NYT On The Impeachment Hearings

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   On the bright side, at least they do--seemingly grudgingly--represent the GOP's side of the argument, to some extent. It's not terribly complete nor objective, but they sketch it, at least. Objectivity's hard, and I don't blame them for not getting it exactly right...right (objective) by my lights, anyway...
   But they always err on the same side of things...well...since they helped herd us into the Iraq war, anyway...
   I haven't gone back and gone through the Ukraine call transcript with the care I ought to have. But I think it's fairly clear that:
1. It sounds terrible when (dishonestly) edited in the way we first got it.
2. It sounds waaay less terrible--but still not great--when read in full.
My own new-ish view of these things (adopted during the Clinton email scandal) is less clearly right: I don't think laypeople are in a very good position to judge these things, because we just do not know what such calls and such diplomacy are normally like. It doesn't look great to me--though it also doesn't look obviously damning (as the dishonestly-edited transcript did). But for all I know, diplomats with hundreds or thousands of hours worth of this sort of thing under their belts might say That's outrageous!...or might say...Meh...more-or-less bidness as usual.
   And, of course, both sides are bloody awful.
   Trump is...Trump. With all that entails. He's both sloppy and clueless enough to make such an error inadvertently, and loony and crooked enough to do it on purpose. Or so it seems.
   And the Dems have completely lost their goddammn minds, and have already cooked up one entirely fabricated, fantabulous, conspiracy theory that rabidly consumed them for two years. And did it for blatantly political reasons. And as soon as that turned out to be 100% hoaxtastic, they spit out this one without even missing a beat. I almost think we should laugh this one out of the room without even thinking about it, just because of that. Well, if it weren't so important, anyway.
   And the Trumpistas think that this is mostly a distraction to draw attention away from the fact that the DoJ is about to drop a bomb by revealing how dirty Russiagate: Origins really was.
   My guess, at this point, is that, basically, the conservatives are right yet again. Which should come as no surprise, given what we've seen over the past 5-ish years. Progressivism is unhinged--and now it's taken over the Democratic party. Why would it surprise anyone if they're wrong yet again? At any rate, I rather suspect that the red team is also right that this is largely intended to distract from the firestorm that's going to result from the Barr investigations. It sounds like there may be criminal charges against Comey and at least one other person.
   But obviously I could be completely wrong. If Trump hasn't done anything incredibly stupid and impeachable yet, I'd be pretty surprised.
   I do think it's pretty significant that Pelosi seems to be laying low on this one.