***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[whywesteppin]

Some days I forget that that there's a difference between Nikki Haley and Tulsi Gabbard.

 

[aepps20]

When our PRESIDENT ELECT was born on the Big Island he was named Johnny but his grand father called him pono because he saw the good in anything. Specifically he saw that Lib conjecture and innuendo would end and no collusion would be found. Check out his life story on Disney + under the title Johnny Tsunami.

 

[stuntman mike]

braddah aepps20 said pono
it’s 6:30 am and i’m done with the internet for the day

 

[Belgium]

Lord help this man's lawyers
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/11/politics/rudy-giuliani-impeachment-podcast/index.html
Giuliani considers launching an impeachment podcast amid public hearings
Rudy Giuliani is considering re-entering the impeachment fray by launching a podcast to provide impeachment analysis of the public hearings in the House of Representatives scheduled for later this week.

Giuliani was overheard discussing the plans with an unidentified woman while at a crowded New York City restaurant, Sant Ambroeus, over lunch on Saturday. The conversation, which lasted more than an hour, touched on details including dates for recording and releasing the podcast, settling on a logo, and the process of uploading the podcast to iTunes and other podcast distributors.

Two people who overheard Giuliani's discussion reached out to CNN and provided a recording they decided to make of the conversation. They contacted CNN unprompted after reading a recent story about Giuliani and the President's ongoing relationship. The people asked not to be identified and provided the audio recording on the condition that it not be published.

"Many Americans want to hear directly from Rudy Giuliani," said Christianné Allen, a spokeswoman for Giuliani, who confirmed to CNN that he discussed the podcast idea at lunch on Saturday. "He is considering several options, in consultation with Jay Sekulow and the legal team, regarding the best way to move forward. As of now, they have not decided on the strategy but are getting very close."

In the conversation, Giuliani said he hoped to have four or five episodes "to analyze the impeachment in every aspect." Giuliani's intention seems to be to have four episodes finished before the start of the Senate trial.

Giuliani also mentioned two op-eds for major newspapers he was planning on publishing, the first of which would explain why Trump is "unimpeachable" and the second offering an explanation of Giuliani's defense of his client, the President.

 

[aepps20]

Johnny Tsunami Trump.

 

[RustyShackleford]

handullz

Stop making a joke of Pete's last name like that. The mods already warned us not to do that. Even of you didn't mean it, it can come off as homophobic.

Also it is hilarious to me you fell for Gabbard's nonsense She is not antiwar.

Famb with all dude respect, you wildin with this analysis.

 

[handullz]

handullz

Stop making a joke of Pete's last name like that. The mods already warned us not to do that. Even of you didn't mean it, it can come off as homophobic.

I’ll hold the ban then b/c that’s stupid AF.

Just because he’s gay doesn’t mean his funny last name is off limits.

sounds like mods are reaching on that one.

 

[RustyShackleford]

I’ll hold the ban then b/c that’s stupid AF.

Just because he’s gay doesn’t mean his funny last name is off limits.

sounds like mods are reaching on that one.

They are not reaching because real homophobic people and bigots have been doing the same thing. On right wing sites they make the same "booty" joke.

So I don't think they are reaching. Nor is such a low hanging fruit of a joke really worth it to take issue with them even if they were.

 

[aepps20]

The Best Name for Pete and Mayor Clown or America's Libbiest Mayor. #GAMEOVER.

 

[Belgium]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ays-truthful-in-written-answers-idUSKCN1UJ2R8
Mueller says he 'generally' agrees Trump was not always truthful in written answers


Trump's sworn written testimony:

 

[RustyShackleford]

-Also, Biden is still in the lead comfortably

-Gabbard's numbers on aggregate have not gotten a big boost from when Hillary fairly called her out

-Gabbard is not beating the brakes off Booker in the polls nor is she close to Kamala or Pete.

-Gabbard is also not anti-war. She is just playing one right now.

 

[gry60]

Civility Is Overrated

The gravest danger to American democracy isn’t an excess of vitriol—it’s the false promise of civility.

www.theatlantic.com

At their most frenzied, calls for civility stoke the fear that the United States might be on the precipice of armed conflict. Once confined to right-wing fever swamps, where radicals wrote fan fiction about taking up arms in response to “liberal tyranny,” the notion has gained currency in conservative media in the Trump era. In response to calls for gun-buyback programs, Tucker Carlson said on Fox News, “What you are calling for is civil war.” The president himself has warned that removing him from office, through the constitutionally provided-for mechanism of impeachment, might lead to civil war.

Civil war is not an imminent prospect. The impulse to conjure its specter overlooks how bitter and fierce American politics has often been. In the early days of the republic, as Richard Hofstadter and Michael Wallace wrote in their 1970 book, American Violence, the country witnessed Election Day riots, in which “one faction often tried violently to prevent another from voting.” In the 1850s, the nativist Know-Nothings fielded gangs to intimidate immigrant voters. Abolitionists urged defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act, and lived by their words, running slave catchers out of town and breaking captured black people out of custody. Frederick Douglass said that the best way to make the act a “dead letter” was “to make half a dozen or more dead kidnappers.”


During the Gilded Age, state militias turned guns on striking workers. From 1882 to 1968, nearly 5,000 people, mostly black Americans, were lynched nationwide. From January 1969 to April 1970, more than 4,000 bombings occurred across the country, according to a Senate investigation. As Hofstadter wrote, “Violence has been used repeatedly in our past, often quite purposefully, and a full reckoning with the fact is a necessary ingredient in any realistic national self-image.”

The absence of this realistic national self-image has contributed to the sense of despair that characterizes American politics today. The reality, however, is that political violence is less common in the present than it has been at many points in American history, despite the ancient plague of white supremacy, the lingering scourge of jihadism, and the influence of a president who revels in winking justifications of violence against his political opponents and immigrants. Many Americans can’t stand one another right now. But apart from a few deranged fanatics, they do not want to slaughter one another en masse.

The more pertinent historical analogue is not the fractious antebellum period right-wing partisans seem so eager to relive but the tragic failures of Reconstruction, when the comforts of comity were privileged over the difficult work of building a multiracial democracy. The danger of our own political moment is not that Americans will again descend into a bloody conflagration. It is that the fundamental rights of marginalized people will again become bargaining chips political leaders trade for an empty reconciliation.

I wish someone would ask Biden during some of the town halls they hold across the country why he thinks it's wise to ignore our own history and the dangerous legacy of political civility that he runs on.

Civility gave us segregation and redlining; it gave us the 3/5 compromise; it gave us the third way Clinton approach to policy. Why is he convinced it will work this time?

I would love to see him put his foot in his mouth.

 

[RustyShackleford]

Civility Is Overrated

The gravest danger to American democracy isn’t an excess of vitriol—it’s the false promise of civility.

www.theatlantic.com

I wish someone would ask Biden during some of the town halls they hold across the country why he thinks it's wise to ignore our own history and the dangerous legacy of political civility that he runs on.

Civility gave us segregation and redlining; it gave us the 3/5 compromise; it gave us the third way Clinton approach to policy. Why is he convinced it will work this time?

I would love to see him put his foot in his mouth.

Ole boy gonna be outchea like...

"Well you know, I was when I tell you what that back in the day well you know I was with and fought for all the time I mean geez, c'mon, Trump and I told them ummmm, well you know......BARACK!.....thank you for the question"

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

 

[Belgium]

Gates testified in the Stone trial that he wasn't the only one who witnessed a conversation that contradicts Trump's written testimony. 2 Secret Service agents were there as well.

 

[RustyShackleford]

I see washed Wilford Brimley has gotten some courage. Trump didn't let him bomb brown people so he salty.

 

[heelsandeers]

If Bloomberg is in this thing to try to head off a wealth tax or high marginal rates on the uber-wealthy, that would be a mistake.

Interesting piece in the NYT yesterday on billionaire discomfort with Warren (which is odd, because she hasn’t demonized the rich in personal terms the way Bernie does)

I don't understand why these billionaires are so afraid of her. She isn't going to be able to push through a wealth tax, nor in my opinion will she try very hard to.

 

[wavycrocket]

Stephen Miller’s leaked emails reveal (as we all knew) he’s an EXPLICIT white Supremacist...and Trump’s US Policy is DIRECTLY shaped by it. Almost word for word. And they prove the cruelty is the point. dwalk31 thoughts???

 

[elpablo21]

This is their defense? Yikes
You already lost if you have to include 'the hostage says he was not held captive' as a serious argument. When Trump said "I have a favor to ask though" immediately Zelensky told him Ukraine was preparing to buy more javelins, Trump knew that Zelensky was aware of the Giuliani's pressure campaign because he was acting at the direction of Trump. He didn't have to be more explicit than that in the call because Giuliani etc had already explicitly made their demands clear to Ukraine in private.
Giuliani's co-conspirator Lev Parnas now admits that he directly demanded a Biden probe from Ukraine in advance of the July call and told them that if they didn't comply, aid would be frozen and Mike Pence wouldn't show up at Zelensky's inauguration. Parnas' new lawyer said he did so at the direction of Giuliani, who acted at the direction of Trump, and both of Parnas' threats ended up happening. Ukrainian government officials were already concerned by at least May 2019 that the aid was potentially in jeopardy, and Giuliani was ramping up his pressure campaign at the time. Either way they ended up getting definitive confirmation that the aid was conditioned on complying with Trump/Rudy's investigation demands.
The WH released the hold on the aid shortly after learning of the whistleblower complaint, and just days after Zelensky committed to going on CNN to issue a public statement about Trump/Giuliani's demands. Zelensky didn't end up doing so after Reuters reported that the hold was released.
https://www.axios.com/republicans-i...utm_medium=twsocialshare&utm_campaign=organic

Confronted with a mountain of damaging facts heading into tomorrow's opening of the public phase of impeachment, House Republicans plan to argue that "the President's state of mind" was exculpatory.

 

[wavycrocket]

Yikes dwalk31 . 9 Black people are massacred in a church by a racist coward...and Trump’s Senior Policy Advisor is more concerned about confederate flags looking bad.

 

[wavycrocket]

.

 

[harlemtothebronx]

Stephen Miller’s leaked emails reveal (as we all knew) he’s an EXPLICIT white Supremacist...and Trump’s US Policy is DIRECTLY shaped by it. Almost word for word. And they prove the cruelty is the point. dwalk31 thoughts???

No way.

 

[nako xl]

Mens rea. Can't be a major crime if you didn't intend to commit one.

In layman's terms, the president wasn't committing the crime he's accused of because he didn't know what he did was illegal, or rather, he didn't mean to do it at all. It's like the difference between murder and manslaughter.

 

[whywesteppin]

I see washed Wilford Brimley has gotten some courage. Trump didn't let him bomb brown people so he salty.

I was going to suggest a washed Noble Willingham of Walker, Texas Ranger fame.