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#15060838
You are trying way too hard to excuse Trump's behavior. That is the problem with the American right.

Legalism is the last hiding place for morality. What Trump did was wrong. Trying to excuse it on a technicality is why this country is in such trouble.

If there is a major failing in US morality it is the notion that if something is not illegal it is moral. And that is not now nor never has been true.
By late
#15060858
Verv wrote:
High crimes & misdemeanors would literally refer to breaking the law.



It refers to abuse of power.

You don't get to replace history with fantasy.
#15060861
Drlee wrote:At the heart of this is the indisputable fact that Trump tried to use his office and government money to get dirt on his political opponent. In what world is that OK? You tell me what justification YOU offer for doing this.

If there is reasonable cause to believe Biden violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Trump's motivation is irrelevant. Any evidence showing Biden broke the law could be construed to be "political dirt." Running for president is not a "get-out-of-jail-free" card.

Drlee wrote:but rather by the facts of the case.

Cases involve both facts and law. There is not law here. The Senate can simply ignore the whole thing if it wishes, because the articles have no legal foundation.

QatzelOk wrote:It's just one half of America's corrupt elite using lawfare to force the other half of its corrupt elite to bomb harder, or sanction harder, or send the CIA in to subvert harder, or rip off ordinary Americans harder.

It's really about tanking Warren and Sanders--Sanders more specifically, so that a Socialist is not a possibility at the top of a ticket--while simultaneously trying to damage Trump. Biden is the neoconservative's best chance at returning to power. That's why he's the only one I'm really opposed to.

Verv wrote:Pres. Jefferson himself kept a mulatta concubine.

President Jefferson held his own children born by his slave concubine as slaves themselves--freeing them only after he died. That's pretty fucked up.

Drlee wrote:What Trump did was wrong.

What Biden did was wrong, and he's not alone in enriching his family with his office. That's the bigger problem. That's why Pelosi is worried. That's why Romney is worried. Biden literally demanded a prosecutor be fired who was investigating a company where his son sat on the board of directors and lobbied the US government--directly to John Kerry among others--to get USAID funding; that is, your tax dollars ultimately finding their way into Hunter Biden's pocket.

Drlee wrote:If there is a major failing in US morality it is the notion that if something is not illegal it is moral.

That certainly applies far more to Biden's conduct or Hillary Clinton's conduct than to Trump. In both of those cases, you can actually name statutes or implementing regulations. You are suggesting that Trump looking into the crimes of his adversaries is "political dirt" and that somehow his political adversaries have some sort of immunity from investigation or prosecution. That is clearly not the case.
#15060893
blackjack21 wrote:It's really about tanking Warren and Sanders.

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.
By Rich
#15060894
Drlee wrote:You are trying way too hard to excuse Trump's behavior. That is the problem with the American right.

Legalism is the last hiding place for morality. What Trump did was wrong. Trying to excuse it on a technicality is why this country is in such trouble.

If there is a major failing in US morality it is the notion that if something is not illegal it is moral. And that is not now nor never has been true.

Its the Presidential system that is the problem. Its much, much easier for a party to change its Prime minister than it is for its to change its President. Once a candidate wins the party nomination you're stuck with them. In fact you could be stuck with them for 8 years, because both parties seem to find it impossible to avoid renominating a President after 4 years.

Look lets imagine you're a strongly feminist women high up in the Democratic Party and you discovery, beyond certainty that Bill Clinton has raped multiple women. What are you going to do? Its obvious what you are going to do. You're going to do you're best to cover it up. Because Bill Clinton's removal from office would have torn the Democratic party apart and guaranteed a Republican victory at the next election. A party can not just remove a President and move on. I'm sorry but anyone who thinks they can just doesn't understand the two party system.

And this is the problem, many Americans don't understand the two party system. Because a proper two party system only emerged in the nineties. In 1974 the united States didn't have a proper two party system. Republican Presidents expected to have to deal with a permanently Democrat controlled Congress. Their weak position didn't allow them to operate in a fully partisan way. And the Democrats although they might have had majorities in the Senate and the House were not a proper party as we understand the term in Britain post 1935. The Democrats couldn't even support themselves in a civil war. The Democrats were a total joke as a modern political party.
User avatar
By Verv
#15060900
Drlee wrote:You are trying way too hard to excuse Trump's behavior. That is the problem with the American right.

Legalism is the last hiding place for morality. What Trump did was wrong. Trying to excuse it on a technicality is why this country is in such trouble.

If there is a major failing in US morality it is the notion that if something is not illegal it is moral. And that is not now nor never has been true.


That's an interesting idea.

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'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...

It's almost as if the media isn't actually objective, and the only reason that Pres. Trump's indulgences appear unique or worthy of recognition is because the media pretends that this is the reality.

But it isn't.

If the same bar was used for Pres. Trump as for the Obama administration, we would be impeaching him over everything he did inappropriate with the Ukraine and would have a massive conspiracy about him being a foreign power's lapdog.
#15060916
blackjack21 wrote:You are suggesting that Trump looking into the crimes of his adversaries is "political dirt" and that somehow his political adversaries have some sort of immunity from investigation or prosecution.


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.

We all know why Trump did it, because of how he did it, and how he behaves in general.
By late
#15060919
Biden didn't commit a crime. It was investigated, so that is a blatant lie.

But even if he had, committing offenses and abuses of power would not be justified to investigate it.

It would also be unnecessary. Yovanavitch was one of the toughest corruption fighters we have. Which is precisely why Trump had to get rid of her, what we planned on doing was entirely improper and corrupt.
#15060924
Biden my ass.

This whole affair stinks. Looking at what Trump did, what Guliani did, what his two stupid Ukranian thugs did is enough for anyone but the most partisan hack.

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.

Trump said he was going to "drain the swamp". He did just the opposite.

So can we drop Biden and talk about the impeachment? Biden is nothing but a dodge. If the republican senate wants to investigate him there is nothing stopping them. But that is another issue altogether.
#15061090
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 Rates
The 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.
#15061135
blackjack21 wrote:My analysis of the situation isn't limited to parroting the media.

And then went on to write a synopsis of media memes from the last few months, almost verbatim.

Regurgitating the media's 'take' is not a personal analysis of what's really going on. It's kind of sad to see this on this late page of this thread.

It's like the only way you have of understanding politics is to watch TV channels that talk about politics once in a while. Since our media is all self-interested lies and deception, this simply isn't enough. In fact, it's the same as not knowing anything at all.
#15061162
Wow @blackjack21 . Great post. I will have to think on it. I would not want to shoot from the hip but there are some points with which I absolutely agree.

I agree that frequently feminism is an excuse for left-ish politics. Occam's razor. It would theoretically be easier to cleanly pass an ERA within a conservative/constitutional framework. Thing is, we don't have a constitutionally centered conservative party. I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing though. The country is 1) due an inevitable swing to the left and 2) conservatism has lost its identity entirely. We need a redefinition of terms and the first party that figures it out and finds a map to the center during the primaries wins the big prize.

As for the Trump/Russia stuff. I am not so quick to dismiss it as pointless. We know for a fact that the Russians very much wanted Trump and that they put a great deal of time and effort into swaying the election. I am willing to admit that Trump was clumsy and inexperienced enough to be played by Putin like a drum.

Clearly Sanders was stumped at the post by the super delegates. Could he have beaten Trump? It would have been a hell of a race for sure. Does the "establishment" want Bernie? Of course not. He is though, the pied piper of the youth vote. Could be beat Trump? Probably but the socialist thing could give it to Trump by a hair. It all depends on the young people. If they vote in large numbers Trump is in trouble and so are the down ballot folks. Bernie is also popular with boomers.

As for the Biden corruption. Where there is smoke there is fire. I have been fast to condemn Trump on optics and the Biden thing has very bad optics. It will not play out well in the election. Can Warren beat Trump? I just don't know. You and I called it for Trump last time, albeit for somewhat different reasons. I thought that women would fall hard for Hillary but that Trump would sweep with white males and that in the end Gerrymandering and Evangelicals would give it to him, as you recall. I was very surprised when Trump took 40% + of white women and even scored well with white educated male voters.

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.


Well that was a sarcastic comment on my part. This is Pandora's box. Nobody wants to go there.
#15061185
Adam Schiff made the point that in 1994 Ukraine had nuclear weapons and the U.S. negotiated with them to give up these weapons with the provision the U.S. would always have their back (against Russia ostly...) What a goddamn bunch of stupid people these Trump Supporters...
#15061236
Stormsmith wrote:I see it as an indictment of your educational system

Me too.

Because Americans spend so much time in their cars listening to songs about nothing at all, their minds can be distracted about political events about nothing at all as well.

The nothingness of this impeachment has been masked by a commercial media that has more and more real world events to hide, so don't be surprised that they want Americans wasting all their energy on nothingness.
#15061238
QatzelOk wrote:Me too.

Because Americans spend so much time in their cars listening to songs about nothing at all, their minds can be distracted about political events about nothing at all as well.

The nothingness of this impeachment has been masked by a commercial media that has more and more real world events to hide, so don't be surprised that they want Americans wasting all their energy on nothingness.


Ay Q, I find American news media not only biased and untrustworthy but just plain superfluous in general.

I don't know why anyone even bothers with some of these commercial news sources anymore. It is completely filled with nonsense.
#15061239
Tainari88 wrote:Ay Q, I find American news media not only biased and untrustworthy but just plain superfluous in general.

I don't know why anyone even bothers with some of these commercial news sources anymore. It is completely filled with nonsense.

Exactly. While the USA has been provoking nuclear powers, spending money at bankruptcy speed, and staging coup d'etats a stone's throw from their border (uh oh), their news media is concerned with Impeachment, shut-downs, fibs and verbal mistakes of the president, and other trivial things.

Meanwhile, the provoking of nuclear powers and coup d'etats in its gigantic backyard, and theft of taxes by the rich... are real threats to the USA and its citizens' quality of life.
#15061244
QatzelOk wrote:Exactly. While the USA has been provoking nuclear powers, spending money at bankruptcy speed, and staging coup d'etats a stone's throw from their border (uh oh), their news media is concerned with Impeachment, shut-downs, fibs and verbal mistakes of the president, and other trivial things.

Meanwhile, the provoking of nuclear powers and coup d'etats in its gigantic backyard, and theft of taxes by the rich... are real threats to the USA and its citizens' quality of life.


Are they going to achieve kicking out that narcissistic fool of a president? I really don't know Q.

They should examine why he was able to take over in the first place? And fix the damn system. But they don't because all those leeches feed off of it and are content to allow the rot to continue forever.

It is a decaying place the American Empire has been at war for over 20 straight years and they don't care about regular people who pay attention to vacuous news sources and get distracted by fluff news and garbage.

That is what they are about.....a waste of time and energy and a total lack of intelligence.

There is a book store here called Librerias Gandhi and they sell books--I like reading original works from great writers. I would rather spend my time doing that than listening to crap opinions from bought off corporate commercial media Q.

I think people need to change badly in the world. All over the world.
#15061283
Tainari88 wrote:There is a book store here called Librerias Gandhi and they sell books--I like reading original works from great writers. I would rather spend my time doing that than listening to crap opinions from bought off corporate commercial media Q.

But it's nice to check in with corporate media and other commercial entities just to see what trends the culture all around you are following. Trends are important to know about, not to follow.

And like you, I'd much rather be reading great texts than interacting with commercial media.

I'd also rather be talking to interesting people with fresh ideas than relating to banal media-watchers whose opinions are dull and predictable because they were manufactured by them, as was their fear of being original or different.

But what choice do we have but to make do with what we have?

I think many Westerners have simply given up on thinking or talking about real things because their elites have been trying to hard to isolate them and shut them up for so long that it's now a popular reflex to say nothing and relate to no one.
#15061291
Tainari88 wrote:Ay Q, I find American news media not only biased and untrustworthy but just plain superfluous in general.

I don't know why anyone even bothers with some of these commercial news sources anymore. It is completely filled with nonsense.

You are all too kind. I had not watched a commercial news for many years. Fox, CNN, whatever …. they all are aimed at stupid people. We use our tv as essentially a movie theater. Just 2 weeks ago we got some kind of antenna rig that permits us to get commercial tv for free. I watched my first "evening news" in years and was amazed at how revolting it was. A few minutes of the day's tragedies mixed in with close ups of Obese Donald waddling to and fro spouting lies and nonsense then ………. a few minutes of buy, buy, buy ……. usually a new car or some shit that will increase one's sex appeal but, above all, spend your money on shit you don't need. Then back to today's mass shooting and Donald prancing around.
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