Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[Professor Tiger]

Daaang, sounds like John McCain is really pissed at Trump.

We're going to lose the House, lose the Senate, and lose a bunch of states because of him. All his supporters will blame us for what we have or have not done...

Yes, we will.

[bluetick]

Word has it the unnamed congressman is Peter King R-NY

[Professor Tiger]

The views expressed by the congressman are shared by the never-Trump wing of the GOP, and there are a lot of them. Those words could just as well have have used by McCain, Graham, Corker, McConnell, Ryan, Sasse, Flake and countless others. Not exactly “THIS IS IT” worthy.

By the way, a lot of them will be back in the private sector in 2020, and Trump supporters will be instrumental in putting them there. Good riddance to them all. This is a good moment to remind everyone that these are precisely the type of RINO’s whose spineless governance led to the election of Trump in the first place. Trump supporters detest them more than Leftists.

[Cletus]

Love the caption.

[Jungle Rat]

Trump won't finish his first term.

[Cletus]

I hope he dies.

[hedge]

Trump is the best thing that has happened for liberals in a long time. I kinda hope he doesn't get run off, esp. if there's a dem sweep in the midterms. Just let him keep bumbling along and galvanizing the left into action. On the downside, I doubt the market is going to react favorably (to say the least) if the dems take over congress, but of course there are easy ways to profit handsomely from that eventuality...

[Cletus]

But, he's terrible for the country (world, actually). We're all better off if he just drops dead.

[hedge]

That would be better than if the dems force him out, although there's generally a wave of sympathy when somebody dies. Maybe not from you (or me, for that matter) but from the average person who doesn't really support Trump but doesn't really hate him either. But if Trump is forced out (unless it's for something for which even Prof would agree he had to go, which offense, come to think about it, may not exist), it will just galvanize his loony supporters in the same fashion that he himself has galvanized the left. I say let the people decide. I think they'll decide against Trump on their own and according to our democratic process.

[Professor Tiger]

Cletus = TDS.
hedge = non-TDS.

[hedge]

You're right, I have no delusions about Trump. I don't think he ever wanted to be president or thought he had a chance in hell of being president, he just wanted publicity. But by some miracle he got swept into office and couldn't refuse it. The only area I might be in disagreement with Cletus about this administration is that I believe Mike Pence might possible be far worse for the country than Trump. At least Trump is an atheist, maybe our first atheist president. But he's not an atheist on principle, he's just an atheist b/c believing in god would require at least some moral circumspection and, certainly in his case, moral approbation, and he doesn't have time for that bullshit. But I'd rather have a lazy atheist in office than a flaming religious nutbag like Mike Pence, who I'm sure believes in speaking in tongues and all manner of pre-kindergarten horseshit, and does not believe in civil rights for anyone who doesn't fall in line with his brand of orthodoxy. Either way, I believe that we're going to be done with both of these bozos soon enough (not soon enough for some, but soon enough for me) and the republic will have survived and hopefully will be strengthened...

[Professor Tiger]

At least you are willing to let the Democratic process work. I respect that. A lot of your comrades are not so willing. I never thought I’d see the day when the GOP hatred for Obama would be exceeded, but I have. As much as I disagreed with Obama’s policies, I never hated the man. I still think he is a good and decent man. I never heard the most rabid Obama haters around here say, “I want Obama to drop dead.” Much of the Left has become so consumed by visceral rage that they can’t wait to defeat Trump at the ballot box, like grown up’s, but must conduct a coups d’etat today.

You wondered if there is a case when I would drop Trump. There are. Criminally, I will dump Trump if somebody - anybody - produces compelling empirical evidence that he has committed serious crimes while in office, and they go through the Constitutional process of impeachment and removal. That is not too much to ask. And so far, they haven’t come anywhere close to meeting that very reasonable standard.

Politically, there are plenty of things Trump could do that would cause Trump supporters to drop him like a hot potato tomorrow. And he has already come perilously close to crossing that line three times that I can think of:

1. His #1 campaign promise was to build the Wall. He will get credit from his supporters if he appears to be fighting for the Wall, even if he fails in the sincere attempt. When he signed that spending bill, which did very little to get the Wall built, that was a big red flag to his supporters. If he is no longer perceived as fighting for the Wall, he is done.

2. The spending bill he just signed was an abomination to most of his supporters. It could have been written by the editorial board of dailykos. Yet is was passed by a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and signed by Trump, a Republican President. His base is used to being routinely sold out by Republican legislators. (We will take our revenge on them on 2020.) But Trump was supposed to stop that pattern, but he didn’t. The closest he has come to losing me so far was when Chuck Schumer stood up and bragged about how much their side got from the spending bill that The Donald had just made law.

3. After the Vegas shootings, for about five minutes, he sounded quite open to gun control, and all the bogus illogical presumptions behind it. He bragged about his putting LaPierre and the NRA in their place. The second closest I have come to dumping him was when he said, “It is time.” If he ever agrees to enact more gun control, he’s done.

[Cletus]

You're right, I have no delusions about Trump. I don't think he ever wanted to be president or thought he had a chance in hell of being president, he just wanted publicity. But by some miracle he got swept into office and couldn't refuse it. The only area I might be in disagreement with Cletus about this administration is that I believe Mike Pence might possible be far worse for the country than Trump. At least Trump is an atheist, maybe our first atheist president. But he's not an atheist on principle, he's just an atheist b/c believing in god would require at least some moral circumspection and, certainly in his case, moral approbation, and he doesn't have time for that bullshit. But I'd rather have a lazy atheist in office than a flaming religious nutbag like Mike Pence, who I'm sure believes in speaking in tongues and all manner of pre-kindergarten horseshit, and does not believe in civil rights for anyone who doesn't fall in line with his brand of orthodoxy. Either way, I believe that we're going to be done with both of these bozos soon enough (not soon enough for some, but soon enough for me) and the republic will have survived and hopefully will be strengthened...

One of the interesting byproducts of Trump's historic incompetence is this reframing of Mike Pence as some sort of political genius. He's a bumbling idiot, too, but has a better filter than Trump.

[hedge]

"You wondered if there is a case when I would drop Trump. There are. Criminally, I will dump Trump if somebody - anybody - produces compelling empirical evidence that he has committed serious crimes while in office, and they go through the Constitutional process of impeachment and removal. That is not too much to ask. And so far, they haven’t come anywhere close to meeting that very reasonable standard."

Actually, the bar for impeachment is far, far lower than committing serious crimes in office. I think the wording is "high crimes and misdemeanors" and there is other wording that would imply that it doesn't even have to be a misdemeanor. I saw an interesting episode of Firing Line where Buckley was interviewing Ann Coulter (I could recall her name just now so I googled "blond bitch neocon" and she was the first name that came up), this was in the mid-90's and she was keen on getting Bill Clinton impeached, the list of things she came up with as impeachable offenses was so inclusive that I doubt there were more than a couple of dozen people in America qualified to be president according to her standards. Of course, I'm sure she's changed her tune now, but you should check out that episode to get an idea of what she thought qualified as an impeachable offence when Clinton was in office. Even Buckley was visibly skeptical (to say the least)...

[hedge]

I haven't seen anything anywhere that suggested Mike Pence was any kind of genius, political or otherwise. I think he is scarier than Trump b/c I suspect he might could actually get some of his bullshit evangelical agenda enacted. Not after the midterms, though...

[Jungle Rat]

Trump is a dumpster fire

[hedge]

I actually posted this in here last year, her whole point so far is that impeachment comes (or should come) far before any criminal case, it's there to ensure that people in high office maintain a standard of virtue commensurate with that office. She also mentions "lying to the American people." So Prof, do you think that simply lying to the America people is an impeachable offense? Do you think Trump has lied to the American people, about anything? Now then, I certainly don't think Trump or anybody else should be impeached for lying about, say, an extramarital affair, but it is interesting to hear Ann Coulter advocating just that. But again, that was when Bill Clinton was president....

[youtube]YbmAROJMswU[/youtube]

[hedge]

From wikipedia entry on high crimes and misdemeanors: "Benjamin Franklin asserted that the power of impeachment and removal was necessary for those times when the Executive "rendered himself obnoxious."" There can be little doubt that Trump has achieved that...

[aTm]

Impeachment brings charges of "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

"Other high crimes and misdemeanors" is solely defined by Congress and is therefore PURELY political. An impeachable offense is basically whatever Congress decides it is. So if a majority of the House decided that being an insufferable asshole with bad hair and an orange face was an impeachable offense just on its own, they could impeach Trump and remove him from office just like that.

Frankly, I am against ever impeaching a President without some kind of real criminal act or true heinous action, because once you get team red and team blue opening up that bottle and removing the other side's President for whatever fucking whims they have...the democratic process of picking a president by election ceases to exist. The last three and I guess four, since Clinton actually was impeached, have been HATED by the opposite team, its getting worse not better. Removing a President of one team just means that next time the other team gains the House of Reps, that team is gonna do it too because "the other side did it first!" And the merry-go-round of election=>impeachment=>election=>impeachment will begin.

Nobody should be for impeachment as a political expedience for removing the President, IMO it leads to the downfall and alteration of the Constitution by the time the ramifications play out.

[Professor Tiger]

"Other high crimes and misdemeanors" is solely defined by Congress and is therefore PURELY political. An impeachable offense is basically whatever Congress decides it is. So if a majority of the House decided that being an insufferable asshole with bad hair and an orange face was an impeachable offense just on its own, they could impeach Trump and remove him from office just like that.

Correct.
A week after the Dem's take the House in 2020, Maxine Waters will lead the charge to impeach Trump for the following "high crimes and misdemeanors:"

Having bad hair
Having orange skin
Having small hands
Being an unrepentant heterosexual white male
Being arrogant
Using profanity
Overstating the size of his inauguration day crowd
Doubting AGW
Withdrawing from the Paris Accords
Pulling out of TPP
Arresting illegal aliens
Attempting to build a Wall
Approving Keystone pipeline
Drilling in ANWAR
Approving fracking
Dramatically reducing EPA regulations
Dramatically reducing ALL government regulations
Appointing a conservative SCOTUS judge
Appointing a lot of other conservative federal judges
Destroying ISIS
Bringing Kim Jung Un to the negotiating table
Threatening to scrap the Iranian nuke deal
Cutting taxes
Significantly increasing GDP
Significantly increasing the stock market value
Significantly increasing business profits and wages for middle class workers
Reducing unemployment
Reducing black unemployment to its lowest level in history
Refusing to spend trillions on reparations
Refusing to enforce a national transvestite-friendly bathroom policy
Refusing to arrest Christian bakers and florists who don't want to do do gay marriages
Refusing to kneel for the national Anthem at NFL games
Having extramarital affairs and paying hookers 17 years before he became President and lying about it
Having a son who once had a meeting with Russian lawyers
Accusing the FBI of spying on him in Trump Towers and being proven right
Briefly employing a campaign manager who had done shady business deals in Ukraine before Trump hired him
Employing a retired General who once talked with a Russian ambassador
Employing a Coffee Boy who colluded with a former Maltese Ag Minister, and who possibly sold America's national secrets on decaf.
Objecting to the FBI seizing his confidential and legally protected files from his lawyer's office
Refusing to ban and confiscate all guns
Failing to committing suicide
Saying and tweeting stuff Democrats don't like
And, worst of all, driving his golf cart on a putting green at a golf course he owns! (Oh the humanity!)

Wow, that's quite a hefty bill of bill of attainder. With charges like that, we should just skip the whole legal process and send Trump to Gitmo right now for waterboarding.