If Two Years Wasn’t Such a Long Time
My wife and I have a friend in Lebanon — the country, not the Pennsylvania town — whom we’ve known since the 1970s, when Lebanon’s civil war was still being fought with frequent rocket and mortar attacks. Tony lived in Beirut, once one of the most beautiful cities in the Middle East, where rocket attacks had become as common as MAGA hats in Tennessee. Nonetheless, he urged us to visit him at his home in the Christian part of town.
“Tony,” we said. “Are you nuts? The city is under attack! We could be blown to smithereens at any second!”
“No,” he said, “all that is on the other side of town. It’s five miles away.” He said it the way a Wilmingtonian would say all the murders happen on the East Side, Wawaset Park is perfectly safe.
It’s easy for some of us to take that attitude towards the Trumping of America. You’re probably not foreign-born, so ICE is not an existential threat. You probably aren’t directly affected by the targeted tariffs, unless you grow soybeans, and even then you’re in line for a buy-off. Life seems more menacing if you’re gay or trans, but not in ways most people notice. Basically, all the bad stuff is happening across town.
So back to Tony. Two years after he invited us to visit, his family was living in the stairwell of a bombed-out apartment building. (Don’t worry, they all made it through just fine, and still live in Beirut.) The point being that a bad situation can get a lot worse in two years.
Nancy Pelosi might be comfortable treating this as a political matter, but she’s shirking the constitutional duty of the House by doing so. I understand the urgency of voting Trump out in 2020, but doing nothing because of the fear of public backlash is another blow against constitutional order.
Sorry, Aunt Nancy gets this one right, if for no other reason then the possibility of a President Pence if Trump is impeached. Trump remains a big liability for the Republicans, a loose cannon with a machine gun mouth that spews lies and increasingly insanity. If incontrovertible evidence emerges for impeachment that’s another story, then it must proceed. We all know impeachment will not fly, pass or be considered in the senate. And it makes all the rest moot.
It’s not fear of public backlash. It’s because she knows there is no basis to impeach Trump.
On what basis does Trump deserve to be impeached?
Hint: “I don’t like the results of that election” is not a valid basis for impeachment.
This may appear dumb. But, remember, this fucking clown is the arbiter of maturity and intelligence. So there’s that.
“It’s because she knows there is no basis to impeach Trump.”
Wow. And you’ve done such a good job of not appearing incredibly stupid until now. Wha’ happen?
The man was a criminal long before he ran for office. That’s grounds enough, as there’s no actual objective standard for starting such proceedings. Let’s put it this way, check out what the two previous impeachments were for. Trump’s done far worse.
He belongs at the end of a rope.
Shorter Alby: I got nothin’
As to specifics on impeachment, you’re right. That’s not my job. Yours, either, obviously.
But, just as obviously, you got nothing, either. You literally said nothing. “There is no basis to impeach Trump” is a nonsense statement. Literally anything can be used as a basis to impeach, as the Andrew Johnson example shows.
It was not lost on me that, given the opportunity to engage in dialogue, you choose to engage in name-calling instead. Mark of stupidity that you might be too stupid to understand.
I asked you a relatively straightforward question, “On what basis does Trump deserve to be impeached?” Seems like a reasonable question with which to open a dialogue, no?
You respond with “the man was a criminal long before he ran for office” followed by “He belongs at the end of a rope”.
So, are you ready to have an actual dialogue, or are you going to continue to stamp your feet and shout “orange man bad!”?
Let me know.
Emoluments
Obstruction of Justice…
etc.
I’d also say that if any other president had his campaign manager, Nat’l Security Chief and personal attorney all convicted of felonies while he was still in office, he would be removed.
The Senate can sort out the evidence at trial.
(Of course this answer will not be good enough because xyz is a fucking bad faith actor and a coward and dolt. But he is an adult, allegedly.)
C’mon, don’t play dumb. There are literally tens of thousands of articles listing possible reasons, and you know it. You don’t need me to list them for you.
My point, which you’re still missing, is that there doesn’t have to be a legitimate reason. Do you understand, or is that still over your head?
You could have engaged with it any way you wanted. You didn’t. You engaged in name calling because that’s what you want. You made an assertion and, instead of proving what you claim, you’re asking me to refute it. Again, this is not a sign of intelligent but a sign of clueless arrogance.
I know and am friendly with lots of people who share your views, and they have the advantage of having actual names and faces and the responsibility of standing behind what they say and answering my objections to it.
You, otoh, specialize in making predictions that are usually wrong but never acknowledged by you as such. Also, you have repeatedly stated you think it’s funny to get liberals upset, which marks you as at the least a possible sociopath, something you and your therapist should work out.
I know you think you’re proving how smart you are. You are actually demonstrating that you know how hollow your claims are. Truth be told, I think you’re a closet liberal who turned to whatever it is you are because the odds are stacked against us, and you’re too cowardly to fight where the odds are against you.
PS: I’m really not impressed with your “I asked a simple question” gaslighting, either. I’ve asked a lot of simple questions of you that you never even tried to answer.
I also engage in name-calling! Ad-homs are fun.
Inauguration slush fund!
There’s already evidence that Trump Hotel DC is operation to pile up foreign cash.
This guy is just a partisan pissant.
And he’s a partisan pissant who’s about two bad-faith posts away from disappearing.
But if you’ve read him right along, you can see that a lot of his attitude is cynicism, which is the mark of a dispirited romantic.
OK Alby, that’s a little better.
So “there doesn’t have to be a legitimate reason?”
Not sure that is correct in either a theoretical or practical sense, but practically is what is more important.
In a practical sense, is that really true?
Please look up the Andrew Johnson case. Look at how flimsy that was. By the standard set in that case, any pretext will do, which is why it was another 100 years before the subject was even broached again.
“High crimes and misdemeanors” is a phrase with no context-setting guidelines, so it becomes whatever the House prosecutors decided to prosecute.
You might have noticed that there’s plenty of populist sentiment to impeach, so if Democrats were just doing what their constituents wanted they’d go ahead. The fact that they don’t means it is therefore a strategic decision.
It is informed by the Clinton impeachment, which actually improved his approval ratings because people thought it was making a mountain out of a molehill. Pelosi, and other mainstream Dems like her, are afraid of that.
curious if you thought Obama should have been impeached and your thoughts on his most egregious mistakes, constitutional over reaches, or red lines he didn’t set etc. etc.
*burn*
Shit president, but he didn’t deserve to be impeached.
“You didn’t build that”
“Bitter clingers”
“Could have been my son”
Worst record of any president with regards to economic growth
Pallets of cash to Iran
Did nothing to end foreign wars
Screwed up the one chance we probably had for meaningful health care because of his massive ego
Set race relations back at least a generation
Shall I go on?
Remarkable level of narcissism for so little actual achievement.
A remarkable list to me because many of the things you cite are the same reasons liberals consider him a disappointment.
I disagree with you about his ego and narcissism — I don’t think they’re anything out of the ordinary for a president — and I don’t see anything wrong with those quotes, because I think they’re accurate and I think it’s a fool’s game trying to play to the ever-diminishing ability of Americans to see things intellectually instead of emotionally.
But you are furthering my suspicion that what you want for the country is not all that different from what liberals would like.
Idiot. Your list is more than half George W Bush. The other half are things Obama said which you don’t like because they were said by what you consider an uppity nigger.
The ole pallets-of-cash trope. And I missed it in real time. Mother fuck.
This guy’s the Very Adult Person on here.
Typical rube.
What y’all don’t get is that once you run this through the “but will it help me or hurt me?” metric, you’re no longer doing your constitutional duty. If everything is just political, then you have no reason to complain about Trump except that he won.
I agree with this post 100%. Do your constitutional duty and the idiots in the media and Chris Coons will come along.
“but she’s shirking the constitutional duty of the House by doing so.”
I think it’s fair to ask to what end. The exercise of one’s duty is not conducted in a vacuum, without purpose or objective.
If you were to assert that the objective is to remove Trump, other than my fear of a President Pence, I can get on board. But strategies have to be executable in order to be an actual strategy. Even if you presume that the impeachment in the House is successful, removal from office requires success in the Senate. Because of that, in my view, such a strategy fails.
Even so, strategies can have multiple objectives and the failure in attaining one objective is not a fatal flaw in a strategy. Are there other objectives that result from a successful impeachment, but failure to convict? Lowered ranking in the polls? Sucking up time and energy to keep them from doing stupid stuff?
I think a failure to convict, supports the meme that it was all a nothing burger and many people are swayed by memes. Consequently, I think there is more to lose and a greater chance of losing, than the small chance that a GOP Senate will do the right thing.
Impeachment is not the removal from office. That requires a separate vote.
Impeachment is how you investigate allegations of wrongdoing — in Trump’s case, that could include several instances of criminal code violation — of a president, whom, as Trump’s lawyers like to point out, might not be indictable otherwise while in office.
I don’t like the system, but it’s the one the founders set up and nobody has bothered to try changing. “Losing” or “winning” is not the point. Finding culpability is the point. To shun impeachment is, in effect, to say we won’t bother investigating the charges in the only venue the constitution gives us to investigate them.
Yes, impeachment is the equivalent being indicted, that’s why I said “failure to convict” which is the trial by the Senate, which is in GOP hands. Prosecutortial discretion – If you can’t convict is there some objective to be obtain by indicting?
If there is something to be achieved, then I’m on board with impeaching, but at the moment, I don’t see the point. That doesn’t not keep the House from investigating, which it is currently doing. But I would not be focused on impeachment, when I should be focused on the truth, which could lead to impeachment. Pelosi should not show her hand, until she needs to.
“But I would not be focused on impeachment, when I should be focused on the truth, which could lead to impeachment. ”
I agree, but you’ll have to acknowledge that you’re making a semantic distinction that might not be one she’s making. When people read her saying no, they’re not hearing her say “maybe later.”
many people are swayed by memes
I have a black friend, want to see a picture?
You don’t. Stop lying.
True. I think people don’t comprehend strategic thinking, the long view etc.
When I drive, I look at the immediate, which is the vehicle in front of me, but I primarily look ahead as far as I can see. Is the light way up there turning red? Is there a big slow moving trunk I don’t want to get stuck behind? How far ahead is my turn? Do the lanes go down from 2 lanes to 1 lane? I don’t like surprises, so I watch the body language of the driver in front of me, but knowing what is ahead of them, give me insight into what they are going to do and consequently what I am going to do.
Through informal surveys (me asking them), I have found that most drivers, look only as far as the vehicle in front of them. It is difficult to understand what Pelosi is doing when they don’t know how far ahead she is looking.
And of course, there are those who think that once you are impeached, you are done, which again demonstrates the failure of our educational system.
The Very Deep Over-Thinker™ has logged on.
I, for one, love over-wrought logistical proofs of mundane everyday activities.
Shoe-tying. To tie or to double-knot. What did Hume say on the subject?
Some people take a different route but get to the same place eventually. I like scenic drives.
It depends on the characteristics of the laces. The synthetic material tends to slip more and leather makes it difficult to tie the initial knot very tight.
Stampeding herds have no intended destination. They are just following the cow in front of them.
Which is why you don’t want to stand in their way.
Trust me, I don’t because you either get trampled or become part of the herd, especially since the their ultimate destination is the slaughter house.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Next time I see you I’ll demonstrate. This is the worst koan ever, because you can clap (not very loudly) with one hand.