Damn
Y’all, I am not ready to talk about the Ken Paxton “verdict” yet. I am just too outraged, even for me. But, I will say this.
It was a damn goat rodeo. And, Democrats have to accept some blame in this situation.
First, you do not, repeat not, hire two lawyers well into their eighties to fight in a battle of mental agility. That’s what a courtroom is. Texas Democrats chose two guys who are all hat and … well hell, their damn cattle wandered off 15 years ago. They both embarrassed themselves and that’s a shame. Their whole trial plan and use of technology was a disaster.
Most importantly, Republicans in the senate sat there for two weeks listening to Paxton’s rampage of lawlessness and thought to themselves, “Well hell, I’ve done worse than that myself, or at least I’m planning to.” To people who think I’m being flippant about that, I’m most certainly not. Plus, I can think of at least two Democrats sitting in the Texas senate, and more in the House, who ought to be in jail themselves. So this isn’t a partisan thing.
I need more time to process this. Thanks for putting up with me.
And the mass media routinely fails to report how corruption won, democracy lost.
Washington Post example:
>>Texas attorney general acquitted in historic impeachment trial.
After a historic 10-day trial, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was acquitted Saturday by the state Senate on 16 charges of bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of office. He was immediately reinstated, ending a suspension that began in May with his impeachment by the state House.
The verdict could propel the conservative Republican’s political future at home and potentially on the national stage.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/16/texas-attorney-general-paxton-impeachment-verdict/
At least Republican TX Speaker of the House Dade Phelan issued a statement blasting Patrick for bias while presiding over the trial and calling out Paxton’s corruption.
Too little, too late though.
An alternative headline:
“16 TX Republican Senators banded together to ignore the testimony of Ken Paxton’s Republican friends, associates, appointees and employees to return the most corrupt AG in the country to power.” — Ron Filipkowski
1Certainly there are some corrupt bad apple Dem congress and other political critters, but the extent the Rthugs will go to protect their own is extreme. And dangerous to democracy. And poisoning everything. There’s always been some of that, but nothing like the last 5-6 years.
2I gave up on the Rethugs ever doing the right thing a long time ago. For every Liz Cheney, who stands up to tyrants, there is a Rethug voted out of office and replaced by someone even worse.
Do not expect otherwise and you won’t be disappointed.
3As soon as I heard that news, I thought of you! I came to check to see if you had said anything right off the bat … I can understand why you’ve held off!
4We feel the pain of corruption.
More info …
‘Scoop: How GOP pressured Texas senators over Paxton’s impeachment trial’
5https://www.axios.com/2023/09/17/ken-paxton-texas-impeachment-gop
Know how y’all feel, I followed the Paxton proceedings and am utterly disgusted. The Rethuglikan hypocrisy and corruption reeks from one side of Texass to the other.
And then this morning I watched Meet the Press, where the new host, Kristen Welker [Chuckles Todd bailed out] interviewed none other than Donnei J Trump for almost the entire program. She went after him better than anyone else that I’ve seen before.
JFC, what a lying corrupt sonuvabitch Mango Manboobs is. And hordes of your neighbors are his rabid acolytes.
Do NOT underestimate him or his cultists. He’s a lot smarter than most people think, cunning and devious, prevaricating and diverting at every turn.
Far more adept, and dare I say intelligent, than GW Bush, for example, but way below Obama, Biden and many others.
I’m definitely going to have a strong drink in a little bit. Been too nauseated so far today to imbibe some good rum [the ragweed kicked in yesterday and am miserable].
6RE: 6 So “Meet the Press” ran the interview allowing 45 to constantly lie, THEN later Xtweeted “Former President T***p made a spate of false and misleading comments about immigration, foreign policy, abortion and more in a wide-ranging interview with #MTP moderator Kristen Welker.” Then they put a link to a “fact check” review of the 45s words.
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-the-press/fact-checking-trump-meet-press-interview-rcna105297
Question to NBC: WHY are you airing 45s stream of lies in the first place?
7RE #7- NBC does it for ratings = more moolah
8Texas is now officially a third world state along with Alabama and Mississippi.
9I watched here in Detroit, what a shame, didn’t matter wife didn’t care? Different lawyers wouldn’t of helped! You got a big problem, NOW? Elections matter, BLACK LIVES MATTER!
10I think someone went around and showed Senators the pictures and reminded them they had the negatives.
11Never forget the outsized part the Southern Baptist Church has in all this, Dan Patrick and Paxton are heroes.
12It was fitting that a short thunderstorm hit my house in Austin about the time the Texas Senate got to the 12th vote and I started to lose the tiny bit of hope that I had harbored. Even the sky was crying. Another very sad day for integrity in the Texas legislature.
13The “impeachment trial” was for *show* – nothing else .
14lex @ 5
My favorite legal bombthrower, Liz Dye, endorses the Axios version.
But even if so, by now we need to consider whether impeachments, as such, are a bad idea. Alcee Hastings went from being impeache
15d off the bench to Congress.
Many generations ago, I did a paper on the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Though a favorite subject, for different reasons, of both liberal and conservative ruminators, the bottom line was that as a matter of policy, it was ineffective.
It is difficult to think of any impeachment, eitherresulting in conviction or not, that in retrospect seems to hav
16e been effective.
(I apologize for the fractured comment; my finger keeps hitting a function key on my smart keyboard that I did not know about.)
17Roy Cohn, Combover Crime Lord’s consiligiere, supposedly said he didn’t care what the law was. He cared who the judge was. Danny Goeb, a.k.a. Dan Patrick, was the judge in this case and illustrates Cohn’s dictum perfectly.
On top of that, Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers have paid a pretty penny to buy themselves a lapdog legislature, and it paid off handsomely in this case. I held out so much hope for this impeachment, but – looking back – I see I was hopelessly naive.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/05/texas-fracking-billionaire-brothers-prageru-daily-wire
About the best we can hope for at this point is that “reasonable” NSGOPers like Dade Phalen, Liz Cheney, Joe Strauss, et al, will face the fact that their party is broken and abandon it for a third party.
18What I don’t get about this whole deal is that it was the GOP speaker of the house essentially spearheading this thing to get it moving. Surely he knew how this would turn out. So, why did he go through with this? Was this a shot across the bough? Was this a giant middle finger of “I’m going to try to make you sweat?” What was the purpose of it all?
19My thought on why they did this fake impeachment thing was so when he was acquitted they could say “see, he’s not guilty of any of anything.” Now he’s free to move up to bigger crimes, run for president, etc., and you know, do what Rthug politicians do for a living. Nothing useful.
20Are we sure this wasn’t a test of our tolerance of very off center verdicts? Having the facts and suppositions I had about what Paxton was up to in TX, I came to the conclusion that this man might just be guilty OF something. Watching the trial was very much like Juanita said, watching paint dry and both sides lawyers cases were just as clear as milk to me. But, and I tremble in saying, is this what we have to look forward to in the most lying, scheming, gawd awfulest FG’s trials?? Will he walk out of court smiling his smamy smile saying, See?, I did nothing wrong. I do honestly believe that will be the last straw and some of the most gun hating people in America will probably be lining up to take their Rights back!!
21Please don’t let this be a preview of very bad things to come.
1. Who is more trustworthy than a Texas Ranger?
David Maxwell’s words alone were enough to convict Ken
2. Who would want to go to work for Ken?
3. Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers are going to demand their investment back and you and I are going to pay the price in decisions unfavorable to the average Texas taxpayer.
22Harry Eagar @ 15 Thanks for info! I came across the article while surfing the internet. Seemed reliable so passed it on.
23I’m afraid this was a forgone conclusion.
However, I understand the Feds have taken an interest, which I hope is true and if so, should be interesting.
I still want to know who pays Paxton’s 3.3million $ judgement.
24Unfortunately we did Kate.
25So the next time an Rthug TX politician says “your tax money at work”, you’ll know what they mean. Ain’t going toward helping you.
26