US Politics - All He Wants for Christmas Was His Two Dead Sheep

[Mlle. Zabzie]

As you were.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I’m starting to think these Republicans are in so deep that they’ll never be able to admit to what they’ve done. This is beyond pathetic. I think what’s most offensive is the boy who cried wolf claims of partisanship. What can be more partisan than openly defying your oath of office to protect another branch of government when it’s been caught being nakedly corrupt?   

[Fragile Bird]

The hearings have been so appalling I honestly don’t know what country now exists south of the Canadian border.
 

No matter what you think of the sins of the US over the years it’s been the world’s leading super power, no one deserves this.

[argonak]

32 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

The hearings have been so appalling I honestly don’t know what country now exists south of the Canadian border.
 

No matter what you think of the sins of the US over the years it’s been the world’s leading super power, no one deserves this.

Everything makes a lot more sense if you assume that the Russian hack of the GOP (the results of which weren't leaked) was filled with compromising material on the various GOP members.  If they commit this sort of stuff in front of everyone, think of the stuff they do behind the scenes.  Sondland for example paid a million for his ambassador ship in a technically legal bribe.  What they do in the shadows must be ten times worse.  Right now the only thing keeping them safe is Trump and Barr.  

If Democrats get back in control of the Justice department before they've completely seized the supreme court, they're all in danger of going to jail.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Of all the terrible AGs to have served in the past 20 years, Barr is close to the worst. One of the least worst, Holder, also appears to think the same having said so in an editorial today.

[DanteGabriel]

23 minutes ago, argonak said:

If Democrats get back in control of the Justice department before they've completely seized the supreme court, they're all in danger of going to jail.

Dollars to donuts that if the Democrats take back the Presidency and Justice Department, they'll let all the obvious traitors in the Republican caucus just slide in foolish and futile hopes of "unity" or some other milquetoast bullshit.

[Zorral]

16 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Dollars to donuts that if the Democrats take back the Presidency and Justice Department, they'll let all the obvious traitors in the Republican caucus just slide in foolish and futile hopes of "unity" or some other milquetoast bullshit.

  Besides those sorts of people committing all the crimes never go to prison, with very few exceptions, those few who have the bad luck to get to carry the criminal and corruption prison water for all the rest.  Cohen goes to prison -- and he should! -- but Giuliani won't -- and lordessa how much he should.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

17 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Dollars to donuts that if the Democrats take back the Presidency and Justice Department, they'll let all the obvious traitors in the Republican caucus just slide in foolish and futile hopes of "unity" or some other milquetoast bullshit.

I think not. Rare was it for elected officials to call for criminal charges after Dubya left office. That’s not the case anymore, and the base won’t allow indifference to criminality anymore. At least I hope so.

 

Also, totally unrelated, is it just me or does Rep. Matt Gaetz look like adultery?  

[DanteGabriel]

19 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think not. Rare was it for elected officials to call for criminal charges after Dubya left office. That’s not the case anymore, and the base won’t allow indifference to criminality anymore. At least I hope so.

I do not share your optimism. I think the Democrats would scare themselves out of prosecuting Trump's enablers with an epic bout of hand-wringing about what that would do to their standing with mediocre low- information white people.

 

19 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

Also, totally unrelated, is it just me or does Rep. Matt Gaetz look like adultery?  

He looks exactly like what "my Florida politician dad got me out of a DUI" looks like.

[Zorral]

Crime in Progress tells the story behind the Steele Dossier.  I've listened to the authors speak, so I highly recommend this.  The content will also speak to why people may think, no matter how voting goes, no way the Big Criminals are going to be prosecuted (not even censored, and maybe not impeached by the House vote either, which Some are starting to say, because no party unity there either).  There is stuff about the Clintons in here too, which means nobody wants to tear the lid off the rethugs, because the Big Dems are down in the trough too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/books/review-crime-in-progress-steele-dossier-fusion-gps-donald-trump.html

 

[sologdin]

Quote

1. It turns out that reports about Trump's executive order recognizing Jews as an ethnicity or nationality were not accurate. Other than calling for use of the IHRA definitions of antisemitism, it doesn't appear to have changed much of anything about the application of Title VI to antisemitism.

bael--

my reading of the order is that it makes it federal policy to interpret CRA title VI as including a prohibition on discriminatory anti-semitism. this is accomplished by a vague proclamation that permits protection of victims of anti-semitism on the basis of one of the protected classes of persons in title VI, which does not include religion, but only race, color, and national origin; this policy may not be due chevron deference in the judiciary and therefore may be of no moment if a case develops over it--normally the unambiguous statutory language will control, irrespective of the agency interpretation. we shall see how compliant the judiciary is on this.

if it is used for the stated objective, then that's great.  but law doesn't work that way, remaining limited to the stated propagandistic objectives of initial proponents; four cases down the road, this language gets cited by neo-nazis for sequestration and deportation purposes, say. eliminationism normally proceeds in incremental phases, some of which may appear legitimate on paper, if taken naively at face value.

Quote

2. That said, many who rushed to condemn the idea of recognizing Jews as an ethnicity or nationality have ignored the fact that Jews traditionally and the central religious texts of Judaism have always self identified as a distinct people/nation with a shared ancestry, god/religious observance, language, culture, and land. Religion was always one major component of Jewish/Israelite/Hebrew peoplehood, but never it's own separate thing. 

i had an intervening contribution that addressed this; i do not agree that the group's self-definition of membership should be determinative of a state's definition; am open to the possibility that it is relevant, but remain skeptical.

Quote

Trump doesn't deserve benefit of the doubt. We can be certain he didn't do this out of the goodness of his heart. But that doesn't mean the executive order is wrong or bad for Jews. Protecting the Jewish minority in America, annually one of the top victims of hate crimes in the US, increasingly on US campuses under the guise of protesting Israel, from racist harassment and intimidation is just as important as protecting other minorities in this country. 

totally agreed.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

56 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

I do not share your optimism. I think the Democrats would scare themselves out of prosecuting Trump's enablers with an epic bout of hand-wringing about what that would do to their standing with mediocre low- information white people.

Much like on the right, I don’t think the base would tolerate that anymore. They’re too fired up to allow Democrats to get away with not going for the jugular, and it’s high time they finally do so. If Trump is greeted with a string of unsealed indictments after he leaves offices, the cronies around him who enabled him will go down with him.

Quote

He looks exactly like what "my Florida politician dad got me out of a DUI" looks like.

Can’t throw stones on this one. My dad’s a lawyer and he got me out of one in HS. The Navy and FBI couldn’t even find records of it when I was trying to go to OCS.

[Darryk]

There's not an iota of a chance of this guy being convicted by the Senate, so it seems the Democrats are pursuing a very misguided political act that will blow up in their faces.

Trump has already committed several impeachable offences, most notably breaking the emoluments clause. The Ukraine thing is probably the least serious, and the one that is easiest for Trump to turn back on the Democrats thanks to Biden's son's shenanigans. 

Seems to me the establishment Democrats are demonstrating the same strategic genius that prompts them to keep running corporate centrists (or moderate centrists as they call themselves,  though only because the people in power get to decide who the 'moderates' are) because they believe a progressive like Bernie can never win. Well we don't know for certain that Bernie could never win, as they haven't tried it yet, but we know for certain that the knuckleheads currently in charge of the Democrat party will never win.

[mormont]

5 minutes ago, Darryk said:

There's not an iota of a chance of this guy being convicted by the Senate, so it seems the Democrats are pursuing a very misguided political act that will blow up in their faces.

Break this down for me.

Trump, you admit, has committed impeachable offences. The impeachment is valid. But you're right, he won't be convicted by the Senate, because the Senate majority don't care if he's committed an impeachable offence, they care about their political fortunes.

Yet somehow your conclusion is not that the Senate majority are guilty of a political act. Instead it's that the Democrats are?

The House Dems are doing their job. The Senate Republicans refuse to do theirs. That's the story of this impeachment and of the last 12 months, for that matter.

[Darryk]

7 minutes ago, mormont said:

Break this down for me.

Trump, you admit, has committed impeachable offences. The impeachment is valid. But you're right, he won't be convicted by the Senate, because the Senate majority don't care if he's committed an impeachable offence, they care about their political fortunes.

Yet somehow your conclusion is not that the Senate majority are guilty of a political act. Instead it's that the Democrats are?

The House Dems are doing their job. The Senate Republicans refuse to do theirs. That's the story of this impeachment and of the last 12 months, for that matter.

The Senate majority are guilty, but I feel more pissed about the Democrats using such poor strategy, because I want the Democrats to win.

Besides, the average American seems to believe that both sides are corrupt, and it's hard to argue with that. So pointing out to them that the Republicans are the ones not doing their job won't convince them of anything.

I think the average American doesn't care about this circus because they're more worried about paying the bills. Sad that it's got to that state but as Aristotle wrote 2,500 years ago, if you want the people to care about the welfare of the state then you need a thriving middle class.

[mormont]

8 minutes ago, Darryk said:

The Senate majority are guilty, but I feel more pissed about the Democrats using such poor strategy, because I want the Democrats to win.

And the correct strategy is?

I'm not clear from your posts what you think the Democrat approach should be, I'm afraid. Ignore all impeachable offences? Impeach earlier? Nominate Sanders now? Go back in time and nominate him in 2016?

 

[Darryk]

Just now, mormont said:

And the correct strategy is?

I'm not clear from your posts what you think the Democrat approach should be, I'm afraid. Ignore all impeachable offences? Impeach earlier? Nominate Sanders now? Go back in time and nominate him in 2016?

 

Right now my advice would be for people like Pelosi, Schumer and other corporate democrats to step aside and hand over leadership to the Progressive wing. They can crow about Bernie's supposed "unelectability" all they want, but they dropped the ball in 2016 and they're dropping it again now. The dignified thing would be to stand aside and let someone else take a shot, especially someone who beats Trump in so many heads-to-head polls.

Impeachment is a bad political move, no matter which way you look at it. However, I am sympathetic to the idea of impeaching him on principal ie. "we know it won't go anywhere but it's our job to do it", even though I think principal in American politics died ages ago. However, in that case they should have gone after him for the Emoluments Clause, which is the clearest, most blatant corrupt act out of many corrupt acts Trump has committed.

 

[Zorral]

Whatever the outcome, particularly the expected outcome due to the rethug Senate majority, it really mattes that he goes down in history as being impeached.  Which now he will, even is the Senate won't vote to remove him from office and does a sham of a trial, which they've announced they are doing -- no witnesses, nothing, just grandstanding for eviLe and voting.

But it's in the official record that they are doing that, and the criminal was IMPEACHED. It's history.  It can't be changed.  Though we already know that he'll try everything to get this removed from the official record -- it wouldn't be the first time that the Congressional Record was tampered with, though to my recollection maybe never something this huge that involves so many figures, so overtly, from the POTUS all the way down.  So it's not going to be easy.  That he's been impeached and the testimonies of so many and that the POTUS refused to allow others to testify and obstructed Congress, is everywhere.  Not even Dr Manhattan could get rid of all of it ....

 

[DMC]

3 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Dollars to donuts that if the Democrats take back the Presidency and Justice Department, they'll let all the obvious traitors in the Republican caucus just slide in foolish and futile hopes of "unity" or some other milquetoast bullshit.

Forget about prosecution which is based on an uncertain election outcome.  There is absolutely no reason the Intelligence Committee cannot continue investigating - taking unwilling witnesses to court - while still impeaching Trump.  The timing difficulties is an understandable excuse for expediting the impeachment process, but that should not mean everything is just dropped.  Pretty sure the GOP Congress investigated Hillary from the moment they took the majority to the moment she lost.  And they absolutely should continue investigating, there is clearly a lot more to learn about what actually went on and the American public deserves to know.  Their message with the trade deal has been some variation of "we can walk and chew gum at the same time."  Well, how bout you actually do that?  Nah, you're right, the Dems are overwhelmingly likely to revert back to their default position of feckless.

2 hours ago, sologdin said:

but law doesn't work that way, remaining limited to the stated propagandistic objectives of initial proponents; four cases down the road, this language gets cited by neo-nazis for sequestration and deportation purposes, say.

Can you cite EOs that have resulted in this type of "four cases down the road" path?  Honest question.  Measuring the "significance" of EOs is a very difficult task that is decidedly still in the development phase.  One of the most prominent ways to do so is this, which basically relies upon "raters," their term for mentions of an EO in a variety of publications - including a handful of law journals (see Table 3.1, 70).  Chiou graciously shared this data with me a few years back, and in my own research both before and after I've found the amount of times EOs are cited in court cases and/or law journals is..frustratingly lacking.  (Like, seriously, I don't even want to say how much time I feel like I've wasted running fruitless searches.)  Almost as if I'm missing something based on this data collection method.  Any help/insight would be greatly appreciated.

[Jace, Extat]

It's also now precedent that you don't support the enemy's impeachment efforts. Full stop.

Glad we got it on the record that he was impeached though. Not even Nixon got impeached! That's how history will know he was a bad man. Good job, all. We won! This cavalcade of disasters that the idiot box calls "Impeachment 2019" was all worth it because some of us got that ten minute ruuuuush when we first read the news.