I am pretty certain this is the way the process works. The House conducts a formal investigation (gathering of evidence by various committees, hearings, etc.), Articles of Impeachment (i.e., charges) are proposed, and then the House votes on the Articles of Impeachment. All of that foreplay means that the story is strung out for months in the press and in the public, which is bad for tRump; if House Dems voted on Articles of Impeachment today like you want them to, it would all be over by next week when Putin’s Mitch refused to bring it up in the Senate, which would be good for tRump.
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Plus the whistleblower complaint was about more than one phone call. The House needs to see the complaint and interview the whistleblower.
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This sure beats the flowers and cupcakes I was going to give Mrs. Awiztherewas for her birthday today.
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Old Watergate counsel? Guess you didn’t see Dem counsel Barry Berke tear Lewandowski a new one the other day. Frankly, the piling on of Democrats and specifically Pelosi has to to stop, or it will be nothing but cyberspace screaming until trumpp’s out of office.
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We need to quit focusing on one phone call and its transcript. The Whistleblower complaint says it’s a systemic problem, not one phone call. That’s why we need to see the complaint, not just transcripts of that one call.
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Listening to Josh Marshall (or other Josh?) on NPR right now. Sitting in my car thinking about all the types of popcorn I like.
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It seems to be that this person heard numerous phone calls with even more sensitive info than we’ve been told about.
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Buckle up.
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Trump looks like he’s feeling pretty good this morning:
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I watched every moment of the Watergate hearings with all of the zeal an idealistic 22 year old could muster. There are huge differences between then and now. We are not going to be swayed by any folksy vocal stylings of southern Democrats, for one thing. And no one is going to come forward with as big of a bombshell as Butterfield did when he revealed the WH taping system. And we did not have a huge swath of the media ready to twist and subvert every single thing that was said during the hearings creating the constant “both sides do it” drum beat.
But that aside, if the Dems would let the pros do most of the Q&A and let people with real brains orchestrate the order and timing of the discovery on the different articles, this could be a devastating indictment of a man who is actually much, much more criminal than Richard Nixon. There is no lack of dirt - we just need really good people wielding the shovels.
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Oh, no, no, no, no, no…
The Flying Unicorn Brigade has assured us for months, now, that impeachment will be a cake walk.
The impeachment managers are gonna be welcomed as liberators.
It’s gonna be flowers and sweets, my friend, flowers and sweets!
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“Everyone who doesn’t agree with me hasn’t listened to enough of my arguments yet”
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Odds are it’s not the call that triggered the Whistleblower, rather it’s one chosen to give plausible deniability. Once we see it and go “meh”, they’ll try to move on to the next squirrel, but I don’t think that’ll fly this time around.
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I guess it really is Infrastructure Week.
And I was getting bored.
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Whistleblower is going to testify before Intel. Now the Senate intel wants in on the action. Mitch McConnell gave a diplomatic statement on the prospect of impeachment articles. No strong defense of Trump. Tellin’ you folks, Bolton stuck a blade in Trump and he’s bleeding out.
The chances of resignation are much, much higher. The leverage the GOP has is that Trump’s gonna rot in jail unless he takes the deal that Barr can work up.
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I agree with @littlegirlblue on turning Barry Berke loose. If he needs help, reach for the lawyers who worked with Mueller. Schiff, I think, got one for his committee. The impeachment inquiry will also include Mueller’s reports, as it shows similar prior bad acts.
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We’ll see if the end justifies the means.
I am so with you. Timing is everything, and even more importantly, an action easily understood as antithetical to American beliefs was needed. This example is clean, and easy to understand.
The 448 pages of Mr. Mueller only matter to those of us who read it, a vast minority, I know. It didn’t have the immediacy and the ability to be easily understood by the low information voters, or non political junkies in the country that this does.
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“If it’s what you say, I love it.”
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I did see Berke’s questioning. It was not incompetent, but it was not anything like great cross examination. Berks looked great by comparison to the Dem congresmen and women, but as an attorney examining a witness, he looked sloppy. (How many times did he flub the date of that video he was using in his questioning?) Dems need higher standards.
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