House Impeachment Inquiry

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Belz... said:
Can someone quote that? Can't see reddit from 'ere.
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It's a very long list with links:

The tan suit

Wanting all Americans to go to college

Eating pork chops

Eating fancy mozzarella (and no peas)

Chewing gum

Eating chicken prepared by someone else

Having hair that appears to look different in differing lighting conditions

Wearing flip-flops in Hawaii

Michelle wanting healthier school lunches

Imaginary $200 million/day India trip

Thanking the Native Americans on Thanksgiving

Endowed with certain unalienable rights

Eating lobster

Snookigate

Ditching the press corps

Corpsemen

Using an F-15 backdrop when discussing the F-22

Hoping KSM is found guilty

Not updating his own Twitter account

Bowing to the Japanese Emperor

Winning the Nobel Peace Prize

Giving lab coats to doctors for a photo op

Arguing for the Olympics to be held in Chicago

Following the traditional chain of command by not regularly talking to generals several levels down

Some random teacher leading kids in a weird Obama song

Following the unanimous advice of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff

Michelle giving a speech at a farmer's market

Following the long tradition of appointing czars

Continuing the very long tradition of appointing donors as Ambassadors to Embassies that don't matter

Fact-checking website

David Axelrod collecting money from a company he sold

Watching Apollo missions and pretending to wave to the astronauts

Imaginary million-dollar ham

Imaginary assgazing

Abiding to the Iraqi security pact

T-Shirtgate

HR 2454, Section 788

Negotiating with Russia

ACORN

Michelle's garden

"Shocked and Outraged" vs. "Saddened"

57 states

One of the largest Muslim nations

Date night

The non-shelter dog

Watching Star Trek in the White House

Air Force One photo op

Dijon mustard

Michelle's shoes

Possibly bowing to the Saudi King

The iPod

Michelle touching the queen

The sleeveless dresses

The DVDs

Cocktail parties

Drinking a beer at a basketball game

Imaginary White House dress code

Arugula

The terrorist fist jab

The teleprompter

The birth certificate

"Only" liberating a concentration camp

Drinking orange juice
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There's no way to word this that won't be latched onto by the Trumpers as some grand form of.... *pause for dramatic effect* HYPOCRISY! (the one and only sin) but, in the most basic terms (I'll expand on it in a moment) we can accept that, for certain definitions of "corrupt" that all politicians are corrupt, but not all of them are meaningfully corrupt.

Now that over simplifies it a bit and and "corrupt" is actually not the exact term, but the point is that all (within a rounding error and... as close to literally all possible for "effective politicians") probably do wheel and deal, do stuff off the books or through unofficial channels, sweeten deals, and just generally almost certainly do at least occasionally do things that would at least make their supporters raise an eyebrow if they knew they did it.

So for very "technically correct" values of "corrupt" yeah if you picked any politician at random and followed them around, observing every move they made you wouldn't have to wait long before you observed something that could be called at least a little shady.

But "Democrat D. McDemocrat once shook a lobbyist hand and winked while he did it therefore the President gets to be a Russian Sleeper Agent" doesn't strike me as logical, fair, right, or useful and I'm... well I would say shocked but that would be lying, that it makes perfect sense to other people.

This childish, straw nihilism I turn on and off when it's convenient, "I'm intellectually pure because I pretend distinctions and context and levels aren't a thing", "I have morals so I don't have to have standards," "The system can never be perfect so I'm better then you by watching it burn nonsense" is going to be the end of us.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
This childish, straw nihilism I turn on and off when it's convenient, "I'm intellectually pure because I pretend distinctions and context and levels aren't a thing", "I have morals so I don't have to have standards," "The system can never be perfect so I'm better then you by watching it burn nonsense" is going to be the end of us.
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Damn, who does that remind me of?
 
The Don said:
It's a very long list with links:

Some random teacher leading kids in a weird Obama song
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This one I remember. They were actually singing a song about historically significant African-Americans, which included a verse about President Obama. It was Fox News that turned it into students being forced to sing the praises of President Obama, with comparisons to North Korea.
 
Armitage72 said:
This one I remember. They were actually singing a song about historically significant African-Americans, which included a verse about President Obama. It was Fox News that turned it into students being forced to sing the praises of President Obama, with comparisons to North Korea.
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Obama is still coming for your guns...
 
Armitage72 said:
This one I remember. They were actually singing a song about historically significant African-Americans, which included a verse about President Obama. It was Fox News that turned it into students being forced to sing the praises of President Obama, with comparisons to North Korea.
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And of course none of those praises are sung by the GOP for Trump...
 
Well, let's not say that there weren't some real controversies around Obama, the biggest one, perhaps, being his massive expansion of the drone strike programme begun under Bush - killing between 64 and 600 (numbers from different sources vary, although the lower ones come from the administration and the higher ones from independent sources) civilians. Drones were also used - admittedly by the Obama administration - to target and kill US citizens without any trial. Not only that, but drones are imprecise, and the intelligence used to select targets was imperfect, meaning that it was often not really known who they were actually being sent to kill.

Obama is a billion times better than Trump, but let's not pretend that he was a flawless saint.
 
Belz... said:
No one's forcing them to do anything.
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This should be remembered. Everyone single one of these people can resign in protest at any moment. Every single one of them that is being instructed to not comply with subpoenas can resign and do whatever they like.

They choose to stay, they are complicit.
 
alfaniner said:
...except at that "Dear Leader" meeting where everyone around the table was forced to sing his praises. At least General Mattis managed to dodge that.
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On the other hand, General Mattis dodged his way onto Theranos' board of directors, where he spent a lot of time singing the praises of Elizabeth Holmes.
 
Grizzly Bear said:
It's only 'incorrect' because partisanship causes people to ignore things they dont like to hear. I'm not arguing for equal responsibility. But it's obvious from news coverage that issues Trump gets legitimately pinned on are largely ignored when it's not him or the Republicans doing it.

Notice how Bidens involvement in getting a ukranian prosecutor fired when his son had a stake in that company gets very little attention and isnt held accountable...
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It appears that you have uncritically accepted an alternate reality.
 
timhau said:
Ah, so now he's a dodgy character.
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I don't know about "now". His involvement with Theranos, and his record of promoting Elizabeth Holmes to people who raised concerns about her ethics and competence, have led me to question whether he was perhaps always a dodgy character. I know he's much liked in some circles, and I've liked him myself in the past. But a high-ranking military officer is essentially a political creature. So it seemed nice, but somewhat unlikely, that he would be as great of a guy as he seemed.

Belz... said:
Of course. He's no longer on the team.
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That's not fair. Mattis, among a lot of other people whose judgement we're supposed to respect, screwed up big time in their support for Elizabeth Holmes.

Up until his involvement with Theranos, everything I'd heard about Mattis let me to believe he was probably a man of integrity and good judgement. It was hearing about his involvement with Theranos, not his split with Donald Trump, that has caused me to rethink my idea of the man.

I can respect someone for choosing not to get involved with Donald Trump. I can't respect someone for choosing to get involved with Elizabeth Holmes.
 
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theprestige said:
That's not fair. Mattis, among a lot of other people whose judgement we're supposed to trust, screwed up big time in their support for Elizabeth Holmes.
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Is it part of a pattern or an isolated ****-up? 'Cause everybody ***** up at some point, usually with some regularity. It's just weird that you turned on Mattis just right now.

I've liked him myself in the past.
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Of course. He was on the team.
 
Belz... said:
Is it part of a pattern or an isolated ****-up? 'Cause everybody ***** up at some point, usually with some regularity. It's just weird that you turned on Mattis just right now.
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I'm reading Bad Blood right now. I only found out about Mattis' involvement with Theranos, and his defense of Holmes to people who raised legitimate concerns about her ethics and competence, this week. This has been the first mention of him since I found out. So it's not weird at all that I turned on Mattis just right now.

Of course. He was on the team.
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No, I liked him before he joined the team, too, back when he was just a Marine Corps general with a good reputation among the troops.

Why are you trying so hard to dismiss my explanations?
 
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