US Politics: “How did we come to this...”

[Jace, Extat]

16 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Impeachment is much more formal than that. If Biden wins and in 2022 the Republicans get the House back, it's quite likely that there will be plenty of investigations of Burisma and the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor, but the odds of impeachment are much lower.

And what's the difference, practically? And don't tell me some blah-blah bullshit about the investigative power afforded to the Congress during an impeachment as opposed to investigation. I heard a lot of that from mouth breathing morons who were convinced that Ukraine was a "very explainable impeachment worthy offense."

[DMC]

30 minutes ago, Altherion said:

it's quite likely that there will be plenty of investigations of Burisma and the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor

Alll you're doing is describing polarization.  This isn't sage or anything, it's just the world we live in now.

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

I was just reminded of how the student loan payment halts and extra unemployment and eviction moratoriums all end in the coming months assuming no new laws are passed.  So we could really be headed for a deeper level of Hell than we're currently experiencing.  Combined with the huge virus rebound and possibly the prospect of new shutdowns.  Exciting stuff.

Now remember monkey, we are privileged to live in a time where we get to experience the equivalents of the 1918 Spanish Flue pandemic, the Great Depression of the 1930's, and the turbulent 1960's Equal Rights movement all in the same year, while under the stellar leadership of a corrupt and delusional  Mussolini wannabe with an 'end of the world' fetish and a disturbingly large number of fanatical followers.   Better yet,  said wannabe dictator's chief political foe is a non-entity whose best days, such as they were, are long past.    

[Altherion]

27 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

And what's the difference, practically? And don't tell me some blah-blah bullshit about the investigative power afforded to the Congress during an impeachment as opposed to investigation. I heard a lot of that from mouth breathing morons who were convinced that Ukraine was a "very explainable impeachment worthy offense."

The difference is in the magnitude of the spectacle. Any given Congressional investigation into Benghazi or Russian election interference or Burisma or whatever is lucky to make the mainstream news for more than a couple of days whereas an impeachment dominates the news cycle for weeks or maybe even months so even people who ordinarily aren't at all interested in politics will hear of it. It's a much more dramatic show.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Altherion said:

whereas an impeachment dominates the news cycle for weeks or maybe even months so even people who ordinarily aren't at all interested in politics will hear of it. It's a much more dramatic show.

Good.  That's what's supposed to happen when people commit crimes.

[Jace, Extat]

1 minute ago, Altherion said:

The difference is in the magnitude of the spectacle. Any given Congressional investigation into Benghazi or Russian election interference or Burisma or whatever is lucky to make the mainstream news for more than a couple of days whereas an impeachment dominates the news cycle for weeks or maybe even months so even people who ordinarily aren't at all interested in politics will hear of it. It's a much more dramatic show.

Okay. Why wouldn't they do that? What, exactly, about the current Republicans makes you think that they will not launch an impeachment into Presidential Paperclip Expenditures the instant they have a parrot-able offense and the power to do so? Escalation dominance is the only language those creatures understand. Expecting them to moderate is the exact kind of bullshit you were selling five years ago.

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

Looks like I may have been wrong about how strong Maloney still is in her district.

Although, for some reason New York law is that absentee ballots can't start being counted until 8 days after an election (I assume the reasoning is so that all ballots can be counted at once and there's not trickle count as ballots post-marked by election day continue to show up); so we likely won't have final results for any of these races for a while. And the absentee vote may look quite different from the election day vote.

So it's expected the victory margin on the night will be less than the number of absentee ballots? If the victory margin on the night is larger they don't bother counting the absentee ballots

[Altherion]

5 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Okay. Why wouldn't they do that? What, exactly, about the current Republicans makes you think that they will not launch an impeachment into Presidential Paperclip Expenditures the instant they have a parrot-able offense and the power to do so?

Because they have no chance of getting a conviction in the Senate and everyone knows it. A huge spectacle is not all that beneficial to the losing side of the story.

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

What would this accomplish? Unless there's an ironclad case, there's simply no way any article of impeachment is getting 67 votes in the Senate. Impeachment for the sake of impeachment is just a waste of time and will probably be seen as such.

So you are saying Republicans aren't interested in petty revenge doomed to fail to play to their increasingly rabid and unhinged base? They already have the pretext to get going on it.

Democrats had no chance of 67 in the Trump impeachment, but went ahead anyway. They were at least hoping for a "moral" conviction with 51 and failed to even get that.

[BigFatCoward]

2 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Reading that article I got the impression that it was a big coincidence. He was just assigned that bay where it had been fashioned back in October. 

That's... not easy to swallow. As in, I cannot believe it. That is to say, I do not think the truth has been divulged. In other words, bullshit.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/motorsport/53159686

The article (not sure if you can access) states there is verified video evidence it's been there since last year. 

[The Anti-Targ]

6 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Because they have no chance of getting a conviction in the Senate and everyone knows it. A huge spectacle is not all that beneficial to the losing side of the story.

Democrats obviously failing to convict a clearly guilty Biden isn't a loss in the political sphere. So long as all Republicans toe the line it's just further proof that all Democrats are corrupt servants of the father of lies, which is great confirmation of just how righteous the right is, despite being infiltrated by racism and policies that perpetuate cruel economic injustice on the poor.

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, Altherion said:

A huge spectacle is not all that beneficial to the losing side of the story.

Last time I checked, the House and the Senate are both at least supposed to be equal branches with the presidency.  Their impeaching a president means something.  They put together articles and everything.  Your position seems to come from a vantage point wherein the legislature is entirely pointless.  I hope that's not true.

[The Anti-Targ]

9 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/motorsport/53159686

The article (not sure if you can access) states there is verified video evidence it's been there since last year. 

Show don't tell, as they say.

If this is an actual noose and not a rope with a loop tied in the end then I struggle to understand why it would be present in any NASCAR garage let alone one coincidentally assigned to a prominent driver who supported the banning of Confederate flags and is a BLM supporter.

Also, how much did the US airforce pay to have its logo painted on a race car? Is this wise govt expenditure?

[Kalbear]

In general, unless the impeachment trial itself is very exciting and reveals really juicy things, it ends up making people slightly more sympathetic to the person on trial, and not doing a whole hell of a lot else. 

[DMC]

15 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

In general, unless the impeachment trial itself is very exciting and reveals really juicy things, it ends up making people slightly more sympathetic to the person on trial, and not doing a whole hell of a lot else. 

Right, cuz Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, and Trump all loved being impeached.  It was peachy for their presidencies.

ETA:  If anyone wants to get pedantic, of course yes, Nixon was not actually impeached.  I was referring to the process.

[Kalbear]

9 minutes ago, DMC said:

Right, cuz Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, and Trump all loved being impeached.  It was peachy for their presidencies.

ETA:  If anyone wants to get pedantic, of course yes, Nixon was not actually impeached.  I was referring to the process.

It sucked for them. But in every case except Nixon - which had those juicy reveals - approval of that person went up afterwards. In Clinton's case, it went up quite a bit. In Trump's case, it went to his highest level of his POTUS. So no, it probably sucked for them personally a bit, but it didn't appear to damage him. We're barely even talking about him being an impeached POTUS at this point. Mitt Romney is probably more famous because of it than anything else.

I think that unless you really think you have a good case and can actually get something done most of the public sees it as a waste of time and resources and doesn't want the thing to happen. Now, you and I might not think that that's how government should work - that if people commit crimes, they should be tried. But weird crimes that take huge explanations to make sense and can be argued in weird esoteric forms of the constitution are not what people are going to care about. Iran/Contra? Selling drugs to give guns to rebels illegally? Okay, that's a big grab, especially with a random secretary also showing up in playboy as part of it. But Barr firing someone he has a vague right to fire with insinuations that he's doing it for political favor reasons and without any kind of document or trail or data indicating a clear crime? Pfft. They just don't care. And doing the impeachment isn't going to make them care any more.

[BigFatCoward]

34 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Show don't tell, as they say.

If this is an actual noose and not a rope with a loop tied in the end then I struggle to understand why it would be present in any NASCAR garage let alone one coincidentally assigned to a prominent driver who supported the banning of Confederate flags and is a BLM supporter.

Also, how much did the US airforce pay to have its logo painted on a race car? Is this wise govt expenditure?

Are the FBI generally lumped in with 'law enforcement are all racist'?  Not snarky, just got the impression that it was Local LE that was considered racist/corrupt/incompetent.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

approval of that person went up afterwards. In Clinton's case, it went up quite a bit. In Trump's case, it went to his highest level of his POTUS. So no, it probably sucked for them personally a bit, but it didn't appear to damage him.

This is an entirely facile view of approval trends.  You think Clinton or Trump's numbers went up because of being impeached?  Come on, that's not the context and you know it.

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think that unless you really think you have a good case and can actually get something done most of the public sees it as a waste of time and resources and doesn't want the thing to happen.

I feel like we're at mirror images right now.  Pretty sure I we were at opposite ends of the spectrum about a year ago.  Anyway, the argument I was deriving this from was more about prosecuting crimes administrations commit.  And I don't think you disagree with that, at all.  Olly North and all.

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

This is an entirely facile view of approval trends.  You think Clinton or Trump's numbers went up because of being impeached?  Come on, that's not the context and you know it. 

Yes, I do. I think a good amount of people saw it, got tired of it, and thought Trump was more right than wrong. Polling at the time around the impeachment specifically also indicated this. Similarly, Dem numbers went down around this time. 

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

I feel like we're at mirror images right now.  Pretty sure I we were at opposite ends of the spectrum about a year ago.  Anyway, the argument I was deriving this from was more about prosecuting crimes administrations commit.  And I don't think you disagree with that, at all.  Olly North and all.

I'm in favor of doing it when it's POTUS. I'm not in favor of doing it against his flunkies for the most part, and I'm really not in favor of doing it for small potatoes bullshit. I thought with Trump that his going after a political foe using the power of POTUS had to have a stand made, and I was aware it would make his numbers rise and nothing would likely get done as a result - but it needed to be done if only to indicate the traitors in the senate. We must try to protect the democratic process. Barr firing people isn't in the same boat. And honestly, right now the legislature needs to focus on COVID and voting rights, not Barr's shenanigans. If Trump wins they can prosecute him. If he loses they can prosecute him too. No need to do anything right now.

[The Anti-Targ]

6 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Are the FBI generally lumped in with 'law enforcement are all racist'?  Not snarky, just got the impression that it was Local LE that was considered racist/corrupt/incompetent.

At this point assuming there is institutional racism in all parts of law enforcement and the justice system in the USA is a safer assumption than assuming any given agency is free of it. But, #not_every_cop / prosecutor / judge of course. In this case I would be more inclined to suspect evidence (video) tampering by the perpetrators rather than the Feds actually manufacturing exonerating evidence.