So much disinformation out there. Independent investigators here in Ukraine have told me, repeatedly: Joe Biden did NOT stop an investigation into his son. In fact, US officials, including Biden, were pushing for MORE oversight of the company where Hunter Biden was a board member
Finally the Process to Impeach President Donald Trump begins
Tue, 2019-10-01 12:43
#202
Tue, 2019-10-01 12:51
#203
Trump is pushing a fake scandal once again. Don’t buy it.
Tue, 2019-10-01 13:09
#204
The Dangerous Position of William Barr
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-dangerous-position-of-william-barr
Tue, 2019-10-01 13:12
#205
Look Who's Not Laughing!
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/09/look-whos-not-laughing.html#more
"...So why is 'Ze' (as hip young Ukrainians like to call him) looking so sad...?"
Tue, 2019-10-01 13:28
#206
The Floodgates Open on Trump
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-floodgates-open-on-trump
Tue, 2019-10-01 14:33
#207
How Long Could the Trump Impeachment Process Last?
Tue, 2019-10-01 14:38
#208
The Late Show on Rudy Giuliani's credibility.
Tue, 2019-10-01 14:42
#209
Tue, 2019-10-01 15:43
#210
Looks like the GOP dam is starting to burst!
Tue, 2019-10-01 15:43
#211
Grossman: Playing the Trump Card
https://mronline.org/2019/09/29/playing-the-trump-card/
"...Clearly, the ingredients of anti-Trump cooking create a very mixed batter. Some spoonfuls may even contain a 'Save Biden as candidate' flavor, outweighing the truly weighty reasons for baking a completely new kind of cake. Wise or not to begin with in electoral terms, the impeachment movement and the election campaign should be forced to skim off less important scandals and gather forces instead to achieve genuine health care and the immense incarceration tragedy, win free tuition, fight racist police violence and armed militia dangers, win abortion rights, build the labor movement and alter stagnant or worsening labor conditions and housing for millions of working Americans.
How to pay for all that? Anti-Plumpers must carve the funds from billionaire caches and from the skyrocketing billions and trillions spent on military spending, big stick threats and eternal wars around the world. These issues, not minor shenanigans by Trump, Giuliani or other corrupt sinners, offers the best - and maybe only way to beat Trump and all the evils he shares with so many others.
Trump Articles of Impeachment
https://rootsaction.org/trump-articles-of-impeachment#domestic-emoluments
Democracy Now: To Impeach or Not to Impeach? Chris Hedges & John Bonifaz Debate...
The Jimmy Dore Show
"Host smacks down Democrat defending Biden corruption."
The Jimmy Dore Show
"Bernie explains why impeachment is bad strategy."
Tue, 2019-10-01 15:48
#212
it's a Russian bot
Tue, 2019-10-01 15:49
#213
White House ordered top-secret system upgraded to prevent leaks
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/01/white-house-trump-leaks-code-015194
Tue, 2019-10-01 15:51
#214
No kidding!
It appears that a lot of these guys may be in serious trouble with the law
Giuliani hires Watergate prosecutor to represent him in House impeachment probe
The president's personal attorney is lawyering up as he faces a subpoena in the fast-moving inquiry.
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/01/rudy-giuliani-hires-attorney-trump-impeachment-probe-015172
Tue, 2019-10-01 19:16
#215
Ukraine’s ex-foreign minister speaks out on Giuliani
The call between President Trump and Ukraine's leader is becoming quicksand, snaring one administration official after another. NBC’s Richard Engel and former Special Presidential Envoy Brett McGurk join Stephanie Ruhle and Ali Velshi to break down the latest on what we know about Mike Pompeo and Ukraine.
Tue, 2019-10-01 19:19
#216
Don't worry boys President Pence will pardon you all, won't he!
Pompeo says State Dept. officials won't testify, House chairs tell him to stop obstructing
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused House Democrats of attempting to “intimidate, bully and treat improperly” five State Department officials whom key committees have asked to interview as part of an impeachment inquiry centering on the Ukraine scandal.
Tue, 2019-10-01 19:33
#217
Trump suggested shooting migrants in the legs
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/01/politics/new-york-times-trump-shoot-migrants-legs/index.html
Tue, 2019-10-01 19:53
#218
Don't assume the Senate would *never* remove Donald Trump
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/01/politics/trump-impeachment-senate/index.html
Tue, 2019-10-01 22:19
#219
Tue, 2019-10-01 22:29
#220
Tue, 2019-10-01 22:32
#221
Tue, 2019-10-01 23:42
#222
Tue, 2019-10-01 23:54
#223
Tue, 2019-10-01 23:57
#224
Tue, 2019-10-01 23:59
#225
Loud & Clear: Trump Sees 'Civil War' Breaking Out Over Impeachment (podcast)
"On today's episode of L&C, Brian Becker (ANSWER Coalition) and John Kiriakou (CIA anti-torture whistleblower) are joined by Luqman Nation, which joins a livestream every week on Facebook, Dan Kovalik, a human rights and labor lawyer, and Aaron Mate, a journalist with the Grayzone and the Nation and host of 'Pushback with Aaron Mate'.
"I believe this is the wrong move at the wrong time. But they have to do something...It's not going to work. This is a really bad mistake on their [Democrats] part.."
[16:30]
Wed, 2019-10-02 00:04
#226
Nice to see the Democrats moving quickly, firmly, and determined to finally shut the thug down
Wed, 2019-10-02 00:26
#227
Wed, 2019-10-02 00:31
#228
The Democrats will need to be razor sharp and keep their eye very focused on the Trump impeachment ball
Wed, 2019-10-02 00:35
#229
Wed, 2019-10-02 11:52
#230
The Ukraine Scandal Was in Plain Sight
Why did it take a whistleblower to get our attention?
Wed, 2019-10-02 12:31
#231
TRUMP'S 'CIVIL WAR' QUOTE TWEET IS ACTUALLY GROUNDS FOR IMPEACHMENT, SAYS HARVARD LAW PROFESSOR
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-civil-war-tweet-grounds-impeachment-1462044
Wed, 2019-10-02 13:03
#232
Significant polling
Do Americans Support Impeaching President Trump?
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/do-americans-support-impeaching-president-trump/
Wed, 2019-10-02 13:13
#233
If Trump Goes Down, He’s Taking Everyone With Him
Frank Bruni
Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not represent the views of MSN or Microsoft.
I was based in Washington and reported from Capitol Hill during Bill Clinton’s impeachment, which was the last time the country entered waters like these. It was ugly, and Democrats and Republicans traded vicious words.
But Clinton never publicly accused his detractors of treason or floated the idea that one of them be arrested on those grounds, as Donald Trump just did with Adam Schiff.
Clinton and his defenders raised the specter of a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” to use Hillary Clinton’s infamous phrase, thus asserting that he was being persecuted for his politics, not punished for his misdeeds.
But they didn’t insist, as Trump and his defenders routinely do, that a vital part of the federal government was an evil cabal intent on undermining our democratic processes, which is Trump’s self-serving characterization of the intelligence community. Their central strategy wasn’t to ignite a full-blown crisis of confidence in the institutions of government. They weren’t serving dire notice, as Trump essentially is, that if the president goes down, he’s taking everyone and everything else with him.
Gallery: Donald Trump's life in pictures (Photos)
The Clintons possessed and projected a moral arrogance that was laughably oxymoronic under the circumstances. And they and other prominent Democrats junked the party’s supposed concern for women’s empowerment to savage Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones and others who came forward with claims about the president’s extramarital sexual activity, including serious accusations of sexual violence.
But they didn’t equate the potential fall of the president with the fall of the Republic. They didn’t go full apocalypse. Bill Clinton didn’t prophesy that his impeachment would lead to a kind of “civil war” from which the country would “never heal,” as Trump did by tweeting an evangelical pastor’s comments on Fox News along those lines.
I wrote last week that the prospect of Trump’s impeachment terrified me, and one of the main reasons I cited was what we’re seeing now: his histrionic response, which is untethered from any sense of honor, civic concern or real patriotism.
He’s not like most of his predecessors in the White House, who had some limits, at least a few scruples and the capacity to feel shame. Their self-pity wasn’t this unfathomably deep, their delusions of martyrdom this insanely grand. “There has been no President in the history of our Country who has been treated so badly as I have,” he tweeted last week, and the violins have wailed only louder and weepier since.
While there were fellow narcissists among his forebears, was there a single nihilist like Trump? I doubt it, and so the current waters are in fact uncharted, because the ship of state has a sort of madman at its helm.
That he’s fighting back by impugning his critics’ motives, stonewalling investigators and carping about the media shouldn’t disturb anyone, not if we’re being grown-ups. Richard Nixon, confronted with his impeachment, thrashed and seethed. Clinton assembled a war room in an effort to outwit his adversaries. That’s the nature of politics. That’s the right of the accused.
But in the mere week since a formal impeachment inquiry was announced, Trump has already gone much farther than that and behaved in ways that explode precedent, offend decency and boggle the mind. We’re fools if we don’t brace for more and worse.
For grotesque example, he has suggested — repeatedly — that government officials who tattled about his crooked conversation with the Ukrainian president are spies who deserve to be executed. Had any other president done that, many Americans would speak of nothing else for the next month.
But from Trump, such a horror wasn’t even surprising, and it competed for attention with so many other outrages that it was dulled, the way so much of his unconscionable behavior is. When you churn out a disgrace a minute and no one expects anything nobler, you’re inoculated by your own awfulness.
He has taken his vilification of the media to new depths, content on this front, as on others, to pump Americans full of a toxic cynicism so long as he profits from it. He and his handmaidens have disseminated distortion after distortion, lie upon lie, including the claim that deep-state officials tweaked the criteria for whistle-blowers just so that someone could ensnare him.
They have instructed Americans not to believe their own eyes, their own ears, their own intelligence. They mean to put truth itself up for grabs, no matter the fallout.
Lindsey Graham, the sycophant of the century, called the whistle-blower’s complaint a setup, as if it didn’t rest on the sturdy foundation of a reconstructed transcript — released by the White House — that shows Trump imploring a foreign leader to do political dirty work for him.
Trump keeps saying it was a “perfect” call, which is like seeing Dom Pérignon in a puddle of sewage. Then again, his presidency has long depended on such optical illusions.
There’s light, though, and it’s this: As corrosive as his as tirades are, they may also be what does him in. He’s poised to take this persecution complex too far.
Already, there has been a swell of support for impeachment, according to new polls released by CNN and Monmouth University, and I bet that trend continues as revelations of his wrongdoing cascade and as he wildly overreacts.
That probably wouldn’t be enough to get Republican senators to convict him and remove him from office, should the House follow through with impeachment and a Senate trial ensue. But it would affect November 2020.
He’s in a bind, because his burn-down-the-house defense against impeachment makes the best case that he must be impeached — that a leader with no bounds and no bottom can’t be allowed to rage on unimpeded. The impeachment inquiry is laying Trump bare. As scary as that is for us, it may be even scarier for him.
I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni).
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Wed, 2019-10-02 14:06
#234
This impeachment thingy is roiling the stock markets, eh!
Wed, 2019-10-02 14:32
#235
This poll number proves how powerful Trump's misinformation machine really is
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/02/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-transcript/index.html
Wed, 2019-10-02 15:32
#236
If there is no wrongdoing why be concerned?
Trump explodes as Democrats ratchet up impeachment push
The president lashed out at Hill Democrats as House leaders announced a fresh round of potential White House subpoenas.
Thu, 2019-10-03 08:02
#237
Will Impeachment Backfire on Democrats?
"Former Georgia state rep Dee Dawkins-Hagler and author Brian Trascher join Scottie Nell Hughes to discuss the impeachment inquiry into President Trump and the Democratic political candidates' chances against him in the 2020 election."
"It is hurting the American people. I think we are all worn out from this entire ordeal..."
me too.
Thu, 2019-10-03 08:19
#238
Yes, Trump and his corruption and drama have worn most people out.
Thu, 2019-10-03 08:56
#239
By 45%-38%, Americans support impeaching him over Ukraine allegations, poll finds.
While Trump’s overall job approval hasn’t budged, opinions of impeachment have moved significantly in favor of impeachment.
https://cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/what-do-voters-think-about-impeachment
Thu, 2019-10-03 08:27
#240
Will Impeachment Backfire on Democrats?
"Former Georgia state rep Dee Dawkins-Hagler and author Brian Trascher join Scottie Nell Hughes to discuss the impeachment inquiry into President Trump and the Democratic political candidates' chances against him in the 2020 election."
"It is hurting the American people. I think we are all worn out from this entire ordeal..."
me too.
A tweet from Brian Tauscher:
https://twitter.com/BTrascher/status/1179152124497842179
And
Scottie Nell Hughes is an American journalist, news anchor and political commentator. She was a paid CNN commentator during the 2016 presidential election, often speaking in support of presidential candidate Donald Trump. Hughes joined RT America as a full-time anchor in September 2018
MAGA! Sorry, KAG!
Thu, 2019-10-03 09:26
#241
This is nothing but a political stunt and an impeachment attempt based on the flimsiest of pretexts which will ultimately fail, sink the crooked, creepy Joe Biden and boomerang back on the Democrats. The president of Ukraine said he wasn't pressured. And in any case these 'high crimes' alleged are the weakest possible grounds upon which to impeach Trump, among the credible, strong and actual ones that could and should be pursued. It's nonsense and I predict despite the relentless full court press of msm propaganda, the American public will smell the bullshit.
Canadian writer and analyst Aaron Mate (TRNN, The Nation, Pushback etc) summed it up quite nicely in a Jimmy Dore vid I posted to NR's other 'Ukrainegate' thread: 'Media's Misreporting of Ukraine-gate Apes Misreporting of Russiagate':
"...This is the same behaviour that impelled 'Russiagate' for over two years - making 'bombshell' claims, only to see them discredited, but leading to no humility and no accountability. It's like they're right back at it again. There's just been straight up impunity for propaganda. And we're going to have to deal with however-many-more months of it.
I resent it so much because we spent so much time during 'Russiagate' debunking and poring over all this stupid bullshit that now no longer matters. They only mattered for the purpose of fueling a bullshit conspiracy theory that Trump had conspired with the Russian government. We had to spend our time going through them - we did so many segments on it. Going through the web of claims pointing out why the evidence for them wasn't really there, wasting everyone's time instead of talking about actual issues. This crowds out the space for that for cynical interests that have driven all this from the start. I'm so mad that we have to get into it again..."
me too.
Thu, 2019-10-03 09:45
#242
This is nothing but a political stunt and an impeachment attempt based on the flimsiest of pretexts which will ultimately fail, sink the crooked, creepy Joe Biden and boomerang back on the Democrats. The president of Ukraine said he wasn't pressured. And in any case these 'high crimes' alleged are the weakest possible grounds upon which to impeach Trump, among the credible, strong and actual ones that could and should be pursued. It's nonsense and I predict despite the relentless full court press of msm propaganda, the American public will smell the bullshit.
I agree there are more serious actions than this. Which is why there should be far more than one article of impeachment. Which does not require a "high crime," but also includes misdemeanors. A president can violate the constitituion and the violation not be a crime. Such as abuse of power. Whether the Ukraine president felt pressured is immaterial to a charge of using the office of the presidency to try to get a foreign country to dig up dirt on a political opponent.
The remainer of your paragraph could have been written by Sean Hannity.
Thu, 2019-10-03 10:27
#243
Almost everything NDPP writes about U.S. politics could have been written by Hannity.
Thu, 2019-10-03 10:38
#244
From the South Lawn of the White House, President Trump tells reporters that China should launch an investigation into the Bidens.
No need to recreate a transcript for this one.
Thu, 2019-10-03 12:20
#245
If "reporters" = President of China and "should" = pressured, you would be on to something.
Thu, 2019-10-03 12:47
#246
If "reporters" = President of China and "should" = pressured, you would be on to something.
According to this complaint, filed by Common Cause on Sep. 23, the Federal Election Campaign Act forbids any solicitation of a contribution from a foreign national. No quid pro quo required, just a solicitation, successful or unsuccessful. A contribution is further defined as anything of value to the campaign. An investigation into a political opponent would clearly be such a contribution.
If this interpretation is correct, it would appear that not only the Ukrainian phone call, but also the public call to China to investigate Biden could very well constitute such a solicitation.
Thu, 2019-10-03 13:05
#247
If "reporters" = President of China and "should" = pressured, you would be on to something.
You don't think they have TVs in China? And the statement is grounds for impeachment on its own. It is an abuse of power to say that a foreign country should investigate a political opponent. It also may violate federal election statutes.
“Let me make something 100% clear to the America public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election,” the statement read. “This is not a novel concept.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/fec-chair-ellen-weintraub-trump-illegal-foreign-election-aid
Thu, 2019-10-03 13:48
#248
Impeachment Crisis: Trump, Democrats Exchange Threats and Warnings
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/10/03
"...Pelosi's comments at the press conference underscored the reactionary character of the Democrats' effort to impeach Trump not for his crimes against democratic rights or his brazen efforts to incite fascist violence, but for offending the intelligence agencies and seeking foreign assistance against Biden the leading Democratic presidential hopeful.
Asked if he would cooperate with subpoenas of documents and witnesses by the House Democrats, Trump said he would, but then attacked the impeachment inquiry as a 'hoax'...Trump went on to cite a New York Times article, as reporting that the whistleblower had contacted the House Intelligence Committee before filing his complaint. Schiff 'helped to write it too,' Trump went on to claim.
The article does confirm the close coordination between the intelligence agencies and the House Democrats in the effort either to force Trump out of office or compel him to conform to the foreign policy dictates of the military intelligence apparatus, particularly in relation to policy towards Russia, the Middle East and Afghanistan. The Democrats are heading up, in the form of an impeachment inquiry, an operation mounted by the CIA and other intelligence agencies that have been at war with Trump over foreign policy questions since his 2016 election campaign. The interests of working people have nothing in common with either of these factions of the ruling class, which are in fundamental agreement on a policy of escalating war abroad and austerity at home."
Thu, 2019-10-03 14:13
#249
Josh and Michael: I am sure there are many such rules broken by Trump, but I am also sure these same rules have been broken regularly by others, including the Democrats during his 2016 campaign. Therein lies the danger. Russiagate poisoned the well. Parsing through the facts of this matter is difficult boring work, and if "the President is a Russian Traitor" didn't do the trick, I doubt "The President Asked Someone to Investigate a Political Opponent" is going to capture the non-partisan public's imagination.
I would very much like it if Trump were not re-elected. I don't think this flimsy pretense for an impeachment press cycle is helping anything but Stephen Colbert's ratings. I hope to be wrong. I wish the Democrats focused on policy and their own candidates than going this route.
ETA - I also very much agree with the analysis in the bolded section of NDPP's comment above.
Thu, 2019-10-03 14:20
#250
No president has ever asked a foreign country a foreign country to investigate one of his political opponents. That is just one of a myriad of violations of law and custom that Trump has done that no previous president has done. This, everybody does it, defense is total BS.
Thu, 2019-10-03 14:43
#251
I am sure there are many such rules broken by Trump, but I am also sure these same rules have been broken regularly by others, including the Democrats during his 2016 campaign.
Citation needed.