Friday Talking Points -- The End Of The Impeachment Road
Today's column requires a preface, because once again I am forgoing my usual Friday format to fully address the importance of the impeachment trial. Regular columns will resume next week, right before the next Democratic debate airs, and we'll return to our usual awards and talking points then. I thank my readers for their patience, in advance.
Other program notes for next week: Monday's column will be my first prediction of the outcome of a primary race in the 2020 election season, and will be published before the Iowa caucuses finish. Tuesday's column will be late, as I'll be writing my snap reactions to both the State Of The Union speech and the Democratic response. Normally I would also write my snap reactions to the Democratic debate as well, but because it falls on a Friday (and because this column has already taken two weeks off) I won't be doing so this time around. There will be a total of three debates in February (before New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina vote) so we'll have other opportunities for debate analysis before Super Tuesday rolls around.
Oh, and for those who like fun calendar tricks, this Super Bowl Sunday will be an interesting palindrome: 02/02/2020. Even more fun: this will be true worldwide, since Americans are pretty much the only ones who put the month before the day in our date format, but in this case it won't matter.
OK, with all of that out of the way, let's get right to my reactions, impressions, and other thoughts about the history that is being made in the Senate today.
The impeachment endgame
As of this writing, nothing has been officially decided yet in the Senate impeachment trial. However, one thing seems almost certain at this point: there will only be 49 votes, maximum, in favor of calling witnesses. Both Lisa Murkowski and Lamar Alexander have announced that they will not be voting for witnesses, which leaves all 47 Democrats together with only Mitt Romney and Susan Collins. Murkowski may have been persuaded to vote no because if she had voted yes it would have set up an uncomfortable situation for Chief Justice Roberts, who would have to decide whether to break a 50-50 tie or not (with the safe money being on "not"). In any case, that's how things stand as I begin writing this.
Surprisingly, however, another consensus seems to be emerging, that of delaying the end of the trial until next Wednesday. This idea, bizarrely, is reported to have come from the White House. I say "bizarrely" because doing so would deny President Trump an acquittal vote before he is scheduled to give his State Of The Union speech next Tuesday night. Also bizarre is the fact that the White House is now signaling that Trump will not even mention impeachment in his speech. Now, this could all be a feint, because there's always the "Who knows what Trump will say" factor. But that's what they're signaling at the moment, for whatever it's worth.
The proposal gives Democrats several things they want, including breaking for the entire weekend -- which would allow the four senators still in the running for the Democratic presidential nomination the time to do a last-minute blitz in Iowa right before they hold their caucuses. It would also deny Trump an opportunity to "spike the football" in his biggest speech of the year. And yet this proposal is supposedly coming from the White House. It doesn't make a whole lot of political sense, but that's what is being reported.
Whenever they wrap things up, though, the outcome seems just as preordained now as it has all along -- the Senate will vote largely on party lines to allow Donald Trump to remain president. No witnesses will be heard from in the Senate, and no subpoenas for any documents will be issued. The third impeachment of a United States president will thus end the same as the first two presidential impeachments, as largely a partisan exercise that changes nothing but leaves an indelible stain on the president's legacy.
Since the trial started last week, we've seen many hours of back and forth between the House managers and the president's counsel. Some of it was sober and serious, and some of it was heated and contentious. That was to be expected, of course. The most illuminating part was the question period, where senators got to pose questions to one side or the other (or both). This mostly consisted of softballs lobbed to their own side of the aisle, but occasionally there were some thought-provoking questions and answers alike.
But none of it changed anything, really. The end result is going to be the same, after days upon days of making the cases both for and against removing President Trump. As indeed happened with Bill Clinton's impeachment trial.
What does it all mean? Well, that is a question that will continue to reverberate for some time to come, in at least two significant ways. The first will be exactly what the House managers are now predicting: more information is going to come to light. John Bolton's book is soon going to be released, and he'll likely make the rounds of television interviews to promote it. He'll be able to fill in a lot of details that weren't previously known, which will undoubtedly (if what's leaked already is any indication) make Trump and his cronies look even worse than they already do. And Bolton's not the only source of future revelations, either -- sooner or later the record will be complete, whether it happens in the next few months or whether we'll have to wait until the full paper trail is revealed to the public years later (under the next Democratic president, say). These revelations will likely not be limited to just what Trump did with Ukraine, but also plenty of other disturbing actions that have so far been kept secret.
The second big impact this impeachment will have is going to come in all the second-guessing about how Nancy Pelosi handled things in the House. It is pretty obvious that the system itself is broken, because she was faced with an almost-impossible choice. She could have attempted to fight Trump's stonewalling in the courts, but that would have taken approximately forever. The slowness of the court system means that impeaching a president may become almost an impossibility unless the president serves two terms, in fact. Tying things up in the courts can now so effectively run out the clock that any president will be able to get away with just about anything -- as long as they follow Trump's path of absolute refusal to cooperate with any document or witness requests or subpoenas at all, and of filing such a snowstorm of motions and objections that will all be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. This virtually guarantees that the "run out the clock" strategy will succeed, at least for a single term. Think about it -- if Pelosi had taken the route of fighting in the courts, then by the time anything was ultimately decided, Trump may have started his second term in office, or been voted out.
There has to be a way to speed this up, obviously, if the power of impeachment is going to mean anything in the future. Perhaps all cases pertaining to presidential impeachment should be filed directly in the Supreme Court itself, rather than having to first work through all the other levels of the judiciary? Everyone knows these matters will be endlessly appealed, so why not avoid all the meaningless preparatory rulings and judgments and just move straight to the nine people who will have to make the ultimate decisions anyway? Just as impeachment automatically shoves everything in the Senate aside, it should also follow an expedited path through the court system as well. The Supreme Court can move quickly when circumstances require -- as indeed it did in Bush v. Gore. If it can move that fast when the results of an election are undecided, then it should move equally as fast when the question is the impeachment of a sitting president. The length of the legal process should not be able to be used as such an effective political delaying tactic in the future, but it would take either Congress passing a law or even a constitutional amendment in order to change this.
Given all that she knew, it's understandable why Pelosi acted as she did, of course. Pelosi knew two fundamental things going into the impeachment process: (1) the courts would take forever to rule on each and every tiny little legal squabble, and (2) the Senate was almost certainly not going to remove a sitting Republican president less than a year before the next election. Pelosi faced the choice of either making the entire presidential campaign about all the ins and outs of the impeachment process in the courts (because it definitely would have consumed the political world while it was playing out), or moving quickly to impeach, knowing how the Senate was going to ultimately vote. She chose the latter, but this choice will be the subject of endless Monday-morning quarterbacking for many years to come. Should she have pressed for John Bolton to testify? If she had won, would what Bolton was going to say have changed anything? There are dozens of ways it all could have played out, obviously, and each and every one of them will be rehashed in the future.
Pelosi, of course, didn't want to impeach Trump in the first place. She had to be reluctantly dragged in after many months of fending off impeachment cries from within her caucus. Trump's behavior in the Ukraine phone call was so egregious and the whistleblower's complaint could not be ignored, so she was finally convinced to pull the impeachment trigger. But in doing so, she tried to keep the effort as tightly focused as possible -- which is another decision that will be endlessly second-guessed. Should Democrats have "thrown the book" at Trump by including articles of impeachment for every bit of wrongdoing Trump has racked up? (Just one example: "Article XXXIV: The president broke federal law [18 U.S. Code 2074] by 'knowingly issuing a counterfeit weather forecast or warning of weather conditions falsely representing such forecast which was published by a branch of the federal government,' and thus must be impeached for this crime.") Would that have led to a more successful and comprehensive airing of Trump's wrongdoing in both the House and Senate? Would it have changed anyone's mind, or would the end result have been the same? These are now just theoretical questions, since Pelosi chose not to take this route.
Pelosi made her decision and set the timetable, although she may have erred (this remains to be seen) in issuing the invitation for the State Of The Union speech so late -- Pelosi had full control over this date, and could easily have picked one in mid-January which would have precluded Trump from using it as a victory speech. Is this the real reason she delayed officially sending over the articles of impeachment to Mitch McConnell? Again, this is now something for the Monday-morning quarterbacks to discuss. For better or for worse, Pelosi chose the route she did and nothing now is going to change it.
One interesting thing that happened during the whole impeachment process is that it has actually spurred both Democrats and Republicans -- and, especially, Trump himself -- to give the appearance to the public of getting lots of things done in the meantime. Both sides wanted to portray themselves as working diligently while the impeachment process played out, which resulted in the passage and signing of a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, among other things. Politically, neither side wanted to give the appearance of being paralyzed by impeachment. Whether this means anything to the public or not is unknowable, but both sides did an adequate job of making that political case.
The full political impact of the impeachment of a sitting president won't be known fully until Election Day, most likely. At this point, it's anyone's guess how it will affect voters. Will this motivate Trump's base more than they already are, or will it further disgust previously staunch GOP strongholds like the suburbs? Will senators who vote either for or against witnesses wind up paying a political price for their vote? That might depend on what trickles out later, in Bolton's book and beyond. If the case that Trump abused the power of his office just gets stronger and stronger over time, then the vote to refuse to hear from witnesses may look worse and worse.
Impeachment may have the smallest political effect on the Democratic nomination race, though. Pretty much all Democrats -- including all the presidential candidates -- share exactly the same stance: Trump was guilty, impeachment was the sworn duty of House Democrats, and Trump must be beat in November. There's no daylight between any one candidate and any other on this, which means it is pretty irrelevant to the nomination process and the voters. The one candidate who might have benefited politically -- Tom Steyer, who spent millions of his own money trying to convince the country that impeachment was necessary -- doesn't seem to have gotten any boost as a result. Whether you agree with the decision or not, Pelosi's short timeline has indeed pretty much removed the issue from the entire primary season.
How big an issue will it be in the general election? Well, Trump himself is likely to continue complaining how unfairly he's been treated by Democrats, but he would quite likely have been making this argument anyway. Now he'll be able to whine about his impeachment instead of just all the congressional investigations and the Mueller Report, but will that really move the needle at all with the public? His staunch supporters already bought into Trump playing the victim card, and those who felt Trump brought it upon himself are also not likely to change their minds now.
If impeachment was already baked into the political cake anyway, then Pelosi's short timeline may look much better in retrospect. If nobody's changed their minds over the past week, then it is quite likely few would have changed their minds if this process had dragged on into the summer.
Democratic voters are already laser-focused on two clear goals: defeating Trump and taking back the Senate. If the impeachment isn't likely to change much in the presidential election, could it have a bigger impact on individual Senate races? This is possible, but far from guaranteed. Susan Collins was in trouble already, and no matter which way she voted she was going to annoy lots of Maine voters. Even without such a vote and without impeachment, she still would have been in just as dire political circumstances (she recently surpassed Mitch McConnell as the senator with the lowest job approval rating back in her home state, in fact). Lamar Alexander is retiring, so his vote isn't going to hurt him politically in any way (except possibly in his political legacy). Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney aren't likely to pay any price at all, because both Alaska and Utah are quite likely to send them back to the Senate anyway.
Democrats will indeed try to make some political hay over some of the GOP senators who voted against witnesses, and this could become even more prominent as more details emerge (from Bolton or from other sources). All of the vulnerable Republican senators except Collins will have to defend their vote to deny witnesses, and Democrats will be running ads reminding the voters of this all throughout the election season. This is where the impeachment process -- even though it failed to remove Trump -- may benefit Democrats in a big way. There is a good case to be made, since already anywhere from two-thirds to three-fourths of the public supported calling witnesses in the trial. If the Senate trial is seen as a coverup by the public, then the voting record may become a liability for enough senators to actually flip control of the chamber. If a Democrat is elected president, they'll only need to flip three seats, and there are plenty of targets to do so already (Iowa, Arizona, North Carolina, Colorado, most prominently, as well as Maine). Whether this will now be easier is still an open question, but it's a certainty that Democrats are going to try to make the argument in plenty of campaign ads.
The final thing worth discussing is the precedents being set. I wrote about this last week, but these precedents are important enough to restate once again. First and foremost, Donald Trump is going to consider the Senate vote "total exoneration," which means that he will have no constraints upon him for the entire rest of the year. The Senate will be stamping its approval on forcing a foreign government to dig up dirt on political opponents, and Trump will see this as a big green light to continue doing so even more openly than he has already. After all, if he's not going to pay any price, why not?
But it goes beyond the circumstances of the impeachment case, because Trump will now be left almost totally unrestrained. He has pushed out all of the so-called "adults in the room" on his cabinet and White House staff, which has left nothing but yes-men in their place. Nobody's going to even attempt telling Trump he can't do something he wants to do now, because he now has no reason whatsoever to listen to them. The Democrats will be equally powerless to stop his most outrageous impulses from becoming reality, because it would take something like Trump shooting someone on live television for the House Democrats to even contemplate a second impeachment. That means from now until (at least) next January, Trump will be free to do whatever he wants to, which is a scary thought indeed.
Trump has also set the most alarming precedent of all, because his strategy of throwing up a total stonewall -- refusing to provide any documents or witnesses -- has now effectively worked. There are other congressional investigations into Trump, but he won't be cooperating with any of them, period. This may be true even if the courts rule otherwise. That's a frightening thought, but it must be addressed. The executive and judicial branches are theoretically supposed to be co-equal, which means that the president could decide that the courts simply have no jurisdiction over him at all. Even if the Supreme Court rules that Trump must hand over evidence (his tax returns, testimony from aides, whatever), Trump might just ignore such a ruling and refuse to comply. It has happened before, and Trump now knows that a second impeachment simply is not going to happen, so what's to stop him from just defying a court order -- even from the Supreme Court?
Even if it doesn't come to that, Trump's total stonewall strategy is almost certainly going to be adopted by some future president. Why should they turn over possibly-incriminating documents and witnesses when they can just stonewall and drag things out in the courts so long that any attempted congressional investigation just grinds to a halt? There's an obvious benefit to doing so, as Trump has just proven. Congressional oversight not only of the president but also of the entire executive branch may soon become a thing of the past, as a direct result. Of course, it will be amusing for Democrats the first time a Democratic president pulls this trick on a hostile Republican Congress, but beyond partisanship this could have the most important consequences of any of the precedents now being set. If Trump can get away with claiming blanket immunity then other presidents will definitely follow suit.
We all tend to think of Trump as existing in a vacuum. "Things'll be different when Trump's gone," we reassure ourselves. But this isn't true. Trump getting away with these things means future presidents will also be able to get away with the same things -- or even worse. Personally, I don't trust future Republican presidents or Democratic presidents not to draw this obvious conclusion. "It was good enough for Trump, so now you have to live with it" is going to be an overwhelmingly tempting impulse no matter who is sitting in the Oval Office. The Senate has now (I just checked, and while writing this they did vote as expected, 49-51, on the question of calling witnesses) not only allowed Trump to avoid being held accountable, they have also put their imprimatur on any future president who decides to emulate Trump. That is why this impeachment matters so much. That is what the Senate is creating -- a whole new world of opportunities for any president to essentially ignore any law he or she feels like ignoring, and to likewise ignore any Congress attempting to investigate her or him.
In other words, welcome to the new normal.
-- Chris Weigant
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Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground
Not-so-fun-fact: The 51 Senators who voted against witnesses represent only 46.7% of the US Population (based on 2018 population estimates).
Trump Rape Case Goes Ahead
On Jan. 9, a New York judge denied Trump's bid to throw out Carroll's lawsuit against him, according to the New York Times.
E. Jean Carroll, the writer who's claimed President Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s, asked on Thursday for a DNA sample from the president to compare to the genetic material she says is on a dress she wore at the time of the alleged assault.
"Unidentified male DNA on the dress could prove that Donald Trump not only knows who I am, but also that he violently assaulted me in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, and then defamed me by lying about it and impugning my character."
"As a result, we've requested a simple saliva sample from Mr. Trump to test his DNA, and there really is no valid basis for him to object," Kaplan, counsel for E. Jean Carroll said.
The request came in a letter to the president's attorney, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
After reading of the Republicans' vote to participate in the cover-up, I hardly slept a wink last night, my mind on the hamster wheel of the implications to the future of our democracy. (And I am not one to use hyperbole, so I am not kidding.)
I was more surprised by Mitt Romney's vote to call witnesses than Susan Collins. He is not up for re-election until 2024, so the political consequences of his vote are minimal (who really believes most voters will remember how their Senator voted in 4 years?) Following that line of thought, why did other 'statesman-like' Senators not also vote 'yes'? Marco Rubio has built his bona fides on opposing Cuba's dictatorship, yet sees no contradiction in rubber-stamping America's two-bit dictator? Rick Scott (FL) won his seat in 2018, so he could have chosen the same long-term view as Romney. Instead, he decided to inject 'humor' into the mix, posting a hostage video on Twitter. (Can we hope that the twitter tag #RickScottIsNotOttoWarmbier starts trending?)
Tuesday's column will be late, as I'll be writing my snap reactions to both the State Of The Union speech and the Democratic response.
You might have to change that schedule.. Word is the SOTU speech will be moved til after President Trump is fully vindicated and completely exonerated of this faux impeachment coup..
Whenever they wrap things up, though, the outcome seems just as preordained now as it has all along -
Yep.. :D Only a TOTAL PARTY SLAVE or a completely drooling MORON would have actually thought it would go any other way.. :D
the Senate will vote largely on party lines to allow Donald Trump to remain president.
Interesting to note.. The faux impeachment coup was TOTALLY and unequivocally partisan. By Democrat's own words, that makes it an illegitimate impeachment..
The ACQUITTAL, however... The total EXONERATION??
Is likely to be the ONLY thing of this whole sordid Democrat Debacle mess that is bi-partisan..
Let that sink in.. The forces that support President Trump. BiPartisan..
The forces that hate and attack President Trump?
TOTALLY PARTISAN..
Ironic, eh...
John Bolton's book is soon going to be released,
Even if that were true, so??
You have three problems with Bolton..
1. What he is saying now is the complete opposite of what he has said previously about the Ukraine meeting..
2. You Democrats are on record as saying how Bolton has NO CREDIBILITY and cannot be trusted.. NOW... NOW that he is saying what you want to hear.. NOW his words or gospel?? You don't catch the overpowering stench of hypocrisy there??
3. Even if what Bolton says NOW is 1000% accurate and even if Bolton had the credibility of a saint.. SO??? Even if President Trump did turn some screws, it was perfectly within his prerogative to do so.. Just like, according to ya'all, it was PERFECTLY within Obama's prerogative to ask Putin for some quid (help in winning his (Obama's) election) and the pro quo was Obama would be flexible for Putin when Putin wanted The Crimea..
So, even if ya'all win... Ya'all lose...
She could have attempted to fight Trump's stonewalling in the courts, but that would have taken approximately forever.
And yet, "forever" wasn't a consideration or a stumbling block when ya'all wanted witnesses in the Senate..
Why is that??
The full political impact of the impeachment of a sitting president won't be known fully until Election Day, most likely. At this point, it's anyone's guess how it will affect voters.
According to Joe Biden, President Trump is "probably" stronger for the General Election.
Funny how ya don't mention that.. :D
If the case that Trump abused the power of his office just gets stronger and stronger over time, then the vote to refuse to hear from witnesses may look worse and worse.
And the House Dumbocrats refusal to call witnesses looks worse and worse..
THAT'S the reality.... It's sorely missed around here.. :(
There has to be a way to speed this up, obviously, if the power of impeachment is going to mean anything in the future. Perhaps all cases pertaining to presidential impeachment should be filed directly in the Supreme Court itself, rather than having to first work through all the other levels of the judiciary?
Basically, it sounds like you want to make Impeachment EASIER and less painful...
Are you REALLY thinking that thru???
Or does your Trump hate blind you to the reality of how that, exactly, would come back and bite the Democrats on the ass..
Impeachment is a slow and painful process FOR A REASON!!!!
What you are suggesting is the Eminiar 7 solution.
Make war so sterile and painless and easy that there is no reason NOT to have one or NOT to stop one that is started...
Please look past your Trump hate and see the truly horrifying results of such "illogic"..
Why, political speaking, it would be A Taste Of Armageddon...
There's no daylight between any one candidate and any other on this,
Yes there is, but why let reality intrude on the fantasy..
First and foremost, Donald Trump is going to consider the Senate vote "total exoneration," which means that he will have no constraints upon him for the entire rest of the year.
Of course President Trump is going to consider the Senate vote "total exoneration".. Because that is exactly what it is..
TOTAL..... EXONERATION....
Just as the results of ya'all Russia Collusion delusion was.... wait for it..
TOTAL..... EXONERATION....
Trump has also set the most alarming precedent of all, because his strategy of throwing up a total stonewall -- refusing to provide any documents or witnesses -- has now effectively worked.
Yep.. Just like it worked for Obama.. As a matter of fact, it worked so well for Obama, he spews the BS line that his administration was "scandal free"... I believe you yourself has spewed that same bullshit here in Weigantia..
Funny.. I don't recall any complaints from ya'all then..
Why is that??
Another example of HHPTDS Weigantian not being coupled with reality...
Trump might just ignore such a ruling and refuse to comply. It has happened before, and Trump now knows that a second impeachment simply is not going to happen, so what's to stop him from just defying a court order -- even from the Supreme Court?
Yep he might..
And I will support President Trump to the HILT on that and laugh at ya'all til the cows come home..
Because it will be SOLELY and COMPLETELY because of Y'all's Democrats actions that precipitated President Trump's capabilities..
President Trump has absolutely NO RESTRAINTS on him for the next 4+ years.
You Democrats have effectively NEUTERED yerselves in your ability to reign in President Trump..
After re-election, President Trump will likely move into areas that even I would be uncomfortable with..
But yunno what???
It will ***ALL*** be because of Democrats and Trump/America haters and their hysterical and bullshit use of a faux impeachment to obtain a coup..
Impeachment is a ONE-TIME use only offensive..
And Democrats blew it by using it here, unnecessarily and without ANY bi-partisan support..
I was hoping that's what I would hear you say in this FTP because those are the facts and that is the reality..
But, alas, I am disappointed once again..
C'le'vie....
CB,
Not-so-fun-fact: The 51 Senators who voted against witnesses represent only 46.7% of the US Population (based on 2018 population estimates).
So?? It's not a popularity contest...
It's what's just and right contest..
Trump Rape Case Goes Ahead
BBBBBWWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Now the crazies are coming out of the woodwork...
What's next?? The LAUGHABLE emoulments clause? Maybe even Santa Claus??
hehehehehehehehehe
You people crack me up so much..
Yer so blinded by your hate and bigotry, ya'all can't see what a caricature ya'all have become..
After reading of the Republicans' vote to participate in the cover-up,
There was no cover-up.. Democrats had ample opportunity to call witnesses and documents and fight for those things thru the courts in the House.
JUST as they would have had to do in the Senate..
Claims of "cover-up" are simply cries of impotence, incompetence and sore luserism..
I hardly slept a wink last night,
I know the feeling.. I am lucky if I sleep 2 hrs a night.. But mine is medical health while yers is mental health..
Your problem is you chose the wrong side and now your conscience won't let you have any peace...
You lost, rusty.. It's not as if it should have come as a shock to you..
You were always going to lose... There was absolutely NO PATH that this could have taken, no realistic scenario, no outside possibility where this could have gone any other way...
"You’re missing the point. There’s no throne. There is no version of this where you come out on top. "
-Tony Stark, AVENGERS
You lost.. Democrats lost.. And THAT loss is in perpetuity....
No matter what the future holds for the Democrat Party one thing is constant..
President Trump beats Democrats...
Democrats ALWAYS lose...
In perpetuity..
THAT is the reality of the here and now and for all time to come..
Well, we have heard from assorted riff raff...
Where are the REAL Weigantians to chime in??
Can't wait to see ya'all's reactions.. :D
Chuck Schumer scolds Kamala Harris for laughing with Sherrod Brown at impeachment presser, goes viral
https://www.foxnews.com/media/chuck-schumer-scolds-kamala-harris-sherrod-brown-impeachment-trial
First the Schiff-head/Nadler dust up.
Now this..
You Democrats are really nothing. But ya'all ARE entertaining.. :D
PRESIDENT TRUMP BAGS ANOTHER ONE!!!!
US believes Al Qaeda leader in Yemen 'likely' killed by airstrike, source says
https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-airstrikes-target-leader-of-yemen-based-al-qaeda-branch
Odumbo wishes he could have been a TENTH of effective as President Trump has been.... :D
Ted Cruz appears to mock Pelosi's SOTU handclap at GOP's successful impeachment vote: 'Who did it better?'
https://www.foxnews.com/media/ted-cruz-nancy-pelosi-clap
As I said??
Democrats are nothing.. But they DO provide comic relief..
I guess the ability to make people laugh at their stoopidity is a talent of sorts.. :D
It's not so much that American democracy has all but died in its infancy, it's that all it took was a complete clown like Trump and his impious behaviour to bitch-slap it into submission.
Sure, Trump has always been an ill-wind that blows no good, but for this sad, laughable dried up bon vivant to have stumbled across America's Achilles heel -oversight enforcement- and to have blustered and bullshitted his way past traditional barriers of presidential comportment, is bordering on the Pythonesque in it's absurdity.
Not to worry, my furry friends, this is just another 'era', Trump might believe in his own divinity and assumed presidential immortality, but he'll be an asterix before too long, a mere stain on the American annals.
LL&P
It's not so much that American democracy has all but died in its infancy, it's that all it took was a complete clown like Trump and his impious behaviour to bitch-slap it into submission.
Sure, Trump has always been an ill-wind that blows no good, but for this sad, laughable dried up bon vivant to have stumbled across America's Achilles heel -oversight enforcement- and to have blustered and bullshitted his way past traditional barriers of presidential comportment, is bordering on the Pythonesque in it's absurdity.
There is one fact that blows away your hate filled and bigoted comment..
Democrats **LOVED** Donald Trump when he had a -D after his name..
Not to worry, my furry friends, this is just another 'era', Trump might believe in his own divinity and assumed presidential immortality, but he'll be an asterix before too long, a mere stain on the American annals.
Says the guy who actually BELIEVED the Russia Collusion delusion and actually BELIEVED that President Trump would be removed from office..
Sorry, son.. Yer credibility is non-existent here..
President Trump keeps winning and winning and winning.. :D
"Says the guy who actually BELIEVED the Russia Collusion delusion and actually BELIEVED that President Trump would be removed from office.."
See how easy it is to bullshit people...I have maintained publicly that the Trump campaign had synergy with the GRU and their efforts to interfere in US elections, Trump asking Russia for Clinton's emails and promptly receiving them was proof enough to conclude that handily. I have never said I thought Trump would be removed from office after impeachment. I did say to anyone who would listen the day after the election that Trump would be impeached within his first term, his removal, in my view was unlikely considering thin-skinned nature of the those in congress, and the hyper-partisanship of American politics. I also thought it unlikely given the fact that the GOP didn't possess a spine between them and Trump had them by the short and curly's...
As for credibility, you need look no further than yourself for a profile in gobshitery, all your posts and rhetoric are of similar ilk to the sewage spewed forth by FOX news and its conspiracy army.
President Trump keeps whining and whining and whining.. :D
See, I'm not without compassion, I fixed your brutally misspelt final sentence.
LL&P
Don Q
You are engaged in a futile (and probably also mostly unjustified and unnecessary) attempt to get big money out of politics, right?
The "big money" donors are ALREADY precluded from donating huge sums directly to candidates, meaning all you have left is to try and prevent them from supporting candidates with political advertising (aka "Free Speech", as in "First Amendment"), right?
AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!!! So, what's the point of crusading?
Don
I cannot believe that I am saying this, but I gotta agree with CRS. I have never understood why you focus on the part of campaign finance that does have caps on how much money a person can give to a candidate when it is the SuperPACs and PACs that allow unlimited money that is hard to trace its true origins to pout into our elections.
It’s a big part of why it is untrue to claim One Demand would get Big Money out of our elections. Even if a candidate doesn’t accept donations over $1 directly to their campaign, a PAC can accept the corporate money on the candidate’s behalf (even if the candidate claims to have nothing to do with the PAC).
This is why One Demand has always seemed like you were ignoring the real problem and focusing on the superficial one instead. It is like you were putting a bandaid on one hand’s cut while ignoring that a tourniquet is needed on the other arm’s severed hand.
You Democrats have effectively NEUTERED yerselves in your ability to reign in President Trump..
It’s actually dipshits like you and the GOP wussies that have neutered the country’s ability to reign in President Trump by your willful ignorance and refusal to stand up for the Constitution. You let that conman control your weak little mind and now you cheer his constant erosion of our political norms like a trained dog performing for his master. The saddest part is that you know that he has fooled you, but you think if you just keep saying that everyone else is “losing” but you and he are “winning”, it won’t be so bad.
Your messiah only got elected because a foreign country aided his campaign in 2016. Trump got caught seeking foreign help in the 2020 election by the whistleblower, and after Trump failed at preventing the whistleblower’s complaint from being buried, Trump decided to pull the “it can’t be criminal if I admit to doing it publicly” bullshit that idiots like you believe must be true. Trump cannot win the election fairly and he knows it!
How many times over the past 3 years have you been forced to contradict yourself when defending Trump because he’s switched his stories after being caught lying? I am guessing that you have done it more often than you normally do to coverup your own lies!
Do you really believe that the majority of Americans are going to accept the Republican's argument that their refusal to hear testimony on newly uncovered information from people with firsthand knowledge on the allegations against Trump is NOT them covering up his crimes?
[20]
You raise a valid point. Brother Don's heart is in the right place, yet I'd like to see him redirect his energies into an anti Citizens United campaign.
Much as I'd hate to give away organized labor's ability to fund candidates and PACs that's a good trade for getting Big Money out of politics. Besides, Unions can still help provide boots on the ground for favorite candidates and causes.
[21]
Excellent rant! You rather neatly summed up my own exasperation with the 42% who just don't get it.
I wonder if some of these folks are clinging to Trump because deep down inside they fear how mortified they will feel when they figure out what rubes they've been? They can only ignore reality for so long, right?
CW,
Great recap of the precedents that Trump’s acquittal will result in, especially the refusal to properly respond to requests for documents. I agree that Trump has made it so Congress cannot get information needed to conduct investigations into his conduct in a timely fashion.
Republicans have tried to argue that the House should have sought judicial review of Trumps refusal to properly respond to their record requests BEFORE filing an article of impeachment for obstruction of Congress. That goes against the legal reasoning that led to the statutes of the Freedom of Information Act being passed.
Government agencies became quite efficient at being inefficient at responding to record requests of information that would be embarrassing to those in charge of the agency. Before FOIA’s creation, if you put in a record request with an agency and it got denied, you had to appeal to the same agency if you believed they were wrong to refuse disclosure of the records you sought.
How often do you think telling the person who had rejected the record request the first time that they were wrong to deny the record worked and changed the person’s mind? And if that information would have resulted in the director facing possible criminal charges, it should not surprise you to learn that the appeals process could takes months or years to be completed.
That is why FOIA and most states public records acts do not require those seeking records from having to jump through all the administrative hoops that could be used to further deny or delay records that weren’t exempt from disclosure from being released; the law allows the requester to seek immediate remedy by taking the agency to court where it faces stiff penalties for improperly withholding documents.
Congress seeking records is a quasi-FOIA request, as Congress often has more need for legal access to the records than your average citizen. However, agencies do not face the same possible financial penalties from denying Congressional requests, nor does the President.. That is why the article of impeachment wasn’t just necessary, it literally is the only recourse to stop the president’s obstruction from continuing. It is brought specifically to combat obstruction of Congress, as the courts do not have a way to deter the intentional delaying of records by a president — impeachment is the only true determent available!
DonQ.
Okay, feel free to keep on tilting.
'Nuck,
See how easy it is to bullshit people...I have maintained publicly that the Trump campaign had synergy with the GRU and their efforts to interfere in US elections, Trump asking Russia for Clinton's emails and promptly receiving them was proof enough to conclude that handily.
So??
As usual, you deflect and dodge..
Your golden boy Mueller said that what you spew does not rise to Collusion..
You STILL lose..
As for credibility, you need look no further than yourself for a profile in gobshitery, all your posts and rhetoric are of similar ilk to the sewage spewed forth by FOX news and its conspiracy army.
You mean, all the stuff I post that turns out to be dead on ballz accurate???
As opposed to all your spewage that turned out to be nothing but bullshit?
Again.. YOU LOST...
Get over it..
Do you really believe that the majority of Americans are going to accept the Republican's argument that their refusal to hear testimony on newly uncovered information from people with firsthand knowledge on the allegations against Trump is NOT them covering up his crimes?
No.. The vast majority of American are going to accept that Democrats spin things and bullshit about things that are not factual...
How is it a "cover up" if Dumbocrats could have called the witnesses when the House had impeachment??
So, based on YOUR OWN WORDS, it's DEMOCRATS who are guilty of a cover-up..
You see how easy it is to refute all your bullshit with FACTS...
You lost the 2016 election..
You lost with your Russia Collusion delusion..
You lost with your faux impeachment coup..
You lose... Constantly...
MC,
I wonder if some of these folks are clinging to Trump because deep down inside they fear how mortified they will feel when they figure out what rubes they've been? They can only ignore reality for so long, right?
OR.....
Or it's you who are clinging to bullshit..
It's YOU who can't concede that you MAY be wrong about everything..
Basically, you are conceding that you are as much of a close-minded cult follower as you accuse President Trump supporters of being.
CAN you admit the POSSIBILITY that you are wrong???
MC,
Allow me to show you how it's done..
Mtn??
You may be absolutely factually accurate.. Although you have ALWAYS lost in your predictions, you might be right that President Trump is evil incarnate..
It's hard to explain Democrats love for Trump when HE was a Democrat..
But, you might be right and I might be totally and utterly wrong..
The facts don't support it.. But it's still possible.
Can you do the same??
If you can't, then it's you who is the cult-follower and not President Trump supporters..
Don
And as I have said before, just 3% of presidential election voters contrbuting an average of 100 dollars in donations under 200 dollars total would total around 500 million dollars.
So there is NO VALID REASON to take more than 200 dollars from any one donor.
Other than it is legal to do so and, more importantly, 3% of voters are NOT donating $100 to campaigns! Those seem like pretty valid reasons for a campaign to accept as large of campaign donations as are legally permitted.
And you realize that while your $500 million in campaign donations sounds wonderful, your 3% does not mean that it will be spread out evenly. Let’s look at a town with 30000 registered voters. 3% of the registered voters would be 334 voters. If they each give $100 to campaigns, that means the various campaigns will have to fight over the $33,400 available. If there are 3 candidates running for mayor and all of them agree to One Demand rules, they will likely be forced to run their campaign for under $15,000. How successful of a campaign do you think $15k gets a candidate these days?
The reason the big money interests spend the money they spend is because citizens keep voting for those candidates.
First, you don’t really know why anyone donates to a candidate. Next, who else are people going to vote for other than the candidates? Your insistence that any amount higher than $200 makes the donation evil is ridiculous.
And lastly, you did not explain how One Demand would combat PACs! If a candidate accepts only $1 donations to their campaign, but a PAC — that they claim not to be connected to — is spending 2 million in ads supporting the candidate, how is One Demand effective at getting the influence of Big Money out of the election?
Lol...well this fits
https://religionnews.com/2020/01/31/sekulow-run-christian-charities-steered-65m-to-the-trump-lawyer-and-his-family/
It's never ending with these crooks, who else would Trump hire to be his personal lawyer but a two-bit fraudster and his family of hangers-on and assortment of favorites.
While Sekulow has been arguing in front of the senate about how Biden and his son need some attention from authorities, he and six members of his family, ranging from his wife, sons, brother and daughters-in-law are happily toiling away at nothing for his shady not-for-profit tax exempt businesses and receiving huge sums of cash for doing so.
So rich of these people to wag a finger at anyone, much less Biden et-al, when they have been living in the lap of luxury courtesy of $5-10-20 donations from the religious right and blurring the taxability of their incomes by use of shady paper corps and creative accounting.
To my eye, it's fitting that the religious right wing are being taken for a ride by the slime of humanity, you get what you pay for.
LL&P
It's hard to explain Democrats love for Trump when HE was a Democrat..
You mean when he supported Democrats’ positions on the issues? And you are honestly admitting that you cannot figure out why the Democrats no longer support a person who now rails against everything they stand for? It’s really not hard to explain at all.
So if the guy you gave your blessing to marry your daughter — a man you thought the world of — winds up being an abusive husband, your opinion of him will remain the same?
'Nuck,
It's never ending with these crooks, who else would Trump hire to be his personal lawyer but a two-bit fraudster and his family of hangers-on and assortment of favorites.
Yea.. DUMBOCRATS would ***NEVER*** enrich themselves off their political careers..
Do you even NOTICE your blatant hypocrisy??? Or is it like breathing for you???
To my eye, it's fitting that the religious right wing are being taken for a ride by the slime of humanity.
Yea, you keep saying that.. But you have NO FACTS to support your bullshit and you are ALWAYS wrong about every prediction you have ever made.
I mean, shit.. The laws of averages says you should be RIGHT at least ONCE IN A WHILE...
But you are ***ALWAYS*** wrong...
Any normal person (IE a non bigoted hate-filled ideological slave) would have to eventually question, "Hmmmm Maybe I *AM* wrong..."
But not you.. Bigoted and hate-ful slave til the end.. :D
You mean when he supported Democrats’ positions on the issues? And you are honestly admitting that you cannot figure out why the Democrats no longer support a person who now rails against everything they stand for? It’s really not hard to explain at all.
I am not talking about "I disagree with your positions but I respect your right to have them..", dickweed...
Democrats LOVED President Trump when he had a -D after his name..
Now they hate and despise him and wish him and his family dead...
That goes WAY beyond policy position disagreement
And you know it. Yer just flailing more bullshit because you are hysterical about being wrong..
AGAIN..
So if the guy you gave your blessing to marry your daughter — a man you thought the world of — winds up being an abusive husband, your opinion of him will remain the same?
Of course not..
But I would have to acknowledge that maybe I am not the best judge of character for having thought the world of the monster in the first place.
THAT's the point..
Regardless, becoming an abusive monster *IS* a valid reason to change one's position..
Party slaver is NOT a valid reason to change one's position or opinion about a person..
If you think that President Trump was an awesome guy as a Democrat but a horrible despicable monster as a Republican..??
Well, it's obvious to anyone with more than 2 brain cells to rub together is that it's YOU with the problem..
Not President Trump..
Just because you claim I didn't address something doesn't mean I didn't address it.
You just chose to ignore it or didn't understand it.
Yep, that's the MO around here...
It's good confirmation for you..
According to Weigantian Charlottesville rule...
SILENCE GIVES ASSENT
James T Canuck,
Thanks for that link to the story on the Sekulow families’ non-profit scam. Here’s the thing that is so disgusting....it is incredibly likely that everything he is doing is actually legal! Yes, he is gaming the system for everything he can, and takes advantage of tax breaks meant to help missionaries barely able to scrape by, but he technically is not breaking the law.
The rules that govern how the government takes out federal taxes for ordained ministers was created to allow missionaries to go into the most impoverished areas to create missions that helped their communities. It was a small way to reward those willing to sacrifice to help others. The only problem is that the rules cannot distinguish a pastor at an extremely well-funded mega-church from a missionary living in a shelter in a tiny village.
'Yea, you keep saying that.. But you have NO FACTS to support your bullshit and you are ALWAYS wrong about every prediction you have ever made.'
No wonder Trump and his gaslight-gang are beacons of fidelity and pillars of American decency for you Michale, you all share the same tenuous tethering to reality. I suppose the link to the religious media outlet that sourced the facts through the IRS, PTL and Sekulow's various shady shell corps was just too much actual fact for your cognitive processes to organise into understandable data.
It's fascinating to observe how even a bludgeoning of methodical fact, honestly sourced and diligently laid out completely stymies you, time and again.
This is what FOX news has to answer for, the dumbing down and moronification of the American mind.
My expectations remain low, there's something to be proud of, maintenance of the status quo requires some attention to detail and conviction.
LL&P
Once again...
There is absolutely NOTHING WRONG with people enriching themselves personally from their political careers..
This is FACT..
How do we know this FACT???
Because NONE of ya'all ever complained about it when morons like the Clintons or Odumbos did it..
Once again.. The FACTS prove ya'all to be nothing but bigoted Party/Ideological slaves...
This is what FOX news has to answer for, the dumbing down and moronification of the American mind.
Actually, MANY people here have quoted FOX news quite extensively, including you.....
So, once again.. Yer proven to be a moron..
And totally WRONG..
Again, If you don't believe that 3% of presidential election voters will support a candidate making this commitment then you do not believe that democracy can work.
It has to be one or the other.
NO, no it does NOT!
Do you even hear yourself? It’s YOUR way or else it won’t work! Democracy works regardless of whether people buy into your fantasy.
Do you think a Bernie or Warren making the small donor commitment now for the general election would not get a huge boost in the primaries and not get art least 3% of presidential election voters to contribute an average of 100 dollars for the general election campaign should they be the nominee?
I have no reason to think that they would see an increase because I have never heard a single person claim that they do not donate to a political campaign because the candidate accepts donations over $250.
I have never heard a single person claim that they would donate $100 to a political campaign, something they have never done previously, if only there was a candidate that was only taking small dollar donations.
You’ve never bothered to say what percentage of voters already donate to campaigns to know if your 3% would even be an improvement or would be less people donating.
You don’t explain what is motivating someone who has never given to any candidate’s campaign to suddenly do so. But I am sure it is just me who thinks this makes no sense...i’ll let you get back to working on fixing that website of yours before the wave of donations starts flooding in!
Democrats LOVED President Trump when he had a -D after his name..
Now they hate and despise him and wish him and his family dead...
That goes WAY beyond policy position disagreement
No one ever loved Trump because he had a -D after his name... because, except for you, apparently, NO ONE BASES THEIR LOVE ON SOMETHING LIKE THAT!
It does go way beyond policy position disagreements! Trump’s actions and comments are reprehensible most days. Trump tried to steal glory from 9/11 first responders by claiming he was there, too! I know that seems perfectly OK to someone who lies about being in law enforcement and serving in our military, but the rest of the world finds it disgusting.
The more you make this argument, the more it appears to be you are deflecting from the fact that you only like Trump because he has an -R after his name!
There is absolutely NOTHING WRONG with people enriching themselves personally from their political careers..
Which makes your screaming that Hunter Biden being paid to be on the board of an oil company is somehow illegal seem like an odd position for you to take....
No one ever loved Trump because he had a -D after his name... because, except for you, apparently, NO ONE BASES THEIR LOVE ON SOMETHING LIKE THAT!
Now yer just being a semantical moron because you have no other factual argument..
Which makes your screaming that Hunter Biden being paid to be on the board of an oil company is somehow illegal seem like an odd position for you to take....
It wasn't HUNTER'S career he was making millions off of..
Therefore, your argument, like ALL your arguments, is bullshit and non-applicable
Further, I never said THAT was the illegal part..
Joe Biden's extortion and bribery is the illegal part.. At least by your OWN standards you want to apply to President Trump..
Top Democrats fume after Trump expands travel ban to six new countries
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/top-democrats-fume-after-trump-expands-travel-restrictions-six-new-countries
WAAAAA WAAAAAA WAAAAA WAAAA
Get used to it, Dumbocrats..
You can't do NUTTIN' about it!!! :D
BBBBWWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Ya'all have utterly and COMPLETELY neutered yerselves!!! :D
And what's even MORE hilarious is that Dumbocrats did it willingly!! Even EAGERLY!!!!! :D
My gods, how hilarious is THAT!!!
Democrats are TOTALLY impotent with regards to President Trump's actions.. :D
Trump, Unrepentant and Unleashed
WASHINGTON — During a meeting with Donald Trump at Trump Tower in June of 2016, with the opéra bouffe builder improbably heading toward the nomination despite a skeletal campaign crew on a floor below, I asked when he would pivot.
We all assumed he would have to pivot, that he would have to stop his belittling Twitter rants, that he would have to cease attacking fellow Republicans like John McCain, that he would have to get more in line with the traditional stances of his party, that he would have to be less of a barbarian at the gates of D.C.
He crossed his arms, pursed his lips and shook his head — a child refusing vegetables.
How naïve he was, I thought to myself. But I was the naïve one. Trump has forced the world to pivot to him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/opinion/sunday/trump-impeachment-trial-witnesses.html
Yep!!
SUCK IT!!! :D
The deep state establishment is NOT calling the shots anymore!!
:D
[59] of the previous thread:
How do you reconcile this claim (the fact that in the Constitution, all enumerated powers are given to Congress) with Obama's actions vis a vis the number one state sponsor of terrorism?
Congress has handed over way too much power to the executive. I blame Congress for doing so, not the successive presidents for accepting it.
Congress has handed over way too much power to the executive. I blame Congress for doing so, not the successive presidents for accepting it.
Agreed...
But here, you are the exception that emphasis the rule..
Hit SUBMIT too soon..
What I meant to say was that the vast majority of people here are perfectly OK with it when it was a DEM POTUS and hate it when a GOP is POTUS...
That's why it's obvious that, for THEM, it's not that they hate when a POTUS has too much power..
They hate it when a GOP POTUS has too much power..
Which is why it's impossible to assign **ANY** credibility to their arguments..
Because it's **SOLELY** based on RvD issues..
Are you done pretending to be stupid yet?
Pretending??!!??
Shirley, you jest...
“The Republican Party has now lost whatever control they could exert over this president, any oversight they could have. It’s gone. The state of the union is there is no union. How can there be, when one side is petrified of their Godzilla?”
-Democrat Senator Pussy
Actually, it's DEMOCRATS who have lost any and all control they can exert over President Trump..
It's DEMOCRATS who have given up all oversight capability they had ever had..
And NO ONE is "petrified" of President Trump... His supporters love him.. They LOVE what he is doing to the Dumbocrats..
Everything President Trump is and all his capabilities he has now are SOLELY because of Democrats...
Their CONSTANT and hysterical attacks, their CONSTANT attempts to nullify the will of the people and illegally remove a freely, fairly, legally, duly, democratically and Constitutionally elected President Of The United States???
THAT has made President Trump the political juggernaut he is today...
You Democrats blew it..
It's REALLY that simple...
Surprisingly enough, a thoughtful and accurate assessment from Dem Senator Chris Murphy..
“This trial in so many ways crystallized the completely diametrically opposed threats that Democrats and Republicans see to the country.
We perceive Donald Trump and his corruption to be an existential threat to the country. They perceive the deep state and the liberal media to be an existential threat to the country.
That dichotomy, that contrast, has been growing over the last three years, but this trial really crystallized that difference. We were just speaking different languages, fundamentally different languages when it came to what this trial was about. They thought it was about the deep state and the media conspiracy. We thought it was about the president’s crimes.”
-Senator Chris Murphy
The only thing Murphy fails to acknowledge is that FACTS and reality support President Trump and his supporters view of the dichotomy...
The Democrats' view is nothing but wishful thinking, hatred and bigotry...
The President has committed no crimes...
Democrats tried to prove over and over that this was not factual.. They failed over and over..
Based on the foundation of jurisprudence in the United States Of America, President Trump is completely, unarguably and unequivocally INNOCENT of all criminal charges against him..
WHO could have POSSIBLY predicted this outcome!??
I think ya'all know the answer to that....
CW, JL, Liz, DSWS, CRS, DH and Me... :D
Everyone else was a moron... Or, at best, just deluded by Party slavery...
Democrats are warning Republicans that they will be judged harshly by history.
History is written by the winners, sugar..
And Democrats are utterly and completely **NOT** winners..
Never will be..
Aren’t you worried that, if left in office, Trump will harm America’s national security, seek to corrupt the upcoming election and undermine our democracy to further his own personal gain? Don’t you want to hear the witnesses and see the documents that would give the full story and make this a fair trial rather than a mock one?
-Democrat Pussy Val Demings..
Ask House Democrats???
They are the ones who didn't call the witnesses ya'all wanted the Senate to call..
Besides, Dumbocrats claim to have an airtight case..
According to ya'all, witnesses are not necessary..
DUH!!
No matter HOW Dumbocrats want to spin it.. They're morons..
As with so many other pivotal moments in modern history, Republicans wanted to win, not look for the truth. And history, God help us, is written by the winners.
Factually not accurate..
Republicans wanted to win and they wanted the FACTS...
They got both..
What President Trump did, even if Democrats COULD prove it, is not impeachable.
There is no such "crime" as abuse of power..
There is no such "crime" as obstruction of Congress..
There is no such "crime" as collusion..
No matter HOW ya'all want to spin it..
Democrats completely and totally and utterly lost...
If this had happened in a real legal court??
The judge would have thrown the Democrats in jail for contempt.. To be so presumptuous as to waste the court's time with complete and utter bullshit..
THAT is how badly Democrats frak'ed up..
A driver was stuck in a traffic jam on the highway outside Washington, DC.
Nothing was moving.
Suddenly, a man knocks on the window. The driver rolls down the window and asks, "What's going on?"
"Terrorists have kidnapped the entire US Congress, and they're asking for a $100 million dollar ransom. Otherwise, they are going to douse them all in gasoline and set them on fire.
We are going from car to car, collecting donations."
"How much is everyone giving, on an average?" the driver asks.
The man replies, "Roughly a gallon."
Baa daa da... :D
Surprisingly, however, another consensus seems to be emerging, that of delaying the end of the trial until next Wednesday.
Biden may yet get an impeachment trial, if he does well enough on Monday to assure Republicans that he's the nominee. Not looking likely at this point, but stranger things have happened.
Biden may yet get an impeachment trial, if he does well enough on Monday to assure Republicans that he's the nominee.
Unless I just woke up in an alternate reality where all elections are on Monday....I assume you mean 'Tuesday'..
Stick a fork in Biden.. He's done..
While Stained in History, Trump Will Emerge From Trial Triumphant and Unshackled
https://www.enmnews.com/2020/02/01/while-stained-in-history-trump-will-emerge-from-trial-triumphant-and-unshackled/
Democrats have well and truly unleashed the beast..
There will no longer be any constraints on President Trump's behavior save for the constraints of his supporters...
Democrats have well and truly lobotomized and neutered themselves..
“When you strike at a king you must kill him.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mr. Trump’s foes struck at him but did not take him down.
With the end of the impeachment trial now in sight and acquittal assured, a triumphant Mr. Trump emerges from the biggest test of his presidency emboldened, ready to claim exoneration and take his case of grievance, persecution and resentment to the campaign trail.
The president’s Democratic adversaries rolled out the biggest constitutional weapon they had and failed to defeat him, or even to force a full trial with witnesses testifying to the allegations against him. Now Mr. Trump, who has said that the Constitution “allows me to do whatever I want” and pushed so many boundaries that curtailed past presidents, has little reason to fear the legislative branch nor any inclination to reach out in conciliation.
“I don’t think in any way Trump is willing to move on,” said Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman who teaches at Princeton University. “I think he will just have been given a green light and he will claim not just acquittal but vindication and he can do those things and they can’t impeach him again. I think this is going to empower him to be much bolder. I would expect to see him even more let loose.”
I don't think you people realize how BAD it's going to be for Democrats now...
All ya'all's sore luserism spin it's simple deflection to mask how scared ya'all are now..
"It's open season {on Democrats} and there is no bag limit."
-President Fowler, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER
And if yer not scared?? You obviously do not have a proper grasp of the facts and reality..
Ya gotta ask yerselves one question??
What can Democrats do to President Trump now?? What hold do they have over him and his behavior??
Absolutely nuttin'...
“This was clearly a political coup d’état carried out by a group of people who were amazingly, openly dishonest and I think it’s going to be repudiated,” said former Speaker Newt Gingrich, a strong ally of the president’s. “He’s been beaten up for three solid years and he’s still standing. That’s an amazing achievement if you think about it.”
I know asking the lot of ya'all to give credit where credit is due is a waste of photons..
But ya gotta admit, it IS an amazing achievement that ONE MAN could stand up to such an unrelenting daily... HOURLY onslaught by such an amassed force and actually emerge the other side.. Not only emerge but emerge utterly triumphant, vindicated and show NO SIGN of letting up..
All ya'all's hatred and bigotry aside, President Trump is a force to be reckoned with..
The fact that ya'all refuse to acknowledge that explains why ya'all constantly lose..
That does not seem like the likeliest path forward for Mr. Trump, more of a pugilist than a peacemaker. “He’s obviously legitimately pretty angry,” said Mr. Gingrich, who was forced out as speaker after Republicans lost the midterm elections during the drive to impeach Mr. Clinton. “Given that he’s a natural counterpuncher, he may decide to go after them.”
“That’s not his best strategy,” Mr. Gingrich said. “His best strategy is to assume that the Democrats are totally out of control, that they will not be able to keep fighting. If he appears conciliatory, they’re going to very badly damage themselves with average voters who are going to say these guys are pathological.”
“He has that option,” he added. “I’m not saying he’s going to take it.”
I have to agree..
President Trump's BEST strategy is to Kill 'em with kindness
Be so sweet and fair to Democrats that their continued hate and bigotry will be blatantly obvious by comparison. It will PROVE (as if any proof is necessary) that Democrats are motivated solely by their hate...
As I said, it's the BEST strategy forward.. It's not the strategy I would like.. It's unlikely to be the strategy that President Trump will follow..
But it's undoubtedly a good idea..
Democrats Vow Trump Probes to Go On After Impeachment Trial Ends
https://news.yahoo.com/democrats-vow-trump-probes-impeachment-110000081.html
More witch hunts.
Yea.. Cuz THAT has worked out so well for Democrats :eyeroll:
Doing the same thing over and over and over again, hoping for a different result..
The VERY definition of insanity...
How the House lost the witness battle along with impeachment
NBC host Chuck Todd recently asked guests on his show if supporters of President Trump just want to be lied to. It is a question that many in the media would never ask about Democrats, even in the face of overtly false claims. This week is an example. After the Senate rejected witnesses and effectively ended the impeachment trial on Friday, the media ignored the primary reason for the defeat, which is the insistence of House leaders to impeach Trump by Christmas. Critics of the president simply do not want to hear that the blind rush to impeach guaranteed not only an acquittal but an easy case for acquittal. It is after all important for some members of the media to maintain that fools dwell only in Republican red states.
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/481015-how-the-house-lost-the-witness-battle-along-with-impeachment
Democrats engineered and created the circumstances of their own defeat..
And the hilarious thing is they don't even see it..
Democrats had control from the start.. They could have done their jobs and made the Senate GOPers' job impossible.
Instead they took the lazy way out. They just assumed that the GOP and the American people would just fall all over themselves to make the Democrats' case for them..
Moronic..
Completely and utterly moronic..
Indeed, in the impeachment case of President Nixon, it took only a few months to go all the way to the Supreme Court for the final decision. So absent such a delay, the impeachment of Trump was guaranteed to fail, due to an incomplete and insufficient record. Yet the House insisted this was a “crime in progress” and there was no time to delay a submission to the Senate. It then immediately contradicted its rationale by waiting more than a month to submit articles of impeachment to the Senate. The House simply could not have made it easier on the president and his legal team.
House Democrats' actions were mind-blowingly stoopid...
And yet, with one or two possible exceptions... NO ONE here can concede that reality...
The media ignored the obvious catastrophic blunder by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership. The media instead suggested that it was all some grand and brilliant scheme. They even credited the strategy with Bolton eventually coming forward to say he would testify with a subpoena, even though the same offer was made during the House investigation. The media also ignored the unexplained decision by the House to withdraw a subpoena for top Bolton aide Charles Kupperman, who went to court as a prerequisite for testimony, the same position taken by Bolton. Before the courts could even rule, the House mooted the case by withdrawing the subpoena. That made no sense, and the court dismissed the case after concluding that the House appeared to have no interest in the witness.
It's perfectly clear why Democrats ran away from the courts..
They knew they were going to lose and they didn't want to establish the precedent..
As these blunders by the House became more and more obvious, all the efforts to excuse them became more and more absurd. One main defense heard in the media was that it did not matter, given the Senate Republican majority. Yet if the House was certain to lose on that record, why end the investigation prematurely with a case that would be so easy to defeat? By waiting only a few months, the record would have been stronger. Instead, House Democrats surrendered control of the record to the opposing party and adopted a ridiculous strategy of demanding concessions to end with this trial that Senate Republicans loathed. That strategy failed miserably.
This is not Monday morning quarterbacking. This very series of events was expressly laid out before the vote, and House Democrats made a decision to choose certain failure over completing their impeachment case. There was no reason to expect Senate Republicans to assist House managers in making their case, particularly in calling witnesses not subpoenaed by the House. Democrats had opposed any witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Clinton and voted as a bloc for a summary acquittal. There was no reason to expect Republicans to adopt an entirely different approach.
There is simply no doubt that House Democrats dropped the ball.. Scrooed da pooch.. Frak'ed things up to hell..
By not conceding this, ya'all are simply encouraging.. nay.. BEGGING for the exact same incompetence over and over again..
It's as if, despite your claims, ya'all **WANT** President Trump to succeed..
I remember a lesson we had in the police academy...
Before Newhall, cops killed in the line of duty were revered and the mistakes they made that brought about their deaths were swept under the rug..
After Newhall, it became common practice to analyze they incidents, determine what went wrong and take steps to correct the errors thru training..
While cops who die in the line of duty deserve our respect, their actions *MUST* be analyzed in the cold light of objectivity. To prevent mistakes (if any) from taking the life of more cops..
That's kinda how I feel with ya'all here..
CW used to be able to be counted on to calmly and objectively analyze the actions of the Democrat Party and deliver a scathing report on the bone-head moves that Democrats make..
We haven't seen that since President Trump was elected..
And that's said because it actually BETTER'ED the Democrat Party..
Now, Democrats have no reason to change because they KNOW that, no matter what, the Left Wing masses will accept ANYTHING, even the GROSSEST level of incompetence..
None of the explanations offered by House Democrats make any logical sense. That, however, does not matter. As Todd said of supporters of the president, people “want to be lied to sometimes” and “do not always love being told hard truths.” The hard truth is that House Democrats lost this case the minute they rushed an impeachment vote, and they knew it. With the approaching Iowa caucuses, they chose a failed impeachment rather than taking a few more months to work on a more complete case against Trump, a case more difficult to summarily dismiss. That is the hard truth.
Sadly, Democrats have NO ONE of any value or worth that they will listen to to set them straight..
Tom Basile: Pelosi's impeachment gamble fails – here's what going all in could cost her and the Democrats
Trump’s acquittal in the Senate means an energized Republican Party, reduced credibility for the speaker and a year of Democrat House control wasted on investigations that yielded nothing.
While Pelosi has tied up all her political capital on investigations and impeachment, Trump has continued to advance on a number of key issues, including jobs and the economy. It’s having an impact.
The latest polling by AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs shows a clear enthusiasm deficit for Democrats concerning the presidential campaign. According to Real Clear Politics, three polls over the last month have also seen Democrats slip in the generic congressional ballot to within the margin of error, potentially marking a sharp shift in voter preference.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tom-basile-pelosis-impeachment-gamble-fails-heres-what-going-all-in-could-cost-her-and-the-democrats
Democrats are surely going to lose the Presidential election..
They don't have a chance of taking the Senate..
And it's entirely likely that, due to Pelosi's mind-blowingly stoopid play, Democrats will lose the House..
Simply amazing...
Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats gave President Trump an asterisk. Yes, it will be a permanent footnote in the historical record. Pelosi’s political asterisk will be far worse. It will connote the continued erosion of confidence in her leadership and be a mark of growing irrelevancy after a career that once broke a political glass ceiling.
President Trump's place in history is going to be much MUCH better than Pelosi's place in history..
But, I guess as bad as Democrats got their asses handed to them..
Clinging to ANY silver-lining, no matter HOW faded and tattered it is..... Well, that has to be a requirement to maintain ya'all's sanity, eh?? :D
Michigan lawmaker recorded telling cop after arrest 'this is going to be the most famous arrest you've ever made'
https://www.foxnews.com/us/michigan-state-lawmaker-cop-dui-arrest-video
Yep.. You guessed it.. She's a Democrat..
[62]
Unless I just woke up in an alternate reality where all elections are on Monday....I assume you mean 'Tuesday'.
No, it's tomorrow.
Wierd...
Who's Super Bowlin' tonight???
Heheheh
The Bloomberg campaign has fired back in a statement this morning that actually says: “The president is lying. He is a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity, and his spray-on tan.”
Bloomberg is trying to out Trump President Trump...
Cuz that's worked out so well for everyone else who took on the President.. :D
What is so hard for Republicans to understand that the House is solely responsible for determining what an impeachable offense is? The Articles of Impeachment outline what the Senate is to adjudicate — are they guilty of doing what the AOI claim — that’s it!
The Senate is not voting on whether they think the House handled the inquiry or even if they agree with what the House charged the president with! That is not what the Constitution requires of them. They are not asked to comment on whether the House did everything they could have done to get the requested documents. They are asked to determine whether Trump committed obstruction of Congress — something Trump’s defense freely admits that he did!
Trump’s defense claim that they instructed all federal agencies to ignore all FUTURE Congressional requests for records because the White House RULED that the House’s subpoenas were not properly constructed. Then Trump’s defense claims that it cannot be obstruction if the House didn’t try to get the courts to rule on whether the records had to be released.
Where to begin with this bullshit defense??? First, the White House doesn’t have the authority to rule on whether the House’s subpoenas were properly constructed or whether they can simply ignore Congressional subpoenas.
Second, they were telling agencies to ignore FUTURE requests from Congress because they — somehow — know that those subpoenas will be improperly constructed and therefore, they can be ignored! Trump has mastered time travel, apparently. So even if we ignore that they do not have the authority to rule on whether they have to respond to Congressional subpoenas, they told the agencies that subpoenas that they had not yet received were not valid because... they said so?
Lastly, Trump’s defense team argued that there was no need for more witnesses, BUT if witnesses were going to be called, then they would want to cross examine ALL of the witnesses that they did not cross-examine when they chose not to have the opportunity to cross examine when they refused to participate in the inquiry.
They all but threatened the Senate to vote against witnesses or they would drag out the impeachment trial for as long as they could. They are openly obstructing in their defense of Trump being charged with obstruction!
Don,
They can donate and spend all the money they want. I and any true American will simply stand up and say we will not vote for that candidate.
The big money interests will not spend money to influence elections when it no longer works for them.
So when you and the masses that devote themselves to the OneDemand way don’t have a presidential candidate to vote for, you will write in your own names on the ballot, correct? That means a big money candidate will win every election.
You cannot beat the PACs because their spending money will always work at influencing elections! And your OneDemand all but ensures that! You throw away your votes and allow big money candidates to always win. Your own grand plan guarantees your failure.
“If only people knew about it,” you keep telling yourself; all the while ignoring the fact that less than 5 of the people who HAS heard of it has signed on with it...if they actually exist. But keep telling yourself that the flaw isn’t in your plan....nah, it’s perfect! It’s democracy, afterall!
If you think that President Trump was an awesome guy as a Democrat but a horrible despicable monster as a Republican..??
But that’s where you’ve been off this whole time. I have never been a fan of Trumps. He’s a over-privileged, narcissistic, bully with serious self-esteem issues who has never placed anyone’s needs before his own. He’s a self-admitted sexual offender and possibly a rapist. You may love the guy even more now that he has sold out our country for his own benefit, but I find him more repulsive than ever.
I remember a lesson we had in the police academy...
Was that Police Academy 4, 5, or 6? I saw the first three movies, but not the last three.
You keep claiming that the Democrats allegations against Trump are untrue, but they are not. Trump has admitted as much. When idiots like you lie to yourself, does it make it easier to accept that you are being used by a Russian asset? You keep saying that we are “losing” to Trump, “we” being Americans it would seem. Republicans sold this country out just in the fleeting chance that they can hold onto power just a little longer. Much like the Confederate States did when they sold out the country to hold on to slavery, today’s GOP has turned against the Union in their desire to prevent their removal by the voters.
What is so hard for Republicans to understand that the House is solely responsible for determining what an impeachable offense is? The Articles of Impeachment outline what the Senate is to adjudicate — are they guilty of doing what the AOI claim — that’s it!
As usual, factually not accurate..
The CONSTITUTION is solely responsible for determining what an impeachable offense is...
Where to begin with this bullshit defense??? First, the White House doesn’t have the authority to rule on whether the House’s subpoenas were properly constructed or whether they can simply ignore Congressional subpoenas.
Yes, it does.. :D
And that's why yer so pissy.. :D
Russ... You really need to come to grips with the fact that you, once again, lost..
President Trump will be 100% completely and utterly exonerated and vindicated..
These are the facts..
But that’s where you’ve been off this whole time. I have never been a fan of Trumps.
So? Who cares?? Your credibility is shot.
But DEMOCRATS were "a fan" of Trump when Trump had a -D after his name..
This is well-documented..
All of this hate and bigotry is SOLELY based on the fact that President Trump now has a -R after his name..
You keep claiming that the Democrats allegations against Trump are untrue, but they are not.
Again, per your norm, not factually accurate..
I claim two things.
1. The Democratic allegations are UNPROVEN and UNSUPPORTED by facts.
2. Even if the allegations WERE 1000% factually accurate, they are NOT a crime and NOT impeachable..
You keep saying that we are “losing” to Trump, “we” being Americans it would seem.
WOW.. So many factually inaccurate claims..
I am saying "ya'all" are losing to Trump, "ya'all" being Democrats and Trump/America haters..
Americans.. REAL Americans are winning.. Just like President Trump is winning. :D
Republicans sold this country out just in the fleeting chance that they can hold onto power just a little longer.
Yea, you keep saying that.. But it's just hate and bigotry spinning.. Nothing more..
Much like the Confederate States did when they sold out the country to hold on to slavery,
And, let's not forget.. Those were all DEMOCRATS...
today’s GOP has turned against the Union in their desire to prevent their removal by the voters.
The voters weren't trying to remove the President.. It was Democrats and Trump/America haters..
The VOTERS want President Trump in office.. For ANOTHER 4 years..
You and your Democrats and Trump/America haters KNOW this..
Which is exactly why ya'all keep trying to illegally remove President Trump from office..
Ya'all KNOW that President Trump is loved by the voters, by the real patriotic Americans..
Ya'all KNOW that yer gonna lose at the ballot box..
Impeachment Winds Down With Whimper as Washington Moves On
‘We all need break. This is as close to purgatory as any of us want to get,’ says senator
https://www.wsj.com/articles/impeachment-winds-down-with-whimper-as-washington-moves-on-11580596487
Democrats hang their heads in shame.
ANOTHER failed coup attempt..
Democrats have NOTHING to show the voters to explain why they should retain the House..
NOTHING...
Hell, even the next Democrat Nominee for President said that this faux impeachment coup went on too long.
“The impeachment trial went on a little too long.”
-Bernie Sanders
Which is rather ironic since Bernie voted to EXTEND the trial with witnesses..
Bernie doesn't stand a chance against President Trump..
The next afternoon, the senator arrived in Cedar Rapids for a town hall and told a few hundred supporters that she wouldn’t be able to stick around for a picture due to a tighter-than-normal schedule.
“I’ve been in Washington for a long time and I need to get to a lot of places around Iowa today and the next day,” Ms. Warren said. She said her golden retriever, Bailey, would do pictures with supporters instead.
And, of course, Warren sycophants would be perfectly happy with the dog.. :D
Hell, the DOG would be a better POTUS than Warren!! :D
Bernie Is the Opponent Trump Wants
The president has a game plan to win the election. A Sanders nomination is just what he needs.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/trump-bernie-sanders-socialism.html
And it's beginning to look like Democrats are, once again, going to give President Trump exactly what he wants.. :D
It's almost as if Democrats ***WANT*** to keep President Trump in office.. :D
Trump is running on the economy, but he knows many voters don’t like him. He needs to give those voters something to fear about the other party. That’s where socialism comes in. Trump uses that word at every rally, hoping to make Democrats look radical and scary. Sen. Elizabeth Warren agrees with many of Sanders’ ideas, but she doesn’t call them socialism. Sanders does. He plays right into Trump’s hands.
If you hang out with young progressives, you might be under the impression that socialism is popular. It is, but only on the left. In the latest Gallup poll, taken in September, liberals and Democrats viewed socialism favorably, but Americans as a whole rejected it, 57 percent to 39 percent. In the same poll, respondents viewed capitalism favorably, 60 percent to 35 percent. A Harvard/New York Times poll, taken in July and August, found similar results: Americans endorsed capitalism, 57 percent to 37 percent, while rejecting socialism, 59 percent to 34 percent. Polls taken in May by the Pew Research Center, in March for the libertarian Cato Institute, and in December for Fox News yielded similar results. In every survey, socialism scores well among progressives but gets trounced, among voters as a whole, in a showdown with capitalism.
I mean, it's all a moot point anyways..
NONE of the Democrat candidates can beat President Trump..
But out of all the candidates, Bernie has the WORST chance of winning..
And if Bernie is the nominee then moderate Democrats will stay home and Independents/NPAs will vote President Trump by the tens of millions..
Nov can't come soon enough!! :D
“Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs on a great game, and a fantastic comeback, under immense pressure. You represented the Great State of Kansas and, in fact, the entire USA, so very well. Our Country is PROUD OF YOU!”
-President Donald Trump
{{{sssiiiiggghhhh}}}
Sometimes ya just gotta shake your head sadly...
[80] ListenWhenYouHear wrote:
the House is solely responsible for determining what an impeachable offense is
No.
The Constitution gives the House the sole power to vote articles of impeachment. That means that the House can impeach for any offense it deems impeachable, and refrain from impeaching for any offense it decides not to consider impeachable. But the Constitution also gives the Senate the sole power to judge impeachments. That means the Senate can acquit on whatever grounds it chooses -- including the grounds that the House shouldn't have impeached for the offense it did.
You can't have it both ways. Either there's some degree of objective standard implicit in the Constitution, however vague or flexible, and both houses have a duty to adhere to it; or there are sole powers granted without limit. If the House has the sole power to impeach (and therefore to decide what it considers impeachable), then the Senate has the sole power to convict or acquit (and therefore to decide what it does). Likewise if the Senate has to abide by some external standard of what's impeachable, then so does the House.
I don't see any reference in the Constitution to any definition or standard, and I see the words "sole power" in both Section 2 and Section 3 of Article I.
The Senate has the power to acquit on the grounds that the House shouldn't have impeached for violation of a law that was written to apply to Edwin Stanton (and thus was unconstitutional under the bill of attainder clause). The Senate has the power to acquit on the grounds that the House shouldn't have impeached for lying about a blowjob. And the Senate has the power to acquit on the grounds that the House shouldn't have impeached for unlawfully soliciting foreign involvement in a US election.
Those decisions differ dramatically in merit: certainly in how they will be viewed by history, and hopefully in how they will be viewed by voters over the next six years. But if the Senate has the power to make the first two decisions, then it has the power to make the third.
[83] Michale wrote:
The VOTERS want President Trump in office.. For ANOTHER 4 years..
You and your Democrats and Trump/America haters KNOW this.
No.
No one knows what the voters want, because no one knows who the voters will be, and who the non-voters will be. There are enough people on each side, and there's routinely enough variation in turnout from each side, that it could go either way. I'm pessimistic about politics, so my prediction matches yours. But only as a prediction. Until we see the turnout, no one knows.
DSWS,
The Constitution gives the House the sole power to vote articles of impeachment. That means that the House can impeach for any offense it deems impeachable, and refrain from impeaching for any offense it decides not to consider impeachable. But the Constitution also gives the Senate the sole power to judge impeachments. That means the Senate can acquit on whatever grounds it chooses -- including the grounds that the House shouldn't have impeached for the offense it did.
Exactly...
Once the Articles get to the Senate, it's the Senates ball to do with it as they will.. As long as the Senate addresses the ball in one form or another, the House can't do diddley squat about it..
No one knows what the voters want, because no one knows who the voters will be, and who the non-voters will be.
Disagree.. It's clear what the voters want.. :D
"If I drop a hammer on a high gravity planet, I don't need to actually see the hammer fall to accurately predict that it will fall.."
-Commander Spock, STAR TREK Court Martial
Likewise, I can accurately predict to the point of factual that the sun will rise tomorrow in the east and set in the west..
And JUST as the sun WILL rise in the east and set in the west, President Trump WILL win re-election.
Of course, you can make a logical and rational argument that I cannot know for certain and I will concede and grant you that argument..
But that doesn't change the fact that, barring a REAL assassination by Democrat loyalists, President Trump will win re-election..
Until we see the turnout, no one knows.
I concede that point.. :D
unlawfully soliciting foreign involvement in a US election.
There is no such law...
You can argue there "oughta be a law"....
But as of now, foreign involvement in other country's elections is a foregone conclusion..
The US is more guilty of that then most nations..
No one here had a problem when Obama and his minions involved themselves in the Israeli elections to defeat Bibi...
The impeachment endgame
"We're in the endgame, Stark"
-Dr Strange, AVENGERS Infinity War
You can argue there "oughta be a law"....
there is. it's article 1, section 9, clause 8 of the US Constitution (currently referred to as the "emoluments" clause), over which donald has publicly run roughshod with the full support of almost half the country.
[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
every other aspect of this whole impeachment drama is really kind-of tangential to this issue, that donald has not only accepted, but encouraged and at times even demanded personal favors from foreign states - not favors to serve the interests of the USA, but solely to serve the interests of himself.
every president in recent memory has asked little favors of foreign governments in the course of serving US interests, but none except donald has so regularly and blatantly made the personal favors to himself priority 1, subservient to the interests of the nation he serves.
we can disagree about the extent to which it matters, as senator alexander did in his statement rejecting witnesses at the impeachment trial:
"I don't need to hear any more evidence to decide that the president did what he's charged with doing," Alexander told NPR's Steve Inskeep on Friday. "So if you've got eight witnesses saying that you left the scene of an accident, you don't need nine."
but as the senator initmates, it's a stone cold fact that donald has done this. the only rational question is whether it qualifies as an impeachable offense.
JL
let me re-write that last paragraph:
but as the senator initmates, it's a stone cold fact that donald has flagrantly violated a clause in the US Constitution. the only rational question is whether it qualifies as an offense that merits his removal from office.
[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
If that applied to President Trump, why didn't Democrats impeach him for it??
Because the FACTS do not support the claim..
every other aspect of this whole impeachment drama is really kind-of tangential to this issue, that donald has not only accepted, but encouraged and at times even demanded personal favors from foreign states - not favors to serve the interests of the USA, but solely to serve the interests of himself.
Just as Obama accepted "help" from Putin in exchange for "flexibility" on The Crimea..
If it wasn't a crime when Obama did it, it's not a crime when President Trump does it...
but as the senator initmates, it's a stone cold fact that donald has done this.
If it were, President Trump should have been impeached for that specifically..
The fact that he wasn't proves that the facts didn't support the claim..
Given the hate and bigotry that Democrats have for President Trump... If there was even a miniscule ingot of factual support to push the actual crimes..
Democrats would have done so..
The fact that the Articles were non-criminal in nature proves that Democrats did not think they had the facts to support actual criminal charges..
I mean, yer a smart guy, JL..
Much smarter than me in most cases..
Can YOU think of a logical and rational reason why NOT to press actual criminal charges if the facts completely and utterly support the charges???
To rephrase..
Given the absolute HATE that Democrats have for President Trump, can YOU think of a logical and rational reason why NOT to press actual criminal charges if the facts completely and utterly support the charges???
nobody ever wrote a criminal law to forbid a president from violating the constitution. that's why impeachment exists - for that express purpose. every single other open-ended parliamentary power in england was explicitly forbidden congress by the constitution. they can't pass ex post facto laws, they can't issue bills of attainder, they can't void contracts, and so on.
impeachment was made specifically for this type of scenario, where a president does something that clearly violates the constitution, but there's no law yet explicitly forbidding the particular violation. if they'd cited a criminal statute it wouldn't be accurate, not because what the president did isn't criminal but because the statute is inadequate to the severity of the constitutional violation.
this is why impeachment exists.
this is why impeachment exists.
Impeachment ONLY exists to address HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS...
The Articles of Impeachment were NOT a High Crime, nor were they a misdemeanor..
Ergo, even beyond the partisan illegitimacy, impeachment was not applicable..
You really didn't address the question.
If Democrats *HAD* incontrovertible FACTS to support an actual high crime or misdemeanor, WHY did the actual articles of impeachment not address an actual crime??
Dumb it down for me. You know I am just a knuckle-dragging ground-pounder..
http://sjfm.us/pics/NoAmmo.jpg
This addresses the issue perfectly..
sorry, i didn't really answer the question. i'll try again. not feeling well, on my way to the doctor.
can YOU think of a logical and rational reason why NOT to press actual criminal charges if the facts completely and utterly support the charges???
basically the reason why regular criminal charges fail against a president in many cases comes down to arcane legal arguments based on the text of the statute. for example, "obstruction of justice" implies that the people being obstructed are from the executive and judicial branches, which in this case they're not. bribery and extortion are the same, because there's a whole lot of inside baseball legalese that makes criminal presidential acts different from the garden variety criminal sort.
if you name a presidential offense based on federal statute, some technicality of the statute will come back to bite you, which has absolutely nothing to do with the substance of the crime.
JL
you've heard of criminals who were guilty as sin getting off on a technicality. where presidents are concerned there are a minefield of additional technicalities that have nothing to do with whether or not a crime was in fact committed.
sorry, i didn't really answer the question. i'll try again. not feeling well, on my way to the doctor.
Sorry to hear that.. yea, I am a bit under too.. I fell off a ladder on Saturday and busted open the zip ties holding my ribs together.. Gotta do another surgery to repair the damage.. Quickly too, as our annual family cruise is in 61 days..
basically the reason why regular criminal charges fail against a president in many cases comes down to arcane legal arguments based on the text of the statute. for example, "obstruction of justice" implies that the people being obstructed are from the executive and judicial branches, which in this case they're not. bribery and extortion are the same, because there's a whole lot of inside baseball legalese that makes criminal presidential acts different from the garden variety criminal sort.
OK, that makes sense...
But consider this..
If there are loopholes that say a President is NOT guilty of A, B, C or D... Then it's not really factually accurate to say that the facts support criminal charges..
To put it another way..
If a man kills his wife, but it was a mercy killing, then the FACTS don't support a murder charge, even though it's a fact that the man did kill his wife..
If President Trump committed bribery, but the verbiage of the law allows for exceptions and loopholes, then it's not factually accurate to say that facts support the charges..
The fact support the charges, EXCEPT for this, this and that... If President Trump has this, this and that, then the facts DON'T support the charges..
That make sense???
To put it even another way, the facts support an Obama charge of Treason for his hot mic dealings with Putin's Lackey..
But the EXCEPTION to Treason is a President who makes a backroom deal with an enemy.. THAT is a loophole or exception to the Treason law..
Therefore it's NOT factual to say the facts support a Treason charge against Obama...
To put it more simply..
The facts support criminal charges against President Trump.
A NON FACTUAL statement..
The facts WOULD support criminal charges against President Trump except for loophole A, B and C and exception X, Y and Z...
That *IS* a factual statement..
“Imagine Donald Trump deciding sometime in June, ‘Well, I heard this conspiracy theory that a lot of illegal immigrants voted in California, so I’ve decided that during the presidential election California has to undergo extreme vetting because we can’t trust their votes. We’re going to shut down voting in a state.’ This is literally the kind of thing he will do now. We’re not talking hypotheticals anymore...I don’t understand how anyone cannot be terrified, not just angry, but literally terrified about what the future’s gonna bring.”
— Politics.com editor and MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson
That's not a bad idea...
Any state that votes blue but can't guarantee that NO ILLEGAL votes were done..
Their votes should be immediately disqualified..
I like it..
“Do you think he [Donald Trump] will be a gracious loser? Do you think that he will accept defeat and reach out the hand of friendship to whoever is going to replace him? I don’t think so. Can I see Donald Trump at that point making the argument that the election was stolen? A possibility.
-Ted Koppel
You mean, like Hillary and the Dumbocrats have done since 10 Nov 2016???
You mean like that???
" And I think there are unfortunately millions of people in this country today who would respond to that in a fashion that, you know, I’m not even sure I really want to consider all the consequences of where that might go. Could it lead to violence? Yes, it could.”
If Dumbocrats try to steal the election like they tried illegal coups.. TWICE??
You bet there is going to be violence..
Guaran-frakin'-tee it!
The facts WOULD support criminal charges against President Trump except for loophole A, B and C and exception X, Y and Z...
That *IS* a factual statement..
not exactly. see, this is where impeachment comes in. the reason the framers included impeachment in the constitution (while all its cousins like bills of attainder and the like were explicitly forbidden) is that they recognized the possibility of a chief executive or chief justice abusing all those loopholes and exceptions that exist for heads of government. thus, they gave congress carte blanche to come up with any crime they thought would pass muster with two thirds of the electorate.
basically, the framers' message to future congresses was that any federal official who was guilty as sin would not be protected from impeachment by a technicality of their office.
basically, the framers' message to future congresses was that any federal official who was guilty as sin would not be protected from impeachment by a technicality of their office.
Which brings us back to, "Could Democrats PROVE that President Trump was guilty as sin??"
Apparently.. NOT.. Since they didn't have **ANY** Crime as an Article Of Impeachment..
not exactly. see, this is where impeachment comes in.
No.. Impeachment comes in when one Party can, with complete BI-PARTISAN support, prove with FACTS (not hearsay, rumor, innuendo and bullshit, but FACTS) that the President has committed a High Crime or a Misdemeanor..
One Party can't arbitrarily decide that, since a President is an asshole and a jerk, that they are going to bring in impeachment for whatever they want it for..
The Constitution does not allow it..
[97]
nypoet22 wrote:
there is. it's article 1, section 9, clause 8 of the US Constitution (currently referred to as the "emoluments" clause)
No, it's 11 CFR § 110.20 (g). No person shall knowingly solicit, accept, or receive from a foreign national any contribution or donation prohibited by paragraphs (b) through (d) of this section. The emoluments clause says "accept", not "solicit". The articles of impeachment mention soliciting foreign involvement in an election. They don't mention actually receiving anything, because Ukraine didn't get around to making up any dirt on Biden -- and Pelosi wanted the impeachment to be focused on one point instead of being all over the place.
Trump has violated the emoluments clause, but it's not part of what he was impeached for.
One Party can't arbitrarily decide that, since a President is an asshole and a jerk, that they are going to bring in impeachment for whatever they want it for.
It's happened at least twice. That's not counting the current instance.
dsws,
Define "contribution" and "donation" as it pertains to that...
It's happened at least twice. That's not counting the current instance
Perhaps, at it's basis.. But there were still "crimes" of a sort.. Although Andrew Johnson's was iffy at best..
I guess Democrats were just lazy and didn't want to bother actually having FACTS to prove actual crimes..
Define "contribution" and "donation" as it pertains to that...
For example.. Would Putin's "help" for Obama count as a "contribution" or "donation"???
dsws,
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t the Senate in the Bill Clinton Impeachment vote on whether Clinton was guilty of the charges as outlined in the AOI, and then whether the offense warranted being removed from office?
DSWS
Ok, hit submit as I was fact checking myself and realize I was wrong.
If President Trump committed bribery, but the verbiage of the law allows for exceptions and loopholes, then it's not factually accurate to say that facts support the charges..
You, conveniently, skipped over one minor detail in your analysis.... loopholes are only applicable if you meet the criteria for which they were created. You argument that the President is authorized to “negotiate with foreign leaders” doesn’t include the remainder that states WHAT they are authorized to negotiate — “on matters of national security”. Creating a scandal to damage the reputation of Joe Biden in order to help his own chances to be re-elected is not “a matter of national security”.
Trump is a con man. He’s a grifter that will always seek to rig the outcome in his favor. And you need to wake up and realize that “in HIS favor” does not mean “in our nation’s favor”. The sooner you come to terms with this, the better.
Trump is a con man. He’s a grifter that will always seek to rig the outcome in his favor. And you need to wake up and realize that “in HIS favor” does not mean “in our nation’s favor”. The sooner you come to terms with this, the better.
Yea, you keep saying this..
But you NEVER have the facts to back it up..
And you STILL have not adequately explained why Democrats loved Donald Trump when he had a -D after his name..
The *ONLY* logical conclusion is that it's hypocrisy and Party slavery at work here..