   | | Political discussion involving past and present political events, candidates and elections. Please read Msg #1 before posting. |
Msg #73002
2 replies | Articles of Impeachment | By MikeC/TX on 11/21/19 5:49pm
Based on what we've seen in the impeachment hearings this week, I think these are the minimum impeachment articles we will see:
1. Abuse of office.
2. Attempted bribery and/or extortion.
3. Obstruction of Congress.
There could be more.
I also think Gordon Sondland may be looking at perjury charges - three shots at it, and his testimony is still questionable.
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| Msg #72998
3 replies | Politico 2020 forecast | By jnew on 11/20/19 12:29pm
Presidency is too close to call. -The Senate leans in favor of the Republicans. The House leans in favor of the Democrats. Th majority of Governors will be Republicans.
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| | Msg #72993
0 replies | It take a "stable genius"... | By MikeC/TX on 11/15/19 6:03pm
... to try to intimidate a witness WHILE THAT WITNESS IS TESTIFYING!
Even some Republicans (Liz Cheney among them) said that tweet attacking the Ambassador while she was testifying was completely inappropriate.
Ambassadors always serve at the pleasure of the President - he could have recalled her without giving a reason other than that he lost confidence in her. There was no reason to smear her and destroy her career, but that's the way he rolls.
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| | Msg #72990
0 replies | Someone should explain to "Gym" Jordan that | By MikeC/TX on 11/13/19 5:24pm
attempting and failing to commit a crime is still a crime. Attempted murder is a crime; attempted robbery is a crime; attempted bribery is a crime. It's not just the results, it's also the attempt to obtain the results.
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| Msg #72989
0 replies | 5 minutes | By bagger on 11/13/19 8:55am
Until the funniest show this year.
I'll be watching it on the Cartoon network.
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| Msg #72983
0 replies | Read the transcript | By MikeC/TX on 11/8/19 7:03pm
That's actually what I've done this week - read some of the 300+ page transcripts and all of the key extracts. The testimony that has been provided can only be described in one word - damning.
Today, the transcripts of the depositions of Lt. Col. Vindman and Dr. Hill were released, and they are incredibly damning. If you haven't at least read the excerpts, they're all available on http://intelligence.house.gov
The Trumpist defense has now started to move from "he did nothing wrong" to "he didn't know what they were doing", effectively throwing EVERYONE involved - including Giuliani and Mulvaney - under the bus in an attempt to save their Dear Leader. Unfortunately, the testimony and Trump's own words on the "transcript" of the July 25 call shows it was all directed by Trump.
Lt. Col. Vindman's testimony included the fact that the "transcript" of the 7/25 call the WH released (which was clearly marked as not a verbatim transcript) was not accurate - parts of it were changed.
Trump is desperately trying to claim that these witnesses are all "never-Trumpers" who have a grudge against him, but there is no evidence that this is true - some of them he appointed to office, and Amb. Sonderland, who actually described the quid pro quo in his testimony, donated $1 million to Trump's Inauguration Committee. Would a "never-Trumper" do that?
Public hearings, where we will ALL be able to hear the evidence, begin on Wednesday. After weeks of GOP complaints about closed hearings, Trump today said that there shouldn't even be public hearings. What's he afraid of?
Trump has been reduced to an old man screaming at the sky - despite what he wants, Congress is not listening to him and these public hearings will start on Wednesday. There's nothing he can say or tweet that will stop them.
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| Msg #72977
10 replies | Wanna see 2020? | By HisHughness on 11/5/19 10:41pm
Look toward Kentucky tonight, then continue on to Virginia.
Wanna see 2021? Check out Leavenworth. You'll see a fading (prison doesn't offer hair-coloring services) bright orange flash.
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| Msg #72973
3 replies | So here's where we are | By MikeC/TX on 11/1/19 6:15pm
Dems: We're going to start an impeachment inquiry
GOP: Holding private hearings is illegal, we're being excluded, and President Trump's due process rights are being violated!
Dems: (checking notes) This is the process you set up in 2015 when you re-wrote the rules for the Benghazi hearings. Private hearings, only committee members allowed in the room.
GOP: But you're excluding us from the process!
Dems: (checking notes again) Republican committee members can attend these hearings and ask questions, as can their counsel. No one is on the committees is being excluded. There are about 47 members of your caucus that have full access.
GOP: This is a sham! The House never voted to authorize this inquiry!
Dems: (checking Constitution and statutes) We're not required to do that.
GOP: There's precedent from the last two impeachment inquiries!
Dems: OK, we'll take a vote, and we'll even give Trump more due process than either Nixon or Clinton got.
GOP: We vote no.
Seriously - NO ONE has a right to due process during the investigation and possible indictment, which is what impeachment is all about. Due process - if it applies - happens during the trial. The Fifth Amendment is very specific about the right to due process - it's when a defendant in a criminal or civil case is facing the loss of life, liberty, or property. Impeachment is a political process; the defendant isn't facing ANY of those - the maximum penalty is removal from office. The Constitution allows the Senate to determine its own rules for an impeachment trial, and although a Republican Senate will give Trump every break it can, due process ia not a requirement.
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| Msg #72968
3 replies | What I learned today | By MikeC/TX on 10/28/19 5:16pm
I'm just gonna drop this here... it turns out that MAGA actually has a meaning in Nigerian parlance. It means "easily fooled idiot"... and the Nigerians are laughing at us. Well, not us, exactly - they're laughing at Trump's followers... And yes, we don't speak Nigerian, but there are MANY words and phrases in the English language that are lifted from other languages: Taco. Pizza. Al dente. Quid pro quo.
Rich, you might want to rethink ending your messages in the future with a word that doesn't reflect kindly on you. Just saying...
An amusing read:
http://secondnexus.com/news/donald-trump-maga-nigerian-slang-sucker/
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| Msg #72957
5 replies | Just to set the record straight... | By MikeC/TX on 10/27/19 7:20pm
In his bizarre announcement today about the death of al-Baghdadi, Trump mentioned a couple of times that he warned about Osama bin Laden in one of his books, but no one listened to him.
That's a total lie.
First of all, Trump has never written a book - they're all ghost-written. His "Art of the Deal" was actually written by Tony Schwartz, who not only negotiated half the advance and half the royalties but also has his name on the front cover of the book as a co-author.
Secondly, in "his" book "The America We Deserve", published in 2000, there is a brief reference to bin Laden - not a warning about him, just a mention of his name. No one listened to Trump because they already knew more than he did about who bin Laden was - he had been indicted as a terrorist in 1998. There is NOTHING in that book to suggest he knew more than anyone else what a threat bin Laden was to America and tried to warn us about it.
Don't believe me? Read the book and report back here on what the book actually says. Did he or did he not warn us about the danger of Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11?
The fantasy world in his head must be an amazing place to live.
MAGAts - almost EVERYTHING you hear from your President is a lie. He has his own reality, and you're living in it.
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| | Msg #72954
0 replies | It's been a full two weeks now . . . | By HisHughness on 10/25/19 8:55pm
. . . since any Trumpeteer has bleated a Breitbart talking point defending the Cheeto-in-Chief's whizzing all over the Constitution. The silence from that section of the bleachers is becoming deafening.
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| Msg #72953
0 replies | What's getting lost in the GOP uproar about... | By MikeC/TX on 10/24/19 5:31pm
... the House investigation of Trump:
1. Investigations are usually closed-door hearings and depositions, especially when there could be sensitive information involved.
2. The House committees are following a House Rule which says that only members of the committee and their counsel can attend closed-door sessions. That rule was written in 2015 by the Republicans, and used by them during the Benghazi investigation. With the exception of Hillary Clinton, all witness testimony during those hearings was behind closed doors. Chairman Trey Gowdy threw Darrell Issa - a member of his own party - out of a meeting because Issa was not a committee member. Chairman Adam Schiff was following that same rule when he denied Matt Gaetz access to the hearing.
3. All members of the committees involved can attend the session and ask questions. Counsel for each side of the aisle is given the exact same amount of time to question the witness. There are 44 GOP House members on those committees, including 12 of whom were among the GOPers who illegally stormed the committee hearing.
4. Once the investigation phase is completed, public hearings will be held. The House MAY allow Trump's attorneys to cross-examine witnesses, but they are not required to do so. Republican members of the committees and their counsel, however, will be able to.
5. There are no due process rights in an investigation because no one has been charged with anything. The House investigation is like a grand jury, and neither the target nor his attorneys are involved in the grand jury process. If the House votes to impeach, the matter goes to the Senate for trial and THAT is where due process would occur. However, the Fifth Amendment only applies to criminal and civil cases; impeachment is a political process and POTUS is not at risk of losing life, liberty, or property. The absolute worst that could happen is that he could be removed from office. The Senate will decide the rules of a trial.
The Republicans know all this because they have done the exact same things they are screaming at the Dems for doing. It's all political theater, playing to Trump's base, betting that most of them don't have any idea how Congress works.
As Carl Sandberg once wrote: “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”
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| Msg #72951
1 replies | All of you eat your heart out | By Carolyn Bodley on 10/24/19 9:35am
I bet you all wish you could have your own new, big, beautiful wall like Colorado is getting — no one can get over, no one can get under.
Our wall can probably be built out of toothpicks since we are a mile high, and won’t have to be that high.
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| Msg #72948
2 replies | Ambassador Taylor's opening statement | By MikeC/TX on 10/22/19 6:27pm
Ambassador Bill Taylor, acting Ambassador to Ukraine. testified at a closed-door House hearing today. The transcript of his actual testimony has not been released, but the full text of his opening statement is available here:
http://drive.google.com/file/d/1vUI__sxL_fgzy5JYqaxB9cysOHwwQSE4/view
In it, he lays out what is clearly a quid pro quo (a favor for a favor) - the release of military aid previously appropriated by Congress for Ukraine along with a meeting at the WH in exchange for Ukraine formally and publically opening investigations into two conspiracy theories: the (nonexistent) DNC server, and the Bidens. Despite the apparent belief of some in the GOP that it's not a quid pro quo unless you actually speak the Latin words while making the offer, that's exactly what this was - offering something in exchange for something in return.
Quid pro quo can be a negotiating tool, except when offering it is illegal. Just the act of asking a foreign government to investigate a political opponent is a violation of Federal Election Law - a felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison. The President has no authority to withhold aid that was appropriated by Congress - all he can do is veto the appropriations bill, and he didn't do that; instead, he decided to hold up the money and attach strings to it.
And then Ambassador Taylor goes on to describe what amounted to a shadow foreign affairs effort headed up by Rudy Giuliani, who is not a government employee, doesn't have a security clearance, and answers directly to President Trump - bypassing State completely.
The whole thing screams "abuse of power", which is clearly an impeachable offense. "High crimes and misdemeanors" does not mean actual crimes, although they can be included. In The Federalist Papers #65, Hamilton discussed impeachment and wrote this:
"A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."
He should know - he was there when the Constitution was written...
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| Msg #72944
1 replies | Knowing the bias of a media outlet helps, imo | By Moneyman/TX on 10/19/19 5:53pm
I recently found this site while researching if a site someone sourced in a political discussion was generally thought to be biased (left, right, or close to the middle). Just because a source may "left" or "right", as long as you are aware of that and take that into account when viewing or reading reports from that source doesn't, imo, mean that the report should automatically be tossed out if you disagree with their political leanings or touted as the gold standard if you happen to agree with their political leanings. A lot of times certain questions and views on specific topics are only brought up by ones on the far left or on the far right, with some of those specific angles and views being valid points that should be discussed by both sides.
http://mediabiasfactcheck.com/
To test what I thought overall of the ratings on the site itself, I started with some of the obvious ones, FOX, MSNBC, CNN, etc. Overall, I found their ratings to be pretty accurate and well sourced information about the media outlet itself, which helped to back up even more the ratings a source had received.
I thought others might find http://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ a helpful resource when researching political information and sourcing sites.
One news outlet I have found in the last several months that I really like is NEWSY http://www.newsy.com/ Viewing their reporting with the understanding that they are clearly slightly left of center (not fall over dead left as the MSNBC type) I found that on a multitude of subjects they tend to give more balanced reporting with info from both the left and right side on topics that many other outlets will only include one side or the other. The angles of some of their stories and certain word choices betray their slightly left views, however, even with that, they do tend to at least be fair and show the oppositions true responses and actions to the subject they are reporting on, imo.
I am curious if anyone else uses NEWSY to get their daily news. If so, what are your thoughts on it? I have been meaning to ask about them since I found them.
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| Msg #72942
1 replies | How droll | By HisHughness on 10/18/19 6:11pm
Donald Trump, who wrote the book on throwing trusting subordinates under the bus, is now being repeatedly flung under that Greyhound; see Sondland, Mulvaney, and probably very soon, Rick Perry. The Donald, it seems, is going to spend a lot of time on the asphalt looking up at the mufflers as they pass overhead.
And the bleachers grow increasingly quiet . . .
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| Msg #72939
2 replies | Possible Tax Fraud? | By MikeC/TX on 10/16/19 4:27pm
ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit investigative journalism organization, just published a story that suggests Trump may have committed tax fraud on at least two of his properties.
Here is how they described how they obtained the documents they used in the investigation:
"ProPublica obtained the property tax documents using New York’s Freedom of Information Law. The documents were public because Trump appealed his property tax bill for the buildings every year for nine years in a row, the extent of the available records. We compared the tax records with loan records that became public when Trump’s lender, Ladder Capital, sold the debt on his properties as part of mortgage-backed securities.
ProPublica reviewed records for four properties: 40 Wall Street, the Trump International Hotel and Tower, 1290 Avenue of the Americas and Trump Tower. Discrepancies involving two of them — 40 Wall Street and the Trump International Hotel and Tower — stood out."
The discrepancies resulted in a lower value on the properties for tax purposes and a higher value on the properties for the lenders. This is exactly what Michael Cohen testified that Trump did on a regular basis - adjust the value so that it was lower for taxes and higher for lenders.
One of these tax filings was in 2017, after the inauguration. If it turns out to be fraudulent, that's another impeachable offense.
The full story is available here:
http://tinyurl.com/y4gbgo9l
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