Pelosi finally actually moves to Impeach Trump
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Are you just outright lying or do you live in some alternate universe? Or do you actually take the word of a compulsive liar?tstorm823 said:
From May.
For you to use a quote from that garbage piece of shit as if it's actually evidence for anything is fucking disgusting.
Right.tstorm823 said:
Trump has said he wants to, and is going to, put forward a gun control bill. Great, Trump's voluntarily taken that responsibility, so he can damn well do it and we shouldn't be asking the Dems' bills are. We should ask where is Trump's draft? Why is it the Democrats' fault he hasn't got off his fat, orange arse to get it done? I mean, he's evidently got plenty of time to direct personal and state resources to chasing after non-existant computer servers and sacked prosecutors in Ukraine, if we're going to throw around accusations of not being able to do two things at once.
The obvious complication is that what the Democrats and Republicans / Trump want from gun control is fundamentally different, and they can't agree. The Democrats can rightfully not want to support a completely superficial bill that hands Trump and the Republicans a PR victory whilst making no significant difference to gun control. So it's on Trump, isn't it? Is he prepared to make a Democrat-friendly gun control bill, knowing what they want?
Because the deadline for delivering that aid was set for this month.Agema said:
I'm currently arguing about the perspective of the President of Ukraine. It makes a lot more sense to talk about what was public knowledge rather than assume he has all the same information as a specific CIA agent.
I mean, Zelensky says he wasn't pressured [https://time.com/5686305/zelensky-ukraine-denies-trump-pressure/]. And has said that Ukraine's fear the aid was in jeopardy stemmed from the sale of a Ukrainian defense company to China [https://www.rferl.org/a/ukrainian-aircraft-motor-sich-u-s--china-rivalry/30132082.html]. Like, this phone call was a tiny little spec of US-Ukraine relations. And if you zoom out just a little, you can see other events that impact what's going on. And if you zoom out all the way, you can see the rest of the world and realize this phone call was utterly meaningless pleasantries.
I do, apparently, live in an alternate universe to you. But I'm ok with that. Because I'm 100% confident that "whatever Donald Trump says is a lie" is no way to build an honest worldview.Kwak said:
And no, Vox is stupid. It brags there about Democrats passing super lots of bills! Some bills deserve that brag, I don't mean to take away all credit, but 7 of those 49 bills mentioned are specifically naming Post Offices, so pointing at a total number isn't exactly a good measure of quality of work going on.
I'd instead go down to the next level of the Vox rabbit hole and look at the bill they claim will reduce prescription drug prices [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/5/13/18618097/drug-prices-obamacare-congress-voxcare].
No Vox, no! Bad Vox! It is intentional, and it isn't clever. This is what the Democrats do all the freaking time, and it's a blueprint of exactly how not to work with others on legislation. They write up a bill that could be bipartisan, that could actually pass and help people, then deliberately poison pill it with something that's far from bipartisan, and then when the whole bill can't pass, they say "well, the Republicans don't actually believe that thing they say or they would have voted for our poison bill." This isn't me speculating, this is what's going on. [https://www.apnews.com/46a476c9d01347a3a00483d83b7c2419]
Vox's example of Democrats passing legislation to lower drug prices is the perfect example of them not passing legislation to lower drug prices. That bill was never intended to lower drug prices, there's not reason to package together restrictions on pharmaceutical companies with literal advertisement for the ACA. Its purpose from the start was to be used as propaganda against Trump and Republicans by places like Vox.
Listen to the people you think are liars sometimes, then you can come live in my alternative universe commonly referred to as "reality".
I mean, that's not how legislation is supposed to work. The legislature is supposed to legislate. I'm not saying a president can't start the process, but to say the onus is on Trump is not correctAgema said:
Regardless, the point isn't to make a "Democrat-friendly bill". The point should be to find common ground. You want background checks to work better? Republicans would support efforts to make the background check system work better, but in the sense of improving the background check itself, rather than just doing more of them. Little crime, and to my knowledge no mass shooting, is committed through loopholes Democrats are constantly on about, but tragedies have happened as a result of background checks failing to stop a convicted criminal from buying guns because the database apparently isn't great. So do that. Red flags laws have some limited popularity in the GOP, and lots of shootings could be prevented through those. So do that! Bipartisanship is not that hard.
LegalEagle is usually pretty thorough. I'm disappointed by this one, he included an ABC report that they had to issue a backtrack on 10 hours later. They asked a former adviser to the Ukrainian president about rumors that the call was contingent on investigating Hunter Biden, he confirmed he'd also heard rumors of that, and they reported it as a factual occurrence using a guy who was no longer involved in the Ukrainian administration as a primary source. And that's the point where LegalEagle starts saying "oh, this actually looks really bad". That's a big miss, and likely a consequence of him trying to get this video out amidst the frantic pace of the news on this.Asita said:
So, again, I ask you why were the Ukrainian officials apparently worried about the aid being in jeopardy? What can have occurred to make them start to worry?tstorm823 said:
That's still no reason to use American news. The Ukrainian president has access to all sorts of information (including, for instance, confidential communications with the US government up to and including phone conversations with the US president) that the press doesn't.
Of course he wouldn't! No president of a country is going to admit they got bullied into doing things by another state: it'd be utterly humiliating.
And so despite this Ukraine-China company thing being an ongoing issue since 2018, suddenly something happened between late July and early August, and then in late August, the US gets upset about the potential sale of the company. And despite all this major potential threat to US interests, Trump's stated concerns in the were Ukrainian prosecutors, Biden, and US cybersecurity firm servers, and explaining how vital it was to fix up meetings with Giuliani and AG Barr.
These would be "meaningless pleasantries" that White House officials post-hoc decided to file into storage as highly classified national security? So how "meaningless" do you think they thought they were if they felt the need to hide them?
The phone call is prime facie evidence of the US president asking a foreign leader to do him favours of a personal nature and interfering with US politics, which any moron can see. The context (aid, etc.) is consistent with this possibility, as detailed by the whistleblower.
The evidence was so worrying that a this whistleblower, a professional intelligence official, deemed it important to report. This then went to the Director of National Intelligence, who concurred it was both urgent and serious enough to be sent for oversight. Shortly after, the DNI was fired and his deputy (another highly experienced individual with an intelligence background) was circumvented, and attempts made to give the role to a political Trump cheerleader.
That would be an amazing series of coincidences that all fit together so consistently out of sheer dumb luck, and likewise yet more amazing coincidence that it's so similar to and consistent with other Trump behaviour (e.g. Mueller probe). What it surely is, at minimum, is grounds to thoroughly investigate Trump because, as stated, it is prime facie evidence of abuse of office, whatever stupid chaff you want to throw around rather than admit that the beloved pres you plan to vote for in 2020 might be dodgy as fuck.
Nonsense. It's totally normal. Presidents have worked on bills and presented them to the legislature, or jointly worked with the legislature on bills, since pretty much forever.
If the Democrats put foward a bill on their own, it gets shot down by the Republicans just because. The point of Trump getting involved is to break the impasse, and everyone's waiting to see what he comes up with. He's voluntarily offered to take point on this, so he's primarily responsible for progress.
Reread my comment: specifically "The obvious complication is that what the Democrats and Republicans / Trump want from gun control is fundamentally different, and they can't agree."
The issue is not necessarily "common ground", it's a middle way that both sides can swallow despite some discomfort. Trump can either put forward a bill that almost entirely pleases his party, or forces them to concede something to the Democrats that they otherwise wouldn't.
An approaching deadline. How explicit do I have to be?Agema said:
That's both a useless complaint, as we can't possibly know specifically what information the Ukrainian president has received confidentially, and a naive comment, the press absolutely knows all sorts of crap they aren't supposed to. It's not coincidence that the press had magically heard rumors about every aspect of the complaint before it was released. Some of them had read it already. Hell, some probably helped write the thing.
Question: has Ukraine investigated Hunter Biden? I've seen literally nothing to suggest they were bullied into doing that, I've seen no evidence they've done that period. It would certainly be humiliating to say "yes, we were bullied, so we helped Trump with his campaign to get the money." It would not at all be humiliating to say "Trump tried to bully us, but we didn't submit to him." It's not like Trump can take the money away now. Your reasoning doesn't hold up at all.
a) We're finding out that they're putting all sorts of crap in that system, there's nothing to suggest this call received unique treatment.
b) This conversation leaked out anyway. This is, I'm fairly confident, the leakiest administration the US has ever had. Trump essentially can keep nothing secret. There are, without a doubt, many US federal employees that hate him and hand everything they can over to the press.
Why do you think this president is putting more stuff into high security protocol?
Fortunately, truth is not determined by the first impression of any moron. And I find it a tad questionable that you would label yourself as such.
The DNI you say was fired over this had his dismissal announced on July 28th, before the whistleblower even had rumors that Ukrainians thought their aid was in jeopardy. The whistleblower complaint wasn't filed until August 12. Your explanation of events requires at minimum a hell of a lot of behind the scenes action. If anything, the announced dismissal is more likely to have caused the whistleblower complaint than vice versa, as it was announced by August 15th there would likely be a DNI less willing to screw Trump. Add to that, there are reports that prior to an August revision to the whistleblowing procedure [https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/27/intel-community-secretly-gutted-requirement-of-first-hand-whistleblower-knowledge/], you couldn't file without first-hand knowledge of the wrong-doing. It seems less like there were people using positions of power to bury this than it seems there were people with power paving the way.
They're doing an impeachment investigation, I think it will be plenty thorough. They're still not going to find anything worthwhile, because the truth will never even approach the wet dreams of Trump as a mafioso they've concocted.
Incorrect. The democrats bills get shot down because they fill them with crap they know Republicans can't vote for. Democrats want Republicans to be permanently branded as the obstructionist party, so the less they get done, the worse they think Republicans look.
Donald Trump is a horrible person, and he is also an idiot. He thinks he knows better than everyone else, but he doesnt. He thinks he knows more than every expert, and he thinks everyone else is just wrong. He thinks they are liars solely because they oppose him. He thinks all facts that prove him wrong are lies that are made up just to disgrace and discredit him. When presented with facts and truth and logic, he makes up a ton of bullshit but never actually defends himself with viable proof. What little proof he provides usually just proves him more wrong.
Honestly, I don't really care. And the following applies to every other point-by-point comment following, too.tstorm823 said:
The conversation and whistleblower report, together, are incredibly obvious prime facie evidence of abuse of power that demands investigation, and there is substantial supporting evidence of a potential cover up. Against that, all you're doing here is taking the most beneficial possible interpretation for Trump at every point, and bolstering it with mere conjecture that proves nothing at all.
It's like there's a suspect for a murder who can be placed at the scene, with witness identification and a motive, and you're the armchair detective declaring that suspect is obviously innocent because he's the managing director of your golf club.
Speculation is White House staff possibly didn't wait for a complaint. They anticipated that intelligence officials would be alarmed very rapidly (hence also burying the conversation), so immediately moved to ensure a Trump loyalist would be in charge of overseeing any complaints.
I had an very long response to you, and when I hit post, it seems to have disappeared forever, so now I'm going to quick type a lazier version.Agema said:
tl:dr; If you thought I was taking the most beneficial possible interpretation for Trump before, buckle up.
This story on the Hill [https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/463307-solomon-these-once-secret-memos-cast-doubt-on-joe-bidens-ukraine-story] came to my attention. And while the bombshell the story is supposed to deliver is credibility to the claim that Joe Biden really did have that prosecutor fired to protect Burisma, there's a way more important piece of information to me snuck in there.
Hoooooly crap. If this is true, we have to rethink everything, because you and I both were operating under the assumption that Giuliani went to Ukraine to ask for the dirt, and this flips the whole thing on its head.
Believe this report by The Hill for just a moment and revisit this timeline: Biden demands the Ukrainian prosecutor gets fired. Then in 2018, he brags about it at a recorded event. Ukrainian officials then put together their information on the event in question that might implicate Joe Biden in an ethical violation. They attempt to get the information to the US Department of Justice through the Southern District of New York (who aren't known for being Trump's biggest fans) and are told "no thanks, not interested". So instead, they contact Rudy Giuliani, who's willing to hear them out. This answers a big question of mine: why the hell would the State Department deputize Giuliani? Prior to seeing this article, I had figured the phone call would disappear because there's really nothing to indict on in there, but if Trump really had the State Department send Giuliani to Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, that could be impeachable, depending on what they find. But if Ukraine contacted Giuliani first, that's very different. He can't just take the info, that'd be Trump Tower Meeting part II, so he'd have been obligated to inform the relevant authorities, which might be the FBI but would probably include the State Department since the information was coming from a foreign state. And then they authorize him to take the meeting as an agent of the US government rather than as Trump's personal lawyer. (I'm not sure the actual legality of that, but go with it for a moment).
At any rate, this would mean Ukrainian officials gave Giuliani the memos you can find in that article. Including the part where Biden's claims that the prosecutor was corrupt are lies that required an apology later. You don't necessarily have to believe any of that is true, just believe that Ukraine contact Giuliani to give him that information, and he relayed that information to Trump. Now, revisit the July 25th call.
This new perspective, that Ukraine wasn't being asked for dirt on Biden but was actively offering it, flips this exchange the exact opposite direction of your reading. When Zelenskyy says they spoke with Giuliani and are hoping to meet with him, it wasn't "I got the message that you were sending through Giuliani", it was "did you get the message we sent you through Giuliani." And then Trump responds and basically repeats that message out loud. Which answers a second big question I had: why did Trump call the prosecutor a "very good prosecutor"? Even within the accusations that he was fired for bad reasons, I didn't see anyone other than Trump suggest this prosecutor was good and not actually corrupt. But if he had seen these memos, or at least was told the content, Trump's characterization of the prosecutor makes perfect sense. They say he was good and all the claims he wasn't were lies to cover for Biden and/or Burisma. Trump had this info before the call. And if the Hill report is accurate in showing what information Ukraine was sending to Trump, it's probably also correct on the series of events that got that info there. And then reading it this way, the "I wanted to tell you" could be taken as confirmation that Ukraine had started the correspondence.
That's the most generous reading of events. Even playing devil's advocate, I didn't imagine an option where Trump actually did nothing wrong, but there's a timeline of events for you that puts us where we are now without Trump doing anything wrong, and it might be true.
tstorm, you're being obtuse and ignoring the obvious implication in Trump's discussion and requests.
Any president with a shred of proper conduct would never be so stupid as to request such a thing of another head of state in such a manner. This proves one of three things: that Trump is incompetent, corrupt, or both.
Any president with a shred of proper conduct would never be so stupid as to request such a thing of another head of state in such a manner. This proves one of three things: that Trump is incompetent, corrupt, or both.
In any functioning democratic nation Trump would have been forced to resign his post many times before this shitshow started.tstorm823 said:
The only thing dumb about this is how the US political system handles corruption.
That this requires such a complex form of inquiry that can possibly end with "guilty but we don't want to punish so we won't because nya nya you need 66% votes to do so and we toe the party line" makes the whole proceeding a fucking farce and the worst litmus test for Trump's competence or lack of corruption.
We already look corrupt and idiotic as a nation. We have a transparently corrupt president for all to see and the only reason the man is still in office, let alone not serving time in prison, is because his party/enablers control the Senate, the Department of Justice and until less then a year ago, the House of Representatives.tstorm823 said:
And they've shown very clearly that they have no interest at all in anything the Trump might have done wrong, either because it makes them look bad for supporting him, are terrified of his base/cult(who also don't seem to care), and/or Party truly trumps Country no matter what. And since Trump knows that nobody in the position to bring the hammer down on him will, he's been more then happy to keep doing what he's doing.
But if you want to keep enabling him by pretending nothing is wrong and the emperor is wearing clothes, don't be surprised that this shit keeps happening and proving how the GOP cares about nobody but themselves by letting it happen over and over again.
This reporting is from one John Solomon, who as far as I'm aware is the guy who kicked off the whole Ukraine-Biden affair as a big thing in US political circles in the first place. A quick read around suggests he's both aggressively pro-Trump, and has a very chequered history, especially over the last 5-10 years (starting several conservative conspiracy theories that were never adequately supported.) In fact, after several dubious stories, The Hill apparently restricted him to opinion pieces... as that article you cite is clearly identified as too.tstorm823 said:
Also here is that the key Ukrainian prosecutor we (and Solomon) are really talking about is Yuriy Lutsenko; again we're into murky waters because Lutsenko, like his predecessor, had a deeply flawed performance in his role - hence likely why Zelenskyy replaced him in August. Lutsenko too is an unreliable narrator with potentially unsafe motivations. We also know Giuliani met Lutsenko as far back as 2017 (due to Manafort etc.?), and so they were hardly unknown to each other raising the possibility of collaboration. And Lutsenko, of course, later backtracked in May 2019 and said there was no evidence of Biden's wrongdoing anyway.
Again, I do not object to investigating Joe Biden and his son properly. But it seems evident to me that inevstigations in Ukraine have failed at least twice and come to a dead end, and the extent to which they are an ongoing issue has a disturbing amount to do with partisan political pressure from the USA.
They could, but someone would surely spot that this would be an eye-wateringly vast conflict of interest. And even if they were that stupid or careless, let's see appropriate documentation authorising it.
I have a much simpler answer for that: it's because Trump describes everyone useful to him in exaggeratedly glowing terms, and one-sidedly damns anyone he deems obstructive. We've had three fucking years of it rammed in front our eyeballs on pretty much a daily basis - he just doesn't do balanced evaluation. He will flip from stupidly positive to stupidly negative at the flick of a switch based on whatever the target last said or did.
Can't have someone who isn't a Democrat loyalist in an "unbiased" news outlet. I understand. Can't have someone printing such audacious suggestions as saying the Clintons didn't do anything illegal during Uranium One, but Russians state actors definitely were at the time, and the FBI failed to inform anyone. Or saying that a lawyer was going around getting donors to sponsor women who claimed Trump sexually assaulted and tried to make lucrative exclusivity deals on their stories. Those are not controversial statements, these are not opinions, and in both cases he provided ample documentation. The only problem with these stories is that they might have more benefit for Republicans than they do for Democrats. And there are people who genuinely believe that facts have a liberal bias...Agema said:
Abomination said:
Dalisclock said:
... who can't allow themselves or others to believe that anything good for Republicans could ever be anything but lies, and this includes the majority of the news media. When it comes to conservatives, the news media is J Jonah Jameson. At any rate, this isn't important.Saelune said:
Again, none of this is important. I said in my post that you don't have to believe any of that stuff about Biden is true. The perspective I want you to consider is what the controversy of Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian President looks like if instead of Trump sending Giuliani to dig up dirt on Biden, the Ukrainians were the ones reaching out to Giuliani instead. Just change that one circumstance, and reevaluate the phone call. And if you say it looks like Trump shaking down Ukraine, you're as hopeless as the rest here.
Just to be perfectly clear on what's going on: I am speculating on how this might not be corruption by Trump, I am not criticizing anyone for seeing it that way and wanting it investigated. Everyone else is criticizing me for even entertaining any possibility other than Trump being evil and deserving to be thrown from office. If all of you just stood by your own opinion that he's evil and should be thrown from office, you wouldn't look stupid when/if I'm exactly right. The reason you all might look stupid is for dismissing as lies and delusions a possibility that is equally supported (if not more) by the known facts of the case.
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Actually depending on what facts come out about what trump has done. The republicans doing that might end up looking bad, like really really bad, like supporting corruption bad if they don't at least make a good show of considering it.Abomination said:
The Republican Party is the one that decided lies and bigotry was to be their entire political goal, not us.tstorm823 said:
And we didnt decide that the entire party would rally around a compulsive liar, sex offender, pedophile and major bigot, no matter what. The Republican Party could have dumped Trump whenever they wanted. Instead he is now the leader of the party.
Trump is the most obviously corrupt President ever. I am not forcing you to type an unwavering defense of him, you are choosing to, and thats on you.
Stop defending Trump and we will stop pointing out that you're wrong.
I'll believe it when I see it. So far the entire party has convinced me of nothing other than toadying up.Worgen said:
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Well, we are seeing some republicans already start to turn away from trump. If we hadn't then we wouldn't be hearing about challengers to trump in the republican primary and we have started seeing more and more willing to counter his stuff. Granted its still a small number and its totally possible they will close ranks hardcore with this impeachment investigation, but it could happen.Abomination said: