General Current Events/Political Discussion

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

52 minutes ago, Tabonga said:

 

The fix was in long before any hearings started.   (The only one who showed any integrity was Tulsi Gabbard.)

Which fix? The one where Mitch McConnell openly stated that they would acquit no matter what?

[Link | 2,712]

1 hour ago, Tabonga said:

Thereby avoiding any cluttering up of his possible run in 2020 (at least from that quarter).  In addition he also maintained Obama  had his back in this (I don't remember what the exact phrasing was) - at the very least implying that Obama likely knew what was going on.

I wouldn’t trust anything he says about Obama these days. He’s been desperately, hopefully riding his coat tails all the while. 

[Tabonga | 2,318]

15 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

Which fix? The one where Mitch McConnell openly stated that they would acquit no matter what?

Or the one where the Democrats (with the exception of Gabbard) decided they were all going to vote for impeachment before the process had a chance to take place (such as it was) .   They didn't need to be announced to be in.   The handwriting for both was on the wall to any moderately discerning observer (of which I was one).  Neither final vote surprised me.

[Rooster | 124]

4 minutes ago, Tabonga said:

Or the one where the Democrats (with the exception of Gabbard) decided they were all going to vote for impeachment before the process had a chance to take place (such as it was) .   They didn't need to be announced to be in.   The handwriting for both was on the wall to any moderately discerning observer (of which I was one).  Neither final vote surprised me.

It helps to listen to witnesses before making a decision.

[Tabonga | 2,318]

13 minutes ago, Link said:

I wouldn’t trust anything he says about Obama these days. He’s been desperately, hopefully riding his coat tails all the while. 

He actually said that well over a year before announcing his candidacy.  But in general I don't believe much of what any politico says about another just on general principle.

[VegHead | 127]

1 minute ago, Tabonga said:

Or the one where the Democrats (with the exception of Gabbard) decided they were all going to vote for impeachment before the process had a chance to take place (such as it was) .   They didn't need to be announced to be in.   The handwriting for both was on the wall to any moderately discerning observer (of which I was one).  Neither final vote surprised me.

This is slightly disingenuous given the party lines.  If Trump is guilty, why would any Democrat vote to acquit?  If Trump is innocent, why would any Republican vote to convict?  You have to look at the evidence yourself, and then decide who voted according to the facts presented in the trial.  The question isn't whether or not the vote was surprising (it wasn't), but whether or not the vote was consistent with the facts (again, it wasn't).  

[Tabonga | 2,318]

12 minutes ago, Rooster said:

It helps to listen to witnesses before making a decision.

https://www.legalcheek.com/2016/06/expert-witness-murder-trial-could-hinge-on-parrot-who-keeps-saying-dont-fcking-shoot/

[Tabonga | 2,318]

6 minutes ago, epiclotus said:

This is slightly disingenuous given the party lines.  If Trump is guilty, why would any Democrat vote to acquit?  If Trump is innocent, why would any Republican vote to convict?  You have to look at the evidence yourself, and then decide who voted according to the facts presented in the trial.  The question isn't whether or not the vote was surprising (it wasn't), but whether or not the vote was consistent with the facts (again, it wasn't).  

That the fixes were already in was reflected by the party line votes.  Gabbard recused herself as was proper - something that Bennet, Klobuchar, Sanders and Warren should have also done that. In the Senate Mitt Romney most likely voted as he did given his well known (and shared) animosity to Trump.

What is perhaps the most important factor is whether whatever Trump did rises to constitutional muster for impeachment* or not - the panel of experts called by the house seemed to think so but they were hardly neutral and other constitutional experts disagreed,

In the larger perspective what we think only counts in November,

*The Democrats (as represented by Pelosi) did themselves no favors by constantly vacillating on what the offenses were - changing it periodically indicates that they were not sure that an impeachable offense actually occurred.

[Link | 2,712]

The rumor mill says Bloomberg is considering Clinton as his pick for VP 

[VegHead | 127]

5 minutes ago, Tabonga said:

That the fixes were already in was reflected by the party line votes.  Gabbard recused herself as was proper - something that Bennet, Klobuchar, Sanders and Warren should have also done that. In the Senate Mitt Romney most likely voted as he did given his well known (and shared) animosity to Trump.

Maybe I wasn't clear on my point.  It isn't a fix if the vote aligns with the facts.  If Trump is guilty, then a Democratic vote to convict isn't a fix; similarly, if Trump is innocent, a Republican vote to acquit isn't a fix.  To say that both sides fixed their votes ignores that one side is actually right and the other is wrong.  Either the Democrats/Independents/Romney that voted to convict were right, or the Republicans that voted to acquit were right.  Just because their respective sides align or not with the President doesn't discount that reality.  Some people voted correctly, and some people did not.  Who you believe should be based on the facts of the case.  From the facts that I have seen, the Democrats voted correctly.  To say that it was a fix dismisses those facts.

As a side note, Romney voted to convict on abuse of power, but not on obstruction of Congress.  That would suggest, to me at least, that he was voting based on evidence presented, and not merely party lines.  Given his statements prior to the vote, I have no reason to doubt his words.  Plenty of Senators who should have animosity toward Trump voted to acquit him.

[Tabonga | 2,318]

1 hour ago, epiclotus said:

Maybe I wasn't clear on my point.  It isn't a fix if the vote aligns with the facts.  If Trump is guilty, then a Democratic vote to convict isn't a fix; similarly, if Trump is innocent, a Republican vote to acquit isn't a fix.  To say that both sides fixed their votes ignores that one side is actually right and the other is wrong.  Either the Democrats/Independents/Romney that voted to convict were right, or the Republicans that voted to acquit were right.  Just because their respective sides align or not with the President doesn't discount that reality.  Some people voted correctly, and some people did not.  Who you believe should be based on the facts of the case.  From the facts that I have seen, the Democrats voted correctly.  To say that it was a fix dismisses those facts.

As a side note, Romney voted to convict on abuse of power, but not on obstruction of Congress.  That would suggest, to me at least, that he was voting based on evidence presented, and not merely party lines.  Given his statements prior to the vote, I have no reason to doubt his words.  Plenty of Senators who should have animosity toward Trump voted to acquit him.- 

 It is a fix if either or both had pretty much decided before the proceedings how they were going to vote since they didn't (in theory) know everything yet.   The Senate did have the advantage of seeing most of the "evidence" ahead of time.   The idea of a fix really is separate from any idea of right or wrong since the decision is predetermined*.  And it isn't an either / or  (assuming no fixes) since the House could be right in terms of their thinking there were grounds for impeachment and the Senate could be right  thinking there wasn't - which is likely why the impeachment process was set up the way it was.  what the framers didn't count on in this process was the negative influence of an entrenched twro party system (which is nowhere in the constitution) on the process - there is reason to believe that  at least some of the framers didn't really like the idea of parties - originally the President was the one who won the most electoral college votes and the vp was the person who won the second most**.  This soon  proved unworkable and was abandoned in 1804. 

Romney likely had a deep enough dislike for Trump to override a desire to vote in a manner less harmful to the GOP in general - others may have had a stonger dislike for Trump that was still squelched by a desire to vote in the best interests of the GOP. He also could have only voted on one as a show of disrespect.  Whatever his reasoning was I certainly wouldn't trust any pronouncements coming from him about it. 

*Consider the case of a race horse being doped who would have won anyway - the race has still been fixed and if discovered  horse would be disqualified anyway.

**They also were working with a somewhat naive view of what politicians would be  - basically citizens willing to devote their time for a bit rather than becoming a profession in and of themselves,  

 

Edited February 17, 2020 by Tabonga

[Tabonga | 2,318]

1 hour ago, Link said:

The rumor mill says Bloomberg is considering Clinton as his pick for VP 

Heh - a match made in heaven.  

[Link | 2,712]

2 hours ago, Tabonga said:

Heh - a match made in heaven.  

Seriously. Both clueless about what people really want. 

Shown by her, well, entire political career, and his idea to pay social media “influencers” to hype him up.

[Tabonga | 2,318]

Heh - politics can be as fun as watching a cage match:

 

For the finale I am looking forward to Martha Raddatz crying on National TV again in November..............

Edited February 17, 2020 by Tabonga

[Quest4Nes | 376]

Carville's response to bernie calling him a political hack was savage.

 

“That’s exactly who the [expletive] I am,” Mr. Carville said. “I am a political hack. I am not an ideologue. I am not a purist. He thinks it’s a pejorative. I kinda like it. At least I’m not a communist.”

 

 

LMAO

Edited February 18, 2020 by Quest4Nes

[Reed Rothchild | 9,533]

I agree.  All political hacks should embrace honesty and admitting they are pieces of shit.  Kinda like how all the "never Trump"ers all gladly took it in the ass in the name of the almighty party.

[Californication | 1,477]

Carville sounds pretty angry, lol. If he liked it, he wouldn't be angry.

I am not sure if Carville landed a blow though, Bernie's not a communist. 

Edited February 18, 2020 by Californication

[Tabonga | 2,318]

Let's do a little compare and contrast:

https://www.library.georgetown.edu/news/banned-books-week-2019

https://newsthud.com/georgetown-university-library-bans-books-that-offended-students/

 

[PineappleLawnchair | 88]

Quote

I am not sure if Carville landed a blow though, Bernie's not a communist. 

Same difference, really. It's just Socialism is more like an HIV infection while Communism is full blown AIDS.

[Tabonga | 2,318]

49 minutes ago, PineappleLawnchair said:

Same difference, really. It's just Socialism is more like an HIV infection while Communism is full blown AIDS.

Without getting into the nitty gritty details (i.e.  a lot of overly verbose and obtuse language)  Marx and Engels viewed socialism as a transitory phase before communism which first would supplant capitalism and then move towards communism.   

[Californication | 1,477]

40 minutes ago, Tabonga said:

Without getting into the nitty gritty details (i.e.  a lot of overly verbose and obtuse language)  Marx and Engels viewed socialism as a transitory phase before communism which first would supplant capitalism and then move towards communism.   

I am pretty sure that the difference have to do with who controls the means of production. Socialists don't want the government to control the means of production, it can be privately owned. 

Someone jump in if I'm wrong.

[Californication | 1,477]

I think this podcast has a breakdown of thr difference. ( They are not related to Antifa)

 

[Tabonga | 2,318]

2 hours ago, Californication said:

I am pretty sure that the difference have to do with who controls the means of production. Socialists don't want the government to control the means of production, it can be privately owned. 

Someone jump in if I'm wrong.

It gets confusing really quickly (and I haven't read the source material since 1972 or 1973 - I also read Mein Kampf for the same class in the same semester - along with stuff for my other classes it was a rather frenetic time period ).

Marx and Engels didn't create the idea for either socialism or communism - those had been postulated earlier (in fact there were several branches - such as utopian socialism* (the name was coined by Marx and Engels though) and anarchy (which oddly enough fell under that umbrella).  Marx and Engels used the term socialism  in different ways - sometime referring to the work of earlier (and other contemporary) socialist theorists as socialism, sometimes as a pre communist phase and sometime interchangeably with communism (one could be forgiven if they mistook the duo for Russian novelists rather than German philosophers  ). 

Theoretically, socialism (as an intermediate phase) postulates that the means of production and related decision making are held in common by the people - the mechanics of how this is supposed to work are never really laid out (Marx and Engels were basically big picture guys),  In communism there was to be no private property so the people didn't own anything (either indivually or in common) - including the means of production.   The government owned everything and made all the decisions.  Presumably the government would act in the best interest of the people - although Marx and Engels once again were very short on details on how this was supposed to be ensured.

It can be argued that the Scandinavian experiment in socialism is at best a hybrid rather than a form of true socialism since it features a capitalistic core - which is, albeit, heavily regulated.  Whatever success that model has had is likely due to the capitalistic elements and the existence (until now) of an almost totally homogeneous society (which is currently under assault - so that part of the equation is going to change).

*The many small scale experiments in Utopian Socialism have been mostly abyssmal failures.  The Shakers (probably the largest and most successful of these - at least in their early years) were doomed to failure since they banned reproduction (by banning sex).  The Oneida Community (although never very big) is maybe the most famous because Oneida Silverware has its roots there (the Oneida Community no longer exists.)

*Interestingly enough the Pledge of Allegiance was written by a Utopian Socialist minister.  His brother (also a Utopian Socialist minister wrote one of the most famous utopian novels (Looking Backward) of the 19th century - in fact it was one of the best selling novels of that century.

 

 

Edited February 18, 2020 by Tabonga

[Californication | 1,477]

Sanders is a democratic socialist. He has not talkes about utopian anything. 

We have a mixed economy, as does Scandinavia, as does most of Europe.

What Sanders is talking about is adding Healthcare and Education to our current socialist programs: the fire dept., police, k-12 education, medicaid, social security, etc.

Some people think Sanders shouldn't even be calling himself a socialist.

Edited February 18, 2020 by Californication

[Link | 2,712]

5 hours ago, Tabonga said:

Let's do a little compare and contrast:

https://www.library.georgetown.edu/news/banned-books-week-2019

https://newsthud.com/georgetown-university-library-bans-books-that-offended-students/

I can see how this would be entertaining. Do you think the reasons for banning have any relevance? They are almost completely opposed from the first group to the second.