Impeachment

[pgg]

Holding the Senate in 2020 by the Rs will be no gimme. 23 R seats to 12 D seats are contested, plus 2 special elections. They only need to pick up 3 or 4 seats to gain control.

Most of those R seats are "safe" though.

The Alabama seat held by Doug Jones (D) is up, and it was a fluke that he won it in the first place. So there's +1 R. The New Hampshire seat held by Jeanne Shaheen (D) might flip to a Republican.

The Colorado seat held by Cory Gardner (R) might flip to a Democrat. And Sen Susan Collins is vulnerable in Maine, so that one will probably flip to a Democrat.

So, a wash on probable flips?

I personally think Sen Mark Warner (D-Virginia) is at risk because of the gigantic wakeup call complacent Virginia Republicans just got. Fivethirtyeight called it "safe Democrat" in November, but then things happened. Virginia is going to be interesting this year.

The rest? Yes there are a bunch of Republican seats up in 2020 ... in Wyoming, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Dakota, West Virginia, Tennessee, Nebraska, Arkansas, Montana, Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina, Missouri, Alaska, two in Georgia, Iowa, and North Carolina.

This isn't an impossible field for the Democrats to make some gains, but it's definitely not a gimme.

Granted anything could happen. World War III with Iran only lasted 3 days after Archduke Francis Soleimani's untimely demise, but maybe World War IV will break out in June, and World War V will be the October Surprise? Who knows?

Also ... one of the elephants in the room ... 100% of the House seats are up every two years. It's not like the Democrats have a lock on keeping it.

If both houses go D, then Trumps agenda will stall and we'll have 4 yrs of gridlock

Gridlock 2020 ! !

Worse things could happen.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[vector2]

So Trump doesnt know Parnas and Fruhman? Only had pics taken with them because he has pics with everyone, right?

--

'Take her out': Recording appears to capture Trump at private dinner saying he wants Ukraine ambassador fired -
Trump apparently heard discussing firing Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

A recording reviewed by ABC News appears to capture President Donald Trump telling associates he wanted the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch fired while speaking at a small gathering that included Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman -- two former business associates of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who have since been indicted in New York.

The recording appears to contradict statements by Trump and support the narrative that has been offered by Parnas during broadcast interviews in recent days. Sources familiar with the recording said the recording was made during an intimate April 30, 2018, dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Trump has said repeatedly he does not know Parnas, a Soviet-born American who has emerged as a wild card in Trump’s impeachment trial, especially in the days since Trump was impeached.

"Get rid of her!" is what the voice that appears to be Trump’s is heard saying. "Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it."

Cont...

'Take her out': Recording appears to capture Trump at private dinner saying he wants Ukraine ambassador fired

President Donald Trump was apparently heard discussing firing Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch during a 2018 dinner,.

abcnews.go.com

----

 

[KungPOWChicken]

I’m staying out of this pissing contest because it could reach 1 million posts and I’m 100% sure no opinions would be changed. It’s pretty clear, regardless of political opinion, that Donald Trump is a morally bankrupt individual. You have to believe he’s stepped on women (grab ‘Em by the pu**y) to get where he is, or ruined the lives of women along the way. He’s what - three marriages in right now?

ML suffered, no doubt. Yes, BC and HRC tried to ruin her. But she appears to have come through it all stronger. Good for her.

let’s not sit here though and believe that Trump is any different. In my opinion he’s far worse. But I guess you’d debate that (likely largely because of your personal political beliefs).

I think we can all agree that many politicians are scum bags. Monica wasn’t the first women Clinton took advantage of. Didn’t he hang out with Weinstein and Epstein. Talk about morally bankrupt. And honesty we don’t know the majority of **** that goes on behind the scene. Under the table deals are being made all the time with these politicians, such as “hey why don’t you stay at my luxury villa”. All I do know is that when I pay less tax to these corrupt motherfookers that directly benefits me. When the economy is good that directly benefits me. Everything else is minor and day to day I go on living not worrying about it.

 

[PainDrain]

Totally agree the NRA has fallen from grace and needs an injection of better leadership. I prefer to support SCI as IMO, they are the best advocates for sustainable hunting, conservation and habitat improvement.

Is SCI more hunting and conservation minded? Are they pro-public access? I know nothing about the organization. One of the reasons I left Trout Unlimited is because they refused to take a stand on public access to western rivers a few years back. Interestingly I think one case involved that idiot from Montana Senator Greg Gianforte (the body slammer). I would love to join an organization that had conservation, hunting and public access wrapped into one without some of the extreme positions being pushed by the NRA.

 

[Angus Avagadro]

Is SCI more hunting and conservation minded? Are they pro-public access? I know nothing about the organization. One of the reasons I left Trout Unlimited is because they refused to take a stand on public access to western rivers a few years back. Interestingly I think one case involved that idiot from Montana Senator Greg Gianforte (the body slammer). I would love to join an organization that had conservation, hunting and public access wrapped into one without some of the extreme positions being pushed by the NRA.

I'm a member of SCI and a Life member of the NRA. Of the two, SCI is definitely the biggest advocate of hunting and conservation. If you are a hunter or conservationist, I would recommend you check them out. They focus much attention on international hunting and conservation, along with North America. NRA is more focused on legislative advocacy defending the 2nd ammendment . They are hunting advocates but IMO they focus more on 2nd ammendment rights at the state and national level. I recognize not all hunters are NRA supporters, but I think they perform the task of trying to protect the 2nd ammendment from death by a thousand cuts. Check out SCIs website. They might be a group representing your interests.

 

[vector2]

For the record I think the way that Lt Col has been treated is shameful. Any such person should be given the benefit of the doubt and heard (not necessarily believed at face value, but respectfully heard) unless and until proven to be lying. I do have to exercise some restraint in what I say about certain categories of public officials, D or R or neither, positive or negative, because despite the disclaimer in my .sig everyone here knows what I do for a living and there are rules I have to follow.


I don't know what Sen McConnell really thinks deep inside either. But I do feel pretty confident, given his announced and easily observed focus on getting federal judges confirmed over the last 3 years, that his thought process is squarely realpolitik. He's making the most of the here & now opportunities a R in the White House affords. I think he and every other Senator would rather have President Trump-R instead of President ______-D through 2024, and it'd take a whole lot more than the Ukraine saga to convince them a Democratic president would be a net improvement. Because the bottom line is that even if Trump wins this year he'll be gone in 2024, but the judges he appoints will be serving until 2044 (or longer).

In regard to the Republican primary, the "catering to the base" argument didn't even make any sense back then considering you had deeply conservative, pro-2A, anti-choice, pro-tax cut people like Ted Cruz running against a reality TV star who used to be registered D, donated thousands of dollars to D's, and who was once pro-choice. I really think the whole process of the primary supports the argument that trump's flair, candor, faux populism, and nods at racism are what really stoked the base, hence the results of the poll where 54% of people liked most his "Approach / Personality" and only 14% most liked his "Policies / Values."

Now, post-election, I think you are right that there are a fair number of single-issue voters who have seen results with judges that are pro-2A or anti-abortion or anti-immigrant or whatever. My argument is that outside of anecdotes from people like you (i.e. informed and/or well-educated libertarians / lean-conservatives who realize that trump is toxic waste), really liking trump is not mutually exclusive with getting results on a single-issue. In fact, I think we all agree there are wide swaths of GOP base who like his results, but would be loath to admit how much they personally like him (hence why the result in 2016 was a surprise to so many).

Your anecdote is that you and your circle personally dislike the president, but he ultimately is protecting a single issue you care deeply about it. My anecdote is that I went over to my in-laws for the college football championship and there were groups watching in a couple different rooms. My father-in-law (who is a great friend of mine and who would do anything for my wife and me) was so excited by the camera panning to trump and melania that he got up just to come into the other room to make sure everyone was watching. He is a HS grad who got a great union blue-collar job back when those things still existed in quantity and then did very well for himself by working his way up the ladder. He owns guns (like me), is anti-abortion, and is for rolling back all energy regulation, but is not really a nut about any of those issues. And also, now that he's retired it probably doesn't matter to him that most of trump's policies would've hurt (or at least been neutral) to his bottom line when he was working his way up. Anecdotally, my father-in-law is one of dozens people I've met within his and his family's circle who just really, really personally like trump, and secondarily appreciate that there is some policy alignment too.

Shifting gears for a sec, we all know the infamous shoot someone on 5th ave and not lose support quote. One of the things I struggle to understand is if McConnell knows what's up inasfar as trump's unethical behavior and criminality, doesn't care, and is merely going to go full steam ahead with realpolitik in order to achieve his political desires, is there actually anything which would cause the tide to turn? For you personally, what would be the breaking point wherein trump became such a danger to the republic that you would vote against your interest in 2A and actually vote D instead of third-party libertarian?

 

[thinkorswim]

Most of those R seats are "safe" though.

The Alabama seat held by Doug Jones (D) is up, and it was a fluke that he won it in the first place. So there's +1 R. The New Hampshire seat held by Jeanne Shaheen (D) might flip to a Republican.

The Colorado seat held by Cory Gardner (R) might flip to a Democrat. And Sen Susan Collins is vulnerable in Maine, so that one will probably flip to a Democrat.

So, a wash on probable flips?

I personally think Sen Mark Warner (D-Virginia) is at risk because of the gigantic wakeup call complacent Virginia Republicans just got. Fivethirtyeight called it "safe Democrat" in November, but then things happened. Virginia is going to be interesting this year.

The rest? Yes there are a bunch of Republican seats up in 2020 ... in Wyoming, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Dakota, West Virginia, Tennessee, Nebraska, Arkansas, Montana, Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina, Missouri, Alaska, two in Georgia, Iowa, and North Carolina.

This isn't an impossible field for the Democrats to make some gains, but it's definitely not a gimme.

I haven't been paying much attention to impeachment since I believe nothing of consequence will come from it, but the Senate races are where it will get really interesting. The Senate is very much a toss-up and I think you're underestimating the number of vulnerable Republicans.

I think we can both agree that there's no way Doug Jones wins again in Alabama, even if they decide to put up the child molester again instead of Jeff Sessions. There's just no way Alabama votes Democrat in a Presidential cycle. But at the same time, Cory Gardner in Colorado is also a dead fish. The entire state has been trending strongly Democrat and he's up against a wildly popular candidate in Hickenlooper.

So with these near-definite flips, we're still sitting at 53-47 for Republicans.

But I think Democrats have a very good chance to flip Arizona, Maine, and North Carolina. Iowa and Georgia may also be closely contested races, but it would take a lot for Democrats to take those two states. And although Texas was close in 2016, the magic of Beto against an extremely unlikable candidate in Ted Cruz won't happen again, and I think Texas needs another 5-10 years before it reliably turns purple in general elections.

It should also be worth noting that in most of the above races, the Republicans have declining approval ratings and are being out-raised by their Democratic opponents. Money talks.

In the end, I think Democrats pick up a net of 3 and we get a 50-50 Senate.

 

[PikminOC]

let me say this and then I’ll try to shut up for a while:

I FREQUENTLY try to put myself in the mindset of his supporters. I try to envision all the best things about him and try to see him as a savvy businessman and strong leader who is putting America first. I reflect on my tax break and my excellent stock market returns.

I would ask those that support him to attempt to view him from my eyes from time to time; as a cruel, morally bankrupt narcissist and pathological liar, whose primary motivation is further enriching himself and avoiding consequences for his many transgressions.

Maybe one of us will see the light. Maybe it will be me.

Are you referring to the Clintons?

 

[GaseousClay]

Someone want to counter Purpura's destruction of the Dems case today? End this nonsense and let these crook politicians start doing what they're paid to do.

As for enriching himself, @caligas check Clintons and Obamas net worth since being out of office. Check all these congress people (D and R) net worth while in office. Thus far no evidence Trump has increased his net worth at all in office.

 

[Lawpy]

I haven't been paying much attention to impeachment since I believe nothing of consequence will come from it, but the Senate races are where it will get really interesting. The Senate is very much a toss-up and I think you're underestimating the number of vulnerable Republicans.

I think we can both agree that there's no way Doug Jones wins again in Alabama, even if they decide to put up the child molester again instead of Jeff Sessions. There's just no way Alabama votes Democrat in a Presidential cycle. But at the same time, Cory Gardner in Colorado is also a dead fish. The entire state has been trending strongly Democrat and he's up against a wildly popular candidate in Hickenlooper.

So with these near-definite flips, we're still sitting at 53-47 for Republicans.

But I think Democrats have a very good chance to flip Arizona, Maine, and North Carolina. Iowa and Georgia may also be closely contested races, but it would take a lot for Democrats to take those two states. And although Texas was close in 2016, the magic of Beto against an extremely unlikable candidate in Ted Cruz won't happen again, and I think Texas needs another 5-10 years before it reliably turns purple in general elections.

It should also be worth noting that in most of the above races, the Republicans have declining approval ratings and are being out-raised by their Democratic opponents. Money talks.

In the end, I think Democrats pick up a net of 3 and we get a 50-50 Senate.

Wait why do Democrats have a very good chance in flipping NC?

 

[GaseousClay]

So Trump doesnt know Parnas and Fruhman? Only had pics taken with them because he has pics with everyone, right?

--

'Take her out': Recording appears to capture Trump at private dinner saying he wants Ukraine ambassador fired -
Trump apparently heard discussing firing Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

A recording reviewed by ABC News appears to capture President Donald Trump telling associates he wanted the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch fired while speaking at a small gathering that included Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman -- two former business associates of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who have since been indicted in New York.

The recording appears to contradict statements by Trump and support the narrative that has been offered by Parnas during broadcast interviews in recent days. Sources familiar with the recording said the recording was made during an intimate April 30, 2018, dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Trump has said repeatedly he does not know Parnas, a Soviet-born American who has emerged as a wild card in Trump’s impeachment trial, especially in the days since Trump was impeached.

"Get rid of her!" is what the voice that appears to be Trump’s is heard saying. "Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it."

Cont...

'Take her out': Recording appears to capture Trump at private dinner saying he wants Ukraine ambassador fired

President Donald Trump was apparently heard discussing firing Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch during a 2018 dinner,.

abcnews.go.com

----

So what? He can get rid of any ambassador he wants for any reason. If he's told shes anti-trump which she was then he can get rid of her. You act like politics should be all gumdrops and rainbows.

 

[vector2]

So what? He can get rid of any ambassador he wants for any reason. If he's told shes anti-trump which she was then he can get rid of her. You act like politics should be all gumdrops and rainbows.

Lol, "if he's told" .....by an indicted criminal goonfriend of Rudy's who's spying on the ambassador with that Connecticut nutjob, who stands to make a lot of money if she's fired, and who's only at that dinner because he's funneling millions of Russian dollars into pro-Trump and pro-GOP superPACs.

But sure, yeah, your orange god-emperor can do whatever he wants whenever he wants, illegal or technically legal, in that delusional fantasy world of yours and then lie right to your face for the 16,000th time about it.


Now with some bonus video

Tape Made Public of Trump Discussing Ukraine With Donors (Published 2020)

The recording from a dinner in 2018 showed that the president spent an hour with two key players in the Ukraine pressure campaign. He has repeatedly said he does not know them.

www.nytimes.com

 

[deleted126335]

Lol, "if he's told" .....by an indicted criminal goonfriend of Rudy's who's spying on the ambassador with that Connecticut nutjob, who stands to make a lot of money if she's fired, and who's only at that dinner because he's funneling millions of Russian dollars into pro-Trump and pro-GOP superPACs.

But sure, yeah, your orange god-emperor can do whatever he wants whenever he wants, illegal or technically legal, in that delusional fantasy world of yours and then lie right to your face for the 16,000th time about it.


Now with some bonus video

Tape Made Public of Trump Discussing Ukraine With Donors (Published 2020)

The recording from a dinner in 2018 showed that the president spent an hour with two key players in the Ukraine pressure campaign. He has repeatedly said he does not know them.

www.nytimes.com

Ambassadors do serve at the pleasure of the President. Trump had every right to remove her. Doubt that he had a good reason.

 

[Splenda88]

The US government has always been corrupt, but it was not out in the open like that...

 

[vector2]

Ambassadors do serve at the pleasure of the President. Trump had every right to remove her. Doubt that he had a good reason.

No one's arguing whether removing an ambassador is legal. The point is that her (highly unethical, conflicted, contemporaneously unexplained) removal is the one technically legal raindrop in the torrential downpour of illegal acts within the overall scandal, not the least of which is Yovanovitch getting illegally surveilled by Parnas and Hyde.

 

[PikminOC]

Didn't Obama surveil Trump? Amirite

 

[nimbus]

Didn't Obama surveil Trump? Amirite

For what?

 

[pgg]

edit - oops, fat fingers

 

[pgg]

In regard to the Republican primary, the "catering to the base" argument didn't even make any sense back then considering you had deeply conservative, pro-2A, anti-choice, pro-tax cut people like Ted Cruz running against a reality TV star who used to be registered D, donated thousands of dollars to D's, and who was once pro-choice. I really think the whole process of the primary supports the argument that trump's flair, candor, faux populism, and nods at racism are what really stoked the base, hence the results of the poll where 54% of people liked most his "Approach / Personality" and only 14% most liked his "Policies / Values."

I'm not sure I'll ever really understand what happened in the 2016 Republican primary. There was certainly an element of "anybody but a career politician" backlash that fueled Trump's campaign. I think a lot of the GOP primary voters just wanted someone who was willing to pick a fight and throw some punches.

I think a lot of his popularity then and now is simply because he get belligerent with people (R and D). In that sense all of the traditionally "un-presidential" character traits like volatility and sarcasm and namecalling just reinforced those persons' criteria for supporting him in the first place. I think there was a perception that politicians like Sen Cruz had their chance and couldn't stop the tide because they weren't willing to get scrappy and fight hard (and even dirty).

We can't deny that there was a huge population of red state people who simply felt wronged during the Obama years. Continually talked down to, dismissed as dumb rednecks, their religious beliefs dismissed or outright mocked. Hollywood sneering at them from the west coast and Washington DC Democrats from the east coast. These people were pissed off and it doesn't surprise me at all that a career politician like Sen Cruz, with no real successes to date, didn't motivate them the way a trash talking reality TV star did. There were and are a lot of them.

I just never thought there were enough to actually get him the 2016 nomination.

Now, post-election, I think you are right that there are a fair number of single-issue voters who have seen results with judges that are pro-2A or anti-abortion or anti-immigrant or whatever. My argument is that outside of anecdotes from people like you (i.e. informed and/or well-educated libertarians / lean-conservatives who realize that trump is toxic waste), really liking trump is not mutually exclusive with getting results on a single-issue. In fact, I think we all agree there are wide swaths of GOP base who like his results, but would be loath to admit how much they personally like him (hence why the result in 2016 was a surprise to so many).

Your anecdote is that you and your circle personally dislike the president, but he ultimately is protecting a single issue you care deeply about it. My anecdote is that I went over to my in-laws for the college football championship and there were groups watching in a couple different rooms. My father-in-law (who is a great friend of mine and who would do anything for my wife and me) was so excited by the camera panning to trump and melania that he got up just to come into the other room to make sure everyone was watching. He is a HS grad who got a great union blue-collar job back when those things still existed in quantity and then did very well for himself by working his way up the ladder. He owns guns (like me), is anti-abortion, and is for rolling back all energy regulation, but is not really a nut about any of those issues. And also, now that he's retired it probably doesn't matter to him that most of trump's policies would've hurt (or at least been neutral) to his bottom line when he was working his way up. Anecdotally, my father-in-law is one of dozens people I've met within his and his family's circle who just really, really personally like trump, and secondarily appreciate that there is some policy alignment too.

I don't know why anybody likes the guy on a personal level. I can only speculate that a lot of people, maybe including your FIL, take pleasure and comfort in seeing a president who (obviously) doesn't craft statements via polls and focus groups. Like him or hate him, when you read a presidential tweet, you know what he's actually thinking at that moment. Maybe that makes him relatable to some.

Shifting gears for a sec, we all know the infamous shoot someone on 5th ave and not lose support quote. One of the things I struggle to understand is if McConnell knows what's up inasfar as trump's unethical behavior and criminality, doesn't care, and is merely going to go full steam ahead with realpolitik in order to achieve his political desires, is there actually anything which would cause the tide to turn? For you personally, what would be the breaking point wherein trump became such a danger to the republic that you would vote against your interest in 2A and actually vote D instead of third-party libertarian?

Short answer, there is no point at which I'll vote for a Democrat this year. (That doesn't mean I would vote for Trump.)

I honestly don't know if I'll ever vote for a Democrat again. They've been lying about sweeping gun control (registration, bans, and confiscation of absolutely everything) most of my life. For a while I bought the idea that some of them really were acting in good faith, but I've seen the lie with clarity for a good 10-15 years now. I've lost count of the number of people on this very forum who told me I was unreasonably paranoid in 2008, 2012, and 2016 when I said they would never stop short of draconian Japan & Australia style gun control. Now they're not even pretending that's not their goal.

I guess it's progress that even SDN's Democrats aren't denying that goal any more.

Is it conceivable that at some point, perhaps a decade or two or three in the future, Democrats will credibly remove repeal of the 2nd Amendment from their platform? I guess. Maybe if the 87 anti-gun bills in the Virginia legislature right now result in Virginia going for Trump this year and Sen Warner losing to a Republican opponent, the Democrats will begin to connect the dots and really understand that gun control is kryptonite, a well-deserved self-inflicted wound. Maybe Virginia 2020 will be the first data point in a generation of data points that convince them they're wrong and should drop it. But probably not.

No kidding, absolutely serious, in 2020 I would throw a wasted protest vote at this satirical Libertarian candidate who goes by the name "Vermin Supreme", wears a boot for a hat, and talks about a pony-based economy and green renewable zombie-fueled electricity before I would vote for Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Bloomberg, or any of the other current Democratic candidates. (It'd be easier than writing in Mickey Mouse.) I'll simply never vote for any candidate who wants to repeal part of the Bill of Rights.

Now - I'm a glass half full kind of guy, so if a Democrat wins this year I will choose to be happy about the things they say and do that I agree with. And if Trump wins again, I'll choose to be happy that at least one fundamental civil right enumerated in the Constitution will be a little bit safer for a little bit longer. There'll be something to be happy about no matter who wins.

Either way, I'm not worried about World War IV or other civilization-altering events triggered by our next president.

 

[AMEHigh]

So what? He can get rid of any ambassador he wants for any reason. If he's told shes anti-trump which she was then he can get rid of her. You act like politics should be all gumdrops and rainbows.

I have no problem with him getting rid of an ambassador.

But why did he say he doesn’t know Parnas when there’s evidence that’s clearly not true?
Why is his personal lawyer taking care of US government business?

I forget which person it was who testified during the house hearings but they said they wouldn’t be able to name Obama’s or Bush’s personal lawyers because they weren’t intricately involved in US government affairs the way that Giuliani is.

If you’re ok with all that that’s fine but you have to recognize that others might not be and are going to question those lies and those involved. So far trump doesn’t have a good track record of honesty and integrity for himself or those that he associates with since a number of them are in jail, so I personally do think that says something about how the government is being run.

Although he likely won’t be removed from office I do think it’s important for checks and balances to remain in place and for evidence and information to continue to come forth.

 

[Mikkel]

I have no problem with him getting rid of an ambassador.

But why did he say he doesn’t know Parnas when there’s evidence that’s clearly not true?
Why is his personal lawyer taking care of US government business?

I forget which person it was who testified during the house hearings but they said they wouldn’t be able to name Obama’s or Bush’s personal lawyers because they weren’t intricately involved in US government affairs the way that Giuliani is.

If you’re ok with all that that’s fine but you have to recognize that others might not be and are going to question those lies and those involved. So far trump doesn’t have a good track record of honesty and integrity for himself or those that he associates with since a number of them are in jail, so I personally do think that says something about how the government is being run.

Although he likely won’t be removed from office I do think it’s important for checks and balances to remain in place and for evidence and information to continue to come forth.

"I learned about it from the news."

- Barack Hussein Obama

 

[Leon'sMom]

How to Wake Up on Monday:

Step 1: Use a Q-tip to gently remove any wax in your ears.
Step 2: Get a chair and sit down alone in a quiet room.
Step 3: Find a live feed without any media commentary of the impeachment proceeding. (*If you are unable to watch the proceeding live, find a commentary-free pre-recorded feed.)
Step 4: Listen, listen, listen. Don't talk with anyone while listening. Don't turn on any pundits. Just listen to it all yourself.
Step 5: Use your own big brain. Think. Analyze. Compare. Connect dots. Focusing only on the impeachment case that is being decided.
Step 6: Ask yourself who has the facts of the case on their side--the house managers or Trump's team?
Step 7: "Welcome back to reality. You have been missed."

 

[vector2]

I'm not sure I'll ever really understand what happened in the 2016 Republican primary. There was certainly an element of "anybody but a career politician" backlash that fueled Trump's campaign. I think a lot of the GOP primary voters just wanted someone who was willing to pick a fight and throw some punches.

I think a lot of his popularity then and now is simply because he get belligerent with people (R and D). In that sense all of the traditionally "un-presidential" character traits like volatility and sarcasm and namecalling just reinforced those persons' criteria for supporting him in the first place. I think there was a perception that politicians like Sen Cruz had their chance and couldn't stop the tide because they weren't willing to get scrappy and fight hard (and even dirty).

We can't deny that there was a huge population of red state people who simply felt wronged during the Obama years. Continually talked down to, dismissed as dumb rednecks, their religious beliefs dismissed or outright mocked. Hollywood sneering at them from the west coast and Washington DC Democrats from the east coast. These people were pissed off and it doesn't surprise me at all that a career politician like Sen Cruz, with no real successes to date, didn't motivate them the way a trash talking reality TV star did. There were and are a lot of them.

I just never thought there were enough to actually get him the 2016 nomination.



I don't know why anybody likes the guy on a personal level. I can only speculate that a lot of people, maybe including your FIL, take pleasure and comfort in seeing a president who (obviously) doesn't craft statements via polls and focus groups. Like him or hate him, when you read a presidential tweet, you know what he's actually thinking at that moment. Maybe that makes him relatable to some.


Short answer, there is no point at which I'll vote for a Democrat this year. (That doesn't mean I would vote for Trump.)

I honestly don't know if I'll ever vote for a Democrat again. They've been lying about sweeping gun control (registration, bans, and confiscation of absolutely everything) most of my life. For a while I bought the idea that some of them really were acting in good faith, but I've seen the lie with clarity for a good 10-15 years now. I've lost count of the number of people on this very forum who told me I was unreasonably paranoid in 2008, 2012, and 2016 when I said they would never stop short of draconian Japan & Australia style gun control. Now they're not even pretending that's not their goal.

I guess it's progress that even SDN's Democrats aren't denying that goal any more.

Is it conceivable that at some point, perhaps a decade or two or three in the future, Democrats will credibly remove repeal of the 2nd Amendment from their platform? I guess. Maybe if the 87 anti-gun bills in the Virginia legislature right now result in Virginia going for Trump this year and Sen Warner losing to a Republican opponent, the Democrats will begin to connect the dots and really understand that gun control is kryptonite, a well-deserved self-inflicted wound. Maybe Virginia 2020 will be the first data point in a generation of data points that convince them they're wrong and should drop it. But probably not.

No kidding, absolutely serious, in 2020 I would throw a wasted protest vote at this satirical Libertarian candidate who goes by the name "Vermin Supreme", wears a boot for a hat, and talks about a pony-based economy and green renewable zombie-fueled electricity before I would vote for Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Bloomberg, or any of the other current Democratic candidates. (It'd be easier than writing in Mickey Mouse.) I'll simply never vote for any candidate who wants to repeal part of the Bill of Rights.

Now - I'm a glass half full kind of guy, so if a Democrat wins this year I will choose to be happy about the things they say and do that I agree with. And if Trump wins again, I'll choose to be happy that at least one fundamental civil right enumerated in the Constitution will be a little bit safer for a little bit longer. There'll be something to be happy about no matter who wins.

Either way, I'm not worried about World War IV or other civilization-altering events triggered by our next president.

One thing we both agree on as far as the primary and even today is that we are in unprecedented territory. But to take a detour for a second,

In regard to 2A, you are doing exactly what I believe you have chastised others for in regard to your blanket belief about all dems and whether we should take people at their word. There is no doubt that the banning of semi-automatic rifles, especially those that are military style or with pistol grips is going to be part of the dem platform, regardless of whether such a ban makes any sense or will have any effect on mass shootings (it probably won’t). We all know human beings are bad at evaluating the probabilities of rare but scary events. There are people who get in their car everyday but who won’t get within 50 ft of a much safer airplane flight. People on both sides of the aisle have not been immune to this effect and hence why the bump stock ban went into effect under trump’s doj under such public and political pressure.

But, at least at the national level as I can’t speak to state specifics, I believe you are mistaken that more mainstream and moderate dems want to blanket repeal 2A. I’m pretty liberal but I certainly don’t want to repeal and I certainly don’t plan on turning in my semi-automatic weapons to authorities any time soon (although to be fair, it doesn’t really have much to do with an armed populace successfully resisting authority considering even my local police department has full auto, body armor, infrared sighting and night vision, tear gas, flashbangs, dogs, drones, and helicopters). People like Biden and Klobuchar (or Manchin, Doug Jones, a lot of dem governors) know that a blanket 2A repeal is plutonium, and honestly, anyone who thinks it’s a good thing to campaign on after Newtown is a *****. Regardless, even if the congress and POTUS changes slightly against your favor in regard to 2A, trump has ensured through SCOTUS and the lower judiciary that no restrictive law will pass judicial muster. And what’s more, just from a numbers standpoint there are so many firearms in America that confiscation is just an absurd idea.

But let’s get back to where we are in America, which is pretty much in uncharted waters and with a level of norm-breaking that is almost unimaginable. I’m not going to go full hyperbolic and say that the re-election of trump immediately means WW3 or a civilization altering event. But since you care about the Constitution, I want you to consider where we are at vis a vis what trump has said about Article II before even considering 2A and the bill of rights. Out of his 15,000 lies, one of them is him literally saying “Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president." He and his team throughout the impeachment process have taken the unprecedented step of saying that the entire executive branch, without expressly invoking executive privilege, will not cooperate with a congressional investigation or lawful subpoenas. He now has an attorney general who functions as his Roy Cohn who obviously would never investigate the executive branch for anything, no matter how legitimate. He is on record from as recently as this past June claiming that 1 million Californian votes were illegal.

But, you’re not worried, right? Because he is a reality tv star clown of a POTUS with only 39-42% public support, and ultimately our law enforcement apparatus or military will ensure that the 200+ year streak of peaceful leadership transitions will remain unbroken if he loses the election. But I’ll remind you, transitions to absolute power don’t always happen overnight. Russia had 10 years of a democratically elected president after Gorbachev, but Yeltsin was wildly unpopular towards the end of his 2nd term and resigned. Putin was also legitimately democratically elected at least for his first election and maybe even his second. His transition to a dictator was quite insidious, and was based on high popularity within his base and nationally, and also a strong economic picture. Now that trump has set the precedent that essentially a president cannot be investigated for election interference especially in the last 12-18 months leading up to an election, what do you think a wildly popular billionaire oligarch US president with autocratic ambitions, the military on his side, and a broader personality cult is going to do with that power? Even if the Senate convicts, think about the enforcement mechanism for actually getting that future individual to step down. I’m also not worried about WW3 or a civilization ending event if trump is re-elected, but I do worry about the next president, and the president after that, and the president after that if this current precedent remains unchallenged.

 

[PikminOC]

For what?

Lmgtfy
The US attorney general, William Barr, has alleged that Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign was spied on during Barack Obama’s administration, reigniting a fierce dispute over the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
“I think spying did occur,” Barr told a Senate subcommittee in Washington. The attorney general confirmed that he had requested a review of the FBI’s decision to secretly investigate whether Trump associates were conspiring with Moscow in 2016.
“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Barr said.

 

[PikminOC]

One thing we both agree on as far as the primary and even today is that we are in unprecedented territory. But to take a detour for a second,

In regard to 2A, you are doing exactly what I believe you have chastised others for in regard to your blanket belief about all dems and whether we should take people at their word. There is no doubt that the banning of semi-automatic rifles, especially those that are military style or with pistol grips is going to be part of the dem platform, regardless of whether such a ban makes any sense or will have any effect on mass shootings (it probably won’t). We all know human beings are bad at evaluating the probabilities of rare but scary events. There are people who get in their car everyday but who won’t get within 50 ft of a much safer airplane flight. People on both sides of the aisle have not been immune to this effect and hence why the bump stock ban went into effect under trump’s doj under such public and political pressure.

But, at least at the national level as I can’t speak to state specifics, I believe you are mistaken that more mainstream and moderate dems want to blanket repeal 2A. I’m pretty liberal but I certainly don’t want to repeal and I certainly don’t plan on turning in my semi-automatic weapons to authorities any time soon (although to be fair, it doesn’t really have much to do with an armed populace successfully resisting authority considering even my local police department has full auto, body armor, infrared sighting and night vision, tear gas, flashbangs, dogs, drones, and helicopters). People like Biden and Klobuchar (or Manchin, Doug Jones, a lot of dem governors) know that a blanket 2A repeal is plutonium, and honestly, anyone who thinks it’s a good thing to campaign on after Newtown is a *****. Regardless, even if the congress and POTUS changes slightly against your favor in regard to 2A, trump has ensured through SCOTUS and the lower judiciary that no restrictive law will pass judicial muster. And what’s more, just from a numbers standpoint there are so many firearms in America that confiscation is just an absurd idea.

But to get back to where we are in America, which is pretty much in uncharted waters and with a level of norm-breaking that is almost unimaginable. I’m not going to go full hyperbolic and say that the re-election of trump immediately means WW3 or a civilization altering event. But since you care about the Constitution, I want you to consider where we are at vis a vis what trump has said about Article II before even considering 2A and the bill of rights. Out of his 15,000 lies, one of them is him literally saying “Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president." He and his team throughout the impeachment process have taken the unprecedented step of saying that the entire executive branch, without expressly invoking executive privilege, will not cooperate with a congressional investigation or lawful subpoenas. He now has an attorney general who functions as his Roy Cohn who obviously would never investigate the executive branch for anything, no matter how legitimate. He is on record from as recently as this past June claiming that 1 million Californian votes were illegal.

But, you’re not worried, right? Because he is a reality tv star clown of a POTUS with only 39-42% public support, and ultimately or law enforcement apparatus or military will ensure that the 200+ year streak of peaceful leadership transitions will remain unbroken. But I’ll remind you, transitions to absolute power don’t always happen overnight. Russia had 10 years of a democratically elected president after Gorbachev, but Yeltsin was wildly unpopular towards the end of his 2nd term and resigned. Putin was also legitimately democratically elected at least for his first election and maybe even his second. His transition to a dictator was quite insidious, and was based on high popularity within his base and nationally, and also a strong economic picture. Now that trump has set the precedent that essentially a president cannot be investigated especially in the last 12-18 months leading up to an election, what do you think a wildly popular billionaire oligarch president with autocratic ambitions, the military on his side, and a broader personality cult is going to do with that power? Even if the Senate convicts, think about the enforcement mechanism for actually getting that future individual to step down. I’m also not worried about WW3 or a civilization ending event if trump is re-elected, but I do worry about the next president, and the president after that, and the president after that if this current precedent remains unchallenged.

Percentage doesn't matter. Electoral college matters

 

[vector2]

Percentage doesn't matter. Electoral college matters

 

[PikminOC]

View attachment 293794

Not that obvious to Democrats who keep saying he didn't win popular vote and electoral college should be abolished

 

[vector2]

Not that obvious to Democrats who keep saying he didn't win popular vote and electoral college should be abolished

If someone is arguing the electoral college should be abolished then obviously that person knows how the president is elected, they just disagree with it and think it should be changed with an amendment. Regardless, the point I was making about trumps 39-42% “public support” was in reference to his ongoing approval rating polling floor, not his popular vote percentage.


But to go on a bit of a tangent, consider for a moment what’s going to happen if the current trend of people moving to cities / cities becoming more densely populated continues, and if concomitant with that trend congressional apportionment remains constant. At our founding we had 30,000 persons per 1 congressman. We are now at 700,000 persons per congressman and rising, and the number of senators ain’t changing anytime soon. Now, you may not think it’s a big deal that someone could lose 46-48% and still win the electoral college, but what about 44-50? 39-59? That’s precisely the predicament we could be in if cities continue to grow at a fast clip and the electoral college is asymmetrically distributed.

 

[pgg]

One thing we both agree on as far as the primary and even today is that we are in unprecedented territory. But to take a detour for a second,

In regard to 2A, you are doing exactly what I believe you have chastised others for in regard to your blanket belief about all dems and whether we should take people at their word.

Fair points. However all Democratic presidents will appoint judges hostile to the 2nd Amendment. Some, like one of Obama's appointees, will even lie about it during a Senate confirmation hearing (I will respect the Heller precedent) before turning around doing the exact opposite (signing on with the dissent in McDonald).

Agree completely with your assessment of the risk-assessing ability of most people and the futility of gun control.

But, at least at the national level as I can’t speak to state specifics, I believe you are mistaken that more mainstream and moderate dems want to blanket repeal 2A.

I'm sorry but I just disagree. Look at Virginia. This isn't a bunch of fringe or edge-case California or New York Democrats. It's Virginia! The state Constitution is actually even more explicit about the RKBA than the 2nd Amendment is. But that's not stopping them. They're voting in lockstep with each other to enact sweeping bans of firearms. They're even going after public and private shooting ranges in the name of "safety" but really they simply understand the lesson of NYC: if you make it impossible or outrageously expensive/inconvenient for people to shoot, most won't, and you are incrementally closer to grinding out a win.

I guess not all of the Democrats elected to office in Virginia would decide on their own one day to write and sponsor the bills to do the banning. But right now they are proving that they will all go along with it.

So what's the difference? Every vote for a Democrat is a vote to effectively repeal the 2nd Amendment and to appoint the judges to uphold violations of the 2nd.

I’m pretty liberal but I certainly don’t want to repeal and I certainly don’t plan on turning in my semi-automatic weapons to authorities any time soon (although to be fair, it doesn’t really have much to do with an armed populace successfully resisting authority considering even my local police department has full auto, body armor, infrared sighting and night vision, tear gas, flashbangs, dogs, drones, and helicopters). People like Biden and Klobuchar (or Manchin, Doug Jones, a lot of dem governors) know that a blanket 2A repeal is plutonium, and honestly, anyone who thinks it’s a good thing to campaign on after Newtown is a *****.

I'm not sure if recently-failed Democratic Presidential candidate Beto "hell yes we're going to take your AR15" O'Rourke is in fact a *****. But I am sure he's a Democrat and the debate audience cheered when he said it. Should I not take him and them at their word?

If they keep saying and doing these things, and I vote for them because I want to believe they don't reeeeallllly mean it, who's the *****?

Regardless, even if the congress and POTUS changes slightly against your favor in regard to 2A, trump has ensured through SCOTUS and the lower judiciary that no restrictive law will pass judicial muster. And what’s more, just from a numbers standpoint there are so many firearms in America that confiscation is just an absurd idea.

I'm not certain SCOTUS has shifted far enough to really protect the 2A in a meaningful way yet. Kennedy was the "moderating" conservative voice that made Heller & McDonald narrowly written decisions with some terrible caveat verbiage. He has been replaced by Kavanaugh.

However it appears that Roberts is waffling more and more these days and wanting to keep things more balanced.

We'll get an answer to NYSRPA vs NYC in a few months, probably June. The obvious, obvious, obvious correct ruling in that case is that NY was egregiously wrong, and that Heller & McDonald need some amplifying verbiage to establish a level of Constitutional scrutiny (strict). And yet, there is concern that Roberts will vote with the left side of the bench to moot the entire thing.

It's 5-4 now, but it's a very soft 5-4.

But let’s get back to where we are in America, which is pretty much in uncharted waters and with a level of norm-breaking that is almost unimaginable.

I don't disagree. But I'm not going to vote for a Democrat.

But, you’re not worried, right? Because he is a reality tv star clown of a POTUS with only 39-42% public support, and ultimately our law enforcement apparatus or military will ensure that the 200+ year streak of peaceful leadership transitions will remain unbroken. But I’ll remind you, transitions to absolute power don’t always happen overnight. Russia had 10 years of a democratically elected president after Gorbachev, but Yeltsin was wildly unpopular towards the end of his 2nd term and resigned. Putin was also legitimately democratically elected at least for his first election and maybe even his second. His transition to a dictator was quite insidious, and was based on high popularity within his base and nationally, and also a strong economic picture. Now that trump has set the precedent that essentially a president cannot be investigated especially in the last 12-18 months leading up to an election, what do you think a wildly popular billionaire oligarch president with autocratic ambitions, the military on his side, and a broader personality cult is going to do with that power? Even if the Senate convicts, think about the enforcement mechanism for actually getting that future individual to step down. I’m also not worried about WW3 or a civilization ending event if trump is re-elected, but I do worry about the next president, and the president after that, and the president after that if this current precedent remains unchallenged.

You bring up another interesting point here. It's curious to me that so many people will simultaneously issue sincere warnings about Trump's unprecedented presidency perhaps leading us toward a totalitarian oppressive regime comparable to Putin's Russia ... and in the next breath they will tell us that only the government-run police and military should have guns. Because the government can be trusted, always and forever. You even post a bit of the futility-of-resistance strawman yourself -

[...] it doesn’t really have much to do with an armed populace successfully resisting authority considering even my local police department has full auto, body armor, infrared sighting and night vision, tear gas, flashbangs, dogs, drones, and helicopters).

The point of an armed populace isn't that individuals will walk out in the street and stand up to helicopters and tanks and jets with JDAMs. It's so that government thugs or their less-traceable proxies can't safely visit undesirable people at 2 AM to beat, kidnap, or kill them. Simply put, armed people are hard to control and hard to intimidate. I want to live in a country where the people are dangerous and hard to control.

If the nightmare Putin-clone-in-America scenario ever happens, I want this country absolutely saturated with AR15s and CNN-journalist-terrifying-superduper-high-capacity banana clip shoulder thingies that go up.

 

[nimbus]

Fair points. However all Democratic presidents will appoint judges hostile to the 2nd Amendment. Some, like one of Obama's appointees, will even lie about it during a Senate confirmation hearing (I will respect the Heller precedent) before turning around doing the exact opposite (signing on with the dissent in McDonald).

Agree completely with your assessment of the risk-assessing ability of most people and the futility of gun control.




I'm sorry but I just disagree. Look at Virginia. This isn't a bunch of fringe or edge-case California or New York Democrats. It's Virginia! The state Constitution is actually even more explicit about the RKBA than the 2nd Amendment is. But that's not stopping them. They're voting in lockstep with each other to enact sweeping bans of firearms. They're even going after public and private shooting ranges in the name of "safety" but really they simply understand the lesson of NYC: if you make it impossible or outrageously expensive/inconvenient for people to shoot, most won't, and you are incrementally closer to grinding out a win.

I guess not all of the Democrats elected to office in Virginia would decide on their own one day to write and sponsor the bills to do the banning. But right now they are proving that they will all go along with it.

So what's the difference? Every vote for a Democrat is a vote to effectively repeal the 2nd Amendment and to appoint the judges to uphold violations of the 2nd.




I'm not sure if recently-failed Democratic Presidential candidate Beto "hell yes we're going to take your AR15" O'Rourke is in fact a *****. But I am sure he's a Democrat and the debate audience cheered when he said it. Should I not take him and them at their word?

If they keep saying and doing these things, and I vote for them because I want to believe they don't reeeeallllly mean it, who's the *****?




I'm not certain SCOTUS has shifted far enough to really protect the 2A in a meaningful way yet. Kennedy was the "moderating" conservative voice that made Heller & McDonald narrowly written decisions with some terrible caveat verbiage. He has been replaced by Kavanaugh.

However it appears that Roberts is waffling more and more these days and wanting to keep things more balanced.

We'll get an answer to NYSRPA vs NYC in a few months, probably June. The obvious, obvious, obvious correct ruling in that case is that NY was egregiously wrong, and that Heller & McDonald need some amplifying verbiage to establish a level of Constitutional scrutiny (strict). And yet, there is concern that Roberts will vote with the left side of the bench to moot the entire thing.

It's 5-4 now, but it's a very soft 5-4.




I don't disagree. But I'm not going to vote for a Democrat.



You bring up another interesting point here. It's curious to me that so many people will simultaneously issue sincere warnings about Trump's unprecedented presidency perhaps leading us toward a totalitarian oppressive regime comparable to Putin's Russia ... and in the next breath they will tell us that only the government-run police and military should have guns. Because the government can be trusted, always and forever. You even post a bit of the futility-of-resistance strawman yourself -



The point of an armed populace isn't that individuals will walk out in the street and stand up to helicopters and tanks and jets with JDAMs. It's so that government thugs or their less-traceable proxies can't safely visit undesirable people at 2 AM to beat, kidnap, or kill them. Simply put, armed people are hard to control and hard to intimidate. I want to live in a country where the people are dangerous and hard to control.

If the nightmare Putin-clone-in-America scenario ever happens, I want this country absolutely saturated with AR15s and CNN-journalist-terrifying-superduper-high-capacity banana clip shoulder thingies that go up.

Do you think being armed would have helped the Uighurs in China?

 

[pgg]

Do you think being armed would have helped the Uighurs in China?

Maybe?

Instead of the police quietly marching off a million of them into concentration camps, maybe the military would've had to get involved. Maybe if 1 in 10 or 1 in 50 of the Chinese officers tasked with the roundups got shot in the face (or the back from 400 meters), it would've taken longer to get rounded up. Maybe a little extra time and attention before the deal was done would've focused attention and pressure.

Being un-armed certainly hasn't helped them - right now, they're all dead or dying or "getting re-educated" and the destruction of their culture and society is essentially a done deal.

Maybe if they were armed, it wouldn't have mattered. Maybe, like the Jews of Nazi Germany (also unarmed) who mostly calmly walked onto the trains and into the gas chambers, they'd have gone quietly, just failing to understand that they're dead already.

Maybe if the Chinese people were widely armed and not abjectly helpless, their government wouldn't be such totalitarian abusive dicks, and the idea to stuff a million people into concentration camps wouldn't have been attempted in the first place.

But we'll never know, because the non-hypothetical reality is that they were all unarmed and now they're unarmed in concentration camps.

 

[BLADEMDA]

Here is my take on the impeachment:

Trump engaged in improper behavior in asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. It was not an impeachable offense because the Bidens did engage in unethical behavior. But, Trump's respone to that behavior was incorrect/wrong.

The Bidens are dirty. Hunter Biden received close to a million dollars per year from Burisma. Why? He has no experience in the oil/natural gas industry and doesn't speak the language. This is corruption pure and simple. Was it illegal? No. That's why Trump should have left the Justice Dept. handle the matter.

Trump should not be removed from office over this ordeal. His shoot first mentality has gotten him into a lot of hot water. He has no idea how to be a good politician.

Did Joe Biden, his brother or his son profit from Joe Biden being Vice President? Yes. Did Joe Biden influence the Ukrainians into dropping the investigation into Burisma? Yes. Please note it was BURISMA which profited the most from the Joe Biden interference. Hence, they "hired" Hunter Biden as a reward/favor to Joe Biden. Quid pro Quo.

In Trump's simple mind this "dirty deal" deserved a response by him. He wanted to use that corruption to dirty up Joe Biden. Sleepy Joe didn't break any laws but in no way is he anything more than a typical Washington swamp rat (as most of them are).

Unlike the liberals on this site I see the rats on both sides of the aisle. The liberals expect their rats like Clinton and Biden to roam free while the GOP rats should all be exposed and terminated. Pure hypocrisy.

 

[vector2]

Fair points. However all Democratic presidents will appoint judges hostile to the 2nd Amendment. Some, like one of Obama's appointees, will even lie about it during a Senate confirmation hearing (I will respect the Heller precedent) before turning around doing the exact opposite (signing on with the dissent in McDonald).

Agree completely with your assessment of the risk-assessing ability of most people and the futility of gun control.

You’re probably not wrong there. Almost every SCOTUS nominee from both sides says whatever they need to to pass all the litmus tests, but there’s gotta be some judge out there who will protect Roe and 2A.

I'm sorry but I just disagree. Look at Virginia. This isn't a bunch of fringe or edge-case California or New York Democrats. It's Virginia! The state Constitution is actually even more explicit about the RKBA than the 2nd Amendment is. But that's not stopping them. They're voting in lockstep with each other to enact sweeping bans of firearms. They're even going after public and private shooting ranges in the name of "safety" but really they simply understand the lesson of NYC: if you make it impossible or outrageously expensive/inconvenient for people to shoot, most won't, and you are incrementally closer to grinding out a win.

I guess not all of the Democrats elected to office in Virginia would decide on their own one day to write and sponsor the bills to do the banning. But right now they are proving that they will all go along with it.

So what's the difference? Every vote for a Democrat is a vote to effectively repeal the 2nd Amendment and to appoint the judges to uphold violations of the 2nd.

I'm not sure if recently-failed Democratic Presidential candidate Beto "hell yes we're going to take your AR15" O'Rourke is in fact a *****. But I am sure he's a Democrat and the debate audience cheered when he said it. Should I not take him and them at their word?

If they keep saying and doing these things, and I vote for them because I want to believe they don't reeeeallllly mean it, who's the *****?


I'm not certain SCOTUS has shifted far enough to really protect the 2A in a meaningful way yet. Kennedy was the "moderating" conservative voice that made Heller & McDonald narrowly written decisions with some terrible caveat verbiage. He has been replaced by Kavanaugh.

However it appears that Roberts is waffling more and more these days and wanting to keep things more balanced.

We'll get an answer to NYSRPA vs NYC in a few months, probably June. The obvious, obvious, obvious correct ruling in that case is that NY was egregiously wrong, and that Heller & McDonald need some amplifying verbiage to establish a level of Constitutional scrutiny (strict). And yet, there is concern that Roberts will vote with the left side of the bench to moot the entire thing.

It's 5-4 now, but it's a very soft 5-4.

Can you tell me what exactly is going on in Virginia as unbiasedly as you can, cause I haven’t followed it that closely? From what I’m reading, the summary of the bill looks like

A universal background check measure that would require background checks for all sales, including private transactions
A limit on handgun purchases, allowing only one purchase in each 30-day period
A “red flag” law that would allow courts and law enforcement to temporarily seize a person’s guns if he’s deemed a danger to himself or others
A law letting local governments ban guns in public spaces during permitted events
A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines
A requirement that lost and stolen guns are reported to law enforcement
A prohibition on people under protective orders owning guns
Stiffer penalties for letting children access loaded, unsecured guns

The one handgun a month and the “assault weapon” ban are really the most egregious parts, but I think you will have a difficult time convincing the middle of the road, apathetic to guns voter as such. As for the other parts, I’m in favor of them.

You may be right that SCOTUS is not quite at the point where you feel 2A is bulletproof (ha), but I wonder would your opinions change at all if it were 6-3 in your favor post-RBG?

To be clear, I said that an assault weapons ban is going to be part of the dem platform, and that includes everyone from Beto to Bernie to Biden to probably even Klobuchar. What I said was plutonium is a blanket 2A repeal, and that you’d have to be a ***** to run on that platform. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’ve assumed that anyone who is in favor of any gun restriction also secretly wants to ban all guns, and I don’t think that’s true.

You bring up another interesting point here. It's curious to me that so many people will simultaneously issue sincere warnings about Trump's unprecedented presidency perhaps leading us toward a totalitarian oppressive regime comparable to Putin's Russia ... and in the next breath they will tell us that only the government-run police and military should have guns. Because the government can be trusted, always and forever. You even post a bit of the futility-of-resistance strawman yourself -

The point of an armed populace isn't that individuals will walk out in the street and stand up to helicopters and tanks and jets with JDAMs. It's so that government thugs or their less-traceable proxies can't safely visit undesirable people at 2 AM to beat, kidnap, or kill them. Simply put, armed people are hard to control and hard to intimidate. I want to live in a country where the people are dangerous and hard to control.

If the nightmare Putin-clone-in-America scenario ever happens, I want this country absolutely saturated with AR15s and CNN-journalist-terrifying-superduper-high-capacity banana clip shoulder thingies that go up.

You’ve out of hand dismissed my statement as a strawman but you really haven’t supported your position. Armed people are actually usually not that difficult to control and intimidate because the vast majority of the time they aren’t gathered in large enough numbers at 2am. Plenty of no knock warrants are executed all the time against a heavily armed populace without a second thought, and while I do think having an armed populace is ultimately a desirable thing, one of the horrible side effects is that cops have really itchy trigger fingers in situations which are non-lethal in 95% of the civilized world.

Think about it...even if you and your wife are sitting at home in your bedroom with a semiauto M4 and a striker 12 instead of the (on-average more likely ) 9mm or .45 handgun, the lowest of low group of government thugs in the dystopian scenario is still probably going to be a group of 4-10 essentially fully militarized police since we are a rich nation that funds our military, intelligence services, and law enforcement agencies exceptionally well. Just like in the gestapo analogy, the government thugs always one-up the populace. The people in the Warsaw ghetto brought a knife to a gun fight. The average American is bringing a semiauto to an (outfitted like a SWAT team) fight. Maybe the most hardcore survivalists in a big group are going to make the thugs think twice, but in those cases the government can always just one-up you until we reach the helicopter scenario, and you have a full on Waco sitch where the government wins anyway, except this time with a lot more casualties.

To be perfectly frank, obviously my opinion is that trumps affront to the Constitution and its subsequent consequences are much worse than the consequences of electing a dem in a country that already has 400 million firearms, Heller as now established precedent, and an already militarized police force.

 

[deleted126335]

Fair points. However all Democratic presidents will appoint judges hostile to the 2nd Amendment. Some, like one of Obama's appointees, will even lie about it during a Senate confirmation hearing (I will respect the Heller precedent) before turning around doing the exact opposite (signing on with the dissent in McDonald).

Agree completely with your assessment of the risk-assessing ability of most people and the futility of gun control.




I'm sorry but I just disagree. Look at Virginia. This isn't a bunch of fringe or edge-case California or New York Democrats. It's Virginia! The state Constitution is actually even more explicit about the RKBA than the 2nd Amendment is. But that's not stopping them. They're voting in lockstep with each other to enact sweeping bans of firearms. They're even going after public and private shooting ranges in the name of "safety" but really they simply understand the lesson of NYC: if you make it impossible or outrageously expensive/inconvenient for people to shoot, most won't, and you are incrementally closer to grinding out a win.

I guess not all of the Democrats elected to office in Virginia would decide on their own one day to write and sponsor the bills to do the banning. But right now they are proving that they will all go along with it.

So what's the difference? Every vote for a Democrat is a vote to effectively repeal the 2nd Amendment and to appoint the judges to uphold violations of the 2nd.




I'm not sure if recently-failed Democratic Presidential candidate Beto "hell yes we're going to take your AR15" O'Rourke is in fact a *****. But I am sure he's a Democrat and the debate audience cheered when he said it. Should I not take him and them at their word?

If they keep saying and doing these things, and I vote for them because I want to believe they don't reeeeallllly mean it, who's the *****?




I'm not certain SCOTUS has shifted far enough to really protect the 2A in a meaningful way yet. Kennedy was the "moderating" conservative voice that made Heller & McDonald narrowly written decisions with some terrible caveat verbiage. He has been replaced by Kavanaugh.

However it appears that Roberts is waffling more and more these days and wanting to keep things more balanced.

We'll get an answer to NYSRPA vs NYC in a few months, probably June. The obvious, obvious, obvious correct ruling in that case is that NY was egregiously wrong, and that Heller & McDonald need some amplifying verbiage to establish a level of Constitutional scrutiny (strict). And yet, there is concern that Roberts will vote with the left side of the bench to moot the entire thing.

It's 5-4 now, but it's a very soft 5-4.




I don't disagree. But I'm not going to vote for a Democrat.



You bring up another interesting point here. It's curious to me that so many people will simultaneously issue sincere warnings about Trump's unprecedented presidency perhaps leading us toward a totalitarian oppressive regime comparable to Putin's Russia ... and in the next breath they will tell us that only the government-run police and military should have guns. Because the government can be trusted, always and forever. You even post a bit of the futility-of-resistance strawman yourself -



The point of an armed populace isn't that individuals will walk out in the street and stand up to helicopters and tanks and jets with JDAMs. It's so that government thugs or their less-traceable proxies can't safely visit undesirable people at 2 AM to beat, kidnap, or kill them. Simply put, armed people are hard to control and hard to intimidate. I want to live in a country where the people are dangerous and hard to control.

If the nightmare Putin-clone-in-America scenario ever happens, I want this country absolutely saturated with AR15s and CNN-journalist-terrifying-superduper-high-capacity banana clip shoulder thingies that go up.

 

[dhb]

The people in the Warsaw ghetto brought a knife to a gun fight.

And held out for a month!

 

[vector2]

Here is my take on the impeachment:

Trump engaged in improper behavior in asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. It was not an impeachable offense because the Bidens did engage in unethical behavior. But, Trump's respone to that behavior was incorrect/wrong.


The Bidens are dirty. Hunter Biden received close to a million dollars per year from Burisma. Why? He has no experience in the oil/natural gas industry and doesn't speak the language. This is corruption pure and simple. Was it illegal? No. That's why Trump should have left the Justice Dept. handle the matter.

Trump should not be removed from office over this ordeal. His shoot first mentality has gotten him into a lot of hot water. He has no idea how to be a good politician.

Did Joe Biden, his brother or his son profit from Joe Biden being Vice President? Yes. Did Joe Biden influence the Ukrainians into dropping the investigation into Burisma? Yes. Please note it was BURISMA which profited the most from the Joe Biden interference. Hence, they "hired" Hunter Biden as a reward/favor to Joe Biden. Quid pro Quo.

In Trump's simple mind this "dirty deal" deserved a response by him. He wanted to use that corruption to dirty up Joe Biden. Sleepy Joe didn't break any laws but in no way is he anything more than a typical Washington swamp rat (as most of them are).

Unlike the liberals on this site I see the rats on both sides of the aisle. The liberals expect their rats like Clinton and Biden to roam free while the GOP rats should all be exposed and terminated. Pure hypocrisy.

Firstly, no one has established that the Bidens engaged in illegal behavior (May 16, 2019: Yuriy Lutsenko, the current prosecutor general, tells Bloomberg News that neither Hunter Biden nor Burisma was now the focus of an investigation. “Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws — at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing. A company can pay however much it wants to its board.”)

Secondly, even if the Bidens’ behavior was unethical, you’re using of the moral logic of a 3 year old (two wrongs make a right) to establish trump’s innocence. trump committed impeachable offenses by abusing his power to extort a foreign head of state to announce investigations of a political rival instead of leaving his FBI and DOJ to investigate Biden. Subsequently he obstructed congress by failing to comply with lawful subpoenas and never invoking executive privilege.

Thirdly, somehow we have magically all forgotten how corporate boards work. To quote myself from the previous thread:

“ No one is debating that he sat on the board of the company. It's really whether it has any relevance- and honestly it doesn't considering he's an attorney/lobbyist who has worked in finance and who sat on Amtrak board at one point. If you look at any of the boards of directors of any fortune 500 company, you'll see that half the members are just status positions by some VIP who likely works in an entirely unrelated business field. I mean, hell, one of the board members of coca cola is an exec from the video game company Activision Blizzard. Another is from Expedia, another is from Aaron's and Delta. Exxon's board has ppl from Wellpoint, Xerox, and Merck. The implication from the misinformed right is that Biden's appointment was inappropriate because he's not from an oil background. That is either a deliberate or accidental misinterpretation about how boards work.“


And finally (and hopefully for the last time), Biden's pressure on the corrupt and ineffective Shokin was out of in the open, was the official policy of the US govt, and was supported by the IMF and our European allies


—
But the U.S. was not alone in pressuring Ukraine to fire Shokin.

In February 2016, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde threatened to withhold $40 billion unless Ukraine undertook “a substantial new effort” to fight corruption after the country’s economic minister and his team resigned to protest government corruption. That same month, a “reform-minded deputy prosecutor resigned, complaining that his efforts to address government corruption had been consistently stymied by his own prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin,” according to a Jan. 3, 2017, Congressional Research Services report.

Shokin served as prosecutor general under Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine who fled to Russia after he was removed from power in 2014 and was later found guilty of treason. Shokin remained in power after Yanukovych’s ouster, but he failed “to indict any major figures from the Yanukovych administration for corruption,” according to testimony John E. Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under President George W. Bush, gave in March 2016 to a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“By late fall of 2015, the EU and the United States joined the chorus of those seeking Mr. Shokin’s removal as the start of an overall reform of the Procurator General’s Office,” Herbst testified. “U.S. Vice President Joe Biden spoke publicly about this before and during his December visit to Kyiv; but Mr. Shokin remained in place.”

In early 2016, Deputy General Prosecutor Vitaliy Kasko resigned in protest of corruption within Shokin’s office. In a televised statement, Kasko said: “Today, the General Prosecutor’s office is a brake on the reform of criminal justice, a hotbed of corruption, an instrument of political pressure, one of the key obstacles to the arrival of foreign investment in Ukraine.”

In reporting on Kasko’s resignation, Reuters noted that Ukraine’s “failure to tackle endemic corruption” threatened the IMF’s $40 billion aid program for Ukraine. At the time, the IMF put a hold on $1.7 billion in aid that had been due to be released to Ukraine four months earlier.

“After President Poroshenko complained that Shokin was taking too long to clean up corruption even within the PGO itself, he asked for Shokin’s resignation,” the CRS report said. Shokin submitted his resignation in February 2016 and was removed a month later.

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, on Sept. 20 tweeted that the “Obama administration policy (not just ‘Biden policy’) to push for this Ukrainian general prosecutor to go” was “a shared view in many capitals, multilateral lending institutions, and pro-democratic Ukrainian civil society
—-

 

[PainDrain]

Here is my take on the impeachment:

Trump engaged in improper behavior in asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. It was not an impeachable offense because the Bidens did engage in unethical behavior. But, Trump's respone to that behavior was incorrect/wrong.

The Bidens are dirty. Hunter Biden received close to a million dollars per year from Burisma. Why? He has no experience in the oil/natural gas industry and doesn't speak the language. This is corruption pure and simple. Was it illegal? No. That's why Trump should have left the Justice Dept. handle the matter.

Trump should not be removed from office over this ordeal. His shoot first mentality has gotten him into a lot of hot water. He has no idea how to be a good politician.

Did Joe Biden, his brother or his son profit from Joe Biden being Vice President? Yes. Did Joe Biden influence the Ukrainians into dropping the investigation into Burisma? Yes. Please note it was BURISMA which profited the most from the Joe Biden interference. Hence, they "hired" Hunter Biden as a reward/favor to Joe Biden. Quid pro Quo.

In Trump's simple mind this "dirty deal" deserved a response by him. He wanted to use that corruption to dirty up Joe Biden. Sleepy Joe didn't break any laws but in no way is he anything more than a typical Washington swamp rat (as most of them are).

Unlike the liberals on this site I see the rats on both sides of the aisle. The liberals expect their rats like Clinton and Biden to roam free while the GOP rats should all be exposed and terminated. Pure hypocrisy.

VECTOR pretty much destroys most of your arguments that Trumps was acting to root out corruption.

I will also add that Trump actually did break the law by withholding the funds. He broke the Impoundments act, which says that a president cannot hold up funding that Congress has allocated for more than 45 days. The act also says that he can ask Congress to re-allocate/withdraw funds for said purpose if he doesn’t think it’s justified but he cannot act to withhold money once it has been appropriated. It’s a law that was designed to address exactly what Trump did.

 

[BLADEMDA]

VECTOR pretty much destroys most of your arguments that Trumps was acting to root out corruption.

I will also add that Trump actually did break the law by withholding the funds. He broke the Impoundments act, which says that a president cannot hold up funding that Congress has allocated for more than 45 days. The act also says that he can ask Congress to re-allocate/withdraw funds for said purpose if he doesn’t think it’s justified but he cannot act to withhold money once it has been appropriated. It’s a law that was designed to address exactly what Trump did.

Vector simply "spun" the facts. Trump is NOT innocent here. He was trying to play politics like many of them do. He did it poorly. Impeach him over it? Hardly. Joe Biden and son were engaging in unethical/corrupt behavior. That is how many members of the GOP see it. Dirty Joe was not doing anything "illegal" but it was corrupt.

As for holding up funding that again is not worth impeaching a President over. I would NOT vote to remove Trump from office based on the facts of the case. Was his phone call "perfect"? Hell no. But should he be removed from over over it? No. "Abuse of power"? I remember Obama abusing his power on a regular basis with a "paper and pen" in hand by creating new policy. All current Presidents have abused their power to some degree with Obama being way up there.

This is a partisan hack job impeachment. The final vote in the Senate, like in the House of Rep, will prove it was all just politics.

 

[BLADEMDA]

Republican Party leaders denounced the DACA program as an abuse of executive power.[36]

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[GaseousClay]

So Trump doesnt know Parnas and Fruhman? Only had pics taken with them because he has pics with everyone, right?

--

'Take her out': Recording appears to capture Trump at private dinner saying he wants Ukraine ambassador fired -
Trump apparently heard discussing firing Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

A recording reviewed by ABC News appears to capture President Donald Trump telling associates he wanted the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch fired while speaking at a small gathering that included Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman -- two former business associates of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who have since been indicted in New York.

The recording appears to contradict statements by Trump and support the narrative that has been offered by Parnas during broadcast interviews in recent days. Sources familiar with the recording said the recording was made during an intimate April 30, 2018, dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Trump has said repeatedly he does not know Parnas, a Soviet-born American who has emerged as a wild card in Trump’s impeachment trial, especially in the days since Trump was impeached.

"Get rid of her!" is what the voice that appears to be Trump’s is heard saying. "Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it."

Cont...

'Take her out': Recording appears to capture Trump at private dinner saying he wants Ukraine ambassador fired

President Donald Trump was apparently heard discussing firing Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch during a 2018 dinner,.

abcnews.go.com

----

Love writing a 10 second response and have vector for waste hours of his day with anger and pretending to be smart by posting random clippings he searched

 

[BLADEMDA]

Top 10 Ways Obama Violated the Constitution during His Presidency

The Obama administration has been the most lawless in U.S. history. Here are just a few examples to prove it.

www.cato.org

Here is further proof that Obama was just as bad, if not worse, than Trump in abusing the power of his office. But, the GOP did not and would not impeach him over these issues because we respect the office of the Presidency. We learned from Clinton that impeachment is a last resort for TRUE high Crimes against the nation.

 

[Splenda88]

Top 10 Ways Obama Violated the Constitution during His Presidency

The Obama administration has been the most lawless in U.S. history. Here are just a few examples to prove it.

www.cato.org

Here is further proof that Obama was just as bad, if not worse, than Trump in abusing the power of his office. But, the GOP did not and would not impeach him over these issues because we respect the office of the Presidency. We learned from Clinton that impeachment is a last resort for TRUE high Crimes against the nation.

Hahahaha...

Not an Obama fan or trump fan, but come on.

Let us face it... Whether you like him or not, Trump is the definition of corruption. I hope people will be ok when our next president acts like Trump...

 

[PainDrain]

Vector simply "spun" the facts. Trump is NOT innocent here. He was trying to play politics like many of them do. He did it poorly. Impeach him over it? Hardly. Joe Biden and son were engaging in unethical/corrupt behavior. That is how many members of the GOP see it. Dirty Joe was not doing anything "illegal" but it was corrupt.

As for holding up funding that again is not worth impeaching a President over. I would NOT vote to remove Trump from office based on the facts of the case. Was his phone call "perfect"? Hell no. But should he be removed from over over it? No. "Abuse of power"? I remember Obama abusing his power on a regular basis with a "paper and pen" in hand by creating new policy. All current Presidents have abused their power to some degree with Obama being way up there.

This is a partisan hack job impeachment. The final vote in the Senate, like in the House of Rep, will prove it was all just politics.

Vector didn’t “spin” anything. The firing of Shokin was something everyone, except Shokin and his oligarch friends, was advocating. Now, should Hunter Biden have been on any Ukrainian company board? I would say no but it isn’t illegal.

 

[KungPOWChicken]

Hahahaha...

Not an Obama fan or trump fan, but come on.

Let us face it... Whether you like him or not, Trump is the definition of corruption. I hope people will be ok when our next president acts like Trump...

So you mean Trump acting like himself??? I would get ready for 4 more years

 

[Splenda88]

So you mean Trump acting like himself??? I would get ready for 4 more years

He can be a president a vie... I have never trusted any politician.

 

[vector2]

Vector simply "spun" the facts. Trump is NOT innocent here. He was trying to play politics like many of them do. He did it poorly. Impeach him over it? Hardly. Joe Biden and son were engaging in unethical/corrupt behavior. That is how many members of the GOP see it. Dirty Joe was not doing anything "illegal" but it was corrupt.

As for holding up funding that again is not worth impeaching a President over. I would NOT vote to remove Trump from office based on the facts of the case. Was his phone call "perfect"? Hell no. But should he be removed from over over it? No. "Abuse of power"? I remember Obama abusing his power on a regular basis with a "paper and pen" in hand by creating new policy. All current Presidents have abused their power to some degree with Obama being way up there.

This is a partisan hack job impeachment. The final vote in the Senate, like in the House of Rep, will prove it was all just politics.

What about Obama? What about Obama? What about Obama? What about Obama? What about Obama?

Man you guys are pathetic. Paging @Apollyon to come whine about usage of the word ‘whataboutism’ again.... before I go ahead and call out whataboutism for the 25th time. None of you including the house gop or trumps lawyers are capable of defending trump on the facts, there’s not a single character witness on earth who can say trump is the sort of guy who wouldn’t break the law for political gain, and thus the only game you have left are endless irrelevant comparisons to people who aren’t even in public office.

And speaking of spin, good lord, blade. You don’t refute one thing I wrote about Ukraine finding no evidence about Bidens, how corporate boards actually work, or what the US govt, the EU, or IMF thought of Shokin...you merely downplay your opinion of what’s impeachable...and then you accuse me of spin? Gtfo with that nonsense. You can say all you want that Biden is “corrupt,” but as pgg points out so often, words have meaning, and sure as hell anyone who’s calling Biden and son “corrupt” on TV are referring to a crime. Full-blown dementia Giuliani is now even getting called out by Jeanine Pirro of all people to provide the evidence on Biden if he’s gonna keep running his mouth, and NEWSFLASH, the personal lawyer of the president who’s spent the last year traipsing around Ukraine doesn’t have jacksht.

The actual partisan hack job is the blanket stonewalling enabled by the gop senate, and the fact that nobody is going to get testimony from Mulvaney, Bolton, Pompeo, Giuliani, or Trump, or get any of the thousands of emails which these dolts surely sent each other confirming the illegal aid hold was for purely political gain.

 

[thinkorswim]

Top 10 Ways Obama Violated the Constitution during His Presidency

The Obama administration has been the most lawless in U.S. history. Here are just a few examples to prove it.

www.cato.org

Here is further proof that Obama was just as bad, if not worse, than Trump in abusing the power of his office. But, the GOP did not and would not impeach him over these issues because we respect the office of the Presidency. We learned from Clinton that impeachment is a last resort for TRUE high Crimes against the nation.

Dude, really? This isn’t a proof of anything illegal or even close to corrupt. It’s just a list of Democratic policies you can’t stand. Try a little harder next time.

 

[vector2]

Top 10 Ways Obama Violated the Constitution during His Presidency

The Obama administration has been the most lawless in U.S. history. Here are just a few examples to prove it.

www.cato.org

Here is further proof that Obama was just as bad, if not worse, than Trump in abusing the power of his office. But, the GOP did not and would not impeach him over these issues because we respect the office of the Presidency. We learned from Clinton that impeachment is a last resort for TRUE high Crimes against the nation.

Lmao, because “we respect the office of the Presidency.” That’s hysterical. If Obama breathed funny, sure enough some congressman would ramble something about impeachment.

Unfortunately for them, even near Obama’s nadir in popularity, 66% of people opposed his impeachment. In 1998, 67% of Americans opposed impeaching President Bill Clinton and 69% opposed impeaching George W. Bush in 2006.. They didn’t impeach him because he was still too popular, too many Americans opposed it by historical standards, and it would die in the senate. It had nothing to do with respect for anyone or anything.

 

[BLADEMDA]

Hahahaha...

Not an Obama fan or trump fan, but come on.

Let us face it... Whether you like him or not, Trump is the definition of corruption. I hope people will be ok when our next president acts like Trump...

We don't like the way Trump acts but the remedy for that is called an ELECTION. Impeachment is reserved for the highest crimes and most egregious actions by a President. Trump derangement syndrome where the same members of Congress keep trying to impeach the guy day in and day out is not how we handle this issue in the USA. The election is just 9 months away. I, and all of the GOP, will abide by the results of the electoral college.

 

[PainDrain]

We don't like the way Trump acts but the remedy for that is called an ELECTION. Impeachment is reserved for the highest crimes and most egregious actions by a President. Trump derangement syndrome where the same members of Congress keep trying to impeach the guy day in and day out is not how we handle this issue in the USA. The election is just 9 months away. I, and all of the GOP, will abide by the results of the electoral college.

So your feelings on the Clinton impeachment are what?