monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

@glitterbag,

Quote:

Today the Republican members at the Impeachment hearings smeared and impuned the motives of a War Veteran who has served admirably........apparently oblivious of POTUS's recent pardoning of 3 court marshaled military men found guilty of War Crimes. Hooray for us....we are on our way to becoming a pariah nation. Thank you Trump.

I don't expect Lindsey Graham to get all screamingly emotional on this. His lickspittle role/values will leave his moral needle flaccid again.

But as a consequence of Trump's action, the Navy is hauling Gallagher in and is expected to oust him from the SEALs. So war crimes, though fine with Trump, appear to be less fine with the Navy leadership.

There is an opinion piece up at the WP today arguing that Trump has a philosophy of war which presumes that savagery in war is necessary, realistic and justified. It's a rather silly piece and my suspicion is that the author was, more than anything else, just showing off his knowledge of the history of moral theory in war.

What makes it so silly is that there's no evidence Trump has ever thought much about this subject at all (and what are the chances he's read any philosophy of war books?). The far simpler explanation here is that, aside from playing to some fascist-leaning factions in his base, Trump is merely manifesting a deeper and much more pervasive notion - that all human affairs are determined by maximal savagery. It is savagery that wins.

This isn't a matter of philosophy. It is the mental operations of a sociopath.

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@Builder,

Did you see the meme with Biden sniffing Swalwell?

Not bad.😷

1 Reply

@Lash,

Dude wtf is wrong with you?

1 Reply

@snood,

Much less than is wrong with you.
I have a sense of humor, for one thing.

It’s a viral meme, for another thing.

1 Reply

Quote:

Aaron Rupar
Replying to @atrupar
TRUMP offers these uplifting words about Democrats: "These people are sick. They're sick. And the press really in this country is dangerous. We don't have freedom of the press in this country. We have the opposite. We have a very corrupt media."

America is really not far from becoming a failed state.

Another four years of Trump will almost certainly do it.

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Huge surprise, this

Quote:

Leaked emails show how Stephen Miller used Breitbart as his personal PR firm

Miller used Breitbart in a campaign to discredit Sen. Marco Rubio, and to advance hardline views on immigration.

White House adviser Stephen Miller has already faced calls to resign following the release of a tranche of emails he sent to a former writer at Breitbart promoting white nationalist content and extremely restrictive immigration policies. Turns out, his relationship with the right-wing site runs even deeper.

According to a new batch of those emails, shared first with the Southern Poverty Law Center and then reported by NBC News, Miller used his relationship with Breitbart staff to also direct coverage to advance his ideological and political stances. He commissioned articles damaging to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, helped dictate editorial standards about how to describe immigration policies, and published unattributed content under Breitbart’s general staff byline. Part of the time, he did so while working on Donald Trump’s campaign and while Rubio was still in the presidential race.

Miller often referred to Rubio as “pathological” in his correspondence with Katie McHugh, the former Breitbart writer who shared the emails with the SPLC, and asked her to discredit the Florida senator and any immigration policy more moderate than Miller’s hardline stance...

Vox

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I spent the day yesterday, monitoring Italian roast beef in the crock pot, reading "A Warning" and watching the impeachment hearings. I am more curious than ever who the "anonymous" writer of the Op-Ed is and now the author of the book. It has to be someone in his close circle and is still there.

In any event, yesterday's hearings was not a good day for republicans.

Quote:

The day underscored the fundamental fact of the situation: Trump did what Democrats are accusing him of doing. The only issue is whether congressional Republicans are willing to punish him for it.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/19/20973246/impeachment-hearing-republicans-trump-vindman-volker

Doubtful

1 Reply

Sondland, the dribbler, is testifying now. I think he has decided to quit parsing what happened and is filling in the details. But it's early yet and we'll see.

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@revelette3,

revelette3 wrote:

In any event, yesterday's hearings was not a good day for republicans.

Not in my estimation.

Quote:

The day underscored the fundamental fact of the situation: Trump did what Democrats are accusing him of doing. The only issue is whether congressional Republicans are willing to punish him for it.

Why would they punish him when "what he did" is not wrong in any way?

1 Reply

@oralloy,

Quote:

Why would they punish him when "what he did" is not wrong in any way?

He abused his office of Presidency by holding over the head the newly elected President of Ukraine, a sought after WH visit and military aide congress already approved of to go to Ukraine in exchange of an announcement of an investigation into a political opponent in the coming presidential election and to prove his conspiracy theories of 2016 which goes against our US intelligence agencies, again to help his re-election campaign and to just satisfy his endless insecure ego.

Even the republican own witnesses have confirmed it. The impeachment charges and evidence define the definition of bribery which is an impeachable offense. If he wasn't president, his actions would amount to campaign violations. But what he did is much worse because of his position and power of being the President of the United States.

You can deny it all you want, doubt I will bother to keep repeating what I said above, so just mark it as said.

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@revelette3,

I know that Democrats desperately want to be above the law. But they aren't. And it is not an abuse of power to try to investigate when Democrats break the law.

It is also rather hypocritical to falsely accuse Trump of abusing his power to investigate his rivals when that is what the Democrats have been doing to him non-stop ever since he was elected.

1 Reply

@revelette3,

revelette3 wrote:

Even the republican own witnesses have confirmed it.

Note that the argument is not that he didn't press for an investigation. The argument is that there is nothing wrong with pressing for an investigation.

revelette3 wrote:

The impeachment charges and evidence define the definition of bribery which is an impeachable offense.

There is no reason to think that Mr. Trump has been accepting bribes.

revelette3 wrote:

If he wasn't president, his actions would amount to campaign violations.

No they wouldn't.

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@oralloy,

If he wanted an investigation into Hunter Biden and by extension Joe Biden, there is proper channel he should have went through. You don't ask a foreign President to do US investigations. If he had sincerely wanted to address corruption, he would wanted to address all the corruption in Ukraine instead of only the ones affecting his 2020 Presidential elections. Moreover, the fact that he wanted a public announcement with Biden's and that company (forgot for a moment on how to spell it) and the 2016 conspiracy theories only confirms his intent of wanting a foreign government to interfere in US presidential elections.

1 Reply

@revelette3,

revelette3 wrote:

If he wanted an investigation into Hunter Biden and by extension Joe Biden, there is proper channel he should have went through. You don't ask a foreign President to do US investigations.

You do ask a foreign president if you want that foreign government to investigate something in their own country.

revelette3 wrote:

If he had sincerely wanted to address corruption, he would wanted to address all the corruption in Ukraine instead of only the ones affecting his 2020 Presidential elections.

It is possible for someone to want specific corruption that they are aware of to be investigated, while not bothering with other corruption that they are unaware of.

revelette3 wrote:

Moreover, the fact that he wanted a public announcement with Biden's and that company (forgot for a moment on how to spell it) and the 2016 conspiracy theories only confirms his intent of wanting a foreign government to interfere in US presidential elections.

Running for office does not make Democrats immune to being investigated for their crimes.

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Sondland's testimony today verifies the quid pro quo. But here's a very important part of this story.

Quote:

Sondland Confirms Public Announcement Was More Crucial Than Actual Probes

TPM

Makes total sense. The goal in this part of what Trump and Giuliani were up to was to produce a media story or stories that would cast Biden in a bad light, thus damage his electoral chances and forward Trump's. It worked in the prior election, didn't it? An actual investigation was irrelevant because the Trumpies didn't give a **** about actual corruption.

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@blatham,

Of course, it does not matter at all what testimonies reveal in this impeachment investigation. The response of the GOP and right wing media will be full on gaslighting. What else can they do? They've invested everything in Trump including whatever honesty, ethics and integrity they might have had four years ago.

Now the game will be to go full bore propaganda until a Senate trial and then to count on McConnell's amorality to make it toothless and shut it down fast.

And the second channel of their strategy will be to destroy the reputation of whichever Dem candidate succeeds in the primary through using all their modern right wing media strength and through social media campaigns (aided by Russia) designed to manipulate Americans through misinformation/disinformation techniques.

It's going to get very, very ugly.

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@glitterbag,

Quote:

but does your nonsense make any sense at all

No nonsense there, all fact. Susan Rice said a traitor served his country honorably. Fact. Obama fired 195 high ranking military officers. Fact. The Democrats said nothing about either. Fact.

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@blatham,

What's going to be ugly? The leftist whining when Trump stays in office until 2025?

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@blatham,

Is there any way the committees can continue their investigations, compile evidence, and then choose not to bring it to a vote — in the House or the Senate? Or delay the vote until the primaries are over? We know the Senate won't vote to convict. We know McConnell could time the trial to hamper the primary candidates' ability to campaign. We know Trump will parade the Senate vote as a total vindication, as he did with the Mueller report (and Barr's help).

1 Reply

@blatham,

Now it's an integrity crisis. We have a complete confession that the administration was engaged in bribery/extortion and it wasn't on the down low, everyone was aware. It will come down to each senator ranking their allegiances between (1) the constitution, (2) their reelection and (3) Trump. My guess is a lot of senators will go 2 then 3. I doubt they really care about one.

3 Replies

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