US Politics, December 2019: Profound procedural deficiencies

cage match, no subs, no backsies

We already have a wrestling heel as president. Going full UFC (with free KFC) would only expand the electorate, imo.

I don't understand Perlstein's point.

I'm not sure I do either. He has been pretty much anti how the Dems have been handling this for weeks.

Similar to O’Heir’s I think. By making this about Ukraine it’s confusing to a lot of voters. Maybe he’d rather they went after him for emoluments stuff instead.

Perlstein's point is stupid, the national security argument is there to embarass/persuade GOP Senators. The general public won't gaf.

This is the simplest case they can make, that's why they've focused on it

Oh wait, I get it now. I misread "in" as "is," which made me think that his second sentence contradicted the first.

abuse of power and obstruction of justice come down to things that the president did which damaged national security. and why did they damage national security? because they resulted in funding being withheld from ukraine. and why is that bad for national security? that's where perlstein's tweet comes in. most americans have no idea where ukraine is, and/or think maybe it is part of russia. americans have no fucking clue, in general. and then there are people who do know about ukraine/russia and disagree that we should be militarily supporting ukraine (that's a far smaller number)

counterpoint: americans during watergate had no clue what was going on either. we may all have globbed onto the idea that nixon was trying to interfere with elections, but the mess of proceedings and exposes over the next year or two were very complex. to this day, most people don't know why nixon was impeached, in the end.

xps

I kinda agree. The people trying to make this confusing would be doing it no matter what the impeachment was about. I understand that US-Ukraine politics isn’t something most people gaf about but bribery and election tampering seem to be the most unassailable reasons for impeachment that exist.

obnoxious pedant voice: nixon was not impeached

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-n35wAjB_u78/T1G-sL_peBI/AAAAAAAABJc/UZc0x2bI0M8/s1600/Caveman+Lawyer+Jury.png

yeah. i can understand perlstein's point, but what is the more obvious set of charges that he recommends that would be more viscerally understood by americans?

xp dr casino ugh, i do that all the time. but YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN

On climate change I'm afraid that them moving past outright denial isn't necessarily any kind of progress on the issue. It's getting to where outright denial is becoming politically untenable

Update: the PM has ruled out any emergency funding because the firefighters “want to be there.”

For anyone not following, there are over 100 wildfires in two states, many of which have been burning for a month. Over five million acres of bushland and 700 homes have been destroyed. The air quality in Australia’s most populous city is E L E V E N times above “hazardous” level, and fires to the north of it have joined into a 60-km-long “megablaze.”

Climate change denial is working just fine for the Prime Minister, who attends a pentecostal / prosperity gospel megachurch, and has a personal QAnon adviser.

(At the time Ukraine were trying to negotiate around the Biden / Burisma demand, this PM attempted to quid pro quo bringing his pastor, who funded conversion camps for lesbian teens and covered up his own pastor /father’s multinational child molestation for years, along on his White House visit.)

i believe perlstein's thesis is they should throw everything at him, maximalist charges, because 1) they won't impeach him again 2) the overhwelming maximalist "this man is a huge crook" blunderbuss case is easier to make than the "this specific set of acts is a high crime" case.

they (the democrats) won't vote to impeach him again because that's a political impossibility from their POV.

but also 3) the senate won't vote to remove, so they may as well throw it all out there. he calls their current strategy "narrow bore"

I just heard a smart liberal say the very least this inquiry will provide a check going forward on Trump using state power to sabotage his enemies. I think that's goofytown. The calamity of the narrow-bore impeachment strategy is... 1/4.

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) November 14, 2019

At least they could include obstruction of justice articles based on the Mueller Report, since Mueller already did all the leg work for them and tied it all up in a neat package with a ribbon and handed it to Congress, saying "here's a little something you may want to impeach him for, 'cuz my hands are tied".

if only mueller would have actually said that

FLASH POLL

which % is higher:

% of americans who know where ukraine (anywhere within 2000 miles of it)
% of americans who understood why the mueller report didn't say that trump committed a crime

i know a lot of americans are dumb but surely the first of those two, cmon

i think perlstein has in mind the obvious petty corruption stuff rather than the mueller stuff?

if only mueller would have actually said that

Aimless is barely paraphrasing tbf

lmfao

NEWS: A small group of Democrats are floating censuring Trump instead of impeaching him.

About a dozen moderates met on Monday to discuss the idea. Some have also been reaching out to House Rs to gauge support.

w/ @MZanonahttps://t.co/0WbRqlNt8c

— Sarah Ferris (@sarahnferris) December 10, 2019

That is a terrible idea that sets a terrible precedent

Cool, like half-assed pet owners squeaking out a feeble 'no, down' when their dog starts humping a neighbor's leg. Should prove very effective!

fuckin moderates

and all dudes

apologies if this has been covered but good to see harris getting back to business
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/stephen-miller-kamala-harris-senators-letter-white-nationalist_n_5ded8571e4b00563b8534265

I'm with Josh Marshall--the Dems shouldn't be trained monkeys doing ever more elaborate tricks for a Senate audience that has folded its arms and refuses to be impressed. It's wasted effort and it does make the dems look weak. The point isn't to change Republicans' minds, which is impossible--the point is to demonstrate that the Republicans are unwilling to put any bounds on his power or behavior. That's about the best the Dems can do right now.

President Trump abused the powers of his high office through the following means:

(1) Directing the White House to defy a lawful subpoena by withholding the production of documents sought therein by the Committees.

(2) Directing other Executive Branch agencies and offices to defy lawful subpoenas and withhold the production of documents and records from the Committees — in response to which the Department of State, Office of Management and Budget, Department of Energy, and Department of Defense refused to produce a single document or record.

(3) Directing current and former Executive Branch officials not to cooperate with the Committees — in response to which nine Administration officials defied subpoenas for testimony, namely John Michael “Mick” Mulvaney, Robert B. Blair, John A. Eisenberg, Michael Ellis, Preston Wells Griffith, Russell T. Vought, Michael Duffey, Brian McCormack, and T. Ulrich Brechbuhl.

they left out bolton

goofytown

looking forward to perlstein's upcoming book about the trump era

at the rate he's working through GOP presidential history we may all be living in Waterworld by the time he gets to it.

rebuttal: waterworld will actually be good for the world, not bad. we need water to live

(Ben Garrison takes notes furiously for his next cartoon.)

water water everywhere and you have to flush ten fifteen times

it seems like as i get older and older, i have to flush more times. must be a problem with water pressure laws and the epa

Have to wonder how many of the ten-to-fifteen were because he was unwittingly attempting to flush his drooping, wizened scrote after his boys had sunk to the bottom of the bowl.

^hurtling toward the borderline of very bad fanfic

how ironic that an Old Lunch post would make me regurgitate my old lunch

speaking of Old Lunch, here comes mine

― master of nuggets (Neanderthal), Tuesday, December 10, 2019 6:42 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/rookie-cop/2868167

http://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/040416/040416_campaign_daily_vlarge5p.grid-4x2.jpg

they left out bolton
― Peaceful Warrior I Poser (Karl Malone)

Bolton wasn't subpoenaed.

parties that are not organized along ideological lines are useless; the 'moderate' Dems can gtfo

at least the Republicans figured this out and all turned into cavepeople

If the Dems can't muster the votes for impeachment, they are well and truly fucked

um

House Democrats can push their sham impeachment all they want.

President Trump's re-election is 𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲. pic.twitter.com/O7o02S26nS

— Trump War Room (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TrumpWarRoom) December 10, 2019

If the Dems can't muster the votes for impeachment, they are well and truly fucked

they overwhelmingly have the votes, only 2 Dems are on the record as opposing it. The "moderates" referenced above don't even have the 18 necessary to pass the procedural blocks they would need to throw up.

TBF, there's nothing stopping them from throwing up anyway.

*VLTF*