Cont: House Impeachment Inquiry - part 2

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Meadmaker said:
I don't actually know what the average American thinks about all this. Polls in this day and age are notoriously difficult to get correct, because an awful lot of people won't talk to pollsters and a few of the ones who do deliberately lie about it. My hunch, though, is that they don't want the president removed from office, or at the very least they don't want to bother with all the fuss and nonsense when they know that the president is certainly not going to be removed from office. My hunch is that this whole spectacle will hurt Democrats at the polls, and that's for real.
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It also matters WHY people have the opinions they do.

While I am not an American (and therefore not in a position to do anything such as vote), I don't want him removed from office. "Why not?" I hear you ask.

Because if he is removed, Pence will be sworn in as president, and one of his first moves will almost certainly be to pardon Trump. I want Trump to serve his full term, get his arse kicked in the 2020 elections, and then be held accountable for his crimes. I am sure I wouldn't be the only person with a "don't remove" opinion to have the same reasons.

Unfortunately, I suspect that if Trump loses in 2020, by a narrow margin, he will try to hold on to power. If he gets a right royal botty-smaking, he may resign, and have Pence pardon him anyway.

However, I do support the impeachment of Trump, and with Pelosi appearing to do what I suggested some months ago that she might, i.e. hold off sending it to a Senate trial, I kind of like the idea that Trump will have impeachment held over his head while he is repeatedly referred to as "impeached President Donald Trump" for the next few weeks... or months.
 
Minoosh said:
Oh PLEASE call Giuliani, please please please. Giuliani himself doesn't even know what he's going to say next.
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Giuliani wasn't one of the witnesses Schumer wanted to call. Bolton and Mulvaney were two of them. I forget the other two off the top of my head, but I posted them upthread.
 
I kind of like the idea of delaying sending it to the Senate - keep it hanging like a Sword Of Damocles over Trump as long as possible. At least it thwarts any ideas that McConnell and Graham had about wrapping this up quickly and decisively.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
You want to apply Occam's Razor to Trump?
What do you think does transferring more than $2milion in donation raised for Veterans instead into his Campaign (something he has admitted) suggest about him?
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No crimes?

How about being named “Individual One” in a crime that his attorney is sitting in jail for?

But Lord, there are SO many from which to choose!
 
I think delaying sending the Articles to the Senate would be a bad PR move. It feeds in to the narrative that the whole thing is a sham designed to attack the president because Democrats don't like the result. And you can say "ah, but it's about doing so until there's a guarantee of a fair trial" if you like, but the Republicans already have months of "this is not a fair trial" behind them, so any Democrats trying that are going to look like they're saying "I know you are, but what am I?", regardless of actual facts.

I think the way this will look worst for Republicans and best for Democrats is to let the Senate dismiss it within a day. Then hammer home that the Republicans refused to allow witnesses to be called, refused to look at the evidence, announced ahead of time that they were biased, and then didn't even allow a trial to go ahead. That's a strong, clear message which isn't open to a great deal of spin. The only Republican counter is that the whole thing is a farce - which itself is undercut by the fact that they refused to hear the evidence.
 
Meadmaker said:
Yes. Obviously. Now, let's see if you twist the meaning of "bribery" to match what happened. Be advised that it didn't play well on the focus groups, so the Dems dropped it from the articles of impeachment.
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A straw man exercise.

It wasn't bribery. It was extortion.

It wasn't Trump's money to give ... to 'bribe' with, in the first place. A majority of both chambers of Congress had already given it to Ukraine. Congress was in full possession of all the facts regarding the issues of potential corruption when they did so.

Trump was threatening Ukraine, using his control of the Executive Branch as a club. as a weapon.

With money that was already theirs by legal right. I guess that's in character for Trump. That's the same way he treated his contractors.

I suppose you could twist the meaning of "extortion" to somehow match "bribery", but you seem to be against that sort of thing.

At least when it is convenient.
 
Meadmaker said:
This is such a fascinating post, and is quite typical of a lot of rhetoric from Democratic and Democratically aligned sources.

Is Grizzly Bear for reall? Yes. He is. And his opinions are shared by millions. I don't know how many millions. It's difficult to say, but the thing I find fascinating is that you, like so many others, are incredulous that such an opinion even exists.
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So is the opinion that Christ rose from the dead.

I'm not sure this is the best metric to use to determine facts or accuracy.

I suspect it's actually a majority opinion.
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So is the opinion that Christ rose from the dead. Roughly three quarters of them in 2016.

I blame "news islands". If you watch CNN, you might actually think that the country is united behind impeachment, but a group of stubborn Republican senators will thwart the will of the people and the rule of law. It's really not like that.

The actual facts are there on view for anyone who wants to see them. It's the spin and the interpretations that vary. Did he try to twist Zelensky's arm to get him to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden? Absolutely he did. Everyone agrees to that.

Did he "interfere int he 2020 election"? Uhh......you lost me there. Digging dirt on your opponents is not interfering in the election. It's conducting a campaign. The fact that he used American foreign policy to do that is bad, and Grizzly Bear said so. Most people agree that it's bad.
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Using extortion to cow a foreign government into interfering with an election is not "Digging dirt on your opponents".

He wasn't "digging dirt". He didn't care if there was dirt to be dug or not, and most likely had already been told that no such dirt was there to be found, anyway.

He just wanted stinky sounds made in public about Biden.

How bad? Bad enough to remove an elected President? There is no "fact" that answers that question. That's a matter of opinion, not fact.

<snip>
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It is a fact that he solicited, via extortion, the aid of a foreign agent ... an entire country ... to affect an election in the U.S.

That's a crime. Not a matter of opinion.

Since he is immune to regular venues of indictment and trial all that is left is impeachment.
 
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Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I think delaying sending the Articles to the Senate would be a bad PR move. It feeds in to the narrative that the whole thing is a sham designed to attack the president because Democrats don't like the result. And you can say "ah, but it's about doing so until there's a guarantee of a fair trial" if you like, but the Republicans already have months of "this is not a fair trial" behind them, so any Democrats trying that are going to look like they're saying "I know you are, but what am I?", regardless of actual facts.

I think the way this will look worst for Republicans and best for Democrats is to let the Senate dismiss it within a day. Then hammer home that the Republicans refused to allow witnesses to be called, refused to look at the evidence, announced ahead of time that they were biased, and then didn't even allow a trial to go ahead. That's a strong, clear message which isn't open to a great deal of spin. The only Republican counter is that the whole thing is a farce - which itself is undercut by the fact that they refused to hear the evidence.
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It doesn't matter how it looks. The days of image mattering are over, the sides have been chosen, the villains are proudly wearing black uniforms with skull insignia on everything. They don't care if you point out their hypocrisy, they don't care if you expose their evil. They're now at the point of shooting people in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue and laughing about it because nobody can stop them.
 
Crazy Chainsaw said:
This is my take on Impeachment,
"Let's be realistic here the Republicans wouldn't convict Donald Trump, if he shot and killed Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, and Mitch McConnell on the Senate Floor During the Trial in front of the Chief Justice.
If he did that they would pen a metal on him!"
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If he did that I'd pin a medal on him. If he took out Nunes in the process I'd make it two.

I'd still want to see him tried and convicted for murder. But the murder would have been a public service, whether he did it for the right reasons or not.
 
shemp said:
I'm sure that the so-called Founding Fathers would be aghast at all of this. But they might not find it entirely unexpected. They knew the dangers of opening up democracy to an unintelligent, uninformed and uncaring electorate.

Edited to add: They understood the danger of such an electorate being manipulated by a demagogue.
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And well they should have. It was thanks in no small part to the work of demagogues that they had successfully prosecuted a war against a major world power, and not a few of those demagogues were right there, sitting among them and helping design the Constitution.
 
Meadmaker said:
<snip>

Just remember, it was the Republicans who wanted to force a true role call vote, so that they could use the footage in the campaign ads. Either they're wrong, or the Dems are wrong. I suppose we'll see as the saga unfolds.
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It's a blade with two edges. Clips of Repugnicans declaring they had no intention of upholding their sworn duty to impartiality along side of their votes proving they were lying through their teeth could be good ad coy.

There's a wealth of stuff the Repugnicans have been filmed saying that would make dandy fodder to use against them. The Dems just need to have the chutzpah to use it properly.
 
Meadmaker said:
The other way is to hope he is forced to release his tax returns, and then he is exposed as a guy who has lost a lot of money, lived like a king, but never paid taxes, and once again his public support plummets.
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Not going to work! They will praise him for being super genius clever.
 
TragicMonkey said:
It doesn't matter how it looks. The days of image mattering are over, the sides have been chosen, the villains are proudly wearing black uniforms with skull insignia on everything. They don't care if you point out their hypocrisy, they don't care if you expose their evil. They're now at the point of shooting people in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue and laughing about it because nobody can stop them.
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Sad but true!
 
TragicMonkey said:
It doesn't matter how it looks. The days of image mattering are over, the sides have been chosen, the villains are proudly wearing black uniforms with skull insignia on everything. They don't care if you point out their hypocrisy, they don't care if you expose their evil. They're now at the point of shooting people in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue and laughing about it because nobody can stop them.
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Sad but true indeed. They're openly and proudly Trump-worshiping hypocrites at this point, fully embracing the post-fact world we inhabit.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I kind of like the idea of delaying sending it to the Senate - keep it hanging like a Sword Of Damocles over Trump as long as possible. At least it thwarts any ideas that McConnell and Graham had about wrapping this up quickly and decisively.
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Sword of Damocles?

It's a campaign ad.
 
uke2se said:
Conservatives might say that, but I doubt many believe it, because it is unbelievable. Trump wasn't trying to root out corruption in Ukraine, and we know this for a couple of reasons:

1. He never said anything about corruption in any other context than this particular incident with the Ukrainian prosecutor and Joe Biden.

2. Biden's actions made it more likely that his son would be prosecuted because the prosecutor was fired for not investigating corruption.
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3. Hunter Biden's position with Burisma was heavily covered in the news media at the time, so it wasn't something that the Trump Administration just uncovered this summer. If there was a legitimate belief that Hunter and/or Joe did something illegal, the US would have:
(a) started its own investigation rather than asking Ukraine to start one;
(b) started it 2 years ago.

4. In the US, presidents don't normally get personally involved in criminal investigations, especially ones with political overtones.

5. In the US, presidents don't assign their PERSONAL attorneys to coordinate criminal investigations.

And finally,
6. The thought that a man who has engaged in numerous private business deals with foreign governments while serving as president (including getting dozens of trademarks from our biggest economic rival) and who recently got socked with a $2 million fine for misappropriating money from a charitable foundation is interested in rooting out corruption is laughable.
 
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quadraginta said:
So is the opinion that Christ rose from the dead.

I'm not sure this is the best metric to use to determine facts or accuracy.




So is the opinion that Christ rose from the dead. Roughly three quarters of them in 2016.




Using extortion to cow a foreign government into interfering with an election is not "Digging dirt on your opponents".

He wasn't "digging dirt". He didn't care if there was dirt to be dug or not, and most likely had already been told that no such dirt was there to be found, anyway.

He just wanted stinky sounds made in public about Biden.




It is a fact that he solicited, via extortion, the aid of a foreign agent ... an entire country ... to affect an election in the U.S.

That's a crime. Not a matter of opinion.

Since he is immune to regular venues of indictment and trial all that is left is impeachment.
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Well dammit, then the Democrats should have called it a crime, but they didn't. The Democrats should have called it extortion, but they didn't. If that's what it was then someone in a position of authority to say that's what it was should have called it that, but they didn't. Words like "bribery" and "extortion" didn't play well in the focus groups, so they weren't used. The articles of impeachment read like the output of a focus group, because they were.


And people here are acting like the impeachment of the president is a grand triumph. Over on the GOP side of things, they were asking for a true role call vote, so that each Congressman running for re-election could be recorded on film casting their vote on impeachment. You had better hope you know something that they don't, because they think the Democratic Party has stumbled into a trap, a trap which they set themselves, no less.
 
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