Pelosi finally actually moves to Impeach Trump

[Agema]

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.

Have you not read my previous posts? I don't care about conjecture about how Trump might be innocent. I care that there's a load of highly credible evidence that suggests he isn't innocent.

On top of that is his deeply dubious prior conduct that may (once he leaves office and loses immunity) still see him prosecuted. On balance of evidence currently available and with past indiscretions, and his very long history of shabby conduct even before his political career, my assessment at this point in time is that the most credible assumption is that he's as bent as a seven dollar note.

He's not going to go down for it, of course, because the Senate will protect him; in large part because most of the USA has been sucked into a morass where they can't see anything - including criminality - going on in Washington as anything other than political shenanigans.

 

[Agema]

Well, we are seeing some republicans already start to turn away from trump.

Are we going to see 20 senators do so?

No. (Unless the investigation turns up enough that somehow enough Republican voters are turned against him; this is possible, but I suspect in these polarised times very unlikely.)

So he'll sail on serenely, having been taught the lesson that he can get away with what he likes.

 

[tstorm823]

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.

I feel like nobody else on this website has ever spoken to a Republican. There was always a large movement in the Republican party against Donald Trump. If anything, we're backing him more than ever, cause he's done a pretty alright job despite being perpetually under fire.

Have you not read my previous posts? I don't care about conjecture about how Trump might be innocent. I care that there's a load of highly credible evidence that suggests he isn't innocent.

It shouldn't be conjecture for very long. The very first subpoena is aimed at Mike Pompeo, and they're going to ask what the hell Giuliani was doing for the State Department. If Solomon wasn't blatantly lying, you're going to have to consider it soon enough. May as well answer the question now: if Ukraine approached Giuliani about Biden proactively, and neither Trump nor anyone associated sought out or pressured them to do so, do you toss out this impeachment inquiry?

 

[Agema]

May as well answer the question now: if Ukraine approached Giuliani about Biden proactively, and neither Trump nor anyone associated sought out or pressured them to do so, do you toss out this impeachment inquiry?

If you want to set the conditions as "If Trump is innocent, should Congress pursue impeachment" then the answer is obviously no.

But all that preamble about who approached who in 2018 is ultimately irrelevant. The issue is simply whether Trump was using his position to get the Ukrainian president to investigate stuff for Trump's own personal political gain, which is abuse of power.

 

[tstorm823]

If you want to set the conditions as "If Trump is innocent, should Congress pursue impeachment" then the answer is obviously no.

But all that preamble about who approached who in 2018 is ultimately irrelevant. The issue is simply whether Trump was using his position to get the Ukrainian president to investigate stuff for Trump's own personal political gain, which is abuse of power.

You're contradicting yourself in consecutive sentences.

Who approached whom is 100% relevant to the sentence that follows. If Giuliani goes to Ukraine first, he's asking them to investigate Biden. If Ukraine approaches Giuliani with information, they've already at least begun investigating of their own volition, which would mean that Trump didn't get them to investigate. Who started the process can tell us whether your second sentence applies. I would call that relevant.

 

[Worgen]

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.

I feel like nobody else on this website has ever spoken to a Republican. There was always a large movement in the Republican party against Donald Trump. If anything, we're backing him more than ever, cause he's done a pretty alright job despite being perpetually under fire.

Oh yeah, insulting all our allies, showing how unreliable the US is, bringing the world closer to a new world war, and putting a bunch of brown people in concentration camps. Then again, I guess all that might be republican ideals.

 

[Kwak]

I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago. Then the Right-Wing Spin Machine Turned the Story Upside Down.
...

When Joe Biden arrived in Ukraine in December 2015 to press for more aggressive anti-corruption efforts by the government, Hunter Biden?s role with Burisma made his father?s demands, however well-intentioned, appear politically awkward and hypocritical. That was the point of my story. I quoted Edward C. Chow, who follows Ukrainian policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who said the involvement of the vice president?s son with Zlochevsky?s firm undermined the Obama administration?s anti-corruption message in Ukraine.

?Now you look at the Hunter Biden situation, and on the one hand you can credit the father for sending the anticorruption message,? Chow said. ?But I think unfortunately it sends the message that a lot of foreign countries want to believe about America, that we are hypocritical about these issues.?
....

The then-vice president issued his demands for greater anti-corruption measures by the Ukrainian government despite the possibility that those demands would actually increase ? not lessen ? the chances that Hunter Biden and Burisma would face legal trouble in Ukraine.

When it first was published, my 2015 story seemed to have little impact, other than to irritate Joe Biden and his staff. It ran inside the print edition of the Times, not on the front page.

But somebody obviously read my piece, as well as others like it, because questions about the Bidens in Ukraine suddenly came roaring back this year. Giuliani, Trump, and their lackeys began spreading the false accusation that Biden had traveled to Ukraine to blackmail the government and force officials to fire the country?s chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to derail an investigation into Burisma.

In May, when this issue began to surface, The Intercept?s Robert Mackey wrote an excellent piece debunking the lies in the new pro-Trump version of the Biden story. In the process, he provided greater detail than I had included in my 2015 story. He wrote that Shokin had been forced from office at Biden?s urging because he had failed to thoroughly investigate corruption and stifled efforts to expose embezzlement and misconduct by public officials. Biden did threaten to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees unless Shokin was ousted. But that was because Shokin had blocked serious anti-corruption investigations, not because he was investigating Burisma.
https://theintercept.com/2019/09/25/i-wrote-about-the-bidens-and-ukraine-years-ago-then-the-right-wing-spin-machine-turned-the-story-upside-down/

 

[Nedoras]

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.

Okay, no one else responded to this point and I can't let this slide. This is absolute nonsense to the point where I can hardly believe that you're saying it. The Republicans WANT to be the obstructionist party. Do you even remotely remember the Obama years? Your point of view is selectively taking certain Republican politicians at their word, which is insane. They're bad faith actors and literally BRAG about being bad faith actors. They don't want to work with Democrats, not unless the Democrats do exactly what they want and nothing more. Even then, it may not happen as they don't want the Democrats to get ANY form of perceived "win". Mitch McConnell's entire strategy for over a decade now has literally been "why let them get a win, why let them have anything?". And you're going to honestly say it's on the Democrats? Republicans aren't going to vote on a bill made by the Democratic party, regardless of what's in it. McConnell openly brags about how he won't ever let it happen.

What planet are you on, where you think it's anything other than that? Are you just ignoring that the Republican leadership exists, and taking Trump at his word when he says shit like "the Democrats and I, we could do so many great things, but they're just so nasty and don't want to"? Honestly this perspective of yours baffles me, as it ignores over a decade of political history. It just takes Trump and a few Republican politicians at their word, and as their colleagues are saying otherwise.

Not only all of that, but Democratic strategy has literally just been capitulating to Republicans and ignoring their own base for fucking DECADES. The thought that the Democratic leadership doesn't want to work with Republicans and do "common sense solutions" is laughable.

 

[Silvanus]

You're contradicting yourself in consecutive sentences.

Who approached whom is 100% relevant to the sentence that follows. If Giuliani goes to Ukraine first, he's asking them to investigate Biden. If Ukraine approaches Giuliani with information [...]

Except they didn't just offer up information apropos of nothing, did they? There was an explicit request. "Whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great".

If I call you, and you then ask me for a favour during that call, is the request nonexistent or irrelevant because I was the one who called?

 

[Agema]

Who approached whom is 100% relevant to the sentence that follows. If Giuliani goes to Ukraine first, he's asking them to investigate Biden. If Ukraine approaches Giuliani with information, they've already at least begun investigating of their own volition, which would mean that Trump didn't get them to investigate. Who started the process can tell us whether your second sentence applies. I would call that relevant.

Biden is first investigated back in 2016. No progress is made, and the case (first under Shokin, then Lutsenko) is closed in 2017.

Some of Lutsenko's minions allegedly approach Giuliani in early 2018 with the case having been re-opened.[footnote]Why? Was this representing Ukraine or something else, such as seeking White House allies to help protect Lutsenko's job (his predecessor having been forced out due to US pressure)?[/footnote] One way or another in May 2019, Lutsenko publicly rolls back on some of the talk that's come from Ukraine's prosecutor office and declares that Biden has no case to answer. That sounds to me like the end of it from Ukraine's end. Evidently at this point there is no active investigation.

In support of this we even have Giuliani in May 2019 - who is keen to let everyone know what he's up to in news articles and social media - saying he's trying to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden. The obvious implication of this is that they aren't investigating Biden.

Then a new Ukrainian president arrives, and in July 2019 Trump explicitly asks him to open (or in the case of Biden, re-open) investigations politically favourable to the US president.

So, irrespective of who approached who in 2018, Trump's request is a problem.

 

[tstorm823]

Oh yeah, insulting all our allies, showing how unreliable the US is, bringing the world closer to a new world war, and putting a bunch of brown people in concentration camps. Then again, I guess all that might be republican ideals.

The world could stand to rely less on one superpower, being closer to a new world war is just you fantasizing, and people crossing the border aren't explicitly brown and holding them in detention til a court appearance isn't a concentration camp.

And on the flip side we got tax reform, we have a stronger economy, unemployment is down, we have wages increasing and increasing fastest at the bottom [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/workers-at-lower-end-of-pay-scale-getting-most-benefit-from-rising-wages.html] (every time Warren says the economy is working but only for the rich, feel free to give her the finger). We have policies aiming investment at troubled areas [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-18/trump-opportunity-zones-are-the-last-great-neoliberal-experiment] rather than handouts, we got rid of the individual mandate and insurance premiums actually started to level off, we got criminal sentencing reform, we got at least the attempt at border security, and we got the majority of obsolete regulation off the books. And perfectly by accident of the media and bureaucrats hating Trump, we finally have the transparent federal government that Obama promised. How could you expect me not to reelect him?

But somebody obviously read my piece, as well as others like it, because questions about the Bidens in Ukraine suddenly came roaring back this year. Giuliani, Trump, and their lackeys began spreading the false accusation that Biden had traveled to Ukraine to blackmail the government and force officials to fire the country?s chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to derail an investigation into Burisma.

That person has some real delusions of grandeur. Questions about Biden and Ukraine came back because Ukraine was looking into it and Biden bragged about it on TV. No, a single article is not responsible for questions about Biden and Ukraine coming back 3 years later.

One way or another in May 2019, Lutsenko publicly rolls back on some of the talk that's come from Ukraine's prosecutor office and declares that Biden has no case to answer. That sounds to me like the end of it from Ukraine's end. Evidently at this point there is no active investigation.

In support of this we even have Giuliani in May 2019 - who is keen to let everyone know what he's up to in news articles and social media - saying he's trying to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden. The obvious implication of this is that they aren't investigating Biden.

This feels like the Seinfeld "I met someone last night, yada yada yada, I'm really tired this morning." "You can't 'yada' sex, you yada'd the best part!"

"One way or another in May 2019..." May 2019 Ukraine got a new President. The one Trump was talking to on the phone. You don't have to look very hard to guess why there might have been a hiccup in May 2019, there was an election an April. And while I don't know exactly why Lutsenko decided to make that public comment, it's noteworthy that it came between the election and the start of Zelenskyy's term. The public attempt to exonerate the Biden's was a lame duck effort.

 

[Dalisclock]

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.

I feel like nobody else on this website has ever spoken to a Republican. There was always a large movement in the Republican party against Donald Trump. If anything, we're backing him more than ever, cause he's done a pretty alright job despite being perpetually under fire.

I used to be a conservative republican, years ago. I saw the party had boarded the crazy train and there was no signs of getting off it and seeing how it's embraced being the Trump Party(except for a few Never Trumpers who haven't put up more then a token resistance), I was right to do so. I'm just occasionally aghast at people like yourself who look at what a rotten human being and leader he is and somehow convince yourself "He's a great leader!". The GOP and the conservative movement has sold out what principles to attach itself to a man who adores them, until the point they're no longer useful and cease to show unconditional loyalty, at which point you'll be cast aside and braded as traitors and sick and animals like he does everyone else who dares cross the great donald, savior of Murica.

What does the Kool Aid taste like? Or do you not even taste it anymore considering you drink so much of it?

He's accomplished plenty but little of it good. He has encouraged people to pay attention to the news and actually vote in record numbers, so I guess I'll give him that. And he's roused a lot of people out of complacency by showing just how corrupt a government can be and how easily it can be abused when Congress acts like a subordinate to the executive branch instead of a co-equal check on their power.

And I already know I'm wasting my breath because I can plainly see none of it is making through those MAGA earplugs and blindfolds he's so generously sold you through the sheer goodness of his heart. Most of us know he's fucking us and are not happy about it. The difference is you've embraced it and keep asking for more.

 

[Worgen]

Oh yeah, insulting all our allies, showing how unreliable the US is, bringing the world closer to a new world war, and putting a bunch of brown people in concentration camps. Then again, I guess all that might be republican ideals.

The world could stand to rely less on one superpower, being closer to a new world war is just you fantasizing, and people crossing the border aren't explicitly brown and holding them in detention til a court appearance isn't a concentration camp.

And on the flip side we got tax reform, we have a stronger economy, unemployment is down, we have wages increasing and increasing fastest at the bottom [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/workers-at-lower-end-of-pay-scale-getting-most-benefit-from-rising-wages.html] (every time Warren says the economy is working but only for the rich, feel free to give her the finger). We have policies aiming investment at troubled areas [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-18/trump-opportunity-zones-are-the-last-great-neoliberal-experiment] rather than handouts, we got rid of the individual mandate and insurance premiums actually started to level off, we got criminal sentencing reform, we got at least the attempt at border security, and we got the majority of obsolete regulation off the books. And perfectly by accident of the media and bureaucrats hating Trump, we finally have the transparent federal government that Obama promised. How could you expect me not to reelect him?

You really need to read your links, your opportunity zones are totally misleading since most of "...the opportunity zone census tracts were already outperforming everyplace else before they were designated..." So they were just finding places that were doing good or starting too and slapped the name "opportunity zone" on them.

The criminal sentencing reform was actually a good thing he did. At least it looked like that till he didn't fund it.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/03/12/first-step-act-comes-up-short-in-trump-s-2020-budget

Border security is a red herring, its a stupid wasteful thing that the orange bastard came up with so we would have an enemy to fight. Its something we didn't need and won't get any use out of aside from wasting money.

You would have to pull up some instances of obsolete regulations being pulled since from what I've heard, it sounds like a lot of the regulations he is getting rid of are ones that helped us. Like making it so that pork plants regulate themselves instead of the usda [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/usda-to-shift-some-inspector-tasks-to-pork-plant-workers--in-everything-but-name/2019/05/23/9808cc50-66af-11e9-82ba-fcfeff232e8f_story.html], rolling back clean water protections [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-stream-protection-rule-clean-water_n_58add04ee4b03d80af717914], and and banking regulations. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/08/house-to-vote-on-sweeping-rollback-of-banking-rules/]

 

[Dalisclock]

And now Trump is accusing Adam Schiff of Treason.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/us/politics/trump-schiff-treason.html

This is coming like a day after suggesting that whoever tipped off the Whistleblower should be executed as a spy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/us/politics/trump-whistle-blower-spy.html

Oh man, the irony here is so thick. It would be hilarious if it weren't so fucking terrifying that this is really happening. I'm waiting for the GOP to come out and say this is not acceptable from anyone, let alone a sitting president. I expect to be waiting a long time because I already know there are no scruples or backbones left over there.

It's clear the man is unhinged(moreso then he already was) and it's likely to become worse as this goes on. With any luck he'll confess without even realize he did so during one of his many temper tantrums yet to come.

 

[tstorm823]

I used to be a conservative republican, years ago. I saw the party had boarded the crazy train and there was no signs of getting off it and seeing how it's embraced being the Trump Party(except for a few Never Trumpers who haven't put up more then a token resistance), I was right to do so. I'm just occasionally aghast at people like yourself who look at what a rotten human being and leader he is and somehow convince yourself "He's a great leader!". The GOP and the conservative movement has sold out what principles to attach itself to a man who adores them, until the point they're no longer useful and cease to show unconditional loyalty, at which point you'll be cast aside and braded as traitors and sick and animals like he does everyone else who dares cross the great donald, savior of Murica.

What does the Kool Aid taste like? Or do you not even taste it anymore considering you drink so much of it?

He's accomplished plenty but little of it good. He has encouraged people to pay attention to the news and actually vote in record numbers, so I guess I'll give him that. And he's roused a lot of people out of complacency by showing just how corrupt a government can be and how easily it can be abused when Congress acts like a subordinate to the executive branch instead of a co-equal check on their power.

And I already know I'm wasting my breath because I can plainly see none of it is making through those MAGA earplugs and blindfolds he's so generously sold you through the sheer goodness of his heart. Most of us know he's fucking us and are not happy about it. The difference is you've embraced it and keep asking for more.

You clearly have absolutely no idea what I think about things.

The thing I say is "I did not vote for Trump, but I would now." I refused to vote for him, even against Hillary Clinton. I've never said he's a great leader, rather I call him a buffoon. And if he stops being useful to me, I will be the one casting him off. I have no loyalty to Donald Trump, and I don't believe the tiniest bit that his policies coinciding with my political beliefs are anything but coincidental, based solely on actual Republicans making him feel important. I don't even consider Donald Trump a Republican. People around these parts know me for saying Donald Trump is a Democrat. I'm arguing constantly that Donald Trump would be signing Democratic legislation if they made any attempt to work with him. And I've said on more than one occasion explicitly that Donald Trump is a bad person and the question of this administration is "can a bad person do good things?"

If you can take all of that, look at me, and think "man, what a Kool-Aid drinking Trump loyalist" just for considering the possibility that the world isn't the most horrible possible interpretation of events, it's not because it's true. It's because your world view is so warped that you think anyone not treating Trump as the apocalypse has do be brainwashed. Don't give Donald Trump the power to determine your entire outlook.

You really need to read your links, your opportunity zones are totally misleading since most of "...the opportunity zone census tracts were already outperforming everyplace else before they were designated..." So they were just finding places that were doing good or starting too and slapped the name "opportunity zone" on them.

I choose sources that challenge my biases whenever possible. I don't want people dismissing facts because of the opinions they are presented with. The areas for opportunity zones were determined first by specific criteria, and then states picked areas that fit the criteria that they thought would benefit most from the program. It's not terribly surprising that states picked areas that already showed potential for improvement.

The criminal sentencing reform was actually a good thing he did. At least it looked like that till he didn't fund it.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/03/12/first-step-act-comes-up-short-in-trump-s-2020-budget

You don't need to fund sentencing reform. Changing statutes is basically free. The part that's supposed to have that funding and is lacking is the recidivism reduction programs. And I absolutely agree that pulling back that funding is a bad thing that makes the law worse. But to say the First Step Act is no longer good because 1/6th of it got shorted funding this year is an overstatement, and to phrase it as the sentencing reform being unimplemented because recidivism reduction programs were shorted is just factually incorrect.

Border security is a red herring, its a stupid wasteful thing that the orange bastard came up with so we would have an enemy to fight. Its something we didn't need and won't get any use out of aside from wasting money.

Border security has been an ongoing challenge for decades. The orange bastard did not make it up. You may disagree with his characterization and proposed solutions, but denying the problem because Donald Trump cares about it is reprehensible.

You would have to pull up some instances of obsolete regulations being pulled since from what I've heard, it sounds like a lot of the regulations he is getting rid of are ones that helped us. Like making it so that pork plants regulate themselves instead of the usda [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/usda-to-shift-some-inspector-tasks-to-pork-plant-workers--in-everything-but-name/2019/05/23/9808cc50-66af-11e9-82ba-fcfeff232e8f_story.html], rolling back clean water protections [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-stream-protection-rule-clean-water_n_58add04ee4b03d80af717914], and and banking regulations. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/08/house-to-vote-on-sweeping-rollback-of-banking-rules/]

Can I pull from your examples? Because that pork plant story is one of my all-time favorite hit pieces on Trump. Like this is the story. [https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/09/17/761682926/usda-changes-rules-overseeing-how-pork-is-produced]

Some highlights:

-USDA inspectors aren't just replaced by company personnel, there's still a USDA inspector at every point of inspection supervising the process. It's just inspectors supervising people pulling out bad meat instead of doing the labor themselves. Still very much government inspected.
-This wasn't a Trump idea, the pilot program for this started 20 years ago.
-This change in regulation has already been successfully applied to poultry.

To characterize a USDA rule change that would still very much have USDA inspectors assuring the safety of pork products and based on a 20 year study that showed successful results as "Trump lets pork plants regulate themselves" is completely ridiculous.

 

[Agema]

"One way or another in May 2019..." May 2019 Ukraine got a new President. The one Trump was talking to on the phone. You don't have to look very hard to guess why there might have been a hiccup in May 2019, there was an election an April. And while I don't know exactly why Lutsenko decided to make that public comment, it's noteworthy that it came between the election and the start of Zelenskyy's term. The public attempt to exonerate the Biden's was a lame duck effort.

Sure, possibly - but again, that's just your conjecture... and it still doesn't excuse the president of the USA asking foreign leaders to interfere in US elections.

I just don't really get why you're trying to burn so much time and effort trying to magic up excuses for Donald Trump. I mean, you've accused other users here of being politically motivated, that Pelosi is cynically magnifying what you claim is a nothingburger for political gain, that Lutsenko is lying just to save his skin, the whistleblower's got a nonsensical case. Everyone is cynical, biased, cheating, lying, playing politics...

...but the glaring exception you refuse to see ill of is Donald Trump. He, alone, you are granting almost infinite assumption of acting in good faith. Amazingly, despite his having personal, professional and political lives of almost unparalleled shitbaggery (at least compared to everyone else). It's just bewildering.

 

[tstorm823]

Sure, possibly - but again, that's just your conjecture... and it still doesn't excuse the president of the USA asking foreign leaders to interfere in US elections.

I just don't really get why you're trying to burn so much time and effort trying to magic up excuses for Donald Trump. I mean, you've accused other users here of being politically motivated, that Pelosi is cynically magnifying what you claim is a nothingburger for political gain, that Lutsenko is lying just to save his skin, the whistleblower's got a nonsensical case. Everyone is cynical, biased, cheating, lying, playing politics...

...but the glaring exception you refuse to see ill of is Donald Trump. He, alone, you are granting almost infinite assumption of acting in good faith. Amazingly, despite his having personal, professional and political lives of almost unparalleled shitbaggery (at least compared to everyone else). It's just bewildering.

I've not accused others here of being politically motivated, I've accused others of being biased. That's very different, I don't think people are lying to me to try and advance their politics, I just think they're very misguided and judging things inaccurately, particularly anything to do with Trump. Pelosi is cynically magnifying something that I believe will turn out to be nothing, but judging her actions based on my beliefs isn't fair, and while I think she's motivated to impeach Trump and the crime in question is largely irrelevant, I don't think she'd do so if she didn't believe herself there was enough to call something a crime. I don't think I ever even speculated on Lutsenko's motivation other than to say I don't know what Lutsenko's motivation was (perhaps it was just to try and keep the new president from getting immediately drawn into this international controversy he otherwise had no part in). I think the whistleblower's case is reasonable given the information included, but that information isn't firsthand, has multiple factual errors, and contradicts information that wasn't included in the report. And it reeks of being made by a team of people rather than a single whistleblower, but that really has no bearing on the accuracy or intent. I have no problem believing that both Bidens are perfectly innocent of wrong doing, and if they are acting as deliberate cover for Burisma, it's probably just to fight against Russian oil in Ukraine rather than conspiratorial nepotism.

While I think it's worth asking the question about Biden in Ukraine, I think Trump is a jerk for promoting it with such sick pleasure. I think he's foolish for letting Giuliani publicly represent him. And I think his tweets about every aspect of this are reprehensible.

But none of that has anything to do with the facts of the case. If people think Trump was shaking down Ukraine by withholding military aid until they investigated Trump's political opponents, but the Ukrainians didn't know the aid was frozen, they had already started the investigation on their own, and were the ones who brought it up in the phone call, and Trump never made such a demand in the phone call, and then released the call, and released the whistleblower report, and unfroze the aid money... I'm not just going to say "Trump's the worst person in the room, so I'd better ignore all those details and blame him anyway." That would be ignoring reason just to reassert my own bias. Do I think Trump is the worst person involved in all of this? Yes. Does that mean he did everything wrong? No.

Just a reminder, your view of my position is relative to the people on the Escapist. I'm always, always, always going to be in defense of anyone with an (R) next to their name here, regardless of how I feel about them, just because people are way out the other way. Even if the person did something wrong, I'm still going to end up between them and the user base here, because a Republican who deserves polite criticism gets wished they were out of office, a Republican that deserves to be out of office is said to deserve prison. And a Republican that deserves prison is prescribed execution. And if people are that blinded by hatred, somebody has to provide a bit of reality to the conversation.

 

[tstorm823]

Okay, no one else responded to this point and I can't let this slide. This is absolute nonsense to the point where I can hardly believe that you're saying it. The Republicans WANT to be the obstructionist party. Do you even remotely remember the Obama years? Your point of view is selectively taking certain Republican politicians at their word, which is insane. They're bad faith actors and literally BRAG about being bad faith actors. They don't want to work with Democrats, not unless the Democrats do exactly what they want and nothing more. Even then, it may not happen as they don't want the Democrats to get ANY form of perceived "win". Mitch McConnell's entire strategy for over a decade now has literally been "why let them get a win, why let them have anything?". And you're going to honestly say it's on the Democrats? Republicans aren't going to vote on a bill made by the Democratic party, regardless of what's in it. McConnell openly brags about how he won't ever let it happen.

What planet are you on, where you think it's anything other than that? Are you just ignoring that the Republican leadership exists, and taking Trump at his word when he says shit like "the Democrats and I, we could do so many great things, but they're just so nasty and don't want to"? Honestly this perspective of yours baffles me, as it ignores over a decade of political history. It just takes Trump and a few Republican politicians at their word, and as their colleagues are saying otherwise.

Not only all of that, but Democratic strategy has literally just been capitulating to Republicans and ignoring their own base for fucking DECADES. The thought that the Democratic leadership doesn't want to work with Republicans and do "common sense solutions" is laughable.

First order of business, please don't do that thing you did at the end where you put words in quotes while trying to describe my position as though I had said them. I'm sure you weren't trying to mislead anyone, but it's really, really irritating and I hate it.

But here's the planet I'm on. I'm on the planet where Democrats package together election security with every other election rule they can dream of, from rewriting the rules on congressional redistricting to making universities designate a "Campus Vote Coordinator", and then putting this bill up as "H.R. 1" for the term so that when Republicans say "no, we're not voting for those 700s pages of nonsense, Democrats can say "oh, Mitch McConnell hates election security and wants Russia to run the US." I'm on the planet where Democrats make a law to help lower drug prices, and then package it with rollbacks of every change Republicans made to the ACA for 2 years, and then say "oh, Republicans don't really want lower drug prices" (and Vox calls it clever politics). I'm in the world where Democrats have proposed "no fly, no buy" repeatedly despite it being really, really stupid because they really love saying that Republicans want terrorists to have guns.

I'm not taking anyone's word on this. I've seen the bills. This is my own informed opinion. They bundle crap together because it makes a no lose situation where if the bill fails, they can trash Republicans for it. It's a pattern of behavior. And I'm guessing you're way off on who you think the Democrat's base is. It's not socialist college students, it's yuppy rich people. What you think is capitulating to Republicans is satisfying their actual base. People can say all they want that Obamacare wasn't socialized medicine because they gave everything up to please Republicans, but the line "people who like their insurance can keep it" still has a ton of play in the Democratic Primary and you can't blame Republicans for that.

And Mitch McConnell absolutely votes on bills by Democrats. 55 of 86 bills [https://www.congress.gov/search?q=%7B%22source%22%3A%22legislation%22%2C%22bill-status%22%3A%22passed-both%22%7D] that passed both chambers this year were sponsored by Democrats. You just don't hear about things like H.R.259 - Medicaid Extenders Act of 2019 because you might get the idea that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Presiding Officer Chuck Grassly are human beings who don't want to abolish healthcare for the poor.

 

[Kwak]

That person has some real delusions of grandeur. Questions about Biden and Ukraine came back because Ukraine was looking into it and Biden bragged about it on TV. No, a single article is not responsible for questions about Biden and Ukraine coming back 3 years later.

That's how you're going to summarily dismiss this? Invent something not being claimed so you can then heap your scorn and derision on it and ignore it. You really are a Conservative.

 

[Agema]

But none of that has anything to do with the facts of the case. If people think Trump was shaking down Ukraine by withholding military aid until they investigated Trump's political opponents, but the Ukrainians didn't know the aid was frozen, they had already started the investigation on their own, and were the ones who brought it up in the phone call, and Trump never made such a demand in the phone call, and then released the call, and released the whistleblower report, and unfroze the aid money...

The facts of the case are that Trump explicitly asked a foreign president to investigate cases politically beneficial to himself. That is bad. That aid that was supposed to be released was withheld for unknown reasons around the same time is doubly suspicious. That is a prime facie case of abuse of power, right there.

1) No-one in Ukraine was apparently running an investigation into anything Trump wants at the point of the call, or evidently had for months previously. You can't just ignore that. And even if they were still active investigations, the threat exists of conspiracy to handle them in a way advantageous to Trump.

2) The Ukrainian president did not bring investigations up, Trump did. Zelenskyy thanks the USA for military aid[footnote]Note that Zelenskyy flatters Trump with lies here by agreeing that the USA does more for Ukraine. The EU has given Ukraine about ten times as much aid as the USA has[/footnote], and it is at this point Trump asks for "a favor", and says he wants investigations. That logical leap is deeply suspicious.

3) Therefore Zelenskyy mentioning Giuliani thus precedes Trump explicitly mentioning Biden, but is after Trump explicitly asks for favours in the form of investigations. So Trump surely has prompted the likelihood of Giuliani entering the conversation.

4) Those reports and the aid being unfrozen are consistent with the strategy that once a scandal is exposed, it looks better to release materials and get one's version of events out rather than seem evasive and attempt to hide them.