Do you know how Congress works?
The Impeachment of President Trump
- Thread starter Quantum Quack
- Start date
Do you know how Congress works?
RainbowSingularity
Valued Senior Member
it seems to be getting worse
i am now in the surprised category at how murky this is
i was always sure there was all sorts of murky things going on in the background
accessing contracts without due tender process(probably not illegal in any way but certainly doesn't support democratic regulated capitalism as a free access market).
but then i dont want some hill-billy making solar powered nuclear cannon tanks and selling them to terrorists and dictators.
when the government successfully sues the pharmco for opioid cash
who gets the money ?
when the govt issues financial penalties... who gets the money ?
people got lazy when obama was in(because of their own greed and xenophobia and selfishness)
they never realized how good they had it
i am now in the surprised category at how murky this is
i was always sure there was all sorts of murky things going on in the background
accessing contracts without due tender process(probably not illegal in any way but certainly doesn't support democratic regulated capitalism as a free access market).
but then i dont want some hill-billy making solar powered nuclear cannon tanks and selling them to terrorists and dictators.
when the government successfully sues the pharmco for opioid cash
who gets the money ?
when the govt issues financial penalties... who gets the money ?
people got lazy when obama was in(because of their own greed and xenophobia and selfishness)
they never realized how good they had it
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
The government gets the money.
Yes, we had it good with Obama.
The system should work (well enough) but no one planned for someone like Trump. After Trump some unwritten rules will now need to be written.
There is also supposed to be checks and balances between the 3 branches. That isn't working well at the moment as the Republican House members aren't serving as checks on the President.
Party politics would suggest that this would be a grey area but it is so bad now that it is just an embarrassment. They do it and can get away with it however because of the people who elected them and those are the same people that elected Trump and that Trump has impressed for some reason. They are a traditional and "loyal" bunch. It's worrisome to say the least.
Uh, no, he didn't.
Why do you even bother to post Republican propaganda bs on this forum? You know you are going to get called on it.
repeat post
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
It was a priority of Obama. Like most real problems, it's complicated. He did greatly reduce the number of prisoners but there is a small core number that can't be tried in a criminal court, can't be released and no other country will take them. Congress tied his hands as well.
Hey Ice... What are your thoughts about the relationship between Trump and Giuliani?
Any one else have any thoughts they wish to share?
Last edited:
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Wingnut, bandahar, tribe.
Or Reagan, or W - W being the first Trump-style disaster only because the Congressional resistance that kept Reagan from the crazy had been crippled.
W's administration and media backing piled on Reagan's preliminary trashing of the "system". It hasn't worked since.
The entire lefty blogosphere and liberal analytical punditry has been trying to warn anyone who would listen about the inevitable consequences of allowing the rise of fascism in the media and a major political Party - since 1980, if not sooner. They (the liberal and left punditry) specifically warned about Reagan, about W, and about Trump. By name, as they came up. They even warned about Clinton.
At some point failure to plan for the obvious future, for incoming hurricanes and the consequences of war and so forth, is dereliction and foolishness even without warning. The fact that everyone was warned, for decades, with examples, puts the folly on stilts.
They haven't been serving as "checks" on a Republican President since 1981. Neither has the Republican Senate.
Also, the President hasn't been serving as a check on them.
And now they have packed the Supreme Court with partisan Republicans.
Meanwhile, Congressional "checks" on the Democratic Presidents have been obstructions of governance itself - the Senate's abuse of the filibuster, for example.
Last edited:
They can be released, they can be tried, and several countries will take them if the US guarantees no repercussions.
What they can't be is allowed to talk to the press freely, or convicted in a fair trial.
The Republican Congress, and media, tied his hands.
#tinfoil | #potsherds
Twittery: Click for a tinfoil-wrapped dose.
Trying to wrap up who diGenova and Toensig are takes a modest paragraph, at least; it ought to suffice to say the attorneys who were already entangled in the #trumpswindle before the president decided to not hire them as personal attorneys turned up today on FOX News in Trump's defense; they pushed a Soros conspiracy theory.
Thus, we should reiterate a point I mentioned last month↗: Conservative conspiracy theorists ought to take note, before spelunking the Soros hole, that the billionaire bogeyman's connection to the Trump scandal in Ukraine runs through George W. Bush.
And it's true, we might also try reiterating some sort of point—there are many—about paying attention to what an argument does. This is very nearly one of those both sides/both ways↗ contradictions, but it's also known conspiracism, and much akin to a point noted about aristocracy↗, the FOX News crowd doesn't really attend such palty details as self-nullification.
Still, think about Soros trying to take down President Trump back when Shrub was still scrounging business privilege off his famous, political family name. If it's mildly less unbelievable than a fifty-year conspiracy to subvert democracy on behalf of a black man, it's still effing stupid.
RainbowSingularity
Valued Senior Member
i think Giuliani may be aging mentally
the sheer pace at which someone in his position would need to maintain is quite strenuous(assuming they are doing the job & not just getting others to do the thinking & negotiating etc).
showing a lack of ability to be dynamic may be very American, however it doesn't bode well with mental longevity.
if he doesn't take a back seat & slow down & take up a hobby i would not give him more than 2 years before he kicks the bucket or has some type of serious health issue... & if soo consequentially... what happens then when all the apples fall out of the kart is a bigger dilemma(one of which i have no interest in[ after the other lawyer it might well be the nail in the coffin for someones career])
that is my impression from seeing him on tv news
Roll on like a steam roller to try and maintain new ticket sales moving through the front turn styles.
such is the same attention span and attention to scientific fact that is applied.
if you find yourself thinking too hard, its not faux news
Last edited:
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
I think dementia at some level explains Giuliani and his behavior (along with power and greed). It's hard to tell for sure but he is clearly a somewhat different person than he was years ago. I have no doubt that he was no saint then but this just seems like a different guy.
Trump is more or less the same person but his mental facility seems to be diminished as well. It's hard to tell though as he has never been a "thinker", has always been transactional and has always been a carnival man, so to speak.
Regarding the impeachment proceedings...ultimately it's up to the average Republican having a change of heart and I don't see that happening. After all they elected him in the first place knowing the kind of person that he is.
The Democrats haven't really gotten their act together either with their current Presidential candidates.
Trump is more or less the same person but his mental facility seems to be diminished as well. It's hard to tell though as he has never been a "thinker", has always been transactional and has always been a carnival man, so to speak.
Regarding the impeachment proceedings...ultimately it's up to the average Republican having a change of heart and I don't see that happening. After all they elected him in the first place knowing the kind of person that he is.
The Democrats haven't really gotten their act together either with their current Presidential candidates.
They would have no problem electing Warren, or a couple of the others, "knowing the kind of person that {they are}."
Apparently the Democrats are supposed to fix this mess on their own while under fire from the media, and if they can't do it the mess becomes their fault and the Republicans are back to voting for Trump or hitting themselves on the head with hammers or whatever they feel is the appropriate response to having shit the bed yet again.
The average Republican is about a quarter of the citizenry, about 40% of the guaranteed voting public, and increasingly isolated. If the electoral fraud and vote suppression of that Party (including its contracted efforts, Russian and the like) is sufficiently countered, it can be ignored by the adult voting public - Trump may clear the Senate on Party lines, and not be removed from office, but that will not erase the public record.
So the elections seem to be riding on whether the Republican media feed can sell the "bothsides" and "bipartisan" line - and it looks like they can, so far: I've seen a half hour of TV punditry on the sorry state of US governance in which the only responsible person named more than once was Obama.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
According to you, you are misusing quotes in your comments.
I think you may be giving too much credence to Republican TV. Do people still watch TV?
This election should be the Democrats for the taking but I'm not feeling confident. Warren certainly isn't going to win. I don't see enough name recognition for a clear-cut Democratic victory.
Turn out will be very high for the Republicans. I do think (hope) that Trump loses somehow but it's not a confidence feeling.
Yeah, that's pretty much how elections work.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
But they're under fire from the media.
It's how the Republican Party would like them to work.
It's not how adults in a democracy choose their governance. It's not even how elections used to work, in the US.
- - - - -
Not credence - influence.
Not giving - granting.
Not TV - Republican media feed.
Republican voters watch cable and Fox TV, listen to talk radio, attend to fundamentalist religious authorities, and live on Facebook - all of these are predominantly rightwing corporate propaganda sources, and so they have become entirely bubble dependent for their news and information. They live in a political fantasy world, whose history must be rewritten and entities retconned with increasing frequency (the fundamental weakness of propaganda - it diverges from events over time). Only the amnesiac are left.
They are a minority of the US population, electorate, and total vote - without gerrymandering, vote suppression and fraud and manipulation, Russian meddling, and so forth, they lose.
Without the wild card of the Electoral College they lose the Presidency - if Trump wins this next one, he will probably have overcome a deficit of five million in the popular vote (two million more than the deficit he overcame in 2016). At that point, serious people will begin to make real world plans for secession.
As Benjamin Franklin put it: "A Republic, if you can keep it".
That is such a vapid statement.
Hey, do you remember when a conservative group got caught up in the "Obamaphone" scandal, where they went around deliberately misinforming people of color until they found some folks who were excited about what the "Obamaphone", and the whole point was to pretend this was the typical Democratic voter?
It really should be a forgettable episode, so it's not the biggest worry if you don't remember. Still, though: What made people laugh was that they were large black women. And I say that because I can watch other people simply repeat the brainless drivel interested parties spoonfeed them, and it's like, sure, he's not jumping up and down all excited, and shit, but he doesn't think he's learning something new; instead, he seems to think he's saying something smart, and informing people. Moreover, he actually seems to be taking himself seriously.
Thus: We're a year out. If these were 2012 Republicans, Michele Bachmann has already had her time atop the field, Herman Cain was a frontrunner, and his lead was eroding for Newt Gingrich. In six weeks, Michele Bachmann would accuse Ron Paul's campaign of impropriety, and while it turns out there really was something awry afoot, Paul's agent escaped prosecution and went to work for Mitch McConnell, while Bachmann's state campaign chair would, ten months later, resign, and shortly thereafter be indicted, and then spend the next three years getting convicted for felonious dealings with the Paul campaign.
That is to say, Republicans didn't get their act together until after primary voting started. Fast-forward to 2016, and it's hard to say Republicans ever really got their act together, unless that many of them really are geniuses and the whole Trump primary was some sort of staged farce that nobody managed to figure out.
As a general rule, "The Democrats haven't really gotten their act together either with their current Presidential candidates", is an uninformed political critique with easy traction for its lack of any real informational critique. If you can manage to string together the words, someone in the room who isn't really listening to you will nod as if agreeing; it's a human behavioral thing.
So here are the problems:
• "The Democrats haven't really gotten their act together ...." — Mayhaps, but compared to what? It's a weird expectation, an easy point of criticism with no obligation to reality. That is to say: They don't have their act together? They're not really supposed to, at this point.
• "... either ...." — It's a strange, extraneous comparison tacked on to what operates as a defense of apparent criminal behavior. That the Democrats, "haven't really gotten their act together … with their current Presidential candidates", is irrelevant to the question of Trump's relationship with Giuliani.
• "... either ...." — It's a strange, extraneous comparison tacked on to what operates as a defense of apparent criminal behavior. That the Democrats, "haven't really gotten their act together … with their current Presidential candidates", is irrelevant to the question of Trump's relationship with Giuliani.
While it's true that site policy, as a practical effect, discourages deeper discussion, you happen to be among those who never were really giving it any sincere effort, so while the piece of advice I would give really ought not be necessary for someone who has been around this place as long as you have, this is where we find ourselves: Do you really think people don't recognize the same lazy tropes they've endured for longer than you've been here?
• • •
Private irony arises, but it's worth sharing: So, I went looking for an older episode, trying to figure why it kept nagging memory, and, sure enough, I found it. Normally, when I recall of the episode, I'm considering a different irony, one unto itself from the moment.
It was just a weird digression in a political thread, and, sure, in a general sense it's not without value in considering the world, today, but, still.
And you were there, and you, and you, and ....
Oh, right. There are a number of familiar names in that one, from over six years ago, but I did, indeed, forget that our neighbor LaurieAG was there, pushing fallacious, traditionalist equivocation↗.
(I was actually going to try a slightly complicated joke to make the point of my question in the prior section, but the circumstance doesn't suit the hook, so, poof, there goes the joke. Still, it seems worth noting this irony arises even as the initial inquiry returned a negative result. Or, perhaps that result, describing extraneity, only escalates the irony. Y'know, like, that was a bust but at least I got this.)
'Round and 'round. It's not quite the circle of life, but, you know, something about a flat circle goes here, and pretenses of being unable to discern the difference.
Vapid but very true. If the Democrats go into Iowa with a fractured field, odds of their defeat go up significantly. There are several democrats who should be able to walk away with the presidency - but not if they spend the next six months fighting it out.