Topic: US Politics [serious discussion - please read OP before posting] - page 12. (Read 5799 times)

There is tons of evidence that suggests the main reason he withheld the funds and WH meeting was to gain a political advantage in the next election.  For example, why would he make a public statement from Ukraine about opening the investigation a requirement before giving Ukraine a meeting in the White House?

What would an investigation led by a corrupt country even prove?  

If it really was just a coincidence that his most likely 2020 opponent was involved, and Trumps actions were driven purely by a desire to stop corruption, then I agree with you. It's clear that was not the case though.

trying to impeach trump on basis of biden corruption is complete nonsense, usa, accused soviet union of corruption, if usa wouldnt have fought corruption globally like trump did, they would reveal themselves even earlier as hypocrits,

I agree with your opinion on that.

It seems pretty clear she's doing it for attention/political reasons.

In the midst of an ocean of baboons, she comes across as sane.

So why not just vote no? 

They make perfect sense to me. The House voting to censure would be a completed action with some political impact. (Based on lies by lying liars but that's beside the point.)

The House as-is voting to impeach makes them look totally like fools plus incompetent.

She posted a statement on why she voted present on her campaign site:  https://www.tulsi2020.com/press/2019-12-19-tulsi-gabbard-releases-statement-impeachment-president-trump

And on her official House.gov site she called for Trump to be censured: https://gabbard.house.gov/news/press-releases/rep-tulsi-gabbard-calls-house-censure-president-putting-personal-political-gain

She's basically saying "He obviously abused his power as president to gain an advantage in upcoming election, but it 'breaks her heart we are so divided' so lets just censure him instead".   <==that's me paraphrasing.  

Her arguments just don't make sense to me though.  It seems pretty clear she's doing it for attention/political reasons.  Voting present != Being brave, and putting Country before Party.  So she must still be trying really hard to be the next president, and she pretty much torched any shot at the Dem nomination....which means third party it is, which will help the Republicans BIG TIME come November.

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Unrelated: Basically ignored anything politics for past couple weeks on vacation and just read books and basically avoided any political discussion with family and friends.  Detoxing from constant news and reading a couple books without keeping up with the rest of the world is quite nice.  Especially if you're forced to consume it at work every day.

I was liking Tulsi a bit until she started on the Regime Change war mantra and I just started to feel she was more interested in protecting those in the military than the actual country itself. The whole "talking" thing is just great in theory but history shows it doesn't work out well usually when you're dealing with people who think differently than you and who have ambitions and desires that do not include peace. I see her as folding when it comes to things like the cuban missile crissis for example.

What do you find weird about it? It's common in controversial votes for some to vote "present" as opposed to committing to either side when, for example, you agree with part of it and not others and you just can't bring yourself to vote in favor. Of course some also use it as a way to weasel out of a vote.

I am surprised it took this long. I had figured they would have impeached Trump within the first day of getting the majority.

This just shows this was a partisan exercise. There is bipartisan opposition to impeaching Trump.
This was her not voting to further divide America, while not giving Trump further political ammunition.

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Pelosi reportedly has not committed to even sending the articles of Impeachment to the Senate, so there may never even be a trial. I guess the argument that Trump did something so bad that he needed to be removed from office a year from an election was bogus.

Well, the inevitable has finally happened.

House voted Yea on both articles of impeachment.

Interestingly, Rep Jared Golden of Maine (D) was the only member to split his vote, voting Yea for article one and Nay for article two.

Non-interestingly, the vote was split right across party lines, with 2 Dems voting Nay for both articles.

Tulsi Gabbard gave the weird answer of "Present" for both articles.

Yes.

https://live.house.gov/

8:52:36 PM   H. Res. 755   Motion to reconsider laid Article II on the table Agreed to without objection.
8:52:29 PM   H. Res. 755   Motion to reconsider Article I laid on the table Agreed to without objection.
8:52:04 PM   H. Res. 755   On agreeing to Article II of the resolution Agreed to by recorded vote: (Roll no. 696).
8:34:22 PM   H. Res. 755   On agreeing to Article I of the resolution Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: (Roll no. 695).

Vote results will be available here at some point:

http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2019&rollnumber=695
http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2019&rollnumber=696

If I am not mistaken, with 220+ votes for Yay, the 1st article is passed and Trump is impeached by the house.
Now the Senate will put him on a trial early January to see if he is removed as a president.

This is very very fresh, no source to quote, just the live video on twitter.

Can anyone confirm  ?

The house is debating the articles of impeachment today. They have 6 hours of debate, half for democrats and half for Republicans. They started around noon today, so time for debate should end around 6-630 this afternoon.

There is a lot of hyperbole and a lot of hysteria.

Yeah, I think I've changed my mind and agree you at this point.  'He did it then, he did it now, he'll do it again' seems like a reasonable approach.

The next hearing is scheduled for Monday.  Intelligence and Judiciary Council will present evidence to the House (I don't know if it's the entire house all in one place, maybe). 
The White House were invited to present a defense,  they just had respond by end of today.  Like 30 minutes before the deadline the White House Council sent their response:



I guess that's a no.

Seems likely we will get to see the Articles middle of next week and the committees will likely vote to impeach by end of the week.

If they're going to get the whole thing done this year, it has to be done by 2 weeks from today.  Zoom zoom.

Not sure I'd agree with that. IMO the only solid article would be obstruction of congress and if they all let Clinton off for his stuff, they'll definitely let Trump off for the other articles. i.e. for abuse of power strictly with the Ukrainian thing, I simply don't believe they made a strong enough case as it's far too easy to make a counter case to the masses, who don't follow everything like we've been, that the possibility exists he was in fact interested in investigating corruption but that he's "unconventional" and so didn't do it the way he should have.

However, if they add in a variety of other examples of things he's done in order to bolster the case that he has a history of abuse of power, as well as adding in some of the Mueller stuff to show more cases of obstruction of congress and justice, then they might clearly show that these events were simply a small portion of all the things he's done. They then might be able to sway more of the public to the point where maybe, just maybe more of the senate will vote for removal. But they need to only pick out absolutely clear examples of it. As it stands though, I don't think there's a chance in hell the senate will remove him and he'll then have free reign to do anything he wants. I think that in order to have "enough" stuff there would probably need to be 3-4 articles of impeachment.

I suspect he would as well. I just don't think he grasps that the sorts of games he likes to play normally, shouldn't be going on right now as he just makes things worse.

Seems like the Republicans (who arent even conservatives anymore and loyal to Trump only) have been forbidden from even suggesting that Trump messed up but shouldn't be impeached for his mess up.  Its really the only defense left at this point and not a single one of them have suggested that Trump has behaved anything but perfectly.  Trumps ego is just too big and he doesnt give a damn about reality.  That is just pathetic.

Every decent conservative president up till Raegan is rolling in their grave because of these cowards.

I think fewer articles is probably a better path for the Dems at this point.  Make it easier for the public to digest and get the Republicans fewer things to object to.

Wonder if another government shut down is in our future.  I could definitely see Trump making things difficult out of spite, but that could backfire.

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I've been removing BADeckers shit posts that just link those crap sites.  If you guys (the ones having an actual conversation) think I should leave them let me know.

The Supreme Court has already ruled in the past on this and executive privilege, what they can withhold, is narrowly limited to certain things in the case of impeachment (at least I think's that what it is. could be for oversight in general). Their main reasoning for withholding things seemed to do a side step around that and instead said the entire inquiry etc was invalid and talked about due process. And again. They turned over documents to citizens but not the same sort of stuff to congress.

If you're referring to the case about the Mueler report, that's different. That's about whether private Grand Jury testimony can be made available for impeachment. There's also previous case law for that and it was in favor of congress getting it for impeachment. The impeachment trial is considered a judiciary proceeding. Since the investigation and articles of impeachment are required for the trial, all of what the congress does also falls into that. Some Rule 6e about grand jury testimony has an exception for judicial proceedings. So that case will only fail if the dems screw up in some way, or the appeals court etc somehow decides to completely overturn previous case law. If they don't, I doubt the supreme court will hear the case. If they do, then the supreme court probably would.

Oh I'm not talking about obstruction for Ukraine, I'm talking about obstruction in regards to the Mueller probe into Russia. So it's a bit different here. I'm also unsure if they're going to include obstruction when it comes to Ukraine b/c of the fact that the Presidency doesn't typically have to provide information relating to subpoenas if they are to deem it executive privilege. (Which is obviously then tested in court, it is currently being tested)

We'll see what the courts decide, though I don't think we'll have this done b/c of the fact that the Dems are really rushing this process.

Given they got zero documents that they subpoena'd.. and yet documents were delivered to citizens that used the FOIA process, obstruction is guaranteed to be on the list. I saw a potential list that included obstruction of congress and obstruction of justice. Obstruction was on the list for Nixon and Clinton as well even though they did turn over documents freely, while not turning over others.