US Politics, December 2019: Profound procedural deficiencies

It's hard to know, but I think Trump really believes his bullshit, that the call was perfect, that he did nothing wrong, and that he wants a chance to mount a full defense and clear his name. Anything that encourages him to pursue this view seems good to me.

yeah, i agree. trump wants it to be a spectacle. he wants hunter and joe biden on the stand, he wants schiff and pelosi (?!) on the stand, etc.

i don't think it'll make a difference in the outcome - trump is obviously totally innocent and this whole thing is a conspiracy that we're all in on, even if we don't know it yet, because of the deep state etc - but with greater spectacle comes a greater chance of chaos and mistakes. GOP has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory many times before (ie roy moore), you never know. plus, with greater spectacle comes more entertaining political action that will be fun to recount as we're burning alive during the latter half of this century, if we're unfortunate enough to live that long, good mourning

xps

Acquittal in the Senate is a foregone conclusion. At this point the optimal outcome is a solid day of Trump-as-witness foaming at the mouth, which can then be turned into a thousand campaign ads for the Democratic nominee, whose campaign slogan will be "It's me...or four more years of that."

thank god . . . the supreme court

BREAKING: Supreme Court agrees to consider Trump's bid to keep his financial records away from Congress and a New York grand jury. Court will hear three Trump appeals.

— Greg Stohr (@GregStohr) December 13, 2019

wowza

Is this sooner than expected?

This will only postpone matters compared to dropping the stay and allowing the appeals court ruling to stand.

that was never going to happen

It will be funny in eight months when Trump has been "exonerated" and every last paranoid witch-hunt accusation is borne out in a document dump revealing his oligarchic laundromat

what's another three years of nose-holding

there's going to be shit coming up about him for the rest of our lives

it will be a fifteen-flusher for sure

many toilets died to bring us this information

Lol.

there's going to be shit coming up about him for the rest of our lives

And up through the ground come a bubblin' crude.

from the NYT:

Mr. Trump said today that he did not have a preference for how the Senate impeachment trial should work, but my colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports that he has privately pushed for a longer process that would give him the chance to stage a theatrical defense. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, wants a shorter, more dignified event.

Sucks to be you, Turtle

On Thursday, Mr. McConnell met with Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, to hash out terms of the trial: how long it would last; how many hours each side would get to present its case; whether there would be witnesses and if so, how many.

Democrats criticized Mr. McConnell’s coordination with the White House. “If articles of impeachment are sent to the Senate, every single senator will take an oath to render ‘impartial justice,’” Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said today.

oaths, oh my sides

Everybody will swear on a Big Mac

oaths may seem comically useless, but the truth is that there ain't no way to better ensure good conduct, because every more coercive strategy has even worse problems. at least swearing an oath, administered in public during a somewhat solemn ceremony has a small chance of activating whatever amount of civic responsibility and honesty the oath-taker might possess. it's not much, but it's all we got.

that is tragically small chance in this instance

Rationalization is the Catch of the Day every day in Congress.

what if they add a provision that every time they are found to lie while under oath, david and charles koch are punched in the face

What if the Senate chamber just catches fire

And we just sit back...

Way back...

er, the Senators will not be testifying under oath during the trial. this oath is different.

"impartial" and "justice", the Lewis Carroll definitions

Supreme Court decision expected in late June, so they're obviously feeling a sense of urgency....

the fact that they want to take it up instead of just denying cert to the challenges of the lower court rulings does not bode well

If they rule for Trump, giving him a unique immunity from the reach of legal investigations which every other citizen must submit to, it will just be another nail in the coffin of presidential accountability to anyone for anything they do or choose not to do, no matter how those actions may violate the law, defraud others, or evade their plain duty. The appeals court ruling makes this unambiguously clear.

Then again perhaps they delayed because they knew they couldn't deny the subpoenas, so they are giving Trump some extra time.

I want to believe that, but I don't really

Just depends how fully in the tank they are for their king, I suppose

Judge stymies Trump's border wall by invoking GOP law targeting Obama

President Donald Trump’s border wall is facing a surprising new legal hurdle down in Texas: an obscure legislative provision crafted by House Republicans in 2014 when the GOP was targeting then-President Barack Obama’s budget powers.

The amendment, carried forward into current law, has resurfaced with a vengeance in El Paso, Texas. U.S District Court Judge David Briones has been quoting back its words in a series of rulings against Trump’s decision to take $3.6 billion from military construction projects to expedite his wall.

As first adopted, the Republican language specifically prohibited Obama from taking any step to “eliminate or reduce funding for any program, project, or activity as proposed in the President’s budget request” until it's cleared with Congress.

Story Continued Below

The triggering event was a relatively narrow dispute in 2013 over funding for space exploration. But when they were enacted in Jan. 2014, the restrictions applied government-wide. And a year later, under full Republican control, Congress added the word “increase” alongside “eliminate or reduce” funding.

What goes around, in other words, comes around.

Ha?

Yeah, well, they have a whole lot more of this to look forward to as they continue to erode norms. They're too stupid to realize that what benefits them while they're in power will just as likely benefit their opponents when power shifts.

Except Democrats will shy away from taking advantage of these situations

november 22: https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/politics/van-drew-vows-to-stay-a-democrat-even-as-he/article_3beada82-3912-5b15-8859-55103dddaefc.html

december 14: https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/politics/democrat-officials-say-jeff-van-drew-poised-to-switch-parties/article_1fccb81e-050c-548b-a7d7-ee6b7768b1ce.html

srsly though, what is going on?

That cocaine kicking her ass pic.twitter.com/B0P1NFtAq4

— CURE (@CureHipHop) December 13, 2019

(Angie Craig, D-MN)

do her eyelids mean something in morse code

Superhypercaffeinatedexpialidocious

This evening I turned on MSNBC and watched Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland express deep concern about whether his Republican colleagues were going to keep an open mind as jurors in the Senate trial of the President. At one point he went as far as to say that Mitch McConnell had “raise[d] serious questions whether he will be objective in carrying out the responsibilities of the Senate or whether he’s going to try to stack the deck in favor of the president.”

My point here is not to pick on Ben Cardin. This is one example of rhetoric you can hear from many Democrats and most Senate Democrats. It’s just the example that is ready at hand. But it is terrible and completely pathetic.

It is grievously irresponsible to be expressing “concerns” that Republicans may not do their job and uphold their responsibility as Senators. Republicans have made crystal clear that they understand the nature of the President’s abuses of power and that they will not only protect him from the consequences of his actions but, in an effort to do so, bend reality to pretend that it is in fact fine and even admirable for a President to use extortion to force a foreign power to intervene in a US election. To see Republicans do this in the open and not state that fact clearly is a total abdication of responsibility.

[sport metaphor. military battle metaphor.]

Republicans have made their intentions crystal clear. It is an abdication of responsibility not to state this clearly. Republicans have already decided to protect a lawless President from constitutional accountability. They’ve betrayed the constitution and their oaths. This is a point to make consistently over and over and over again. Because it is true. If some Republican Senator decides to change his mind and the right thing they are welcome to do so.

Perhaps Cardin and others are too squeamish for that language or too wedded to Senate collegiality. I’m sure many Republican colleagues are amiable enough people when you meet them at the congressional gym. But language does not need to be hot to state clearly where the facts of the matter stand. There’s nothing to be “concerned” about. Senate Republicans have made very clear there is no level of lawless behavior from this President that they will not defend. The public needs to know that. It needs to be said over and over. To say anything else, to express hopes this or that doesn’t happen when it already has happened only signals a damaging, demoralizing and shameful weakness.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/terrible-terrible-terrible

if all the pundits make this point at the same time, i believe we can levitate the pentagon

i have been getting bad feelings for the past week or two. ever since the baton was passed to nadler, basically, not to blame him specifically. i think a lot of it is the whole thing i've complained about before with everyone knowing the outcome (acquitted in senate, easily) and spinning that future result weeks before it happens. i do it, too, for sure. liberal democracies sometimes die, and sometimes the people that held power during the nominal democratic time continue to hold power afterward as well. have a dark glass of wine or two and it's easy to see kevin mccarthy as this kind of person, mitch mcconnell of course, matt gaetz as the dumb jock, a bunch of older white men with shaved heads as the anonymous supporting meathead cast

huh?

as for Van Drew, who gives a shit?

I regret to inform you that Trump announcing that he has the support of a dipshit New Jersey House backbencher nobody has ever heard of is going to be a YOOOOGE game changer pic.twitter.com/yXmUdc9ydd

— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) December 15, 2019

the majority of the Dems Just Don’t Care

^Fresh Prince repeating ideas

I've been hearing thaty compromising on this infrastructure deal is likely to send absolutely the wrong message to significant parts of the electorate which could heavily undermine everything else the Dems are trying to accomplish over the next year.
& that in trying to seem too reasonable they may just blow any form of credibility they have.
NOt worth it for a bill that isn't going to immediately show positive results for marginalised people or whatever.

Hearing from where?

It's a frequent dilemma these days, where attempting to govern the nation might not mesh smoothly with image-building and message-sending. I know the Republicans have constructed a coalition that has no interest in governance, since that would also include regulating their ability to make the highest possible profits, which enables the Republicans to take and hold extreme positions without much interest in making compromises.

However frustrating this dynamic is, I still would rather have the option of voting for someone who intends to prevent the government from falling into complete ruin. Even at the cost of sending "wrong messages". This doesn't mean I expect Democrats to be supine before the excessive demands of the Republicans, but if they expect to get better at messaging, their principle tool ought to be explaining their vision for the nation in simple and direct terms, not some voodoo based on the details of appropriations bills.