The endless stream of bad news

[_EAllusion]

Roger Stone's sentence has been commuted hours after Roger Stone appealed for a commutation for not turning on Trump and there is another purge occurring in the DoJ to allow the AG to takeover an investigation into Trumpworld.

There was a time in when this would've produced an ocean of protest, but constant assault on the rule of law tends to grind people down if the opposition party with real power just lays down.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Yeesh. I think it's asking a lot of the nation to protest more than one or two things at a time. I wouldn't even begin to know how to get young people to care enough about Trump's soft coup and malfeasance to take to the streets like they've done for BLM and, well, BLM. Both issues are important, and I'd argue what's happening within the Executive branch is existentially more pressing.

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

Over the course of American history, commuting/pardon powers have done far more good than harm, but also exist as a giant Constitutional loophole to dictatorial powers once impeachment is a dead-letter. That makes it hard to know how to respond to arguments to curtail the pardon power.

[_EAllusion]

Yeesh. I think it's asking a lot of the nation to protest more than one or two things at a time. I wouldn't even begin to know how to get young people to care enough about Trump's soft coup and malfeasance to take to the streets like they've done for BLM and, well, BLM. Both issues are important, and I'd argue what's happening within the Executive branch is existentially more pressing.

- Doc

I think the energy is there, but it needs to be coordinated by opposition political leaders. Joe Biden would have to tell them to take to the streets. One of the reasons that BLM can exist as a massive protest movement is because there's a sense that both parties are failing, so there's no leadership to represent them. Gotta take matters into your own hands and become the change you seek. On the issue of Trump malfeasance, Democrats in Congress are supposed to be there fighting it. Their opposition is extremely tepid, but nominally there. Once people think there's a party on their side, they tend to defer to its machinations. You don't get travel ban protests because Democrats in Congress are supposed to be the travel ban protest. It's the same reason why a massive anti-war movement died almost immediately when Obama became President even though Obama continued on with the very things they were upset about. Enough of them saw Obama's victory as their victory to diffuse their energy.

[_EAllusion]

A simple thing here is Trump should be impeached again. This is textbook impeachment material. And when Republican Senators cover for his corruption and assault on the rule of law, then clearly and loudly let people know that it's up to them as institutions have failed.

[_EAllusion]

Nancy Pelosi's offered solution, for what it is worth, is to pass a symbolic, unconstitutional bill that won't become law. Peak Nancy Pelosiness there.

[_Jersey Girl]

A simple thing here is Trump should be impeached again. This is textbook impeachment material. And when Republican Senators cover for his corruption and assault on the rule of law, then clearly and loudly let people know that it's up to them as institutions have failed.

I asked about another impeachment here not long ago. Don't recall what the response was or if I ever got one at all. What about his negligence re: pandemic? Is fanning the flames of a public health crisis and doing nothing to tamp it down while lying about it also impeachable? He's also threatening to pull fed funding from schools if governors don't open for the upcoming school year. WTF.

He told the governors to handle their state. He's threatened them more than once since then.

ETA: We've got a record nearly 70K new cases reported today and the day's not over yet. WTF.

[_EAllusion]

Anything is technically impeachable. In terms of what ought to be in the realm of impeachable conduct as the framework was set up and is defensible, you're looking at abuse of office or abuse of the public trust. Insofar as you can tie the poor pandemic response to that, and you can, then sure, it's on the table.

Abuse of commutation to protect people who committed crimes on your behalf, in coordinating with people using espionage to influence an election in your favor no less, the stonewalled investigation into the same is about as blinking red light impeachment territory as exists. The only thing that is more quintessentially impeachment territory in my mind is pardoning people who assassinate your political opponents, and this is like a half-step away from that. You're not in a liberal democracy in a country where this kind of thing is expected and unaccountable. That's a hard thing to accept, but denial helps no one.

[_EAllusion]

If the roles were reversed, Congressional Republicans would've been sending articles of impeachment like it was spam emails at this point. The leadership of the two parties has very different ideas about how to maintain and wield power. Democrats preferred mode is bury your head in the sand and hope you don't get blamed for failures until the winds of change sweep you to victory. That there's governing responsibilities is an inconvenience. The Ukraine impeachment was a matter of an apoplectic left flank in Congress forcing Pelosi's hand into a compromised, limited impeachment effort after securing buy-in from the swing district centrists.

[_Jersey Girl]

Anything is technically impeachable. In terms of what ought to be in the realm of impeachable conduct as the framework was set up and is defensible, you're looking at abuse of office or abuse of the public trust. Insofar as you can tie the poor pandemic response to that, and you can, then sure, it's on the table.

He disseminates false information to the public on a daily basis. He bragged that he activated the DPA back in April to order 3M to produce as many N95 respirators as the "Administration deemed necessary" with no recent updates and with reports of essential personnel now running out again when production should have continued to ramp up to the point where N95's were made available to the general public, he put decisions off on state level government and the proceeded to badger the hell out of governors to re-open without meeting the gating criteria established by his own freaking Coronavirus Task Force, he continues to badger them to now re-open schools while criticizing the CDC guidelines as being too strict to meet (which is bulls-hit), he's now publicly accusing Dr. Fauci of making "a lot of mistakes" trying to discredit him in spite of the stupid s-hit that he himself recklessly suggested such as "hitting the body with light" or using disinfectant to kill the virus internally (where upon some sad citizens tried ingesting bleach), says the number of new cases is going up due to our outstanding testing when that on it's face is totally false when our testing rate is miserably insufficient to start with, and yes, the fatality rate is lower right now but like I said in another post, the number of new cases daily has skyrocketed (we just went up another 1K from the time I mentioned this in an earlier post), he pays lip service to mask wearing and when he says the CDC contradicted itself regarding masks he HAD to know good and well that they were trying to prevent a "run" on masks on the part of the public early on to reserve stock for front line medical personnel, and my god, the list is just too damn long to even recount it all.

Abuse of commutation to protect people who committed crimes on your behalf, in coordinating with people using espionage to influence an election in your favor no less, the stonewalled investigation into the same is about as blinking red light impeachment territory as exists. The only thing that is more quintessentially impeachment territory in my mind is pardoning people who assassinate your political opponents, and this is like a half-step away from that. You're not in a liberal democracy in a country where this kind of thing is expected and unaccountable. That's a hard thing to accept, but denial helps no one.

Yes, this much I do understand.