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US Politics. Trump Crossing the Dnieper. Alea Iacta Est.


A Horse Named Stranger

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13 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Very curious what this is about...

The State Department is shutting down until further notice.  All embassies should contact Mr. Giuliani for further guidance.

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32 minutes ago, DMC said:

The State Department is shutting down until further notice.  All embassies should contact Mr. Giuliani for further guidance.

This is as sound advice as telling people to bet the Dolphins covering the spread. You're sick! 

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And now on the immigration front...

A lawyer interviewed by the CBC said Canadians being banned from the US was once a rare event. They heard about such incidents perhaps once every two years. Now the law firm hears about 5 year bans being handed out to Canadians on a daily basis.

His client was a young man who heard that a music festival in Washington state needed volunteers, so he drove down to volunteer. He was grilled for 5 hours at the border and then deported and banned from entry into the US for 5 years. He was told volunteers steal jobs from Americans.

No rules or regulations have changed, just attitude.

That’ll put a crimp on Worldcon.

Time for some retaliatory bans, methinks.

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Independent Senator Angus King just told Anderson Cooper that he was suspicious about the transcript of the Ukrainian call and so had two staff members read it out aloud. At a slow speed it took them just over 10 minutes. The conversation has already been described as being 30 minutes long. Perhaps it took longer if there were translators involved, but King pointed out the Ukrainian President speaks English.

There seems to be missing content.

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3 hours ago, DMC said:

Well, the answer to your question is, again, my point is these are the mechanisms at Congress' disposal, they've always been these mechanisms, and Trump is hardly the first president to resist them.  Also, in terms of GOP MCs' unwillingness to stand up for their own branch of government, that is - as it's always been - based on the opinions of their constituency.  Which means it's ultimately the constituency that has changed - in that there's a substantial portion of the electorate that will in all likelihood be perfectly fine with Trump openly and actively behaving as if Congress has no oversight power.  It's virtually impossible to construct durable institutional checks when that's the case.

Anyway, there's some inaccuracies in your first graph.  First, no, the Senate does not have to go along with any contempt citation passed by the House (or vice versa), each chamber is independently empowered with contempt charges.  Second, censure is the same way - only the Senate censured Jackson (before it was expunged).  Moreover, censure is generally not used against other executive branch officials (I can't think of any example of such) - I mean with contempt there why bother?  Finally, if you look at the history of contempt citations since Watergate, most were successful in inducing some type of compliance - particularly when the citation has to do with withheld documents.

ETA:  Also, forgot, Jackson's censure was expunged before he left office.

Jackson made a deal.  As stated, he was obsessive about that removal from the record.

And I know that both houses have their own rules and don't necessarily follow each other.  Which is, again, the point.

If the Senate doesn't have the House's back, what is the recourse?

Especially when the supporters show up armed and dangerous? As they are saying they will do.

Would the empowered forces open fire on them in return?

They sure didn't in Miami when they stopped the Gore - Bush recount.  The law and order professonals .... didn't show up, melted away, etc.

 

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4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

If the Senate doesn't have the House's back, what is the recourse?

Um, when it comes to contempt, what does it matter if the Senate has the House's back?  You have no point here.  The rest of it has nothing to do with institutional checks.

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You are either being silly or intentionally obtuse.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/01/what-can-congress-do-if-mike-pompeo-wont-cooperate-with-its-impeachment-inquiry/

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... Congress may not have a lot of options left to force potentially key players in its impeachment inquiry to speak to it. The rule book for how to be a check on the executive branch doesn’t include an executive branch unwilling to cooperate.

Pompeo is staking his argument on both procedural and political grounds. Procedurally, he accuses Democrats of not providing a technical document, called a Notice of Deposition, to have his staff testify. He says they were not given enough time, and he is demanding that State Department lawyers be present during testimony to assert executive privilege....

....As The Washington Post’s Dan Balz wrote recently, the checks and balances are set up to work if both sides respect the governing norms. The founders just didn’t put tools in the Constitution for this. “America’s democratic system, the world’s oldest, is said to be resilient, with institutions strong enough to defend against runaway actors and with checks and balances designed to prevent too much power from building up in any one place or with any one person,” Balz wrote. “Earlier in Trump’s presidency, that appeared to be the case. Right now, however, that is in question.”

 

 

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Contempt is worthless if there is no cooperation among the various branches and agencies, including the DOJ and the court.

Quote

We know of one tool Congress still has, and it’s pretty blunt: inherent contempt. Some top Democrats have been talking about using this for weeks. It is a long-dormant power for Congress to fine or jail officials who don’t comply. It hasn’t been used in over a century, but when it has, Congress has detained administration officials for not complying with it. Congress doesn’t have its own jail, so lawmakers could try to use the D.C. jail. As you can see, this idea gets pretty extreme pretty quickly.

 

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Again, contempt citations are referred to the US Attorney for DC.  Will she ignore them?  Maybe, I don't know.  She's a Trump appointee, but that doesn't necessarily mean she's in his pocket.  The DNI IG is a Trump appointee too.  As for the courts, yeah, that would be where a lot of the battle is held.  We'll see.  Acting like it's a fait accompli is very premature.

Anyway, as I'm sure you've heard from all the talking heads over the past week, impeachment is entirely political.  This is a political battle.  There's almost no chance Trump is going to be removed.  The key is to make it as clear as possible how corrupt his regime is an make reelection impossible.  Availing themselves of these mechanisms - in prudent ways - is an excellent way of demonstrating that and keeping the pressure on him.

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49 minutes ago, DMC said:

Again, contempt citations are referred to the US Attorney for DC.  Will she ignore them?  Maybe, I don't know.  She's a Trump appointee, but that doesn't necessarily mean she's in his pocket.  The DNI IG is a Trump appointee too.  As for the courts, yeah, that would be where a lot of the battle is held.  We'll see.  Acting like it's a fait accompli is very premature.

Anyway, as I'm sure you've heard from all the talking heads over the past week, impeachment is entirely political.  This is a political battle.  There's almost no chance Trump is going to be removed.  The key is to make it as clear as possible how corrupt his regime is an make reelection impossible.  Availing themselves of these mechanisms - in prudent ways - is an excellent way of demonstrating that and keeping the pressure on him.

you keep leaving Trump's own increasingly erratic nature out of these proclamations.  Most of the people who were kind-of-sort-of keeping Trump's more extreme impulses in check are gone, which means he is going to do crazier and crazier stuff.  At some point, odds are he likely really will attempt something like having political enemies arrested or shutting down the US-Mexico border with zero regard for consequences.  Should Trump attempt something even vaguely similar to the above, do you still stand by your 'almost no chance of impeachment' claim?  

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3 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

you keep leaving Trump's own increasingly erratic nature out of these proclamations.  Most of the people who were kind-of-sort-of keeping Trump's more extreme impulses in check are gone, which means he is going to do crazier and crazier stuff.  At some point, odds are he likely really will attempt something like having political enemies arrested or shutting down the US-Mexico border with zero regard for consequences.  Should Trump attempt something even vaguely similar to the above, do you still stand by your 'almost no chance of impeachment' claim?  

I'll stand by it for him.

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1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Perhaps it took longer if there were translators involved, but King pointed out the Ukrainian President speaks English.

There seems to be missing content.

I don't doubt that there is missing content (it's a summary, after all) but I don't think the time of the conversation is really that relevant. Have you seen Zelensky speaking English? He's fluent in conversational English, but for a high level, diplomatic conversation, I doubt it would have been conducted entirely in English. Pleasantries, sure, but diplomatic conversations where nuance matters, I doubt it. Not that this was a diplomatic call per se, but Zelensky didn't know it was going to be a shake-down.

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31 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

you keep leaving Trump's own increasingly erratic nature out of these proclamations.  Most of the people who were kind-of-sort-of keeping Trump's more extreme impulses in check are gone, which means he is going to do crazier and crazier stuff.  At some point, odds are he likely really will attempt something like having political enemies arrested or shutting down the US-Mexico border with zero regard for consequences.  Should Trump attempt something even vaguely similar to the above, do you still stand by your 'almost no chance of impeachment' claim?  

Well, that's the goal right?  Is to goad him into such a mistake.  Will it lead to removal?  Fuck if I know.  I'm done trying to gauge Trump's base's red line.  If there even is one.  But, him doing "crazier and crazier" stuff is good politically.  No doubt about that.  I mean, in terms of the two you mentioned, sure, let him try to arrest "Shiff" or anyone else.  See how that goes.  As for "shutting down the border," he's already been told that's practically impossible by his own people.  If he wants to try it anyway, then that's on him.

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49 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

you keep leaving Trump's own increasingly erratic nature out of these proclamations.  Most of the people who were kind-of-sort-of keeping Trump's more extreme impulses in check are gone, which means he is going to do crazier and crazier stuff.  At some point, odds are he likely really will attempt something like having political enemies arrested or shutting down the US-Mexico border with zero regard for consequences.  Should Trump attempt something even vaguely similar to the above, do you still stand by your 'almost no chance of impeachment' claim?  

I would think the fact that he took a lead from a QAnon (thoroughly debunked) conspiracy posted on 4Chan and proceeded to take actions that could be used as a pretext for impeachment means we've more or less reached peak crazy. That he was able to have this conversation with a bunch of his people listening in suggests 2 possibilities: his handlers believed the conspiracy BS too, which means there is more than one inmate running the asylum; or his handlers have had their fill of Trump and they are letting him do shit that will end him as president on or before Nov 2020.

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24 minutes ago, DMC said:

Well, that's the goal right?  Is to goad him into such a mistake.  Will it lead to removal?  Fuck if I know.  I'm done trying to gauge Trump's base's red line.  If there even is one.  But, him doing "crazier and crazier" stuff is good politically.  No doubt about that.  I mean, in terms of the two you mentioned, sure, let him try to arrest "Shiff" or anyone else.  See how that goes.  As for "shutting down the border," he's already been told that's practically impossible by his own people.  If he wants to try it anyway, then that's on him.

Yeah, I've had similar thoughts. There is a real trade-off. Trump doing crazy things will probably make impeachment conviction or losing the election more likely. At the same time there will be real costs to the country and individuals. 

As for the Senate not convicting, well the goal is to either make vulnerable Republican Senators to take a difficult vote or to have the vote to convict be close. It's harder to argue you were exonerated when the vote was close or all Repubs did not support you. If all Repubs eagerly clean up Trump's shit stains, they will go to the ballot box having done so. 

Plus, we have no real choice but to impeach. Not doing it would be a signal that Trump can do whatever he wants to whatever or whomever he wants. The Senate not convicting him was a great argument against impeachment before, but things have really changed.

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Well if Congress is going to jail any of Trump's underlings it ought to be in a cage at the border at an ICE facility.

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

It hasn’t been used in over a century, but when it has, Congress has detained administration officials for not complying with it. Congress doesn’t have its own jail, so lawmakers could try to use the D.C. jail. As you can see, this idea gets pretty extreme pretty quickly.

 

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50 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

but I don't think the time of the conversation is really that relevant.

Seriously?  It's a half hour conversation condensed to five pages.  I don't care how much translating is going on, there's a hell of a lot more in that call.  Unless they, like, took a siesta in the middle or something, there's a lot missing.  And there's absolutely no reason to view Trump's account as anything other than the best case scenario (for him).

3 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Plus, we have no real choice but to impeach.

Yep.  In for a penny in for a pound.

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