Politics US Edition Volume II

[BruceVC]

56 minutes ago, Lexx said:

You know, one thing I never really understood - America has such a thing for going against dictators in other (primarily middle eastern, hurr durr) countries, but everytime I hear about what the american president is apparently able to do, I'm wondering if he isn't a dictator himself.

Reminds me of when the world was all QQ about Erdogan getting himself more power, all the while the american president can just swing his duck around in whatever ways he likes and apparently nobody can do anything against it. Feels kinda hypocritical to me.

I can understand that sentiment and it can easily appear that there are double standards which can create frustration as it appears " Western countries are not held to the same standards " 

But its much more nuanced and complex than that. For example if you look at the worlds autocratic leaders and countries, that include Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia , you will see there is valid  global criticism towards certain policies their leaders have implemented but end of the day these are sovereign countries and they play an important role in current  geopolitical realties and it doesn't make sense to try to remove these leaders even if other  countries had the appetite to do this  which understandably they dont 

But Trump is not in the same league as these other leaders because despite some of his attempts to undermine or bypass  the US Constitution he is still accountable and restrained by the laws of the USA and legitimate legal challengers

The difference is in these other countries  these leaders influence or control there own domestic legal systems so within there own countries their is very little accountability

So the " double standards " concern is really just about the cosmetic view we have of Trump as  is he really the same as Putin or Erdogan? He isnt because he is not above the laws of the USA. We can see evidence of this throughout his presidency especially how he lost basically every single challenge around all this baseless corruption allegations  in the 2020 US election

I do believe Trump would love to be able to operate in a more autocratic way around certain US policies but the good news is he has been legally prevented from doing so  by the independence of the US courts...and this is a good thing that exists in most first world Democrat countries 

 

[IndiraLightfoot]

Watched my first Cuomo Prime Time. It was rather fun and personal - obviously he was selling his views on things hard, but he did it with a humorous twinkle in his eyes. One point, he really championed well: He argued that the US legal system saved the transition and put an end to the bad lawyering from Trump's legal team. My having read Gromnir's posts here, his word choices of travesty, mockery, etc, seem like understatements. Nice to see so many US judges doing their jobs seriously and professionally. Cuomo also pointed out that GOP had so many prominent republicans cheering these lies about election fraud on, and most of GOP nowadays, given the inceredible amount of 70 millions of ballots for the demagogue, can be presumed to be Trumpers.

[BruceVC]

57 minutes ago, IndiraLightfoot said:

Watched my first Cuomo Prime Time. It was rather fun and personal - obviously he was selling his views on things hard, but he did it with a humorous twinkle in his eyes. One point, he really championed well: He argued that the US legal system saved the transition and put an end to the bad lawyering from Trump's legal team. My having read Gromnir's posts here, his word choices of travesty, mockery, etc, seem like understatements. Nice to see so many US judges doing their jobs seriously and professionally. Cuomo also pointed out that GOP had so many prominent republicans cheering these lies about election fraud on, and most of GOP nowadays, given the inceredible amount of 70 millions of ballots for the demagogue, can be presumed to be Trumpers.

He is a good guy, highly intelligent and cogent and  I thoroughly enjoy his show as well as Don Lemon afterwards....I assume you realized he is the brother of the Governor of NY and there dad was a very famous Civil Rights lawyer ? Also he contacted  the virus in the early days of the initial NY pandemic and I am glad he survived 

[BruceVC]

https://www.mid-day.com/articles/donald-trump-virtually-concedes-defeat-agrees-to-joe-biden-transition/23106205

Great news, belated news  but great news. Trump has finally accepted the Biden victory and will accept the transition period 

This is good for the world and the fight against the virus 

[Chairchucker]

4 hours ago, BruceVC said:

But Trump is not in the same league as these other leaders because despite some of his attempts to undermine or bypass  the US Constitution he is still accountable and restrained by the laws of the USA and legitimate legal challengers

TBH I got the impression this wasn't as much the case as it should be, and that we saw a little bit of the good old 'if the President does it, it's not a crime.'

[Guard Dog]

5 minutes ago, Chairchucker said:

TBH I got the impression this wasn't as much the case as it should be, and that we saw a little bit of the good old 'if the President does it, it's not a crime.'

The truth is he didn't really get away with that much. He tried to do a lot of things that were either slapped down in Congress, slapped down in court, or just ignored. Most of what he did do was petty. Petty accomplishments for a petty man. 

One of my biggest complaints before this undignified election debacle was his usurping abuse of tariff power. That is exclusively a power of Congress. The could have, and SHOULD have stopped him. He did get away with that one. Other s--t like his Muslim ban and his "great big beautiful wall"  were slapped down in court and Congress respectively. In truth the part of the wall he did get was build by misappropriating money Congress designated for something else. Again something a President cannot do and should not have been allowed to get away with. Fun fact that was the heart of the issue of Iran-Contra. The Reagan Admin took money designated for one thing and did something else with it. Something Congress had prohibited. 

[Gromnir]

54 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:

The truth is he didn't really get away with that much. He tried to do a lot of things that were either slapped down in Congress, slapped down in court, or just ignored. Most of what he did do was petty. Petty accomplishments for a petty man. 

 

hmm.

the wall is a good example o' where we disagree. in his fight to build an ineffectual wall on the southern border, trump forced a national shutdown which cost the nation billions o' dollars and he subsequent stole money from the dod which woulda' gone to repairing levees and military base housing and schools. trump pushed his wall building aspirations in spite o' Congress not allocating the President funds and senators stood silent as he did so.

trump avoided impeachment investigations in a way never considered possible previous to this administration. refuse to provide documents and witness testimony in an impeachment? am knowing impeachment were many months ago, but is weird how quickly many forget the lengths trump went to avoid being investigated. 

trump used the acting cabinet member nonsense to a degree never considered previous, leading to innumerable changes to fed regulations which is gonna take years to untangle including blatant ignoring the Court's daca decision-- we mentioned the chad wolf silliness previous on this board. 

oh, and the election bs trump promoted is not gonna end in 2020. every national election has battleground states and republicans now is aware they may delegitimize an election by pointing to a handful o' voting districts as a way to undermine the elections en masse.  detroit. milwaukee. philadelphia. atlanta. four cities and a handful o' districts were the margin o' victory for democrats, and 'cause democrats is more likely urban, that sorta situation will continue. republicans is aware democrats cannot reverse the roles in 2024 or 2026 'cause republicans is rural. cannot hold up an election by fighting in four red counties. 

sending federal troops to portland to stop protests in spite o' fact state legislators and governors rejected fed interference? that were not petty.

oh, and making covid-19 a political issue, conflating second amendment with mask wearing while undercutting cdc guidelines (just a few covid-19 issues) led to many unnecessary american deaths. 

etc.

the biggest tragedy o' the trump Presidency is we learned how meaningless is the Courts and Congress and the Constitution is in restraining a President unable to restrain self. to stop a President from doing illegal requires judges and senators to do their jobs, and all too often, US senators, didn't.

converse, thank God a handful of republican low-level bureaucrats and district level judges ignored trump and did their jobs. gd has all wrong and he has slept through the last month if he does not realize how a handful o' election officials and judges in georgia, pennsylvania, michigan and arizona saved american democracy... and that ain't hyperbole.

"Never was so much owed by so many to so few."

churchill were actual exaggerating the battle o' britain situation-- post war investigations reveal the raf and luftwaffe were having relative parity in the air war over england in ww2. 

by comparison, the current situation pitted trump v. a handful o' judges and bureaucrats whose names we will forget in another week. if those folks hadn't done their jobs, would you have been confident that US senators woulda' finally found their spines? 

is gonna take a long time to fix what trump broke, if is possible to fix.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited November 24, 2020 by Gromnir

[Pidesco]

It is not just Guard Dog I've seen recently promoting the idea that America has somehow escaped Trump's shenanigans unscathed. I've seen pundits on network news, especially Republicans, claiming the same thing.

Trump demonstrated time and again that the checks and balances system Americans like to tout is utterly toothless as long as the same party is in charge of two branches. Given that demographics have all but ensured that the GOP will hold the Senate for the next few decades, and that the US is irrevocably stuck in a two party system, I don't see how this is in any way fixable in the near future. Personally, I think the institutional weaknesses exposed by Trump will just become the new normal.

[Guard Dog]

My biggest hope for the Trump administration was for Congress to remember that it is Congress, it is coequal, and not beholden to the president. They let me down. When it wasn’t sycophantic subservience it was Ineffectual frowning and flaccid resistance. Yes they effectively checked a few things especially after the Democrats gained control of the house. But they still get my underachiever of the decade award.
 

Far too much political capital and effort was expended on that hopeless impeachment. Not saying what Trump did did not deserve impeachment. It certainly did. Obstruction of justice will get you charged pretty much anywhere. But they knew they were not going to get a conviction in the Senate. That made it pointless. As Sun Tzu said if a battle cannot be won it shouldn’t be fought. They would have been better served reasserting powers that the executive has usurped over the years like tariffs. They also should have called him out on his “acting“ cabinet positions. That was some banana republic business. But Mitch McConnell has no spine.

I said a little while back I am very glad that Goldwater and Reagan were not around to see what Trump has done to the Republican party. I’m also glad Tip O’Neill was not around to see the Pelosi Congress.

[Guard Dog]

3 minutes ago, Pidesco said:

It is not just Guard Dog I've seen recently promoting the idea that America has somehow escaped Trump's shenanigans unscathed. 

Oh I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying it could’ve been worse.

[Pidesco]

1 minute ago, Guard Dog said:

Oh I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying it could’ve been worse.

Short of civil war, or of Trump having his opposition imprisoned or something, how could it have been worse?

[213374U]

11 hours ago, Chairchucker said:

Yo, my bad for misdefining (apparently this isn't a word? whatevs) the office of President. Final sentence was the important one anyway, tho.

Heh. I don't think you mislabeled anything. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck...

However, you may have underestimated the proclivity of some Americans for condescendingly explaining how it's actually an American duck, not at all like the ducks anywhere else in the world, by quoting some 200-year old legal language that doesn't explicitly mention ducks. And only to finally concede that functionally... it is a duck.

I mean, the argument that the President isn't a HoS because of the limited scope of the office's powers is silly because HoS elsewhere are basically ceremonial figureheads. Doesn't stop them from holding, organically, the highest position in government. But as it turns out, apparently now the legislature is a "position" too.

(but literally)

 

Just nod sagely and move on, I'd say.

[Gromnir]

6 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:

 

Far too much political capital and effort was expended on that hopeless impeachment.

we disagree. 

william barr and trump has made a very dangerous fringe theory o' Presidential authority mainstream. trump refused cooperation with any and all Congressional oversight and the doj, 'ccording to barr, cannot stop the President. as such, impeachment is the ONLY meaningful option for Congress.

had to impeach. precedent woulda' been devastating if the house failed to impeach. 

and keep in mind that your observations 'bout the inevitability o' a failed conviction is predicated on the absence o' testimony and documents which woulda' been available if only a couple more senators had agreed such were warranted. trump is a lousy witness. look up a couple o' his depositions from past lawsuits. a parade o' damning witnesses, supported by documentary evidence and then trump predictable imploding woulda' made conviction a real possibility even if it were not a certainty. 

'course again, the norm o' having a President comply with impeachment investigations were erased. impeachment were s'posed to be different. 

as for head of state stuff, is quaint how a few people believe legal and dictionary definitions is infinite elastic and may be stretched and molded to support any argument. oh sure, lack o' a particular nation having an office which could fit the requirements o' a head o' state shouldn't prevent an individual from nevertheless imagining such into existence. be creative. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Amentep]

38 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:

But Mitch McConnell has no spine.

I actually think it was more Mitch McConnell was getting exactly what he wanted, so what incentive did he have to do anything different? 

[BruceVC]

25 minutes ago, Pidesco said:

Short of civil war, or of Trump having his opposition imprisoned or something, how could it have been worse?

Its hyperbole to suggest that the Trump presidency was nothing short of a civil war....there are many things Trump wasnt able to implement due to legal challengers and his own Republican party pushback. He was a disruptor and he also tried to implement policies that you personally may find problematic but there was a good intention to them or many US citizens supported. This is far from the idea of  the seriousness of "Trump has broken the US" and yes the US has survived the risk of a Trump unintentional meltdown

For example he was not able to remove the Russian sanctions and the Senate, Republican controlled , refused to entertain this.

Also he tried very hard to dismiss the legitimate election results, straight away this is something that answers your question. It could have been much worse if Trump had succeeded in this and I can give you other examples if required 

[Guard Dog]

10 minutes ago, Amentep said:

I actually think it was more Mitch McConnell was getting exactly what he wanted, so what incentive did he have to do anything different? 

Then he really is a villain because he has been there too long to not know wrong when he sees it. I would much rather he were a coward

[Pidesco]

4 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Its hyperbole to suggest that the Trump presidency was nothing short of a civil war....there are many things Trump wasnt able to implement due to legal challengers and his own Republican party pushback. He was a disruptor and he also tried to implement policies that you personally may find problematic but there was a good intention to them or many US citizens supported. This is far from the idea of  the seriousness of "Trump has broken the US" and yes the US has survived the risk of a Trump unintentional meltdown

For example he was not able to remove the Russian sanctions and the Senate, Republican controlled , refused to entertain this.

Also he tried very hard to dismiss the legitimate election results, straight away this is something that answers your question. It could have been much worse if Trump had succeeded in this and I can give you other examples if required 

First, other than McCain's vote on ACA at the 11th hour there was no Republican push-back to his presidency. Ever.

The bit about Trump's intentions is hilarious because if you think good intentions were anywhere involved you haven't been paying attention.

When did Trump try to remove Russian sanctions? Was it in 2017 or something?

There was no push-back from the GOP on Trump's attempts to dismiss the results. They have passively allowed American Democracy to be put into question, how that is not terrible for the US?

[Gromnir]

23 minutes ago, Amentep said:

I actually think it was more Mitch McConnell was getting exactly what he wanted, so what incentive did he have to do anything different? 

personal integrity and an unsullied conscience?

"Were I to ignore the evidence that has has been presented and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history's rebuke and the censure of my own conscience."

HA! Good Fun!

[Pidesco]

6 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

personal integrity and an unsullied conscience?

"Were I to ignore the evidence that has has been presented and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history's rebuke and the censure of my own conscience."

HA! Good Fun!

Well, it's somewhat easier to stand on principle when you are absolutely sure your stand won't actually change anything.

[BruceVC]

7 minutes ago, Pidesco said:

First, other than McCain's vote on ACA at the 11th hour there was no Republican push-back to his presidency. Ever.

The bit about Trump's intentions is hilarious because if you think good intentions were anywhere involved you haven't been paying attention.

When did Trump try to remove Russian sanctions? Was it in 2017 or something?

There was no push-back from the GOP on Trump's attempts to dismiss the results. They have passively allowed American Democracy to be put into question, how that is not terrible for the US?

There are some  examples of the Senate voting against what Trump wanted, like I mentioned Trump wanted to remove the sanctions imposed on Russia due to its illegal annexation of Crimea in Ukraine 

The Senate didnt agree to this and it shouldn't matter what year this occurred in because we are reflecting on his entire presidency. But yes it was in 2017

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-USA-trump-russia-sanctions-idUSKBN1AC1U8

There were  good intentions around some of Trumps political strategies but the policy decisions  were  problematic. You have a real problem in the USA and other countries around illegal immigration so the concept of " The Wall " was about addressing this ....intention was good as  illegal immigration cannot be just accepted in any country but the way the Trump presidency went about it was controversial and illegal in certain cases

But I do agree that there was no pushback initially from Republicans but from about last week several Republicans did speak out against what Trump was doing by refusing to accept Bidens victory, like Romney

https://www.towleroad.com/2020/11/ben-sasse-mitt-romney/

 

 

[Pidesco]

Just now, BruceVC said:

There are some  examples of the Senate voting against what Trump wanted, like I mentioned Trump wanted to remove the sanctions imposed on Russia due to its illegal annexation of Crimea in Ukraine 

The Senate didnt agree to this and it shouldn't matter what year this occurred in because we are reflecting on his entire presidency. But yes it was in 2017

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-USA-trump-russia-sanctions-idUSKBN1AC1U8

There were  good intentions around some of Trumps political strategies but the policy decisions  were  problematic. You have a real problem in the USA and other countries around illegal immigration so the concept of " The Wall " was about addressing this ....intention was good as  illegal immigration cannot be just accepted in any country but the way the Trump presidency went about it was controversial and illegal in certain cases

But I do agree that there was no pushback initially from Republicans but from about last week several Republicans did speak out against what Trump was doing by refusing to accept Bidens victory, like Romney

https://www.towleroad.com/2020/11/ben-sasse-mitt-romney/

 

 

Ah, not lifting sanctions but not wanting to put new sanctions in place. That I remember somewhat. Trump just didn't veto the legislation because it would have been passed anyway.

There isn't a huge problem in the US regarding illegal immigration, it was a fake issue used for campaigning purposes. The problems with immigration that do exist ares more driven by businesses that rely on illegals and the lack of reasonable ways to legally immigrate to the US, and a wall has nothing to do with those.  The original intention was to drum up xenophobic feeling among rally goers when on campaign. The post election goal was to have something tangible to point at when challenged on campaign promises. No good intentions were involved anywhere.

 

3 out of 50 senators is not "several".

[Amentep]

25 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

personal integrity and an unsullied conscience?

Not sure at this point McConnell cares about either.  He'll do it because he can and it gets him what he wants, everything else be damned.  I think he's shown that over the Trump presidency, if not before.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Gromnir said:

is gonna take a long time to fix what trump broke, if is possible to fix.

I think this is true not only for the things that Trump broke, but for what Trumpism means for the future of the U.S.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, Pidesco said:

Well, it's somewhat easier to stand on principle when you are absolutely sure your stand won't actually change anything.

That stand, even if it had no functional purpose except for optics (the vote technically received bipartisan support) and a possible footnote in history books, could cost him in his re-election chances with a primary - last I checked a couple of months ago, his approval rate was good with independents and okay (relatively speaking) with Democrats, but had suffered quite badly with Republicans. Lucky for him, his re-election will come in 2024, and if Trumpism is over by then, voters may have well forgotten - if not...

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

They would have been better served reasserting powers that the executive has usurped over the years like tariffs. <snip> But Mitch McConnell has no spine.

Were those powers usurped by the executive or handed over by generations of senators looking to make the executive branch more powerful so that it could better exert the will of the party?

Mitch McConnell has spine to spare. His agenda differs from what you think it should be.