Politics First Contact

[Volourn]

Clinton should have never been impeached. PERIOD. Oh noes. He 'lied' to Congress about having sex. Oh noes. He should have never been asked the question in the first place. LMAO They deserved to be lied to wasting taxpayer money over affair bull****z.

[HoonDing]

 

[Raithe]

[Bartimaeus]

5 hours ago, Volourn said:

Clinton should have never been impeached. PERIOD. Oh noes. He 'lied' to Congress about having sex. Oh noes. He should have never been asked the question in the first place. LMAO They deserved to be lied to wasting taxpayer money over affair bull****z.

If you think the question is not Congress' to ask, would it not make more sense for Clinton to refuse to answer rather than lie? I feel like lying to Congress should have consequences if we want to enforce the executive branch to have some kind of integrity. Obviously, it didn't matter enough then, and even less now.

[ComradeYellow]

14 hours ago, Lexx said:

imo American politics is f'd either way. I have big doubts about it ever getting better again. Personally I just hope it'll get back to a point where I don't have to strongly fear it's negative influence on my country and / or the rest of Europe anymore.

With luck, we'll get better on our own (perhaps with some turmoil in the process, see 1861-1865 for reference) and at the same time Europe can be freed from the yoke, one of those win-win type of deals.

[Volourn]

"If you think the question is not Congress' to ask, would it not make more sense for Clinton to refuse to answer rather than lie? I feel like lying to Congress should have consequences if we want to enforce the executive branch to have some kind of integrity. Obviously, it didn't matter enough then, and even less now. "

 

1. Yeha, he probably should have refused to answer but then they would have impeached him for that.

2. If congress wants to show integrity and be shown it they should have integrity by not asking people if they put a **** into a willing participant. Useless waste time and money that didn't help the country one bit which is what their job should be about. Millions of dollars spent  to find out someone had sex  yet not one thing actually changed - he got impeached and still finished out his term. And, the country was not better off. LMAO

[injurai]

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/755/text

[Skarpen]

29 minutes ago, injurai said:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/755/text

Well it's nice Dems just cemented Trumps reelection.

[Guard Dog]

I believe this is an example of the expression "hoisted by your own petard" https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-condemn-fbis-use-of-surveillance-powers-they-long-supported-11576105389

Also does anyone vomit a little in the back of their mouths when they hear Pelosi and the Democrats profess loyalty and respect to the Constitution and the founders? Especially considering they have called it a deeply flawed document written by dead white slave owners? They hate it like poison when it's protecting us from their predation but it's "hooray for the red white and blue" when it gives them the power to do what they want.  

[ShadySands]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/12/politics/eric-holder-william-barr-unfit-attorney-general/index.html

[Pidesco]

1 hour ago, Guard Dog said:

Especially considering they have called it a deeply flawed document written by dead white slave owners?

Is that in some way untrue? I guess "deeply" is hyperbolic but other than that.

[Guard Dog]

A 25 year old story is making the rounds again. In 1996 President Clinton offered to help Boris Yeltsin get re-elected if (and only if) Yeltsin agreed to lift restrictions on US poultry imports. The main exporter of poultry in the US back in those days was Tyson Foods in Arkansas. CEO Don Tyson was a big donor and supporter of Bill Clinton who had his own re-election fight against Bob Dole. 

So, Clinton offers a head of state to have the US interfere in the election process of another country, it that head of state will do a favor for a friend and financial backer of Clinton. Not quite the same thing but definitely in the same neighborhood. As you might guess a lot of hooplah was kicked up by this. But not at Bill Clinton. As far as everyone was concerned he did nothing wrong. The Washington Times was the bad guy for breaking the story to begin with. In fact the FBI was going after them pretty hard for it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/03/28/white-house-asks-for-probe-in-leak-of-clinton-yeltsin-talk-memo/b71bcbc2-ff15-403e-a8ea-c4ae353546ad/

One last comment. This quote by Clinton white House Press Secretary Michael McMurray is just too good not to share:

Quote

McCurry said Clinton and Lake considered the leak to be far more sensitive than the typical anonymous disclosure that is commonplace in Washington journalism. "The president feels like he ought to be able to sit down with the president of Russia and have a private conversation," McCurry said.

No. He can't. Not then, not now.

 

Rats. Rats to the left, rats to the right, rats before and behind.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Guard Dog
And another thing

[ShadySands]

21 minutes ago, Pidesco said:

Is that in some way untrue? I guess "deeply" is hyperbolic but other than that.

They did not all own slaves and a few were pretty staunchly anti-slavery 

[Guard Dog]

11 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

They did not all own slaves and a few were pretty staunchly anti-slavery 

That is correct. James Wilson, William Patterson, Roger Sherman, and James Madison were all very important players at the Convention and all were anti-slavery.  Jefferson hated slavery and his family owned the majority of slaves in VA. He wanted to free his but it was illegal to do so believe it or not. Ironically the 3/5 rule that is used to point out how terrible the founders were was proposed by one of the biggest anti-slavery delegates, James Wilson. Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina wanted unrestricted slavery and slave trade with Portugal, Spain, etc. A majority of other delegates either wanted it eliminated or at the very least severely limited. In fact John Rutledge and Abraham Baldwin promised to walk out of the convention and union without it. The US might have been formed without Georgia or the Carolinas. They also wanted full representation for their slaves. Now THAT is rich. They can't vote, earn money, pay taxes, and have no rights whatsoever, but they are fully represented in Congress. Of course what this really was about is a ploy to expand the political power of the slave states. More slaves = more power in Congress. The 3/5 Compromise allowed slavery, allowed higher representation than the slave states should have had, and led the agreement to ban slave trading nationwide. 

I am seriously condensing a lot of details here but there is a succession of events. It's just a historical irony that the notion that a slave is 3/5 of a human being (modern interpretation) was actually proposed by someone who wanted to abolish slavery. 

[smjjames]

While it's true that the situation was far more complex than some (whichever Democrats GD is alluding to) make it out to be, it's still flawed in that way which is reminiscent of the North/South split that dominated most of the 19th century. Of course, the Founders had never intended for it to be a godly perfect document either.

@Guard Dog (on the Clinton thing from 25 years ago) I guess some might have seen it as a vestige of the Cold War days when messing with foriegn elections (South America, Central America, and the Caribbean in particular) in the fight against communism was the norm, if more hidden. Hypocrisy abounds on both sides, but pretty sure none of them even Clinton went to the same level as Trump.

Meanwhile, probably barely making a blip in the US, Britain is having 'the most important general election evar!', but I guess it'll make a splash later.

Edited December 12, 2019 by smjjames

[Gfted1]

Britain does that every 2-3 months.

[Zoraptor]

The difference between Clinton/ Yeltsin and Trump/ Zelensky is that Clinton was not asking Yeltsin to dig up dirt on Dole. US foreign policy doing favours for powerful companies has been so widespread it's coined a descriptor for countries of a whole geographic region- 'Banana Republic'- if US presidents were impeached for that there really would have been an impeachment per semi modern President. And given how much current US foreign policy is about pushing Raytheon/ Boeing/ Lockheed etc weapons quite possibly an impeachment per month. Frankly, the US would have interfered anyway, the chance to permanently break Russia via that vodka soaked sot and imbecile Yeltsin was simply too great.

The problem with the Washington Times publicising US interference in 1996* was much the same problem people have with Trump outright saying he's staying in Syria to take their oil- you're not meant to say that sort of thing otherwise you face more resistance next time you want to do something similar. Yeltsin being reelected is meant to be the Russian people expressing their new democratic rights to freely elect their favoured candidate rather than an incompetent drunkard bribing his way to victory via IMF loans, overseas interference, overspending the spending cap by 1000 times and in places literal ballot stuffing.

*before the election was over; once finished it was fine to crow about how it was 'the yanks wot won it for him', in a perfectly legal way and unimpugnable way, per Time.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Zoraptor

[Guard Dog]

Zor is correct for the most part. But, buy getting Yeltsin to allow Tyson to sell chickens to Russia Clinton was ensuring Tyson will have money to give him for his own re-election bid. Just another way to look at it. A bit more nebulous than what Trump did but still dirty pool. I just find it deliciously ironic that Trump and Co are castigated (rightfully) for wanting to go after the whistle blower and getting down on the media but in the Great Chicken Caper of 1996 the FBI went after the media and the whistle blower. 

But, Clinton was a Democrat and, as everyone knows, it's not wrong when  a Democrat does it. 

Rats are gonna rat.

[smjjames]

Name one President who did it in the same way as Trump did, and you can apply the same 'it's not wrong when x do it' to Republicans.

[Guard Dog]

6 minutes ago, smjjames said:

Name one President who did it in the same way as Trump did, and you can apply the same 'it's not wrong when x do it' to Republicans.

Can't think of a one. In the club of scoundrels he is in a class all by himself. But that "it's not wrong when democrats do it" was a tongue-in-cheek statement. Just meant for a chuckle. But there is a grain of truth in it based on the attitudes of some folks and the "media". I'm sure you will recall all the women's groups defending Clinton from the women he had harassed over the years when they should have been taking their part against him. 

[ComradeYellow]

4 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

  Jefferson hated slavery

I believe it was Jefferson who referred to slavery as a "Necessary Evil".  However yes it wasn't until after the founders aged and made way for a couple generations that slavery took on a more prominent and positive tone, and reactionaries at the time started changing their rhetoric that slavery being a "benevolent Christian institution" that "benefited all parties involved".  So I'll be fair to the founders here.  "Bad but only got worse until it had to be stopped" summarizes the slavery epoch in America.

These right wing idiots really don't change though.  They'll sit there and rationalize and rationalize their filth until progressive minded people decide they've had enough.

[Guard Dog]

23 minutes ago, ComradeMaster said:

 

These right wing idiots really don't change though.  They'll sit there and rationalize and rationalize their filth until progressive minded people decide they've had enough.

What happens then?

[Zoraptor]

Exit polls in the UK predicting a landslide Tory victory. After the bad polling last time I would be taking that with a decent grain of salt though.

47 minutes ago, smjjames said:

Name one President who did it in the same way as Trump did

It was certainly uniquely stupid to have asked for a quid pro quo on a monitored call then follow it up with his personal attorney. In terms of actual effect it was pretty minimal- most US military aid to Ukraine including high profile items like Javelins sits in a warehouse unused- and accusations such as it endangering the vital national interests of the US are, charitably, hyperbolic but in terms of being provable it's basically there.

If we did take a broader interpretation to include benefits to donors as well as direct personal benefits it wouldn't even be Trump's worse case in terms of morality or practical effect.

[Malcador]

So I guess the Brexit ridiculousness will keep on.  Corbyn gone too maybe?

[Chilloutman]

Turns out people in UK really want to leave that union, will commi.. I mean labor want 3rd referendum? xD