Political Discussions for "Adults"

Anteater · 02-01-2020, 12:12 PM

1. Trump said the various accusations of his campaign colluding with Russia and the investigation related to that was a hoax. It was already established that Russia spent money and tried to influence the election, though it was ineffectual for the most part other than the debacle with Hillary and Podesta's emails. To put it into perspective, Russia spent 40k in ad spend across 50 states, and some of that money ended up being spent in favor of pro-Bernie and pro-Jill Stein ads. Take that for what you will, but all of that was more than enough reason to increase the severity of Russian sanctions.

2. I'm saying we don't know if aid was actually held up or not. The actual White House budgetary office said it wasn't and even provided documentation that proved it wasn't. Trump's team of people didn't know, but instead of being calm they just tried to cover for him out of kneejerk fear.

In reality, half of the promised appears to have been doled out without any strings attached in late July right on schedule, and this was before the story even broke in early September. So that means your left with Trump's phone call and expressed desires as far as justification for an investigation is concerned. I personally don't think that's enough to justify the removal of a President, especially in light of other things Trump has done (for better or for worse) or even the actions of past Presidents.

3. All I'm ultimately saying about Trump and Biden is that it appears to have been a convenient coincidence that Trump was already interested in Ukraine long before Biden was on his radar as an actual political rival to look into. The pieces lined up really well to the point where you could make a legitimate argument that investigating some of what happened in 2016 and looking at Hunter Biden on Burisma's board were good entry points into seeing if there was money laundering and other "corrupt activities" going on, especially since Burisma's CEO had to literally flee the country previously for those exact kinds of crimes.

BUT.

Was it a good idea for Trump to push on the Biden angle the way he did? No, because a lot of people want Biden as POTUS. He should have known how that would look optics-wise.

Should he have opened his stupid mouth about aid at all over that phone call, knowing people were taking notes? No.

Are those things impeachable? In a purely political sense, yeah, but since the Articles didn't have Bribery as one of them it wasn't going to have any teeth anyway. It was a half-assed effort.

Do they justify removal from office? Not really. I didn't think Clinton lying to Congress was worth removing him (and he avoided that outcome). I didn't think Fast & Furious was enough reason to remove Obama from office (even though there were more than a few who wanted to launch Articles of impeachment over it at the time). Impeachment should be reserved for wrongdoing where there are huge real world consequences, not petty bull**** related to foreign aid (which really shouldn't be going out as much as it is) or sexual affairs.

Out of the big ones, Nixon to me was the only one who did something that justified removal because he took direct action that had consequences outside of the partisan bubble. Breaking into places, firing his Special Prosecutor the way he did, etc.

~~jwb~~ · 02-01-2020, 12:40 PM

1.) Trump went on national TV and said he believes Putin when he said Russia didn't try to interfere with our elections. And then there's what he said in the phone call, of course:

Quote:

That half-hour call has already led to a whistle-blower complaint, an impeachment inquiry, and a congressional hearing. But it also sparked confusion over one strange stream-of-consciousness portion of Trump's remarks. In the recently released recap of the call, Trump alludes to the investigation of the 2016 Democratic National Committee breach. "I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike ... I guess you have one of your wealthy people ... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation," Trump says.

On its face, the comments suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of how cybersecurity investigations work, combined with muddled and broadly debunked conspiracy theories about Ukraine's involvement in the DNC breach investigation. For starters, CrowdStrike is not a Ukrainian company. And there is no single, physical server that represents a piece of elusive missing evidence from the DNC breach. Instead, the DNC shared a forensically preserved digital image of its systems with the FBI, who concluded that Russian agents had indeed hacked the network.

The president's line of inquiry makes no sense on multiple levels. It does, though, seem to reveal an amazing underlying fact: Trump is still searching for answers about what happened inside the DNC's network, because he still doesn't believe the one America's intelligence agencies have told him.

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-uk...ction-hacking/

2.) ...

Quote:

President Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine at least a week before a phone call in which Trump is said to have pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate the son of former vice president Joe Biden, according to three senior administration officials.
Officials at the Office of Management and Budget relayed Trump’s order to the State Department and the Pentagon during an interagency meeting in mid-July, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They explained that the president had “concerns” and wanted to analyze whether the money needed to be spent.
Administration officials were instructed to tell lawmakers that the delays were part of an “interagency process” but to give them no additional information — a pattern that continued for nearly two months, until the White House released the funds on the night of Sept. 11.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...9a0_story.html

3.) It's not a coincidence ffs. He cares more about Biden than actual corruption. In fact he doesn't care about corruption full stop.

Anteater · 02-01-2020, 01:23 PM

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/1512

Quote:

d. An apportionment or a reapportionment shall be reviewed at least 4 times a year by the official designated in section 1513 of this title to make apportionments.

You should look at how aid is actually dispersed and what the Executive Branch can and can't do. It's another reason on why I knew Trump wouldn't be removed from office as a result of this process, because serious law scholars would see the same stuff I've looked at before.

Trump never had the power to "freeze" aid, but he does have the authority to oversee the reapportionment and obligation process of the aid that had been approved. He said what he said, but he had the authority to review things. That's a process that can take weeks to months. The aid was never "frozen".

From 31 USC 1512:

Quote:

“The official designated in section 1513 of this title to make apportionments shall apportion an appropriation under paragraph (1) of this subsection as the official considers appropriate. Except as specified by the official, an amount apportioned is available for obligation under the terms of the appropriation on a cumulative basis unless reapportioned.”

The funds were still going to Ukraine, but exactly how they were used by and for Ukraine might change in the reapportionment. For example, instead of buying rifles, they might buy grenades. Instead of training Ukraine for cyber security, they might train for field communications.

This is why the law allows the official in charge leeway to do what he “considers appropriate”. This is not overriding Congress. The Executive Branch is charged by law on how to use those security assistance funds for Ukraine.

**Frownland** · 02-01-2020, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anteater

This is why the law allows the official in charge leeway to do what he “considers appropriate”.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frownland

"the president can do whatever the **** he wants because he's the president and he said he can do whatever the **** he wants".

No need to do all these mental backflips trying to justify the basis of this imo.

Anteater · 02-01-2020, 01:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frownland

No need to do all these mental backflips trying to justify the basis of this imo.

These statutes existed long before he was ever elected though. I only knew about them because I had to research all that **** when I had to write a paper about the history of foreign aid for the UAE, Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. There's decades of history about all the cash we hand out.

**Frownland** · 02-01-2020, 01:56 PM

Ja the fascist state of the presidency was set in motion by FDR then exponentially increased by basically every president thereafter if you look at it outside of the 24 hour news cycle.

Anteater · 02-01-2020, 02:01 PM

One of my old instructors told the class that he thought Teddy Roosevelt was the "last real American President", but when a student asked him who he'd vote for he said "Colin Powell".

OccultHawk · 02-01-2020, 02:16 PM

I think when Obama and the Dems let the republicans bully them by not allowing obama his Supreme Court pick (Merrick Garland) that’s going to be understood as the first of a series of events that led to a situation much more disastrous than where we’re at now. There’s times when you have to fight and that was one of them and we didn’t. We acted like pussies and pussies get ****ed. We literally should’ve burnt DC to the ground.

You can always dig deeper but if our future fascism is punk rock not getting that pick was the stooges.

Mindy · 02-01-2020, 05:23 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmqDhRo-f8Q

Mindy · 02-01-2020, 07:46 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJVmcdk0Ti0

02-01-2020, 01:56 PM	#4666 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,541	Ja the fascist state of the presidency was set in motion by FDR then exponentially increased by basically every president thereafter if you look at it outside of the 24 hour news cycle. __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth. d e a f b o x

02-01-2020, 02:16 PM	#4668 (permalink)
OccultHawk one-balled nipple jockey Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Dirty Souf Biatch Posts: 22,006	I think when Obama and the Dems let the republicans bully them by not allowing obama his Supreme Court pick (Merrick Garland) that’s going to be understood as the first of a series of events that led to a situation much more disastrous than where we’re at now. There’s times when you have to fight and that was one of them and we didn’t. We acted like pussies and pussies get ****ed. We literally should’ve burnt DC to the ground. You can always dig deeper but if our future fascism is punk rock not getting that pick was the stooges. __________________ 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Member of the Year & Journal of the Year Champion Behold the Writing of THE LEGEND: https://www.musicbanter.com/members-...p-lighter.html

02-01-2020, 05:23 PM	#4669 (permalink)
Mindy ask me about cosmology Join Date: Oct 2016 Location: Milky Way Galaxy Posts: 9,045	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmqDhRo-f8Q __________________ https://www.instagram.com/shhons_meme_agency

02-01-2020, 07:46 PM	#4670 (permalink)
Mindy ask me about cosmology Join Date: Oct 2016 Location: Milky Way Galaxy Posts: 9,045	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJVmcdk0Ti0 __________________ https://www.instagram.com/shhons_meme_agency