US Politics, December 2019: Profound procedural deficiencies

the republicans have moved well past troubling themselves to be embarrassed about their party or its positions

Treeship, you can't shame the shameless.

(stifling sobs with limited success) 'At long last, I must admit that I...I have left no sense of decency, sir.'

-Bob Marley no living Republican

“...When Jesus was falsely accused of Treason, Pontius Pilate gave Jesus the opportunity to face his accusers. During that sham trial, Pontius Pilate afforded more rights to Jesus, than Democrats have afforded this president in this process.” #ShamImpeachment pic.twitter.com/n8FZRe64eo

— Barry Loudermilk (@RepLoudermilk) December 18, 2019

not sure where they go from here

I wish democrats used the impeachment trial as a way to showcase stuff that would be more embarrassing for republicans to have to defend. But maybe that was impossible.

That's Impossible has been trademarked by Dem leadership

btw lol that Jesus was "falsely accused", pretty sure claiming to be King of the Jews was an affront to Caesar

To all of the republicans who have taken to rending their garments over the unfairness of Trump undergoing impeachment proceedings which, because the outcome is ultimately in the hands of the GOP, will result in nothing more punitive than a degree of mild inconvenience, might I offer the counterproposal of just having the president melted down in an industrial-sized vat of acid?

but is it a fact that he's rapidly declining and his handlers are becoming aware etc?

Check out this exchange I had with then private citizen @realDonaldTrump on Oct. 15, 2008. We spoke about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and he then offered his thoughts about impeachment. pic.twitter.com/mXlsG9SjbB

— Wolf Blitzer (@wolfblitzer) December 18, 2019

Man, that fake news is getting more sophisticated every day! I can barely distinguish it from the genuine article anymore.

It's a cliche to say so, but, my god, he once spoke in coherent, intelligible English.

pretty sure claiming to be King of the Jews was an affront to Caesar

Being the Messiah, according to the Messianic beliefs of his era, would have also required his being the King of the Jews. This is the reason why the gospels include an elaborate genealogy to prove Jesus was a direct descendent of David. As unreliable as the gospels are as biography, it appears Jesus was very circumspect about making direct outright claims to be the Messiah, but he frequently spoke about "his father in heaven" and let people draw the obvious conclusion. Come to think, this makes him a lot like Trump and his 'do us a favor, though'.

I guess freebasing unchallenged entitlement and virulent racism for years does the same thing to your brain that meth does to your face, huh.

how the fuck is ‘barry loudermilk’ a real name

Democrat Trump in above clip

xpost Give him a break, he had it legally changed from Diarrhea McBowels.

I'll never understand how democrats failed to incessantly bash voters over the head with that old interview clip of Trump praising Hillary. And I guess I should prepare myself for basically no one ever seeing this clip, either.

"Look, I said nice things about her before! Cause we were such great friends! She's so mean to me, very nasty. Why doesn't she ever say anything nice?"

True story: there is a White House staffer going around the Senate delivering to each office, as a package, the incoherent, scathing Pelosi letter AND...wait for it...a giant 16x12 White House Christmas card (along with, implausibly, a second smaller Christmas card).

What a day. pic.twitter.com/y8gZuQbipl

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 18, 2019

there is also a tiny, microscopic card that is included in the package, if chris murphy had bothered using the oversized magnifying glass that was included as part of his birthday gift from earlier in the year

wait does Melania have the exact same signature as Donald?

or this that not her name there or waht

It's just that they're both such fitness nuts that they only sign things while using one of those vibrating belt exercisers.

are we looking at a 9-10pm vote ET?

https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/nmmarketplace.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/4/5e/45e63961-c3c3-54c6-904f-2834932e6ca6/5a4e42ff8f031.image.jpg?resize=450%2C639

It's a cliche to say so, but, my god, he once spoke in coherent, intelligible English.

Come on. That clip isn't that different from him today. He's still using a sixth-grade vocabulary and his logic is still 100% transactional/bullying, he's just less shouty, and he's saying things the people sharing that tweet around agree with.

435 representatives x 5 minutes each would be over 182 hours, so let us all be glad there are less expansive limits to the permitted speechifying.

it would "only" be a little over 36 hours, but yes, that too would unbearable! i have a high threshold for this stuff and i had trouble keeping it on for longer than few minutes at a time.

yup, I messed up my math on that. thx for the correction

Honest question: what would the GOP ask the whistleblower if they appeared? Why is having the whistleblower as a witness such a bugaboo for them?

Morbs' boy Doug Henwood gets roasted here.

because then not only can they vote to acquit trump (COMPLETEL EXONERATION!) but they can also use the whistleblower as a scapegoat for the entire thing. much easier for their dumb voters to remember one name and face to hate for the rest of their lives as a traitor to trump, rather than try to remember all the other people who corroborated everything the whistleblower said. yes - this is dumb and it doesn't make sense, no, it doesn't matter

I just don't understand what the whistleblower is thought to have done wrong besides blow the whistle when they saw something wrong; if they hadn't, they wouldn't be the whistleblower.

xpost to unperson:

He has separate, distinct thoughts which he can connect to each other, and pronounces the words he uses. That's the big difference.

(Also he is expressing a moral concept, no matter whether anyone agrees with it, or how sincere he was, that is not solely about whether he himself is being fairly treated. It also relies on accepting the abstract notion of leadership carrying responsibility. These are both absent from his communication today.)

xps Why is having the whistleblower as a witness such a bugaboo for them?

First, they want to intimidate future whistleblowers. Also, they want the chance to have a known person they can character assassinate as a Deep State Trump hater and whatever else they think they can make stick.

Then, knowing the Democrats would never agree to this, they want to make it an issue so as to imply the process is rigged against Trump, because they can't call the witnesses they want to call. It also gives them cover for denying the Democrats the chance to call Bolton or Mulvaney.

That second one makes the most sense. Because even if the Whistleblower were a full-blown anti Trump person, it doesn't alter the facts of what they blew the whistle over in the first place. Better to make them out a shadowy evil doer (Soros?) that we will never know then add them to the list of witnesses we've already heard from.

And I know these GOP assholes are disingenuous to the extreme, but the two things that bother me the most is the brazen way they claim they were not privy to documents ... while the White House withholds documents. And that they have not been able to hear from certain witnesses ... while the White House prevents witnesses - potentially exonerating witnesses (lol) - from testifying. How to you even counter such overt bullshittery? The GOP might as well accuse the Dems of invoking Double Secret Probation. They practically have.

which is more likely: that all the republicans wanting to reveal the whistleblower are using a strategy that is coordinated and purposeful, or that trump just starting blurting out that he wanted to reveal the whistleblower over and over until republicans starting backing him up when asked by reporters if they agreed with him?

it's comforting to think that things should make sense, even when it's the GOP doing it, but the entire GOP whistleblower thing is predicated on people NOT understanding what a whistleblower even is and what rights they are afforded.

I don't have any "boys"

excited for trump's crucifixion

i'm guessing he will not forgive them for what they do

Odds that Trump supporters will co-opt (or even campaign on) "impeached" as a t-shirt worthy compliment, a la "deplorable"?

other shoe

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/18/trump-impeachment-trial-steny-hoyer-087319

I think this is a good idea and hope they go through with it. Probably they won't.

why do this and not a 21-gun impeachment? seems half-assed.

Hoyer said Democratic colleagues have approached him in recent days, citing an op-ed by constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe in which he calls on Democrats to delay sending impeachment articles to the Senate until McConnell agrees to run a fairer process.

“Under the current circumstances, such a proceeding would fail to render a meaningful verdict of acquittal,” Tribe wrote. Notably, House Judiciary Committee Democrats huddled with Tribe earlier this month as they practiced behind closed doors for their series of impeachment hearings.

Some Democrats said they became convinced such a move was under consideration when House leaders decided against naming impeachment managers — the set of lawmakers who would argue their case on the Senate floor — until an undetermined later date.

I'm not crazy abt the attenuated impeachment terms but I don't think delaying the articles defeats the purpose of that strategy.

People are dumb and need to hear even the simple charges repeated and examined. The more time the better, esp. if MCConnell is pledging to rush through the trial.

And especially if Giuliani keep raising the stakes in real time, while more stuff leaks

i understand the thought behind tribe's idea, but they would also need to grapple with the very real possibility (even strong likelihood) that they would never send the articles to the senate. mcconnell isn't going to change anything. let's say a month has gone by in this fashion, with the articles of impeachment approved by the house but still not sent to the senate, and nothing has changed. What then? wait some more, until election day?

Tribe is seeking leverage to move McConnell in a direction McConnell doesn't want to go, but imo delay is unlikely to work. This is the man who was happy to sit on a Supreme Court nomination for ten months and who paid no price for that. A delay of the impeachment trial that he did not initiate, accompanied by Democratic demands he can dismiss as long as he wants, will not impress him.

Immediately after Gohmert finished speaking, Rep. Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said, “I am deeply concerned that any member of the House would spout Russian propaganda on the floor of the House.”

This criticism triggered a heated response from Gohmert, who returned to the podium, shouting, but the microphone had been turned off.