Adam Schiff appeals for justice in the US Senate.
Of course, the Senate voted 52-48 to acquit in “a political triumph for the White House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell”.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Enough is enough.
Apparently, it’s now tots OK to blackmail a foreign leader into digging up dirt on a political rival. I’m so old I remember when Republicans had at least a modicum of respect for the constitution and the rule of law.
It’s looking bad for your Republic.
To put things in perspective, even if the numbers were reversed, there would have been no conviction. A 2/3 supermajority is required to convict.
So, quietly dig, dig and dig some more and leave the Senate with political suicide to fail to convict the next time.
When exactly was that? When they were disrupting the recount in Florida to install Bush as President despite losing the election? When they illegally sold arms to Iran in order to fund Nicaraguan terrorists, despite such support having been explicitly banned by Congress? When they conspired with Iran to prolong a hostage situation involving US diplomats for political advantage? Or maybe it was when Nixon’s goons were breaking in to the Watergate to dig up dirt on the DNC? I could go further back if you like – Wikipedia has a fulsome list of federal political scandals for every administration back to Washington.
I think perhaps what you meant to say was “I’m so old I remember when Republicans at least pretended to have a modicum of respect for the constitution and the rule of law.”
“When exactly was that?”
@ Dunc, # 5: I think you’d have to go back to 1860 or so.
JoeBuddha, #2
No, nobody is saying that. They’re saying it’s okay for a Republican president to do it.
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blockquote>What do you do when the law doesn’t work?
I don’t know anymore… Impeachment failed to deal with Trump because our holy and inerrant Founding Fathers didn’t figure an entire political party’s undying loyalty to a corrupt wannabe-despot into their math. Now we have to wait for an election (assuming there is even going to be one) that’s already been likely rigged in favor of Trump. Even if he is defeated, I’m not inclined to think that he’ll willingly leave the White House nor do I believe the Republicans won’t help him stay there.
The angry Lefty in me wants to burn the entire political system down until even our 18th-century-fish-wrap constitution is nothing but ashes and build something better over the ruins. However, the realist knows that we can’t even tear people away from their boob-tubes to vote every 4 years. Maybe we out to just give the right-wing babies their bottle, let them leave the union so they can form the capitalist, Christian, white enthostate of their wet dreams so they’re not standing in the way of the progress we want to make.
Or, for a change, maybe we Lefties ought to be the ones talking about secession.
They should impeach him for rape.
@ 9
Yeeeeeah… If the Senate wouldn’t drop Justice Frat Boy for nearly raping a 15-year-old back in high school, why should convict Trump for his “assertiveness.”
Akira MacKenzie:
If the Senate wouldn’t drop Justice Frat Boy for nearly raping a 15-year-old back in high school, why should convict Trump for his “assertiveness.”
It’d be prime-time testimony. He’s all about the smears – see how he likes it.
Edit @ 10
…why would they convict Trump for his “assertiveness?”
The Republican Party is a criminal cabel, and the American people are complicit.
@JoeBuddha #2:
Given the possibility that this is what Putin is doing to Trump, I’m not surprised Trump thought it was OK for him to do it to Zelenskyy.
my mind is always trying to find little ideas or interpretations of events to make it seem positive when it looks this f’n dark and foreboding going forward. here are a few to add any others to this probably fantasy list
he is old as is the corrupt senate leadership they can not live forever.(hopefully)
they only charged him with two possible crimes there are more that could also be added maybe next time.
he will not be elected and it will be a democratic landslide changing the make up of the senate to the left
there are none federal investigations on going that can still bring out formal charges.
because of his “victory” in the senate and his “control” of the republican he will feel more free to do even more outlandish things criminal activities. (he will take all the rope needed to hang himself)
these thoughts are what I try to use to counter the feeling that we are in the midst of a fascist take over.
uncle frogy
Why did they bother going through with this ,if they knew the repubs were not going to vote for it .
This is only going to help the snatch snatcher keep his fat botty in the white house for another 4 years .
Davidc1: “Why did they bother going through with this ,if they knew the repubs were not going to vote for it .”
Oh ferchrissake. Is your memory really that short? Back during the summer, the left was insistent that Trump be impeached. After all, there was probably enough on obstruction of the Meuller investigation, emoluments… to convict the MF. Pelosi resisted, and the left wing of the Democratic party–including many frequent commenters on this very board–were threatening to not vote in the next election because of the accommodation and normalization of Trump by Democrats.
Then came the whistleblower, and Darth Cheeto confessing to his crimes in the call summary and on the Whitehouse lawn and Mick Mulvaney confessing… And Nancy Pelosi felt she would be derelict in her duty if she ignored such an egregious threat to our Democracy. And the impeachment came. And the people stayed complacent and bored. And the Senate Republicans–with the exception of a courageous vote by Mittens–ignored their duty, shat on the constitution and formed a parade up the orange shitgibbon’s capacious arse.
Now the only question is whether we let them get away with it. Every Senator who voted for acquittal should be met with chants of “Shame. Shame. Shame.” We should make it our life’s work to make sure these cowards are exposed for what they are.
Optics I think.
The Dems were looking like do nothings. Now they did something and have demonstrated the Republicans are openly corrupt.
Sadly it feels like few of the public care or even understand what they are seeing.
Much media coverage is headed “Trump acquitted by the Senate”. It should be headed “Trump acquitted by his own Republican Party”.
Anyone believe a civil war is at all avoidable any more?
I’m quite serious. We used to be able to reach agreement across the aisle in the U.S. We used to be able to treat with respect those with different opinions.
Now? It’s a pendulum. The left votes in Clinton. The right screams and mobilizes and votes in Dubya. The left screams and mobilizes and votes in Obama. The right screams and mobilizes and votes in Trump.
Hopefully, the left will manage to vote in Sanders or Warren this year. But the pendulum will continue to swing, ever higher, and the gap between the two sides will become wider and wider, and no more compromises will be possible. Every contest will be winner-take-all. Every new president will try to undo everything the previous one did.
Under such conditions, eventually, one party will eventually make it impossible for the other to ever take power again. And then the only recourse will be a civil war.
Please convince me I’m wrong. I’d love to be wrong.
Tualha:
I doubt this is convincing, but an actual war would be bad for business; I doubt the powers-that-be and the 0.01%ers would allow it.
@20:
There’s always a pandemic or an asteroid strike to look forward to!
John Morales: that’s also why the great powers will definitely not overreact to the murder of some minor duke by Serbian nationalists.
@#18, DanDare:
The problem is — or, at least, some of the problems are — that they spent two years fumfering around letting Pelosi and the DNC tell everyone impeachment was a bad idea and letting everything fall apart, then when even Pelosi couldn’t pretend that Trump wasn’t screwing everything up they chose a single charge to convict on which amounts almost to a technicality, sat on it for a while, didn’t show all the evidence during the impeachment itself, and ended up doing it three years into a four-year term so it looked as non-urgent as possible.
Since GWB, Democrats have been pushing the narrative that it is a mistake to publicly undertake any political project that fails — as a result, they have made themselves seem cowardly and unwilling to take action in the face of horror. This has been a mistaken policy. It isn’t necessary to be seen to win every time; you can always blame the other side when things get shot down. What is necessary is to be seen to be trying to do what your voters want on a regular basis, and the Democrats left that behind by the end of the Clinton administration.
Very clearly there is some realization in the upper echelons of the party that voters are not enthusiastic about turning out for Democrats any more, and that it has something to do with failures to accomplish… something. But they’re so far removed into centrist fantasyland — where voters hate extremes and automatically get all fired up to vote for the preservation of the status quo — that they don’t understand how it works. Not Impeaching was supposed to show that they were Wise (If Cynical) Technocrats Who Understood The System. Impeachment was supposed to show that they were Courageous Fighters Who Would Stand Up For What Was Right. Waiting 3 years to impeach and then doing the least they could and failing suggests that they are neither wise nor courageous, which is unfortunately not a surprise to anybody who has paid attention to the DNC for the last few decades.
@21 War is always good for business – certainly for those in the armaments, manufacturing, and energy business. And really for all businesses.
@20
A significant amount of the people who currently hold progressive positions hold them because they have terrible material conditions, and the party that went the hardest to court them happened to be the one that is also deeply conservative. They fundamentally have no actual political ideology – they just parrot the talking points of the only team that pretends to give a shit about them.
Demonstrably, those people can be flipped if they are appealed to in a way that addresses the underlying reasons why they lean towards terrible politicians, and thankfully even some centrist democrats are beginning to realize this.
If we do less “Hey Ohio coal workers, you’re going to lose all your jobs and that’s great!” a la 2016, and more reaching out and addressing working class issues and fears, I think we’d find a pretty substantial upswing away from radical conservatism. Sure, one side might eventually be left in a position where it might never win again, but it’d be way less of an impactful situation if we shrink that side’s supporters down to a miniscule amount.
Unfortunately that requires class-conscious campaigning and not letting all of your political decisions be governed by corporate donations, so maybe things are as dire as they seem.
@25
well maybe for some kinds of businesses but I do not think it so good for trade internationally.
one of the good things about the current situation is how much national economy are increasingly interconnected by international trade. Just look at the worries about supply chain interruption that might be caused by the current virus eruption.
countries at war internally seem to have a reduced ability to trade outside of their boarders.
But I take to point suggested by the WW1 reference people are apt to do the stupidest things .
I am reminded of a quote from George Orwell
“the point is that we are capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then when are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we are right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battle field”
going to be an interesting 2 years
uncle frogy
that is “when we are finally proved wrong”
Tualha #20
For a war you need two at least remotely comparable sides. The US left can’t fight a war. It can’t even form an insurgency.
A few random points: 1) don’t ever doubt that Comrade Trumpski can be re-elected– he can and he may if the Dems can’t get all their crap in one sock; 2)never put too much faith in the public– they’re horribly uninformed and they don’t care; 3) we have an entire political party that has been corrupted by hate, greed and lust for control aiding and abetting a corrupt president backed by a foreign power; 4) we have a hard-right wing that is a perfect analog for the theocrats portrayed in “The Handmaid’s Tale”, ( and if you haven’t seen it yet, watch it on Netflix. You will be shaken to your core). What do you do when the law doesn’t work? Get off our asses and vote, campaign, phone bank-WORK. Drag people to the polls if we have to, but get them there. The only other option is Revolution. It’s up to all of us. Talk is cheap. We can sit here online and bitch ’til the cows come home, but that ain’t gettin’ it done. We either go all-in now, or be content with the few scraps the Righties leave us.
@27 Great quote. Ah, if only Orwell was alive today…
@numerobis: Franz Ferdinand wasn’t “some minor duke,” he was the presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire.
@17 I suggest you get off that high horse before you fall off .Was there ever a chance that he would have been found guilty ?
davidc1,
That probability of success is low is in no way an excuse to neglect one’s duty under the Constitution. The Dems did their duty. The Rethugs not only shirked their duty, they mad a farce of it. Now, it is the turn of the voters. If they have been paying attention and doing their duty, the Rethugs should lose BIGLY in November. If not, then Americans have the gummint they deserve. Then we’ll know just how evil and stupid Americans are.
@33.I apogise if my reply to you was a bit snippy .
A few random points: 1) don’t ever doubt that Comrade Trumpski can be re-elected– he can and he may if the Dems can’t get all their crap in one sock; 2)never put too much faith in the public– they’re horribly uninformed and they don’t care; 3) we have an entire political party that has been corrupted by hate, greed and lust for control aiding and abetting a corrupt president backed by a foreign power; 4) we have a hard-right wing that is a perfect analog for the theocrats portrayed in “The Handmaid’s Tale”, ( and if you haven’t seen it yet, watch it on Netflix. You will be shaken to your core). What do you do when the law doesn’t work? Get off our asses and vote, campaign, phone bank-WORK. Drag people to the polls if we have to, but get them there. The only other option is Revolution. It’s up to all of us. Talk is cheap. We can sit here online and bitch ’til the cows come home, but that ain’t gettin’ it done. We either go all-in now, or be content with the few scraps the Righties leave us.
@26
Please stop repeating the right wing’s lies about the democrats’ disdain for blue collar workers (eg, coal miners). The truth is that Hillary Clinton had a realistic, compassionate plan to help coal country move away from overreliance on a dying, finite, dangerous, and destructive industry:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ucenergy/2016/11/04/building-on-clintons-plan-to-revitalize-coal-country/#5c409c981953
All the repubs do is lie to them and encourage them in their false beliefs about the future of coal (among many false beliefs), which does them no good but does make them very easy to manipulate. Don’t help them spread their falsehoods.