Yesterday I caught a bit of the impeachment theatre en route to a lunchtime speaking engagement. To be honest, if they'd come round and performed it live in my hotel room, I'd still have fled. If universally respected eminent lifelong career foreign-service bigshots Bill Taylor and George Kent are Adam Schiff's star witnesses, their chief purpose seems to be to get Democrats pining for the charisma of Bill de Blasio and the self-effacement of John Kerry.
In a functioning system, the head of the government sets foreign policy and the diplomats enact it. So naturally there's not a chance of that in Washington. When Taylor and Kent whine that there seemed to be a "shadow foreign policy", the shadow is theirs; they spent a day testifying that everything had been going ticketty-boo for decades just as they'd always done things - and then Trump came along and took a different view. Oh, my! Anyone would think that, as Barack Obama once proposed, "elections have consequences".
First up was George Kent, the "Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus". He warmed up the crowd with some extensive biographical material about the "nearly sixty years" of George Kents (I believe he's George III or some such) who have "chosen" to endow America with the blessings of their "public service". It didn't help that he wore a bow tie. Eventually he stopped talking about himself and started talking about Ukraine:
Our strategic aim for the entirety of my foreign service career is not possible without a Ukraine whole, free, and at peace, including Crimea and Donbas, territories currently occupied by Russia.
Crimea is, of course, familiar to anyone who's read "The Charge of the Light Brigade":
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to do or die...
Or, in the case of low-level diplomats who've never had a single conversation with the President, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or tender their resignations after first ensuring that their pensions won't be affected. Instead:
Into the valley of the SCIF
Rode the six hundred hearsay witnesses...
As I said, any Tom, Dick or Harry can bandy Crimea, but it takes a career striped-pants Foggy Bottom public servant to toss in "Donbas" with gay abandon. It would have been interesting to see whether Adam Schiff or anyone else in the room could have found Donbas on a map. The odds of pinning the tail on the Donbas blindfolded are better. It's bordered to the north, east and south-east by Russia, so it's akin to the Russian foreign ministry regarding northern Mexico as a vital national-security interest of Moscow's.
In fact, northern Mexico is a vital national-security interest of America's, but, under the mass wankerization of public policy, Perma-Beltway cares more about the borders of Ukraine than it does about the borders of the United States.
The proper response to George Kent bleating about "our strategic aim for the entirety of my foreign service career" is to advise him to join the Council on Foreign Relations and write a widely unread book. Instead, Kent rode on deeper into the valley of delusion:
Ukraine is on a path to become a full security partner of the United States within NATO.
By "full security partner", that means that, if Quebec annexes New Hampshire, Ukraine will be obligated to come to America's defense. It also means that the next time Putin invades Donbas America will be going to war with Russia:
We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too
We've fought the Bear before, and while we're Yankees true
The Russians shall not have ...er, Donbas.
If you're wondering why that's in America's interest, fellow highly esteemed - or at least highly self-esteemed - foreign-service grandee William Taylor was there to second the motion:
Ukraine is a strategic partner of the United States, important for the security of our country.
Does any rational person believe either half of that sentence? Ukraine is endemically corrupt and its principal exports are, to London and Paris "escort" agencies, its comely if unibrowed blondes and, to America, Hunter Biden's monthly stipend. Ukraine is a "strategic partner" of the Biden Family trust fund, and one can see that it might be inconvenient for sleazy corrupt princelings thereof to have to find new oligarchs to be on the take from. But out there in America Trump was elected because Americans think "the security of our country" starts on the Rio Grande not the Donets.
We all sympathize with the Ukrainian people. They've had it tough. They used to be "The Ukraine", but some oligarch filched their definite article and smuggled it to Cyprus to pay for a "business associate" of Hunter's to get a ski chalet in Courchevel. Nevertheless, some of us think that a self-governing people has the right to have the lawfully elected head of the executive branch make his own foreign policy, even for a full vital indispensable security partner such as Ukraine. If Ukrainian policy can never be changed, what's the point of elections?
Finally, I would like to register an objection to ambassadors called "Bill". Say what you like, but fourteen years ago, during a previous round of Democrat obstructionism, the self-regarding Foggy Bottom tosspots at least came with monikers worthy of their status. From my column of April 2005:
Norman Lear, who produced all those critically acclaimed issue-confronting heroine-gets-an-abortion '70s sitcoms that seem a lot more dated than "The Beverly Hillbillies" these days, has now produced a People For the American Way ad in which a man who identifies himself as a "common sense Republican" objects to any attempt to end the Democratic filibuster of Bush's judicial nominees. As things turn out, the "common sense Republican" has so much common sense he's an official with a union that endorsed John Kerry.
Then there's the 59 striped-pants colossi of the Nixon-Ford-Reagan State Department who've sent a letter to the Senate calling on them to reject John Bolton's nomination as U.N. ambassador. According to the Associated Press report, the signatories include:
"Princeton Lyman, ambassador to South Africa and Nigeria under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; Monteagle Stearns, ambassador to Greece and Ivory Coast in the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations; and Spurgeon Keeny Jr., deputy director of the Arms Control Agency in the Carter administration."
Princeton Lyman? Monteagle Stearns? Spurgeon Keeny Jr.? If Norman Lear's shows had wacky characters like that, they'd still be in syndication. It's a good rule of thumb that anything 59 economists, bureaucrats or diplomats are prepared to sign an open letter objecting to is by definition a good thing. But that goes double when the 59 panjandrums lined up against you are Princeton Monteagle Jr., President Nixon's ambassador to the Spurgeon Islands; Spurgeon Monkfish III, President Ford's ambassador to the Lyman Islands; Dartmouth Monticello IV, President Johnson's personal emissary to His Serene Highness the Monteagle of Keeny; Columbia Long-Playing-Album, the first diplomat to be named by President Carter to the State Department's Name Control Agency; and Vasser Peachy-Keeny, the first woman to be named Vasser Peachy-Keeny. One sees their point, of course: Let a fellow called "John" Bolton become ambassador and next thing you know Earl and Bud will want the gig.
Even Senator John Danforth, who should know better, got in on the act, taking half a page in the New York Times to give the Full Monteagle to the "religious right."
And yet impeachment is dependent on guys named Bill and George? Où sont les Monteagle Spurgeons d'antan?
~Mark will be back tonight on the telly with Tucker, live across America at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific.
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The glorious wit and wisdom of Mark Steyn! This was HILARIOUS!!! Thank you so so so much - you are a blessing to the world.
I looked at a Salon column on the Monteagle Keen Striped-Pants letter, and one of the things 59 former diplomats had a problem with was Bolton's "insistence that the U.N. is valuable only when it directly serves the United States" which, according to Salon, would "make it difficult for him to negotiate with other U.N. representatives from other nations."
Salon also said
"Central to the concern over Bolton's nomination is his dismissive view of the United Nations itself. In a panel discussion in 1994, Bolton declared that 'there is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, that's the United States, when it suits our interests, and when we can get others to go along.' Bolton said that the 'mindless creation of the United Nations as something different than what is in the United States' interest to do isn't gonna sell here or anywhere else.' "
So Bolton would make an awful Ambassador FROM the UN to the US. He was simply not loyal to the UN at all. Of course, he was being nominated as the American Ambassador TO the UN, so he's not supposed to be loyal to the UN, any more than the Ambassador to the Ukraine is supposed to be loyal to it.
The two diplomats remind me very much if other State Dept career officials I've met. There is a type. They are able to speak very fluently, at any length and without notes, while conveying a sense of seriousness, importance, and erudition, ungrounded to any identifiable higher principles or passions. As this is all they can do, they may represent the greatest waste of very expensive educations on the planet.
Mark
First, Great take off of the Metro stop name. Now that it's Bribery I sense that the Dem party is going through the alphabet so constituencies can pick their poison. Eventually they can become so possessed the the Coasts who will always vote Dem will stay with them but the moderates can say "you are crazy" against the shrill and get reelected for abandoning them. As I listen to focus groups some will say the border, the children, some will say DACA, I think if the President takes a moment now and then to offer an order to offer support for each one as they come along he can win over the feelings of the suburban Moms who,don't like his presentation style, that is NEW YORK in your FACE.
Bless the West sez President Peng as he picks out which bow tie to wear for the 2024 swearing in.
Unreal. What a joke. I caught Tucker last night and it was hilarious. All he could do was laugh...and his laugh is infectious! I mean seriously. This is so absurd; Mark does a great job here of outlining the absurdity of it all. Nobody is even watching this fake circus act except for the (P)MSNBC acolytes who apparently forgot that they were played for fools just this past year during the Collusion Delusion. I had read that Maddow's audience in particular, was mad at her for basically lying to them. And her ratings plummeted (even worse than normal) after the Russian Hoax resulted in nothing. And yet, here they go again..."Sad!"
If 100,000 people showed up outside the Capitol demanding Eric C. be supoenaed , would MSM cover it ? Would it shut down the impeachment inquiry?
Antsy Pelosi today quadrupled-down on impeaching the President for talking on the phone, saying this outrageous scandal makes Nixon's offenses look "almost small", suggesting she's angling for a spot on NBC's "Last Comic Standing".
One of the features of the eternal present is that it refreshes every hour or so. It's like a close basketball game where the teams trade points down the stretch and it comes down to the last seconds. Rather than an accumulating base of knowledge that can be sifted, analyzed, and organized, an amnesiac constantly refreshing "open" mind is up for grabs.
At least you had the stomach to watch this charade, which is more than I can say for myself. Just watching the news coverage is painful enough. Chris Wallace thought that William "I can tell you what people told me about Trump" Taylor was a very impressive, very damaging witness. If only he had worn a bow tie, it would have been game over. My only complaint with the column; did you really need to take a shot at Spurgeon Monkfish III? I think he's had it hard enough as is.
Main lesson from Ukraine? Don't believe America and give up your nujes. Now who convinced them to do that? These same idiots that are now testifying I bet.
Ambassador Taylor is carrying the baton for strengthening Ukraine. His myopic view has traditional process as the only way to achieve this objective. In this context he must find it necessary to ignore the prospect of a former Vice-President leveraging his office to enrich his family despite its linkage to Ukraine. Accordingly his statement to the Impeachment Inquiry cherry picks from the totality of the Ukraine situation.
Mark,
look I love ya, but, we Bills just can't get a break. Can you just refer to those ne'er-do-wells are fellows who have abused their right to have been given such a NOBEL name as Bill?
Thanks for at least considering my request.
Bill
Ukraine's biggest internal problem is reputed to be its impregnable Soviet Socialist style unreconstructed bureaucracy. Thank you for now highlighting its biggest external problem.
"Ce n'était pas magnifique et ce n'était pas de la diplomatie ?" to quote a close friend who is a high official in the foreign service of Grand Fenwick.
P.J. O'Rourke was on the same wavelength with a couple of his observations:
- Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
- Maybe it's understandable what a history of failures America's foreign policy has been. We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners. Any prolonged examination of the U.S. government reveals foreign policy to be America's miniature schnauzer -- a noisy but small and useless part of the national household.
I used to be of the view that the bureaucracy had its own agenda and would obstruct any government that dissented in any meaningful sense from the consensus views of the managerial class. By obstruct I would have assumed this would be slow walking, manipulation, the issuance of warnings to cabinet officials, the stuff you'd see on yes Minister. What has become apparent is that the bureaucracy is so well entrenched that they are a power base without whose consent you cannot govern. This power base intersects nicely with the increasingly lawless courts and is armed with the total surveillance capabilities made possible by modern IT (see the use of blackmail, and whistle-blowers). The effect of this you have is a kind of shadow government - which is what I take it people mean by deep state. The professionalization of the civil service a progressive innovation of the 19th century perhaps has achieved its ultimate goal of rule by elites unchecked by elections and constitutional constraints. It is an interesting question why our elites are so bad - my sense is that that problem lies with the universities that have groomed a class of sycophantic brown nosers trained by an increasingly radical and out of touch class of champagne socialist professors. If you are going to do anything about this you need to get a much better pipeline of potential judges and bureaucrats by breaking down the monopoly the universities have on credentialing the elite. Then you need to make a real effort to re-staff the administrative state or abolish civil service tenure. Is any of this politically achievable - no not in my view. When this reality becomes apparent to the portion of the population not on board with the agenda of the managerial class running the system you get into revolutionary politics - which is exactly what where this sham impeachment proceeding is taking us.
You and I are on the same wavelength. The only chance for our representative republic to survive is either a genuine miracle or some sort of secession by like minded and contiguous states, preferably with port access.
Yup, the permanent bureaucracy is passive-aggressive in the extreme.
I have found Latka Gravas! As you all no doubt recall, Latka Gravas, a well known immigrant to the USA (Ukrainian, I believe, which explains a lot) disappeared on May 16th, 1984. At some point prior to 1996 he reappeared with a new identity and entered politics, initially at the state level. You will know Latka today as Adam Schiff.
So that was an Andy Kaufman mask the creepy nursery rhyme guy was wearing on Gutfeld the other day? It all makes sense now...
I laughed so many times reading this that I am now I am curious if Mark actually laughs out loud at his own jokes as he writes them into these wonderful essays. You know, like some kind of conversation with oneself i.e whehre he says "good one, Mark" and then "well thank you, Mark" to himself, although I hear that you can go blind from excessive self-congratulation so maybe it's not a thing.
I must concur, Laura. I became stuck on "comely if unibrowed blondes". I mean, it's stand-alone funny, but then I envision Mark being chased by a bevy of angry Ukrainian beauties, and he has a great big grin on his face. Worth the price of admission every time I log on.
"Let a fellow called "John" Bolton become ambassador and next thing you know Earl and Bud will want the gig."
They do have a point about Bolton, who apparently was in a competition with Sessions to be the worst White House team member, although either Earl or Bud would have done the job credibly.
For the benefit of Commonwealth readers I wish to provide a pecking order guide to official U.S. Gubmint titles:
There's a Cabinet full of 15 Departments and several more agencies such as the EPA that each have executive officers*. The order is Secretary then Deputy, then Under (typically career bureaucrats,) then Assistant then Associate so you can have an Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nothing Special in the Department of State. Then there are the Senior Executive Service positions that are afforded civil service protection so no elected official can ever get rid of them but they get really high pay and benefits (similar to Generals and Admirals.)
At least I think that is the way it is. The order changed in the 1970's after I took Government class in High School. There may be more levels but you can mix and match them in creative ways.
* Reliable research says that no one knows for sure how many departments, agencies, sub-agencies, offices and commissions there are in the Federal Gov.
Brilliant explanation!
Thanks to this article, I found out that EPA (Eta Pi Alpha, to be exact) is how USA is spelt in Greek.
"Our strategic aim for the entirety of my foreign service career is not possible without a Ukraine whole, free, and at peace, including Crimea and Donbas, territories currently occupied by Russia."
Was Kent on sabbatical during the Obama administration?
Apparently. Also, kudos to Mark for "widely unread book".
Not to mention ignoring the history wrought by the administrations of Clinton, the Bushes, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and all the others back to Wilson.
Wm. P.: Indeed. I saw that clip, thought that he was doing one of those Dem heat checks- say something false and absurd, and see if the press gags as they swallow it. Much like the D congressman who told us we'd be astounded at the virtuous witnesses to come. He must really like bow ties! And those hard-edged DC reporters didn't even snicker at "astounding virtuous."
A beauty. LOL. And such a perfect moniker for so many lefty books.
From George Kent's bio on the State Dept web site. He was was the "Senior Anti-Corruption Coordinator" at the exact time that Hunter Biden was appointed to the Burisma Board of Directors.
"George Kent currently serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the European and Eurasian Bureau at the U.S. Department of State, overseeing policy towards Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Previously, he was Deputy Chief of Mission in Kyiv, Ukraine (2015-18). In 2014-15, George was the Senior Anti-Corruption Coordinator in the State Department's European Bureau from 2014-15, leading development and advocacy of anti-corruption messages across Europe and Eurasia. From 2012-14, he oversaw $200 million in annual programming for the rule of law, law enforcement, and judicial system capacity building in Europe and Asia"
One of the most valuable skills for a diplomat is to know just how much to offer in a bribe. Too much and they won't respect you but too little and they might betray you and sell out to another bidder. An "Anti-Corruption Coordinator" is to work on the latter, i.e., being the other bidder.
"Judicial system capacity building," over no fewer than two continents - and all for under $200,000,001 per annum!
Oh, dear....one should be careful about admitting that they are George III. There's a very unfortunate background on that particular moniker....
Monteagle Stearns, married to Antonia Riddleberger... That must have been a wedding ceremony and a half.
Back in the day when diplomats worked for the President, and not vice versa, I just read on page 602 of Conrad Black's magisterial biography of FDR that he summoned Joseph Kennedy, US Ambassador to Great Britain, to meet with him at Hyde Park (October 1940) after Joe had "endorsed Lindbergh, appeasement, and some aspects of Fascism, and warned the mainly Jewish film producers and directors to stop producing anti-Nazi films." As Conrad Black wrote it, Kennedy "arrived Saturday morning. After ten minutes with Kennedy, Roosevelt called Eleanor into the room for a moment, and told his wife, 'I never want to see that son of a bitch again as long as I live. Take his resignation and get him out of here!' Eleanor, who had rarely seen her husband so angry, reminded him that there were other guests and the train didn't leave until two. 'Then you drive him around Hyde Park, give him a sandwich and put him on that train!'" Poor Eleanor later called it "the most dreadful four hours of my life," but there was no mass radio coverage of Joe's side of the story against the President, as there would be today,
So FDR used an "irregular channel" to cashier Joe Kennedy, which happens to be the necromancer Hillary Clinton's favorite channel.
FDR was opposed to increasing the quotas for Jewish immigrants, to accommodate those trying to escape the Nazis. He was politically maneuvered in 1944 by Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah into adopting a change in the law to accommodate refugees.
After 60 years of scraping a living serving before the mast of the great Ship of State Department, the Kent family must be living in abject poverty.
George Kent IV is probably running the boilers in Foggy Bottom, and George V probably gets bussed to some ghetto school across MLK Blvd where he has to give up his lunch money and Nikes to Donteath and the Boyz.
I'm confused about The Rules. It's not "white privilege" or mainsplaining etc, if a white dorkfaced, bow-tie wearing Democrat breathlessly pants about Ukraine in pursuit of impeachment. So, we should #BelieveAllWhiteMen? Or not? Halp!
"mass wankerization of public policy"
I CAN'T!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
That one slipped right by me. Love your comment, Laura!
In keeping with the tradition of Washington bars opening mornings for TV viewing of sensational congressional hearings, marked a couple of years ago at the inaugural James Comey testimony by Tucker Carlson asking, "How dorky is Washington?" at least one now has a drink worthy of an ambassador: the "Subpoena Colada". Presumably early birds may have the Augustus Octavius Bacon in honor of the former president pro tempore of the Senate.
How about another Rusky Nail in Schiff"s coffin?
He requires silver.
"...Vasser Peachy-Keeny, the first woman to be named Vasser Peachy-Keeny"
It doesn't get any better than that.
Magnificent.
Diplomats are agents - not principals, and must continuously be reminded of the fact.
Mark, This might be the most brilliant thing you've ever written. Which is saying quite a lot. Thank you for gifting us your wisdom, humor, and matchless insights.
Second this.
Third this.
And after watching 5 hours of this self-righteousness yesterday, the catharsis of laughing riotously at Mark's ingenious "names" paragraph is just what was needed.
"Into the valley of the SCIF
Rode the six hundred hearsay witnesses... "
"Forward, the Not-Too-Bright Brigade!"
Was there a witness dismayed?
Not though the Speaker knew
Someone had blundered."
Morons to the left of them, morons to the right of them
Morons in front of them, bothered and dunderheaded
Stormed at with shoddy transcripts
Boldly they lied, and well
Into the jaws of disbelief
Out from the mouth of Schiff
Rode the six hundred hearsay witnesses...
Dave, The poem continues:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Testified the six hundred.
This is so appropriate because the charge is against THE RUSSIANS!
Hey, we got names too. As Canada's ambassador to The Ukraine, or The USA, we should insist on the appointment of Orville Lloyd Dutton Manly Alvin Norbert "Old Man" Sedgewick. Of course it would mean giving up his current position as the oldest member of Possum Lodge...
Was Joseph Patrick Patrick Joseph Kennedy Lawford Shriver Schwarzenegger VII one of the signatories as well? Those names had me in tears Mark!
Well I don't know about New Hampshire but les neiges d'antan are certainly here in Ontario. Also record cold temperatures for a couple of days. Bring on global warming!
Breitbart has it right. The hearings are a big Nothingburger.
Mark riffing on these names is a great way to start the day. There must be a book of children's names in the Harvard library that only parents in good standing, intent on raising the next generation of government functionaries, are allowed to peruse. Adlai anyone?
Mark didn't even get to Averell, Cyrus or Cordell.
I forgot Elihu (2 of them,) Hamilton, Philander, Bainbridge, Condoleezza and of course, Hillary, named after the Kiwi mountain climber.
One waits in vain for the appearance of Contracepción and her Latina sisters.
There are certain states where parents must choose from approved names. And clearly, in America, there are approved Deep State names.
I think Mark Steyn just stole a copy of The Holy Book of Approved Names for Deep State Spawn that was locked in Hillary's bathroom right beside the server. Otherwise how could he have known???
Mark replies:
Indeed, Laura. In fact, Quebec is one of those jurisdictions that approves names. I recall the lady at the desk querying my daughter's, while the fellow at the next window, registering Mohammed bin Muhamad al Mahomet or some such, breezed through.
Lemme know if you need me to deal with anyone in Montreal-if you know what I mean. Have your people call my people.