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Impeachment issue Cannoli Send a noteboard - 02/02/2020 04:06:25 AM

One reason I am not bothering to pay attention to the Senate trial is that I've already made up my mind. I don't care how many witnesses are called or what arguments are made. Even stipulating all the alleged facts (not the subjective issues, like motive or implications), so what? What is Trump accused of doing? Pushing around the head of state of another country? Withholding aid until that politician fell into line? GOOD! Give him another term! We have to respect China, to a certain extent, because they are rich and powerful and have nukes. Same thing with Russia. Maybe to a lesser extent, India, because numbers & nukes. EVERY OTHER COUNTRY can get bent and take their orders from the President of the United States, no matter who he is or what party he is from. Sorry guys, you DON'T COUNT (and that includes our glorified protectorate floating alone in the North Sea, if it is not currently in the process of sinking under the waves. Or maybe devolving into a disease- & poverty-stricken post-apocalyptic wasteland. The Guardian isn't super clear about its predictions for what's going to happen this month). If the US wants something, you do it. If Joe Biden had anything more than a job for his son in mind, I'd have approved of HIM doing it too.

Foreign Aid has been defined by one of the few US Legislators I ever really respected as taking money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country. When that is going on, the rich people getting our money can damn well dance a jig if the President elected by these United States wants him to. Especially if it's a made-up bullshit country not even as old as I. Oh, Mr. President of the Ukraine, do you LIKE being a head of state, instead of a regional politician within the Russian Empire? Then you are our butt-monkey, or Putin's. You don't like it? Win a war.

Honestly, I've about had it with the existence of that place, what with it being an excuse for the politicians most beholden to the Military Industrial Complex using it as an excuse to get into it with the legitimate power into whose geopolitical sphere of influence Ukraine naturally falls, for the last several years.

But the President did it with less than pure motives, they say. So what? What politician does NOT do anything with less than pure motives? What politician does anything with any agenda other than getting reelected? If Barack Obama had done ANYTHING against Trump as many months before the 2016 election as the Ukraine phone call was to the 2020 election, a claim that he did so to derail a possible GOP contender would be laughed at. And everyone knows he would have, if he was half as politically astute as he is supposed to be, and anticipated Trump's nomination, let alone win. He used the IRS to harass conservative organizations. Clinton used the Justice Department to harass the NYPD when his wife was anticipating the mayor of NYC opposing her Senate bid. The alphabet soup Democrats used the FBI for surveillance on their political opposition (as did Obama). The difference between them, is they were doing it to elected officials and political groups that were at least representing the interests of some American citizens, rather than a dilettante private citizen's unethical income. And it isn't like Trump needed a Ukraine investigation to smear Joe with Hunter's shenanigans, either. But even if Trump DID withhold aid (prove that it WAS delayed longer than it should have been, solely at the President's order and solely in reaction to recalcitrance on the part of the Ukraine, which is still irrelevant without the successive points proven), solely (prove it) for political advantage, because he's afraid (prove THAT, too) of a malaprop-spouting former VP, whose own party didn't consider him as a successor to his former running mate, at a time when there were other candidates getting far more attention, so what?

Does this mean that from now on, no administration can lift a finger against anyone affiliated with the opposition party? (Remember, Hunter Biden is not even a candidate for elected office, let alone a public official - he's a grown, middle-aged man, whose father has no legal responsibility for him; if HE can't be touched without raising the specter of undue partisanship, what official or candidate CAN? )

The President of the US has the power to conduct foreign policy. He has the power to investigate allegations of wrong-doing, and he has the discretion to select which ones (If there was an infallible triage chart for that sort of thing, we wouldn't need the executive branch). He has the power to use one of those powers to further another. He also has the right to appeal legal issues to a court. That's what checks and balances mean. Not Democrats checking Republicans, but one branch of government handling a dispute between the other two. Congress can pass laws to override Supreme Court decisions. The President can sign or veto such laws. The Court can rule on the constitutionality of Congressional actions or Presidential orders. And the President appealing a Congressional subpoena in court is that system working. Do some law professors think otherwise? Well, they can damn well get a president to believe in them enough to take the political risk of appointing them Attorney General or to the Supreme Court and then they get a say. Are there foreign policy experts who think that Trump's policies toward Ukraine are so outrageous and so detrimental to the well-being of the (only) country (that matters), that only the most venal motives could explain them, they can get themselves elected President and then they'll be able to conduct foreign policy as they wish. But during the events in question, Donald Trump was the President. Until you can show me which law directs the motives under which he must act and how he broke it, as far as I am concerned, he hasn't done anything wrong.

Cannoli
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
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Impeachment issue - 02/02/2020 04:06:25 AM 809 Views
The whole thing has been absolutely absurd from start to finish - 02/02/2020 05:46:01 AM 299 Views
Damn that was a good post, freaking well done! - 02/02/2020 09:51:38 PM 293 Views
It seemed a little scattershot to me - 04/02/2020 05:29:51 AM 256 Views
It was a joke and a colossal waste of time and money. - 02/02/2020 09:05:41 PM 258 Views
Just one issue... - 02/02/2020 10:57:47 PM 272 Views
In fairness, if 'the US' had wanted this investigation, Ukraine could've just gotten it over with. - 03/02/2020 07:56:37 PM 257 Views
Well if you want to completely reinvent the US government... - 04/02/2020 01:57:37 PM 283 Views
Yeah, clearly we have a problem of different media environments having different facts here. - 04/02/2020 07:22:43 PM 247 Views
The Constitution specifies impeachment requires, "high crimes and misdemeanors." *NM* - 04/02/2020 08:31:59 PM 132 Views
Those words are in the text, yes. - 04/02/2020 09:26:06 PM 280 Views
2 recent impeachments - 05/02/2020 03:46:36 PM 269 Views
Why do you have to go point by point? - 06/02/2020 09:29:12 PM 285 Views
Re: Russian interference - 07/02/2020 06:08:10 PM 414 Views

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