Just ask Eric Ciaramella--everything he said was second- and third-hand information since he was not on the Ukraine call, so all his information was gossip.
Which is the best part. The whistleblower admitted himself in the complaint he wasn't a direct witness, and this is about the quality of evidence we have gotten across the spectrum for all of these nonsense charges.
A verdict has already been reached, so there is little need to rehash it much further. This is the third loss on the third false charge so far. Think they would learn.
Edit 2 - keep in mind, in one page of this thread you’ve now called the Mueller investigation a waste of time and money, but apparently - you think it’s fine and people should welcome investigations if they have nothing to hide. That’s nice.
Democrats have rewritten the rules. Don't blame me--blame them. Guilty until you produce proof of your innocence, remember? Failure to provide proof of your innocence is also a cover-up. Oh, you are also allowed to call other people "Russian agents" *and* you can refuse to be served summons of the lawsuit against you--twice--once at your house and once at your lawyer's office.
Recall--I am no Republican, but I definitely oppose Democrats.
Incdentally, Joe Biden is not much of *anyone's* political opponent these days--he decided to give up on New Hampshire and is already in South Carolina.
This chest-beating in light of what is going on with Roger Stone today is fucking laughable. A man convicted of multiple felonies (including witness intimidation) by a jury is being let off the hook because he's Trump's personal rat-fucker and Bill Barr demanded the sentencing guidelines be ignored in this ONE instance. What a coincidence it happened hours after a Trump rant. You know, another one of those open and shut cases from the "nothingburger".
I am pretty sure subpoenas were ignored so the proper evidence couldn't be collected. Hence the attempt of Obstruction of Congress charge with impeachment.
It's like me ripping up a search warrant and slamming the door screaming "witch hunt" if police officers came to my door looking into one of my alleged crimes. Except that wouldn't go over well.
And before you go, "well they should have went through the courts to get the subpoenas granted." please show me where in the constitution that the House needs to go to the judicial branch to have subpoenas answered.
I already pointed out one high profile person in Chelsea Manning serving time for not answering a subpoena. Honestly, the double standards that is being put on display is very fascinating.
Democrats have rewritten the rules. Don't blame me--blame them. Guilty until you produce proof of your innocence, remember? Failure to provide proof of your innocence is also a cover-up.
Benghazi anyone?
Yup. Democrats definitely started the weaponization of congress.
I am pretty sure subpoenas were ignored so the proper evidence couldn't be collected. Hence the attempt of Obstruction of Congress charge with impeachment.
It's like me ripping up a search warrant and slamming the door screaming "witch hunt" if police officers came to my door looking into one of my alleged crimes. Except that wouldn't go over well.
And before you go, "well they should have went through the courts to get the subpoenas granted." please show me where in the constitution that the House needs to go to the judicial branch to have subpoenas answered.
I already pointed out one high profile person in Chelsea Manning serving time for not answering a subpoena. Honestly, the double standards that is being put on display is very fascinating.
Defending yourself legally isn't proof of guilt, not even evidence of it, not even the appearance of evidence. If he wasn't challenging them in court like he is he wouldn't be getting very good legal advice.
There is no replacement for evidence, despite the attempts to invert traditional ideas of guilt and innocence.
As an aside I haven't heard of a single subpoena that even had the appearance of relevancy to this question, let alone some smoking gun.
Trump ordered a hold on aid to Ukraine - that's common ground for both the impeachment prosecution and defense cases.
The defense case, in relation to abuse of power, rested on two issues:
(i) in order to be abuse of power, the President must have had a wrongful motive for withholding the aid - but Congress have no way of knowing what was inside the President's head (there is a separate issue about whether the block on aid was actually illegal, but that was not part of the impeachment case).
(ii) even if there was abuse, that would not reach the constitutional threshold necessary for impeachment.
I can understand those arguing in favor of (ii). I can even understand strong supporters of Trump just ignoring the whole issue as irrelevant. I find it more difficult to understand though the position of those arguing that the President was in fact innocent. If impeachment were a criminal trial, defending (i) would be easier - but it's not a criminal trial. I think the closest analogue to a judicial process would be a civil trial, where there are a couple of major differences - the standard of proof is based on the balance of probabilities, rather than beyond reasonable doubt; a jury is entitled to draw inferences from a failure to provide testimony.
In this thread there are those who do not describe themselves as supporters of Trump, but (in addition to suggesting that the proceedings are a waste of time) are defending him as actually innocent. That's despite all the witness testimony that has been presented being against him, a refusal to provide any contemporaneous documentary evidence, a refusal to allow White House staff to testify and an extremely unlikely explanation being offered for Giuliani's involvement in Ukraine (that he was gathering evidence to defend Trump against the accusations in the Mueller report - over a year after that report was published).
Is the basis for stating Trump to be innocent of abuse of power simply that a criminal standard of proof should in fact be applied to this case? If not, then what am I missing?
That's despite all the witness testimony that has been presented being against him, a refusal to provide any contemporaneous documentary evidence, a refusal to allow White House staff to testify and an extremely unlikely explanation being offered for Giuliani's involvement in Ukraine (that he was gathering evidence to defend Trump against the accusations in the Mueller report - over a year after that report was published).
"A witness exists" is a terrible argument for guilt. I feel like we're at Kavanaugh 2.0 all over again. Some of the witnesses are plainly not credible and the others don't tell us anything we don't already know from the reporting. There is nothing new here that makes your case any more valid then it was before it failed.
Everything else you mentioned is perfectly normal and acceptable legal defense mechanisms that exist in standard court rooms. You are able to file motions to suppress evidence, testimony, what have you, if they are not relevant or for other reasons. As I've said before, a proper legal defense is only proof of guilt if you have already reached that conclusion and confirmation bias is setting in. A proper legal defense is not evidence of guilt, in any way, shape, or form, and that's a dangerous mindset to have.
I doubt we will reach an agreement here. You have been on the side of every anti Trump crusade so far and I have mostly been on the opposite. This case is exactly like the rest, zero evidence, a few sketchy claims, all resting ultimately upon how you feel about the man"s mindset and, I can not stress this enough, absolutely nothing concrete whatsoever. I feel like time has proven me right on these things, as has the ruling, so I'm not sure what's left to go over.
I will never understand the idea that innocent people don't need legal defense. I'm an absolute nobody, yet not for one second would I expect the justice system to treat me with any fairness if I did not have a lawyer fighting on my behalf. This really is a guilty until proven innocent mindset. It's terrible in practice.
For the record, I do not support the rest, tacitly or otherwise.
If that logic followed--the notion that supporting "one project of military force" meant tacitly endorsing all of them--we could just as easily say that supporting the war against the Nazis meant tacitly supporting the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and the Cold War, because all of them were done by the same country. I have different views on each one. In my brief opinion, the first was morally necessary, the second pointless and wrong, the third dishonest and cost-ineffective, and the fourth mishandled and with wildly mixed results.
I can support one American deed and oppose another.
I probably wasn't clear enough, for which I apologise.
America is involved with Taiwan because it is an empire. There is no world where America is isolationist or multilateral where it keeps battlefleets in the area in a staredown with Beijing. An America that doesn't claim the right to its "stategic interests" in other countries that are not actually any of America's business is an America that is not defending Taiwan.
Supporting one intervention thus supports all of them implicitly, because you cannot separate out the reasoning and assumption that led to America intervening in the Chinese Civil War from the reasons that led to America intervening in the Vietnam War. By saying "this is a good one", you support the doctrines and reasons that lead to all American interventions, because they are ultimately more similar than they are different.
The fact is I could with very little change use every one of your arguments supporting Taiwan to support South Vietnam, and that is a problem.
1. Taiwan was indeed undemocratic 70 years ago. We defended it because Beijing, the alternative government, was both undemocratic and communist, and therefore was the worse option. Today, Beijing is no longer communist, but remains undemocratic, and therefore is still the worse option.
I disagree with any flat statement that Beijing was the "worse option". Both at the time and with the benefit of hindsight, negotiating with the Communists could very well have been the better option.
I will note that you cared about what the people wanted in Taiwan now, but are ignoring that a) the Communist government had more support among the people of China then, and b) the Kuomintang was not welcomed by the natives of Taiwan (and actions by their American backers didn't help).
That might sound like a shifting justification, but the timing makes sense: Taiwan became a democracy around the same time China abandoned communism. There was no point at which Taiwan would have been better off under the Chinese Communist Party.
That point comes if a lot of people die when China invades the island. Also, once again, Taiwan was a brutal dictatorship until the 1980s. Again, I reject your assertion that a right-wing dictatorship is intrinsically "better" than a left-wing one.
2. I would definitely claim that our interest in Taiwan is not for strategic reasons. The realpolitik policy would be to withdraw from Taiwan and let the Chinese take over. It would be a great opportunity to pick the winning team, save lots of money on military spending, earn some concessions from China, and reduce the chance of a dangerous war over Taiwan to zero. If we were only looking out for our own selfish interests, we would side with China; not Taiwan. We side with Taiwan because defending a modern democracy is worth the costs we're currently paying.
America defended Taiwan the not-democracy for decades.
And I'm sorry, but Taiwan is strategically crucial for both China and America. Here are a few links for you:
I could find dozens more. Ignoring the strategic significance of Taiwan, and ignoring that that is the reason for America's interest in Taiwan, is simply ignoring reality.
And incidentally, all of this also shows one of the reasons why any unified China will want Taiwan.
3. I wouldn't say China's takeover of Taiwan was inevitable. We don't yet know how long the Chinese Communist Party will control China (probably for a long time, in my opinion), and if that government should fall, whatever government comes after won't necessarily want to control Taiwan--the notion that Taiwan shi Zhongguo de yibufen is very specific to Party orthodoxy. I'd predict that any successor to the Party would want unification, though; that notion won't just go away if the Party ever falls.
If that future government was a true democracy, I don't think either Taiwan or the United States would necessarily be opposed to China absorbing Taiwan as a new province. Folks might still be opposed for other, smaller reasons, but the main danger--the total extinction of Taiwanese democracy--would cease to exist in that case. I can easily see a peaceful unification under a democratic China with the United States in full support.
The United States, as long as it remains an empire that claims the right to project force in East Asia, is exceedingly unlikely to agree to Taiwan rejoining China. Some of the many reasons for this are detailed in the links above.
Any Chinese state will want Taiwan, again. Aside from strategic reasons, the Chinese kicked the Dutch out of Taiwan and one Chinese regime or another controlled it from the 1600s until the Japanese took it. Yes, it was fairly lax control, but it was still "theirs" and losing it was one of the humiliations of China's darkest point in modern history. This has been exacerbated by the circumstances around Taiwan's current independence. No Chinese regime - democratic, despotic or otherwise - could ignore such a tempting prize with wealth, strategic significance, and the opportunity to right a historic "wrong".
Frankly, even a temporary preservation of Taiwanese democracy is better than letting it die early.
So where is it not worth American arms intervening, if the residents will (eventually, possibly decades later) set up some sort of democracy in exchange?
What makes Taiwan good, and Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan bad? The latter two even propped up something vaguely resembling a democracy almost immediately.
4. I'd still say that the Japanese took Taiwan from Taiwan, rather than saying the Japanese took Taiwan from China, but I'd agree with you that the historical question is still besides the point.
Taiwan wasn't self-ruling when the Japanese took it. I'd probably agree if you said it was changeover from being a Chinese colony to a Japanese one, but not that it was an independent nation (and the closest thing to true independence were the Taiwanese natives, whose interests were not the focus of any of the powers involved, then or now). In addition, Japan captured it during a war with China, fought Chinese troops on Taiwan/Formosa to do so, and China ceded the island to Japan in the peace treaty.
I assume you're talking about the Republic of Formosa being declared by former Qing officials to resist Japan's occupation, and the following guerilla war, but that doesn't outweigh the above, or change the fact that Taiwan was recognised as part of China before the war.
The people of Taiwan disagree with you. That's not my opinion; that's theirs. The Taiwanese people support American involvement, and unlike the people of China, they are not force-fed propaganda by a one-party state. I trust their judgment above yours, mine, Washington's, and Beijing's.
I'm not telling the Taiwanese what to do or believe. You're the one claiming to be supporting their interests, and I am disagreeing by explaining why I feel their interests are not actually well-served by the current situation due to its certain outcome.
Saying you "trust their judgement" sounds nice, right up until a populace believes things that you don't agree with. Are you a big fan of Vladimir Putin and the annexation of Crimea? Using the same logic for which you are claiming validity for your viewpoint on Taiwan, you should be. I could name quite a few other things I rather expect you don't support, but which are supported by the populace of the country involved.
What the Taiwanese people want is of course not irrelevant. I wish them the best. But what they want doesn't actually change the reality of Taiwan's situation, and there are many historical examples of populaces believing things that were not in accord with reality.
That's despite all the witness testimony that has been presented being against him, a refusal to provide any contemporaneous documentary evidence, a refusal to allow White House staff to testify and an extremely unlikely explanation being offered for Giuliani's involvement in Ukraine (that he was gathering evidence to defend Trump against the accusations in the Mueller report - over a year after that report was published).
"A witness exists" is a terrible argument for guilt. I feel like we're at Kavanaugh 2.0 all over again. Some of the witnesses are plainly not credible and the others don't tell us anything we don't already know from the reporting. There is nothing new here that makes your case any more valid then it was before it failed...
Trump was impeached. Witnesses exist. Documents exist. The impeachment is like a grand jury investigation they found sufficient evidence and witness statements to bring the case to trial.
Not only that but he has continued to do the same damn thing after he was acquitted. Guilliani is still there in Ukraine right now, eyes all bugged out trying to manufacture evidence against Joe Biden's son. Can you imagine if Obama sent his personal lawyer to Romania using millions of dollars of congressionally appropriated aid as leverage to demand an investigation into Bain Capital and Romney's sons in order to influence the election? Republicans would be cool with it, right. ha.
Look, Trump has realized that Republicans are too weak to stand up to him. At all. Ever. And he and they have rigged the systems against the only ones who can oppose his tyranny. That's where we're at. A bunch of fans of the cult of Trump cheering on the death of the Republic and transition to a post-truth dictatorship. Like Russia, we'll have "elections". We'll have "facts".
Anyway, the House found sufficient evidence to send the matter to the the Senate for a trial. Then the Senate decided they didn't want to have a trial. No witnesses, no documents because obviously he was innocent. You see if you are innocent you want a trial with no witnesses or evidence.
Of course the trial was rigged. You don't stonewall and refuse to present evidence if you are not guilty. He obviously did it. Is that even a question? It doesn't matter once Trumpists (Trump cultists) accept that he did it they just move the goalposts further anyway to "well so what he did it".
This is a stain on our nation by Republicans and Trump has only continued to wipe his butt with the Constitution even more since he was acquitted.
@WarChiefZeke I agree we're going to have to disagree here. Trump withheld aid. That's a concrete fact and I think that requires an explanation. At earlier stages in the process Trump first claimed he did not withhold aid and then claimed that he did so because he was concerned about corruption in the country. While a man's mindset is indeed difficult to prove, the fact that this claim was not the basis for his defense in the Senate trial says a lot about its credibility.
I do try to keep an open mind about issues and have supported Trump on occasions where I think his actions have been justified (like in opening dialogue with North Korea for instance). However, I accept I dislike the man and no doubt I can be guilty of succumbing to confirmation bias in considering his actions. I would suggest though that you also consider whether that may be the case for you. You've consistently taken the line of "innocent until proven guilty" and that may make you prone to disregard any evidence of guilt. While the evidence presented to date may not reach the criminal standard of proof, that's not at all the same as saying there's "zero evidence". For instance the testimony to Congress from Sondland (a very strong Trump supporter), was originally that there was no "quid pro quo". He only belatedly changed that testimony once he knew that a phone conversation he'd had with Trump had been overheard and that he was therefore potentially on the hook for perjury. I also referred earlier today to Giuliani's role in this process. The original explanation for his involvement was that he was acting as a 'rogue agent'. More recently it is said he was collecting information to defend Trump against accusations in the Mueller report. I don't think you end up with either of those explanations if you apply Occam's razor.
Looking at your most recent posts, it does seem to me that you are taking the line that the impeachment should be treated as a criminal trial. From that perspective It's interesting that you bring Kavanaugh into the discussion as well, because I think there are similar issues there. There are many situations in which I don't think it is appropriate to apply the criminal standard of proof - that's not generally done for instance if immediate action is required (like police responding to an emergency call). Another field in which this standard is not normally applied is in decisions about employment. In the cases of both Kavanaugh's confirmation and Trump's impeachment the point at issue was whether they should be in a position of power. There were no criminal sanctions under consideration in either case, i.e. these cases were about whether someone should get or keep their job. I don't expect you to accept that frame of reference, but if you did I'm sure you would accept a criminal standard of proof would not be suitable.
Feel free of course to respond to this post. However, given the danger of derailing the thread by (even more ) useless argument I don't expect to respond further on this issue for the time being.
This thread is more of a "stay inside the box" than a "stay on the subject" thread; it jumps topics about every 5 or 6 posts.
Speaking of jumping topics....point out in the Constitution where Congress gets to subpoena the Executive Branch whenever it feels like it, asking for whatever it wants. I just reread through it, so I don't mind waiting while you look for something you won't find.
I do have to admit that the Roger Stone thing is weird, at least the way in which he did it. What Trump *should* have done is pardon Roger Stone, not get Barr to essentially drop the prosecution of the case. I am surprised that, to date, he hasn't pardoned anyone who was caught up in that watered-down Mueller dog-and-pony show.
Andrew Yang and Michael Bennett have become the latest quitters; Deval Patrick should quit by the end of next week. Bloomberg is being allowed to go to a debate in Nevada, a State where his name is not on the Democratic ballot. Money--it may not buy happiness but it can buy pretty much anything else. I am wondering how he is going answer questions about that 2015 speech where he essentially said that 95% of all murders are committed by 16- to 25-year-old non-white males and his "throw them up against the wall to disarm them" approach to "stop and frisk".
edit/add: @Grond0 I forgot to add that the best way to approach this thread is not to respond to people directly because it is far too easy ot get sidetracked, chase rabbits, or split hairs (split hares, to keep with the "chase rabbits"? *shrug*). Oh, and don't forget to skip out for a day or two once or twice per week; yes, that increases the number of unread items but it is also easier to take in smaller doses.
edit/add 2: The Senate had a trial which resulted in acquittal. Some people don't like the results of the trial or don't like how it was conducted, but unfortunately that is too bad--the system does not always result in outcomes of which we all approve.
Interesting we're using not accepting the results of a trial as reasoning here when Roger Stone was found guilty BY A JURY but the President is personally getting Bill Barr to let him off the hook. And even that is being excused. When Stone is convicted, it's part of a "dog and pony show". It's argued Trump should just pardon him, but what he is doing (personally having the AG intervene to save his political henchman) is dismissed as "weird". Wow, what a condemnation. So, to break it down, what Trump is doing with Roger Stone is basically being dismissed as "quirky", but anything in regards to the impeachment trial is "too bad". I LOVE these standards. It must be so amazing to get to live in a world where they apply. Mind you, these are the same people who supposedly lost their shit when Bill Clinton said hello to Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac. Now, the DOJ has basically been turned into Trump's personal law firm, and it's being excused, as always, by saying "oh, that crazy Trump, you never can tell with him." One day you're gonna wake up and realize you aren't living in a free country anymore. And every one of seemingly insignificant steps along the way is what will have brought you there. And you'll pretend no one warned you.
I thought pardoning Stone was out of the question because Stone wouldn’t be able to plead the fifth if he was called to testify.
But I guess if he was called to testify, he wouldn’t have to show up figuring no one else did and nothing happened.
Bloomberg’s stop and frisk program was him trying something (albeit not the right thing), but if it’s ever brought up against Trump, all he has to do is apologize and say at least I didn’t demand the death penalty against innocent kids. Like republicans have the upper hand against infringing on minority rights. All he has to do is own it, apologize for it and say both him and the state of New York have learnt from it and it is no longer being practiced. Then it’ll die quickly.
The democratic field is also going to want Bloomberg to stay in the race as long as possible as he’s getting in the mud slinging with Trump allowing other candidates to focus on their ideas and issues. If all candidates just went after Trump as much as Bloomberg has, it’s feed into the narrative that the Democrats are doing nothing but focusing on getting Trump out of power.
Attacking Bloomberg now isn’t a prudent choice. Best wait for him to win a couple of states or have one of the big 4 (Biden, Pete, Sanders, Warren) to drop out.
Edit: and to make the Stone case even weirder, I can see the judge still giving Stone 7 or 8 years and the prosecution appealing the ruling because it wasn’t lenient enough.
Michael Bloomberg literally hasn't done anything but blanket the country with TV ads because he has an infinite supply of money (as in, he's an ACTUAL billionaire). Frankly, if the race comes down to Trump vs. Bloomberg, we are a full-on oligarchy and we should just tear the entire thing down and start from scratch. He's shit. He's less shit than Trump, but that's the only thing he has going for him. Stop and frisk was horrible. It was a remnant of Giuliani and Bloomberg took over for Giuliani. He was a Republican for years and an independent as far as I was aware until 5 minutes ago. New York City policing in a microcosm of the problems in our justice system at large, and no, an apology frankly does not cut it. It's representative of how minorities have to live their lives in this country on a daily basis. As suspects. The only thing Michael Bloomberg's "campaign" is proving is how susceptible the public is to advertising.
Michael Bloomberg literally hasn't done anything but blanket the country with TV ads because he has an infinite supply of money (as in, he's an ACTUAL billionaire).
Literally. My kids who are way too young to vote or care about politics keep telling me they are seeing ads from this Bloomberg fella. All they do is watch kids videos on YouTube occasionally.
Interesting we're using not accepting the results of a trial as reasoning here when Roger Stone was found guilty BY A JURY but the President is personally getting Bill Barr to let him off the hook. And even that is being excused. When Stone is convicted, it's part of a "dog and pony show". It's argued Trump should just pardon him, but what he is doing (personally having the AG intervene to save his political henchman) is dismissed as "weird". Wow, what a condemnation. So, to break it down, what Trump is doing with Roger Stone is basically being dismissed as "quirky", but anything in regards to the impeachment trial is "too bad". I LOVE these standards. It must be so amazing to get to live in a world where they apply. Mind you, these are the same people who supposedly lost their shit when Bill Clinton said hello to Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac. Now, the DOJ has basically been turned into Trump's personal law firm, and it's being excused, as always, by saying "oh, that crazy Trump, you never can tell with him." One day you're gonna wake up and realize you aren't living in a free country anymore. And every one of seemingly insignificant steps along the way is what will have brought you there. And you'll pretend no one warned you.
Good point. To recap:
- Bill Clinton said hello to Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac and Conservative tears flowed for months
- a jury found Roger Stone guilty, UNANIMOUSLY, of criminal activity and Trump fans are like it's cool: Barr should intervene overrule prosecutors and the jury because the defendant is Trump's buddy or Trump should just pardon him.
- The House of Representatives found sufficient evidence to send impeachment to the Senate where they conduct a rigged trial with no witnesses or evidence. Even so more than half of the Senate admits that he did the things he was impeached for (a handful of Republicans say he did it but then vote to acquit anyway because they are partisans).
- The same conservatives who want Trump to overrule a jury are using a trial rigged by partisan Republicans to say "see he's innocent"
We're seeing mental gymnastics that could quality for the Olympic games here.
Mitt Romney was the only Republican Senator to vote in favor of removal, but Republicans Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, Ben Sasse, and Marco Rubio have all indicated that they consider Trump guilty. Then, in a display of naked partisanship, even though he's guilty, they refused to vote to remove him.
A clear bi-partisan majority of the Senate considers Trump guilty.
Mueller investigation was really the best example of why modern political media is such garbage. For years we were told this was a sure thing, every little detail from every possible unnamed source was treated as the gospel truth, and in the end not even a fraction of what we were told turned out to be halfway factual. It's almost comical to read all of that information in the current light.
The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them
As much as I hate Trump tweets, or find them hilarious in a twisted way, this has an element of truth to it. Look how angry they get if Trump wants to investigate corruption, say, in Ukraine. Clearly they aren't concerned with potential abuse of conduct if it is the other party, in this matter and a great many others besides.
Its again obvious that you never read the report.
By all means, point out this Russian collusion in the report.
That's adorable. You continue to make demonstrably false claims, but somehow its on other people to prove you wrong, rather than on you to provide any evidence that your claims are remotely true.
The House of Representatives found sufficient evidence to send impeachment to the Senate where they conduct a rigged trial with no witnesses or evidence.
The House should have gone to the courts to enforce subpoenas for witnesses. The failure to have the witnesses or testimony they wanted is on *them*, not the Senate. Perhaps next time they won't try to rush their research project, trying to get it all done the weekend before it is due, and wind up getting an F on it.
If a majority of Senators really thought Trump was guilty then there would not have been majority votes to acquit. Their personal feelings are irrelevant; only the vote matters.
I see that some Democrats have been talking about increasing the number of Justices on the Supreme Court. That is a power Congress has but has not used since it set the number to 9; however, the only way that works is for a Democrat to win the White House (which is possible) and for Democrats to take control of the Senate (which is exceedingly unlikely). My advice: don't keep saying that--the possibility exists that Republicans could retake the House, and the more talk about packing the Court happens the more they will get that idea for themselves. Is any Democrat really willing for Congress to raise the count to 11, 13, or even 15 (which would be ridiculous) and thus give Trump 2, 4, or 6 new appointees, all of whom would be fast-track-confirmed by the Senate via cloture votes which require only a simple majority?
The House of Representatives found sufficient evidence to send impeachment to the Senate where they conduct a rigged trial with no witnesses or evidence.
The House should have gone to the courts to enforce subpoenas for witnesses. The failure to have the witnesses or testimony they wanted is on *them*, not the Senate. Perhaps next time they won't try to rush their research project, trying to get it all done the weekend before it is due, and wind up getting an F on it.
If a majority of Senators really thought Trump was guilty then there would not have been majority votes to acquit. Their personal feelings are irrelevant; only the vote matters.
I see that some Democrats have been talking about increasing the number of Justices on the Supreme Court. That is a power Congress has but has not used since it set the number to 9; however, the only way that works is for a Democrat to win the White House (which is possible) and for Democrats to take control of the Senate (which is exceedingly unlikely). My advice: don't keep saying that--the possibility exists that Republicans could retake the House, and the more talk about packing the Court happens the more they will get that idea for themselves. Is any Democrat really willing for Congress to raise the count to 11, 13, or even 15 (which would be ridiculous) and thus give Trump 2, 4, or 6 new appointees, all of whom would be fast-track-confirmed by the Senate via cloture votes which require only a simple majority?
Look Republicans have shown no qualms about packing the courts already lol. They stole a Supreme Court seat and keep putting unqualified people on the Courts. They started this. We'll end it. Republicans want to retaliate after? Well that's on them. They've ALREADY made the the system illegitimate. The systems already broken, threatening to break it more is an empty threat when it's already broke.
"The House should have gone to the courts to enforce subpoenas for witnesses."
Not Really.
The Justice Department failed. They should ensured an unbiased fact-finding investigation happened themselves - like what happened with every other Impeachment. It's their job, not the House of Representatives.
Why wouldn't Barr allow documents to be provided if there was nothing to hide? Why wouldn't the FBI or Justice Dept work to ensure the truth came out? Why were they more concerned with covering up the truth then revealing the truth? Why wouldn't the Justice Department join lawsuits to force the truth to come out?
Reminder: Obstruction of Congress was literally one of the impeachment charges. The House tried to investigate and were blocked. The Justice Department and to an extent the Courts failed. Not the House of Representatives.
When the Justice Department was stonewalling Congress and acting with partisan intent they broke the process. William Barr and Donald Trump have destroyed the rule of law. The House of Representatives is not an investigative agency. They are because they are forced to be but the real problem is the utter failure of the Justice Department to be impartial. Trump has ruined justice in this country by putting corrupt loyalists in the Justice Department and on Federal Courts. He's not putting conservatives in these places, he's putting yes-men loyalists to rubber stamp his flagrant authoritarian behavior.
The Republicans already packed the court. They simply did it by subtraction, with the STATED belief that no Democrat can legitimately nominate a Justice unless they also control the Senate. If the situation arises, they will hold the seat open until a Republican can fill it. Find THAT in the Constitution. The open policy of the GOP is that Democrats don't get to make Supreme Court picks anymore. Why?? Because fuck you, that's why. As I've said before, every single Obama voter in 2012 had a part of their vote nullified.
The courts cannot fail if they are not approached. Congress is not in charge of the Executive Branch, which is apparently a lesson they needed to relearn.
Still...the House will get its chance to ask Barr all the hard questions--he has agreed to appear before them next month. The primary reason is about the Roger Stone situation but we all know that the questions will then branch out on to other topics relatively quickly.
Once again, though, I see that far too many people simply cannot understand the simple concept of "innocent until proven guilty". People who are accused do not have to provide documents and testimony to prove their innocence, only to have their accusers ask "if you have nothing to hide then why aren't you producing the documents?". No, the responsibility to prove guilt via documents and testimony is on those levying the accusations, after which the accused has the option of producing exculpatory documentation or testimony.
I get it, though--proving that people are guilty is hard, so it is much easier to simply say "they did x" and then sit back, arms crossed, as if the accusation itself is proof of guilt. It just doesn't work that way, no matter how many times the same ridiculous talking point gets uttered. Even Harvey Weinstein--long-time close, personal friend of the Clintons--is innocent until the jury in his current court case finds him guilty.
Maybe if Democrats had not destroyed the country by weaponizing the IRS and FBI against their political opponents none of the subsequent things would have occurred.
edit/add: The real problem with "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" is this: if the people saying "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" change the rules about what they are looking for then you cannot know whether or not you have something which needs to be hidden. Open-ended investigations without a clearly-defined purpose or staying focused on their intended line of questioning are dangerous, espeically when they are politically motivated.
I'll tell you all something. I think Trump is an asshole. Unfortunately for the Democrats I think Al Gore is an asshole. I think Hillary Clinton and her husband are assholes. I think Barack Obama is an asshole. I think John Kerry is an asshole. I think Biden is an asshole.
On the Republican side, lest you think I'm biased, I think 'W' is an asshole. I thought his dad was an asshole too. I actually think Romney is an asshole. McCain maybe not but that's just probably because he's no longer with us.
As far as I'm concerned I've had to pick the lesser of two assholes for as long as I've been able to vote for President. It's like Dark Helmet in Spaceballs; "I'm surrounded by assholes!". That's why I really don't lose too much sleep worrying about what they do. Assholes get away with doing things that assholes do. I also think that the reason that they're all assholes is that they don't really have as much control of things that we think they do. The real big assholes are pulling the strings of the lesser assholes.
The main reason I like Bernie Sanders is that, oh my God, I don't think he's an asshole and the real big assholes are scared to death of him...
Edit: Clarification, I don't think the real big assholes can pull Trump's strings either. Unfortunately, 'The Donald' is a wildcard asshole who doesn't need string pullers to make him a bigger one. That's even more scary in a way...
The courts cannot fail if they are not approached. Congress is not in charge of the Executive Branch, which is apparently a lesson they needed to relearn.
Still...the House will get its chance to ask Barr all the hard questions--he has agreed to appear before them next month. The primary reason is about the Roger Stone situation but we all know that the questions will then branch out on to other topics relatively quickly.
Once again, though, I see that far too many people simply cannot understand the simple concept of "innocent until proven guilty". People who are accused do not have to provide documents and testimony to prove their innocence, only to have their accusers ask "if you have nothing to hide then why aren't you producing the documents?". No, the responsibility to prove guilt via documents and testimony is on those levying the accusations, after which the accused has the option of producing exculpatory documentation or testimony.
I get it, though--proving that people are guilty is hard, so it is much easier to simply say "they did x" and then sit back, arms crossed, as if the accusation itself is proof of guilt. It just doesn't work that way, no matter how many times the same ridiculous talking point gets uttered. Even Harvey Weinstein--long-time close, personal friend of the Clintons--is innocent until the jury in his current court case finds him guilty.
Maybe if Democrats had not destroyed the country by weaponizing the IRS and FBI against their political opponents none of the subsequent things would have occurred.
edit/add: The real problem with "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" is this: if the people saying "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" change the rules about what they are looking for then you cannot know whether or not you have something which needs to be hidden. Open-ended investigations without a clearly-defined purpose or staying focused on their intended line of questioning are dangerous, espeically when they are politically motivated.
This is not a criminal trial. This is the government. Separation of powers, the Executive is supposed to be subject to Congressional oversight. Saying muh they're partisan and then using that as an excuse to NOT ALLOW oversight is a huge problem.
Riddle me this:
-Trump refuses to allow oversight.
-He's packing the courts with goddamned lunatics.
-We don't know what he's doing because he is mis-using classification system to hide his actions and is not accountable.
- When he inevitably loses lawsuits he's giving out almost totally redacted documents that obscure the truth.
-Republicans are weak and won't stand up to anything he says.
How is this good? How is this not a de facto dictatorship? What oversight is there of the executive branch right now? Hmm? How is this what's supposed to be happening and normal?? It's obviously not.
Not complying with oversight is not Congresses' fault, it's the executive branches fault.
The real problem with "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" is this: if the people saying "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" change the rules about what they are looking for then you cannot know whether or not you have something which needs to be hidden
That's rich considering Bill Clinton was impeached over a blow job after the investigation started about a land deal.
Maybe if Democrats had not destroyed the country by weaponizing the IRS and FBI against their political opponents none of the subsequent things would have occurred.
This is ridiculous. Do you realize that every President in the past 50ish years (since Nixon) has released his tax returns, except Trump
The IRS was like "sure no problemo" and handed over Hunter Biden's tax returns without any problem to Senate Repulbicans like last week. Tell us again, who's hiding and weaponizing the the IRS????????????????? Congress is supposed to provide oversight of the Executive branch and not be used to attack the President's political rival's son. So spare us the fake concern about the IRS being weaponized.
The FBI did it's own thing. AND THEY FOUND A LOT. The Trump campaign earned the investigation themselves, nothing to do with weaponizing the FBI. What a silly idea. Did you not pay attention to the Mueller report at all? Trump and campaign welcomed foreign interference from Russia. The main reason they weren't prosecuted was because they couldn't prove that they didn't know it was wrong. Yes, guys like Donald Trump Jr. were too moronic to prosecute and this was on instance where ignorance of the law got them off the hook.
Comey realized it and, being a Republican appointed by a Republican (kept on by Obama because he was doing his job) decided to do something without the involvement of the Justice Department. Whatever he did was based on the MERITS.
Criminals don't get to say, gee you're biased against me!!!! Stone, Manafort, TRUMP and all the others drew scrutiny for their actions.
You do realize this dear leader is a life long con man right? Trump University? A scam. Multiple bankruptcies. Lies constantly. He's forbidden by the Courts from running a charity in the state of New York because he ripped off a children's cancer charity. This moron ran Trump Airlines, sold Trump steaks, etc. He has had to settle lawsuits for racist building practices.
Could be where there's smoke there's fire and it's not the fire department's problem it's actually the arsonist.
The courts cannot fail if they are not approached. Congress is not in charge of the Executive Branch, which is apparently a lesson they needed to relearn.
Still...the House will get its chance to ask Barr all the hard questions--he has agreed to appear before them next month. The primary reason is about the Roger Stone situation but we all know that the questions will then branch out on to other topics relatively quickly.
Once again, though, I see that far too many people simply cannot understand the simple concept of "innocent until proven guilty". People who are accused do not have to provide documents and testimony to prove their innocence, only to have their accusers ask "if you have nothing to hide then why aren't you producing the documents?". No, the responsibility to prove guilt via documents and testimony is on those levying the accusations, after which the accused has the option of producing exculpatory documentation or testimony.
I get it, though--proving that people are guilty is hard, so it is much easier to simply say "they did x" and then sit back, arms crossed, as if the accusation itself is proof of guilt. It just doesn't work that way, no matter how many times the same ridiculous talking point gets uttered. Even Harvey Weinstein--long-time close, personal friend of the Clintons--is innocent until the jury in his current court case finds him guilty.
Maybe if Democrats had not destroyed the country by weaponizing the IRS and FBI against their political opponents none of the subsequent things would have occurred.
edit/add: The real problem with "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" is this: if the people saying "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" change the rules about what they are looking for then you cannot know whether or not you have something which needs to be hidden. Open-ended investigations without a clearly-defined purpose or staying focused on their intended line of questioning are dangerous, espeically when they are politically motivated.
This is not a criminal trial. This is the government. Separation of powers, the Executive is supposed to be subject to Congressional oversight. Saying muh they're partisan and then using that as an excuse to NOT ALLOW oversight is a huge problem.
Riddle me this:
-Trump refuses to allow oversight.
-He's packing the courts with goddamned lunatics.
-We don't know what he's doing because he is mis-using classification system to hide his actions and is not accountable.
- When he inevitably loses lawsuits he's giving out almost totally redacted documents that obscure the truth.
-Republicans are weak and won't stand up to anything he says.
How is this good? How is this not a de facto dictatorship? What oversight is there of the executive branch right now? Hmm? How is this what's supposed to be happening and normal?? It's obviously not.
Not complying with oversight is not Congresses' fault, it's the executive branches fault.
The real problem with "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" is this: if the people saying "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" change the rules about what they are looking for then you cannot know whether or not you have something which needs to be hidden
That's rich considering Bill Clinton was impeached over a blow job after the investigation started about a land deal.
Maybe if Democrats had not destroyed the country by weaponizing the IRS and FBI against their political opponents none of the subsequent things would have occurred.
This is ridiculous. Do you realize that every President has released his tax returns,
The IRS was like "sure no problemo" and handed over Hunter Biden's tax returns without any problem to Senate Repulbicans like last week. Tell us again, who's hiding and weaponizing the the IRS????????????????? Congress is supposed to provide oversight of the Executive branch and not be used to attack the President's political rival's son. So spare us the fake concern about the IRS being weaponized.
The FBI did it's own thing. AND THEY FOUND A LOT. The Trump campaign earned the investigation themselves, nothing to do with weaponizing the FBI. What a silly idea. Did you not pay attention to the Mueller report at all? Trump and campaign welcomed foreign interference from Russia. The main reason they weren't prosecuted was because they couldn't prove that they didn't know it was wrong. Yes, guys like Donald Trump Jr. were too moronic to prosecute and this was on instance where ignorance of the law got them off the hook.
Comey realized it and, being a Republican appointed by a Republican (kept on by Obama because he was doing his job) decided to do something without the involvement of the Justice Department. Whatever he did was based on the MERITS.
Criminals don't get to say, gee you're biased against me!!!! Stone, Manafort, TRUMP and all the others drew scrutiny for their actions.
You do realize this dear leader is a life long con man right? Trump University? A scam. Multiple bankruptcies. Lies constantly. He's forbidden by the Courts from running a charity in the state of New York because he ripped off a children's cancer charity. This moron ran Trump Airlines, sold Trump steaks, etc. He has had to settle lawsuits for racist building practices.
Could be where there's smoke there's fire and it's not the fire department's problem it's actually the arsonist.
The problem is, getting rid of the most powerful man in the world is going to require him getting defeated in an election. The stakes are too high for a polarized electorate to think otherwise. The impeachment and Mueller report were a predictable joke. Republicans and Democrats are both entrenched with no room for a middle ground. I know this because my family is a prime example of the 'Trump can do no wrong as long as he's doing policy things I agree with' camp. I can't be certain, but I suspect that if the circumstances were reversed and Trump was a Democrat power-monger, the same excuses would apply to that person from the left. I say that because it's human nature, not because I have any concrete evidence.
I'm ready for a liberal independent (not Democrat) to take over and see what he can do. Part of this is to see what happens because I want evidence, not suspicions of what others think will happen. Again, I don't agree with all of Bernie's proposals, but I don't mind rolling the dice at this point to gather data. I honestly don't understand why more supposed Democrats aren't supporting Sanders at this point. Is it really that they don't think he can beat Trump, or is it that they don't really believe in liberal ideas?
If Trump called off the election in November, 33% of the country would cheer him on. THAT is what's frightening. Trump is an authoritarian. This shit does not happen overnight. As I've described countless times before, it happens in incrmental steps, each designed to be slightly less shocking than the last, each designed to further normalize what's going on. When it arrives, your kids will still go to school that day. You're grocery store will be open. There won't be tanks on your street. But what was there before will be gone.
If Trump called off the election in November, 33% of the country would cheer him on. THAT is what's frightening. Trump is an authoritarian. This shit does not happen overnight. As I've described countless times before, it happens in incrmental steps, each designed to be slightly less shocking than the last, each designed to further normalize what's going on. When it arrives, your kids will still go to school that day. You're grocery store will be open. There won't be tanks on your street. But what was there before will be gone.
I think you agree with me more than most so-called liberals in this thread. It's time for the Democrats to finally put up or shut up. So do you want to be a real liberal or a Republican light? Seriously, I've heard for decades now how supposedly popular the ideas are on the left. Now you've really got a chance to prove it. What will you all do with this opportunity? Biden? Buttigieg?? Klobuchar??? I like Klobuchar honestly but I don't think she has the chops to take on Trump. Buttigieg has no chance. Biden will be savaged in debates. He doesn't seem to have the energy required to win. Warren is not likeable. To me it's between billionaire Bloomberg and Sanders. Which one would be the better president? It's going to be an interesting race. Either could beat Trump but neither is a shoo-in...
If Trump called off the election in November, 33% of the country would cheer him on. THAT is what's frightening. Trump is an authoritarian. This shit does not happen overnight. As I've described countless times before, it happens in incrmental steps, each designed to be slightly less shocking than the last, each designed to further normalize what's going on. When it arrives, your kids will still go to school that day. You're grocery store will be open. There won't be tanks on your street. But what was there before will be gone.
"Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty."
" ... But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D."
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”
> —Milton Mayer, *They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45*
Comments
Which is the best part. The whistleblower admitted himself in the complaint he wasn't a direct witness, and this is about the quality of evidence we have gotten across the spectrum for all of these nonsense charges.
A verdict has already been reached, so there is little need to rehash it much further. This is the third loss on the third false charge so far. Think they would learn.
Democrats have rewritten the rules. Don't blame me--blame them. Guilty until you produce proof of your innocence, remember? Failure to provide proof of your innocence is also a cover-up. Oh, you are also allowed to call other people "Russian agents" *and* you can refuse to be served summons of the lawsuit against you--twice--once at your house and once at your lawyer's office.
Recall--I am no Republican, but I definitely oppose Democrats.
Incdentally, Joe Biden is not much of *anyone's* political opponent these days--he decided to give up on New Hampshire and is already in South Carolina.
It's like me ripping up a search warrant and slamming the door screaming "witch hunt" if police officers came to my door looking into one of my alleged crimes. Except that wouldn't go over well.
And before you go, "well they should have went through the courts to get the subpoenas granted." please show me where in the constitution that the House needs to go to the judicial branch to have subpoenas answered.
I already pointed out one high profile person in Chelsea Manning serving time for not answering a subpoena. Honestly, the double standards that is being put on display is very fascinating.
Benghazi anyone?
Yup. Democrats definitely started the weaponization of congress.
Defending yourself legally isn't proof of guilt, not even evidence of it, not even the appearance of evidence. If he wasn't challenging them in court like he is he wouldn't be getting very good legal advice.
There is no replacement for evidence, despite the attempts to invert traditional ideas of guilt and innocence.
As an aside I haven't heard of a single subpoena that even had the appearance of relevancy to this question, let alone some smoking gun.
The defense case, in relation to abuse of power, rested on two issues:
(i) in order to be abuse of power, the President must have had a wrongful motive for withholding the aid - but Congress have no way of knowing what was inside the President's head (there is a separate issue about whether the block on aid was actually illegal, but that was not part of the impeachment case).
(ii) even if there was abuse, that would not reach the constitutional threshold necessary for impeachment.
I can understand those arguing in favor of (ii). I can even understand strong supporters of Trump just ignoring the whole issue as irrelevant. I find it more difficult to understand though the position of those arguing that the President was in fact innocent. If impeachment were a criminal trial, defending (i) would be easier - but it's not a criminal trial. I think the closest analogue to a judicial process would be a civil trial, where there are a couple of major differences - the standard of proof is based on the balance of probabilities, rather than beyond reasonable doubt; a jury is entitled to draw inferences from a failure to provide testimony.
In this thread there are those who do not describe themselves as supporters of Trump, but (in addition to suggesting that the proceedings are a waste of time) are defending him as actually innocent. That's despite all the witness testimony that has been presented being against him, a refusal to provide any contemporaneous documentary evidence, a refusal to allow White House staff to testify and an extremely unlikely explanation being offered for Giuliani's involvement in Ukraine (that he was gathering evidence to defend Trump against the accusations in the Mueller report - over a year after that report was published).
Is the basis for stating Trump to be innocent of abuse of power simply that a criminal standard of proof should in fact be applied to this case? If not, then what am I missing?
"A witness exists" is a terrible argument for guilt. I feel like we're at Kavanaugh 2.0 all over again. Some of the witnesses are plainly not credible and the others don't tell us anything we don't already know from the reporting. There is nothing new here that makes your case any more valid then it was before it failed.
Everything else you mentioned is perfectly normal and acceptable legal defense mechanisms that exist in standard court rooms. You are able to file motions to suppress evidence, testimony, what have you, if they are not relevant or for other reasons. As I've said before, a proper legal defense is only proof of guilt if you have already reached that conclusion and confirmation bias is setting in. A proper legal defense is not evidence of guilt, in any way, shape, or form, and that's a dangerous mindset to have.
I doubt we will reach an agreement here. You have been on the side of every anti Trump crusade so far and I have mostly been on the opposite. This case is exactly like the rest, zero evidence, a few sketchy claims, all resting ultimately upon how you feel about the man"s mindset and, I can not stress this enough, absolutely nothing concrete whatsoever. I feel like time has proven me right on these things, as has the ruling, so I'm not sure what's left to go over.
I probably wasn't clear enough, for which I apologise.
America is involved with Taiwan because it is an empire. There is no world where America is isolationist or multilateral where it keeps battlefleets in the area in a staredown with Beijing. An America that doesn't claim the right to its "stategic interests" in other countries that are not actually any of America's business is an America that is not defending Taiwan.
Supporting one intervention thus supports all of them implicitly, because you cannot separate out the reasoning and assumption that led to America intervening in the Chinese Civil War from the reasons that led to America intervening in the Vietnam War. By saying "this is a good one", you support the doctrines and reasons that lead to all American interventions, because they are ultimately more similar than they are different.
The fact is I could with very little change use every one of your arguments supporting Taiwan to support South Vietnam, and that is a problem.
Thank you.
I disagree with any flat statement that Beijing was the "worse option". Both at the time and with the benefit of hindsight, negotiating with the Communists could very well have been the better option.
I will note that you cared about what the people wanted in Taiwan now, but are ignoring that a) the Communist government had more support among the people of China then, and b) the Kuomintang was not welcomed by the natives of Taiwan (and actions by their American backers didn't help).
That point comes if a lot of people die when China invades the island. Also, once again, Taiwan was a brutal dictatorship until the 1980s. Again, I reject your assertion that a right-wing dictatorship is intrinsically "better" than a left-wing one.
America defended Taiwan the not-democracy for decades.
And I'm sorry, but Taiwan is strategically crucial for both China and America. Here are a few links for you:
https://theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/taiwans-status-geopolitical-absurdity/593371/
https://taiwaninsight.org/2018/02/26/cross-strait-relations-the-strategic-importance-of-taiwan/
https://chasfreeman.net/books-and-publications/supplementary-texts-interesting-times/strategic-significance-of-taiwan/
I could find dozens more. Ignoring the strategic significance of Taiwan, and ignoring that that is the reason for America's interest in Taiwan, is simply ignoring reality.
And incidentally, all of this also shows one of the reasons why any unified China will want Taiwan.
The United States, as long as it remains an empire that claims the right to project force in East Asia, is exceedingly unlikely to agree to Taiwan rejoining China. Some of the many reasons for this are detailed in the links above.
Any Chinese state will want Taiwan, again. Aside from strategic reasons, the Chinese kicked the Dutch out of Taiwan and one Chinese regime or another controlled it from the 1600s until the Japanese took it. Yes, it was fairly lax control, but it was still "theirs" and losing it was one of the humiliations of China's darkest point in modern history. This has been exacerbated by the circumstances around Taiwan's current independence. No Chinese regime - democratic, despotic or otherwise - could ignore such a tempting prize with wealth, strategic significance, and the opportunity to right a historic "wrong".
So where is it not worth American arms intervening, if the residents will (eventually, possibly decades later) set up some sort of democracy in exchange?
What makes Taiwan good, and Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan bad? The latter two even propped up something vaguely resembling a democracy almost immediately.
Taiwan wasn't self-ruling when the Japanese took it. I'd probably agree if you said it was changeover from being a Chinese colony to a Japanese one, but not that it was an independent nation (and the closest thing to true independence were the Taiwanese natives, whose interests were not the focus of any of the powers involved, then or now). In addition, Japan captured it during a war with China, fought Chinese troops on Taiwan/Formosa to do so, and China ceded the island to Japan in the peace treaty.
I assume you're talking about the Republic of Formosa being declared by former Qing officials to resist Japan's occupation, and the following guerilla war, but that doesn't outweigh the above, or change the fact that Taiwan was recognised as part of China before the war.
I'm not telling the Taiwanese what to do or believe. You're the one claiming to be supporting their interests, and I am disagreeing by explaining why I feel their interests are not actually well-served by the current situation due to its certain outcome.
Saying you "trust their judgement" sounds nice, right up until a populace believes things that you don't agree with. Are you a big fan of Vladimir Putin and the annexation of Crimea? Using the same logic for which you are claiming validity for your viewpoint on Taiwan, you should be. I could name quite a few other things I rather expect you don't support, but which are supported by the populace of the country involved.
What the Taiwanese people want is of course not irrelevant. I wish them the best. But what they want doesn't actually change the reality of Taiwan's situation, and there are many historical examples of populaces believing things that were not in accord with reality.
Trump was impeached. Witnesses exist. Documents exist. The impeachment is like a grand jury investigation they found sufficient evidence and witness statements to bring the case to trial.
Not only that but he has continued to do the same damn thing after he was acquitted. Guilliani is still there in Ukraine right now, eyes all bugged out trying to manufacture evidence against Joe Biden's son. Can you imagine if Obama sent his personal lawyer to Romania using millions of dollars of congressionally appropriated aid as leverage to demand an investigation into Bain Capital and Romney's sons in order to influence the election? Republicans would be cool with it, right. ha.
Look, Trump has realized that Republicans are too weak to stand up to him. At all. Ever. And he and they have rigged the systems against the only ones who can oppose his tyranny. That's where we're at. A bunch of fans of the cult of Trump cheering on the death of the Republic and transition to a post-truth dictatorship. Like Russia, we'll have "elections". We'll have "facts".
Anyway, the House found sufficient evidence to send the matter to the the Senate for a trial. Then the Senate decided they didn't want to have a trial. No witnesses, no documents because obviously he was innocent. You see if you are innocent you want a trial with no witnesses or evidence.
Of course the trial was rigged. You don't stonewall and refuse to present evidence if you are not guilty. He obviously did it. Is that even a question? It doesn't matter once Trumpists (Trump cultists) accept that he did it they just move the goalposts further anyway to "well so what he did it".
This is a stain on our nation by Republicans and Trump has only continued to wipe his butt with the Constitution even more since he was acquitted.
I do try to keep an open mind about issues and have supported Trump on occasions where I think his actions have been justified (like in opening dialogue with North Korea for instance). However, I accept I dislike the man and no doubt I can be guilty of succumbing to confirmation bias in considering his actions. I would suggest though that you also consider whether that may be the case for you. You've consistently taken the line of "innocent until proven guilty" and that may make you prone to disregard any evidence of guilt. While the evidence presented to date may not reach the criminal standard of proof, that's not at all the same as saying there's "zero evidence". For instance the testimony to Congress from Sondland (a very strong Trump supporter), was originally that there was no "quid pro quo". He only belatedly changed that testimony once he knew that a phone conversation he'd had with Trump had been overheard and that he was therefore potentially on the hook for perjury. I also referred earlier today to Giuliani's role in this process. The original explanation for his involvement was that he was acting as a 'rogue agent'. More recently it is said he was collecting information to defend Trump against accusations in the Mueller report. I don't think you end up with either of those explanations if you apply Occam's razor.
Looking at your most recent posts, it does seem to me that you are taking the line that the impeachment should be treated as a criminal trial. From that perspective It's interesting that you bring Kavanaugh into the discussion as well, because I think there are similar issues there. There are many situations in which I don't think it is appropriate to apply the criminal standard of proof - that's not generally done for instance if immediate action is required (like police responding to an emergency call). Another field in which this standard is not normally applied is in decisions about employment. In the cases of both Kavanaugh's confirmation and Trump's impeachment the point at issue was whether they should be in a position of power. There were no criminal sanctions under consideration in either case, i.e. these cases were about whether someone should get or keep their job. I don't expect you to accept that frame of reference, but if you did I'm sure you would accept a criminal standard of proof would not be suitable.
Feel free of course to respond to this post. However, given the danger of derailing the thread by (even more
Speaking of jumping topics....point out in the Constitution where Congress gets to subpoena the Executive Branch whenever it feels like it, asking for whatever it wants. I just reread through it, so I don't mind waiting while you look for something you won't find.
I do have to admit that the Roger Stone thing is weird, at least the way in which he did it. What Trump *should* have done is pardon Roger Stone, not get Barr to essentially drop the prosecution of the case. I am surprised that, to date, he hasn't pardoned anyone who was caught up in that watered-down Mueller dog-and-pony show.
Andrew Yang and Michael Bennett have become the latest quitters; Deval Patrick should quit by the end of next week. Bloomberg is being allowed to go to a debate in Nevada, a State where his name is not on the Democratic ballot. Money--it may not buy happiness but it can buy pretty much anything else. I am wondering how he is going answer questions about that 2015 speech where he essentially said that 95% of all murders are committed by 16- to 25-year-old non-white males and his "throw them up against the wall to disarm them" approach to "stop and frisk".
edit/add: @Grond0 I forgot to add that the best way to approach this thread is not to respond to people directly because it is far too easy ot get sidetracked, chase rabbits, or split hairs (split hares, to keep with the "chase rabbits"? *shrug*). Oh, and don't forget to skip out for a day or two once or twice per week; yes, that increases the number of unread items but it is also easier to take in smaller doses.
edit/add 2: The Senate had a trial which resulted in acquittal. Some people don't like the results of the trial or don't like how it was conducted, but unfortunately that is too bad--the system does not always result in outcomes of which we all approve.
But I guess if he was called to testify, he wouldn’t have to show up figuring no one else did and nothing happened.
Bloomberg’s stop and frisk program was him trying something (albeit not the right thing), but if it’s ever brought up against Trump, all he has to do is apologize and say at least I didn’t demand the death penalty against innocent kids. Like republicans have the upper hand against infringing on minority rights. All he has to do is own it, apologize for it and say both him and the state of New York have learnt from it and it is no longer being practiced. Then it’ll die quickly.
The democratic field is also going to want Bloomberg to stay in the race as long as possible as he’s getting in the mud slinging with Trump allowing other candidates to focus on their ideas and issues. If all candidates just went after Trump as much as Bloomberg has, it’s feed into the narrative that the Democrats are doing nothing but focusing on getting Trump out of power.
Attacking Bloomberg now isn’t a prudent choice. Best wait for him to win a couple of states or have one of the big 4 (Biden, Pete, Sanders, Warren) to drop out.
Edit: and to make the Stone case even weirder, I can see the judge still giving Stone 7 or 8 years and the prosecution appealing the ruling because it wasn’t lenient enough.
Literally. My kids who are way too young to vote or care about politics keep telling me they are seeing ads from this Bloomberg fella. All they do is watch kids videos on YouTube occasionally.
Good point. To recap:
- Bill Clinton said hello to Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac and Conservative tears flowed for months
- a jury found Roger Stone guilty, UNANIMOUSLY, of criminal activity and Trump fans are like it's cool: Barr should intervene overrule prosecutors and the jury because the defendant is Trump's buddy or Trump should just pardon him.
- The House of Representatives found sufficient evidence to send impeachment to the Senate where they conduct a rigged trial with no witnesses or evidence. Even so more than half of the Senate admits that he did the things he was impeached for (a handful of Republicans say he did it but then vote to acquit anyway because they are partisans).
- The same conservatives who want Trump to overrule a jury are using a trial rigged by partisan Republicans to say "see he's innocent"
We're seeing mental gymnastics that could quality for the Olympic games here.
A clear bi-partisan majority of the Senate considers Trump guilty.
That's adorable. You continue to make demonstrably false claims, but somehow its on other people to prove you wrong, rather than on you to provide any evidence that your claims are remotely true.
The House should have gone to the courts to enforce subpoenas for witnesses. The failure to have the witnesses or testimony they wanted is on *them*, not the Senate. Perhaps next time they won't try to rush their research project, trying to get it all done the weekend before it is due, and wind up getting an F on it.
If a majority of Senators really thought Trump was guilty then there would not have been majority votes to acquit. Their personal feelings are irrelevant; only the vote matters.
I see that some Democrats have been talking about increasing the number of Justices on the Supreme Court. That is a power Congress has but has not used since it set the number to 9; however, the only way that works is for a Democrat to win the White House (which is possible) and for Democrats to take control of the Senate (which is exceedingly unlikely). My advice: don't keep saying that--the possibility exists that Republicans could retake the House, and the more talk about packing the Court happens the more they will get that idea for themselves. Is any Democrat really willing for Congress to raise the count to 11, 13, or even 15 (which would be ridiculous) and thus give Trump 2, 4, or 6 new appointees, all of whom would be fast-track-confirmed by the Senate via cloture votes which require only a simple majority?
Look Republicans have shown no qualms about packing the courts already lol. They stole a Supreme Court seat and keep putting unqualified people on the Courts. They started this. We'll end it. Republicans want to retaliate after? Well that's on them. They've ALREADY made the the system illegitimate. The systems already broken, threatening to break it more is an empty threat when it's already broke.
"The House should have gone to the courts to enforce subpoenas for witnesses."
Not Really.
The Justice Department failed. They should ensured an unbiased fact-finding investigation happened themselves - like what happened with every other Impeachment. It's their job, not the House of Representatives.
Why wouldn't Barr allow documents to be provided if there was nothing to hide? Why wouldn't the FBI or Justice Dept work to ensure the truth came out? Why were they more concerned with covering up the truth then revealing the truth? Why wouldn't the Justice Department join lawsuits to force the truth to come out?
Reminder: Obstruction of Congress was literally one of the impeachment charges. The House tried to investigate and were blocked. The Justice Department and to an extent the Courts failed. Not the House of Representatives.
When the Justice Department was stonewalling Congress and acting with partisan intent they broke the process. William Barr and Donald Trump have destroyed the rule of law. The House of Representatives is not an investigative agency. They are because they are forced to be but the real problem is the utter failure of the Justice Department to be impartial. Trump has ruined justice in this country by putting corrupt loyalists in the Justice Department and on Federal Courts. He's not putting conservatives in these places, he's putting yes-men loyalists to rubber stamp his flagrant authoritarian behavior.
Still...the House will get its chance to ask Barr all the hard questions--he has agreed to appear before them next month. The primary reason is about the Roger Stone situation but we all know that the questions will then branch out on to other topics relatively quickly.
Once again, though, I see that far too many people simply cannot understand the simple concept of "innocent until proven guilty". People who are accused do not have to provide documents and testimony to prove their innocence, only to have their accusers ask "if you have nothing to hide then why aren't you producing the documents?". No, the responsibility to prove guilt via documents and testimony is on those levying the accusations, after which the accused has the option of producing exculpatory documentation or testimony.
I get it, though--proving that people are guilty is hard, so it is much easier to simply say "they did x" and then sit back, arms crossed, as if the accusation itself is proof of guilt. It just doesn't work that way, no matter how many times the same ridiculous talking point gets uttered. Even Harvey Weinstein--long-time close, personal friend of the Clintons--is innocent until the jury in his current court case finds him guilty.
Maybe if Democrats had not destroyed the country by weaponizing the IRS and FBI against their political opponents none of the subsequent things would have occurred.
edit/add: The real problem with "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" is this: if the people saying "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" change the rules about what they are looking for then you cannot know whether or not you have something which needs to be hidden. Open-ended investigations without a clearly-defined purpose or staying focused on their intended line of questioning are dangerous, espeically when they are politically motivated.
On the Republican side, lest you think I'm biased, I think 'W' is an asshole. I thought his dad was an asshole too. I actually think Romney is an asshole. McCain maybe not but that's just probably because he's no longer with us.
As far as I'm concerned I've had to pick the lesser of two assholes for as long as I've been able to vote for President. It's like Dark Helmet in Spaceballs; "I'm surrounded by assholes!". That's why I really don't lose too much sleep worrying about what they do. Assholes get away with doing things that assholes do. I also think that the reason that they're all assholes is that they don't really have as much control of things that we think they do. The real big assholes are pulling the strings of the lesser assholes.
The main reason I like Bernie Sanders is that, oh my God, I don't think he's an asshole and the real big assholes are scared to death of him...
Edit: Clarification, I don't think the real big assholes can pull Trump's strings either. Unfortunately, 'The Donald' is a wildcard asshole who doesn't need string pullers to make him a bigger one. That's even more scary in a way...
This is not a criminal trial. This is the government. Separation of powers, the Executive is supposed to be subject to Congressional oversight. Saying muh they're partisan and then using that as an excuse to NOT ALLOW oversight is a huge problem.
Riddle me this:
-Trump refuses to allow oversight.
-He's packing the courts with goddamned lunatics.
-We don't know what he's doing because he is mis-using classification system to hide his actions and is not accountable.
- When he inevitably loses lawsuits he's giving out almost totally redacted documents that obscure the truth.
-Republicans are weak and won't stand up to anything he says.
How is this good? How is this not a de facto dictatorship? What oversight is there of the executive branch right now? Hmm? How is this what's supposed to be happening and normal?? It's obviously not.
Not complying with oversight is not Congresses' fault, it's the executive branches fault.
That's rich considering Bill Clinton was impeached over a blow job after the investigation started about a land deal.
This is ridiculous. Do you realize that every President in the past 50ish years (since Nixon) has released his tax returns, except Trump
The IRS was like "sure no problemo" and handed over Hunter Biden's tax returns without any problem to Senate Repulbicans like last week. Tell us again, who's hiding and weaponizing the the IRS????????????????? Congress is supposed to provide oversight of the Executive branch and not be used to attack the President's political rival's son. So spare us the fake concern about the IRS being weaponized.
The FBI did it's own thing. AND THEY FOUND A LOT. The Trump campaign earned the investigation themselves, nothing to do with weaponizing the FBI. What a silly idea. Did you not pay attention to the Mueller report at all? Trump and campaign welcomed foreign interference from Russia. The main reason they weren't prosecuted was because they couldn't prove that they didn't know it was wrong. Yes, guys like Donald Trump Jr. were too moronic to prosecute and this was on instance where ignorance of the law got them off the hook.
Comey realized it and, being a Republican appointed by a Republican (kept on by Obama because he was doing his job) decided to do something without the involvement of the Justice Department. Whatever he did was based on the MERITS.
Criminals don't get to say, gee you're biased against me!!!! Stone, Manafort, TRUMP and all the others drew scrutiny for their actions.
You do realize this dear leader is a life long con man right? Trump University? A scam. Multiple bankruptcies. Lies constantly. He's forbidden by the Courts from running a charity in the state of New York because he ripped off a children's cancer charity. This moron ran Trump Airlines, sold Trump steaks, etc. He has had to settle lawsuits for racist building practices.
Could be where there's smoke there's fire and it's not the fire department's problem it's actually the arsonist.
The problem is, getting rid of the most powerful man in the world is going to require him getting defeated in an election. The stakes are too high for a polarized electorate to think otherwise. The impeachment and Mueller report were a predictable joke. Republicans and Democrats are both entrenched with no room for a middle ground. I know this because my family is a prime example of the 'Trump can do no wrong as long as he's doing policy things I agree with' camp. I can't be certain, but I suspect that if the circumstances were reversed and Trump was a Democrat power-monger, the same excuses would apply to that person from the left. I say that because it's human nature, not because I have any concrete evidence.
I'm ready for a liberal independent (not Democrat) to take over and see what he can do. Part of this is to see what happens because I want evidence, not suspicions of what others think will happen. Again, I don't agree with all of Bernie's proposals, but I don't mind rolling the dice at this point to gather data. I honestly don't understand why more supposed Democrats aren't supporting Sanders at this point. Is it really that they don't think he can beat Trump, or is it that they don't really believe in liberal ideas?
@jjstraka34
I think you agree with me more than most so-called liberals in this thread. It's time for the Democrats to finally put up or shut up. So do you want to be a real liberal or a Republican light? Seriously, I've heard for decades now how supposedly popular the ideas are on the left. Now you've really got a chance to prove it. What will you all do with this opportunity? Biden? Buttigieg?? Klobuchar??? I like Klobuchar honestly but I don't think she has the chops to take on Trump. Buttigieg has no chance. Biden will be savaged in debates. He doesn't seem to have the energy required to win. Warren is not likeable. To me it's between billionaire Bloomberg and Sanders. Which one would be the better president? It's going to be an interesting race. Either could beat Trump but neither is a shoo-in...
"Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty."
" ... But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D."
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”
> —Milton Mayer, *They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45*