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Ukraine scandal Megathread

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by NewRoxFan, Sep 18, 2019.

  1. JeffB

    JeffB Contributing Member
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    I think we all know by now that the GOP doesn't operate in good faith. This is typical GOP. Accuse the other side of that of which you are guilty.

    It is just muddying the waters, creating controversy, for a public the GOP doesn't believe can follow the facts. They know their base will drink up whatever is on FoxNews and right-wing radio. So the GOP just needs to produce sound and video clips that can be spun on their propaganda networks. No need for facts, evidence, or logic. Just enough innuendo to keep the conspiracy theory alive.
     
  2. Ubiquitin

    Ubiquitin Contributing Member
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    Sadly True. All in the name of deregulation and dismantling social safety nets for big donors. The religious and racist right wingers are not ultimately able to keep these guys in power. It’s big money support from interested wealthy elites.
     
  3. JeffB

    JeffB Contributing Member
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    5-minute member rounds play into the GOP plan to muddy the issue. Not enough time to establish a line of questioning with the witness but enough time for blowhards to just make whatever baseless claims they want. The GOP has been using these to produce their main campaign/FoxNews/right-wing radio clips.

    Democrats should yield all their time to their professional counsel. No need for campaign clips. Let that dude, the professional at this, keep putting in the work. Keep producing the facts and let the attorney who had a hand taking down the Genovese crime family handle this.
     
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  4. DaDakota

    DaDakota If you want to know, just ask!

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    All in the name of ENRICHING those that bought them......

    DD
     
  5. JeffB

    JeffB Contributing Member
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    Jordan with the elementary school-level attempt to create a Matlock moment. Just talk loud and fast until the gavel is struck. Makes for good TV, he thinks.

    Sigh... our Democracy is doomed. We need a Republican Party that is better than this.
     
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  6. Dubious

    Dubious Contributing Member

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    I don't know why these billionaires spend their money organizing new parties. The American Centrist Party, The American Conservative Party... an actual limited government, debt reducing, isolationist, constitutionalist, anti-trust and monopoly, built on the rule of law Party.
     
  7. JeffB

    JeffB Contributing Member
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    My guess is that the plurality of these billionaires like most of what the GOP offers. Pay lip service to "debt reducing, isolationist, constitutionalist, anti-trust and monopoly," but don't actually enforce it.

    The alternative risks a Democratic Party that is moving back towards the left winning elections and actually enforcing "anti-billionaire" policy. Caught between losing elections while building a new party and sticking with the GOP, seems most are rolling the dice on sticking with the GOP and just hoping the white supremacist and hyper-religious components can be brought back under control.
     
  8. JeffB

    JeffB Contributing Member
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    #1728 JeffB, Nov 13, 2019
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2019
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  9. mdrowe00

    mdrowe00 Member

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    ...you know...

    ...I myself was THIS close to believing that Obama character was a Muslim anti-American racist (half)Negro that, if not for the vigilance of real Americans keeping their eyes and ears open via Fox News and Infowars, Operation:Jade Helm might have accomplished its true mission to de-arm the real American freedom fighters and give their guns to the Chinese communists and take over the country...

    ...who we now seem to be friends with, thanks to El Capitan le Donald stepping in and taking care of things...o_O:confused:

    ...all right....

    ...even I have to admit that I can't follow this stuff anymore....;):D
     
  10. JeffB

    JeffB Contributing Member
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    Need more testimony from the people closest to Trump. They need to stop this travesty of justice and testify under oath to clear Dear Leader.
     
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  11. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    Best part of the day...



    [​IMG]
     
  12. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    LOL... about everything and anything...

     
  13. mdrowe00

    mdrowe00 Member

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    :)...she's actually doing her job better that the last lady who had it...:D
     
  14. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    Piece by piece the witnesses testifying dismantled every trump lie, er, version of the story. This one, the "The ukrainians didn't even know the aid was being held up"...

     
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  15. Ubiquitin

    Ubiquitin Contributing Member
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    So is the consensus from the right wing is that this is boring and not worth watching or must see to watch the republicans owning the libs? Can't be both though, so it's probably neither.

    My take? Partisans make partisan sound bites (looking at you Gym Jordan) but the truth is out there and the evidence so far until now points toward a corrupt call to the new Ukrainian President. Denial is effective for the GOP base until either a key trump ally like Mulvaney, or even Bolton, turns state witness and corroborates. Or if the complete un-redacted audio transcript is released that would help tip the scale.

    Or Trump tweeting at 3 am tomorrow "Yeah, I attempted to subvert aid to get the Ukrainians to dig up dirt on Biden before the election. Go **** yourself America". In this timeline, this last option is not an impossible scenario.
     
  16. Os Trigonum

    Os Trigonum Contributing Member
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    this is pretty funny

     
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  17. Os Trigonum

    Os Trigonum Contributing Member
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    early returns

    https://theweek.com/articles/878245/dazed-confused-democrats-impeachment-hearing

    Dazed and confused at the Democrats' impeachment hearing
    by Matthew Walther


    [​IMG]


    The best thing that can be said about Wednesday’s impeachment hearing is that at least some people got to drink because of it. The bars in Washington were open early, and members of my profession were able to conduct themselves much as they had in happier times.

    I do wonder what George Kent had inside that water bottle. The bow-tied deputy assistant secretary of state doesn’t strike me as the day-drinking type, but you never know. He spent most of the morning sounding like an over-eager president of the George Washington University Model United Nations addressing his peers at an invitation-only conference in Cambridge, but by about 2 p.m. he looked like a broken man.

    Who can blame him? Wednesday was a confused and confusing slog for everyone involved. On balance, I would say that the Democrats had a slightly worse day, but only because the contest was unequal. This was supposed to be their chance to sell the American people on impeachment, while all the GOP members had to do was The hearing was televised à la Watergate, and Adam Schiff was supposed to be in his element pretending to be a character from The West Wing.

    The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee reminded us why he never made it as a screenwriter. With a few exceptions — the miniature speech from counsel about "quid pro quo, bribery, extortion, abuse of power of the office of the presidency" — he allowed his members to get bogged down in the details of a narrative that almost no one in the room has mastered. The long-winded summaries from both witnesses of the ever-evolving state of relations between the United States, Ukraine, and Russia in the post-Soviet era served mainly to underscore the fact that President Trump has taken Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressive policies much more seriously than his predecessor ever did. It is difficult to argue that the president is guilty of a hideous crime because he seems to have considered withholding aid that Barack Obama was never willing to offer in the first place.

    One sentence in the testimony of William Taylor, the interim chargé d'affaires in Ukraine, is being called "a significant new development" and even a "bombshell." I would be lying if I said I understood its significance vis-à-vis all the other third-hand conversations upon which the serious charges against the president are supposed to rest. Taylor was apparently told that a certain unnamed "staffer" heard Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, talking to Trump about unspecified "investigations," presumably a reference to the abortive probe of the Biden family's activities in Ukraine. This is supposed to have taken place the day after the president's infamous phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

    Phew. That summary is longer than the actual account Taylor himself gave. If it meaningfully alters your understanding of the underlying issue — whether Trump did anything wrong — then you probably belong to the small class of dedicated observers who already know that the anonymous staffer is likely a man named Donald Holmes. But the point of these hearings was to present unambiguous evidence of wrongdoing to the American people, not to confuse them with (in this case literal) games of telephone involving an entire phone book's worth of names.

    Republicans understood all of this perfectly. If you had asked me on Wednesday morning whether it was still worth it for the GOP to bang on about chronology, I would have said no. But Jim Jordan, on loan from the Judiciary Committee, turned the messiness to his advantage: “We have six people having four conversations in one sentence, and you just told me this is where you got your clear understanding?” he said in response to Taylor's allegedly epoch-making revelation. If there is one exchange from the hearing that could work on its own as a soundbite, it must be this one.

    This is not to suggest that members of both parties did not find ways to embarrass themselves. When Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) yelled “Fine!” after being procedurally outmaneuvered by the chairman, he sounded like a 15-year-old boy who is totally not mad about being grounded. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) might have been making an interesting formal argument about epistemology when he claimed that “Hearsay can be much better evidence than direct,” but for some reason I doubt it. For me the star of the hearing was Rep. Teri Sewell (D-Ala.) who referred to the suddenly all-important Eurasian republic with a definite article. I say this not just because I like old-fashioned place names but because referring to Ukraine in a manner that suggests it is really just Russia's southwest border undercuts the major premise of both parties — namely, that taking Kyiv's side against Putin is a top priority of American foreign policy. If you want proof that national security is epiphenomenal in relation to partisan bickering, look no further.

    What about Trump himself, who has insisted that he would not be watching any of the hearings? At his press conference after the end of proceedings, he sounded unusually winded. Is it possible to tweet till you are out of breath? Whatever he was worked up about, it certainly wasn't the prospect of being removed from office by his own party, a never likely possibility that now looks more remote than it has at any point since September.
     
  18. dmoneybangbang

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    The Week.... the contrarian moderate Democrats but maybe really a republican new source from our resident “moderate Democrats”.
     
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  19. Os Trigonum

    Os Trigonum Contributing Member
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    Toobin is clearly a Rethuglican dupe

     

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