(1) Rebuke of Pelosi by Gen. Berger did not happen(2) Man in winter hat stirred protestors?(3) Viking posed With Michael Voss (Pelosi's Son-In-Law); but Voss is a foreign correspondent for Dutch TV(4) Congress has no constitutional authority to impeach ex-President(5) Trump's second impeachment risks giving US a 'stab in the back' narrative(6) After January 6, will US continue to promote Color Revolutions?(1) Rebuke of Pelosi by Gen. Berger did not happenFrom: Brian Kearsey <Kearsey@Comcast.net>Subject: RE: Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, is a Climate activist, Covid  sceptic,and anti-Lockdown activistThe rebuke of Pelosi by Gen. Berger may be false. I find Snopes to be deviously biased, relatively seldom being caught red-handed in a lie, they seem to generally limit their bias to any gray areas they can find cover in to generate a false sense of trustability. In any case, here's their take on the claim:https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/marines-corps-rebuke-pelosi/(2) Man in winter hat stirred protestors?From: "Javier Ortiz" <javier.ortiza@ehu.eus>Hello Peter,About Capitol protests scenary.Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvqvvsqJ_sIt is  Joshua Phillip (Crossroads) interview with Masako Ganaha  japanesereporter who analyses the video just when Ashli Babbit was killed.There are at least, two person with a suspicious behavior.These persons are the most active persons who broke the window with a helmetjust before Ashli Babbit was shot.It is very easy to verify these persons identity and historial.It is assured that they are not Trump supporters but Antifa or BLMsupporters.Comment (Peter M>):In the video, Masako Ganaha says that Andy Ngo called Jayden X (John Sullivan) 'Antifa'.I did Google Searches on Ngo's site, for "jayden x" and for "sullivan":Your search - "jayden x" site:https://www.andy-ngo.com/ - did not match any documents.Jan 17 2121, 4.21am AESTYour search - "sullivan" site:https://www.andy-ngo.com/ - did not match any documents.In addition, Andy Ngo denied that Antifa partipated in the Capitol riot:https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/expert-andy-Ngo-it-wasnt-antifa-at-the-capitol-riotsExpert Andy Ngo: It wasn't antifa at the Capitol riotsby Paul Bedard, Washington Secrets Columnist |   | January 06, 2021 06:40 PMJournalist Andy Ngo, who has become an expert on the violent anarchist group antifa, today dismissed claims by President Trump's supporters that the group was behind the pro-Trump riots on Capitol Hill."The people occupying the Capitol building do not look like antifa people dressed in Trump gear or Trump costumes," he said in an interview from England."I have seen no evidence that they are able to coordinate a mass infiltration on this scale before, so I'm really skeptical that they would have been able to do it here without any of that information leaking out," he said.(3) Viking posed With Michael Voss (Pelosi's Son-In-Law); but Voss is a foreign correspondent for Dutch TVFrom: Andrew S MacGregor <ama18870@bigpond.net.au>https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2021/01/fact-check-pelosi-son-in-law-qanon-shaman.htmlFact Check: Photo Of Nancy Pelosi's Son-in-Law Michiel Vos Meeting Horned QAnon Supporter Is Real But Part of His Correspondent Job  Jan 7, 2021  by: Maarten SchenkFact Check: Photo Of Nancy Pelosi's Son-in-Law Michiel Vos Meeting Horned QAnon Supporter Is Real But Part of His Correspondent Job ReporterDid a photo show Michiel Vos, son-in-law of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, meeting the shirtless, horned QAnon supporter who was widely mistaken for an Antifa activist during the January 6 events and is that a sign the two were in cahoots somehow?No, that's not true: the photo showing Vos next to Jake Angeli (aka "QAnon Shaman") was real, but besides being married to Pelosi's daughter Alexandra, Vos is also the foreign correspondent for several Dutch television shows and he regularly covers events in Washington D.C., which is what he was doing on January 6, 2021 as House and Senate prepared to certify the election results. [...]Vos appearing in pictures with people in Washington is totally what you would expect for a foreign correspondent. For example here you can see him meet President Trump: [...](4) Congress has no constitutional authority to impeach ex-Presidenthttps://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/congress/the-house-impeached-trump-again-but-what-about-the-trialThe House impeached Trump again, but what about the trial?by  | January 14, 2021 11:00 PMThe horrific events at the Capitol on Jan. 6 left House Democrats determined to impeach President Trump quickly, and they did so on Jan. 13 with the help of 10 Republicans, 232-197.But legal scholars and senators are debating whether the Senate can follow through with the customary impeachment trial and vote on whether to convict Trump since lawmakers won't even consider the matter until Trump is out of office."The Senate does indeed have the power to conduct a Senate impeachment trial after the president leaves office," Michael Gerhardt, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, told the Washington Examiner. "The Constitution does not place a time limit when a trial must be held, and there are three previous impeachments and trials that were done after officials left office. That's a strong foundation for the trial to proceed on Jan. 21."Many legal scholars and Democrats agree with Gerhardt, but it may not be that simple.The House impeachment article accuses Trump of inciting an insurrection. The charge stems from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that left five people dead, dozens injured, and the Capitol damaged. Lawmakers claim Trump stirred up a mob of angry supporters at a rally contesting the intent of Congress to certify the results for President-elect Joe Biden, the winner of the Nov. 3 presidential election. A large crowd of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, overpowering police and taking over the building for hours.While the Democratic-controlled House was able to call up and pass the impeachment resolution just one week later, the Senate has remained out of session and won't reconvene until Jan. 19.Under Senate impeachment rules, House Democrats could exhibit the article before the Senate on Jan. 19 at the earliest, and Senate lawmakers would consider the matter one or two days later.That means Senate consideration would not start until 1 p.m. on Jan. 20, an hour after Trump's presidency ends. Senate Democrats that day will assume the majority after Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is sworn into office and can vote to break ties in the new 50-50 Senate.The leaders of the incoming Senate Democratic majority have signaled they'll quickly hold a trial.But some legal experts say the Constitution does not address the impeachment of ex-presidents, although in this case, Trump was impeached by the House while still in office.However, as a private citizen, Trump would not enjoy the same protections to aid him during a trial, such as taxpayer-funded lawyers and other privileges enjoyed by a sitting president. And it is not clear who would preside over a Senate trial.The Constitution calls for the chief justice of the Supreme Court to oversee a Senate trial of a sitting president and makes no mention of an ex-president's trial.J. Michael Luttig, a former judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit (1991 to 2006), argued in the Washington Post that senators will run into legal challenges if they attempt to convict Trump to prevent him from holding office again."Once Trump's term ends on January 20, Congress loses its constitutional authority to continue impeachment proceedings against him, even if the House has already approved articles of impeachment," Luttig wrote.Democrats, and probably a few Republicans, hope that by impeaching and convicting Trump, they can block him from any future election to higher office.But Luttig said Article I, Section 3 indicates that the Senate could only stop Trump from holding public office if it removes him as a sitting president."It is a constitutional impeachment of a president that authorizes his constitutional disqualification," Luttig wrote.Some senators have already questioned the legality of a post-presidency trial.Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, is among the Republicans who opposed Trump's impeachment in the House and say a Senate trial is unconstitutional."The Senate lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against a former president," Cotton said. "The founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office — not an inquest against private citizens. The Constitution presupposes an office from which an impeached officeholder can be removed."Even if the Senate holds a trial, it may be difficult to convict Trump of the impeachment article because a two-thirds majority is needed. That means 17 Republicans would have to side with Democrats if all of them vote to convict. So far, only a small handful of Republicans appear likely to vote to convict.It could end up before the Supreme Court, Luttig argued."It is highly unlikely the Supreme Court would yield to Congress's view that it has the power to impeach a president who is no longer in office when the Constitution itself is so clear that it does not," Luttig wrote.(5) Trump's second impeachment risks giving US a 'stab in the back' narrativehttps://www.rt.com/op-ed/512448-trump-second-impeachment-germany-1919/Trump's second impeachment risks giving half the US a 'stab in the back' narrative like that which took hold in Germany in 1919Scott Ritter13 Jan, 2021 20:45The rushed proceedings against Donald Trump are not about accountability, but a politicized act of theater that will deepen the ideological chasm which divides America today and drag us ever closer to the suicide of the Union.One hour into the two-hour debate, it became abundantly clear that President Donald Trump was destined to become the first American President ever to be impeached twice. From the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, on down, this point was repeated, as if the political ignominy derived from that fact constituted the worst thing that could happen to a person. But this posturing was more than countered by the rhetorical responses from the Republicans, who did not defend the President so much as attack the process underway in the House of Representatives as little more than a hypocritical act of politicized point scoring.The Republicans, it was clear, did not view the first impeachment effort, which failed to gain a conviction, as a legitimate exercise of governance, and as things stand it looks as if the vast majority of them feel the same about the current undertaking. Rather than looking at the efforts of House Democrats to paint the President with a scarlet letter of shame, the Republicans are treating the attack of Trump as an attack against themselves and those they represent, as and such view it more like a badge of courage.The Articles of Impeachment levied against Donald Trump are serious charges derived from one of the darkest days in American political history—the storming and subsequent occupation of the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2020, by thousands of pro-Trump demonstrators who had assembled in Washington, DC to protest what they and the President believed was the certification by the US Congress of a fraudulent election which denied Trump a second four-year term in office. At the time of the attack, Congress sat in a joint session presided by the Vice President, Mike Pence, to carry out the tasks mandated by the 12th Amendment of the US Constitution regarding the counting of the votes of the Electoral College. There is little doubt that the timing of the action targeting the US Capitol was designed to disrupt this counting, making it, by definition, an act of sedition.An act of sedition, in and of itself, is one of the most serious crimes with which an American citizen can be charged. While not meeting the Constitutional definition of treason, it is a treasonous act which requires a decisive response. This is even more so when the person accused of sedition is a sitting President of the United States. The Constitution of the United States provides Congress with a remedy for such a crime—impeachment. The impeachment hearing convened by Speaker Pelosi is ostensibly for this purpose—to hold the President accountable for his actions.The problem confronting Pelosi and her democratic colleagues, however, is that they themselves have muddied the political waters surrounding President Trump as to make any legitimate impeachment exercise appear little more than an act of political revenge. As their Republican counterparts repeatedly noted in their impassioned replies to the Democrat's vehement accusations, the problems which befell America were not created on a single day—January 6—but rather had their roots in a politicized process of delegitimizing the 2016 election of Donald Trump that began 19 minutes after he was sworn in as President.Most if not all the Republicans were voted into office by an electorate that had been repeatedly denigrated by senior Democrats. Whether it was Barack Obama's 2008 dismissal of working class Americans as "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them…as a way to explain their frustrations," or Hillary Clinton's infamous 2016 gaffe, where she declared that "you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," calling them "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it," and noting that Trump "has lifted them up."The House Democrats clamoring for the second impeachment of Donald Trump have applied a similar broad brush to all Americans—by last count, over 75 million—who voted for him in 2020. They ignore at their own peril the second half of Hillary Clinton's statement, where she noted that the other half of Trump's supporters "feel that the government has let them down" and are "desperate for change. Those are people," she declared, "we have to understand and empathize with as well."For many Republican voters, Donald Trump was the first politician who resonated with them, for whatever reason. Their vote for him was more a rejection of Hillary Clinton's Democratic Party and the mainstream Republican establishment than it was a well-reasoned decision linked to specific policies. Trump "felt" right, and they "felt" better by supporting him. The notion that these voters somehow turned on Trump after four years of uneven governance was belied by the fact that 12 million more Americans voted for him in 2020 than in 2016. The Trump phenomenon was, and is, real.Donald Trump deserves due process. The very Constitution the Democrats claim he assaulted requires it. The current proceedings, built as they are on a foundation of political extortion (Pelosi's effort to compel Vice President Pence into invoking the 25th Amendment), is a purely political act designed to destroy the political viability of Donald Trump and the movement he led. Because the Democrats are seeking revenge as much or more than they seek justice, their efforts are doomed to fail.Logic dictates that the political equivalent of Newton's Third Law of physics—for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction—applies in full effect here. The only outcome from this exercise can be more backlash and division, belief and desire are not mutually exclusive; the Democrats are blinded by their hatred for Trump and his "deplorables" to such an extent that normal causal analysis is foregone. The Democrats smell blood, and are moving in for the kill, not realizing that they are heading into a trap of their own making.To better understand the nature of this trap, one only needs to turn to the history pages. In 1918, the German Army was defeated on the field of battle. Censorship and the dissemination of false and misleading information blinded the German population to this reality. They did not trust the words of their elected officials because there was no viable evidentiary proof presented of this defeat, leading to a cognitive dissonance that produced an outright denial of their military debacle. This mindset was furthered by statements made by German leaders to returning soldiers that "no enemy has vanquished you." Thus was born the "stab in the back" legend from which the Nazi party of Adolf Hitler drew its motivation and strength.In 2020, Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection. Four years of anti-Trump resistance at the hands of the Democrats in Congress, combined by an anti-Trump bias in the mainstream media, had conditioned Trump supporters to be distrustful of these election results. The post-election censorship of any discussion regarding the legitimacy of the 2020 election result only fuels the mistrust and misgivings of Trump's supporters. This suspicion was furthered by the repeated statements of the President and his supporters that the election was stolen from them.America is teetering on the edge of a political abyss which, once crossed, there will be no coming back. If 75 million Americans believe that their political future is being nullified by vengeful politicians in Congress, then the ideological foundation is being laid for the birth of an American "stab in the back" legend which will produce a divided nation incapable of ever being reunited.The House Democrats have ignored this possibility, to the detriment of the nation. Having presided over a kangaroo court seeking a politicized rush to judgement, the House of Representatives will now turn the matter over to the US Senate for the conduct of a trial. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, is calling for a trial and conviction to take place prior to the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, 2021. The Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, would do well to resist this call.Once the President has left office, the Senate can undertake the kind of evidence-based deliberations that the House ignored. Such a trial should examine every aspect of the conditions leading up to the events of January 6, 2020. Only in doing so can the United States avoid the trap of breathing life into a "stab in the back" theory that will only grow over time, condemning the American experiment in representative democracy to a self-fulfilling prophesy of its own demise.(6) After January 6, will US continue to promote Color Revolutions?https://indianpunchline.com/no-matter-impeachment-2-0-trumpism-haunts-america/JANUARY 14, 2021 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMARNo matter Impeachment 2.0, Trumpism haunts AmericaJanuary 13, 2021."My crown I am, but still my griefs are mine. You may my glories and my state depose but not my griefs; still I am king of those." (King Richard in William Shakespeare's Richard II)For the outside world Trump Impeachment 2.0 can only appear as a kangaroo trial. A better way for the American lawmakers would have been to pass a law that the US shall never ever promote "colour revolution" abroad or at home. The US has destroyed so many countries by inciting their peoples to besiege established governments and force them to capitulate to drag them into its orbit. Are they to be called "insurrections"?On top of it, president-elect Joe Biden is reportedly all set to reward one of the US' most successful promoters of insurrections abroad in modern times by appointing her as the new Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in his administration — Victoria Nuland.Nuland has been photographed distributing sandwiches to the 'insurrectionists' camping in tents on Kiev city square in the winter of 2013-2014 and she has been caught on tape abusing the European Union for impeding her project. All that doesn't seem to perturb Biden or Nancy Pelosi. What rank hypocrisy!This ongoing project to impeach President Donald Trump for a second time in a little over a year is farcical. This will be the first time in the 231-year history of the United States that a president has been impeached twice in his term.What happened in Washington, DC, on January 6 was by no means an insurrection. Of course, US citizens were behind the Capitol Building siege. But the parallel ends there. There was no way they could have usurped power in America last Wednesday. In fact, even the vandalism was entirely due to the ineptness of the security personnel deployed there.The BBC has carried a factual/analytical report on what Trump had said at the "Save America" rally organised to challenge the election result near the White House. The explosive quotes are as follows: 'We won this election, and we won it by a landslide' / 'We will stop the steal' / 'We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen'/ 'If you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore' / 'Peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard' / 'We are going to the Capitol.'Were they so very incendiary as to destroy the US political system? Can Trump be removed from office or banned from politics for saying the above? The BBC sought the opinion of the eminent American legal scholar and professor of law at the University of Baltimore, Garrett Epps. Prof. Epps concludes, "In the end, I think it's a jury question."In the best case scenario, the jury should be the American people. In the proposed impeachment, on the other hand, this case can be dismissed by the 100-member US senate body, which will sit as a jury presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. The outcome of that trial will be known only after Biden's inauguration.The Democrats dearly hope that unlike a year ago when the Republican vote rallied solidly behind Trump, this time around, the political mood may change now that he is out of power. In the House of Representatives yesterday, 10 Republican members broke ranks to support the impeachment resolution. (Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House and daughter of former Vice-President Dick Cheney, was the most notable defection.) Reports suggest there might be similar happenings during the impeachment on the Senate floor. Axios reports that even Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reserves judgement until the trial is concluded.In reality, what is on trial is "Trumpism". The odds are stacked against Trump. He's been silenced from the omnipotent social media, including his pet Twitter account. But the public opinion polling suggests that he still has a significant well of support within his party. The Democrats who fear Trump may rise like a Phoenix out of the ashes in 2024, are hoping to to deliver a lasting knockout to him, banishing him from America's public life, stripping him of his right to contest elections in future. This is the real agenda of the political game playing out in Capitol Hill.What happened to American exceptionalism? In the most recent years, many other western democracies have faced such a quandary of the alienated public being drawn toward the heady cocktail of populism and nationalism of the sort Trump patented — in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Greece. Indeed, nationalism has been a recurring feature across Europe's political spectrum and there has been a recent boom in voter support for right-wing and populist parties, out of anger and frustration with the political establishment over perceived dilution of national identity, economic deprivation and inequality, etc.But Europe preferred to take the democratic route to meet the challenge. Germany's is a case in point. Angela Merkel didn't panic. And the latest poll by the Kantar research institute suggests that in just a year, the far-right populist AfD has dropped from first to third position in eastern Germany — the party's longtime stronghold. On the other hand, far-right has also become the "new normal", the ruling party in Austria, Poland and Hungary.Fundamentally, if the European option is not open to the US, that is because of its skewed democracy where politics is disconnected from the masses and is conducted by cabals within the two parties' establishments.Herein lies the danger. What is the guarantee that another Trump will not arise from outside the cabals that preside over politics in America and reaches out to the people directly? The fact of the matter is that Trump's support base still remains the envy of any American politician. Seventy million Americans voted for him last November. That massive support base will feel further disenfranchised or disempowered by what the cabals are perpetrating on the Capitol Hill.The real paradox is that the "mob" who besieged the Capitol building was largely drawn from the American middle classes — the petite bourgeoisie or the 'transitional class,' as Karl Marx described them, in whom the interests of the major classes of capitalist society — the bourgeoisie and the proletariat — meet and become blurred, and which is located between these two classes in terms of its interests as well as its social situation.The concentration and centralisation of capital in America has eventually thrown the petite bourgeoisie into the ranks of the increasingly immiserated working class (proletariat), but it continues to defy not only the elimination but also the neat categorisation into the proletariat. The values the petite bourgeoisie represents — of entrepreneurship at the grass-roots level, self-help, individualism, family, and careful husbanding of resources — are such that despite being buffeted by recessions, loss of jobs and unemployment and mounting bankruptcies, it continues to provide a stereotyped model of past virtues. This class is progressive only in a limited sense.Make no mistake, this class is here to stay in America and if the post-pandemic economic recovery does not go brilliantly well or is mismanaged, its ranks will swell further. That is going to be Biden's real challenge even if Pelosi were to dispatch Trump into political wilderness.