<p>Some of you were surprised last week when I engaged Joe Gilbertson about his conspiracy theory. The truth is, Joe and I go back a long ways, and constantly tweak each other about our mostly opposite political views. He made the mistake of pointing me to his own article to back up one of his arguments, and I went at it.</p>
<p>The net effect is that I volunteered to write a series of articles about the Trump impeachment hearings, as far as it goes. If there&#8217;s any conspiracy here on PBM, it&#8217;s that Joe goaded me into writing a free column for him (cheap bastard!).</p>
<p>Anyway, the deal is that I&#8217;ll try to keep to facts that are reported by major news media, and suppress my own political opinions until the last paragraph or so, and it will be clearly labeled as such. Joe and I won&#8217;t go back and forth arguing what&#8217;s fake news or not. In return, Joe will get an early look at the column, and suggest clarifications or request sources if he doesn&#8217;t believe me. And he gets a free column, cheap bastard.</p>
<p>So, a little introduction, and Joe can vouch for this, I have no income from Soros or the Clinton&#8217;s or Pelosi or any of your favorite whipping boys&#8230; Jeez, it&#8217;s been YEARS since the World Takeover Club met&#8230; I have a real job, a real wife, a house and some woods, dogs, cats, and a few other farm animals. I was a state rep a long time ago, and my biggest political interest is renewable energy.</p>
<p>To start off the column, let me just state the main facts that I think most people will agree on. Since offering to do this column, I&#8217;ve had a few late nights at work, and suddenly realized, holy crap this is moving fast! I&#8217;ll update more in the evenings as much as possible.</p>
<p>So, the indisputable facts as I see it: Trump stopped $250M in aid to Ukraine to fight the Russian takeover that was approved by the State Department, Congress, and the Pentagon. Shortly thereafter, like 2 weeks or so, he called up the President of Ukraine and asked for a &#8220;favor&#8221;, and specifically asked for investigations into Hunter Biden and his father VP Joe Biden, potentially his opponent in the 2020 election. SOS Mike Pompeo was on the call, and it was followed up by a visit by Rudy Guiliani.</p>
<p>Some people on the call were disturbed by the content of the call and some actions regarding Ukraine, and reported it to a security official, who filed a whistleblower report. Whoever received the report ran it past the White House, who stopped it from getting to Congress, but the Inspector General forwarded it to Congress anyway. Pelosi announced an official impeachment inquiry, and hearings started today, with Pompeo&#8217;s head on the chopping block first.</p>
<p>The whistleblower is scheduled to speak, as are 3 different Inspectors General. Trump has made threatening tweets at the whistleblower and Schumer and Schiff and Pelosi, and Guiliani is running around like the proverbial headless chicken, incriminating everyone, including himself. OK, all caught up? More later.</p>
<p>By the way, don&#8217;t try to troll me. The first rule of comedy clubs is don&#8217;t heckle the comedian. Seriously, it won&#8217;t go well for you. Same here.</p>
<p>Joe S Bruder.</p>
<p><em><strong>Editor&#8217;s Note:</strong> One thing from Bruder is definitely correct. I am indeed a cheap bastard&#8230;</em></p>