Kevin McCarthy's call for an impeachment inquiry against the President - forced by his right flank, which has had more control over a Republican House Speaker than anyone since Dennis Hastert - hasn't generated much of a rallying around the President by Democrats, at least not yet.  That's likely because an impeachment inquiry is different than an actual impeachment, and an inquiry is only meant to find evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors.  It doesn't matter if Democrats ask what House Republicans want to impeach Biden for despite no evidence of Biden having done anything wrong.  Because such evidence is exactly what an inquiry is meant to seek!  It wouldn't be an inquiry otherwise, would it?

If an inquiry comes up with nothing, as it's likely to, the House will most likely decide not to impeach Biden; they apparently don't have the votes for it anyway.  But that doesn't matter either; an inquiry is still good enough to tarnish an incumbent President. 

All of his spells trouble for the Biden re-election campaign as it lurches toward 2024.  The best the President can hope for is that Americans start feeling the economic improvements he's accomplished, and soon, because ultimately, Americans vote their pocketbooks, not their reproductive or family-planning rights or their mass-transit access. At least not in presidential elections.  But what about our democracy, our civil rights, or our efforts to live up to our ideals as a nation?

As Stephen Stills once sang, it doesn't matter, it's nothing but dreaming anyhow.  

The Summer of Hunter

It looked like Hunter Biden was going to get his legal troubles behind him, but the plea bargain he agreed to regarding two counts of tax evasion and one count of illegal firearms possession fell like a house of cards.

The federal judge in Delaware overseeing the case, Maryellen Noreika, wanted to make sure that both the prosecution and the defense were on the same page.  They weren't even in the same chapter.  Both sides attempted to align themselves to each other, but Judge Noreika decided that she could not approve the resulting revised deal linking tax misdemeanors to a gun felony because she felt she did not have the right to do so.  They have thirty days to come up with something better.

Now Hunter Biden is not only unable to get his legal issues out of the way, the political issues are getting worse.  There are still ongoing investigations into whether he benefited from his familial relations when working as a consultant in Ukraine and China, and House Speaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, speaking through her figurehead Kevin McCarthy, is pledging to proceed with an impeachment inquiry to see whether President Biden can be impeached for influence peddling through his siblings as well as his son, given the damning evidence implicating the President that has surfaced, and - Oops!  Correction: There's no evidence that President Biden is involved.      

Still, it's important to investigate the First Family, because there is plenty of evidence that Biden's children made sweetheart deals and used their influence to get ahead, especially Biden's daughter and her husband and their deals with Saudi billionaires, and - oh, wait a minute, that was Ivanka Trump and her husband, and her brothers.

Can anyone tell me why Hunter Biden is the first offspring of a U.S. President to be charged with offenses none of Trump's children would see jail time for while Trump's children have not seen jail time for the even greater offenses they have committed?  This country needs an enema!

The Show Must Go On?

Nancy Pelosi has decided that she's heard enough about Donald Trump's abuse of power and has given the relevant committees of the House of Representatives to go ahead and prepare articles of impeachment.  Even if more stuff that could close the sale for the Democrats surfaces after the articles are drafted and adopted by the full House.

The only problem is that Speaker Pelosi seems to have based her decision largely on the testimony from Democratic witnesses at the House Judiciary Committee's first (so far) impeachment hearing.  Left out of the equation is Republican witness Jonathan Turley's word of caution in impeaching Trump too soon before the investigations into his abuse of power get all of the facts.  And Turley is someone who did not vote for Trump.

MSNBC pundits have been dismissing Turley's comments as failing to recognize all of the evidence the investigation has covered, but that misses the point.  Support for impeachment among the American people is qualified at best, but the Democrats could enough sway enough voters to back their accusations against Trump with the information they uncover from the bigger witnesses they haven't questioned yet - notably, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney and Rudolph Giuliani.  These are the big stars of the Ukraine scandal and the dudes with the most direct and most airtight evidence of Trump's abuse of power.  For now, and possibly later, the Democrats are content to let the White House prevent these guys from testifying so they can charge Trump with obstruction of justice.  But having an impeachment process without the big stars providing the the most helpful testimony and relying only small bits of information and opinion from bureaucrats and constitutional lawyers who aren't household names is sort of like offering a side show without a main three-ring circus.

And remember, we're dealing with a President who's the most impressive showman since P.T. Barnum.    

Look, Trump isn't going to be convicted and removed from office because the Republicans in the Senate are solidly behind him, and even if the Democrats get all the information that's out there rather than just some of it, that's not going to change.  But with all of the inflation at their disposal, the Democrats would have a stronger case against Trump for their eventual presidential nominee to pursue against him.  Instead, they're only relying on only a little bit of information that will not persuade enough independents to join them and only cause eyeballs to roll.  That's what Trump wants.  He wants an opposition that isn't ready to go the full 26.2 miles like he is.  That's how he plans to win . . . once he's "exonerated" by a Senate acquittal that will only embolden him.  

But Pelosi lashing out at that right-wing "reporter" at her press conference made for some good drama.

Impeachment Ho? Impeachment, WHOA!

The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative Jerold Nadler (D-NY), below, begins its hearings on impeaching Trump, in the hope of drawing up articles of impeachment that center on abuse of power and bribing foreign nationals.  This will put the Trump trail on a very fast track.

Except for one thing- the House Intelligence Committee still has a lot of work to do, because new leads point toward more corruption.

New details are emerging about more shady deals to help Trump, including calls from Rudolph Giuliani to the Office and Management and Budget and connections between Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, and the key players in the Ukraine scandal.  But the Intelligence Committee, while promising to continue further investigations, doesn't seem to want to hold more hearings for the time being, preferring instead to let the Judiciary Committee take the lead.  MSNBCs Howard Fineman compared what the Democrats are doing to catching a whale instead of a big fish and being reluctant to reel it in.  Instead of finishing the job, the House Intelligence Committee seems to be closing the case without exposing more corruption that could get more Americans to side with their pursuit of impeachment  - because of political concerns over the 2020 election campaign.  Meanwhile, the Republicans relentlessly campaign against impeachment with a message of a witch hunt base on a disagreement with Trump's Ukraine policy . . . with the powerful and persuasive marketing savvy that got Reagan elected President twice and Al Gore deposed after being elected President fairly.  Not only are the Democrats' chances of winning the Presidency and the Senate in doubt, so are their chances of holding the House.   

The Democrats are among the most pathetic bunch of Keystone Kops I've ever seen. Damaging Trump and possibly destroying him going forward into 2020 should be easy as 1, 2, 3, but by looking at it as a political rather than as a constitutional matter, they've already managed to screw it up to the point of making it as complex as πr².  The American people are now less enamored with impeachment, and if the Democrats blow the 2020 election, I'll be much less enamored with them.

If that's possible.  

Up The Hill

Fiona Hill (below) was certainly impressive in her testimony on how American national security was diverted to help Trump with domestic politics and how it should never have been allowed to happen, and she was just as impressive in withstanding attacks on her loyalty to the United States just because she was born and raised in England.  She was especially forceful in refuting the bogus charge that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 presidential election to help Hillary Clinton, a charge that Trump has embraced.  She and her fellow witnesses also made it clear that Joe Biden and his son did nothing wrong regarding business with Ukraine. 

"The Russians’ interests are frankly to de-legitimatize our entire presidency," she told House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff.  "The goal of the Russians [in 2016] was really to put whoever became the president - by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale - under a cloud."

And yet, none of this matters one iota.

Voters who want to hear more about what the government is going to do about them and their own concerns have pretty much stopped caring about the impeachment inquiry, assuming they ever did.  Or, as I said at the start of the month, meh.  Not only has interest in the inquiry waned, so has interest in impeachment.  Independents have turned against it, and voters in swing states have followed suit.  Democrats are suddenly in danger of losing the 2020 presidential election for going after Trump. 

Trump voters simply believe that their guy did nothing wrong.  They do, however, believe that the Bidens did something wrong, which is why they'll be pleased to know that the Republican Senate is launching an investigation of them.  And the Republicans in Congress have paid no heed to Dr. Hill's insistence that the story about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election is a fake - they're looking into it in hopes of finding something.  Because why should anyone listen to Dr. Hill - "That Limey bitch, what does she know?"

Maybe Adam Schiff should ask what the naming Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, knows.  It seems he went to Vienna to meet a now-discredited Ukrainian prosecutor to dig up dirt on the Bidens, even though he's supposed to be an impartial as ranking member of the House intelligence Committee. Lev Parnas, the recently indicted Soviet-born American who was working with Rudolph Giuliani to push the story of corruption in Ukraine caused in part by Democrats, is ready and willing to tell everyone about it.

But hey, if no one cares, because the economy is doing so damn well . . .

The House Intelligence Committee hearings are over, and so, quite frankly is any hope of getting enough people concerned about Trump's actions to ensure his defeat in the 2020 election.  To sum up: Legally, the impeachment hearings have been a success for the Democrats.  Politically, they have been a flop.

Of Heaven's Gate proportions.

Mr. Moto Risin'

Former National Security Council member Tim Morrison, below - whose name forms the words Mr. Moto Risin' when you re-arrange the letters - was supposed to be the best witness against impeaching Donald J. Trump, in the House Intelligence Committee's hearings, but even though he didn't see anything wrong with Trump's contacts with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, he had to check with lawyers thrice over it.  He also added that U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland undercut the usual National Security Council leadership structure was subverted by Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, adding that he "decided to keep track of what Ambassador Sondland was doing. I didn’t necessarily always act on things Gordon suggested he believed were important."  And this was a witness Republicans wanted to have testify to get Trump off the hook.

Mr. Moto risin' . . .

Also, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman and Pence aide Jennifer Williams both said at they distinctly heard Trump try to force Zelensky into opening an investigation into the Bidens, and Vindman - an immigrant who made it clear that he was putting country over loyalty to Trump while expressing a heartfelt appreciation for his adopted homeland - said that Trump's actions were "inappropriate" and "likely to have significant implications" for national security. "I couldn’t believe what I was hearing," he said of the July 25 telephone call. "My worst fear of how our Ukraine policy could play out was playing out."

Mr. Moto risin' . . .

Also, Kurt Volker, Mr. Trump’s former special envoy to Ukraine - like Morrison, a witness Republicans asked for - said he was out of the loop with regard to Trump’s dealings with the Ukrainians, saying that he was unaware of "any linkage between the hold on security assistance and Ukraine pursuing investigations." He added that Trump's paranoia about the Biden issue and the conspiracy theory implicating Ukraine for meddling in the 2016 election were "not things that we should be pursuing as part of our national security strategy."

Got to keep on risin' . . .

But, when all is said and done, Trump will not only be acquitted, he will also be re-elected.  Because Mrs. Warren is rising.  Elizabeth Warren is rising in the polls in California and in a dead heat with Joe Biden, perhaps the only Democrat who could beat Trump - at least until Trump smeared him with such fantastic success.  Looks like Warren, while not an L.A. woman, will get the nomination with her own rise in California and lose to Trump badly next November for being way too liberal at a time when the Democrats need a moderate presidential candidate.

America is falling.

In Mammon We Trust

Marie Yovanovitch presented herself as a heroine in defending her tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine in her testimony to the House Intelligence Committee about how she saw that Trump's attempts to have Ukrainian corruption investigated was more about damaging Joe Biden (which some say he's succeeded in doing) than bringing good governance to the former Soviet republic.  Trump's efforts to discredit her on Twitter in real time while she was testifying - he bad-mouthed her entire career despite her impeccable credentials - opened him up to charges of witness tampering during a hearing on his own impeachment.  Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee were left dumbfounded.

Meanwhile, Trump operative Roger Stone was convicted yesterday of trying to stop the House probe into charges of Russian interference in the 2016 election, having been convicted on five felony counts of lying to investigators, one count of obstructing a congressional probe, and one count of witness tampering.

But, if not for the third event that took place yesterday, the first two would actually matter.  The third event was this: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 28,000 points for the first time ever.

The Dow - and the Nasdaq and the S&P as well - all closed at record highs yesterday thanks to news of an impending trade deal with China.  And, the Dow had set a record earlier in the week thanks to the launch of Disney's Disney Plus subscription video on-demand streaming service.  As long as the economy goes well enough for many people - especially regular voters, who are better off than people who don't vote regularly or don't vote at all - Trump is still a favorite for re-election, and if a progressive Democrat (or, in the case of Bernie Sanders, a progressive independent) is his opponent in the presidential election next November, hell, he could be the first President unanimously re-elected by the Electoral College since George Washington on 1792.  He might even carry the District of Columbia, thanks to all of the gentrification hat Washington, D.C. has undergone in recent years.  At the least, Trump could repeat in 2020 James Monroe's success of two hundred years earlier - only losing four electors, three of whom didn't vote and one of whom wrote in John Quincy Adams.   

Because, boys and girls, Americans don't really care about constitutional crises or the rule of law.   They only care about their own economic well-being.   One could argue - I'm surprised more people don't - that Nixon might have survived Watergate if the economy had been a whole lot better, without stagflation or an oil crisis going on.  Donald Trump, who boasts about the Dow ad infinitum, is counting on a booming stock market and admittedly misleading employment statistics to carry him to victory in 2020 by assuming that Americans are just as venal as he is.

And he's probably right.  As the British noted several years ago, we Americans have an uncanny knack for worshiping God and Mammon at the same time.  How else do you explain the motto "In God We Trust" on our currency?

Money . . . it's a hit . . . don't give me that do-goody-good bullsh-- . . .

The Impeachment Hearings

The U.S. House of Representatives hearings on whether or not to impeach Donald Trump begin today, and I may watch a bit of it., but I have to much personal stuff to take care of to, well, care.  And even if I didn't, I'm not very interested in following a story that I already know the ending to.  The Democratic House will impeach Trump, the Republican Senate will acquit him, and the Democratic presidential nominee will have a hard time defeating him in the 2020 election.  If it's Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, game over.

I've pretty much given up on political activism.  I just turned 54, and I haven't seen much if anything change for the better about These States in the thirty-odd years I've been out of college.  Just the fact that I've been referring to myself as being thirty-odd years out of college indicates how so little has changed in all that time in spite of the fact that so much has happened in all that time.  And now another impeachment process that will lead nowhere?  Like, here we go again.  

So how does it feel to be politically disengaged? Great.  I don't waste my time advocating for candidates for public office who aren't going to win, and I don't bother with causes that I know aren't going to bear any fruit.  Part of  the reason I'm concentrating more on urging Volkswagen of America to keep the base Golf in the U.S. market, which you all know about, is because I figure that at least is a fight I can win. 

Enjoy the impeachment process.  Wake me when it's over.  

Foreign Affairs

The killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, should have been triumph for Trump - as Trump supporters say, you can't spell "triumph" without "Trump" - and for America, but Trump somehow managed to turn this victory into a defeat.  He described al-Baghdadi's death in greater detail than he should have and said that he died like a dog, the sort of language that Arabs take as an insult - which means he just made a video for Islamic State recruitment.  Also, his failure to inform Nancy Pelosi or Charles Schumer and his thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin made it look like he put party over country . . . and another country over his own.  When he attended a World Series game between the Washington Nationals and the Houston Astros Sunday night - mere hours after announcing the death of al-Baghdadi - he was greeted by boos and chants of "Lock him up!,", meaning he's already spent the political capital he'd gained from this operation.

Trump supporters did their guy no favors by attacking Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a Ukraine expert who testified about Trump's dealings with Ukraine's president and expressed concern over how the arms sale to Ukraine - fighting a proxy war with Russian-backed separatists in the eastern provinces - came with strings attached for the Ukrainians and how Trump's demands for dirt on Joe Biden and his son jeopardized Ukrainian sovereignty and American national security.  Colonel Vindman was born in Ukraine when it was a Soviet republic and emigrated to the U.S. with his family.  Many Trumpers have questioned his patriotism, saying his concern for Ukrainian security betrayed a greater loyalty to his homeland than to his adopted country, a charge normally hurled against blacks for their advocacy for Africa or Hispanics for their concerns about Latin America.

There are two things wrong with that theory.  First of all, Colonel Vindman was three years old when his family emigrated to America.  Second, Colonel Vindman is Jewish.  European Jewish immigrants have no loyalty to their homelands because their homelands had no loyalty to them.  Jews in European countries recognize that they're not Germans, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians or anything like tht . . . they're Israelites who happen to live in one of those countries.  The pogroms and the Shoah made that painfully clear.  I don't now anything about Colonel Vindman's family, but I'll guess that anti-Semitism had as much to do with their departure from Ukraine as Soviet oppression.  Jews come to America because they feel safer here than anywhere else . . . and these nasty comments about the good colonel occurred almost a year to the day after the horrific synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. 

Trump supporters will stoop as low as possible to defend their guy.  Even Republicans like Liz Cheney found this attack on Colonel Vindman disgraceful.  Impeachment - and even removal from office - for Trump both just became more likely. 

The Week That Is (So Far)

Too much to keep up with, so I'll be brief . . .

The Democratic presidential debate two days ago (October 15) showed that, even if she's not really the front runner for the party's presidential nomination, Elizabeth Warren has surged to the point where she's being taken seriously.  All of the candidates - even Joe Biden - grilled her on her policies, specifically on how she'd pay for Medicare health coverage for anyone, and she ducked and weaved without ever answering the question.  Bernie Sanders - refreshed and ready to move on after his heart attack - as honest about it, saying that taxes would have to go up.  The fact that few if any candidates went after Biden suggests that he's through.  Not so.  Biden is still leading in a few polls and he's well ahead in South Carolina, and he projected strength and resolve in light of Donald Trump's attack on him and his son Hunter in a press conference the day after the debate in Ohio.  Hunter Biden himself was impressive in his interview with ABC's Amy Robach.  Both Bidens have gone a long way toward addressing the involvement or lack thereof in Ukrainian business dealings, but of course there are too many second-guessing skeptics who will say that they're not satisfied.

Even as impeachment is gaining support in light of Trump's mismanagement of a misguided effort to knock Biden out of the 2020 presidential campaign to make Warren the Democratic presidential nominee and give her the full McGovern next November, Trump  has mangled the carefully crafted U.S. Middle East policy to the point where the Turks have turned the Kurdish enclave in Syria into the greatest pocket of misery west of Bangladesh, and the Islamic State terrorist prisoners held there are escaping.  It took House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, during a White House meeting on Syria, to stand up - literally! -  to Trump over the matter in full fury while her male counterparts in the room bowed their heads for the shame if being there (stop pussy-whipping yourselves, guys), after which Pelosi - whom Trump called a third-rate politician - and Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer stormed out.  And yet Trump may survive all this despite bipartisan fury over his Syria policy simply because he supporters think a Kurd is something that cows chew.

Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings just died.  RIP. :-(  This could be a blow for House Democrats trying to make a case against impeachment that can persuade at least a few Senate Republicans to vote for conviction in a Senate trial.  Yes, yes, the House Oversight Committee will have a new chairman - I don't know who that would be - but, at this juncture, saying that the House Oversight Committee could get another chairman seems like saying that Led Zeppelin could get another drummer after John Bonham died. :-( 

Tell Me I'm Not Dreaming!

My, oh my, oh my, what have we here?

Donald John Trump, the man currently calling 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington his home, called the president of Ukraine to say that he could get the missiles he wanted for the Ukrainian armed forces provided he try to . . . dig up dirt on a political opponent?  And Trump's bragging about it?

In case you have been under a rock lately, Trump did just that, and a whistleblower who remains anonymous filed a compliant that the Trumpster was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" by trying to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the business dealings of Joe Biden's son and especially as to whether the former Vice President inappropriately intervened in Hunter Biden's affairs on his behalf.  Instead of getting Biden in hot water - who was in trouble already because of Elizabeth Warren's surge in Democratic presidential primary polls - Trump got himself into deep rhymes-with-voodoo.  This story was all Nancy Patricia Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, needed to allow a for an impeachment inquiry to go forward.  And although this allows House Democrats to get information they'd tried to obtain before on semi-unrelated matters, Pelosi is keeping the focus squarely on Trump's attempts to have Ukraine influence the 2020 presidential election - because the American people can understand that!

You know Trump is in trouble when even House Democrats from vulnerable swing districts - including my congresswoman, Mikie Sherrill - support an impeachment inquiry.  Thanks to Trump's brazenness, a majority of House members - not just a majority of House Democrats, a majority of House members (though all but one of them are Democrats) - now support the inquiry.  House Judiciary Committee Jerrold Nadler's investigation into Trump is no longer a sideline.  It's his main business. However, Adam Schiff, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, will be doing a good deal of heavy lifting, with this involving national security and all . . .

And we've already found out this much - Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr tried to lock down the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky call and remove it from the computer file where transcripts to calls to foreign leaders are stored.

And what does this all mean for Joe Biden?

Well, it depends on how he handles it.  Given that the American people are in no mood for a bold liberal experiment to make the United States more like a European country, with all of the nice things such a country has, Biden, whose most radical policy proposal is to modernize Amtrak, is likely still the best shot the Democrats have to beat Trump.  The stiff challenge he currently faces from Elizabeth Warren is less about his son's business dealings than it is about his own mistakes and missteps.  Bear in mind, though, that there is no evidence that Hunter Biden did anything wrong or that his dad tried to help him or obstruct justice in any way.  It's just a rumor.  And if it is in fact the case that there's nothing to see here, Biden should just come out and say so and then move on.

He didn't do so well, though, when a Fox News reporter asked him about Hunter and the former Vice President tried to do what Trump always does - change the subject.  I winced when he dodged the question, recalling Gary Hart's arrogant attempt to dodge the question as to whether he committed infidelity when reporter Paul Taylor asked it.  And if Biden wants to nip this in the bud, the last thing he should do is respond with a carefully crafted, lawyerly statement - as Hart had done with his sex scandal - because first of all, Biden is incapable of doing that anyway, and second of all, there'll likely be reporters who can find an opening to go after him on, as Paul Taylor did after Hart denied having done anything "immoral" with the future Trump supporter who went into his Washington townhouse.  ("Do you think adultery is immoral?"  "Yes."  "Have you ever committed adultery?"  You know the rest.)

My guess is that Biden will be fine.  After all, there's more evidence against Trump trying to get a foreign government to look into an alleged illegality on the Bidens' part than there is of the allegation.  Just as long as Biden's denial, whatever form it may take, isn't plagiarized from someone else.

Yes, I went there . . .

Oh, was there a United Nations General Assembly this week?