the shadow knows

I don't think either of the dawgs has as much interest in the proceedings of impeachment at I do, but there is nothing over the transom this morning and it helps me to keep what's going on in my mind to put it into writing and I feel that Beagles does not always get enough information to make a declaration so I consider this a favor for him.

The dems opening statements were calm and repetitive.  The nature of the charges against the prez are not that complicated and can easily be explained, and pretty well proved, within half an hour, and since people would be tuning in and out this seemed like a pretty good decision.  The problem was that it was pretty boring.  Who would listen to the whole thing?  When the reps made their opening statements I expected a lot of hooting and hollering like in the house, but I was strangely disappointed in that they were pretty calm.  Since they didn't want to touch the nuts and bolts of the charges with a ten foot pole, and since at that time they had their 51 votes in Moscow's breast pocket they just took to blasting the dems in general, current reps and sens, Obama, Hilary, Bill, the press, and whatever, mainly with a view of the watchful eye of their leader, hoping for a pat on their head.

And then along came John, 
Milk-mustached John
Strut-walking John
Straight-talking John
Along came enigmatic, book-writing, John.

And everything is different.  Previously the reps were adamant that Trump did not demand that Zalensky smear the Bidens before he would release money that congress had authorized.  It's hard to believe that anybody paying attention would not know at the drop of a hat that this was certainly what happened, but the reps had some convoluted theory that all evidence for that was second-hand and therefore worthless.  And then suddenly there was John's leaked manuscript.  Suddenly their tone shifted, now it became, well maybe Trump did try to strong arm Zalensky, but it was like no big deal, certainly not enough to impeach the prez, and towards the end, starring his tv lawyers, the drift became that impeachment itself was bad.  Regardless of whatever the prez has done it is bad to impeach him.  This was voiced most strongly by Starr who did not discuss his impeachment of Bill.

The deal now is should the senate call Bolton.  There appear to be three reps calling for it and murmuring from the crowd that may well indicate more.  Last night as I was retiring it seemed like almost a sure thing that there would be a fourth and Moscow would have to deal with the issue.  This morning it seems less so.

In the meantime today the sens will be submitting written questions to either the house or the Trump team.  Five minutes each, reps alternating with dems.  Kind of hohum stuff, but the shadow of strut-walking, straight-talking, John will hang over the proceedings.

I shall keep you posted.