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I always thought if I ever started a rock group I'd call it "The Original Artists". That way when we sold our cheap imitation copies of songs we could always say - "they're by the original artists." :-)

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I've been watching some of the current impeachment stuff going on.

A lot of it's boring.

Some people harken back to "Tricky Dick" Nixon and Watergate.

I can see that - in both cases the President was trying to corrupt an upcoming election - 1972 and 2020.

Nixon never involved a foreign power, which I think makes it much worse. It's bad enough when my fellow citizens put some idiot in White House - but I don't like it when foreigners do that :-)

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To me, this all reminds me more of the 1994 O.J. Simpson murder trial. Certainly there are differences - but similar in form.

Everybody knew O.J. "did it" - he certainly acted like he "did it" with that crazy slow speed get-away chase at the beginning.

So his "dream team" of lawyers had to throw a lot of sand in everybody's eyes to confuse them.

They claimed DNA was "junk science", that the police planted at least some of the blood evidence and worst of all that they had tape recordings of police Detective Mark Fuhrman using the "N" word a hundred times or so after he had sworn, under oath, that he never talked like that - ever.

Of course none of that had ANYTHING to do with whether O.J. sliced up his ex-wife and Ron Goldman or not - but it did cause the jury to think there must be some "reasonable doubt" and they acquitted him.

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The same thing's true with Trump. Everybody knows he "did it" - heck, he's on the transcript "doing it" - read the transcript.

So his defenders aren't arguing that he's "innocent" - they can't - because he actually "did it".

So his "dream team" of lawyers has to throw a lot of sand in everybody's eyes to confuse them.

The process isn't fair, the House acted improperly, he's not getting "due process", and so on and so forth - blah-blah-blah.

Or - sure he "did it" and what he did would be a felony in a court of law - but "it doesn't rise to being an impeachable offense".

How does that work?

Don't lose sight of the real issue here:
The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of his political opponents.

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Anyway, like O.J. I think Trump is going to skate on this.

These lam-o Democrats keep bringing a knife to a gun fight.

They keep thinking that one more witness, one more e-mail, one more document is going to make everybody stop and say "Gee whiz, he really did it - he really must be impeached."

What they don't seem to get is that Trump's 40% base doesn't care that he "did it". They know he did it. They truly don't care that he "did it".

It sort of proves Trump's claim, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, okay, and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?" Trump said at a rally in Sioux Center, Iowa as the audience laughed. "It's, like, incredible."

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I call it the "Al Capone" effect.

Al Capone, "Scarface", was a brutal gangster who ruled Chicago in the 1920s.

Capone was most certainly responsible for the St. Valentine's Day massacre in which a bunch of his thugs machine gunned a bunch of his rival's thugs.

Supposedly he also once beat a guy's head in with a baseball bat at a reception at a hotel - just to show what happens to anybody that crosses him.

But Capone skated on all his violent crimes. (He was eventually arrested for income tax evasion and died of complications from untreated syphilis and a stroke).

We like to think we're civilized adult men and women, who believe in "law and order" and the "rule of law" and that "nobody is above the law" - but we all know we're full of baloney :-)

The reality is we love these guys. They do stuff, and get away with stuff we can only fantasize about. And we love to see that.

These guys are secret folk heroes to us, like Robin Hood, only they rob from everybody and only give to themselves :-)

That's why there's three "Godfather" movies and a multitude of other gangster films going back to the 1930s. We love these guys.

Trump's followers not only know he "did it", I think they're almost sexually aroused that he "did it" - and will get away with it.

They love that. They're not going to impeach him.

Ya, Trump is going to skate.

At least it will make for a great movie ...

Someday :-)

Just my opinion - take it or leave it :-)

Stay Jazzed!
--Tom Swezey 



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