The Trump Impeachment Inquiry

I think it better to get the nonsense out of the way now instead of at an impeachment trial.

There isn’t some law of conservation of nonsense.

Oh.

Monica Zelensky will do. I read somewhere that MZ is for rent whenever there’s a POTUS who’s pissed someone off.

When you ask what Pelosi is “afraid” of, it’s an easy inference to make. Moreover, don’t be shocked people think you’re a Republican when you spout Republican talking points.

She’s not “afraid” of anything, she’s operating within the rules that as YamatoTwinkie pointed out were rules that Republicans made when they were in charge.

I apologize if I’m not well versed in Republican talking points. I don’t watch Fox and I don’t follow Doug Collins on Twitter.

Pelosi can be both “afraid” and operating within the rules.

Human communication involves much more than words. Facial expression, and its recognition, has evolved in mammals over eons. It’s advantageous.

Message boards and texting services have resorted to use emoticons to compensate. And it is a grossly inadequate compensation. Tough to emojify changes in voice (pitch, amplitude, pace), gesturing, posture, setting, and shared history.

I share your pain.

Holy shit, he needs to be impeached on this Kurds thing alone. This is going to be a slaughter.

“The Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Syrian National Army, just launched #OperationPeaceSpring against PKK/YPG and Daesh terrorists in northern Syria. Our mission is to prevent the creation of a terror corridor across our southern border, and to bring peace to the area.”

The dumb fucker talks on the phone with an autocrat and without consulting anyone, removes the only protection that our Kurdish allies had against genocide. But but but her emails! And did you know China gave $1.5 Billion to Biden’s kid? This administration has utterly destroyed the US’s reputation throughout the world. We will never be trusted again. The US will never again stand for freedom.

America is the most exceptional country ever.

Fox News is reporting the US military has been ordered by Trump not to assist the Kurds.

OK, sorry, off topic. But shit, people are getting slaughtered now because of his incompetence. And fitness for office is, imho, an impeachable offense as well.

Out of the way? What gives you the idea that they intend to call a few witnesses then step aside to let the impeachment proceedings continue? The very purpose of all this Biden shit is to disrupt, so if/when they get that foot in the door it is never going to close again.

I first saw this cartoon around the time of the 2016 election:

(This image seems to have had the lower part cut off which shows the diaper in more graphic detail.)

The US will also never again have allies, those who are with it to the end.

It’s not just about abandoning the Kurds, antagonizing the EU, or calling Canada a “security threat”. It’s putting in doubt the very notion that the US can be trusted. Trust and the ‘moral high ground’ or a reasonable facsimile of such, was the US’s for 75 years. Not anymore.

Whether this is a good, bad, or irrelevant thing remains to be seen.

So, uh, when exactly do you expect the U.S. to be kicked out of NATO?

I think that like most things, this is a battle for the voters in the middle. The sooner that the Republican strategy can be exposed for the shit that it is, the better.

There’s no reason to think letting the Republicans turn this into a circus will more quickly expose the Republican strategy, most likely the opposite. We already have tonnes of documentation that Biden’s interference was totally in line with US policy and a variety of Western authorities including the IMF. How do you imagine interviewing a bunch of Giuliani approved Ukrainians is going to make anything more clear?

That doesn’t explain why you think letting them steal the floor with that Biden crap will somehow get it out of the way. How long did they keep that Benghazi fiasco going, and what damage did that descent into madness do to the Republican party? What you are proposing isn’t giving them enough rope to hang themselves-what you want to do is give them both ends of the rope and let them choose who is to be strung up.

I continue to respond out of order (I’ll get around to the older posts, promise! Doing some research).

I won’t vouch for everything on the page but page 4 has two points that I actually agree with. First point, it is claimed that Republican ranking members of the (Intelligence?) committee are not allowed to issue their own subpoenas. I would prefer for the impeachment proceedings to have some semblance of bipartisanship, but if only Democrats are allowed to conduct the inquiry it will appear quite partisan.

Second point, witnesses are allegedly being denied agency lawyers during their testimony. Unlike grand jury hearings, which are normally secret and in some cases hearsay, their testimony will be used publicly for or against the president during the Senate trial. There are also national security and diplomatic concerns if the witnesses are asked sensitive questions (the president’s disregard for national security and diplomacy aside). Also, the witnesses testify under penalty of perjury. It would be prudent to allow lawyers to advise the witnesses during their depositions.

The rebuttal at the bottom of page 8 and the top of page 9 is also convincing. In short, the House does have an oversight authority to request the very same documents, but the current requests were clearly made without exercising that authority.

I find the rest of the letter to be unconvincing.

~Max

Personally, I find it helps to debate/debunk the Republican talking points when I know from what compost heap they were pulled. YMMV.