Animavore wrote:

Trump Accidentally Autographed His Own Impeachment Papers at Michigan Rally

Read More: President Trump Autographed Impeachment Papers at Michigan Rally 

https://wcrz.com/trump-accidentally-aut ... m=referral

For some reason when I read this the first thing that popped into my head was that scene from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.

Svartalf wrote:
It's been an eternity that I did not watch that and I don't have the dvd for an instant refresher... just which scene are you thinking of?

The_Piper wrote:

Svartalf wrote:
It's been an eternity that I did not watch that and I don't have the dvd for an instant refresher... just which scene are you thinking of?

Me too, I've never seen it, so don't get the reference here.

More broadly, Mattis argued, the NATO alliance was not serving only to protect western Europe. It protected America, too. “This is what keeps us safe,” Mattis said. Cohn tried to explain to Trump that he needed to see the value of the trade deals. “These are commitments that help keep us safe,” Cohn said.
Bannon interjected. “Stop, stop, stop,” he said. “All you guys talk about all these great things, they’re all our partners, I want you to name me now one country and one company that’s going to have his back.”
Trump then repeated a threat he’d made countless times before. He wanted out of the Iran nuclear deal that President Obama had struck in 2015, which called for Iran to reduce its uranium stockpile and cut its nuclear program.
“It’s the worst deal in history!” Trump declared.
“Well, actually . . .,” Tillerson interjected.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Trump said, cutting off the secretary of state before he could explain some of the benefits of the agreement. “They’re cheating. They’re building. We’re getting out of it. I keep telling you, I keep giving you time, and you keep delaying me. I want out of it.”

The Sanders-Warren ‘feud’ and Ukraine revelations are nowhere near equal in importance. Try telling the media that.

If you asked a casual news consumer what the big Washington story was over the past few days, there’s a decent chance you would hear about a supposed feud between two Democratic presidential candidates — Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

That, after all, was a media obsession for days: an easy-to-understand, easy-to-argue-about story with compelling audio and video.

Made for TV. Made for punditry. Let’s all plumb the greater meaning of whether the Vermont senator really once told the Massachusetts senator that he didn’t think a woman could be elected president.

And while this is grounded in an important issue (ingrained sexism in American culture and politics), there were matters of greater significance going on.

There was compelling new evidence that President Trump knew everything about the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and the 2016 election, and to push an American diplomat out of the way.

This was revealed in documents and text messages and in blockbuster interviews, first with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and later with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. It was stunning stuff, particularly in the context of Trump’s impeachment and a Senate trial in which most Republican senators, according to their leadership, already have their minds made up.

“This is . . . like if Watergate burglars gave [an] interview to Walter Cronkite in Jan 1974 and detailed the Nixon criminal enterprise,” tweeted the journalist and author Eric Boehlert about Maddow’s interview with Lev Parnas, the Soviet-born businessman who played a key role in the pressure campaign.

It was a much, much bigger deal than the Warren-Sanders dust-up.

But these developments were presented as roughly equal, or at least in the same general category of emphasis, on TV newscasts and news-talk shows, as if to say, “Here’s a couple of Washington stories about politicians fighting with each other . . . .”

[...]

The news media is all too predictable, doing things the same old way from campaign to campaign, from scandal to scandal.

But we exist now in a different context: With democratic norms on the brink, the public desperately needs us to do much, much better.

felltoearth wrote:

The_Piper wrote:

Svartalf wrote:
It's been an eternity that I did not watch that and I don't have the dvd for an instant refresher... just which scene are you thinking of?

Me too, I've never seen it, so don't get the reference here.

Tero wrote:I do not get this argument. When would an impeachment ever be invalid?
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-lawyers-respond-impeachment-articles.amp
If you get the house to vote on it, no matter how badly they understand high crimes and misdemeanors, it is always legal to vote on it. That is their job. It is then the job of the senate to vote on whether the blow job related obstruction or quid pro quo qualifies. And it is not the job of defense lawyers to interpret the constitution. This is not that court.

They will bring this up at every press conference so as to appear as "fighting" to Trump and his base.

Tortured_Genius wrote:

Tero wrote:I do not get this argument. When would an impeachment ever be invalid?
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-lawyers-respond-impeachment-articles.amp
If you get the house to vote on it, no matter how badly they understand high crimes and misdemeanors, it is always legal to vote on it. That is their job. It is then the job of the senate to vote on whether the blow job related obstruction or quid pro quo qualifies. And it is not the job of defense lawyers to interpret the constitution. This is not that court.

They will bring this up at every press conference so as to appear as "fighting" to Trump and his base.

What struck me was that using this argument, if the Senate does vote to exonerate Trump, then they would be creating a precedent for every future president to abuse the office to the fullest extent without hinderance.

Alan C wrote:

Tortured_Genius wrote:

Tero wrote:I do not get this argument. When would an impeachment ever be invalid?
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-lawyers-respond-impeachment-articles.amp
If you get the house to vote on it, no matter how badly they understand high crimes and misdemeanors, it is always legal to vote on it. That is their job. It is then the job of the senate to vote on whether the blow job related obstruction or quid pro quo qualifies. And it is not the job of defense lawyers to interpret the constitution. This is not that court.

They will bring this up at every press conference so as to appear as "fighting" to Trump and his base.

What struck me was that using this argument, if the Senate does vote to exonerate Trump, then they would be creating a precedent for every future president to abuse the office to the fullest extent without hinderance.

In this case I'd say they're [Repugnants] not thinking long-term, just like with regards to issues like climate.

"The Senate itself is on trial, as far as I'm concerned, and the jury is the American people," Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said on "Meet the Press," revealing the Democratic tactic of making life as uncomfortable as possible for Republican senators as the trial gets underway.
"A fair trial, everyone understands, involves evidence. Evidence would be documents and witnesses," Durbin said. "At this point, you know, the Senate is on trial. And I hope at the end of the day enough Republican senators will understand history will find you. Make certain that you make a decision that you can live with in terms of our Constitution and your own professional career."
In their own detailed filing issued over the weekend, Democrats made the case that the Senate's expected failure to convict Trump of impeachable crimes would change the presidency forever.
"His misconduct challenges the fundamental principle that Americans should decide American elections, and that a divided system of government, in which no single branch operates without the check and balance of the others, preserves the liberty we all hold dear," the Democratic brief said.