|
Party Plane Jones posted:Quote this post if you want the ‘I want nothing’ Gang Tag whenever it gets uploaded. Never not wanted something so un-badly.
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2019 20:52
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 15:16 |
|
|
Arbetor posted:I am trying to decide what the dumbest defense of the president I have heard today is: The first one, definitely. Bribes are personal benefits in exchange for government service, so he wasn’t bribing the Ukrainian President, he was soliciting a bribe. Plus “high crimes and misdemeanors” pretty much cover whatever we want them to cover, so it’s dumb forwards and backwards.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2019 03:44
|
|
|
Xaiter posted:If they decided that the SCOTUS "presiding" over the trial just means "sitting in a chair and watching it", who the gently caress rules on this? The SCOTUS can't, they have a horse in this race. Are they gonna rule "Yeah, actually, the top of the judiciary can tell the top of the legislature how they do business". That's not gonna happen, none of the justices want to open this can of shitworms. I'm not sure this matters because SCOTUS regularly rules on the extent of their own jurisdiction, which is effectively what they'd be doing by interpreting the limitations of what the Senate can do within the "presiding" clause. I'm not sure whether or not they'd actually intervene in this particular case, but they certainly have the jurisdiction to interpret constitutional requirements if they decide that they want to.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2019 03:09
|
|
|
Numlock posted:Can the US just cut PR loose? Congress could, yes. Congress has sole sovereignty over territories except insofar as they decide to cede sovereignty to territorial governance via legislation, and except insofar as constitutional protections apply to their citizens (which is "mostly" in incorporated territories and "not very much" in unincorporated territories". Congress could unilaterally give sovereignty of any territory to a foreign nation, or grant independence by terminate it's territorial status. Heck, so far as I can tell there's nothing preventing Congress from unilaterally admitting a territory as a state regardless of it's inhabitants' wishes. Should they do any that? Emphatically no. It would be a terrible violation of human rights and the right to self-determination that our territories (obtained via American Imperialism) should posses but our lovely system fails to recognize. Stickman fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Nov 30, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2019 21:05
|
|
|
Oh, that Lev Parnas?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2019 03:45
|
|
|
Ehud posted:I like the crazy deep state callers. Now I'm just imagining someone claiming to be "the Deep State" calling in with a voice-masking app.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2019 20:24
|
|
|
Deteriorata posted:Because they don't have time. Every ruling will take several months, each of those will be appealed, and appealed again up to the Supreme Court. It doesn't matter that the claims have no merit. The point is to stall and run out the clock. They also smartly appear to be using the blanket orders to refuse to submit to house subpoenas as an obstruction of justice case. They don't have time to fight for the subpoenas, but including it as an obstruction article forces Republicans to either vote for impeachment or vote that forcing executive branch employees to ignore congressional subpoenas is not obstruction, which could very obviously be used against them in the future.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 5, 2019 04:41
|
|
|
It's all in the name. You don't have to be paying much attention to see the varied and pervasive ways that Trump has been abusing his power, even if those specific abuses aren't necessarily included in the article. Obstruction of Congress, on the other hand, requires at least a little bit of attention to understand.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2019 01:09
|
|
|
Djarum posted:I am not equating what Trump did as a crime of necessity. It doesn't matter why you are stealing it is a crime. The reasoning doesn't matter the second you decide the break the law you have to be able to accept the consequences. Which if you are starving the option of being arrested and going to jail is worth it to be able to eat. Ah yes, appealing to an unbending sense of absolute black and white justice seems like a winner 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2019 08:10
|
|
|
bird cooch posted:Man your schools sucked. I'm pushing 40 and I was taught all that. So is my kid, they are learning checks and balances in the 8th grade. Are they being taught all the ways that the checks and balances utterly break down and how our multi-tiered system is abused to keep the government non-functioning in ways that benefit the ultra-wealthy? Because we sure as hell weren't.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2019 08:00
|
|
|
bird cooch posted:Did you just hop on and then scroll around to you found something to be pedantic about? Naw, I'm just increasingly annoyed at how broken our system of government is, and I think that our overly-rosy civics curriculum plays a role in producing people who think that our system can actually balance interests in a reasonable way to produce good public policy. It was an overly sarcastic post, though - I apologize for that!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2019 08:48
|
|
|
Madkal posted:Certain piece of irony having the gravedigger talk about a low bar for impeachment when the Republicans tried to impeach Clinton over sex acts. They didn’t even do that! They impeached him for lying about sex acts. I’m pretty sure that no Republican thought the actual abuse part (sex with a subordinate) was bad - they mostly made noises about infidelity. Stickman fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Dec 19, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2019 17:36
|
|
|
If Trump is re-elected, the House can just pass some new articles. It’s not like there’s a shortage of crimes!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2019 18:18
|
|
|
Deteriorata posted:More specifically, "high crimes and (high) misdemeanors" was a term from English law that specifically meant the misuse of office for personal gain. It doesn't correlate to any specific crime. That doesn't really match up with with Wikipedia's discussion of the phrase, though obviously Wikipedia could be off here. They say the "high crimes" were simply offenses that were enabled by the office - personal benefit wasn't a necessary component: quote:"High," in the legal and common parlance of the 17th and 18th centuries of "high crimes," is activity by or against those who have special duties acquired by taking an oath of office that are not shared with common persons.[6] A high crime is one that can be done only by someone in a unique position of authority, which is political in character, who does things to circumvent justice. The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors," used together, was a common phrase when the U.S. Constitution was written and did not require any stringent or difficult criteria for determining guilt but meant the opposite. The phrase was historically used to cover a very broad range of crimes. Using the authority of the office to order crimes against humanity, or commit war crimes, or any number of other terrible things would all fit nicely into that definition (as they should, because gently caress putting up with ongoing crimes against humanity because "that's not what impeachment is for"). E: I'm no expert, though - maybe there's a better source?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2019 02:17
|
|
|
Ogmius815 posted:Hey I post on my phone but at least I know how to use capital letters and punctuation. Normally I’d say that you hadn’t been paying attention if you thought that there were “no public facts” warranting Impeachment before the Ukraine mess. But it’s you...
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2019 04:27
|
|
|
Trump got 46% of the popular vote in 2016 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2019 02:47
|
|
|
Are there any laws governing redactions in FoI documents? It seems like it would be pretty difficult to argue a legitimate government purpose for those ones. I assume it’s probably just “the administration can redact anything they want”, though.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2020 00:25
|
|
|
eke out posted:McConnel confirms: If one side runs out of questions they just keep going with the other side’s, right? E: Or I’m misreading and it means all questions from a single senator (up to five minutes) and then they move on to an opposing senator, with red getting a couple in a row at the end? Stickman fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Jan 28, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2020 21:15
|
|
|
Tibalt posted:Plus, the difference here between Trump and Kavanaugh is that voting No leaves Trump in office, while voting No on Kavanaugh risked losing a SCOTUS nomination. The sort of people who will hold a grudge about tarnishing Trump's legacy pe hurting his reelection chances probably aren't as important to Gardner as the sort of people who would hold a grudge over controlling the Supreme Court. I can’t imagine this was ever a serious consideration. The only ways they could have managed to lose the nomination were if they suddenly lost the senate mid-session (basically impossible) or if Trump steadfastly refuses to nominate anyone who wasn’t a rapist (admittedly slightly more likely, but the GOP would never consider the possibility).
|
|
#
¿
Jan 29, 2020 15:28
|
|
|
I assume that burning whistleblowers is a-okay because it might help get him re-elected? Stickman fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Jan 30, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2020 20:19
|
|
|
Djarum posted:These loving idiots just opened a pandora's box. I kind of hope Bernie wins and just goes hog wild. They'd definitely vote to impeach him, though, and it's clear that they don't give a poo poo about consistency between impeachments. I'd welcome God Emperor Sanders, though.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2020 06:05
|
|
|
TyrantWD posted:Again, why not just have Bolton testify in a closed door session? It's not going to change the final vote to acquit, and it simultaneously relieves a lot of public pressure. If anything, it makes it easier to justify their vote to acquit since they can claim they considered all witnesses and evidence provided and felt it was not enough to remove Trump. Something like 48% of Republicans and 75% of all voters are in favor of witnesses. And they all know the Bolton book is coming, so its not like this is just going to go away if they have a vote in the dead of night. Everything that Bolton experienced in the White House is classified Top Secret and covered by an NDA 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2020 18:44
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/lisamurkowski/status/1223317119233941506 Her reasoning is slightly different than Rubio's: "The country is too divided, better let the president crime!" That'll surely heal the nation.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2020 20:09
|
|
|
Kloaked00 posted:Scrolled through the comments and didn’t see one response in support of her decision. If only she was up for re-election this year Unfortunately, Alaska has always been a divided bathtub curve of nutbars and it's worse now that ever (I say this lovingly about my home state). I'm not really holding out hope that she couldn't pass the election threshold regardless of what she does. Alaska's other Senate seat went from a Democrat to an establishment Republican (who had barely ever lived in the state!) by 2%.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2020 20:33
|
|
|
Eke Out did a great job keeping this thread focused on news and focused discussion (/rage). Weird passive-aggressive off-topic polchat is the last thing it needs, especially when there's at least three other threads where that exact "discussion" happens every single day.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2020 02:39
|
|
|
Kavros posted:Is there a tally of what total percentage of the population effectively voted "for" witnesses (through their Senate representation) and which voted against? I imagine the GOP Senate majority is only really a "majority" The 50 votes for Kavanaugh represented 44% of the population so I suspect it’s only worse in the current Senate. But you have to remember that any form of winner-takes-all representation is going to be vulnerable to skewing - when I lived in red states, I certainly didn’t feel like my senators voted for me in any capacity. A truly representative system would need a pathway for every person’s vote to directly affect the power of some representative that they approve of.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2020 18:32
|
|
|
Vitalis Jackson posted:Independents will have more of an effect on elections and national policy, but the duopoly is baked in and will take some time to conquer. The duopoly is a consequence of our political system, not just a cause. It's here to stay until we make serious changes to the way our power and voting systems are structured, which will require a united push by at least one of the two big parties (which, in turn, would require a serious grassroots in-party coup). In the meantime, "independents" will continue to be a mix of single-issue voters, partisans embarrassed by the only party they seriously vote for, and people willing to throw away their votes shouting into the void. It sucks, but that's what we're stuck with. In the end, impeachment on Ukraine got us sound bytes to attack several Senators, and not impeaching would have been a disaster. The charges were clear, and we now have Republicans on record either saying that Trump's actions were a-okay, or that they weren't but they're not going to do anything about it. That's about the best we could expect. Stickman fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Feb 3, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2020 21:23
|
|
|
Helsing posted:If that is true then it was a terrible strategy because the people who care enough to follow the impeachment closely were already going to vote. The alternative was to not impeach, which surely would have lead to exactly the same voter enthusiasm in your imaginary universe? Surely you wouldn’t be telling us how much of waste the Democrats are for just letting Trump get away with blatant abuses of power without any pushback. E: You also have to consider all the evidence and crimes that have been uncovered by the impeachment investigation. Most of that narrative would never have been released or never put together in one place without the impeachment. Trump is going to be crowing about it until the election, and Trump crowing about it pisses off a solid majority of America. Stickman fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Feb 4, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2020 18:23
|
|
|
Helsing posted:The best way for the Democrats to improve voter enthusiasm would be for them to invest very heavily in a grassroots fundraising and mobilization model where they turn out their base with a policy agenda and communications strategy that offers a clear contrast with the Republicans and which leans into the energy of the post-2016 leftist surge within the party. Obviously the Democratic leadership has no interest in that and it isn't difficult to see how impeachment is a continuation of the Russiagate narrative and the attempt to stymie calls for a massive reform of the party. Those are both great ideas... but the first is totally unrelated to the question of impeachment vs no impeachment and the second is only tangentially so. There’s no reason why they couldn’t have done both, and impeachment proceedings wouldn’t have significantly hindered their ability to do either of those things.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2020 18:42
|
|
|
actionjackson posted:I work with solid organ transplant data - is there any more info about the banning disability discrimination in organ donation anywhere? I can't find anything. I don’t know much about it either, but here’s a 2019 report from the National Council on Disability. actionjackson posted:edit: apparently they banned almond milk??? No they didn't, that's someone in the replies trying to make a joke. There's a Republican bill to ban breast milk, though. (not really, but technically you wouldn't be able to call it "milk" any more). Stickman fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Feb 5, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2020 18:53
|
|
|
But surely Colli.... nope, can't do it
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2020 19:31
|
|
|
Tatsuta Age posted:btw I just learned a fun fact: murkowski's first stint in the senate was a result of her dad being elected to governor of alaska (where he was previously a senator) and then appointing her in his place. makes sense if they're some big alaska legacy why it's so hard for them to shake her stupid rear end out. She's actually retained her seat despite her name. Her father was a corrupt piece of poo poo - Alaskans loved that when he was pulling pork in DC, but it didn't go over so well as governor. Between appointing his daughter to his senate seat, buying a personal jet with state money (and then using it to campaign without reimbursing the state), and a bunch of other scandals and general incompetence he came in third in the primary for his incumbent election - behind Palin and Binkley. The only thing that saved Lisa was that she actually worked decently hard at positioning herself as a competent and relatively bipartisan Senator who mostly cared about Alaskan issues. She's still terrible, but she would have been out if she hadn't turned out to be much, much less corrupt than her father. E: I also remember her dad's house having a wood-powered water heater that filled the whole neighborhood with smoke. Piece of poo poo on many levels. Stickman fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Feb 5, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2020 22:43
|
|
|
Heck Yes! Loam! posted:I've been here the entire thread. There was no way to get anything out of driving a bus over Biden. All it would have done is distract from Trump's crimes and allow the Republican's to distract the media with "corruption" bullshit (and "dumb Hunter" bullshit). All things considered, they did a pretty amazing job of keeping attention on Trump's crimes - letting the Republicans get Biden near the proceedings would have given R's ammunition to derail the whole thing. E: The fact of the matter is that the administration has nothing on Biden, or they could have pushed the investigation through proper channels and/or done it themselves. That's not saying there's nothing to be had, but there's certainly nothing to gain from doing their homework for them. Stickman fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Feb 6, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2020 07:03
|
|
|
Heck Yes! Loam! posted:I think whether anything would be gained or not is debatable. It may have gotten other witnesses, but it also may not have. If it was a closed door deposition in the house before the senate trial, it wouldn't have been nearly the distraction you make it out to be. I think they could have maintained their focus while removing the Biden talking points entirely had it happened that way. That's true, but it was also extremely unlikely to happen. I doubt that the Democrats could have forced closed deposition (or gotten any concessions if they did) because the Republicans knew full well that the only benefit (to them) of Biden's testimony was as a circus distraction. They weren't even willing to put him on the stand when they could unilaterally block all Democratic witnesses - they certainly weren't going to trade anything for closed-door depositions.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2020 07:45
|
|
|
Helsing posted:As with any big, visible and complicated political process I think this impeachment served multiple different goals, some of which are laudatory and some of which should be concerning. The issue arises when people stop viewing the Democrats critically as a deeply flawed but necessary mechanism for political reform in America and instead begin viewing the Democrats as "their" team and start emotionally identifying with the successes of the Democratic leadership. Which people, though? Do you really think that there are enough Americans who see the Democratic Party as “deeply flawed but necessary for reform” to carry an election by themselves, or that impeachment success is the straw that would actually convert any of us into blind cheerleaders? That’s ridiculous. You’re literally arguing that it’s bad when the Democrats do good things or things that might get people to vote for them, because it might distract people from the bad things. Stickman fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Feb 6, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2020 17:54
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 15:16 |
|
|
Tayter Swift posted:He's already started on Romney with expanded drilling in Utah national parks. Romney's been trying to get that for ages. (Monuments, not parks - monuments allow private mineral rights) Trump just really loving hates nature. BigBallChunkyTime posted:I know that if I'm innocent, I fire all the people who testified under oath against me. It's actually illegal, though we're long past the point where that matters. Some (all?) of these are transfers, which is more of a gray area. Stickman fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Feb 8, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2020 02:02
|
|