Republican politicians aren’t just afraid of losing their jobs, They are afraid for their physical safety from Republican voters. They will not stand up to them.
You would think that the people upset about that President betraying the precariously-employed workers who voted for him would have been less eager to go riot at the Capitol when he told them to.
Fortunately, we now have a President who seems to actually care about restoring decent jobs for the American working class. Although, to be fair, US factory work wasn’t ever the secure ticket to a middle-class lifestyle that modern nostalgia paints it:
I think you mean we “…elected another President who is realistic about the fact that it’s no longer possible that anyone that wants to work hard and earn an honest living can go to work in a coal mine, a steel mill, and auto factory, and support a family with a middle class lifestyle,” instead of selling the fantasy of jumping in a time machine and setting the flux capacitor back to 1955. Biden is, however, confronting the fact that there is a needed transformation in the economy to create new jobs and educate people to fill them, as well as ensuring the necessary socioeconomic support to keep people from being exploited by payday loansharks and the student debt industry.
Stranger
In response to Stranger_On_A_Train’s posted CNN report about three GOP Senators meeting with Trump’s defense team
I was wondering about this during his first impeachment trial, and could never get an answer: The Senate is supposed to be acting as a jury to determine if the president is guilty or innocent of the charges which have been filed. So why is it acceptable for any of them to publicly announce before the evidence is even presented to them how they intend to vote. If I were selected for a jury and I were to publicly state before even hearing the evidence that I intended to find the defendant guilty or innocent, at the very least I would be removed from the jury, if not held in contempt of court.
So why doesn’t this apply to members of the Senate? (And this should apply both ways, not just to Republicans but also to Democrats.)
OP: I was just thinking this morning, “Hey, isn’t it amazing how every single thing the 'pubs said they were afraid of happening or said was actually happening by control of Obama and the Dems has actually come to pass at the hands of those craven 'pubs?”
Yes, it was a deeply personal attack on them. But they’ve deluded themselves and will continue to be craven supporters of the worst person to ever sit in the Oval Office.
Almost everything they do is projection. Trump was born in Kenya.
Seen on the web:
I love the fact that the entire moral fate of the country rests on finding just 17 honest Republicans. It’s like some impossible task from a fairytale.
Do you not understand that it’s possible to be deeply affronted and offended by something and yet feel powerless to redress the situation?
Some people genuinely feel that this second impeachment is unconstitutional. Would you have them set aside their views, and do something that they feel is illegal, and all for the sake of personal revenge?
Their sense of ambiguous legality about a second impeachment is more troubling to them than having their party support a violent insurrection against the United States government?
You, sir, are an inimitable wit, a limitless fount of endless pasquinade, an unsummitable mountain of burlesque. I look forward to your future collaborations with Sacha Baron Cohen, or barring that, your pastiche thereof.
Stranger
So if Biden actually cares about the 40 years of pain and suffering of the former middle class, what’s his solution? Have a 60 year old laid of factory worker sit down next to a bunch of teenagers in college to learn coding? Destroy the person’s self-worth and dignity by giving him a government handout?
No, because if they believed this, they would have pushed McConnell to have the trial before Trump left office.
Also, I don’t tend to think that Senators are idiots. The actual precedent is that you can impeach someone after they leave office, as even our Founding Fathers attempted this. There is nothing in the text that says they can’t impeach, and the Supreme Court has declared impeachment entirely a political question.
Finally, because of this, it is entirely up to the Senate to determine what is and is not impeachable, so they factually are not powerless to act. When you are the one who gets to decide if something is against the rules or not, you don’t then get to say you were powerless because of the rules.
And it’s not about revenge. It’s about preventing it from happening again. If the ringleader isn’t punished, then he or another ringleader will find more ground troops. They need to convict to protect themselves and the country from another attempt.
Because it’s a political process, not a criminal trial.
You’re describing someone who doesn’t want help from the government. If they don’t want help, we can’t force them.
That said, name one of those people who refused to take the government handout of $1800. The only people I know who didn’t want it are people who didn’t need it. All of us who needed it were very happy to get it.
Similarly, name the people who applied for unemployment and didn’t want the extra $600 a month. Seems like everyone who couldn’t get work was happy to receive that, too.
So it doesn’t seem like there really are that many people who refuse to take government handouts because it it would “destroy the person’s self-worth and dignity.”
Easy. It’s all about the money.
The problem is that there are all too many people out there in the Trump camp who, if the VP (as a hypothetical example) had been killed would have said he deserved it for “betraying” Trump and it was a justified killing.
There is rot in our society. Or maybe it’s a cancer. In any case, it’s a serious problem.
This is not a criminal trial and it has different rules.
You say that as if middle aged people being in a group of teenagers is a bad thing. When did we start viewing strict segregation by age as a good thing? Admittedly, there can be issues with a diverse group of people, but when I went to college over 30 years ago we actually did have people ranging from 18 to over 60 in my classes. The world did not explode.
I would prefer people get further education out of desire rather than necessity, but I find it bizarre that people regard mixing people of different ages together something undesirable. Aren’t workplaces full of people over that same age range?
How much dignity is there in being homeless and starving?
The destruction of self-worth is from being declared surplus and unwanted by society, not by getting assistance when you need it.
As a general rule, I find those who complain about government assistance destroying someone’s “self-worth” have never been in the position of needing it. When you’re facing eviction, hungry, and your biggest problem is a simple lack of money most folks find help to be welcome, especially if they don’t have to beg for it over and over on a internet website.
I don’t know. It’s possible he doesn’t know either right at this point, but he’s willing to investigate possibilities other than “return to the 1950’s when White Christian Men were large and in charge and anyone else who didn’t respect that was hammered back into place”. Fact is, the 1950’s sucked for a lot of people - like my grandmother, who was openly and legally paid less than what men doing the exact same work were paid. Like the black people for whom being paid less for the same work was also a fact of life. Like people chased out of sundown towns, refused work because they were not a part of the elite class, or barred from attending certain schools because of their race or religion or gender. And on and on…
Truth is, that middle class of the 1950’s was only open to some people, not all.
Anyhow - whether people like it or not, a lot of folks are going to have to make some changes. As someone who has been done out of two careers due to automation/computers, who got little sympathy for my troubles, I have extremely limited empathy for others whining about having to do the same. I assure you, when I was 18 I wasn’t dreaming of working in a grocery store like I am right now. Unfortunately, the job I landed back then simply no longer exists, it’s like “buggy whip maker”. I had to make some changes, whether I wanted to or not. I had to do it all over again in 2007. One thing I’ve learned is that when you find yourself in circumstances like that you’ll get out of the situation a LOT faster if you put your big girl/boy pants on and make the necessary changes rather than whining and trying to hold onto the past.
In our society, no one is entitled a middle class lifestyle, nor guaranteed that. Sorry if anyone had that notion. If someone told them that they were lied to. I am all in favor of maximizing the number of people who can achieve that lifestyle (or even better) but days of expecting to do the same job from 18 to 65 are over, if they ever actually existed.
As two posters have already noted, because it’s not a criminal trial and has different rules. The way I would describe it is that it’s because the rules of Senate proceedings are whatever the Senators say they are, whereas the rules of court proceedings are independently established by law. IOW, this impeachment “trial” is more of a political farce than a trial, with a foregone acquittal based on a majority of Republicans being self-serving spineless hypocrites.
Why is it always CODING!? As if that’s the only fucking choice if one can’t pull coal out of the damn ground. (big sigh)
As for these folks who plan to vote against conviction, they are traitors. That is all. That is how they will be remembered in the history books.