Biden video on Ukraine: “If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.”

To pre-empt the inevitable “That’s out of context!” defense, here’s the whole hour of video.

The damning quotes start around the 52:40 mark, where Biden says,

I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t.
...I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired.

This one’s done. I’ll see you guys on the other side of the impeachment circus. My call: House votes to approve articles of impeachment, Senate declines to remove Trump from office, impeachment fun and games done. Even with press cover, Dems can’t just keep impeaching Trump over and over again.

#1--The democrats haven't impeached Trump yet--so 'over and over again' is a mischaracterization wouldn't you say? Biden is not the one being impeached either and he's not going to be tried. It is pretty much a vote taken by the House to impeach but not really the same once it gets to the Senate--there you'll have lawyers and a trial and the Senators become a jury and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts presides over the trial. If you remember the Clinton impeachment which did go to a trial--his shit got aired in public and a very reluctant Clinton was forced to testify on his own behalf which is something you'd definitely wouldn't want to happen to your guy. I don't think you want his shit aired anymore either--but you can count on the fact that it will be. Chances are the Senate won't convict but even if not that doesn't mean Trump won't be badly damaged and FWIW he already has. Clinton going into impeachment had a 60% favorability--Trump has never gone over 45% and what's more he never will. The polls are also showing an upswing in those favoring impeachment since this Ukraine thing broke. To go further Clinton was impeached on a perjury charge---his denying he had sex with an intern. This is over national security and election issues which is far more serious. There are numerous soundbite instances of Trump encouraging foreign interference in elections and the released transcript is very damning. You can think all you like that he'll get away unscathed every time but all this has taken a toll. You could see it in his UN speech. He might survive being removed because of the Senate saving him but he's a dead man walking before it's over.

As far as Biden I don't have a problem reopening an investigation if there's something worthwhile to investigate. I'm kind of thinking there isn't but if someone has something for real--go for it. That said what Trump has done is separate from Biden's case or non-case and there is plenty of evidence in the transcript and in things Trump has said in the past to impeach him.

......and at least one (if not both) of Giuliani and Pompeo is going to get fucked. Barr could be in some deep shit though plus any numbers of staffers who are covering up/hiding evidence of wrongdoing.

I have to wonder if some of the Dems who approved the latest weak assault on President Trump did so because they knew it would bring focus on the questionable dealings of Biden & Son, and then hopefully rid them of the inconvenient problem of Crazy Uncle Joe. A sacrifice fly—risky—but necessary to preempt Biden’s inevitable self-destruction. Looks to me like Trump was merely a long-shot secondary target. A strike at a secondary target that’s failed. Again. We still get to see if it worked to retire Biden for good.

It always saddens me to confront a mind captive. Trump has quite obviously committed crimes against the constitution, refusing to turn over evidence, instructing people not to testify, and so on. Yet Republicans cannot but view this as a strictly partisan issue. Would Democrats stand for such lawbreaking and at such a high level of criminality? Maybe. But that is not at stake now. And as for the Biden conspiracy: too many democrats fear everyone but Biden (and the malleable Kamala Harris), it's bizarre to think they would undermine their Joe.

To say something about Biden. I have a very close friend whose oldest and youngest sons out of 3 enlisted in the Marine Corps--the first was killed in 2009--not on a battlefield but outside a bar in Southern California in a brawl. That was a very devastating experience for his parents--one that neither of them has really ever gotten over.

But anyway the younger kid is still in though he's getting out on a disability soon--he did a couple tours in Afghanistan and then got in the embassy Marines which meant at times hanging around high flying politicians--one of whom was Biden when he was VP. He genuinely liked Biden. Photos of Joe and numerous young Marines hitting the pubs in Dublin and apparently Joe buying drinks for them out of pocket whenever he was around. The proud parents showing me all these selfies on their fancy fucking iphones or smart phones or whatever--shit that's too complicated for me to bother with. I look at them and then not say much because really they're hanging on and have suffered enough and they're proud of their kid and the dad was a paratrooper....they've served their country unlike a lot of others.....but I don't like Working Class Joe who never worked a working class job and who helped give us all the crime bill and a lot of other bullshit--who loves big banks and corporations a lot more than he cares about the working class--but yeah he's probably alright to go have a few drinks and a few yuck yucks with--he's just way too conservative that I'd ever want to vote for him. See I like the direction of a lot of the new democratic house members. I don't mind being called a socialist. I don't mind being called an anarchist either. And FWIW I've never voted for a republican for anything but that doesn't mean I always vote for democrats. Of the last 5 presidential elections I voted for Obama in 2008. That's one time--more than the 0 times for the shitbird elephants though.

All that said this fucking shit of Trump's about the criminal behavior of Joe or his son in Ukraine sounds pretty fucking far fetched to me. What I really think is this is how Trump goes about politicking----getting down in the gutter as deep as he can like the pig he is. He wants to drag his opponents into these mud wrestling matches because he's a piece of shit and that's all that he knows. This whole thing on the Biden's is a figment of Trump's demented brain is what I think....and if Trump never goes to prison he should fuck off and die and the sooner the better.

This is what Biden would have faced, released earlier than planned in response to impeachment threat.
I bet Ds had Ivanka-Jared-Don-Eric sauce planned for the gander. (Not needed, looks like.0

"Great America PAC" Ad: Biden's "White Privilege" Made His Son Rich (1:03)
Posted By Tim Hains
On Date September 26, 2019

The pro-Trump "Great America PAC" released this new ad accusing former VP Joe Biden and his son of "White privilege" over their business dealings abroad. The six-figure ad will run online and on Fox News Channel.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/09/26/great_america_pac_ad_bidens_w...

Even if above board, the country will do better if the next president has been demonstrably more of a Boy/Girl Scout. Even a Mormon Scout...
At least this time, Trump's taking himself down with the target of his smears.

Trump allies pushed Biden-Ukraine allegations at key moments in campaign timeline
Trump's inner circle was publicly trumpeting articles around the same time as his conversation with the Ukrainian president.

Monica Alba and Carol E. Lee | Sept. 30, 2019, 4:21 AM EDT

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-allies-pushed-biden-ukraine...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Biden campaign demands networks stop booking Giuliani
A letter asserts the president's lawyer is introducing "increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies" about the Ukraine scandal.
Joe Biden

MICHAEL CALDERONE |
09/29/2019 05:19 PM EDT

Updated: 09/29/2019 07:55 PM EDT

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign demanded on Sunday that major TV networks stop booking Rudy Giuliani, accusing President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer of spreading “false, debunked conspiracy theories” on behalf of his client.

“While you often fact check his statements in real time during your discussions, that is no longer enough,” Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn and deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield wrote in a letter obtained by POLITICO. “By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation.”

“We write to demand that in service to the facts, you no longer book Rudy Giuliani,” they continued, suggesting that the Trump surrogate has “demonstrated that he will knowingly and willingly lie in order to advance his own narrative.” ...

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/09/29/biden-campaign-giuliani-ukraine-network...

>1 Carnophile:

Thank you. + 100,000

this stuff against Trump is genuine mass-mania, "the madness of crowds" stuff through and through.

This is how pseudo-democracies self-destruct and, O! God! is this shit ugly and depressing to watch.

_____________________________________

to you others,

you Hillary-Bots:

you you could have accepted the 2016 election-result --not like mature adults, because you're nothing like mature adults--but like spoiled infants who've thrown their toys out of the play-pen.

But rather than that, you decided to shit all over the nursery and then burn the house down. Britain is on the very same course in its own specially insane way.

Well done!, morons.

>8 proximity1:

Impeachment proceedings are a legitimate part of the US constitutional process, aren't they? So what exactly is your problem with people beginning these proceedings if they think there are reasonable grounds?

Proximity seems to think that the allegations that the likes of Trump and Giuliani have made against the Biden's has merit when so far there is not a shred of proof. He watches those two bumble around with all kinds of explanations often contradicting things they've previously said or the other said and it doesn't make a dent in his armor. Practically no one else sees merit in these charges but no matter whatever lies drips out of Donald's mouth Prox laps up.

That Donald Trump tried to get a foreign govt. to interfere in the next election on his own behalf by digging up dirt on an opponent is okay with Proximity. That Donald tries to hide or cover up these activities on a server designated for top secret intelligence and not for his criminal activities is also okay with Proximity. He doesn't care whether Donald commits a 1000 crimes.

Proximity wants Donald to be King.....and accuses others of being brainwashed and morons. If anyone is brainwashed it's him.

" Impeachment Coup Analytics" by Victor Davis Hanson (from AmericanGreatness.com) 29 September, 2019

_______________________

"Aside from the emotional issue that Democrats, NeverTrumpers, and celebrities loathe Donald Trump, recently Representative Al Green (D-Texas) reminded us why the Democrats are trying to impeach the president rather than just defeat him in the 2020 general election.

“ 'To defeat him at the polls would do history a disservice, would do our nation a disservice,' Green said. 'I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach the president, he will get re-elected.'

Translated, that means Green accepts either that Trump’s record is too formidable or that the agendas of his own party’s presidential candidates are too frightening for the American people to elect one of them. And that possibility is simply not permissible. Thus, impeachment is the only mechanism left to abort an eight-year Trump presidency—on a purely partisan vote to preclude an election, and thus contrary to the outlines of impeachment as set out by the Constitution.

Consider it another way: Why is it that the House is controlled by Democrats, yet its leadership is not pushing through any of the policy proposals voiced so openly on the Democratic primary stage?

Why aren’t progressive representatives introducing bills to pay reparations to African Americans, to legalize infanticide in some cases of late-term abortion, to offer free medical care to illegal aliens, to confiscate AR-15s, to extend Medicare for all, to impose a wealth tax and raise top rates to between 70 and 90 percent(†), to abolish student debt(†) and ensure free college for all, or to grant blanket amnesty to those currently living in the country illegally?

Simple answer: none of those issues poll anywhere near 50 percent approval. And no Democratic candidate would expect to beat Trump as the emissary of such an agenda.

If the economy was in a recession, if we were embroiled in another Iraq-like or Vietnam-sort of war, and if Trump’s polls were below 40 percent, then the Democrats would just wait 13 months and defeat him at the polls.

But without a viable agenda and because they doubt they can stop Trump’s reelection bid, they feel they have no recourse but to impeach. If Trump were to be reelected, not a shred of Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” would be left, and the strict constructionist Supreme Court would haunt progressives for a quarter-century.

_____________________________________

(†) In fact, depending on their being done responsibly and effectively, I actually favor both

"impose a wealth tax and raise top rates to between 70 and 90 percent"

and

"abolish student debt"

But, as long as the likes of Obama, Hillary and Biden are the Democratic party's ideas of "progressive" political leadership, we're never going to see any of that.

republicans: "The truth is not the truth." (direct quote)

All other Americans: "Actually, the truth IS the truth. Every time."

lol.

To keep from crying we must keep laughing, right up until the possibility of a future sane world is destroyed, to wit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KZB6l8RY2g

>11 proximity1: "But, as long as the likes of Obama, Hillary and Biden are the Democratic party's ideas of "progressive" political leadership, we're never going to see any of that."

I don't know anyone on this site who thinks those three are progressive politicians, and aside from the rather erratic Storm Raven I have detected no real support for any of them other than as opposed to the farther right.

If Biden is the nominee I'm not voting for him. But I'm in California so that's easy for me to say

Nancy Pelosi played this well. She resisted impeachment for so long that when she finally did relent, many Americans seem to think: well, if Pelosi is ready to impeach, there must really be a strong case against Trump. (As in fact there is.) But while some would argue there was a strong case for impeachment before, by appearing to be the voice of caution and reason, Pelosi has now positioned herself as a much more credible proponent of impeachment now. Also, it really takes the wind out of the sails of the progressives in her party, who have been calling for impeachment for months, that Pelosi is now leading the charge. Nancy must be loving that.

From Trump himself, no high crime--not even a "low" crime; not a misdemeanor, not a parking-ticket.

Trump stands falsely accused of numerous things which high-ranking members of the Obama administrations actually did.

>15 madpoet:

... "many Americans seem to think: well, if Pelosi is ready to impeach, there must really be a strong case against Trump."

They do? How many is "many" Americans? And on what data is that claim based?

"conducted between Sept. 19 and 23" (2019) ...

"A new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday (25 Sept. 2019) shows a majority of Americans do not think President Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office."
...

..."37% of respondents think the president should be impeached and removed, while 57% do not." ...

"The Quinnipiac survey shows not much change in public opinion from last month, when a Monmouth poll also showed that 59% of respondents were opposed to impeachment and removal from office."

by Jeanine Santucci, USA TODAY
Published 10:18 AM EDT Sep 27, 2019

And,

"The Prospect of Impeachment Has Never Been Popular Among Total Voters, According to Polls" (https://heavy.com/news/2019/09/impeachment-polls-trump/)

https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3636

“Start with the initial headline, in the story the Washington Post “broke” on September 18th:

'TRUMP’S COMMUNICATIONS WITH FOREIGN LEADER ARE PART OF WHISTLE-BLOWER COMPLAINT THAT SPURRED STANDOFF BETWEEN SPY CHIEF AND CONGRESS, FORMER OFFICIALS SAY'

"The unnamed person at the center of this story sure didn’t sound like a whistle-blower. Our intelligence community wouldn’t wipe its ass with a real whistle-blower.

"Americans who’ve blown the whistle over serious offenses by the federal government either spend the rest of their lives overseas , like Edward Snowden, end up in jail, like Chelsea Manning , get arrested and ruined financially, like former NSA official Thomas Drake , have their homes raided by FBI like disabled NSA vet William Binney , or get charged with espionage like ex-CIA exposer-of-torture John Kiriakou . It’s an insult to all of these people, and the suffering they’ve weathered, to frame the ball-carrier in the Beltway’s latest partisan power contest as a whistle-blower." …

...

______________________________
from Rolling Stone magazine, The ‘Whistle-blower’ Probably Isn’t : It’s an insult to real whistle-blowers to use the term with the Ukraine-gate protagonist by Matt Taibbi | October 6, 2019 | 7:19PM ET

SEE ALSO;

Elections | The Madness of Progressive Projection |
The only Trump “crime” was in his winning an election he was not supposed to win. So after the election, prior illegal acts were redefined as legal, and legal ones as illegal.
by Victor Davis Hanson | 6 October 2019

Hitler and Mussolini were not bad men. They were sincere in just trying to make their put-upon nations great again. They provided high employment for their people and a new sense of national pride in achieving general prosperity and were great for the business community. Their critics made up lies about them all time out of nothing but jealousy of their great political success. Their critics were just sore losers.

Of course.

It's just logic.

Not Logic 101.

proximity1 logic.

Your presumed "timeline," as it were, is misplaced: Hitler's rise and that of Mussolini came later, after the blunders of practical politicians, in Germany, under the Weimar Republic, and, in Italy had set the stage for them.

It is there, in this stage, to use your foolish historicist's appeal in the above erroneous attempt at a valid comparison, that we, if this were some sort of analogous set of circumstances, would find ourselves; and, again, those who, if your analogy were valid, represented the past's stage-setters for Hitler's and Mussolini's later rise?— they'd be models not of Trump or his partisans but, indeed, of the Obamas, the Clintons, the Bidens and their partisans.

Your grasp of history is lousy: at once in both its factual elements and in your hare-brained interpretive analyses.

____________________

—well, as for Italy and Mussolini : "I start from the individual and strike out at the state."

"Fascism exalted the (Italian) state because throughout Italian history the state was always weak."

— Neumann, Behemoth (1942) p. 68 Victor Gollanz Ltd. LONDON.

The Orange Traitor is a wannabe dictator. In the end he is going to end up in a very bad place and will be giving orders to no one.

Hitler and Mussolini were actual dictators. After a short run of several years they each came to very bad ends.

Besides being narcissistic maniacs who each overestimated his own abilities by light years, all three slimeballs were or are just (temporarily) but highly successful flim flam men, con artists, carnival barkers.

There's your historical parallels, such as they are.

Also I may add that, as history demonstrates, Mussolini was really just Hitler's lap dog, as likewise today The Orange Traitor is just V. Putin's favorite blackmailed public ass-kisser.

So, in the world of flim flam artists, Mussolini and T.O.T. are both second-raters. lol.

#21--I don't think Mussolini was nearly as racist as Trump though. Benito would do favors and dirty work for Adolph but I don't think he ever really got all the obsessions over race and religion. The Donald kind of does--at least we know he doesn't like black people, brown people, Muslims or gay people and I don't think he likes Asians a whole lot either and he certainly has issues with women in general at least if they're not fashion models. Basically he's left with white people (more white males than females) and christians even though I don't think he has a believing bone in his body.

Mark Hemingway demonstrates genuine journalistic talent (in commentary form here) and also shows us how Chuck Todd is a clown and a disgrace to real journalism.

Chuck Todd and the Demise of True Journalism | COMMENTARY | By Mark Hemingway | October 08, 2019

Todd's performance on the air surely made no converts from the public classed in the "basket of deplorables" which he so deplores.

I had no idea that "Meet the Press" had come to this.

INTERESTING:

House Dems, led by Pelosi: We will not have an impeachment vote "at this time."

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/15/house-democrats-will-not-hold-a-vote-authorizing...

The Hill:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday she will not stage a vote on the House floor to officially launch an impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

The decision came after Democratic leaders, returning to Washington following a two-week recess, had reached out to members of their diverse caucus to gauge the party's support for such a vote.

After back-to-back meetings with party leaders and then the full caucus, Pelosi announced that no such vote would take place. Democratic aides emphasized, however, that the process remains fluid and that Pelosi may reverse course and stage such a vote at any point in the future.

"There's no requirement that we have a vote, and so at this time we will not be having a vote," Pelosi told reporters...

"There's no requirement that we have a vote," LOL.

>25 Carnophile: Well, she'd better not wait too long. The election is little more than a year away. What if Trump is on trial at the time of the election? Wouldn't that raise a few constitutional problems?

>26 madpoet:

Trump's adversaries would love to think so; that's probably, and, indeed, (obviously) the whole idea.

Since there's really nothing behind this drive for impeachment other than petty partisan pique, some of the American public are sure to find it disgusting rather than either a sincere person's necessary nuisance or, more common among Democrats, a sadistic person's feel-good frolic.

But, apart from the deluded Democrats' imaginations, no, there is no legal difficulty. Trump is fully the president for the duration of his term unless and until after he's impeached, tried, convicted. Only then can he be removed fom office. And that is not going to happen prior to the 2020 election. So, he's fully entitled to run for re-election and, of course, to beat the living day-lights out of his pathetic partisan opponents--again.

He's also, as far as I'm aware, entitled to run for re-election even if removed from office.

It surely strikes Democrats as a goddamned nuisance that the matter of whether Trump is returned to office is one that is up to the voting public, not their corrupt deep-state machinery.

Looks like Trump's EU ambassador Gordon Sondland is willing to help dig Trump's grave if only because he doesn't want to be buried next to him.

From Volker to Voyonovich to Hill to Kent to McKinley to Sondland we're putting the pieces of this puzzle together--and they all fit very nicely together. The two Ukrainian clowns in prison and Giuliani likely to join them.

Lindsay Graham calling Trump 'dishonorable' today.

>26 madpoet: "We're not going to do X at this time" is politician-speak for "We're not going to do X."

>28 lriley: Any day now! Aaaaaaaany day now!

>29 Carnophile: Well, if Pelosi doesn't go ahead with impeachment, there could very well be a revolt within her own party. There is already a rift between progressives and the Democratic Party establishment. It could get ugly at the next party convention.

>30 madpoet: Well, if Pelosi doesn't go ahead with impeachment, there could very well be a revolt within her own party.

Quite. But as long as (she believes) her own House seat is safe, she won't feel much pressure. Also, if she thinks there aren't even enough votes in the House to pass Articles of Impeachment, she might just try pointing that out to the base and hoping they see the point.

#29--oh I'm pretty sure he's going to be impeached and it will be the Republican party's problem if they'll have to start from scratch and find a new nominee in March/April/May/June/July whenever. There is no constitutional impediment as to when this takes place......just as there wasn't any constitutional impediment in the way for McConnell to block a vote on Merrick Garland for more than a year.

>32 lriley: I agree: this will definitely be a dilemma for Republicans, if the impeachment goes ahead, and then Trump is actually removed from office on the eve of the election, too late to hold a convention. Then I suppose Mike Pence will be their presidential candidate?

If the Democrats wait until too close to the election, I think the American people will wonder: why bother? Let his trial be, not in the Senate, but at the ballot box.

#33--that's if Pence isn't caught up in the mess too----and it could happen. Trump's already made a claim that Pence has some involvement. Pompeo may be hurt too. Giuliani is pretty much a certainty. Trump's had Rudy doing a shadow State dept. But there are reasons why people are confirmed by the Senate for cabinet posts. These cabinet posts come with real responsibility. You can't have your unconfirmed private attorney working secretly away running foreign policy.

But anyway....it might all be over by Christmas. The latest I think it will go is mid-February. I really don't think the democrats are going to kill the election. If it were Ryan and McConnell though--I think they would.

>33 madpoet:

... " if the impeachment goes ahead, and then Trump is actually removed from office on the eve of the election, too late to hold a convention. Then I suppose Mike Pence will be their presidential candidate?"

______________________________

And why, even so, shouldn't or wouldn't Donald Trump be Republicans' candidate?

Actually, the better question is: Why would a majority of the current U.S. senate convict and remove Trump from office? What would be their rationale? On the evidence so far aduced or even cooked up in demented Trump-adversaries' imaginations, there are no sound or respectable grounds for impecaching Trump, let alone convicting him—barring some as-yet-undisclosed 'bomb-shell' revelation. And what is that and where the hell is it to be found? Mueller, in more than two years of determined digging and creative-writing, couldn't produce it.

It beggars belief to suppose that, as things stand and as, by all evidence and indications, they're going to remain between now and November 2020, for Trump's prospects, that is*, it beggars belief to suppose that the U.S. senate is going to convict and remove him from office.

Impeaching Trump, putting him on trial in the Senate, and, in the wildly unlikely event that the Senate convicts Trump, removing him from office —on the "eve" of the November 2020 election, that is, after the ballots have been prepared—does not, as far as I'm aware, mean either that Trump couldn't or wouldn't remain a candidate for re-election to the office of president of the United States. And it certainly doesn't prevent voters from casting ballots for Trump as president and Pence as his running-mate.

I know of nothing that prevents a once-impeached-and-removed U.S. president from being re-elected to that office again--provided, of course, that he's otherwise eligible (that is, he hasn't served more than the allowed number of months in office under the existing term-limits.)

He's not going to be convicted in the Senate and removed from office.

Much as they hate it, Democrats are going to have to face Trump again at the polls and submit, again, to the will of American voters as that is expressed through the rules of the Electoral college.

Damn! Double damn! LOL!

____________________________

* Of course, that's not to say that the Democratic party's —or certain of its members'— general electoral prospects cannot and shall not significantly worsen in the meantime.

Act I

SCENE I. A desert place.

Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches

First Witch:

When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

Second Witch:

When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.

Third Witch:

That will be ere the set of sun.

First Witch:

Where the place?

Second Witch:

Upon the heath.

Third Witch:

There to meet with Macbeth.

First Witch:

I come, Graymalkin!

Second Witch:

Paddock calls.

Third Witch:

Anon.

ALL:

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

... ... ...

ACT IV

SCENE I. A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron.

Thunder. Enter the three Witches

First Witch:

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.

Second Witch:

Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.

Third Witch:

Harpier cries 'Tis time, 'tis time.

... ... ...

Enter HECATE to the other three Witches

HECATE:

O well done! I commend your pains;
And every one shall share i' the gains;
And now about the cauldron sing,
Live elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.

Music and a song: 'Black spirits,' & c

HECATE retires

Second Witch:

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!

Enter MACBETH

LOL!

>33 madpoet:if the impeachment goes ahead, and then Trump is actually removed from office on the eve of the election, too late to hold a convention.

Even if all Dems and 2 "Independents" all vote to remove him, it would still require 20 Republican Senators, so LOL. In any case, such a move would have no legitimacy.

It is illuminating, though, that you're fantasizing that the timing is done so that the Republican Party could not even field a candidate. That is, so that there could not actually be a real election. That says everything about the left's attitude toward our "traditional democratic norms" they pretend to be so concerned about.

It's a legitimate question especially since the Republicans are already using the closeness of the election as a reason to oppose impeachment. According to Snopes removal from office and disqualification from holding the same office are separate penalties that the Senate could apply. So it's possible he could be convicted in the Senate but still be allowed to run again.

>36 Carnophile:

"It is illuminating, though, that you're fantasizing that the timing is done so that the Republican Party could not even field a candidate. That is, so that there could not actually be a real election. That says everything about the left's attitude toward our "traditional democratic norms" they pretend to be so concerned about."

Exactly.

>37 jjwilson61:

RE: "So it's possible he could be convicted in the Senate but still be allowed to run again."

"Possible" "he (i.e. Trump)...still be allowed to run" ?!?

Read the law.

"Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law."

—Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6 and 7

Note bene: an "office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States" is not a precisely-defined phrase in U.S. jurisprudence. Trump's adversaries would of course like to have you believe that the phrase implies that any impeachment and conviction would bar the person convicted from again standing as a candidate for elective office; but the Constitution's text does not make this point clearly.

Not even a criminal conviction bars the convicted person from standing for election to public office.

https://www.factcheck.org/2008/11/felons-in-office/

>36 Carnophile: You misunderstand me. I'm not 'fantasizing' about this happening. I know it is unlikely that Trump will be convicted by the Senate. However, if he is, it won't be until at least the summer of 2020, right? Possibly the fall. Not long before the election. Unlikely things do happen, sometimes--- few people thought Trump would be elected (including Trump himself, apparently) but he was. Mostly, I just find the whole situation curious: everyone is pretending the 'trial' in the Senate will be about the law, when we all know that senators, in the end, will vote for political reasons, and they have already made up their minds to convict or acquit, before the 'trial' has even started. The 'trial' is just theater. Why not just have a vote in the Senate immediately?

(RealClearPolitics)
________________


The Three Main Questions About Ukraine and Impeachment
COMMENTARY | By Charles Lipson | October 24, 2019

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ETA

Q.: What do you get when you cross the common misconception that (A): "impeachment is always really just purely & properly a partisan affair" with the common misconception, (B): "Since '(A)', then (B): therefore there is no realistic or practical point in sticking strictly to the literal terms in the Constitution, "for" "Treason", "Bribery", "or other" "high" "Crimes" and "Misdemeanors" ?

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A. : The future in partisan politics.

IN. YOUR. FACE.

What was the political effect of the impeachment?

Gallup Feb. 4: TRUMP JOB APPROVAL AT PERSONAL BEST

President Donald Trump's job approval rating has risen to 49%, his highest in Gallup polling since he took office in 2017.

...The 42% approval rating among independents is up five points, and ties three other polls as his best among that group.

...Half of registered voters say Trump deserves to be re-elected.

...Now, 51% of Americans view the Republican Party favorably, up from 43% in September. It is the first time GOP favorability has exceeded 50% since 2005.

Meanwhile, 45% of Americans have a positive opinion of the Democratic Party, a slight dip from 48% in September.

#43--Polls in February don't amount to much unless you're actually running for something. I have enough faith in Trump to know that he's going to do something majorly fucked up at least every two weeks and sometimes more than one majorly fucked up thing over the same span. You're already counting chickens before they've hatched and it definitely doesn't impress.

> 44

Didn't have to wait long at all. Jabba the trump just dissed J.C's Sermon on the Mount in front of the whole world at that recent prayer breakfast thingie.

That could be a faux paux or solecism that will lose him a few christian votes - assuming some few christians still care to some degree about Jesus and what he said.

Uh, lol.

#45--at least some of these people on the right think that all this garbage they come by with is going to have us wringing our hands. Oh my oh my.

I can respect people's religious beliefs--that doesn't mean I'll believe the same but the Donald doesn't have a religious bone in his body and he's got all kinds of catholic, protestant and jewish clowns (not all but a lot of them) carrying his golf bags and whatnot for him and showing off what hypocrites and liars they are. He's a phony and so is anyone that found his prayer breakfast remarks to be anything more than horseshit.

>44 lriley: Polls in February don't amount to much...

The point is, the left didn't even achieve their objective of damaging Trump politically. Apparently the opposite. And the Dems' numbers have sunk.

The left (firing a laser at a mirror): "Ow! Damn Trump!"

#47- Personally I think all that orange shit he's been dousing himself in has affected his body and brain chemistry. He's been stuttering and stammering for months now--words have been rolling around inside of his mouth and when they come out it's verbal diarrhea time--is he trying to speak in tongues? It hurts him politically because he shows it and he will continue to show it because sorry to say he's a fucking baby and he has no self control. And Romney hurt him really badly too--he wanted so bad for some democratic Senator to acquit him and it just didn't happen and then Mittens stabs him right in the heart. There you are and Mittens has 5 more years like it or lump it--what I would really call a secure future--not one stupid poll.

Romney hurt him really badly

Romney's vote made no difference whatsoever.

>49 Carnophile:

Here's the thing--and it is VERY sad:

to put us all through this outrage, Trump's opposition had to be living in their own little world of make-believe. The actual reality in which the rest of us live didn't and apparently can't touch these people.

After all this time, then, what's very sad is that these people are just as lost in their self-deluions as they were when they set out on this vendetta to get some kind of goods on Trump, since, as their fantasy-world had it, there had to be ample stuff with which to ruin him and get him out of office.

Interestingly, when it came to discovering this stuff and presenting it, they showed us that they had no choice but to use the creative arts of a fiction-writer or a dramatist--putting words, deeds and wholly-invented motives on their victim, Trump. The results simply weren't convincing and a majority of Americans came out so seriously doubting the reasonableness of what they'd been told that the Democrats have shamed and disgraced themselves throughout.

The idea that any of their efforts have enhanced the Democrats' eventual presidential-nominee's prospects for being elected in November is simply more of the same self-delusion that has plagued them from the start.

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As I've been listening to a re-play of the Manchester, N.H. debate between those Democrat presidential candidates who weren't pre-empted by the wealthy/mass-media-led interests: Biden, Sanders, Steyer, Butteigeig, Warren, Klobuchar, and Yang (a field deliberately pre-narrowed to exclude those deemed by the Mainstream Media to be political-deviants from the present elites' views), the question occurs to me---

unless Democrats maintain a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and, further, gain a new majority in the U.S. Senate, then by what logic do senators Biden, Sanders, Warren or Klobuchar---all of whom voted to convict President Trump on the House's articles of impeachment---if any one of them should be the Democrats' nominee and, then, in the rather unlikely event that he or she is actually elected, defeating Donald Trump at the November ballot, by what logic do they expect anything other than being promptly subjected to a House impeachment enquiry, the drafting and passage of articles of impeachment for "obstruction of Congress" and "abuse of power" followed by a Senate trial on those charges? By what logic?

How dare Biden--grotesquely corrupt, even by the standards applied to Donald Trump--how dare Sanders, Warren or Klobuchar expect anything less than this kind of "Welcome" into office?

FUCK YOU!, Senator Sanders, for brandishing the spectre of some future American president who, according to you, is now at liberty--merely due to some supposed "precedent" set by the acquittal of President Trump in the Senate impeachment trial-- to haggle with U.S. states' governors over this, that or another political favor which is the president's prerogative to grant or to refuse

(thus)

"And here's what I think the horror and the danger of what happened was--not only the acquittal of Trump who in fact committed impeachable offenses and obstructed Congress--it is the precedent that it set. The precedent that it set. And what that precedent is about now is, in the future, you're gonna have presidents who say, 'Hey! Governor, you want (U.S.) Highway money? You better support me or you're not gonna get it because I am the president. I can do anything I want." ...

--AS THOUGH THAT ISN'T THE MOST STANDARD POLITICAL OPERATING PROCEDURE OF EVERY U.S PRESIDENT SINCE JOHN ADAMS!

Presidents sign or refuse to sign federal legislation. That includes U.S. highway-funding legislation. They use that legal authority as a bargaining chip and they always have since the U.S. first began building highways. This is the ordinary manner of partisan politics, regardless of party! you hypocritical fuck!

Damn you, you fucking demagogue! You! You have the nerve to lecture Trump's Senate aquittors when you campaigned for Hillary Clinton!? Hillary Clinton--who has bested every living politician in the U.S. by her capacity to sell herself for money and favors in a way that would make a street-corner prostitute blush with shame? Goddamn you!, asshole!

FUCK YOU!, Senator Klobuchar, for your "I like (Senator Bernie) Sanders just fine." You also like Hillary Clinton "just fine", too, don't you? I guess you joined Sanders in campaigning for her against Trump. Her home-based private e-mail server, which she used for sensitive official communications, despite express warnings from her own senior staff that this was a felony violation of federal law--she brushed that warning aside--that didn't and doesn't give you cause for concern, does it?!

Same for you, Senator Biden! FUCK YOU!

I wonder how accurate that 49 per cent number really is. See:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/daily-presidential-tracking-poll/ar-AADK...

I've been following this rolling poll for months now and Jabba the trump seems to be far in the negative: 53 to 42 against him on job approval and 51 to 40 against him (with 9 for 3rd party on who one would vote for today.

I think that may be the more accurate poll.

And BTW, there was a poll showing fully 75 per cent of voters wanted witnesses at the impeachment trial. How does that number translate into a positive for the republican party in general and Jabba the trump?

>50 proximity1: "in the future, you're gonna have presidents who say, 'Hey! Governor, you want (U.S.) Highway money? You better support me or you're not gonna get it because I am the president. I can do anything I want." ...

--AS THOUGH THAT ISN'T THE MOST STANDARD POLITICAL OPERATING PROCEDURE OF EVERY U.S PRESIDENT SINCE JOHN ADAMS!

Indeed!

>51 JGL53: I wonder how accurate that 49 per cent number really is.

I don't give any credence to MSM polls either, perhaps for the opposite of your reasons. BUT: you don't have to believe the level of the poll; that's not the point here. The point is the trend, i.e. upward for Trump. The idea that anti-Trump partisans in the media would massage the results to make things look good for him is crazy.