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The US Presidency 2020

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I am a Trump supporter and the legal folks stated that the House had called 17 witnesses and their testimony was accepted into the Senate record. Going into the trial the House managers claimed they had an open and shut case but then later whines that they wanted witnesses. The 2 articles of impeachment did not rise to the level required by the constitution. In effect there were no crimes cited. My guess the Democrats will do a lessons learned and refile their case. If they lose their Majority then this will be over. If they keep their Majority and get a Majority in the Senate then Trump will be out. Then they would go after Pence which would make Nancy President.  ::)
 
https://mobile.twitter.com/IlvesToomas/status/1223332141318189056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forumice.com%2Fthreads%2Fot-american-politics.65687%2Fpage-6011

Can't help but laugh.

Former president of Estonia from 2006-2016, toomas hendrik ilves



“Great! No more tedious US lectures on rule of law, fair trials, evidence, equality before the law, transparency, corruption, free and fair elections” — some 130 governments around the world right now.
 
Slightly different topic:

Farm Bankruptcies Soared 20% Amid Trump Trade War. It’s The Highest Rate In 8 Years.

Farmers hit hard despite billions of dollars in taxpayer aid to mitigate the harm from the president’s trade policies.
headshot
By Mary Papenfuss

As President Donald Trump cast himself as a friend of the farmer at an Iowa campaign rally Thursday, newly released data revealed the number of farms declaring bankruptcies surged by 20% in 2019 — the highest in eight years.

The American Farm Bureau attributed the figures, based on court bankruptcy data, to record farm debt and “headwinds on the trade front” triggered by Trump’s trade war.

Nearly 46% of the farm Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings last year were in the 13-state Midwest region, followed by 22% in the Southeast, according to the data. Among the hardest-hit states were Wisconsin and Georgia, as well as Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina and South Dakota.

Bankruptcies soared despite massive federal subsidies to mitigate the losses of the trade war. The $28 billion earmarked for farm aid based on the trade war is more than twice the total spent by the federal government to bail out the auto industry in 2009 — a program often blasted by Trump. The money is referred to as “Trump money” in some regions that were instrumental in putting Trump over the top in the 2016 presidential election. Nearly one-third of national farm income is now provided by taxpayer-funded direct aid and subsidies, which are at the highest level in 14 years, according to the Department of Agriculture.

“They’ve already given out $19 billion to farmers, but they’re cutting $5 billion from people in need,” Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, told NPR in December. “I don’t even know how to describe it except to say that it is cruel, it is unfair and it is clearly designed to support the president’s base.”

The only larger increase in farms bankruptcies in the last decade occurred in 2010, on the heels of the Great Recession, when they spiked 33%.
...

Read the rest here:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/farm-bankruptcies-trump-trade-war_n_5e34a2d6c5b69a19a4af1ad0

:cheers:
 
Fun fact.

According to Fox Business, the Trump impeachment proceedings have coast the US taxpayers $3.06 million.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/cost-trump-impeachment-taxpayers

That, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office is a little less than the $3.4 million that each of Trump's first four golf trips trip to Mar-A-Lago cost.

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/05/691684859/government-watchdog-trumps-trips-to-florida-costing-taxpayers-millions
https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/696512.pdf

:cheers:
 
Can someone dumb down whats happening with the impeachment for me?

Is this sort of whats going on?

Democrats bragged about having all this evidence about Trump and they're going to nail him to the wall in an open and shut impeachment case.
They held off on submitting the evidence for a while for some reason but finally released it/sent it?
The republicans are finding ways to screw with the process and it appears that Trump won't be found guilty of anything or, like our own PMs ethical violations nothings going to come of it.
If Trump beats the impeachment his already considerable ego will be death star proportions and galvanize him to keep on behaving how he's behaving. Anyone who hasn't displayed dog like loyalty should dust off their resume and start looking for a new job.
 
For reference,

Impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_inquiry_against_Donald_Trump

Impeachment of Donald Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Donald_Trump

Impeachment trial of Donald Trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_trial_of_Donald_Trump
 
Jarnhamar said:
Can someone dumb down whats happening with the impeachment for me?

Is this sort of whats going on?

Democrats bragged about having all this evidence about Trump and they're going to nail him to the wall in an open and shut impeachment case.
They held off on submitting the evidence for a while for some reason but finally released it/sent it?
The republicans are finding ways to screw with the process and it appears that Trump won't be found guilty of anything or, like our own PMs ethical violations nothings going to come of it.
If Trump beats the impeachment his already considerable ego will be death star proportions and galvanize him to keep on behaving how he's behaving. Anyone who hasn't displayed dog like loyalty should dust off their resume and start looking for a new job.

I'll try to sum it up best I can:

US Constitution allows for a sitting president to be impeached "for high crimes and misdemeanours". HC&M  is not defined; it's not like a criminal charge where you get specifically charged with 'assault' or 'fraud' or 'bestiality', or 'alarming the Queen' or some such. Rather, it's a concept that allows for all manner of potential misdeeds to be looked at. Impeachment means the House of Representatives votes 50%+1 to 'impeach', which then results in a trial in the senate. 2/3 majority in the senate is needed to remove a president from office. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court conducts the trial.

Donald Trump made it known to the president of Ukraine that a large sum of military aid would be withheld unless an anti-corruption investigation were conducted against Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, who Trump sees as one of his chief rivals from the Democrats. Basically he used US national influence for partisan political and electoral advantage. The facts on this are pretty strongly established at this point.

Impeachment is an inherently political exercise. In this case, senior Democrats in the House were resistant, as they (correctly) percevied there to be little chance that this would succeed in the senate. Nonetheless, as Trump's shenanigans vis a vis Ukraine came to light,t he push to begin proceedings basically couldn't be held off, and the House judiciary committee investigated, heard from witnesses, and returned two articles of impeachment, essentially alleging that Trump had 1) obstructed the investigation, and 2) had inappropriately wielded his executive influence in America's foreign affairs for personal electoral benefit. The House DID put together a very clear and strong case on the actual facts of the matter. Trump was offered the chance to testify in his defense or to submit to questions, at about the same time he was whining that he wasn't getting due process. He never did elect to offer his side, which is fine- that's his right. It just doens't jive with some of his complaints. Trump was impeached as a result of a vote in the House, which was to then send the matter to the Senate for trial.

Senators who are to take part in an impeachment trial swear an oath/affirmation to basically be impartial and to conduct a fair hearing. That notwithstanding, several prominent Republican senators from the Senate leadership affirmed before it started that they absolutely would not vote to impeach, and wanted the matter done as quickly as possible. The House democrats expressed consider about this (understandably) and also wanted it to be determined how the trial would actually proceed- there's no fixed rule book for this. Eventually after some political wrangling, Pelosi had the articles of impeachment sent to the Senate.

At about the time the matter went to the Senate, John Bolton, Trump's former National Security Advisor and a longtime republican, made it known that he had a manuscript written for a book that would substantiate some of the claims made by the prosecution, and would repudiate some of the defences. Much gnashing of teeth ensued. All the Democrats, and two of the Republicans in the senate wanted to call additional witnesses - there were none in the Senate hearings. To call witnesses would have required a straight majority vote in the senate, which was not achieved. Note that this is the first impeachment trial in the Senate including a few Presidents, and a number of other senior appointees such as judges, in which no witnesses have been permitted to be called.

Where that now leaves us is that this is all but done with. There will soon be a vote on the actual charges in the Senate, and it will result in Trump not being removed from office.

The two big questions were essentially 'Did he do it?' which is pretty much a resounding 'yes' including from some republicans, and 'Does 'it' meet the threshold of "high crimes and misdemeanours"?, which several republicans have said 'no it does not' despite conceding that he did the acts alleged. At the end of the day a preponderance of evidence has established that while Trump is corrupt (which we knew long ago), he is not sufficiently corrupt as to be tossed on his *** by his party in an election year, which we also knew. Nobody should be surprised that it played out this way.

At the low, low cost of probably 300 milpoints, that's about as tightly as I can sum it up.
 
Brad Sallows said:
A fitting response to the House majority, which tried to make the Senate do the House's job.

Au Contraire. The House did its job, its the Senate that didn't its duty.
 
>Democrats bragged about having all this evidence about Trump and they're going to nail him to the wall in an open and shut impeachment case.

The case for the charge alleging abuse of power is strong (that Trump wanted to withhold Congressionally-authorized aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate Burisma and the Bidens' involvement, and to investigate the discredited "Crowdstrike-Ukraine connection" theory).  The case for the charge alleging obstruction of Congress is meaningless (a party claiming an immunity from another party's power is not obstruction).

>They held off on submitting the evidence for a while for some reason but finally released it/sent it?

Specifically, the House delayed transmitting the articles of impeachment.  (There is one vote to impeach, and another to send the articles to the Senate; the latter was delayed.)  "Some reason" is supposedly that the Democrats wanted to pressure the Senate to adopt procedural rules to the Democrats' liking.  It was always an empty bluff.

>The republicans are finding ways to screw with the process

No.  Within the scope of the few rules imposed on either House or Senate, both essentially have wide latitude to set their own rules and procedures (the Senate more than the House).  It's vacuous to accuse someone of not following rules when they have power to set their own.

>Trump won't be found guilty of anything or, like our own PMs ethical violations nothings going to come of it.

"Nothing's going to come of it" is the more accurate description.  Senators are not obligated to vote for removal even if they believe the charges are proven; they can decide the conduct doesn't merit removal.  This won't be the first time: there was (and is) little doubt that Bill Clinton was guilty of perjury, but even some Republican senators declined to vote for removal.  Nor are Republicans likely to overlook something not much commented upon: removal of the president now would leave Republicans scrambling to put together their presidential campaign.  And of course, adopting the "let voters decide" stance is always safe.

>If Trump beats the impeachment his already considerable ego will be death star proportions and galvanize him to keep on behaving how he's behaving.

I don't see how it can be worse.

My view:

This was a deliberate misuse of impeachment to throw mud at the president (as was Clinton's impeachment).  Huge expectations were built up during the Mueller investigation and it ended with nothing of consequence after months of lies and misrepresentations.  Democrats needed to orchestrate a new situation to fight Trump's possible re-election by parading Trump's flaws.

The decision to undertake impeachment proceedings was a risk.  I still wonder if Pelosi regrets being rolled by Schiff into committing before all the subsequent events - starting with the release of the memo of telecon - which muddied the righteousness of the "whistleblower"'s complaint.  I suppose Democrats would have properly litigated the administration's claims of privilege if there was confirmation that Democrats were gaining political advantage, but polls were showing little if any damage to Trump and there was increasing likelihood of damage to the re-election prospects of Democrats in vulnerable districts.  Trying to move the litigation-and-testimony circus into Senate would solve that problem, but there was no leverage to do so.

The "obstruction of Congress" charge was a huge blunder - it sets a very low bar for future impeachments, and blackens the three past presidents (Obama, Bush, Clinton) and probably the two before them (Bush, Reagan) with the same brush (worse, actually, since the Trump administration's degree of co-operation with the Mueller investigation set a new high standard for compliance).  The indelible reputational smear is of no particular consequence, but the new impeachment standard is very consequential.  Any House majority not liking an administration's assertion of privileges and immunities can probably impeach in a week: Mon morning, a floor vote to begin; Mon afternoon and Tue to package up the requisite documents and draft the article; Wed and Thu for members to "consider"; Fri morning vote to impeach; Fri afternoon vote to transmit articles to Senate.  It'd be all done before the talking heads could even begin to write their "Wait, this time is different" talking-points explainers.

Another blunder was trying to change message from "we have an overwhelming case, and there's no time to delay voting for impeachment" in the House to "we need to take time to hear more testimony and obtain more documents" in the Senate.

The final blunder also relates to the attempt to have another testimony circus during the trial phase.  If Democrats hadn't tried to turn a trial into a fishing expedition (which is grossly unfair to a defendant), the argument to hear Bolton (new information directly relevant to one of the charges) might have been persuasive to moderate Republicans.
 
You anti-Trumpers, have no fear this was just impeachment 1.0 .They will try again. If they wait until the election they might pick up a majority in the Senate but of course they might lose their House majority.
 
Brihard,Brad, awesome. Thanks a lot for taking the time to explain all that.
 
tomahawk6 said:
You anti-Trumpers, have no fear this was just impeachment 1.0 .They will try again. If they wait until the election they might pick up a majority in the Senate but of course they might lose their House majority.

SAD.
 
FJAG said:
Makes you wonder though if Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren Harding and Franklin Pierce's supporters thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread or regretted their choice.  :dunno:

:cheers:

They all rank in the bottom ten.

But, the current occupant is ranked at the very bottom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States#Siena_College_Research_Institute,_Presidential_Expert_Poll_of_2018

Note: Grover Cleveland was elected to two non-consecutive terms, serving as both the 22nd and 24th President of the United States; he is the only person to have held the office in non-consecutive terms. Because Cleveland had two presidencies, the number of persons who have served as president is one less than the number of presidents in order of succession.
 
Not sure if this is the right place to post this or if the topic deserves it's own thread, so here goes:

Why Democrats share the blame for the rise of Donald Trump

Robert Reich

I was part of a Democratic administration that failed to fix a rigged system – I know our current president is a symptom of our disunion, not its only cause
...
But why are we so divided? We’re not fighting a hugely unpopular war on the scale of Vietnam. We’re not in a deep economic crisis like the Great Depression. Yes, we disagree about guns, gays, abortion and immigration, but we’ve disagreed about them for decades. Why are we so divided now?

Part of the answer is Trump himself. The Great Divider knows how to pit native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, whites against blacks and Latinos, evangelicals against secularists, keeping almost everyone stirred up by vilifying, disparaging, denouncing, defaming and accusing others of the worst. Trump thrives off disruption and division.

But that begs the question of why we have been so ready to be divided by Trump. The answer derives in large part from what has happened to wealth and power.

In the fall of 2015, I visited Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri and North Carolina, for a research project on the changing nature of work. I spoke with many of the people I had met 20 years before when I was secretary of labor, as well as with some of their grown children.

What I heard surprised me. Twenty years before, many said they’d been working hard and were frustrated they weren’t doing better. Now they were angry – angry at their employers, the government, Wall Street.

Many had lost jobs, savings, or homes in the Great Recession following the financial crisis of 2008, or knew others who had. Most were back in jobs but the jobs paid no more than they had two decades before, in terms of purchasing power.

I heard the term “rigged system” so often I began asking people what they meant. They spoke about flat wages, shrinking benefits, growing job insecurity. They talked about the bailout of Wall Street, political payoffs, insider deals, soaring CEO pay, and “crony capitalism”.

These complaints came from people who identified themselves as Republicans, Democrats and independents. A few had joined the Tea Party. A few had briefly been involved in the Occupy movement.

The 2016 rebellion is ongoing

With the 2016 political primaries looming, I asked which candidates they found most attractive. At the time, the leaders of the Democratic party favored Hillary Clinton and Republican leaders favored Jeb Bush. Yet no one I spoke with mentioned Clinton or Bush.

They talked instead about Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. When I asked why, they said Sanders or Trump would “shake things up” or “make the system work again” or “stop the corruption” or “end the rigging”.
...
Something very big had happened, and it wasn’t due to Sanders’ magnetism or Trump’s likeability. It was a rebellion against the establishment. That rebellion is still going on, although much of the establishment still denies it. They prefer to attribute Trump’s rise solely to racism.
...
Democrats did nothing to change a rigged system

Aided by Fox News and an army of rightwing outlets, Trump convinced many blue-collar workers feeling ignored by Washington that he was their champion. Clinton did not convince them that she was. Her decades of public service ended up being a negative, not a positive. She was indubitably part of the establishment, the epitome of decades of policies that left these blue-collar workers in the dust. (It’s notable that during the primaries, Sanders did far better than Clinton with blue-collar voters.)

Clinton and Obama chose not to wrest power back from the oligarchy. Why?

In the first two years of the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. Yet both Clinton and Obama advocated free trade agreements without providing millions of blue-collar workers who consequently lost their jobs any means of getting new ones that paid at least as well. Clinton pushed for Nafta and for China joining the World Trade Organization, and Obama sought to restore the “confidence” of Wall Street instead of completely overhauling the banking system.

There is no longer a left or right. There is no longer a moderate ‘center’

By 2016, Americans understood full well that wealth and power had moved to the top. Big money had rigged our politics. This was the premise of Sanders’s 2016 campaign. It was also central to Trump’s appeal – “I’m so rich I can’t be bought off” – although once elected he delivered everything big money wanted.

The most powerful force in American politics today continues to be anti-establishment fury at a rigged system. There is no longer a left or right. There’s no longer a moderate “center”. There’s either Trump’s authoritarian populism or democratic – small “d” – populism.

Democrats cannot defeat authoritarian populism without an agenda of radical democratic reform, an anti-establishment movement. Trump has harnessed the frustrations of at least 40% of America. Although he’s been a Trojan Horse for big corporations and the rich, giving them all they’ve wanted in tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks, the working class continues to believe he’s on their side.

Democrats must stand squarely on the side of democracy against oligarchy. They must form a unified coalition of people of all races, genders, sexualities and classes, and band together to unrig the system.

Trump is not the cause of our divided nation. He is the symptom of a rigged system that was already dividing us. It’s not enough to defeat him. We must reform the system that got us here in the first place, to ensure that no future politician will ever again imitate Trump’s authoritarian demagoguery.

Topics

See the full article here:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/01/donald-trump-impeachment-trial-state-of-the-union

:cheers:
 
Taxpayers Get $3.4 Million Tab So Trump Can Host Super Bowl Party For His Club Members
The president’s latest trip to his Palm Beach resort and nearby golf course brings the taxpayer-funded total for his golfing hobby to $130.4 million.
By S.V. Date

Taxpayers shelled out another $3.4 million to send President Donald Trump to Florida this weekend so he could host a Super Bowl party for paying guests at his for-profit golf course.

The president’s official schedule shows him spending two and a half hours Sunday evening at a “Super Bowl LIV watch party” at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Tickets sold for $75 each, but were only available to members of the club — the initiation fee for which reportedly runs about $450,000, with annual dues costing several thousands of dollars more.

“Well, obviously there are no TVs in the White House, so what alternative did he have?” quipped Robert Weissman, president of the liberal group Public Citizen. “He could have saved money by chartering a plane and flying club members to watch the game at the White House.”

In response to a query, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham defended Trump’s trip and attacked HuffPost: “The premise of your story is ridiculous and false, and just more left-wing media bias on display. The president never stops working, and that includes when he is at the Winter White House.”

Her phrase “Winter White House” refers to Mar-a-Lago, the for-profit resort in Palm Beach that is several miles east of the golf course and that doubled its initiation fee from $100,000 to $200,000 after Trump was elected in 2016. Trump frequently mingles with guests at social events there.

On Saturday, for example, Trump appeared at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago arranged by the “Trumpettes,” a group of his female supporters. The dinner did not appear on the president’s publicly released schedule, and in any case was a campaign event, not an “official” one.

When a pool reporter asked the White House on Saturday what work Trump did over the weekend, the reply was that he had calls and “meetings with staff.” The president did not attend a rally on Saturday for Venezuelan leader Juan Guaido, whom the United States and other governments have recognized as the legitimate president of that country. That rally began while Trump was still at his golf course, and attending it could have made him late for the start of the Trumpettes’ dinner.

Trump promised during his presidential campaign that he would separate himself from his businesses if he won. However, he reneged on that vow, as well as on his promise to release his tax returns.

On his most recent financial disclosure form, which was filed last May, Trump claimed he had received $12,325,355 in income from the West Palm Beach golf course over the previous year. It’s unclear how accurate that is, given Trump’s tendency to file widely varying figures to different government authorities.

He told the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in his 2018 financial disclosure, for example, that his Scotland golf courses are worth more than $50 million each, even as he told authorities in the United Kingdom that they had a combined net debt of $65 million.

In any event, money spent at Trump hotels and golf courses flows directly to the president, as he is the sole beneficiary of a trust that now owns his family business. U.S. taxpayers have been the source of at least a few million dollars that have gone to the Trump Organization in the form of hotel rooms, meals and other expenses for Secret Service agents and other government employees who have stayed on-site with Trump in Florida, New Jersey, Scotland and Ireland.

“When Donald Trump announced that he would break decades of precedent and hold onto his business, many were afraid it was to find ways to keep making money on the side of his work as president,” said Jordan Libowitz with the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Turns out the presidency is more like a thing he does on the side to help make money for his business.”

This weekend’s trip to Mar-a-Lago was Trump’s 28th to the property since becoming president. Saturday’s and Sunday’s golf outings at the West Palm Beach club brings his total to 79 days there since taking office and 244 total golf days at properties that he owns.

Taxpayers’ total tab for his golf hobby, meanwhile, climbed to $130.4 million.


That figure and the $3.4 million for each Mar-a-Lago trip are based on a HuffPost analysis that included the costs of Air Force transportation, Coast Guard patrols, Secret Service security and other expenses, as detailed in a January 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office of Trump’s first four visits to Mar-a-Lago in early 2017.

Trump frequently criticized former President Barack Obama for golfing too much and promised during his campaign that he would be too busy to take any vacations at all, let alone play golf. Instead, he is on pace to play more than twice as much golf as Obama did ― at a cost three times that of Obama’s, because he insists on playing so many rounds at his courses in Florida and New Jersey, which require expensive flights on Air Force One. Obama mostly played golf at military bases within a short drive of the White House.

“Trump is and always has been a con man. In 2016, he said that, unlike Obama, he’d never golf and he’d never take personal trips outside the White House,” said former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), who is challenging Trump for the 2020 Republican nomination. “In addition, Trump is using taxpayer money to personally enrich himself because virtually all of his travel is to Trump properties. That is the swamp Trump pledged to drain. Trump is the swamp.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-super-bowl_n_5e3734edc5b611ac94d6b545

:cheers:
 
FJAG said:
Hey Fishbone Jones. Not sure what it was about the last post that drew your ire and merited a -300 Milpoints but I'm sure this one will draw your attention too.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-super-bowl_n_5e3734edc5b611ac94d6b545

:cheers:
If there is issue with being docked or added milpoints, PM the member involved. Calling someone out in public is just going to drag the discourse down to a level we've been working hard to get rid of.

- Milnet.ca Staff
 
Related to FJAG's post,


Jan 09, 2020

White House Says It’s Happy to Disclose Secret Service Spending on the Trump Clan—After the Election

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/trump-secret-service-cost-mar-a-lago-bedminster-golf-travel.html
 
Nobody has any comment?  None?

My only comment over the last few days: I don't think anybody is going to take the high road any time soon...
 
Baz said:
Nobody has any comment?  None?

What's to comment? It was a mathematical certainty,

The 48 Senators who found Trump GUILTY represent 18 million MORE people than the 52 who voted not guilty.
https://twitter.com/Lawrence/status/1225172773707952130


 
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