Objectively intelligent.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Except it has not been proven that Trump’s people were coordinating regarding election interference with Russia.

Ima stop you right there. You are arguing that it can't be proved that Trump's people committed that crime. Whatever. Manafort is in prison. Flynn is going to prison. Both of them were doing shady stuff before the inauguration. For Christ's sake, Jarod Kusher was going to a foreign country's representatives and proposing to use it's communications channels so that he could talk to a foreign government without his own government being able to hear, before he had a government position. I'm not saying any of this was sufficient to make a case to indict or impeach Trump. I'm saying that it was clear even before he took office that he was going to govern in a corrupt and lawless way, and that if you accept that premise then it should be no surprise that people thought that a Democratic Congress would inevitably try to impeach him. Any Congress would, unless beholden to their own partisan instincts.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Agree. The fact that anyone with half a brain gives fuel to the "Trump derangement" theme is an absolute travesty. People just don't like him so they are acting irrationally when it comes to him? GTFOH. Everything he's done (and Less' ridiculous carveouts should be completely ignored) has been an outright lie, self-serving, corrupt, objectively stupid, criminal, racist, sexist, irrationally xenophobic, spiteful, lazy, and/or completely ignorant.

Bush delegitimized his critics by calling them shrill. It's the same rhetorical strategy. What has maybe changed since then is that the media environment has gotten more polarized, and the idea that the media can act as a centrist gatekeeper between left and right is less and less credible.

I am not arguing about who is first to be the asshole. I'm stating that this impeachment is not the product of some lower standard set by Gingrich. If ever there were an impeachment that was righteous, this is it.

If you use Nixon as the benchmark, Trump obviously deserves to be impeached. But there don't seem to be many swing voters anymore, and even if there are, Trump specifically and Republicans generally have learned to be far more responsive to the conservative base.

And even if it weren't--even if Trump were being subjected to an impeachment over how he chews gum--that would not be the impetus for Republicans acting like complete fucking trash and investigating bullshit and pretending to investigate made up bullshit going forward. That's who they are no matter what is happening right now.

Trump is a symptom. Conservatism is the problem.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

To answer another post here, I think the issue with Schiff comes down to the fact that, as an ex-prosecutor, he’s a hammer ever in search of a nail. Trump is a shitball, so he takes it upon himself to chase everything, with an admitted intent to take Trump down. That is exhausting. It also has a huge stink of opportunism about it (the guy is on TV talk shows more than some hosts). So Schiff is clearly, partly, political. NTTAWWT. But it puts him in the box with other political people who’ve sought to take out presidents, like Gingrich, Scaife, Starr.

He has a much better case than Starr and Gingrich, of course. But even he knows, censure of Trump followed by his loss in an election is a more likely successful approach. But again, he’s a hammer, and he’s a lawyer, so He Knows Best.

Maybe Schiff has no choice. But he looks a lot more like Ahab than Robert Welch at the moment. Whether a man is guilty or not is not the sole decision in whether to prosecute. The feds don’t indict the terminally ill. A censure, which would rob Trump of the right to say he’s been acquitted and vindicated, may render him effectively terminally ill in terms of re-election. Maybe it’s better to just wait the ten months for his disease to take him out?*

But Schiff always knows best. He is a trial lawyer, a TV darling, and like Gingrich and Starr, he believes this president must be removed, and this is his big moment. In which he risks, and may succeed, in getting Trump re-elected.
___
* The argument he needs to be impeached to avoid him stealing the next election is facile. Trump is in a reverse panopticon. If people are concerned about that, they should be impeaching Zuckerberg.

Unless someone is paying you to make a Moby Dick analogy, this post makes no sense on any level. I'm not sure I could name Schiff before last fall, and I don't understand why you'd say he's a hammer ever in search of a nail. Was in talking about impeachment before the whistleblower complaint? I don't think so. And the idea that getting impeached somehow is better for Trump than censure would have been? It's not noon yet, but that's the dumbest suggestion I've seen today.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Unless someone is paying you to make a Moby Dick analogy, this post makes no sense on any level.

I paid him to do it. I fucking love that book, but I'm not confident enough that I can engage in that kind of literary metaphor myself without sounding like I'm just spewing meaningless cliches.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

I paid him to do it. I fucking love that book, but I'm not confident enough that I can engage in that kind of literary metaphor myself without sounding like I'm just spewing meaningless cliches.

"Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more"

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Trump's people were coordinating with Russia long before he took office. Perhaps we have all forgotten that Jarod Kushner asked the Russian ambassador about using Russian embassy channels to communicate with Moscow before the inauguration. Trump's campaign was run by Manafort. Roger Stone is a criminal. Trump's National Security Advisor lied to the FBI, which is what really got Comey and Mueller going.



All three are the product of what the conservative movement and the Republican Party have become, fueled by demographic changes in the country, the end of the Cold War and technological changes in media. Gingrich was the avatar, though.

Of course I don't like Trump. He's openly racist, insults everyone, punches down, and is just generally an ass.

But he's soiled his asshole brand with corruption, and that's what he is being tried for, and what he was impeached for.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

I paid him to do it. I fucking love that book, but I'm not confident enough that I can engage in that kind of literary metaphor myself without sounding like I'm just spewing meaningless cliches.

I've got the opposite problem. I don't mind saying stuff but I'm not well read So I don't get how the founder of the John Birch Society played into the post?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I've got the opposite problem. I don't mind saying stuff but I'm not well read So I don't get how the founder of the John Birch Society played into the post?

This is genius. I might as well have mixed him up with Welch’s Grape Jelly. Robert, Joseph... a Welch is a Welch, right?

This is How You Execute a Gotcha.

I just toasted you, Hank.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Trump is a symptom. Conservatism is the problem.

Populism (which includes Trump) is a symptom. Late Capitalism (largely “rentier” as Picketty would assert) is the problem.

[LessinSF]

We are 10 days from the Iowa caucuses. And in honor of them being the day after the Super Bowl (How bout those 9ers?!), I give you the current odds. Who wants to bet?

Joe Biden +160
Bernie Sanders +265
Elizabeth Warren +700
Michael Bloomberg +700
Pete Buttigieg +1000
Andrew Yang +1600
Hilliary Clinton +2000
Amy Klobuchar +5000
Michelle Obama +10000
Tulsi Gabbard +10000
Tom Steyer +12500
Deval Patrick +20000

Also, Trump is -125, whichever Dem is +105. I considering betting the Dem side.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Populism (which includes Trump) is a symptom. Late Capitalism (largely “rentier” as Picketty would assert) is the problem.

Not sure what's so different about capitalism in the last fifty years. Earlier you were fingering Newt Gingrich. It's not like he's the product of capitalism.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Republicans don't seem to have been upset that CBS News reported that Trump said he would have their heads on a pike if they voted against him, but they are very upset that Adam Schiff repeated it. If there's one thing that unites Republicans, it's reaction to Democrats.

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by Adder

Ah, yes, "reasonable:".
...
Turning away women at random to solve a non-problem. Completely "reasonable."

"Until now, traveling to the U.S. to give birth has been entirely legal, as long as women did not lie about their intentions on their visa application. The lack of restrictions helped fuel a lucrative “birth tourism” business, in which U.S.-based brokers—including several*operating out of Trump properties—charged women tens of thousands of dollars for lodging during their pregnancy and birth."

From some Daily Beast article.

[LessinSF]

Another article about Adder's "non'problem." https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia...to-us-citizens

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

"Until now, traveling to the U.S. to give birth has been entirely legal, as long as women did not lie about their intentions on their visa application. The lack of restrictions helped fuel a lucrative “birth tourism” business, in which U.S.-based brokers—including several*operating out of Trump properties—charged women tens of thousands of dollars for lodging during their pregnancy and birth."

From some Daily Beast article.

So we're going from "not illegal" to "let's run tests on all women on the way in"? Hmmm. Aren't you supposed to be somekind of privacy advocate?

By the way, how does this rank among problems we have - are we talking a couple hundred rich folks getting citizenship via this, a couple thousand?

And I'm not sure why you are complaining if people were doing something legal before the consequences of which you didn't like. This just doesn't seem like your thing, aren't you, like, libertarian or something?