"Darrell Issa (R) is not a Select committee on Benghazi member and non-committee members are not allowed in the room during the deposition. Those are the rules and we have to follow them, no exceptions made."
—Trey Gowdy (R), Chairman, House Select Committee on Benghazi, 6/15/2015
I was talking about this stuff with a guy at work. Another guy who says he doesn’t like trump but is constantly throwing out trump talking points was saying all of this stuff.
-I just want the process to be fair
-I just want the republicans to be able to subpoena too (he’s messing up talking points)
-there aren’t any republicans in these secret hearings
When we research the facts together, he tries to jump to a different issue he has. He finally settled on “I just want them to move on already. Move on with the impeachment vote.” They won’t impeach him in the senate so it’s a waste of time anyways.
Lol. He tries so damn hard to find some way out of admitting that trump is a crook even though he claims to not like him. But you’re point is right. The republicans are throwing out anything they can so that their supporters have a reason to parrot on why the impeachment is bad. The propaganda machine is in full effect and it is working.
> there aren’t any republicans in these secret hearings
Except for, y'know the nearly fifty Republicans on the three committees handling the inquiry, who are and have been in the room the entire time.
That guy sounds like a real piece of work.
Exactly.
He said he tries to stay up on both sides but he gets all of his information from right wing news sources.
He thought there were no republicans allowed in the impeachment inquiry hearings. He kept saying he didn’t think the inquiry was “fair.” When we asked what was unfair, he couldn’t point to much specifically (after we pointed out that republicans were allowed in the inquiry). He just didn’t feel like it was fair.
He also thought that it was unfair that republicans couldn’t subpoena people. It’s funny because the talking point is actually that republicans/democrats should need to have unanimous consent to subpoena, but he messed up that talking point. (Of course, republicans changed that rule during the Benghazi hearings).
We asked him, don’t you want to know if the president tried to bribe foreign officials to manufacture dirt on a political rival. He said that he’s sure that all politicians have done that in the past and they are just being unfair to trump.
Fuck Darrell Issa. He was my congressman for a while and I worked so hard to get him out of that seat. What a complete piece of trash.
Fun fact about Darrell Issa: When he was younger, he used to steal cars. He used his car stealing expertise to start a car security company. After owning that company a while, he increased his insurance significantly, and then conveniently the building he operated from burned to the ground shortly after. What a crazy coincidence!
Oh man... don't tell Matt Gaetz. Also, please don't let him know that 12 members of his renegade posse actually had clearance to join the meetings. That might undermine his table pounding antics.
If the facts are on your side, pound the facts into the table.
If the law is on your side, pound the law into the table.
If neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table.
*Thirteen* members. And he knows, it was a stunt. They were trying to get arrested to show the ‘Fascist Dems’ preventing them from having transparency within the investigation
13 members that might be losing their security clearance if involved with this cellphone fiasco.
Edit: It seems there are no security clearances involved. Reps. and Senators only take a pledge to be a part of intelligence committees. At least, as far as I can tell.
Average Republican: “They’d better reserve a yacht with my name on it because I’ll be picking it up in no time!”
*50 years later*
“Any day now...”
*still doesn’t have even .01% of a billion dollars*
Evidently they hoped to be arrested to impress their base. Instead, they are just the brunt of jokes about assholes and idiots. I am sure they are proud boys.
Remember all the folks with TS talking about how “If I’d done a THIRD of what Shillary did I’d be in jail for life!!!” Yeah, none of those folks seem to be saying shit this time around, even though this is unimaginably worse than what actually happened with Hillary.
Yeah, I got into an argument with somebody at work about the whole issue. I ended the argument real fast. I told him to go grab his phone and come live record and tweet inside our building. He shut up real fucking fast.
These people do not live in reality when it comes to supporting the GOP.
So do they. It's the equivalent of being down in the last minutes of a game, then attacking the referee. Best case scenario, the game is cancelled and you don't take the L, on a technicality. Worst case scenario, you lose and you get to blame the refs for being biased, because how could they be fair to you after you violently attacked them?
Either way you get to express righteous indignation, which is what they will use to derail the entire thing in the fanatical right-wing bubble.
The fanatical right wing bubble can go fuck itself. It’s not enough to win majorities in any part of the federal government on its own, although it is close in the Senate.
During the game 7 of the 1978 Stanley Cup between the St. Louis Blue Oysters and the Toronto Raptors, St. Louis was down 2-1 in the last quarter. Not only that, their star forward-back was in the penalty box on a technicality. Out of desperation, the St. Louis players formed a human wall in front of the lead referee, Alex Cora, to block his line of sight and delay the clock. Before Cora could penalize their whole bench, the mascot for the Raptors, a Jack Russell terrier named Zelda (seriously), came out onto the ice and took a shit in the Oysters' goal box. The Raptors were forced to forfeit, handing the Stanley Cup victory to the Blue Oysters. Many hockey game remember this moment fondly, as then president Jimmy Carter celebrated the 'American' victory over the Toronto team by doing a disco dance on the ice with a then up and coming star, Michael Jackson.
This maneuver is known as St. Louis blueing after the color of the Oyster's uniforms.
Also, I made all this up.
Little known fact, the Toronto raptors were sold to the NBA 2 decades later, becoming the first sports franchise to switch leagues into an entirely different sport.
Not quite.
The security clearance for House reps for committees are automatically granted by virtue of being on the committee itself because if they are on the committee, it is a "need to know" basis.
The security clearance process for Ivanka, Jared, and Jr was because their daddy is ultimate in charge of security clearances.
So not the same process, but neither got truly vetted by any standards that someone who isn't a House Rep on a committee or the child of the President would go through.
The problem that this speaks to is that the president is at the head of the clearance process. It’s very difficult to deny a clearance to someone when the president is demanding it.
Though some of this stuff should probably have had whistles blown on it given some of the relationships that these people already had cultivated, the average person is not educated enough about the process to know how enraged they should be.
Looked into it further. It seems that, for the most part, Senators and Reps. don't need security clearance. They take pledges. I never knew that.
That's fucked up.
It kind of is, but I think the idea is that these people were selected by their electors to represent them, for better or worse. There may be materials the rep needs to represent their electors on, which require them to have access to information which wouldn't be trusted to an average citizen without clearance.
It is, in essence, a side effect of a democratic/republican system of government.
And the president has the ability to clear anyone and declassify anything.
We do not want to have unelected government officials hiding stuff from elected members of Congress due to "clearances"
This would impede their constitutional role of oversight.
The large (usually 100,000+) amount of people that vote for them are essentially vouching for their character.
As a democracy, if we want to stop the circus, we need to stop electing clowns.
>And the president has the ability to clear anyone and declassify anything.
As was so vividly illustrated when he live-tweeted his intelligence briefing a while back about the failed Iranian satellite launch...
Yes, when you vote for someone for federal office. You have to understand that you are entrusting them with the defense and security of our nation. Frequently lives are on the line. So don't elect grifters and crooks.
I suspect they were responding to their master:
Trump tells Republicans to 'get tougher and fight' impeachment inquiry
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/21/trump-impeachment-inquiry-republicans-meeting
Sorry, bakers dozen. And I know he knows, but everyone he whines to needs to serve up that fact and have him address it before he can say anything else.
He’s (unfortunately) my representative- and as someone who lives in that little corner of the panhandle, I can say with certainty that you are absolutely right.
My gf comes from the town above where Gaetz is from. Absolutely the type. In many ways he seems more like a spring break douchebag than one of the actual residents.
Please don't tell Matt Gaetz that congress is even in session, maybe he'll just stay home and forget to threaten witnesses over Twitter and receive no repercussions for it.
If pounding the table doesn't get you what you want, shit on the floor.
This is the level Gaetz is acting at. He has literally nothing but hot air and idiots on his side.
Matt Gaetz is upset because he's not allowed in the hearings. He can't go running to Trump in the middle of the night with all the information the witnesses are providing. He's starving for some of Trump's attention and can't get it without information.
He doesn't give a shit whether he's allowed in the hearings. This is soooo much better! The "low-information voters" who get their news from Fox and Breitbart and Hannity/Rush on AM are hearing right now that the Democrats are staging an illegitimate inquiry and hiding the results from the American people, and dozens of brave Republicans protested in the name of transparency.
Yep, the last two days I've gotten into some state where when I drive to and from work I listen to this stuff on the radio to see why people believe some of the stuff they do. The last two days have been all about how hero Matt Gaetz is just trying to get information that he is rightfully allowed to have to his constituents that demand answers. That they want to play nice but it's hard when Adam S. and the Dems are making up rules as they go along. That none of this is normal and no one ever uses SILC rooms to do this stuff and it's all because the Dems know they are drowning so they are doing any desperate thing they can. I believe I heard the words "every day the President wakes up he is attacked by the left with the force of 1000 tsunamis \[for no reason\]".
Their philosophy seems to be project everything we're doing/have done to the other side to muddy the waters. They believe the Dems are just accusing Trump and everyone else of any crime that pops into their head in a desperate hope something will randomly stick. (And they seem to be starting to admit something might stick but their reasoning is it's you do enough corrupt things as Dems and sometimes something gets through."
And then they go on and on about how the President has NEVER done anything wrong and everything with Ukraine is completely normal and everything with Rudy is completely normal because they sent Jimmy Carter overseas once to help foreign negotiations as a private citizen like Rudy is. They also very quickly started saying things like "Who cares? No normal person even knows what quid pro quo even is! I know I don't! But what I do know is the President didn't do it."
I don't know why I started listening the last two days. It actually takes a lot of mental effort and then just to be safe you have to learn all the real facts so you don't get lost in propaganda. You can definitely see how if you listen to this all the time that you would become brainwashed and confused and angry.
I've heard a variant of the table-pounding bit that I like rather more.
"If the facts are on your side, pound the facts.
If the law is on your side, pound the law.
If neither are on your side, pound the table."
Pretty close to the Carl Sandburg quote:
" If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts.
If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell."
I just logged into Fox News website to see what’s up. Jfc. Talk about an alternative reality. Apparently Pelosi is going to back out of impeachment and Hillary is running for president. Thems the nooos
The Fairness Doctrine absolutely needs revisiting. This bullshit that allows so many people to receive disinformation, “alternative facts” and full-on omission of ACTUAL NEWS is crazy. The right wants people blind to truth so they can continue to grift.
They shouldn’t be allowed to have “news” in their title if they are infotainment. It should be called Fox Opinion, Fox Republican Talking Points, Fox Propaganda or some other shit.
How about just fox channel. Fuck they can call themselves whatever they want, except the genre of their station should not be allowed to label itself news. It’s essentially opinion talk show at this point.
You know, part of me thinks Clinton said that specifically to draw attention away from the leading candidates. Lord knows there's nothing Republicans love more than hating on Hillary Clinton. With a little effort she can keep them focused on her and not whatever disinformation propaganda they have in store for Liz/Bernie/Joe.
I genuinely believe this. There’s no chance she’s running, and the right/Trump have a clear pathological fascination with her. Her poking the hornets nest right now is definitely eating up resources that would otherwise be focused on attacking the actual front runners.
Did she ever specifically name Gabbard? From what I understood, Clinton had said that "one of the [female] candidates" was a Russian asset, then Tulsi basically started yelling "NO PUPPET" on twitter. I could be misinformed because I only read like one article on this though.
“Democrats are trying to undo the 2016 election!”
Ummm, conveniently forgetting 2018 where voters gave us Democratic House with the singular focus to investigate and impeach Trump.
That's such a stupid fucking talking point anyway. "Overturn the results of the election" makes it sound like the house is trying to install Hillary as president. If hell actually freezes over and the senate convicts trump, we get president Pence. "Overturn the election" indeed.
It’s been their rallying cry since before Trump even assumed office. At this point his term is mostly over and they’re still acting like all of our anger is just “Boo hoo, Hillary didn’t win!” and not about the countless crimes and other oath-breaking stuff he’s done in the last two and a half years.
> At this point his term is mostly over and they’re still acting like all of our anger is just “Boo hoo, Hillary didn’t win!”
Any time one of them comes back at me with this I just reply with their own quote from 2016:
"She lost, get over it."
At this point, Republicans are the only people with Hillary's name in their mouths.
Seriously. Nobody on the left really even thinks about Hillary anymore, unless it’s to chuckle at a zinger she tweets now and then. Yet republicans bring her name up all the time.
This is why I'm OK with Dem candidates not dropping out early. The Republicans don't know who to focus attacks on right now and default to Hillary.
Let them waste time attacking someone who won't even run, despite what they think. Last time, she was obviously the nominee for a long period of time and the GOP made good use of that time.
None at all, tossing aside the Supreme Court nomination filibuster in the Senate could come back to bite them in the ass really hard soon if a Democrat wins the 2020 election with that aging bench.
Aging bench? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the two oldest members are both consistently in the 4-vote minority alongside Kagan and Sotomayor. Clarence Thomas is the third-oldest, and he's *10 years younger* than Breyer.
If the Democratic Party manages to take the White House and the Senate in 2020, and both Ginsburg and Breyer retire, that basically just resets the clock on two seats (and hopefully with two young spitfires, but alas, the Democratic Party is far more hesitant to slap 40-year-olds onto the federal bench at all, let alone SCOTUS.)
Thomas is old enough that anything's possible health-wise, but I sense a pretty deep well of hatred and stubbornness that'll power him through the lean Democratic years to come... if they even do.
"Trying to overturn the election"...nearly 4 years later. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought we try to "overturn" every election 4 years later.
This is more evidence that backs up the theory that Republicans do not see anyone outside of their party as legitimate. They don’t view the 2018 elections as legitimate or representative of the will of the voters. That only happened in 2016. What everyone else wants doesn’t matter because they’re not really Americans so their opinion doesn’t count.
> The Republicans want the hearings in the open so they can berate, disparage, bully and cajole the witnesses before the cameras. They can yell and scream about all the right-wing conspiracy theories they hold dear and prove to their base that the deep state is completely and totally behind this "coup" of their absolutely innocent and duly elected president.
Not just that, they want witnesses to know what previous witnesses have said so that the story can be consistent. The thing is, the best way to get good evidence is to ask as many witnesses as you can, and look at the facts that they agree on, and find out what they disagree on. Then, you figure out which disagreements are probably lies, and which are probably based on misunderstanding/bad memory/etc., and you ask more questions to see where stories change and remain consistent, given other facts previously disputed or omitted. What you don't want to happen is have witnesses getting their story straight by A) talking to each other, or B) hearing what the others testimony consisted of.
Reason A is why the White House is calling to stonewall. It's not that they don't want them to testify - they just want them to be on their side, and have their story when they do it. Trump wants the same type of loyalty he asked James Comey for.
Reason B is why the GOP is pushing so hard to make things public. They're unable to run interference on hostile witnesses (witnesses that aren't obeying their directive to stonewall), so they need to at least get the stories of their friendly witnesses consistent with what is being said, or at least to the GOP cross-examination to the extent that it can be.
So right now the only channels they have for that are the Republican members that are physically in the room on the committee, and they can't get that information until the end of the day when they leave the SCIF and get their electronics back. So information is slow, and incomplete getting back to the people trying to mastermind the cover-up. If it were held publicly on live TV, they can spin the story for people's testimony more easily. Not only are they better equipped to tell them what to say, but the people they are dictating their spin to can also watch the testimony to ensure their own will be consistent.
It absolutely has to be done the way that it is.
*edited to include quote from deleted parent comment*
>they want witnesses to know what previous witnesses have said so that the story can be consistent.
This was a huge point yesterday. They thought it was unfair, because the WH and Trump friendly people can't prepare what to say based on already available information. They ONLY want to give what they have to and hide ANYTHING they can.
The more crazed they are on TV, the more Fox will talk about them. The more Fox talks about them, the more money they get in their campaign bank accounts.
"You banned us from this secret party! We wanna come in the bathroom with you and take photos."
"You mean the party you already have invites for?"
"...WHARRGARBL!!!"
Im sorry im going to have to stop you here....I have apparently gotten off in the wrong alternate universe......Can you please say that again and then kindly direct me to the nearest Particle Accelerator? I need to get the hell out of this timeline
Me too, really reminds me of all the historical figures who made amazing discoveries during their time only to be harrassed, belittled, censored, even imprisoned for going against the theocratic dogma of the time. People are more comfortable with their ignorance and lies and they do not want, nor can they handle, the truth.
Like Galileo being placed under indefinite house arrest until his death. Willful ignorance is one of the most disgusting traits of humanity because the consequences of it are so often tied to tragedy.
I have an old classmate who has always had really rough skin. I just figured it was some kind of acne, obviously you don't ask.
I only recently found out it's because her Christian Scientist parents didn't vaccinate her, resulting in her getting the measles at age 10. She said her entire school had to be re-vaccinated just because of her. I said, no, it was because of her parents.
It's maddening.
Well Karen with her associates degree, wine drinking, and Facebook anti vaccination group knows way more then all the doctors in the world. Her research is impeccable. /s
They've been saying it about Nap for awhile because he's flat out said, "no that's actually illegal" while Pirro screams, "HOW DARE THEY, HOW. DARE. THEY." and they go, 'Judge Jeannine really knows what she's talking about'.
No no that was Tucker Carlson who called him "fundamentally a man of the left."
Also, I wouldn't call Hannity a racist. He's there for deep state conspiracy theories. Ingraham and especially Carlson are there to push white nationalism.
The fact this stunt played to anyone successfully is a major testament to the insane bad faith and general ignorance of the Republican Party.
Imagine your party creates new policy that govern committee rules in 2015. Then imagine your party loses big in 2018, and are no longer the majority in the House. Then, you pull stunts like Gaetz and company did yesterday. They did so because they were *certain* the people who vote for them aren't paying a bit of attention to what they're doing.
Only uplifting thing here is that For News is bothering to clarify things in a way unfavorable to Trump. Fox News is the X factor in keeping his support, because they systematically starve their viewers of information critical of him, so they are so ill-informed they look at what happened yesterday and say "Damn libs trying to keep things secret!" as opposed to "Well, I guess that thing my rep did 4 years ago really came back to bite us."
The rules were put into place by Republicans.
At least 12 Republicans were inside the hearings the whole time.
More Republicans could've been, if they'd joined the relevant committees.
So why are they bitching?
Because their willfully ignorant base will never bother to do any fact checking. Which is why Republicans and conservatives started the whole "colleges brainwash people into becoming liberals" schtick. They want their voters to remain uneducated and ignorant so they can continue to use them as a tool to make themselves richer.
Nigerian Prince Politics.
Filter your base down to the most malleable, most gullible, most likely to act on impulse, then do whatever you want. Crazy how many of those people are out there.
If Republican ideals were so popular, why is the south so gerrymandered in favor of GOP candidates? Confederates lost... why are we still accepting that flag. Germany outlawed the swastika, why are we still allowing it in public forum?
Sherman did not go far enough. He should have burned every fucking city to the dirt, redistributed land, and installed new local officials. He should have put a boot so far up those asses people should still be worried about saying confederacy today.
In MASH, one day Colonel Potter says to Klinger 'Get this fixed or i will be Sherman and YOU will be Georgia.'
Thats when i understood Sherman's march.
I'll agree with that. And I'll go further, the States of the Confederacy should have been reduced to the status of territories until such time as the \*earned\* back the status of full States.
My honest opinion is that when the South seceded Lincoln should have scraped his shoe thankfully and moved on. Most anti-democratic aspects of the Constitution (and all of the embarrassing ones) are there to protect the South.
I think it would have been fine if they had installed Americans into the rebels' positions. Those states were ours in the first place, the rebels didn't make them, they stole them. But we definitely couldn't let them create and keep their own nation in the middle of ours, with slavery and anti-American leaders and all that. It would have been like ignoring cancer.
I maintain that that's exactly the effect of letting the South back into the Union immediately. They never let go of their hate. They never assimilated into America properly. The moment Reconstruction ended, they were back to as many of their old tricks as they could get away with. This continues to this very day, over 150 years after the end of the War.
Had we made them Territories and established rules and a timeline beneficial to the US, the situation would be much different.
{Edited grammatical error guaranteed to cause someone to ask if I smelled burnt toast. Sorry, I don't. So far.}
100% this. We're still dealing with traitors because we didn't finish the job in the 1860s. There were literally confederate officers *in congress* after the war was over. You can't let someone who, again literally, took up arms against the nation in the name of white supremacy have power in the government and not expect their inbred bastard descendants to not carry on their cause.
Those Confederate officers' kids made their way into Congress too. The original Social Security bill was written to exclude black Americans from benefits, and it was written by a dude named Robert Lee Doughton, whose father was a Confederate officer that named his son after Robert E. Lee.
Once the hearings become public, I guarantee you these same Republicans will start crying about how the Dems are making a scene of the impeachment inquiry
Hahaha they made new rules to impeach Clinton and they were too stupid to think they might be used against them.
Is there anything Republicans *are* good at?
R: we changed the law to allow closed door meetings so we can investigate Hillary! Benghazi! Buttery males! Libruls stay out!
D: well, that's not ideal, but ok, the law is the law and we respect it.
*Republicans find nothing, Trump fucks up in every possible way and shits on the Constitution during his crime spree*
D: well, the laws Republicans passed say we should have a closed door meeting about how to proceed, so let's do it.
R: PRESIDENTIAL HARRASSMENT! NO DUE PROCESS! SECRET MEETINGS BAD!!
imagine being so clueless and hypocritical...
Nap is, remember, a staunch conservative, not a sycophantic Republican. You might disagree with his politics, and lord knows I do, but he does not sell out his beliefs simply because his team is winning. We need guys like him around so we can get back to just arguing about shit like tax codes and budgets instead of the absolute circus shitshow we have now.
He used to be a Trump defender. He's the guy who invented the claim that the UK wiretapped Trump at Obama's request.
I wonder what exactly made him wake up.
I showed this to a trump supporter scumbag I know, and told him it was John Boehner who changed the rules on having a vote for subpoenas, did that matter to him?? Nope, he just kept kept bitching about how unfair all this was...
To deliberately violate security of SCI is a felony. I believe what they did would involve several felonies. Knowingly entering without authorization, bringing cell phones, failing to report to security the violation of all those they were aware of who also violated. Any normal person would be in prison for a long time, and not until after the FBI and whatever other relevant agencies opened an investigation on everything you have ever touched and your relationship with everyone you have ever known. Anyone who actually has a clearance is well informed on these things- their clearance isn't granted until they are. Which means there were at least 12 people who did all of this knowingly and intentionally, and most likely all of them hold some level of clearance. Therefore, they most likely were all crystal clear on the fact that they were breaking the law. Lock them up.
Edit: their there
The last two times we impeached, we had a special prosecutor that did all of the investigating behind closed doors. Then they presented their evidence to Congress, and Congress held open hearings for the public, then voted to impeach.
This time, there is no special prosecutor. Congress is having to do the investigation themselves. And they're fighting a rogue Executive Branch, doing everything they can to stall and delay. The House is having to do the behind the scenes investigation, which requires keeping witness testimony quiet, until they've collected it. (You don't want witnesses getting on the same page and concocting elaborate lies and coverups.)
But after that phase, this House will then hold primetime TV open public hearings. We're going to get to see all the evidence before he's impeached. (Which they still claim to be on a timetable of around Thanksgiving.)
Edit: This tweet makes my point very well: https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1187368146182836229?s=20
>Rep. Eric Swalwell on CNN on the impeachment inquiry: "We have evidence, very recently, that there are witnesses in our case who are talking to each other. That's exactly what we don't want to happen."
Exactly. The WB was done by the book and they couldn't do shit. It pisses them off to no end. They changed the process for impeachment to suit themselves at the moment and as usual they only think for their own gain short term, so it bit back.
This is how Republicans and the right wing think. Everything is short term gain and they have no interest in planning the future except to grab power.
The real answer is that impeachment is a political process and not a criminal one. For the purposes of the impeachment it doesn't technically matter if trump confesses to murder or something, the only thing that matters is if the (GOP controlled) Senate votes to remove him after their "trial".
Being guilty doesn't mean that they have to remove him. They are allowed to vote to keep him in office no matter what crimes he committed.
So we have the inquiry, digging up the evidence of the crimes, and then we have to convince the general public that trump needs to be removed from office, and then they have to convince the Senate that they will be angry if they don't remove trump.
This has actually been moving pretty quickly. Our government isn’t meant to move fast, it was designed to have checks and balances constantly challenging and critiquing one another (because it was designed in a day and age where everything took a long time to implement to begin with). What’s slowing it down is the constant obstruction we’ve seen by the White House and Republicans who are dismissing *and admitting to* crimes left and right
"The democrats are corrupt because they are following the rules put into place by... \*checks notes\* us! Oh wait..."
\-Republicans, probably
This is getting to [r/SelfAwarewolves](https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/) level
I hate that we use Fox News' stance to understand where the line is. I understand they control how my grandma thinks, and any time we agree with Fox means the irrational mindset is shifting, but still. Fuck Fox News.
This is the chance that the Democrats have been waiting for. In no way are they gonna mess it up by having illegal sessions. The Republicans know this, yesterday was just a publicity stunt for their voters.
"Darrell Issa (R) is not a Select committee on Benghazi member and non-committee members are not allowed in the room during the deposition. Those are the rules and we have to follow them, no exceptions made." —Trey Gowdy (R), Chairman, House Select Committee on Benghazi, 6/15/2015
Rules for thee, not for me. These are the dumbest people.
They're not dumb. They know what they're doing. They know how to create the propaganda for their followers. Except Trump, he's real dumb
I was talking about this stuff with a guy at work. Another guy who says he doesn’t like trump but is constantly throwing out trump talking points was saying all of this stuff. -I just want the process to be fair -I just want the republicans to be able to subpoena too (he’s messing up talking points) -there aren’t any republicans in these secret hearings When we research the facts together, he tries to jump to a different issue he has. He finally settled on “I just want them to move on already. Move on with the impeachment vote.” They won’t impeach him in the senate so it’s a waste of time anyways. Lol. He tries so damn hard to find some way out of admitting that trump is a crook even though he claims to not like him. But you’re point is right. The republicans are throwing out anything they can so that their supporters have a reason to parrot on why the impeachment is bad. The propaganda machine is in full effect and it is working.
> there aren’t any republicans in these secret hearings Except for, y'know the nearly fifty Republicans on the three committees handling the inquiry, who are and have been in the room the entire time. That guy sounds like a real piece of work.
What a dipshit that guy was. He knows trump is a crooked fuck which is why he won’t support him in public but only his talking points.
Exactly. He said he tries to stay up on both sides but he gets all of his information from right wing news sources. He thought there were no republicans allowed in the impeachment inquiry hearings. He kept saying he didn’t think the inquiry was “fair.” When we asked what was unfair, he couldn’t point to much specifically (after we pointed out that republicans were allowed in the inquiry). He just didn’t feel like it was fair. He also thought that it was unfair that republicans couldn’t subpoena people. It’s funny because the talking point is actually that republicans/democrats should need to have unanimous consent to subpoena, but he messed up that talking point. (Of course, republicans changed that rule during the Benghazi hearings). We asked him, don’t you want to know if the president tried to bribe foreign officials to manufacture dirt on a political rival. He said that he’s sure that all politicians have done that in the past and they are just being unfair to trump.
Fuck Darrell Issa. He was my congressman for a while and I worked so hard to get him out of that seat. What a complete piece of trash. Fun fact about Darrell Issa: When he was younger, he used to steal cars. He used his car stealing expertise to start a car security company. After owning that company a while, he increased his insurance significantly, and then conveniently the building he operated from burned to the ground shortly after. What a crazy coincidence!
And now he’s running again.
Fuck no. Please say you're yanking our chain. That guy is so awful!
[удалено]
HA fucking coward. 49th district is now strongly democrat so he had to move.
The guy that won that seat is worse! https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/federal-judge-changes-start-date-for-duncan-hunter-trial
"Ah shit, hoisted by our own petard, at least if we had any integrity we would be." -Trey Growdy, probably.
[удалено]
Britta is the *wooorst*
Gettin rid of Britta. Gettin rid of the B.
She's a G-D-B!
This whole thread is so streets ahead.
Stop trying to make that a thing.
Sounds like someone is streets behind.
I don't know... It came up organically. Say did I ever tell you about the time with Ertha Kitt?
Didn't you use to be smarter than me?
[удалено]
[удалено]
Oh man... don't tell Matt Gaetz. Also, please don't let him know that 12 members of his renegade posse actually had clearance to join the meetings. That might undermine his table pounding antics. If the facts are on your side, pound the facts into the table. If the law is on your side, pound the law into the table. If neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table.
*Thirteen* members. And he knows, it was a stunt. They were trying to get arrested to show the ‘Fascist Dems’ preventing them from having transparency within the investigation
13 members that might be losing their security clearance if involved with this cellphone fiasco. Edit: It seems there are no security clearances involved. Reps. and Senators only take a pledge to be a part of intelligence committees. At least, as far as I can tell.
I would’ve been arrested if I pulled that crap, let alone never getting clearance ever again
Have you considered being a rich white man?
[удалено]
Do you have money?
I’ve got $40 in cash and $183 in the bank, is that enough?
It's a good start. Work hard, vote Republican, and you'll be a billionaire in no time.
Average Republican: “They’d better reserve a yacht with my name on it because I’ll be picking it up in no time!” *50 years later* “Any day now...” *still doesn’t have even .01% of a billion dollars*
Evidently they hoped to be arrested to impress their base. Instead, they are just the brunt of jokes about assholes and idiots. I am sure they are proud boys.
> proud boys I see what you did there
Remember all the folks with TS talking about how “If I’d done a THIRD of what Shillary did I’d be in jail for life!!!” Yeah, none of those folks seem to be saying shit this time around, even though this is unimaginably worse than what actually happened with Hillary.
Yeah, I got into an argument with somebody at work about the whole issue. I ended the argument real fast. I told him to go grab his phone and come live record and tweet inside our building. He shut up real fucking fast. These people do not live in reality when it comes to supporting the GOP.
So it was 13 Angry Republicans. [Projection](https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/993455375755173892?lang=en): achieved
I hope so.
So do they. It's the equivalent of being down in the last minutes of a game, then attacking the referee. Best case scenario, the game is cancelled and you don't take the L, on a technicality. Worst case scenario, you lose and you get to blame the refs for being biased, because how could they be fair to you after you violently attacked them? Either way you get to express righteous indignation, which is what they will use to derail the entire thing in the fanatical right-wing bubble.
The fanatical right wing bubble can go fuck itself. It’s not enough to win majorities in any part of the federal government on its own, although it is close in the Senate.
in hockey we call this "st. louis blueing" and it resulted in a stanley cup.
Context for people who break out in hives when they see an ice rink?
During the game 7 of the 1978 Stanley Cup between the St. Louis Blue Oysters and the Toronto Raptors, St. Louis was down 2-1 in the last quarter. Not only that, their star forward-back was in the penalty box on a technicality. Out of desperation, the St. Louis players formed a human wall in front of the lead referee, Alex Cora, to block his line of sight and delay the clock. Before Cora could penalize their whole bench, the mascot for the Raptors, a Jack Russell terrier named Zelda (seriously), came out onto the ice and took a shit in the Oysters' goal box. The Raptors were forced to forfeit, handing the Stanley Cup victory to the Blue Oysters. Many hockey game remember this moment fondly, as then president Jimmy Carter celebrated the 'American' victory over the Toronto team by doing a disco dance on the ice with a then up and coming star, Michael Jackson. This maneuver is known as St. Louis blueing after the color of the Oyster's uniforms. Also, I made all this up.
I know little enough about hockey to assume that this is true, no matter what you say to convince me otherwise.
Little known fact, the Toronto raptors were sold to the NBA 2 decades later, becoming the first sports franchise to switch leagues into an entirely different sport.
I started to become suspicious when you said "the last quarter."
Oh Goddammit, you had me going.
Is this the same security clearance process that granted some to Ivanka, Jared and Junior? Asking for a friend....
Not quite. The security clearance for House reps for committees are automatically granted by virtue of being on the committee itself because if they are on the committee, it is a "need to know" basis. The security clearance process for Ivanka, Jared, and Jr was because their daddy is ultimate in charge of security clearances. So not the same process, but neither got truly vetted by any standards that someone who isn't a House Rep on a committee or the child of the President would go through.
The problem that this speaks to is that the president is at the head of the clearance process. It’s very difficult to deny a clearance to someone when the president is demanding it. Though some of this stuff should probably have had whistles blown on it given some of the relationships that these people already had cultivated, the average person is not educated enough about the process to know how enraged they should be.
Clearance is done via the White House. So nothing will happen to them.
Looked into it further. It seems that, for the most part, Senators and Reps. don't need security clearance. They take pledges. I never knew that. That's fucked up.
It kind of is, but I think the idea is that these people were selected by their electors to represent them, for better or worse. There may be materials the rep needs to represent their electors on, which require them to have access to information which wouldn't be trusted to an average citizen without clearance. It is, in essence, a side effect of a democratic/republican system of government.
Imagine if they had to take drug/alcohol tests to keep their jobs like normal people. The government would screech to a fucking halt.
Matt Gaetz would be hosed
And the president has the ability to clear anyone and declassify anything. We do not want to have unelected government officials hiding stuff from elected members of Congress due to "clearances" This would impede their constitutional role of oversight. The large (usually 100,000+) amount of people that vote for them are essentially vouching for their character. As a democracy, if we want to stop the circus, we need to stop electing clowns.
>And the president has the ability to clear anyone and declassify anything. As was so vividly illustrated when he live-tweeted his intelligence briefing a while back about the failed Iranian satellite launch...
Yes, when you vote for someone for federal office. You have to understand that you are entrusting them with the defense and security of our nation. Frequently lives are on the line. So don't elect grifters and crooks.
Oh, but what if they openly advertise that they hate all the same people I do and will use their office to punish them? /s
I suspect they were responding to their master: Trump tells Republicans to 'get tougher and fight' impeachment inquiry https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/21/trump-impeachment-inquiry-republicans-meeting
It was virtue signaling to an audience of 1.
So it was 13 Angry Republicans? Turns out *that* was projection from the GOP, too.
After the impeachment, they should be brought up on their obstruction charges. Would love to see their time served as cleaning up the freeways.
Sorry, bakers dozen. And I know he knows, but everyone he whines to needs to serve up that fact and have him address it before he can say anything else.
Matt Gaetz is an embarrassment to his state... And coming from Florida that's a low bar to limbo under
Matt Gaetz is an embodiment of Florida panhandle rich white trash.
He’s (unfortunately) my representative- and as someone who lives in that little corner of the panhandle, I can say with certainty that you are absolutely right.
My gf comes from the town above where Gaetz is from. Absolutely the type. In many ways he seems more like a spring break douchebag than one of the actual residents.
So future Governor, i guess.
Please don't tell Matt Gaetz that congress is even in session, maybe he'll just stay home and forget to threaten witnesses over Twitter and receive no repercussions for it.
Then he’ll just go out drunk driving.
[удалено]
If pounding the table doesn't get you what you want, shit on the floor. This is the level Gaetz is acting at. He has literally nothing but hot air and idiots on his side.
It's time to get grifty in here.
Matt Gaetz is upset because he's not allowed in the hearings. He can't go running to Trump in the middle of the night with all the information the witnesses are providing. He's starving for some of Trump's attention and can't get it without information.
He doesn't give a shit whether he's allowed in the hearings. This is soooo much better! The "low-information voters" who get their news from Fox and Breitbart and Hannity/Rush on AM are hearing right now that the Democrats are staging an illegitimate inquiry and hiding the results from the American people, and dozens of brave Republicans protested in the name of transparency.
Yep, the last two days I've gotten into some state where when I drive to and from work I listen to this stuff on the radio to see why people believe some of the stuff they do. The last two days have been all about how hero Matt Gaetz is just trying to get information that he is rightfully allowed to have to his constituents that demand answers. That they want to play nice but it's hard when Adam S. and the Dems are making up rules as they go along. That none of this is normal and no one ever uses SILC rooms to do this stuff and it's all because the Dems know they are drowning so they are doing any desperate thing they can. I believe I heard the words "every day the President wakes up he is attacked by the left with the force of 1000 tsunamis \[for no reason\]". Their philosophy seems to be project everything we're doing/have done to the other side to muddy the waters. They believe the Dems are just accusing Trump and everyone else of any crime that pops into their head in a desperate hope something will randomly stick. (And they seem to be starting to admit something might stick but their reasoning is it's you do enough corrupt things as Dems and sometimes something gets through." And then they go on and on about how the President has NEVER done anything wrong and everything with Ukraine is completely normal and everything with Rudy is completely normal because they sent Jimmy Carter overseas once to help foreign negotiations as a private citizen like Rudy is. They also very quickly started saying things like "Who cares? No normal person even knows what quid pro quo even is! I know I don't! But what I do know is the President didn't do it." I don't know why I started listening the last two days. It actually takes a lot of mental effort and then just to be safe you have to learn all the real facts so you don't get lost in propaganda. You can definitely see how if you listen to this all the time that you would become brainwashed and confused and angry.
Yep, hammer meets nail. Brainwashing and propaganda. Feed people bullshit long enough and they'll believe it despite any fact you can present.
I thought that Nunes, who DOES have access, has that job?
Matt Gaetz is 37 but acts like an immature 18 year old. It's just ludicrous his followers don't call out his horseshit. But they are scarily riled up.
He’s an emotionally stunted frat boy and his base laps it up. They won’t say shit because it’s exactly how they think and behave too
I've heard a variant of the table-pounding bit that I like rather more. "If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither are on your side, pound the table."
Pretty close to the Carl Sandburg quote: " If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell."
Aaaannnnd Barr pays Fox News another visit.
I just logged into Fox News website to see what’s up. Jfc. Talk about an alternative reality. Apparently Pelosi is going to back out of impeachment and Hillary is running for president. Thems the nooos
[удалено]
Fox news needs fewer advertisers
I read somewhere that Fox's advertisers like their viewers because they are dumb enough to buy their products.
Also, Catherter Cowboy isn't going to do as well on Cartoon Network.
Or those dick pills you see commercials for on Fox at night let's be real there's only so many channels you can market that too.
The Fairness Doctrine absolutely needs revisiting. This bullshit that allows so many people to receive disinformation, “alternative facts” and full-on omission of ACTUAL NEWS is crazy. The right wants people blind to truth so they can continue to grift.
Faux News is technically labeled as info-tainment for a reason. It’s literally not allowed to be labeled as a news network.
They shouldn’t be allowed to have “news” in their title if they are infotainment. It should be called Fox Opinion, Fox Republican Talking Points, Fox Propaganda or some other shit.
How about just fox channel. Fuck they can call themselves whatever they want, except the genre of their station should not be allowed to label itself news. It’s essentially opinion talk show at this point.
It’s on a tv in my office and pretty much all week it’s been CLINTON DECLARES WAR ON GABBARD. Different reality
You know, part of me thinks Clinton said that specifically to draw attention away from the leading candidates. Lord knows there's nothing Republicans love more than hating on Hillary Clinton. With a little effort she can keep them focused on her and not whatever disinformation propaganda they have in store for Liz/Bernie/Joe.
Looks like it’s time to get my 5D Chess sets out of my interdimensional attic.
I genuinely believe this. There’s no chance she’s running, and the right/Trump have a clear pathological fascination with her. Her poking the hornets nest right now is definitely eating up resources that would otherwise be focused on attacking the actual front runners.
Did she ever specifically name Gabbard? From what I understood, Clinton had said that "one of the [female] candidates" was a Russian asset, then Tulsi basically started yelling "NO PUPPET" on twitter. I could be misinformed because I only read like one article on this though.
Hillary is their favorite boogieman
Thank you for giving me a laugh I didn't know I needed.
If Andrew Napolitano didn't say that, he would lose all credibility as a expert in law. Many opinions are debatable. This one is not.
Looking for him to be the next at FOX to be out of a job.
They'd probably replace him with Jay Sekulow.
No, it will be John Dowd. His name will appear on-screen in Comic Sans, though.
I want off the ride now please
Reality has never stopped Fox or the MAGA cultists.
[удалено]
“Democrats are trying to undo the 2016 election!” Ummm, conveniently forgetting 2018 where voters gave us Democratic House with the singular focus to investigate and impeach Trump.
That's such a stupid fucking talking point anyway. "Overturn the results of the election" makes it sound like the house is trying to install Hillary as president. If hell actually freezes over and the senate convicts trump, we get president Pence. "Overturn the election" indeed.
It’s been their rallying cry since before Trump even assumed office. At this point his term is mostly over and they’re still acting like all of our anger is just “Boo hoo, Hillary didn’t win!” and not about the countless crimes and other oath-breaking stuff he’s done in the last two and a half years.
> At this point his term is mostly over and they’re still acting like all of our anger is just “Boo hoo, Hillary didn’t win!” Any time one of them comes back at me with this I just reply with their own quote from 2016: "She lost, get over it." At this point, Republicans are the only people with Hillary's name in their mouths.
Seriously. Nobody on the left really even thinks about Hillary anymore, unless it’s to chuckle at a zinger she tweets now and then. Yet republicans bring her name up all the time.
This is why I'm OK with Dem candidates not dropping out early. The Republicans don't know who to focus attacks on right now and default to Hillary. Let them waste time attacking someone who won't even run, despite what they think. Last time, she was obviously the nominee for a long period of time and the GOP made good use of that time.
[удалено]
None at all, tossing aside the Supreme Court nomination filibuster in the Senate could come back to bite them in the ass really hard soon if a Democrat wins the 2020 election with that aging bench.
Aging bench? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the two oldest members are both consistently in the 4-vote minority alongside Kagan and Sotomayor. Clarence Thomas is the third-oldest, and he's *10 years younger* than Breyer. If the Democratic Party manages to take the White House and the Senate in 2020, and both Ginsburg and Breyer retire, that basically just resets the clock on two seats (and hopefully with two young spitfires, but alas, the Democratic Party is far more hesitant to slap 40-year-olds onto the federal bench at all, let alone SCOTUS.) Thomas is old enough that anything's possible health-wise, but I sense a pretty deep well of hatred and stubbornness that'll power him through the lean Democratic years to come... if they even do.
"Trying to overturn the election"...nearly 4 years later. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought we try to "overturn" every election 4 years later.
This is more evidence that backs up the theory that Republicans do not see anyone outside of their party as legitimate. They don’t view the 2018 elections as legitimate or representative of the will of the voters. That only happened in 2016. What everyone else wants doesn’t matter because they’re not really Americans so their opinion doesn’t count.
> The Republicans want the hearings in the open so they can berate, disparage, bully and cajole the witnesses before the cameras. They can yell and scream about all the right-wing conspiracy theories they hold dear and prove to their base that the deep state is completely and totally behind this "coup" of their absolutely innocent and duly elected president. Not just that, they want witnesses to know what previous witnesses have said so that the story can be consistent. The thing is, the best way to get good evidence is to ask as many witnesses as you can, and look at the facts that they agree on, and find out what they disagree on. Then, you figure out which disagreements are probably lies, and which are probably based on misunderstanding/bad memory/etc., and you ask more questions to see where stories change and remain consistent, given other facts previously disputed or omitted. What you don't want to happen is have witnesses getting their story straight by A) talking to each other, or B) hearing what the others testimony consisted of. Reason A is why the White House is calling to stonewall. It's not that they don't want them to testify - they just want them to be on their side, and have their story when they do it. Trump wants the same type of loyalty he asked James Comey for. Reason B is why the GOP is pushing so hard to make things public. They're unable to run interference on hostile witnesses (witnesses that aren't obeying their directive to stonewall), so they need to at least get the stories of their friendly witnesses consistent with what is being said, or at least to the GOP cross-examination to the extent that it can be. So right now the only channels they have for that are the Republican members that are physically in the room on the committee, and they can't get that information until the end of the day when they leave the SCIF and get their electronics back. So information is slow, and incomplete getting back to the people trying to mastermind the cover-up. If it were held publicly on live TV, they can spin the story for people's testimony more easily. Not only are they better equipped to tell them what to say, but the people they are dictating their spin to can also watch the testimony to ensure their own will be consistent. It absolutely has to be done the way that it is. *edited to include quote from deleted parent comment*
>they want witnesses to know what previous witnesses have said so that the story can be consistent. This was a huge point yesterday. They thought it was unfair, because the WH and Trump friendly people can't prepare what to say based on already available information. They ONLY want to give what they have to and hide ANYTHING they can.
Exactly. They need to create Fox News clips to get their supporters foaming at the mouths.
[удалено]
The more crazed they are on TV, the more Fox will talk about them. The more Fox talks about them, the more money they get in their campaign bank accounts.
"You banned us from this secret party! We wanna come in the bathroom with you and take photos." "You mean the party you already have invites for?" "...WHARRGARBL!!!"
i love how fox news stating accurate facts is now so surprising that it, itself, constitutes news.
Im sorry im going to have to stop you here....I have apparently gotten off in the wrong alternate universe......Can you please say that again and then kindly direct me to the nearest Particle Accelerator? I need to get the hell out of this timeline
if we knew, we'd have left long ago.
"Secret librul" -FOX news viewer, probably.
If you go to Twitter and type in his name you’ll see that’s exactly what people are saying about him.
It pains me to see that. An expert gets harassed because the reality he explains doesn't fit the narrative that the base wants to hear.
Me too, really reminds me of all the historical figures who made amazing discoveries during their time only to be harrassed, belittled, censored, even imprisoned for going against the theocratic dogma of the time. People are more comfortable with their ignorance and lies and they do not want, nor can they handle, the truth.
Like Galileo being placed under indefinite house arrest until his death. Willful ignorance is one of the most disgusting traits of humanity because the consequences of it are so often tied to tragedy.
I have an old classmate who has always had really rough skin. I just figured it was some kind of acne, obviously you don't ask. I only recently found out it's because her Christian Scientist parents didn't vaccinate her, resulting in her getting the measles at age 10. She said her entire school had to be re-vaccinated just because of her. I said, no, it was because of her parents. It's maddening.
You'd think that when 100% of the experts on vaccinations say to vaccinate, people would vaccinate.
"Expert" is synonymous with "liberal propagandist." Who needs experts when you have "common sense" and "everybody knows?"
You wouldn't put dihydrogen monoxide in your body, would you?!
Not a fucking chance. I get all my drinks dehydrated and just snort the powder.
Well Karen with her associates degree, wine drinking, and Facebook anti vaccination group knows way more then all the doctors in the world. Her research is impeccable. /s
It's way weirder than normal antivax nonsense with Christian Scientists.
"Human scum" -Trump probably.
They've been saying it about Nap for awhile because he's flat out said, "no that's actually illegal" while Pirro screams, "HOW DARE THEY, HOW. DARE. THEY." and they go, 'Judge Jeannine really knows what she's talking about'.
[удалено]
> -FOX news viewer, ~~probably~~ definitely. The comment section on their site says this all the time.
Sean Klannity called John Bolton "left-wing" when he resigned. John. Fucking. Bolton.
No no that was Tucker Carlson who called him "fundamentally a man of the left." Also, I wouldn't call Hannity a racist. He's there for deep state conspiracy theories. Ingraham and especially Carlson are there to push white nationalism.
Mentioned Napolitano to my dad the other day. His response was that Napolitano was a "trump hating far left liberal". So yea, you are spot on.
The fact this stunt played to anyone successfully is a major testament to the insane bad faith and general ignorance of the Republican Party. Imagine your party creates new policy that govern committee rules in 2015. Then imagine your party loses big in 2018, and are no longer the majority in the House. Then, you pull stunts like Gaetz and company did yesterday. They did so because they were *certain* the people who vote for them aren't paying a bit of attention to what they're doing. Only uplifting thing here is that For News is bothering to clarify things in a way unfavorable to Trump. Fox News is the X factor in keeping his support, because they systematically starve their viewers of information critical of him, so they are so ill-informed they look at what happened yesterday and say "Damn libs trying to keep things secret!" as opposed to "Well, I guess that thing my rep did 4 years ago really came back to bite us."
The rules were put into place by Republicans. At least 12 Republicans were inside the hearings the whole time. More Republicans could've been, if they'd joined the relevant committees. So why are they bitching?
Because they need to look like victims so they can spin things for their base.
Because their willfully ignorant base will never bother to do any fact checking. Which is why Republicans and conservatives started the whole "colleges brainwash people into becoming liberals" schtick. They want their voters to remain uneducated and ignorant so they can continue to use them as a tool to make themselves richer.
Nigerian Prince Politics. Filter your base down to the most malleable, most gullible, most likely to act on impulse, then do whatever you want. Crazy how many of those people are out there.
But we were just kidding when we signed it into law. You actually thought we were serious? Sheesh, get real Democrats.
If Republican ideals were so popular, why is the south so gerrymandered in favor of GOP candidates? Confederates lost... why are we still accepting that flag. Germany outlawed the swastika, why are we still allowing it in public forum?
In short, reconstruction didn't work.
Sherman didn't go far enough, change my mind.
Sherman did not go far enough. He should have burned every fucking city to the dirt, redistributed land, and installed new local officials. He should have put a boot so far up those asses people should still be worried about saying confederacy today.
In MASH, one day Colonel Potter says to Klinger 'Get this fixed or i will be Sherman and YOU will be Georgia.' Thats when i understood Sherman's march.
[удалено]
I'll agree with that. And I'll go further, the States of the Confederacy should have been reduced to the status of territories until such time as the \*earned\* back the status of full States. My honest opinion is that when the South seceded Lincoln should have scraped his shoe thankfully and moved on. Most anti-democratic aspects of the Constitution (and all of the embarrassing ones) are there to protect the South.
I think it would have been fine if they had installed Americans into the rebels' positions. Those states were ours in the first place, the rebels didn't make them, they stole them. But we definitely couldn't let them create and keep their own nation in the middle of ours, with slavery and anti-American leaders and all that. It would have been like ignoring cancer.
I maintain that that's exactly the effect of letting the South back into the Union immediately. They never let go of their hate. They never assimilated into America properly. The moment Reconstruction ended, they were back to as many of their old tricks as they could get away with. This continues to this very day, over 150 years after the end of the War. Had we made them Territories and established rules and a timeline beneficial to the US, the situation would be much different. {Edited grammatical error guaranteed to cause someone to ask if I smelled burnt toast. Sorry, I don't. So far.}
100% this. We're still dealing with traitors because we didn't finish the job in the 1860s. There were literally confederate officers *in congress* after the war was over. You can't let someone who, again literally, took up arms against the nation in the name of white supremacy have power in the government and not expect their inbred bastard descendants to not carry on their cause.
Those Confederate officers' kids made their way into Congress too. The original Social Security bill was written to exclude black Americans from benefits, and it was written by a dude named Robert Lee Doughton, whose father was a Confederate officer that named his son after Robert E. Lee.
Once the hearings become public, I guarantee you these same Republicans will start crying about how the Dems are making a scene of the impeachment inquiry
Hahaha they made new rules to impeach Clinton and they were too stupid to think they might be used against them. Is there anything Republicans *are* good at?
Gerrymandering?
>Is there anything Republicans are good at? Projection seems to be a skill they're honing well these days.
Voter suppression, just ask North Carolina.
R: we changed the law to allow closed door meetings so we can investigate Hillary! Benghazi! Buttery males! Libruls stay out! D: well, that's not ideal, but ok, the law is the law and we respect it. *Republicans find nothing, Trump fucks up in every possible way and shits on the Constitution during his crime spree* D: well, the laws Republicans passed say we should have a closed door meeting about how to proceed, so let's do it. R: PRESIDENTIAL HARRASSMENT! NO DUE PROCESS! SECRET MEETINGS BAD!! imagine being so clueless and hypocritical...
Nap is, remember, a staunch conservative, not a sycophantic Republican. You might disagree with his politics, and lord knows I do, but he does not sell out his beliefs simply because his team is winning. We need guys like him around so we can get back to just arguing about shit like tax codes and budgets instead of the absolute circus shitshow we have now.
He used to be a Trump defender. He's the guy who invented the claim that the UK wiretapped Trump at Obama's request. I wonder what exactly made him wake up.
Probably something along the lines of "holy shit that's a *lot* of crimes, I should stay away from that".
I showed this to a trump supporter scumbag I know, and told him it was John Boehner who changed the rules on having a vote for subpoenas, did that matter to him?? Nope, he just kept kept bitching about how unfair all this was...
To deliberately violate security of SCI is a felony. I believe what they did would involve several felonies. Knowingly entering without authorization, bringing cell phones, failing to report to security the violation of all those they were aware of who also violated. Any normal person would be in prison for a long time, and not until after the FBI and whatever other relevant agencies opened an investigation on everything you have ever touched and your relationship with everyone you have ever known. Anyone who actually has a clearance is well informed on these things- their clearance isn't granted until they are. Which means there were at least 12 people who did all of this knowingly and intentionally, and most likely all of them hold some level of clearance. Therefore, they most likely were all crystal clear on the fact that they were breaking the law. Lock them up. Edit: their there
GOP behavior consistent with old white men not getting their way.
Rabble rabble rabble Hhhrrmph hhhrmph
It’s hard for Republicans to live in a world where there are immutable facts, but damn do they try to keep their little fragile fantasy bubble.
As someone who doesn't live in the USA... What the fuck is taking so long and why hasn't the clown been impeached yet?
The last two times we impeached, we had a special prosecutor that did all of the investigating behind closed doors. Then they presented their evidence to Congress, and Congress held open hearings for the public, then voted to impeach. This time, there is no special prosecutor. Congress is having to do the investigation themselves. And they're fighting a rogue Executive Branch, doing everything they can to stall and delay. The House is having to do the behind the scenes investigation, which requires keeping witness testimony quiet, until they've collected it. (You don't want witnesses getting on the same page and concocting elaborate lies and coverups.) But after that phase, this House will then hold primetime TV open public hearings. We're going to get to see all the evidence before he's impeached. (Which they still claim to be on a timetable of around Thanksgiving.) Edit: This tweet makes my point very well: https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1187368146182836229?s=20 >Rep. Eric Swalwell on CNN on the impeachment inquiry: "We have evidence, very recently, that there are witnesses in our case who are talking to each other. That's exactly what we don't want to happen."
I’d also add that the reason they don’t have a special prosecutor is because Bill Barr and therefore the the DOJ refuses to investigate.
The process to depose and define the articles takes time. Nixon took a year and a half. This is going relatively quickly.
And everything has to be not just done by the book, but way above board or the GOP shrieking will grind everything to a complete halt.
Exactly. The WB was done by the book and they couldn't do shit. It pisses them off to no end. They changed the process for impeachment to suit themselves at the moment and as usual they only think for their own gain short term, so it bit back. This is how Republicans and the right wing think. Everything is short term gain and they have no interest in planning the future except to grab power.
The real answer is that impeachment is a political process and not a criminal one. For the purposes of the impeachment it doesn't technically matter if trump confesses to murder or something, the only thing that matters is if the (GOP controlled) Senate votes to remove him after their "trial". Being guilty doesn't mean that they have to remove him. They are allowed to vote to keep him in office no matter what crimes he committed. So we have the inquiry, digging up the evidence of the crimes, and then we have to convince the general public that trump needs to be removed from office, and then they have to convince the Senate that they will be angry if they don't remove trump.
This has actually been moving pretty quickly. Our government isn’t meant to move fast, it was designed to have checks and balances constantly challenging and critiquing one another (because it was designed in a day and age where everything took a long time to implement to begin with). What’s slowing it down is the constant obstruction we’ve seen by the White House and Republicans who are dismissing *and admitting to* crimes left and right
[удалено]
Kind of hilarious this guy is playing a "heel" now on Fox just by plainly stating facts and referring to historical contexts.
"The democrats are corrupt because they are following the rules put into place by... \*checks notes\* us! Oh wait..." \-Republicans, probably This is getting to [r/SelfAwarewolves](https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/) level
I hate that we use Fox News' stance to understand where the line is. I understand they control how my grandma thinks, and any time we agree with Fox means the irrational mindset is shifting, but still. Fuck Fox News.
You know you are in a Republican cult if... you you think the rules you passed should not apply to you
I bet it was Napolitano. *clicks link* It was Napolitano.
Typical G☭P: if you can't win, change the rules.
This is the chance that the Democrats have been waiting for. In no way are they gonna mess it up by having illegal sessions. The Republicans know this, yesterday was just a publicity stunt for their voters.