Lurker > red sox 777

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

The thing Red Sox is forgetting is that impeachment would lead to a Trump testimony, and an inevitable charge of Perjury.

Trump would just refuse to testify. Plead the Fifth.
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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

The Nixon impeachment inquiry went on for 6 months so I really doubt that's true at all.

The Nixon inquiry produced big changes in the opinion of both the public and Republican senators. This one won't, because they won't find any new evidence.
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Also, what could possibly be more insulting to voters than impeaching a candidate during an election campaign? What are his supporters supposed to do if he is removed from the ballot at the last minute? The electorate will not tolerate this kind of attack on the right of the people to choose their president. If you do this you will ensure big GOP majorities in both houses of Congress that are totally devoted to president Trump.

This really isn't in the best interest of the country and I hope it doesn't happen. If you want to impeach, do it now - not during the election.
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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

They would literally hold a vote on opening the impeachment process.

If it doesn't produce a result quickly, the public will lose interest or thinks it means Trump is exonerated because clearly they lack the evidence to proceed, or they would do so.
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What should Congress do?
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They've been talking about impeachment for years. Unless they actually vote for it, the public won't care.
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JeffreyRaze posted...

Public awareness is key really, there was an article about Republicans being shocked to hear Mueller say the report didn't exonerate Trump because none of them read it. They only heard opinions of Barr and a bunch of people who didn't read it either.

And nothing will change if the House holds hearings about it but doesn't impeach. If they do impeach, the Senate has the power to make it an absolute disaster for the Democrats.
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LordoftheMorons posted...

red sox 777 posted...

The House Judiciary Committee isn't going to uncover anything that Robert Mueller hasn't already found. And once the House has voted for impeachment, the Senate has jurisdiction. The HJC can't investigate anything if the Senate holds a speedy trial and acquits the president.

What Mueller found is already well beyond the minimum for impeachment

Right, I'm saying that holding months of hearings to score political points won't work. The info is already out there. An actual impeachment trial will get the public's attention, but the Senate will control that.
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The House Judiciary Committee isn't going to uncover anything that Robert Mueller hasn't already found. And once the House has voted for impeachment, the Senate has jurisdiction. The HJC can't investigate anything if the Senate holds a speedy trial and acquits the president.
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xp1337 posted...

pyresword posted...

So something I'm not totally on board with here.

Even from a purely moral perspective, it feels to me like impeaching the president in any situation other than when the general public overwhelmingly supports impeachment is not the right action to take. Of course, there's also the fact that the general public is not expected to have the necessary information to make an informed decision on this. Is the philosophy here "educate the public and then start the impeachment process", or "use the impeachment debates, trial, etc themselves to educate the public and then at the end of the day congressman will vote according to what their constituents want anyway"?

Closer to this.

Given the already public information and obstruction (defiance of subpoenas, etc.) I think the case is already there on a wide variety of issues (emoluments, obstruction, etc.) That said, I recognize that most of the public likely isn't plugged in to this stuff, so I see the impeachment hearings as a means to do so - the media will cover it and people will see it. There's also a kind of "lead by example" thing going on here, I don't think you can underestimate that people take cues from leadership even if we pretend it's vice versa. People see (now) Dems not going for impeachment and would be more likely to go "Well, it can't be that bad I guess." Take the approval of gay marriage among the public as an example - watch it on a timeline with major events like Biden and Obama coming out in support of it and the reaction from general opinion.

Also, as a historical reference, here's support for removal of Nixon from Gallup polling with some major events highlighted: https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/FT_Nixon.png

Now, I know your gut reaction might be that this proves your point because "House Committee recommends impeachment hearings" only occurs when that line hits 50% but my argument here is: 1. In my conception of this, opening an inquiry would be more like the "Senate Watergate hearings" line precisely because of the defiance of subpoenas by this administration. If they're going to defy subpoenas and prevent the House from investigation then stronger measures need to be taken - not to mention this act itself was part of the Nixon articles already so there is precedent!

Also, I do mean "hearings" here. In the Clinton impeachment, House Republicans held no substantial hearings and went straight to the vote (it's actually more embarrassing, they did this all in the lame duck after they lost seats in the midterms - leading to then-Speaker Gingrich resigning because he was sure it'd help them politically.) I am not calling for that model even though I think between the long reported facts and the Mueller report are sufficient at this point that it would be justifiable.

tl;dr: Using Nixon as a loose guideline here, I believe opening an impeachment inquiry is the right thing to do here because this administration's defiance of subpoenas is preventing the House from performing its oversight duties under more "normal" circumstances (and should be considered impeachable itself) so a stronger measure needs to be taken. The hearings would allow the House to investigate and air the evidence to inform the public. Following this would be the actual impeachment vote.

Again, all of this relies on the House getting anything resembling a fair trial in the Senate. The Republican Party views this whole thing as a witch hunt and they will give it the process a witch hunt trial would deserve. You need 50%+1 to control the trial proceedings.
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Pelosi is correct on this one. I don't normally side with centrist Democrats over the left but she is absolutely right on this. Impeach Trump, and you all but guarantee his reelection. If you think making some sort of point is worth that, okay, but Pelosi doesn't think so, and she has every right to value winning the 2020 election over making some point, which the Senate will probably not even allow the prosecution to make.

I think you at least need to have a majority in the Senate so that you can control the procedure of the trial. It's very easy for Mitch to simply object to every single witness the House calls on the grounds that all of it is tainted under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine (because it originated in the beginning from an illegal investigation/spying on the Trump campaign). Chief Justice Roberts overrules the objection. Then the full Senate overrules the Chief Justice. You never even get to present any evidence.
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Trump is not going to be bound to DC even if he is on trial. The man has probably been involved in hundreds of lawsuits at a time for decades. And in this one, he knows the jury support him.

And, don't count on the House getting a fair trial in the Senate. The Senate sets its own procedure and there is no appeal from its decisions. Chief Justice Roberts presides but the full Senate can overrule him. If they want, they could give the House 5 minutes to present its case, disqualify all of its witnesses, refuse to admit any of its evidence, and proceed to spend the next 3 months hearing testimony (whether or not it would be admissible in a normal court) about Hillary Clinton's emails.
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Beto wants to add 35 million people to the voting rolls - the more these Dems talk about their policies the less I like them. The only way a lot of people have to voice their displeasure with their political options is to exercise their right to not vote. The Dems have decided that instead of making an effort to win these people over, they will try to force them to the polls and then threaten them with the prospect of a scary mean Republican.
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Btw, we do have precedent from the 1700s (before the revolution) that says truth is NOT a defense to "seditious libel."
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When Mitch said that, Republicans had 40 seats. 6 years later, they were at 54. The voters wanted to stop both parties from doing much so they elected a divided government.

People in the center have this misconception that just because a policy is moderate or bipartisan, it can't be awful. It can, and being bipartisan often makes it worse, because it's more likely to pass. Voters also have limited tools to stop this - who do you vote for to stop centrist policies? Well, they found an answer to that in 2016 but before that, the best they could do was divided government.
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By the way, we've tried a very very similar thing before. In 1876 three Southern states submitted 2 sets of electoral votes to Congress. If the Republican won all of the electoral votes from the 3 states, he would win the presidency by 1 electoral vote, whereas if the Democrat got a single electoral vote from any of the 3 states, he would win. There was no doubt that the Democrat had won the popular vote comfortably.

Congress is charged with counting the electoral votes by the Constitution. To resolve the impasse, Congress came up with a plan very similar to Buttigieg's. The Republicans got to appoint 5 commissioners, the Democrats got to appoint 5 commissioners, and 5 commissioners were chosen from the ranks of active Supreme Court justices, who supposedly would be non-partisan.

The commission voted 8-7 to accept the entire slate of Republican electoral votes, for all 3 of the contested states. Each vote was 100% party line. The extra Republican Supreme Court justice made the difference. And Rutherford B. Hayes was elected as President by an electoral vote of 185 to 184.
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"Every other time" was before the Democrats invoked the nuclear option in 2013 to get rid of the filibuster and rammed through a bunch of judges. The Senate is not supposed to be a rubber stamp for the President.
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Forceful_Dragon posted...

red sox 777 posted...

If you want more justices, win more elections.

Remind me who won the 2012 election again? I forget. I must be confused because I thought it was Barack Obama. That can't be right because there's no way they would have blocked a nomination for over 20% of a presidential term.

Barack Obama. And the Republicans won the 2014 Senate elections. You need the Presidency and the Senate to place a new justice on the Supreme Court.
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Should the US Supreme Court overturn its decision in New York Times v. Sullivan?
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And Buttigieg's idea is a nonstarter. That would actively enshrine the Democratic and Republican parties into our constitutional system. We are not a Communist country, there is no place for our laws to give special preference to some parties over others.
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This whining about the Supreme Court is ridiculous. The liberals packed the Court in the 30s and 40s and created a new judicial regime that was at odds with 140 years of jurisprudence in this country. After Reagan and Bush were elected, conservatives were finally able to appoint some balanced people onto the Supreme Court, and there has finally been a relatively minor pushback over the last 25 years or so. If you want more justices, win more elections.
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Nrrr posted...

Beginning to think that "justice" is just about keeping the proles in line, doing racism, and populating our cheap labor factories and has literally nothing to do with justice at all.

There's a reason that it used to be that when you sued another private subject in the royal courts in a civil case for something mundane like refusing to pay a bill you still had to plead that the defendant had acted "with force and arms against the king's peace."

Our modern crime of theft is historically rooted in an offense against public order. That's why borrowing a billion dollars (so that at the point they hand you the money you have permission) and refusing to pay it back is not a crime while taking one candy bar (without permission at the moment you take the candy bar) is a crime. And using force to take that candy bar is a felony punishable by a long time in prison and permanent loss of your civil rights.
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Also the high school student who faced 38 years in prison for cheating in high school. He got 30 days (which is still outrageously high for high school cheating, but it's not 38 years).
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xp1337 posted...

So apparently when this administration insisted there was a humanitarian crisis at the border they meant it differently than what one may have expected.

A man is on trial for providing water and shelter to two migrants at the deadliest crossing in Arizona. He faces a 20 year sentence and would be the first time a humanitarian worker on the border was sent to prison:

https://twitter.com/hannahdreier/status/1135901766896295937

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/03/us/trial-scott-warren-no-more-deaths-volunteer-migrants-arizona-invs/index.html

There's no way he's getting 20 years. It's a very long maximum sentence but the judge won't impose that. It's like the marine biologist who faced 20 years for feeding whales.
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Lightning Strikes posted...

I don't know if red sox's visions of the U.K. and its relationship with America are scary, pathetic or hilarious. At least we can add the single market to the list of things he doesn't understand.

I hope hilarious.
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There's no need for alarm. Trump just likes to start his negotiations by demanding the moon. He'll bargain down very quickly if you give him what he wants (for example, Trump Tower London, Trump Tower Edinburgh, annual military parades celebrating the victory of the Allies in World War II - rotated between Washington, London, and Moscow, removal of the windmills off the Scottish coast where his golf courses are).

I think the above list, plus a Queen's speech honoring President Trump for saving the UK from the European Union by stiffening the resolve of its leaders to carry out the democratic will of the people and providing them with valuable advice on the art of the deal, would probably be sufficient to secure a new common market between the US and UK, without free movement of people.
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Which right wing party would you want to rule your country? You can assume that once they are a party in your country they will be totally loyal notwithstanding a foreign origin.
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At what age should people be allowed to drink alcohol?
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New poll came out today showing Brexit Party in 1st for general election on 26% of the votes and 20 seats shy of an overall majority. This poll also has Lib Dems at 16% and behind Labour.....seems kind of weird how far apart the Lib Dem number is from where they are in the other poll (24%).
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Nrrr posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Nrrr posted...

Right, a republican will somehow look at Donald Trump or Mitt Romney or George W Bush, folks who were born rich and given access to elite schools and people, and large sums to start their lives, and somehow conclude managing to not lose a rigged race was due to their own inherent value, and deserved. You know, the rich guys with massive egos do anyway. The poor ones are largely dopey bootlickers who love to serve power as long as they aren't at the bottom of the heirarchy and can be part of the winning side.

Individual merit can be a preceding generation's merit. Some ancestor originally propelled the family to wealth, and it must have been that person's merit!

Right, people who think that are the dopey bootlickers who love to serve power. The GOP symbol really should be a dog.

To symbolize loyalty? That seems fair.
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Nrrr posted...

Right, a republican will somehow look at Donald Trump or Mitt Romney or George W Bush, folks who were born rich and given access to elite schools and people, and large sums to start their lives, and somehow conclude managing to not lose a rigged race was due to their own inherent value, and deserved. You know, the rich guys with massive egos do anyway. The poor ones are largely dopey bootlickers who love to serve power as long as they aren't at the bottom of the heirarchy and can be part of the winning side.

Individual merit can be a preceding generation's merit. Some ancestor originally propelled the family to wealth, and it must have been that person's merit!
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I realize Northern Ireland presents a thorny problem. Personally, I would just return it to Ireland, but I understand a lot of Unionists there don't want that. I suppose we give them a referendum with 4 options:

1. Stay with Scotland in the "United Kingdom."
2. Secede from the UK and form a new union with England.
3. Secede from the UK and reunify with Ireland.
4. Secede from the UK and become an independent nation.
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Now, I thought of a great solution to this whole Brexit fiasco that can make some more people happy (maybe we can get to 50% plus one?).

We will have a new referendum....on the secession of England from the United Kingdom.

If a yes vote is returned, England will secede from the UK and Scotland will continue as the legal heir to the United Kingdom. The Westminster Parliament (the legal continuation of the Parliaments of independent England and Scotland) would shed its English MPs and move to Scotland where it would resume sitting as the same historical Scottish Parliament dating back hundreds of years. A new English Parliament would be established for the newly independent nation of England.

One of the first acts of the Scottish Parliament (the continuation of the UK Parliament), sitting without the English MPs, would be to revoke Article 50. Meanwhile, England, as a new nation, would not be a member of the EU and would not apply for entry unless at some point its people voted for a government that wanted to do so.

I hope that this plan could establish a temporary coalition between the Brexit Party and the SNP,
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Lightning Strikes posted...

lol the One Nation and liberal Tories have said they won't accept Johnson as PM, Farage is far worse. It would be doom on the party worse than when the Lib Dems went into coalition and got banished to the fringes for almost a decade.

Besides, while FPTP is a fickle goddess, the estimates I have seen say LIB-LAB-SNP or LIB-LAB - the Tories get hit the hardest in seats regardless, similar to what happened in 1997. The poll actually has some interesting data, it shows the Brexit Party only winning in Midlands/Wales while the Lib Dems win the South and London, Labour win the North (a lot of Leave voters who prioritise other issues and will never go right in a general election here) and the SNP win Scotland as well. It is entirely possible that Plaid Cymru could win Wales too - YouGov don't show it separately which is annoying.

https://i.redd.it/nivwekf03f131.png

This map of what it looks like is kind of crazy - really shows the regional discrepancies.

Fascinating. I love these maps.

What I meant is not a Brexit-Tory coalition though - there are not the votes for that. Farage's path to victory depends on the 18% of voters who said they would vote for the Tories in that poll defecting en masse to the Brexit Party. That would likely turn most of that huge swath of Lib Dem seats across the South light blue - these are mostly seats held by Tories now, that voted Leave (by small margins), so I'm pretty sure what's happening on that map is that major vote splitting between Brexit and Tories are placing Lib Dems in first.

Of course as the election approaches, a lot of Labour voters may defect to Lib Dems too, but I think there should be a built-in advantage for Brexit in the FPTP system because the Remain vote was concentrated in London and Scotland. All those London districts voting 75%+ for Remain will create wasted votes from overconcentration in a general election.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/United_Kingdom_EU_referendum_2016_area_results.svg

If Tory voters behaved like US Republican voters they would surely fall in line behind Farage, and if Labour voters behaved like US Democratic voters they would not fall in line behind the Lib Dems to nearly the same degree. I think the Tories do have the same ruthlessness and belief that the ends justifies the means as Republicans, but I feel the mother party has lost most of its political acumen. It's hard to imagine Republicans presiding over the trainwreck of the last several years in the UK, which all stems from the Tories' failure to understand why and how FPTP in single-member districts benefits them. The Tories worked hard for centuries to establish FPTP in the UK and its former colonies and appear to have forgotten its benefits.
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Nelson_Mandela posted...

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/446174-nevada-democratic-governor-vetoes-national-popular-vote-bill

Good for Nevada!

Bravo!
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Lightning Strikes posted...

https://mobile.twitter.com/britainelects/status/1134207549249654786

Lib Dems polling in first pushed by their opposition to brexit. Labour and the Conservatives third and fourth for the first time ever.

IN-VINCE-BLE

Come on Tories, fall in line behind the Brexit Party. I'm sure President Trump would be happy to negotiate a new trade bloc with Prime Minister Farage, consisting of the UK and her former colonies, with free trade and no tariffs.
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More legal conclusions from attorney general Barr: Obama administration officials did not commit treason. Partial exoneration?
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Up
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William Barr is weighing in saying that in his opinion, Robert Mueller could have made a determination notwithstanding his inability to file charges. Since he didn't do so, the attorney general took it upon himself to make such a determination based on the evidence in the report and his determination is that there is not enough evidence to support a charge of obstruction.
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When should American students be allowed to end their schooling?
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Trump is likening it to normal political donations, where you give to both sides so either will feel indebted to you if they win.
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PerfectChaosZ posted...

Hey dont lie- Republicans have never held one of their politicians accountable.

Hey, Republican politicians generally do a pretty good job of representing their constituents, so this whole problem of holding our representatives accountable is a little foreign to us. It's not a problem we have to deal with very often.
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Ashethan posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Also, if people believe in trickle down, then tax cuts for the rich are good policy for helping low-income workers.

If you believe you can fly, should you just jump off a building to test it out? Or go with common logic, and keep your feet firmly on the ground based on evidence that people, in fact, cannot fly?

If I believed I could fly, I might very well jump off a building to experience the joy of flying. If I had evidence that people cannot fly, I would likely modify my belief in my ability to fly. But obviously, my actions must be based on my beliefs.
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Ashethan posted...

red sox 777 posted...

That was before Donald Trump. Have you listened to his rhetoric since 2015?

Yes. He's done tax cuts for the rich, done nothing for healthcare, and continues to give money to saudi arabia.

And again, Hillary Clinton won with voters making under $50k/year. By a significant margin too.

I said rhetoric. Not action, rhetoric. No doubt Hillary won with voters making under 50k, but she probably won that group (adjusted by inflation) by less than any Democrat since FDR made it the core of the Democratic base, with the possible exception of Reagan's 1984 landslide or Nixon's 1972 landslide.

Also, if people believe in trickle down, then tax cuts for the rich are good policy for helping low-income workers. The tax cuts for low-income workers were also very substantial (dwarfed by tax cuts for the rich only because the rich pay so much more in taxes that the same percentage cut yields far more in absolute terms).

Healthcare reform partially failed, but 1) the Republicans tried and 2) they did manage to get rid of the individual mandate, which saves low-income workers without employer healthcare about $2,000 a year if they decide not to buy insurance.
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Ashethan posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Republicans go to low-income Americans on bended knee, ask them what they want, and promise to give it to them. Democrats are too aloof to talk to them much and when they do, they deliver lectures about how the Democratic Party is acting in their best interests.

No, Republicans tell low income workers that money will "Trickle Down" as long as they give tax cuts to the rich. They tell them that healthcare is TOO EXPENSIVE while giving money to Saudi Arabia. They tell them that their problems are all the other people on welfare, when corporate welfare is far costlier. They continue the war on drugs, despite it disproportionately affecting poor people (especially poor people of color) Republicans are fantastic con artists, but they don't get to pretend to actually care about low income workers.

That was before Donald Trump. Have you listened to his rhetoric since 2015?
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Ashethan posted...

red sox 777 posted...

2. Improve job opportunities and wages for low-income Americans by stopping their competition from entering the country.

lol republicans still pretending to care about low-income Americans.

Republicans go to low-income Americans on bended knee, ask them what they want, and promise to give it to them. Democrats are too aloof to talk to them much and when they do, they deliver lectures about how the Democratic Party is acting in their best interests.

There should be no surprise which strategy gets the votes.
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Republicans will hold their politicians accountable when it comes to achieving their goals, or at least fighting for them. Trump's core promise was to improve the economy and create jobs, and so far under Trump the economy has been stronger than it has been since 2000. Whether Trump deserves credit for that is debatable but his supporters just look at results and what they see is success.

In my opinion, for the vast majority of swing voters the whole wall/immigration issue is really about 2 things:

1. Stop Democrats from winning elections by preventing immigrants or their children from becoming US citizens and voting for Democrats.
2. Improve job opportunities and wages for low-income Americans by stopping their competition from entering the country.

All the rest of the stuff (the allegations of crime, racism, etc.) are simply coded ways to express #1 without looking blatantly partisan. #2 was previously a big deal but is becoming less and less so with each month that the US economy remains so strong. Americans are largely finding jobs now if they want to work.
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Ashethan posted...

Xeybozn posted...

Ashethan posted...

Something I really don't get about Donald Trump.

Ask a Trump Supporter 7 years ago about Donald Trump, and a lot of them would probably say they don't like him at all. They'd call him an attention whore, and a charlatan. Those same people now worship the ground he walks on. Do they not get that they've now been conned?

Trump is on their team now and he's winning, so they love him. Think of it like a player changing teams in sports; how many fans would hold a grudge against a former rival player if he came to your team and carried them to the title?

Except Trump's been on their team for a while, and they still hated him!

People didn't hate Trump 7 years ago. They were mostly indifferent to him. He was just some rich businessman.
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If people feel conned, they will say so. I don't know why you would expect people to feel conned right now when the economy is so strong, and that was Trump's core promise.
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Jakyl25 posted...

Also since when does Seph read reason.com? You trending libertarian? Republicans and Democrats dont give a shit about reason

Republicans don't care where something comes from, if it helps the party. A good and loyal Republican would post an article from Pravda, Izvestia, or the New York Times if it helps the Republican Party.
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