They didn't have even this until very recently....by all means though, keep hoping that Santa is coming kiddo.
I can't believe it's been this long since I started this thread. Can't say that I didn't see all this coming. There's not many people with a personality like Trump's, in that high a profile, that aren't doing some shady ish on the side. I mean the guy, at one point, literally said that he could stand in the middle of New York and shoot someone in the street, and not lose voters. Yet he still got elected. Blows my mind. Well, you didn't have to shoot someone, Donald. Your voters may be loyal, but those close to you are not. Shame shame. With this new catch and kill coming out that he fathered a kid out of wedlock with the housekeeper (I still think he had one with the Playboy model as well. The one paid for by Elliot Broidy. The model being Shera Bechard.), now I guess the big question is, which will last longer: the Trump Presidency, or his marriage?
trump's shadiness wasn't a surprise. He had connections with the mob. Another weird bit of irony... with all the questions and complaints about then candidate Obama's past "associations", republicans gave trump's documented mob links a pass... https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ppx7b9/a-brief-history-of-donald-trump-and-the-mafia https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/donald-trump-roy-cohn-relationship https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-...ed-cruz/yes-donald-trump-has-been-linked-mob/
apparently not . . . https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/n...3/cnn-msnbc-say-impeachment-222-times-one-day
Democrats run away from Impeachment as Republicans try to Tag Democrats with trying to Impeach the President. Ain't politics hilarious?
The liberal networks and the Democratic politicians are different entities. It's not unreasonable to hear a lot of discussion that day about impeachment given the day's news. How many times was impeachment mentioned on Fox that day (I googled, but didn't find it)? I have fox playing silently in the background at work, and I saw plenty. In fact, I'm still seeing it -- "Lewandoswky warns that House will immediately begin impeachments hearings if Democrats win." I bet a count of Fox mentions will compete with or exceed CNN and MSNBC. Impeachment is the elephant in the room. The political strategies on both sides are pretty obvious. Democrats like having it hang in the atmosphere because it will encourage the anti-Trump element to come out and vote Democrat, but they want to talk about something else so they don't like a one-trick pony, or like an irrational damn-the-facts-impeachment-at-all-costs party. Republicans obviously want to paint them as the latter to make people afraid that the country will be pitched into chaos over a political vendetta. So what we can expect is plain -- networks left and right will keep talking about impeachment (Fox constantly, MSNBC and CNN on developments in the investigations); Democrat politicians will try to avoid it, Republican politicians will continue to accuse their rivals of planning to impeach.
point-counterpoint first, a new polemic, in the NY Daily News of all places http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-impeachment-delusion-20180828-story.html and then Robert Reich provides a case example of what Dunn criticizes, pretty much right on time https://www.newsweek.com/robert-rei...s-presidency-must-be-annulled-opinion-1092345 more at the link
Princetone University's Keith Wittington argues that a Trump impeachment would be unique among other historical impeachments. https://www.lawfareblog.com/should-congress-treat-impeachable-offenses-cumulatively Wittington writes: President Trump presents a different problem, and indeed a problem that would be unique in the history of federal impeachments. The concerns revolving around President Trump do not center on a single incident like President Johnson’s effort to remove Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, or even a closely related set of incidents like Judge Humphreys’ support of the secessionist cause. President Trump has found himself entangled in a myriad of legal, political and constitutional difficulties, and he seems to stumble into more with every news cycle. If the House were to pursue impeachment charges against the president—perhaps after the midterm election and the seating of a new Democratic majority – the biggest challenge might be how to edit the list of potential impeachment charges down to a manageable size. Members of the House Democratic caucus have already introduced possible articles of impeachment focused on the president’s rhetoric after the Charlottesville riot and his unerring ability to bring the presidency into “contempt, ridicule, disgrace and disrepute.” It is easy to imagine more, ranging from his actions during the 2016 election campaign to his obstruction of the Russia investigation to his ongoing financial conflicts of interest to his handling of national security secrets to his abuse of his discretionary constitutional and statutory authority. Rather than doing everything possible to walk back out of impeachment territory and demonstrate that impeachment is not a necessary remedy to what ails the White House, the president and his supporters have preferred to dig in and try to weather the storm. Trump’s critics have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to presidential scandals. Their difficulty comes with establishing that any single scandal is sufficient to justify the president’s impeachment and removal. Of course the president’s most committed foes are already convinced that Trump should be removed from office. Indeed, many thought extraordinary steps should have been taken to prevent him from even being inaugurated. The president’s fellow partisans, however, have thus far been unimpressed. Although many Republicans might readily admit President Trump’s many missteps, relatively few are prepared to say that those missteps amount to impeachable offenses that would justify overturning the will of the voters. Like Bill Clinton before him, Donald Trump benefits from the fact that those who cast their ballots in his favor had already decided that his personal flaws did not override his political utility. Trump’s many foibles were priced in to his presidency. If the president is impeached and his case is tried in the Senate, his fate will depend on the decision of a number of Republican senators. The Democrats might possess the simple majority needed to impeach in the House, but they will not possess the supermajority needed to convict in the Senate. Whether the president is convicted and removed will depend on whether the president’s critics are able to offer arguments that are persuasive to at least a sizable portion of Republicans. For Republican senators, the decision of whether to convict and remove the president will depend not only on an assessment of the facts and the law but also on a political judgment of whether removal would be in the best interest of the country and of the Republican Party. What might sway them? It might well matter whether the Democrats are able to get beyond individual charges and convince senators to think about the case for impeachment more holistically. The senators will almost certainly follow precedent and vote on each article of impeachment separately. To the skeptical Republican, each individual article of impeachment might well look to be serious but insufficient to justify conviction and removal. Although one should never say never with this president, it does not currently appear likely that there is going to be a single silver bullet, a single high crime that, if adequately demonstrated, would command bipartisan agreement on its importance. Instead, Democrats are likely to find themselves in possession of a host of offenses, each reasonably supported by evidence (often enough the evidence of the president’s own public statements), each damning in its own way, and yet each arguably falling short of justifying removal. Did the president give rhetorical comfort to white supremacists? No doubt. Did the president throw up obstacles to a full investigation of Russian meddling with the 2016 president elections? Certainly. Did the president use his power to pardon in revolting ways? Apparently. Did the president maintain financial interests at odds with responsibilities of his office? Possibly. Did the president contribute to the criminal violation of campaign finance laws? Maybe. Did the president collaborate with foreign powers to advance his own electoral prospects? Perhaps. If Republican senators were forced to examine each such charge in turn, they might well find the president’s actions disquieting and misguided and yet not impeachable. The accumulation of such charges might, however, push the case for impeachment and removal over the line. A constitutionally conscientious senator must be able to see the forest as well as the trees. Such a senator might well think that if a president had brought his office into disrepute with contemptible rhetoric or if a president had egregiously abused his pardoning power, that the president should nonetheless be tolerated until the people had the opportunity to remove him at the next election. If asked to vote on an article of impeachment charging a president with such misdeeds, a senator might well believe that, all things considered, the president should not be convicted and removed. If asked to vote on multiple articles of impeachment detailing a long train of abuses, however, even sympathetic senators could appropriately decide that such evils are not politically or constitutionally endurable. It is the history of repeated injuries and usurpations that could suggest that patient sufferance is no longer the appropriate course of action. An impeachment trial is inescapably political, which is why the power to impeach is entrusted into the hands of the members of Congress. Senators must render a judgment not only on what has in fact happened but also on what the constitutional significance of what has happened might be. In reaching that judgment, senators must not only assess the acts but must also assess the man who has committed the acts. If there are means short of impeachment and removal available to stem the damage to the public wellbeing that a federal officer is inflicting, then the members of Congress have an obligation to take the steps necessary to safeguard the nation from that damage. If, however, offenses pile upon offenses and an officer cannot be adequately checked and trusted to conduct himself in a more responsible manner befitting his high office, then the constitutional calculus changes. Impeachable offenses cannot be adequately evaluated is isolation. Although senators might be called upon to vote on one charge at a time, they have a responsibility to consider the totality of circumstances when casting that vote. more at the link
LOL...nice source Republicans Are Talking About Impeachment Way More Than Democrats Perry Bacon Jr. “Legal blows fuel impeachment fears” declared Politico in a headline on Tuesday, after news broke that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen had entered a guilty plea and a jury had convicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on eight counts of various financial crimes. The story featured three Republicans (and no Democrats) speculating about the possibility of Democrats impeaching President Trump if they win control of the House in November. On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested that impeachment is, “the only message they seem to have going into the midterms,” referring to congressional Democrats. Even Trump himself appears to have impeachment on the mind. Here’s the thing: If the Democrats are planning to impeach Trump if they win control of the House, they are doing a really great job of hiding it. Congressional Democrats aren’t talking about impeachment. On Wednesday, for example, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a leading candidate for speaker of the House if Democrats win control, again all but ruled out an impeachment push, saying that Democrats would use congressional power to oversee the Trump administration and make sure the president does not interfere with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, where any impeachment resolutions would likely be introduced, spent Wednesday pushing a bill he sponsored that would make it harder for Trump to fire Mueller. Nadler has suggested that the party will only pursue impeachment if they think they can get the 67 Senate votes they’d need to remove Trump from office — a very high bar, since that would mean something like 17 Senate Republicans would agree to vote out a Republican president. And it’s not just Democratic leaders who aren’t talking about impeachment. As part of FiveThirtyEight’s project looking at what types of Democrats are doing well in primaries for Senate, House and governor this year, we looked at the campaign website for each of the 811 people who, as of Aug. 7, had appeared on the ballot in Democratic primaries for races with no Democratic incumbent. Only one candidate (Nate Kleinman, running for a House seat in New Jersey) featured a call for impeaching Trump on his website. And he lost his primary, getting just 9 percent of the vote in a four-way race.Other candidates have voiced support for impeachment in interviews or other public remarks. But, as far as we could find (we didn’t do as exhaustive a search of media reports as we did of campaign sites), even that’s a small share of the hundreds of candidates running. ">1 And the latest Cohen and Manafort developments haven’t seemed to bring a surge of calls for impeachment, either. For example, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the party’s nominee in a very Democratic-leaning House district in New York City and a new hero of the left wing of the Democratic Party, has sent out several tweets since the news about Cohen and Manafort — none of which mentioned impeachment. Let me not overstate my case: There is some support among congressional Democrats for impeaching Trump. In a vote in December, 58 House Democrats signaled their support for impeachment by opposing a move to table an impeachment resolution that was written by Rep. Al Green of Texas. But 126 Democrats (along with 238 Republicans) voted to scrap that resolution. This January, another impeachment push from Green got support from 66 Democrats, with more than 60 percent of Democrats in the House opposing it. more at the link...
You read the weirdest stuff. Regarding NY Daily News, the comparison of the calls to impeach Trump to the calls to impeach Bush would only be convincing to someone who wasn't alive during the Bush Admin. There was no expectation at any time in the Bush presidency that any charge would be pursued. It was impotent frustration. The nature of the objection to Trump's continued service is really different. On Reich, yeah, annulment won't be a thing.
I don't see impeachment as worthwhile as the Senate will never remove him from office. Getting 67 Senators to agree to anything politicized these days is impossible. More than likely Democratic congress can serve as a better check on Trump to contain the damage he does for the next two years.
Megan McArdle in yesterday's Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...es-toward-impeachment/?utm_term=.30f117e6c5cd
I honestly believe voting him out in 2020 would be healthier for the nation than removing him from office. The entire proccess is going to take a year. By that time, he would have only one year left in his presidency. Having him removed from office is going to result in sporadic pockets of violence and a significant contingent of the population digging deeper into the " deep state narrative". Voting him out seems healthier and safer for the country. Once he leaves office, I hope his ass is indicted to oblivion.
What’s amazing is this seems to be the overwhelming consensus among liberals and those talking about impeachment seem to all be coming from Trump world. The only thing is they want to create a narrative that it’s us being overzealous and pushing the narrative. In the process it makes them look panicked. I think you are 100% right here. Removing him from office against his own will would result in a powder keg in this country that fox and Trump have created. The Trump cult really is ideologistic and they will fight to hold onto their idol. The best thing that can happen is for the Dems to take over Congress, neutralize Trumps insane right wing agenda, and win in 2020. We then just need the courts, law enforcement, secret service, military, and the other Republicans to ensure peaceful transition of power which isn’t guaranteed with Trump in 2020 if he loses.
Ann Althouse pretty much dismantles McArdle's essay here: https://althouse.blogspot.com/2018/09/by-any-metric-trump-is-in-trouble.html excerpt: more at the link
Whatever.... I don’t really care if Democrats or Republicans are discussing impeachment more. All that matters is that the majority of American people realize that Trump is immoral and oddly incompetent. Is he really who any of us want representing the USA? We can do so much better.
already there, which is promising if Trump is immoral and you enable Trump, what does that mean? I also hope that the majority of American people realize that this current GOP group is immoral
