QatzelOk wrote:You have gleaned this by watching commercial media, so it's not a useful synopsis, and it's not the product of your own sovereign mind.
The establishment fears Sanders. So it is reasonable for anyone to point that out--even commercial media. My analysis of the situation isn't limited to parroting the media. In 2016, the DNC were revealed to be conspiring against Sanders and for Clinton. One of the products of DNC servers being hacked in 2016 was revealing to the public the degree of collusion between the media and the Democratic party--that is the lasting reputational damage done to the DNC, whether the Russians did this or not. So quite a few people, including commercial media, pointed out that when CNN sprung Elizabeth Warren's sexism attack on Sanders during the recent debate and CNN followed up with Warren by completely ignoring his denial and proceeding as if it were a
fait accompli even a friendly Democratic audience was seen and heard to gasp. If you've seen the latest polls, this has backfired. Warren has gone down in the polls and Sanders is now leading both Warren and Biden nationally. It was also understood that he has been stronger than he appeared as his fundraising was outpacing Biden and Warren. How do you explain the gap between the impeachment articles and the time it took Pelosi to transmit it to the Senate? She knew full well that there was nothing and the trial would be short. So the establishment delayed bringing the articles to the Senate until the lead up to the Iowa caucus, and they want to call witnesses--except anything that involves whether Trump was within his power to inquire about Joe or Hunter Biden--to keep Sanders and Warren from campaigning past New Hampshire. Plenty of people have also commented--including duly elected Senators--that the purpose of Schumer's amendments was to try to use votes of Senators the Democrats think are vulnerable against them in the 2020 election. It's clearly a political game. My analysis might be wrong, but I've never bought any of this Russia/Ukraine stuff at all.
Rich wrote:Its the Presidential system that is the problem.
It's that way by design. It makes the president accountable the people, rather than legislators. Everybody hates Congress--except for their own representative, which they rarely change. A unitary executive is also politically more stable. Consider systems like Italy for example. They change governments every six months and have scores of political parties.
Rich wrote:Look lets imagine you're a strongly feminist women high up in the Democratic Party and you discovery
First, you have to imagine that there is such a thing as a strongly feminist woman. That's largely a fiction, as most feminists are just leftists using feminism as a shield to hide their true colors.
Verv wrote:But the big problem to me is that we are just now learning of all of the scandals surrounding Vice President Biden's son and corruption in the Ukraine and his brother and corrupt deals and funding in Costa Rica.
We're also learning that the Obama administration--including the whistleblower--had a meeting about Biden's corruption, the NYTimes knew about it, and later buried the story. This suggests to me that Hillary and her acolytes already used the Biden corruption story to keep Biden from jumping in to the 2016 race.
Verv wrote:We've also all just learned in the last couple years about the Epstein conspiracy well, uh, not really being a conspiracy but an accurate description of reality, and the #MeToo movement exposed all manner of impropriety within politics and Hollywood that the media had never been covering...
The media had ties to Harvey Weinstein and covered up that story as well.
Rugoz wrote:It's a common practice in third word shitholes, and because most politicians have done some shady shit in the past (real or only in appearance) in those countries, and apparently also in the US, it's really easy to depict is as some kind of anti-corruption crusade, regardless of whether it's legally justified or not.
It's commonplace everywhere, because prosecution is a political power. The health of the system depends upon those in power prosecuting the wrongdoings of those out of power, and turnabout being fair play. As a general rule, the political minority doesn't prosecute without the consent of the majority. However, at least the last three presidencies have shown a willingness to prosecute members of their own party. Trump's administration just prosecuted Duncan Hunter, for example.
Rugoz wrote:We all know why Trump did it, because of how he did it, and how he behaves in general.
We also know that he was within his power to do it, that Biden had a conflict of interest, that his son was on the board of a company in legal trouble, that Hunter Biden was lobbying the US government for USAID funds, talked with high level people at the State Department, and that his father--the VP of the United States--got the prosecutor fired by leveraging $1B in US loan guarantees that could benefit Hunter Biden by 1) removing legal troubles for Burisma; and 2) opening the door for Burisma to receive funds from USAID, and by extension for Hunter Biden to receive more money for his successful endeavor. Finally, we know that Trump told Zelensky to get with the US Attorney general, and we have no evidence that Trump ever asked Zelensky to provide information to the Trump campaign.
late wrote:Biden didn't commit a crime. It was investigated, so that is a blatant lie.
Investigated by whom? Tell us about the FBI investigation @late. I'd love to hear about it.
late wrote:But even if he had, committing offenses and abuses of power would not be justified to investigate it.
Committing offenses would not be justified. "Abuse of power" is constitutionally vague. Cite the offense you think Trump committed.
late wrote:Yovanavitch was one of the toughest corruption fighters we have.
Yovanovitch had zero investigative or prosecutorial authority. She was a diplomat.
late wrote:Which is precisely why Trump had to get rid of her, what we planned on doing was entirely improper and corrupt.
Trump was completely within his right to fire her. My #1 criticism of Trump was and is leaving so many hold overs in place. He does deserve some of what he's getting by being such a squishy soft touch kind of guy. He's got the bark of a Rottweiler and the bite of a Bichon. There are some real motherfuckers in Washington and he needs to deal with them a lot more harshly than he has so far.
Drlee wrote:Even if every president before him had done this stuff (and they didn't) that is no reason to let Trump get away with it.
You handle an issue like this at the ballot box, because it's not only not a high crime, it's not a crime. The best defense for the Bidens is playing dumb that the one didn't know what the other was doing. That's the big hole in bribery and corruption statutes. If they knew of each other's actions, it's very likely a crime. The Clinton Foundation was very crafty in that they sold political favors, but didn't benefit financially directly. Instead, they created a charity which directed funds back to their political friends--so the Clintons could buy influence using the money they gained for the political policies they implemented and sold indirectly as favors. It's very clever, but strictly speaking it's not illegal. IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN, but it wasn't.
I used to work on a legal compliance expert system for interstate lending. You made mention of what is legal and what is moral are often two different things. Sometimes what is perfectly legal seems on its face to be illegal for that very reason. I was the liason between the legal team and the software developers covering issues like this:
The True Lender Doctrine: Function over Form as a Reasonable Constraint on the Exportation of Interest RatesThe exportation doctrine permits national and state banks to export interest rates that are legal in one state where they operate to any other state (me: where it might be a violation of usury laws), thereby shielding the banks from liability resulting from state usury claims. The doctrine has expanded over the last forty years to permit state and national banks to preempt a variety of state consumer-financial-protection laws. The doctrine’s high-water mark is the emergence of the “rent-a-charter” arrangement, a scheme in which a nonbank lender uses a bank as a mere conduit to originate loans that are not subject to state usury laws.
Read Smiley v. Citibank and Marquette Nat. Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp. Tonight, Tucker Carlson pointed out that Biden was a tool of credit card companies. That's true. Why? It's the states with weak usury laws were they set up shop: Delaware, South Dakota, North Carolina, Nevada, etc. When you mail in your credit card payment, what state does it go to? What are its usury laws compared to your state? I'm guessing you probably mail your payment into to one of the foregoing states. I haven't been involved in that since 2006, but it was a real eye opener--Doctrine of Exportation, Most Favored Lender doctrine, statutory election, federal pre-emption of state law, etc.
I'm not suggesting you agree with me on everything politically, but one take away is that you shouldn't assume that when you think something is wrong it is automatically illegal. I would also consider it unwise to advocate punishment for something that is not a crime--though should be. Denial of due process will ultimately spread. What we should be doing is devising better laws to prevent corruption.
Drlee wrote:If the republican senate wants to investigate him there is nothing stopping them. But that is another issue altogether.
Yeah, and you can guess why Pelosi, Romney, and a bi-partisan consensus want the idea of investigating how family members of politicians are cashing in to go away, and quickly. If they didn't want questions like that in the first place, they shouldn't have fucked with Trump for three years straight. Everyone knows the Russia story was total bullshit. He's understandably pissed off about it. He's just rattling the skeletons in the closet and its hitting close to home for a lot of people in Washington.
"We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
-- Joe Biden