They’re all gonna make us eat that shit sandwich come hell or high water.
Sadly Robert’s Rules of Procedure or something like them govern committee hearings and therefore the chair must allow the other side to have their say irrespective if what they dote on is bullshit. Which it was. And speaking of an “iron fist” (nice analogy there btw) I am pretty sure that Schiff woulda kicked the GOPers in the groin if it was allowed under the rules. There is no love lost between Schiff and Nunes.
I believe Schiff’s intention was to build a case brick by brick and in that regard he succeeded admirably. Another brick in the wall. Sadly I think some act that is so far beyond the pale that GOPers cannot avoid it is what’s needed to get trump gone. Like holding a barbecue for his friends and they grill an baby. Or being caught on video snorting cocaine off the surface of the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. I really do not know what the GOP limit is but it must be truly epic. For me it is simply that trump had repeatedly broken his oath of office, trampled under foot the Constitution, and broken a whole string of felony level laws that if any other citizen had done any they’d be in the hoosegow for years.
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Q1) do you think that the hearings were run well? If not and considering the subject, what do you think could have made em better?
Q2) please grade Chairman Schiff’s leadership or performance?
Q3) do you believe that’s is the only thing that happened?
Q4) what do you think should have been the punishment, if the ranking member and his fellow Republicans kept it?
Q5) Do you think that a boost (large or modest) would have happened, if Schiff had ran the hearings with a tighter grip?
Q6) do you believe that the testimony failed to do that?
Q7) Would you have been satisfied, if the Republicans had lil or nothing to say about the hearings?
Q8) will a possible Senate trial lead to a Trump conviction? If not, is it the House Democratic leadership’s fault that it didn’t?
two points
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the House passed a resolution changing the usual procedures – and it was (and is) within its power to pass restrictions regarding witness testimony during impeachment proceedings. (if such changes were passed, I would include a provision requiring that each member get five minutes after the witnesses have been excused to bloviate however they wanted to).
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The committee itself can pass its own rules. You didn’t need a house resolution to make that 45 minute period of staff questioning a reality. The Judiciary Committee did the same thing on its own-- except that it (stupidly) put staff questions at the end of the hearing.
that was doubtless his intent.
Just as Trump has an intent with his border wall. The problem is that the existence of a wall doesn’t stop stuff from getting over, under, around, or through that wall.
And the same with Schiff’s wall. He’s building a nice solid wall, while the GOP are digging tunnels to undermine it, finding ways to go around it, etc…and generally making his nice big wall irrelevant.
exactly. which is why our response must be just as epic, but of higher quality.
The GOP is showing the country Kevin Costner’s Waterworld.
We need to show George Miller’s The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2)
Why not flesh this out and make it an op ed?
Yes. That’s exactly my point. But Americans-and, somehow, journalists-only think it happens in movies or novels and thus think this very common and, in a real sense, ordinary thing can’t possibly explain behavior that is perfectly explained by it.
When the GOP loses this stranglehold you speak of, and eventually they will, they will find they don’t have the America they thought they had. They will have destroyed it lock, stock and barrel. This may not happen in my lifetime. The demographic shifts are still happening. At least here in AZ they are. And we certainly have the radicalization of which you speak.This “radicalization” was on full display by Nunes these last two weeks in which he parroted again and again the Russian disinformation word for word that “Hey it’s all Ukraine’s fault…we Russians are innocent victims of your bad and nasty intelligence services”
I can easily imagine trump losing the election and yet refusing to leave the White House. He would still be defended by his minions in Congress. He may even try to call out the military to defend himself.
I hope the voters have the good sense to send a blue tsunami trump’s way so there is no doubt.
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What we need to find out and know if Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley had any type of contacts when they took a trip overseas like Devin Nunes had with a dirt finding mission. some of these Republican Senators are knee deep in this Ukraine scandal.
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No doubt they’ll keep demanding documents in the fashion of Benghazi until they find something, anything, no matter how tangentially related to their talking points, then they’ll proudly wave them in the air and say “See! We told you the Dems were crooked all along!”
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Just like Dear Leader only hits holes in one.
It was all the confusion and follow-up questions about timelines and whether something was said in a tweet or email or text message and who else was there and heard about it in real time. I hope to Dog that the Dems when they construct their timeline of all the events of this shakedown that they include all the details about those things with annotations to specific testimony and documents that the GOP can’t challenge on factual grounds.
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I agree, but I don’t think Swalwell was designated the attack dog – I think he was just unwilling to play the passive role in response to GOP attacks that Pelosi wanted the rest of the committee to play. Had Swalwell been assigned that role, you would have seen a lot more members “yielding” two or three minutes to Swalwell to respond to GOP disinformation.
Propaganda, rumor, urban legend, disinfo have been studied scientifically. It is hard to fight, but one thing the target(s) MUST do it to challenge them, to show how they are false. Can’t just sit there like chumps.
It does not change all minds, but does create doubt about what has been said. Like graffiti, it must be painted over within 48 hrs to discourage it.
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unfortunately, the Dem leadership is of the Kerry School of Disinformation Response — if you ignore it, it will go away.
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Which taints the Trump appointments to the Supreme Court.
And it can happen relatively fast. Armenia, Bahrain, Cambodia, China, Iran, Laos, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Vietnam; Azerbaijan, Belarus, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Turkey all qualify as authoritarian.
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Do you remember Tom Lehrer’s “-ly” song? Like that.
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McGovern did the same re his 35 missions, .Age 22. I could not find my ass with both hands at that age. May not have changed the outcome of the election, but it’s sad he did not even let surrogates defend him. Ditto for Kerry.
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It was a different time, a different era. The mention of religion by a politician was universally understood to be a retirement-from-politics statement. Religion was the last refuge of scoundrels.
Lotta scoundrels there now ; - )
“… Nunes these last two weeks in which he parroted again and again the Russian disinformation…”
Aiding and abetting, if not treason. Ditto for Zuckerberg, selling his “platform” to Russkie bots for 30 pieces of silver Dems must hammer this.