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Come back! Need discussion...2020 PresidentialFollow

#77 May 16 2019 at 2:51 PM Rating: Default
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Let's recall what I said which Debalic responded to with his post. You know... context.

gbaji wrote:
Except that you listed off a bunch of reasons you thought he should be impeached. I'm just curious what those actually are and why you think they should result in impeachment. It's easy to rattle off something like "questionable travel practices", but what exactly are you talking about? ...

...

Isn't a better determination about whether the actions and decisions he's made as president have had positive or negative effects? Silly me, I care less about whether I like the president as to whether he's making good choices. Obama was a very likeable president and made absolutely horrible choices. Trump's more or less the opposite.


I'm being specific to questions involving the calls for impeachment, since that's what I was responding to, and asking people to provide specific examples of things he's done which justify impeachment.

Elinda never responded. But Debalic responded thusly:

Debalic wrote:
trump's actions and decisions have had disastrous effects. And he is an extremely immoral, unethical person.


Silly me. I'm assuming he's saying that Trump has made actions and decisions which have had disastrous effects as president, and he's behaved in an extremely immoral and unethical manner as president. You know, since I was asking about grounds for impeachment, and impeachment is about things one does as president.

And then there's your response:

Friar Bijou wrote:


1. Trump walks into a room full of 14-16 year old naked girls = ok with gbaji.

2. Trump orders an $60k piano from an piano company and then sends a check for $40k and says "sue me for the rest" = ok with gbaji.

3. Trump runs an uncredited "university" = ok with gbaji.

4. Invites members of Russia's intel group into the Oval Office = ok with gbaji.

5. OK, this one not so bad, but: why not release tax stuff? If it's fine, what's the problem? Unless you are the type to cheat on taxes, of course....that may change your perspective.



With the exception of number 4, all of these things are things he did prior to becoming president, and all of them were things that the public was aware of when he was running for election, and presumably took into account when they chose to elect him. Ergo, the weight of these "immoral and unethical" things aren't so significant as to exclude him from office, because the people voted for him despite knowing these things.

Arguing otherwise is basically saying that the election results don't count because you didn't like the guy enough to vote for him, so no one else should have (even though they did), and thus he should be removed from office. Um... That's not how democratic processes work.

And as to number 4? How the heck is that immoral, unethical, or illegal? Presidents meet with delegations of foreign governments all the time. I'm pretty sure that Obama had Putin in his office several times. No one demanded he be impeached for that. That's normal work for a president. WTF?


Got anything that's actually even in the broad territory of impeachable offense?
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#78 May 16 2019 at 11:16 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
With the exception of number 4, all of these things are things he did prior to becoming president, and all of them were things that the public was aware of when he was running for election, and presumably took into account when they chose to elect him.
Making them as morally bankrupt as Trump, which is kind of the point I was trying to make.
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#79 May 20 2019 at 9:32 AM Rating: Good
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#80 May 20 2019 at 4:02 PM Rating: Default
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
With the exception of number 4, all of these things are things he did prior to becoming president, and all of them were things that the public was aware of when he was running for election, and presumably took into account when they chose to elect him.
Making them as morally bankrupt as Trump, which is kind of the point I was trying to make.


So... no actual legal justification for impeachment. Just checking.

Cause... you know... that was the point *I* was making.
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#81 May 20 2019 at 5:53 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
So... no actual legal justification for impeachment. Just checking.
Well, if I could read the entire, unredacted Mueller report I could make an better judgement on it. In the meantime, I'll just assume the worst. You know, like you and your pals do to the "Liberal/Democrat/SOCIALISTS!!!11!!eleven", like alllllllll the time.
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#82 May 21 2019 at 3:40 AM Rating: Default
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If Constitutional Crises and impeachment-worthy high crimes are real things instead of 1% elite tribalist nonsense, then every President should have a DOJ two-year long investigation right off the bat.

And dare I say it: if anyone cares about the other 95% of humans who aren't Americans, then Trump has perhaps to-date killed less than Obama and Bush and other predecessors. Perhaps I dare say perchance Hillary Clinton was all about the syria no-fly zone. Not just as a small aside, just a big-*** thing that she hoped to win over...uh, nihilists? Since that would be a hot war with Russia.

Anyway this last two-three years of utter fucking nonsense from the media is...I mean there's a big dichotomy between what actual struggling Americans care about vs. what tribalist political fucktards and 95% of the MSM feign to call important. Almost NO ACTUAL NORMAL AMERICANS GIVE A FSmiley: lolCK ABOUT PUTIN.

I love all of you, what a fantastic site and with vigorous and robust debates.

And may I mention that I guess it was sold a while back and as usual in my drunkneness I might've railed against Allakhazam the fat-cat owner but this still exists, and plus too--no matter how much I delete my cookies and change computers and big-password tries to scare me, I just log on here after 18 years and bam! Here again. I realize I'm a bad poster especially according to the mean of Aspen skiing libtards who post here, but when I feel it's important for society to hear my voice I will scream it. I scream the voice of the mourning dove, I say I say. Oh and drunk!!

So I guess in sum there's plenty of justification for impeachment for EVERY PRESIDENT EVER. Maybe instead stop ******** about that sort of utter useless nonsense and instead focus on the enormous widening wealth gap and ludicrous defense spending and etc. "OH BUT NO, IF WE JUST IMPEACH TRUMP THEN SOMEONE BETTER LOOKING WILL FSmiley: eekCK US OVER NEXT".

You fucking ignorant 1% cunttards! Useful sheep of the duopoly! Gbaji too, you stupid fuck, Gbaji! And To think I used to call you friend. You have abandoned all reagonomics and conservative values. Oh woe.

Smiley: frown
#83 May 29 2019 at 2:46 PM Rating: Default
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
So... no actual legal justification for impeachment. Just checking.
Well, if I could read the entire, unredacted Mueller report I could make an better judgement on it.


Or you could bother to read the 92.5% of the report that *isn't* redacted and maybe noodle out what's in there. Statements of fact don't change because other parts of the report are blacked out. So if it says (for example), that there's no evidence of collusion with the Russians on the part of the members of the Trump campaign, you can safely assume that there's nothing in the redacted parts that shows evidence of collusion with the Russians on the part of members of the Trump campaign.

I'll also point out (and you'd know if you'd bothered to do a few minutes of actual research instead of just following along with the media narrative), that the bulk of the redacted parts have to do with the Indictments of Russian operatives, and not anything having to do with Trump and his people. Section two (which is where the discussion regarding potential Obstruction occurs) has nearly no redactions in it. So the only section where you could even possibly attempt to build a case for impeachment not only concludes that there was insufficient evidence to proceed with an indictment, but also has the least redactions. So... um... why do redactions matter?

Again, the redactions are not going to include anything that contradicts the findings of the report. Only details that were involved in deriving those findings. And the redactions were not made by Barr, but by DoJ lawyers and the Mueller team itself. So you'd have to believe that Mueller was hiding information in his own report from the public for some reason. And if that was the case, why bother? If he wanted to lie to the people, why not just write the findings he wanted? You're following a conspiracy theory that makes zero sense at all.

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In the meantime, I'll just assume the worst.


Uh hun. Shocking!


Quote:
You know, like you and your pals do to the "Liberal/Democrat/SOCIALISTS!!!11!!eleven", like alllllllll the time.


I've never argued for impeachment of a president, ever. And especially not based on the fact that a prosecutor didn't find him guilty of anything, but golly, there might just be something hidden behind the black lines that like totally make him guilty. Er... that's not how these reports work. If the stuff in the black was evidence of guilt, the recommendation would have been to go forward with indictment. At the risk of stating the obvious, our legal system presumes innocence in the absence of proof of guilt. A lot of people are playing word games with this whole thing suggesting that because Mueller didn't "exonerate" the President, that this means something. Except that the job of a prosecutor isn't to determine if someone is innocent, but whether they are guilty. In the absence of that determination, the target is presumed innocent. Every time. All the time. Thinking otherwise throws our legal standards out the window.

Of course, the Dems can always proceed with impeachment anyway, but at this point it would be an obvious pure partisan political move and nothing more. And I think it'll backfire on them. Badly.
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#84 May 29 2019 at 3:03 PM Rating: Default
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Palpitus1 wrote:
Maybe instead stop ******** about that sort of utter useless nonsense and instead focus on the enormous widening wealth gap and ludicrous defense spending and etc.


I think there's a typo there. You meant to say "narrowing wealth gap". You do understand that wages are rising twice as fast for poor and working class families right now than "the rich".

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Gbaji too, you stupid fuck, Gbaji! And To think I used to call you friend. You have abandoned all reagonomics and conservative values. Oh woe.


When did I abandon Reaganomics and conservative values? I just don't allow myself to lose sight of those things in the midst of nonsense about whether a person is "nice" or not. I've said many times that I'm not a fan of Trump in terms of his personality. However, I can't argue against results. And the guy has pushed conservative economic and social principles and policies harder and more effectively than any Republican since Reagan.

Many times over the years on this forum, various liberal posters have challenged my assertions about the positions and ideals of conservatives. Usually in the form of "well, if they believe that, why did they back down on X, Y, Z...?". I've watched many times as Republicans will play lip service to conservative principles, but then back down from them in the face of media attacks. "Let's investigate subprime lending!", "But if you do that, you hate poor minorities who want to own a home". "Oh. We don't hate those people. We'll just drop it, I guess.". And then the economy collapses. I distinctly recall Joph arguing that this was all the GOP's fault, because even though the folks on his "side" where the ones fighting tooth and nail to prevent investigation of the looming housing crisis, it didn't matter because the GOP was too cowardly to stand up to them.

Well, here we have Trump, of all freaking people, actually doing exactly what Joph has been bashing Republicans for failing to do for decades. Actually standing up to the politicians, and pundits, and media. He's telling them "F U", and doing the "right thing". Again, I'm not a fan of his language most of the time, but I do appreciate that he's actually standing up for those principles and going forward on them.

Lets not forget that back in 2015-2016, through the primary and general election, I stated many times my fear that Trump was a liberal in GOP clothing, just talking the talk to get the win, with the intention to turn to his true colors once he got in office. So yeah, I'm incredibly happy to have been wrong on that. Shocked actually. It's one of the reasons I was really concerned about him. Clinton, for all her ugly faults, was at least a known entity. Trump? No clue what he would do once in office. So yeah, silly me. I'm happy to see reduced regulations on businesses, cleaned up and lowered tax rates, an economy growing at a rate everyone insisted was impossible just a few years ago, wages rising for the first time in a couple decades, and a foreign policy that actually pushes back against other countries instead of falling over itself to please them.

Again. Can't argue with results. Which, of course, is why the Dems are trying to make this about everything else. I have a feeling that such out of touch approach is going to hurt them badly in this election cycle though. We'll wait and see though.

Edited, May 29th 2019 1:06pm by gbaji
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#85 May 30 2019 at 2:42 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Well, here we have Trump, of all freaking people, actually doing exactly what Joph has been bashing Republicans for failing to do for decades. Actually standing up to the politicians, and pundits, and media...
...and doing whatever he wants. True Republican values, enriching oneself at the expense of everyone else. BUSINESSMAN!!! You're only poor by choice!!! CEO's DESERVE 100's of million on dollars while they post tips on food stamps in the break room!!! CLASS WARFARE!!!
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#86 Jun 06 2019 at 6:16 AM Rating: Good
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Trump is a dolt. He's normalizing doltish leadership and governing. Gbaji, you know what he is, what he's done and how he 'rules'. I'm not sure you realize how transparent you come off though (still not sure if gbaji is huge troll or trolling hugely.)

I'm gelling up for Warren, but who knows...
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#87 Jun 06 2019 at 4:49 PM Rating: Default
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Gbaji:
Reasons to impeach/not vote for Trump:

Facts:
"Enforcing" an old immigration law that caused thousands of children to be separated from their parents with no hope of ever finding them again. --immoral, unethical

Obstructing the Mueller investigation. He tried to make McGahn fire Mueller. His timing of firing Comey was suspicious. His twitter comments regarding Sessions recusal were quite telling. The only reason Mueller didn't indict is because of the DoJ's current (partisan) policy of not indicting a sitting president. The evidence is there if you read the Mueller report, it's up to our ****** Congress to do something about it. --illegal, immoral

The Muslim ban: He literally only banned countries that never had a citizen commit a terrorist act in america. And he suspiciously missed countries that he did business in, which oddly enough produced citizens that have commited terrorist acts against the US. Not to mention it's thinly veiled bigotry against brown people. --immoral, unethical

Not enforcing increased sanctions on Russia in light of their assassinations of dissenters. Congress unanimously passed those sanctions. Gross negligence of his job duties. Insubordination. Fire him. -- poor work ethic

Ignoring National Security advisors from our country and many others about election security and the Russian attack on democracy. --hella dumb
#88 Jun 10 2019 at 7:28 PM Rating: Default
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laviont wrote:
Gbaji:
Reasons to impeach/not vote for Trump:

Facts:
"Enforcing" an old immigration law that caused thousands of children to be separated from their parents with no hope of ever finding them again. --immoral, unethical


Huh? The same law that every other president prior to him has enforced. Do you understand that on this issue, you're being told to be "outraged" over something that didn't change with Trump coming into office. Those encouraging this outrage are betting that you wont bother to inform yourself of the actual facts. And it looks like (sadly) they were right.

We separate children from parents when the parents are detained by law enforcement for any reason, all the time. Every time. We don't put kids in the drunk tank when Dad is pulled over for DUI and they're in the back seat, do we? We don't send the kids to jail with their parents when they are arrested for domestic disturbance, violence, whatever. We find someone related to them, or put them in CPS, and foster care after time if no-one is found. That's normal. That's how we do it. That's how we always handle children in situations like this. There are hundreds of thousands of US citizen children in CPS/foster care right now. Most of them are not actually orphans with no family. They are there because their parents are in jail or prison and we "separated them from their parents".

You might want to ask why there is only outrage at this separation in the case of illegal immigration and not all the other cases where we do it. Might it be for political purposes and not any sort of rational examination of how we treat children when their parents are detained in some way? Yeah, I think so. Maybe engage the brain here for a second and see if what you're being told to think actually make any sense in the broader context. Just a thought.

Quote:
Obstructing the Mueller investigation. He tried to make McGahn fire Mueller.


And? Would removing Mueller and replacing him with someone with less obvious conflict of interest issues have prevented the investigation itself? No, it would not have. I'll also point out that a client asking his lawyer to do something, and the lawyer saying "no, we can't do that because it might violate law A, or rule B" is *not* obstruction. And it's certainly not a crime. We retain lawyers specifically because they know the law better than we do, and to prevent us from actually doing things that would violate the law. Which, in this case, is precisely what happened. Trump asked, his lawyer said "no", and they moved on. You can't claim obstruction because someone wanted to do something, was advised against it, and followed that advice. At the end of the day, Trump did *not* fire Mueller, ergo there's no obstruction.

Quote:
His timing of firing Comey was suspicious.


No, it's really not. And since that happened *before* the appointment of a special prosecutor (and arguably was one of the political causes used by the Democrats to demand said prosecution), it's somewhat bizarre to claim that this action could have possibly obstructed said investigation by Mueller itself.

Quote:
His twitter comments regarding Sessions recusal were quite telling.


Why? Be specific here. How does expressing an opinion result in obstruction? To obstruct justice, at the risk of being obvious here, he has to actually take an action (arguably, an illegal action) which manifestly obstructs the ability of the investigators to conduct their investigation. Trump did not do that.

Quote:
The only reason Mueller didn't indict is because of the DoJ's current (partisan) policy of not indicting a sitting president.


Uh... Why did you put the word "(partisan)" in there? And it's not just policy. It's interpretation of SCOTUS rulings in the past. It's certainly not partisan at all. The belief, which has existed for quite some time, is that the president because he's the head of the executive branch of the government, cannot himself be indicted. That's not "current", and it's not "partisan".

I'll also point out that while Mueller claims this after the fact in the press release he gave, he does *not* actually state this in the report itself. He absolutely could have concluded that the evidence supported indictment of the president, and then left it up to the DOJ to decide whether they actually would (again, based on whether they believe they legally can). Again, his report is supposed to identify criminal acts and report on them. He does not conclude that these actions are criminal. Saying "we also probably couldn't have indicted him anyway" is irrelevant. If he believed that there was sufficient evidence to prove that Trump had committed the crime of obstruction of justice, he should have (and presumably would have) actually said so in the report, since the whole point of the report was to determine exactly that information. It's designed to provide guidance to the DOJ with regards to indictment and prosecution. To *not* make any recommendation at all is strange. Interpreting this to mean that he would have recommended prosecution but didn't, not because of a lack of sufficiently strong evidence, but because of a policy not to indict sitting presidents, is well beyond strange.

It suggests that if he had said such a thing, then normal legal standards could be applied to his findings and they could be judged against those standards of justice. Remember that he's writing an official document and will be held professionally accountable to it. If he says "this is sufficient evidence to prove obstruction", and it quite obviously and demonstrably *isn't*, then he shows himself to be engaged in partisanship. If instead, he leaves that out, and then gives a press release (which isn't an official document) suggesting that it was because of the DOJ policy, then he puts it outside the realm of actual legal proceedings with this pesky thing called "burden of proof", and puts it into the realm of politics, where it's just about rhetoric and public perception.

Which is exactly where we are now.

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The evidence is there if you read the Mueller report, it's up to our ****** Congress to do something about it. --illegal, immoral


Yeah, I've read it. Again, no where does he state that the evidence is sufficient to prove a crime occurred. That's the point. Saying "its up to congress to do something about it", ignores that core fact. Some of us have been saying that this investigation was purely political from the start, and this bit here somewhat proves us right. Note, that there's no actual legal standard being applied here. Just political rhetoric. The idea of using a criminal investigation, not to actually determine whether the president has committed a crime, but simply to give the opposition political language to use to try to impeach him is ridiculous, scary, and something some of us saw as being the whole point of the investigation from the start.

But by all means, fall for it.

I'll also point out that the wording in Mueller's press release is weird, from any legal standing. He actually said something like "If I believed there was no evidence of obstruction of justice, I would have said so in the report". Except that's backwards. We don't hire prosecutors to find evidence of innocence, but to find evidence of guilt. The standard is always whether there is "sufficient evidence of guilt". That is a yes or no question. If the answer is "no", then the target is presumed to be innocent. There is no legal need to determine innocence, and the fact that he didn't declare Trump innocent has no meaning at all. What's does have meaning is that he didn't declare Trump to be guilty, nor even that there was sufficient evidence that he was guilty. That means "he's innocent". Period. At least from a legal perspective. Again, politics doesn't have the same requirements. Which is why I suspect he used the language he used. He could not find sufficient evidence to stand up to any sort of legal standard, so he punted it to the political side of things.

Which is great if you're fighting for "my side", but is terrible if you believe there should actually be a standard to these things, and that we maybe shouldn't be running around impeaching presidents just because the political rhetoric has passed some polling threshold in the public eye that the party in power thinks it might do better going forward with it than not. Doubly so when the media is so biased that it consistently provides those same politicians with massive false positives on issues like this making them think they've got more support for impeachment than they actually do. IMO, if they go forward with this, they'll only shoot themselves in the foot.

Quote:
The Muslim ban: He literally only banned countries that never had a citizen commit a terrorist act in america. And he suspiciously missed countries that he did business in, which oddly enough produced citizens that have commited terrorist acts against the US. Not to mention it's thinly veiled bigotry against brown people. --immoral, unethical


Huh? This has nothing at all to do with anything. Um... The nations he based absolutely were on the list of "state sponsored terrorist countries". If it were about "brown skinned people", why not ban the several hundred other countries that have equally brown skinned citizens? Your argument makes zero sense.

This is certainly not even within the realm of "impeachable offense". You shouldn't impeach a president just because you disagree with his policies. And given that Obama also did a very similar ban on a similar set of countries during his term, the fact that you are so outraged by this, once again, points to how easily manipulated you are by normal things being presented to you as though they are abnormal.

The first question you should be asking whenever someone points to something Trump has done and declares it to be illegal, unethical, etc, is "did a previous president do the same thing in the past?", followed by "did the people declaring to me that this is illegal, unethical, etc, say the same thing when that president did something similar in the past?". When the answer to the first is "yes", and the second is "no", your response should be to ignore those people, since they are obviously reacting in a purely partisan manner and not applying fair and equal assessments to the actions of the president.

Stop being a tool.

Quote:
Not enforcing increased sanctions on Russia in light of their assassinations of dissenters. Congress unanimously passed those sanctions. Gross negligence of his job duties. Insubordination. Fire him. -- poor work ethic


Again. The president gets to chose how to implement foreign policy, not congress. In this case, Trump has selected when and whom to apply sanctions, usually based on the impact they would have on our own economic and foreign policy positions *and* based on DOJ findings of whom actually was involved in something nefarious rather than just applying blanket "everyone on this list gets sanctioned".

At the risk of repeating myself, this is precisely within the authority of the president to do. And it's the kind of thing that all past presidents have done. Congress can "authorize sanctions", but it's up to the president to decide when and how to apply them. Congress has zero power to force the president to do so. You know, that whole "separation of powers" bit. You're getting the facts backwards. Normally, it's the executive branch that wants to do something (like sanctions), and they have to go to Congress to get it approved. You're trying to argue it goes the other way around. It does not.

I'll also point out that Obama committed much more questionable executive decisions in this regard. He actually entered the US into a treaty without ever bothering to get congressional approval (Senate specifically). Again, the flow of "must vs may" is backwards from what you are claiming. The president "may" impose sanctions, enter into treaties, etc. Congress "must" approve them before the president can proceed (past certain short term actions the president can do on his own). When Obama signed the Paris accord without getting Senate ratification he was in gross violation of the US constitution.

Funny that I don't recall you demand he be impeached for this. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and guess that you're one of those people who would now insist that Trump was violating the law for not abiding by that accord, despite the fact that it's not a legal treaty in the first place. Funny how the partisan nature of these things will totally change your position. So Trump is violating the law by not taking a foreign policy action congress wants but has no authority to impose, but Obama was not violation the law by taking a foreign policy action which required congressional approval which he didn't bother to get.

Strange, isn't it? Maybe you should take a civics course and learn how the US government actually works? Just a thought.

Quote:
Ignoring National Security advisors from our country and many others about election security and the Russian attack on democracy. --hella dumb


So? He gets to choose which advice he follows, and which he doesn't. That's hardly impeachable. That's him doing his job. You're free to disagree with his decision, but he does get to be the one to make it. Funny thing about how we have a process for determining who gets to make said decision and it's not "what we want and not what the election determined". It's almost like you don't want to live in a democratic system of government, but would rather have one where only the folks you agree with ever get to have political power.

That's... foolish, and darned short sighted.

Is that seriously all you have? I'm still not seeing anything beyond "I don't like him and the decisions he makes". Well, tough. I don't like him and some of the decisions he makes either. I didn't like a whole lot of the decisions Obama made. At no point in the entire 8 years of his term did I call for his impeachment, despite far far stronger evidence of things done during his administration which (assuming he knew about them and signed off on them) would absolutely have been impeachable offenses.


And that's before we get into the whole issue of the likelihood of this entire "collusion, no obstruction!" thing just being a political smokescreen to cover for the almost certainly illegal activities that took place between the Clinton campaign, and the Obama DOJ/whitehouse/intelligence agencies during the election to help Clinton win. The 800lb gorilla in the Mueller report isn't the lack of conclusion about Obstruction, but the absolute conclusion that there was no Collusion. Given that the assumption that this had happened, and that the absolute believe that there was plenty of evidence of it, sufficient to launch the investigation in the first place, one has to question how that perception came to be in the first place, so strongly that politicians and pundits insisted that they could see so much "evidence of collusion" that after nearly 2 years and an incredibly exhaustive investigation, Mueller could not find even a hint of.

How did that happen? How did the same lack of actual evidence allow for FISA warrants on folks in the Trump campaign? How is it that at the same time that was happening, Obama's NSA decided to both unmask and increase the distribution of intelligence gained by those warrants? It's almost like folks in the administration were using their power in the executive branch to try to find dirt on Trump and his people to use for political purposes. Wait!? Isn't that... illegal?

Yes. Yes it is. There was a massive amount of criminal activity here, but it wasn't committed by Trump. And maybe, if we can stop being blinded by the smokescreen, we'll be able to actually see what really happened. I'm far less concerned by a foreign power spending $50k or so creating false facebook accounts and spreading BS to try to influence people's minds during an election year, than I am with our own government using its intelligence services to try to influence said election outcome. And it looks like that's exactly what happened here. And the whole "OMG! Russian collusion" thing? Desperate cover for folks who realized that since Trump won despite their efforts, it was only a matter of time before what they had done was discovered.

It's obvious that they're just trying to run out the clock on this. Count on when the investigations finally turn to what the Dems did during the election for the narrative in the media to be "this is old news", and "why are we talking about the 2016 election again?". They're counting on this. Because if this got even a fraction of the media coverage it should have, there would be a large number of folks in the former Obama administration facing significant charges.

What's sad to me is how much our legal process is influence by the political and media processes. It shouldn't be this way, but unfortunately, it is. Maybe I'm hopeless, but I keep thinking that eventually justice will prevail here. Sadly, it seems like far too many people only care about "their side", and not actual justice. We'll see what happens though.


Edited, Jun 10th 2019 5:56pm by gbaji
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#89 Jun 11 2019 at 9:33 AM Rating: Good
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#90 Jun 11 2019 at 2:49 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
You might want to ask why there is only outrage at this separation in the case of illegal immigration and not all the other cases where we do it.
Could it be the literal cages we kept little kids in? Have we done that before?
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#91 Jun 15 2019 at 1:41 PM Rating: Decent
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The difference in all previous administrations handling of immigrant families was much more humane. Just deport them back, instead of killing kids in cages. That's just sick and it's a sad world we live in that you try to defend it. Even 45 himself had to step back and try to end that. The fact that it took most of the US population's disgust and the world's human rights organizations' disdain to convince him of this is pathetic. You're right, we do separate kids from their parents all the time, but we do not put them in cages because their parents wanted a better life for them. Not until Individual 1.

What conflicts does Meuller have? These fake news non issues?
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/04/debunking-muellers-conflicts/
Meuller is known for being professional, thorough, and by the book. No better person could have conducted the investigation. Him attempting to remove Meuller would clearly have a chilling effect on the DoJ. McGahn was threatened, so he resigned, as to not incriminate himself. 45's administration also destroyed documents that are legally required to be kept. These are all actions attempting to impede an active investigation. That's obstruction. Firing Comey for not ending the investigation on Flynn, is obstruction of justice. This investigation started before he was elected because his campaign had abnormal ties to Russia. Ties that he denied until he didn't. Why is he constantly lying? What is he trying to hide. If he's so innocent, then why all the hate on Sessions for letting his department do their job?

This all started because Carter Page was being watched. He was being watched for legit reasons before 45 started campaigning. Close ties to Russia, they (at least) attempted to recruit him and then he becomes part of the Trump campaign. To say that the investigation started under false pretenses is disingenuous. To attempt to stop it prematurely is obstruction.

The investigation was not started to investigate the president directly. The crime that was being investigated was the russian interference into the 2016 presidential election, and ALL crimes discovered as a result of that investigation. Meuller found the 13 russians who did it, and found a whole lot of **** going on in Individual 1's campaign, and businesses as a side effect. Now, if he was just looking at the Russian interference, and it keeps pointing back to the trump campaign, what does that tell you? Manafort, Stone, Gates, Page, Flynn, Papadopoulos, all guilty as ****. All involved. All chosen by Drumpf. Even if no evidence was found linking him to the election hacking, he would still be a ****** leader with a criminal entourage that we should not trust with the football.

The rest of your post is pure nonsense. If you think that a crime needs to be commited to be so bad at your job that you need to be fired, you need a wake up call. He's just bad at his job. That's enough to fire him. If you think that someone else did it so it's ok is an excuse, then you're no better the Russian trolls that plague the rest of the internet with their whataboutisms. It seems that it is you who doesn't want a democracy. The president gets to choose which of Congresses decisions to follow? WHAT? Since when is this an autocracy? It's not any individual act that let's me know he should be fired. Its's the combination of all of them.

#92 Jun 27 2019 at 8:59 AM Rating: Good
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Any thoughts following the first debate?

I didn't watch it. Regardless I declare Warren winner. Debate.
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#93 Jun 27 2019 at 10:31 AM Rating: Excellent
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Warren is a stone-cold, remorseless imbecile. Nothing you can do, no plea you might make, will stop her from her jackassery once she's set her tiny mind to the task.

With that said, she probably did win, as she was the only person there whose name anyone knows. I hope none of those other losers actually think they have a chance at winning.
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#94 Jul 02 2019 at 8:12 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
You might want to ask why there is only outrage at this separation in the case of illegal immigration and not all the other cases where we do it.
Could it be the literal cages we kept little kids in? Have we done that before?


You do realize that the pictures of children in cages was taken during the Obama administration, right? Right?

Yeah.... We have done that before. WTF? You can't actually be this ignorant of the facts. Can you?
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#95 Jul 02 2019 at 8:45 PM Rating: Decent
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laviont wrote:
The difference in all previous administrations handling of immigrant families was much more humane. Just deport them back, instead of killing kids in cages. That's just sick and it's a sad world we live in that you try to defend it. Even 45 himself had to step back and try to end that. The fact that it took most of the US population's disgust and the world's human rights organizations' disdain to convince him of this is pathetic. You're right, we do separate kids from their parents all the time, but we do not put them in cages because their parents wanted a better life for them. Not until Individual 1.


Wow. Two in a row who fell for the whole "OMG! kids in cages!" bit, and didn't realize when the pictures were taken. Are you guys really living in like a bubble or something?

Quote:
45's administration also destroyed documents that are legally required to be kept.


Source for this claim? This is the first I've ever heard of the Trump administration hiding or destroying any documents.

Quote:
Firing Comey for not ending the investigation on Flynn, is obstruction of justice.


That's not why he fired Comey though.

Quote:
This investigation started before he was elected because his campaign had abnormal ties to Russia.


No, it didn't. Unless you can show that other campaigns had fewer people with connections to foreign nations (like Russia), you're just making stuff up. You do realize that campaigns hire people who are experts on foreign policy, and those people, somewhat by necessity, have connections and associations with folks in foreign countries, right? There are literally hundreds of people working in DC who have similar connections to other countries (including Russia) as folks like Manafort did. If the same standard of law were applied, they'd all be in jail right now, I guess.

But the same standards are not being applied. That's the point. It's being selectively applied. Seriously. Do you know how many people who worked on the Clinton campaign have worked in similar fields as Manfort? You don't, do you? Why not? Because no one has bothered to look into it and write about it in a paper for you to learn about it. That's the only reason you're aware of the connections in Trump's campaign, but not in Clintons. Or Obama's. Or Bush's. Or every other presidential candidate, like, ever.

Quote:
Ties that he denied until he didn't. Why is he constantly lying? What is he trying to hide. If he's so innocent, then why all the hate on Sessions for letting his department do their job?


Again. What "ties" are you talking about?

Quote:
This all started because Carter Page was being watched. He was being watched for legit reasons before 45 started campaigning. Close ties to Russia, they (at least) attempted to recruit him and then he becomes part of the Trump campaign.


Again. This is selective. Our intelligence services "watch" everyone who engages in interaction with foreign nationals, and has connections with US government. Everyone. And guess what? Most of those people are approached and attempts to "recruit" them are made. All the time. The missing point is that he wasn't recruited, didn't do any work for a foreign nation, and thus wasn't a security threat.

Again, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone with foreign policy experience who hasn't had a similar amount of "being watched" as Page did. And some of them go on to work for political campaigns. Even presidential campaigns. At no point in that past has just that information been considered "proof" of some kind of nefarious collusion. Ever.

Quote:
To say that the investigation started under false pretenses is disingenuous.


No. It's not at all. It was started under false pretenses. Let's recall that the reason for the investigation was because of the apparently clear evidence of collusion between the Russians and the Trump administration. So much so, and so obviously so, that it had to be looked into, and those responsible held to justice. Yet, Mueller found *zero* evidence of collusion. So why was there an investigation into collusion?

Clearly, a lot of people imagined something that didn't happen, and then used that imagination to create an investigation.

Quote:
To attempt to stop it prematurely is obstruction.


To point out that there was no evidence of collusion to justify investigating the Trump campaign was merely stating the truth. That's not obstruction.

Quote:
The investigation was not started to investigate the president directly. The crime that was being investigated was the russian interference into the 2016 presidential election, and ALL crimes discovered as a result of that investigation.


Then why spend so much time focusing on the Trump campaign? If it had just been Russians creating fake FB accounts, that would have been fine, and frankly did not require a special prosecutor. The only reason to use a special prosecutor is when you are investigating members of the executive branch who would normally be the "boss" of those doing the investigating.

The intelligence investigation of foreign influence in the election was legitimate. The special prosecution was not. Because that was entirely about investigating Trump. Again, because otherwise there would be no need for the appointment. Clever language aside, no one was confused about what the purpose of the investigation was. Certainly, two years of every liberal pundit and politician made it clear that they believed this was about collusion between the Russians and Trump.


Quote:
Now, if he was just looking at the Russian interference, and it keeps pointing back to the trump campaign, what does that tell you?


Except you've missed the part where none of it led back to the Trump campaign. Hence the conclusion that there was no evidence of collusion.

Quote:
Manafort, Stone, Gates, Page, Flynn, Papadopoulos, all guilty as ****.


None of them guilty of any crime related to the Trump campaign, and certainly not collusion with Russians during the campaign.

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All involved.


Involved in what? Not collusion. That's kind of the point here.

Quote:
All chosen by Drumpf.


Yup. Which is the only reason they were investigated, and past actions, unrelated to the campaign, were found to magically be illegal after the fact. Funny how that works.

[quote]Even if no evidence was found linking him to the election hacking, he would still be a ****** leader with a criminal entourage that we should not trust with the football.[/quote]

Sigh. You don't seem to get the concept of "fishing expedition" and why we normally don't allow them in criminal investigations. You also seem to have willfully given up the fourth and fifth amendments as unimportant.


[quote]If you think that a crime needs to be commited to be so bad at your job that you need to be fired, you need a wake up call. He's just bad at his job. That's enough to fire him.[/quote]

Ah. So you're admitting that the justification for impeachment isn't because he's done anything impeachment worthy, but just because you don't like his policies. Got it. That's kinda what I was saying from the start.


What "bad job" has he done. High GDP growth. record low unemployment. Yeah, that's just terrible. What exactly is he doing such a bad job at?

[quote]It seems that it is you who doesn't want a democracy. The president gets to choose which of Congresses decisions to follow? WHAT? Since when is this an autocracy? It's not any individual act that let's me know he should be fired. Its's the combination of all of them.[/quote]

Interesting that you presumably did not apply this same standard to Obama when he was in office. Where were your calls for impeachment when he decided to selectively enforce US laws? I don't seem to recall that at all.

You need to apply the same standards to Trump that you would apply to past presidents. Otherwise, we can just dismiss you argument as pure partisan wrangling.
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#96 Jul 03 2019 at 5:27 PM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
Wow. Two in a row who fell for the whole "OMG! kids in cages!" bit, and didn't realize when the pictures were taken. Are you guys really living in like a bubble or something?

The new pictures of the camps are worse than the stock photos they used from Obama's time.

By all accounts, when Obama had kids in cages, they only kept them for a few days, not years, before letting them go. AKA Catch and release, because of the Ninth Circuit Court's reinterpretation of the Flores agreement which requires that children could not be detained for more than 20 days, with or without an adult. After that long they are required to put them in shelters, or release them inside the country to await their court date, because that's the humane Jesus way of doing it. He even shut down shelters when they weren't up to humane standards.

Trump's zero tolerance policy is arresting more than they can hold, care for, and feed, keeping them for longer than they should. On top of that 2/3 of the agents are in a facebook group bragging about how badly they treat the people they interact with daily.

The difference between these two strategies is one is well thought out and chose the lesser of two evils. The other is a brash and ill conceived appeal to his brainwashed base that is destroying families, and arguably making it worse for everyone.

Now enough of your tu quoque logical fallacy on that subject.

Quote:
45's administration also destroyed documents that are legally required to be kept.

Page 18 of the Mueller report, and the 5 boxes of evidence from Omarosa's office.

Quote:
That's not why he fired Comey though.


Quote:
Holt, May 11: Monday you met with the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Trump: Right.

Holt: Did you ask for a recommendation?

Trump: What I did is, I was going to fire Comey. My decision. It was not —

Holt: You had made the decision before they came in the room.

Trump: I was going to fire Comey. There’s no good time to do it, by the way.

Holt: Because in your letter you said, “I accepted their recommendation.”

Trump: Well, they also —

Holt: So, you had already made the decision.

Trump: Oh, I was going to fire regardless of recommendation.
...

Trump: [Rosenstein] made a recommendation, but regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey, knowing there was no good time to do it,” Trump said. “And, in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.


Quote:
Unless you can show that other campaigns had fewer people with connections to foreign nations (like Russia), you're just making stuff up.


It's not the number of connections, it's what kind. Carter Page was regularly on TV in a fascist country called Russia. The companies that employed him here, remember him as a strange Putin apologist. He served as an adviser for the Kremlin. He was under surveillance in 2014 after Russian agents attempted to recruit him. Donald was warned about this but continued with Page as a part of his campaign. Why would you want the risk of a spy in your campaign? Well if you're a traitor to the country. So, you have all these pro-Russia businessmen, gathering around a cult of personality who wanted a hotel in Russia, our foe. 45 asks them on live tv to get those emails, and they do. All American intelligence agencies along with our foreign ally intelligence agencies conclude that Russia ran a massive propaganda and disinformation campaign against our election, and you think somehow this investigation is unwarranted?

Another tu quoque fallacy with a bit of special pleading fallacy sprinkled on top.

Quote:
The rest of your argument

You're literally avoiding seeing that trump actually has been begging for Kremlin's favor his whole life, and then Russians do something awful for him that they can gain from. He is weakening our country for personal gain. The voting machines are hacked, and you don't care because "your team" is winning. That's as unamerican as it gets.

quasi-timeline for you to try to wrap your head around why trump was investigated:
trump tries to get a hotel in moscow
carter page loves russia too much for any normal american
manafort does some bad stuff for russia
trump runs for president with roger stone, rick gates, paul manafort, george papadopoulos at his back
papadopoulos sets up meetings with kremlin, hears about some emails
roger stone gets into contact with guccifer 2.0 about them emails
wikileaks drops the emails
russian social media propaganda machine intensifies, anyone but hillary
trump asks russia for the rest of the emails on live tv
within hours russia responds by getting those emails
2 days after trump is "elected" obama warns him not to put flynn in there
trump does anyway
flynn gets investigated
trump asks comey to stop
comey indicts flynn
trump fires comey
meuller is appointed
jeff sessions recuses himself
trump rebukes him for not keeping a chilling effect on the department of justice
trump tells mcgahn to fire meuller
mcgahn resigns
trump bullies sessions until he quits
barr shuts down meuller investigation

What does it take for you to see that this is a lot of crap to just let slide? violations of human rights, the hatch act, the emoluments clause, a disdain for the first amendment, obstruction of justice. is ya blind?

Edited, Jul 3rd 2019 5:29pm by laviont
#97 Jul 14 2019 at 3:12 PM Rating: Good
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Nobody wants to talk about politics anymore. It's gotten so bad. People avoid it like its the ******* plague now.

Should see the comments made by right-wingers on other sites. They can't wait to install gas chambers to border camps and they're proud about it. Meanwhile they're defending Jeff Epstein tooth and nail. It's hilarious. They can't even argue anything. If you respond to their comments, they'll just copy-paste some one liner about **** on the street in San Francisco or Venezuela and socialism. If all else fails, they'll cover their eyes and ears and scream FAKE NEWS until you leave them alone.

It's like every single thing a normal, decent person would be horribly ashamed of is their badge of honor. You can't argue with someone who takes pride in being the lowest form of life on the planet.

What might be more annoying is how everyone will quickly dismiss them as "bots" or "paid trolls from Russia," when in reality they are real Americans who just aren't afraid to tell us what they really think now that their king is POTUS.
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#98 Jul 15 2019 at 5:56 AM Rating: Good
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I'm resigned to 8 years under this surreal authoritative faux government. The dems under pelosi seem to want to coddle trump. She publicly scolds but allows the administration free range to continue it's corrupting ways. This feeds right into mcconnells war against liberals. The supreme court upholds republican gerrymandering. trump is stealing away all the power from congress while stacking the courts, scoffing at democracy and dividing the country like never before....and no one is stopping him. I'm starting to not even care who the dem nominee is - it all feels so futile.



Edited, Jul 15th 2019 12:57pm by Elinda
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#99 Jul 15 2019 at 9:28 PM Rating: Good
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Elinda wrote:
I'm resigned to 8 years under this surreal authoritative faux government. The dems under pelosi seem to want to coddle trump. She publicly scolds but allows the administration free range to continue it's corrupting ways. This feeds right into mcconnells war against liberals. The supreme court upholds republican gerrymandering. trump is stealing away all the power from congress while stacking the courts, scoffing at democracy and dividing the country like never before....and no one is stopping him. I'm starting to not even care who the dem nominee is - it all feels so futile.



Edited, Jul 15th 2019 12:57pm by Elinda


It's just going to keep getting worse. It's escalating ever so slowly. I feel that a post 2020 Trump presidency will make what we're seeing now look normal by comparison. Every day is a little bit of normalcy being chipped away, one little piece at a time. What sort of horrible things will we have become complacent to in five more years? "They shouldn't have come here" they'll oink, no matter what happens. "They should have just followed the law!" --they'll say of everyone else, after the law becomes drastically different. Who is a law abiding citizen anymore but someone of preferred race and social status once they get their way?
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#100 Jul 16 2019 at 7:54 AM Rating: Good
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The world has always been bizarre and ****** up, and it always will be.
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#101 Jul 17 2019 at 3:57 PM Rating: Decent
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I guess I'm so fervent about it is because I'm one of the undesirables. I hope you guys still do what you can to stop racism and other hate crimes against humanity. I know this **** is looking hopeless. At least don't let them kill 40% of America without a fight. I'm still wondering these things:
How many people voted for him not hearing the dogwhistles and just thinking the policies sounded good.
How many people are fascist in their politics without knowing.
How many didn't care about fascism.
How many people are actively fascist and are still rooting him on.
How many people who don't vote, would vote if they paid any attention to it.

For the disenfranchised working class white people, is the empty promise of American jobs worth your integrity?
Leviticus 19:33-34
Jeremiah 22:3
Hebrews 13:2
3 John 5-6

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