Manchin has never voted against his caucus when his vote would have been determinative in the passing or defeating a bill.
He represents West Virginia for Christ’s sake. I wish we had GOP senators as willing to support the rule of law.
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As vile a creature as Trump is, it’s true that he would not have been able to do anywhere near as much damage if McConnell had been a true patriot and acted in good faith for the benefit of the country.
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In an honest Senate, with a patriotic Majority Leader, I believe neither of those men would have been confirmed to the positions that gave them the power.
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I would say that the combination of Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff can show the world what bravery and competence look like.
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Of course we deserve him. We are a republic and a democracy and trumPP’s an aberrant figure in the history of our country. He too shall pass.
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I’m gonna go all California chauvinist just to say remember where they’re from.
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I’d like more like this, and a reminder from George Conway that the trial is missing its most important witness, namely donald jenius trumPP, and hopefully his absence will also be featured when 2020 campaign against him gets hot and heavy.
the best case for calling him has been established by an argument advanced by the president’s own lawyers. Trump’s testimony is actually pertinent for precisely the reason the Bidens’ testimony is not.
Trump’s lawyers contend that a president should not be impeached and removed for making a bona fide policy judgment, whether or not that judgment turns out to be misguided or wrong. On that point, they’re absolutely right. If a president makes a reasoned decision about what best serves the nation’s interests, even if he turns out to be wrong, he has committed no impeachable offense. The Framers didn’t intend, through impeachment, to transform such policy disputes or mistakes into high crimes.
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Yes. Although the other day a few of us here bragged that, while many of the most stellar members of both houses were our own, we still have to admit that Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy are ours, too. I come from a large family myself, and it’s much the same – along with some really good people, we’ve got our share of crooks and village idiots.
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As smarter people than I have pointed, out the Constitution is very light on details in laying out when, why and how to impeach. We have Alexander Hamilton’s words, but they’ve been dismissed and ignored by those who have a stake in keeping djt in office.
There’s much guess work in play, but whatever is written (in a foreign language as djt has said), the spirit must be adhered to as much as possible. There’s not even an attempt to do that with Mitch at the helm and willing flunkies standing behind him.
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The difference is left coast of the state versus inland. Look at a political rendering of the CA map you see blue all along the left coast. Go inland it’s all red where McCarthy and Nunes come from. It’s like that in a lot of states.
Kevin McCarthy is ruthless but he doesn’t bring any smarts to the table. Just the ability to say whatever’s necessary to please trumPP. Nunes? Meh.
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Is Faux focusing on what the repubs don’t like about what Schiff said, with so many going ballistic, which was a reference to what repubs themselves said about a “head on a pike”?
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FIFY
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I know. In my own family, many of them live in those bright red areas, and they enthusiastically support their representatives. I always like, though, how it pains them to know that their numbers aren’t large enough to oust our senators. And even though McCarthy and Nunes don’t exhibit any brain-power, they are still allowed access to microphones for the minions.
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Trump is just one subhuman. They are terrorized by the apparatus this gangster and the mob this demagogue has not created but harnessed. I think they’ve got the ringside seat to the abyss they’ve opened over the recent decades, realize the country as a democratic republic is ended, and the risk/reward tradeoff is now no longer merely political, but absolute. Trotsky and Beria whisper to them.
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At Davos, the economic leaders of the world talked and made deals with each other re: the best way to approach all the trade changes with Brexit. trump first made some kind of drooley, slurred speech while everyone looked at him and thought “he’s impeached, he doesn’t count”. trump went home and they made deals without us, like they have been doing since he was elected. Personally I doubt we will ever recover to any degree from the economic damage he’s inflicted. Most of those deals included currency not the petro-dollar.
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Nitpick: the Nixon (via Ms. Chennault) and Regan (highly likely but not quite confirmed) campaigns both interfered in foreign policy prior to their elections. Notably, even those efforts were aimed at influencing the conduct of the foreign powers themselves rather than soliciting direct interference in the US campaign, as Trump has now done twice
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I have no doubt myself that it’s bad and probably long-lasting. The soybean market in China, that’s a disaster. You can have a hot war with someone and patch things up surprisingly quickly. But this economic stuff, you mess up there and it’s long-term pain. Trump’s problem is that even if he weren’t hell-bent on smashing the alliance system and the interconnected world, even if he were an amiable and cooperative person, he’s so god-damn dumb and ignorant he’d give away the store and just stumble around screwing everything up anyway. I’ve gotten in the habit of quoting Barack, after meeting him: “He knows absolutely nothing.” That’s unhelpful in these macroeconomic negotiations.
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If you’re a snake, you go where there’s mice.
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He shouldn’t be upset. They’ve got TVs in all the bars.
This is 50 years of careful cultivation after Vietnam, MLK, Watergate and Roe v Wade. They’ve built it to last, and don’t intend to let go.