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On December 20 2019 03:03 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2019 03:02 farvacola wrote:
It doesn’t have to be a requirement in order for it to play an important role in the impeachment process. But yes, it is also a problem that far too many people are ok with the way the federal government conducts immigration, and yes, that goes beyond Trump. If your point is that Democrats couldn't be convinced putting kids in concentration camps or the many other horrific things Trump's done was worse than this Ukraine thing, I'd agree.
The problem is the American public, which couldn't be convinced that putting kids in concentration camps was impeachment worthy. If Democrats thought the public would support impeaching Trump over the concentration camps they would have done it.
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On December 20 2019 03:13 Mercy13 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2019 03:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 20 2019 03:02 farvacola wrote:
It doesn’t have to be a requirement in order for it to play an important role in the impeachment process. But yes, it is also a problem that far too many people are ok with the way the federal government conducts immigration, and yes, that goes beyond Trump. If your point is that Democrats couldn't be convinced putting kids in concentration camps or the many other horrific things Trump's done was worse than this Ukraine thing, I'd agree. The problem is the American public, which couldn't be convinced that putting kids in concentration camps was impeachment worthy. If Democrats thought the public would support impeaching Trump over the concentration camps they would have done it.
They didn't convince the public on this, so clearly the only requirement was convincing the Democrats in the house who I think clearly support that horrific policy. Trying to diffuse accountability onto "the american public" is crap imo.
EDIT: Trumps policy of kidnapping and losing kids polled way worse for Trump than this Ukraine thing ever did for example
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On December 20 2019 03:30 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2019 03:13 Mercy13 wrote:On December 20 2019 03:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 20 2019 03:02 farvacola wrote:
It doesn’t have to be a requirement in order for it to play an important role in the impeachment process. But yes, it is also a problem that far too many people are ok with the way the federal government conducts immigration, and yes, that goes beyond Trump. If your point is that Democrats couldn't be convinced putting kids in concentration camps or the many other horrific things Trump's done was worse than this Ukraine thing, I'd agree. The problem is the American public, which couldn't be convinced that putting kids in concentration camps was impeachment worthy. If Democrats thought the public would support impeaching Trump over the concentration camps they would have done it. They didn't convince the public on this, so clearly the only requirement was convincing the Democrats in the house who I think clearly support that horrific policy. Trying to diffuse accountability onto "the american public" is crap imo.
The thing is that you have to link specifically Trump to it. Trump's bad enforment on shit policies you can shift the blame on someone in the cabinet or another appointment. Trump could disavow he wanted specific things etc. So things can be terrible and his policies could not be helping but he could always say, well I never wanted x,y or z
Ultimately he is still reasonable, after all he's the one giving directions and hiring people but like an American CEO you'll never see them go to jail because of that plasuable deniability
The Ukraine thing we have Trump clearly taking an active role in how it played out, not just giving vauge direction to someone else.
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On December 20 2019 03:41 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2019 03:30 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 20 2019 03:13 Mercy13 wrote:On December 20 2019 03:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 20 2019 03:02 farvacola wrote:
It doesn’t have to be a requirement in order for it to play an important role in the impeachment process. But yes, it is also a problem that far too many people are ok with the way the federal government conducts immigration, and yes, that goes beyond Trump. If your point is that Democrats couldn't be convinced putting kids in concentration camps or the many other horrific things Trump's done was worse than this Ukraine thing, I'd agree. The problem is the American public, which couldn't be convinced that putting kids in concentration camps was impeachment worthy. If Democrats thought the public would support impeaching Trump over the concentration camps they would have done it. They didn't convince the public on this, so clearly the only requirement was convincing the Democrats in the house who I think clearly support that horrific policy. Trying to diffuse accountability onto "the american public" is crap imo. The thing is that you have to link specifically Trump to it. Trump's bad enforment on shit policies you can shift the blame on someone in the cabinet or another appointment. Trump could disavow he wanted specific things etc. So things can be terrible and his policies could not be helping but he could always say, well I never wanted x,y or z Ultimately he is still reasonable, after all he's the one giving directions and hiring people but like an American CEO you'll never see them go to jail because of that plasuable deniability The Ukraine thing we have Trump clearly taking an active role in how it played out, not just giving vauge direction to someone else.
He could say that like he said this was a witch hunt/coup. I don't believe he makes that work better than making out only Democrats voting against Democrats and Republicans for impeachment a partisan thing.
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Imo it's pretty clear that the reason why this is the impeachable offense is because he attacked an insider, Biden. There were multiple offenses by Trump that were impeachable and directly connected to him, the obstruction of justice for Mueller, the emoluments clause, and so on. The democrats didn't jump on anything before this because they fundamentally didn't want to impeach him: it's dangerous politically as it could easily favor the republicans more than the democrats, and it doesn't bring them a lot of advantage as Pence isn't really better than Trump in any measure and he could be harder to present as a boogeyman for them (remember they want to run as a return to the neoliberal status quo, they benefit from the other candidate appearing as terrible as possible since they don't bring any concrete change to the electorate themselves).
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On December 20 2019 03:49 Nebuchad wrote:
Imo it's pretty clear that the reason why this is the impeachable offense is because he attacked an insider, Biden. There were multiple offenses by Trump that were impeachable and directly connected to him, the obstruction of justice for Mueller, the emoluments clause, and so on. The democrats didn't jump on anything before this because they fundamentally didn't want to impeach him: it's dangerous politically as it could easily favor the republicans more than the democrats, and it doesn't bring them a lot of advantage as Pence isn't really better than Trump in any measure and he could be harder to present as a boogeyman for them (remember they want to run as a return to the neoliberal status quo, they benefit from the other candidate appearing as terrible as possible since they don't bring any concrete change to the electorate themselves).
I think it's pretty clear that they waited to impeach him until there was a realistic chance the public would support the effort:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/impeachment-polls/
(showing that the public opinion didn't swing toward impeachment until after the Ukraine scandal broke)
I agree with you that they were reluctant to impeach until then for political reasons (even though, by any objective measure he deserved to be impeached earlier, for the reasons you mentioned and others). However, that doesn't mean their motivations were purely self-interested. If they pulled the trigger on impeachment before the public was ready to support it it may have made a second Trump term more likely, allowing him to continue engaging in all those impeachable activities, and worse.
If the goal is to get Trump out of office impeaching him for all the terrible things he did earlier in his term may have been counterproductive. Impeaching him now may *still* be counterproductive. I think Introvert is one of the more reasonable Republicans, but even he is willing to back his boy to the hilt despite Trump admitting to doing the stuff Democrats are impeaching him over.
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United States43620 Posts
On December 20 2019 01:31 TankWithBank wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2019 01:28 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Who said Trump was a Russian puppet? I mean he probably is, out of his own volition, and a North Korean puppet and a Chinese puppet and a Saudi puppet, but why are you so certain that a nebulous political position that may or may not exists said so? Spouting the bullshit narrative that the Russians rigged the election for Trump implies Trump is a Russian puppet no?
I feel like you missed the part where we learned his campaign actively worked with Russian intelligence and the part where every US intelligence agency agree that Russia intervened in the election to favour Trump. The Russia story ended on “it happened, we’re not going to do anything about it though”.
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But as it turns out, that is something that can be mistaken for "nothing bad happened" surprisingly easy. Which is probably a vision of what is going to happen with the impeachment, sadly. It is going to show that Trump did bad stuff, but the republicans will not do anything about it, and then Trumps zombies will interpret that as "Trump did nothing bad"
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They've gone after him like you would a mob boss, which probably seemed reasonable at the time. You know he's done a hundred things worse than the crime you get him for, but it's really hard to prove he ordered all those pairs of cement shoes, so you have to wait until there's something solid-gold undeniable and then you put him away for money laundering or insurance fraud or whatever.
The problem, of course, is that impeachment isn't and hasn't ever been about the law. Impeachment is about convincing voters, the same way elections are about convincing voters, and rules-lawyery charges just don't convince enough voters.
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Canada5565 Posts
Detailed article by The Intercept on the IG report and FBI scandal. It seems like a big deal. I wonder why it's not getting much attention, especially given the parallels to Trump and Biden.
"In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.
In 2017, the FBI decided to seek reauthorization of the FISA warrant to continue to spy on Page, and sought and obtained it three times: in January, April and June, 2017. Not only, according to the IG Report, did the FBI repeat all of those “seven significant inaccuracies and omission,” but added ten additional major inaccuracies.
If you don’t consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal, what is?"
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On December 20 2019 07:07 Xxio wrote:Detailed article by The Intercept on the IG report and FBI scandal. It seems like a big deal. I wonder why it's not getting much attention, especially given the parallels to Trump and Biden. "In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims. In 2017, the FBI decided to seek reauthorization of the FISA warrant to continue to spy on Page, and sought and obtained it three times: in January, April and June, 2017. Not only, according to the IG Report, did the FBI repeat all of those “seven significant inaccuracies and omission,” but added ten additional major inaccuracies. If you don’t consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal, what is?" Because the report also concluded that the investigation was justified in being opened and didn't find any evidence of political motivation.
Yes the FISA guidelines were not followed and that is bad, the are likely not followed in a LOT of cases. And that is bad.
That is an issue with secret courts and limited ability for public oversight and that is bad and should be fixed.
But there is, as far as I have seen, no evidence that it was politically motivated.
This was not a government agency trying to spy on a Presidential campaign for political gains.
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On December 20 2019 03:49 Nebuchad wrote:
Imo it's pretty clear that the reason why this is the impeachable offense is because he attacked an insider, Biden. There were multiple offenses by Trump that were impeachable and directly connected to him, the obstruction of justice for Mueller, the emoluments clause, and so on. The democrats didn't jump on anything before this because they fundamentally didn't want to impeach him: it's dangerous politically as it could easily favor the republicans more than the democrats, and it doesn't bring them a lot of advantage as Pence isn't really better than Trump in any measure and he could be harder to present as a boogeyman for them (remember they want to run as a return to the neoliberal status quo, they benefit from the other candidate appearing as terrible as possible since they don't bring any concrete change to the electorate themselves).
I really doubt they care as much about Biden's son. It's just that this case has loads of people who were willing to testify, it's very clear what happened. The problem has always been the Mitch senate not willing to actually do oversight over the presidency. At least with this clear case they can point out the senators voting for aquittal for the cult of personality followers they are now.
I agree and have said in the past they should've impeached for the emoluments clause, but apparently that clause is worth nothing legally seeing how easily he gets away with it? IDK. The case on getting his tax returns has been sent to the supreme court afaik, he is stalling maximum like always. That ruling will be quite interesting as the appeals court wiped the floor with Trumps lawyers.
And the obstruction of justice OLC thing was a confusing mess, and they never got to talk to the main witnesses like McGahn still due to more obstruction.
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On December 20 2019 03:30 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2019 03:13 Mercy13 wrote:On December 20 2019 03:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 20 2019 03:02 farvacola wrote:
It doesn’t have to be a requirement in order for it to play an important role in the impeachment process. But yes, it is also a problem that far too many people are ok with the way the federal government conducts immigration, and yes, that goes beyond Trump. If your point is that Democrats couldn't be convinced putting kids in concentration camps or the many other horrific things Trump's done was worse than this Ukraine thing, I'd agree. The problem is the American public, which couldn't be convinced that putting kids in concentration camps was impeachment worthy. If Democrats thought the public would support impeaching Trump over the concentration camps they would have done it. They didn't convince the public on this, so clearly the only requirement was convincing the Democrats in the house who I think clearly support that horrific policy. Trying to diffuse accountability onto "the american public" is crap imo.
This is substantially missing the point. Enough of the public was convinced (more by the facts than by Democrats I expect) that impeachment was politically feasible (whatever the political consequences in fact turn out to be). The fact that there is not broad bipartisan support for impeachment is not relevant to what Mercy13 said.
EDIT: Trumps policy of kidnapping and losing kids polled way worse for Trump than this Ukraine thing ever did for example
It does not follow that the public believes it is a valid basis for impeachment. Traditionally impeachment has been used to (attempt to) remove presidents from office for inappropriate acts they committed on a personal level, not (directly) for inappropriate policy. Even given the assumption that Democrats find that policy repugnant (they certainly find some of Trump's policy repugnant), impeaching over policy would look a lot like nakedly trying to reverse the previous election.
+ Show Spoiler +From what I understand Andrew Johnson's impeachment was only superficially about his personal conduct but seeing as it happened in the 1800s it's pretty irrelevant anyway. To my knowledge Watergate (even if it never reached a vote) and the Clinton impeachment didn't directly go anywhere near policy.
edit: In the general view, inappropriate policy should be dealt with by the judiciary/legislature or by voting him out at the next election. You can blame the Democrats and whoever else for not doing the first, you can blame the general populace if they don't do the second, and you can blame the American political system for giving the executive such unchecked power in the first place. None of that makes impeachment necessarily appropriate.
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On December 20 2019 08:04 Aquanim wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2019 03:30 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 20 2019 03:13 Mercy13 wrote:On December 20 2019 03:03 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 20 2019 03:02 farvacola wrote:
It doesn’t have to be a requirement in order for it to play an important role in the impeachment process. But yes, it is also a problem that far too many people are ok with the way the federal government conducts immigration, and yes, that goes beyond Trump. If your point is that Democrats couldn't be convinced putting kids in concentration camps or the many other horrific things Trump's done was worse than this Ukraine thing, I'd agree. The problem is the American public, which couldn't be convinced that putting kids in concentration camps was impeachment worthy. If Democrats thought the public would support impeaching Trump over the concentration camps they would have done it. They didn't convince the public on this, so clearly the only requirement was convincing the Democrats in the house who I think clearly support that horrific policy. Trying to diffuse accountability onto "the american public" is crap imo. This is substantially missing the point. Enough of the public was convinced (more by the facts than by Democrats I expect) that impeachment was politically feasible (whatever the political consequences in fact turn out to be). The fact that there is not broad bipartisan support for impeachment is not relevant to what Mercy13 said. Show nested quote +EDIT: Trumps policy of kidnapping and losing kids polled way worse for Trump than this Ukraine thing ever did for example It does not follow that the public believes it is a valid basis for impeachment. Traditionally impeachment has been used to (attempt to) remove presidents from office for inappropriate acts they committed on a personal level, not (directly) for inappropriate policy. Even given the assumption that Democrats find that policy repugnant (they certainly find some of Trump's policy repugnant), impeaching over policy would look a lot like nakedly trying to reverse the previous election. + Show Spoiler +From what I understand Andrew Johnson's impeachment was only superficially about his personal conduct but seeing as it happened in the 1800s it's pretty irrelevant anyway. To my knowledge Watergate (even if it never reached a vote) and the Clinton impeachment didn't directly go anywhere near policy. edit: In the general view, inappropriate policy should be dealt with by the judiciary/legislature or by voting him out at the next election. You can blame the Democrats and whoever else for not doing the first, you can blame the general populace if they don't do the second, and you can blame the American political system for giving the executive such unchecked power in the first place. None of that makes impeachment necessarily appropriate.
lol enough for what?
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"buttigieg, why won't you be as aggressive about climate change?"
"I live next to a river, of course climate change is important to me."
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God Yang is so good. Him repping thorium gave me science chills
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Joe Biden doesn't even want to replace the Republicans in the senate, he just wants to pass things they want to pass too. At least he seems to be mostly coherent tonight.
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Didn't we have a serious thorium fan in the thread once? We need him back.
And I started late, but Biden doesn't sound totally incoherent right now. Wonder how many naps he had and how long it will last.
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On December 20 2019 10:45 Introvert wrote:
Didn't we have a serious Thorium fan in the thread once? We need him back.
And I started late, but Biden doesn't sound totally incoherent right now. Wonder how many naps he had and how long it will last.
Me? I'm hardcore pro thorium, but don't remember talking about it much. From a materials chemistry perspective, thorium is a slam dunk. It is 100% a education problem. Even well educated scientists are typically ignorant of nuclear benefits because all they learn about it is radiation training for their labs, lol.
Thorium rules.
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The US can't isolate China, how oblivious is Buttigieg? I thought he was supposed to be the smart one?
and Joe Biden is going to use the Navy to stop China... These people are morons.
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EPT
