Well, it's Over!

[Moksha]

Trump directly solicited election fraud in many jurisdictions. So far, Georgia is the only one prosecuting this alleged crime boss.

[Some Schmo]

Trump's own lawyers were practically begging to have Trump indicted for inciting violence on the capitol. They were saying that impeachment wasn't the correct remedy given the circumstances (ex-President and all); criminal indictment clearly was the correct alternative.

[MeDotOrg]

Today I went for a bicycle ride, went up to Twin Peaks and then down to my new favorite bakery for a coffee and pastry. Pulled out my phone while I was waiting in line and read the news. I knew this was coming, but somehow it still really made my spirit sink. We were given a test, and we failed. As has been said, a majority voted to convict, just not a ⅔ rds majority. In the least representative body, with representation not based upon population, more than half thought he was guilty.

I still have some hope. Trump's legal problems are far from over. As more and more is revealed in Civil and Criminal trials, the depth of his venality will become apparent to more and more people. I hope Josh Hawley lives to a ripe old age, because he vote will look worse and worse as a more complete picture of Donald Trump emerges.

I honestly don't know where the Republican Party goes from here.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

We were given a test, and we failed.

You should stop owning their failures.

- Doc

[Meadowchik]

We were given a test, and we failed.

You should stop owning their failures.

- Doc

Unfortunately we all have to live with them.

[Brack]

Seven Republican Senators voted Trump guilty. If 7 Senators vote guilty from your own party, then you are extremely likely guilty.

Seven Republican senators made ex-President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial the most bipartisan in American history, even if their votes did not tip the scales enough to convict him. The final vote was 57 to 43, 10 votes short of the threshold needed to secure a conviction, with seven Republicans joining the Democrats.

Most Republicans followed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s example, claiming the Senate did not have the constitutional authority to put a former president on trial ― though constitutional scholars have largely disagreed with that argument.

In any case, McConnell could have used his powers as majority leader to begin the trial while Trump was still in the White House. He chose not to.

Regardless, Democratic House impeachment managers made their best efforts to lay out historical precedent for trying a former official alongside all the ways Trump incited the Capitol insurrection by refusing to accept his electoral defeat. As a direct result of the violence, five people died, including a Capitol police officer, and more than 100 people were injured. World leaders expressed horror at the “attack on democracy.”

The Republicans who voted to convict Trump were Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitt Romney (Utah), Ben Sasse (Neb.) and Pat Toomey (Pa.).

Here is why they voted the way they did.

Bill Cassidy
The Louisiana senator offered a simple explanation in a video posted to Twitter.

“The Constitution in our country is more important than any one person. I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty,” he said.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_6028 ... 1becd934d6

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/538 ... guilty?amp

[honorentheos]

I was driving around yesterday pursuing a few errands while catching what I could on the radio between stops. I was on the way home after picking up groceries, listening to the speeches being given after the vote contemplating where we go from here. Sen. Schumer had just finished and the radio station was taking the moment after to give a quick update on the vote and earlier events, then the report suddenly rushed a sentence to completion and remarked that Sen. McConnell was preparing to speak. Her words ended just as McConnell began the speech that I could only describe as captivating, stunning, and equally frustrating and bizarre. I had a driveway moment, waiting for his speech to end before getting out and taking the groceries in. I mentioned the speech to my wife, and mulled over what McConnell had said while putting groceries away.

I believe McConnell to be one of the greatest problems in US politics of the last ten or more years. I say that because I believe he is perhaps the most partisan political leader since Newt Gingrich. He represents the current state of politics where concern for the welfare of the people is reduced to meta-politics of party positions and moral conflict, such that day-to-day struggles and other needs are considered small things that are not really government's concern. This means there is no room for compromise with an enemy. One doesn't compromise on big things, and the small things are other people's business. McConnell represents the Republican Party's moral belief that it is locked in combat with great evils such as abortion and socialism, and because of this the greatest good that the Senate could accomplish under his leadership was to man the wall and prevent Democrats from taking a single step closer to their goals. The Do-Nothing Congress is strategic, and whatever else one wants to think about the man, Mitch McConnell has a sharp mind for political strategy.

But if he's so politically savvy, what to make of this speech.

First of all, I think Trump setting fire to democracy on his way out represented an affront to the way McConnell frames the partisan conflict and this great war. With Trump as President, the US Senate was able to spend four years doing little else but pursue shoring up the system against the infiltration of evil liberal judges and socialistic government programs. His online and personal behavior was embarrassing but the man in office was demonstrating the underlying truth of McConnell's view: The Republican Party - the sum whole of it - was on the side of what was morally right. Even someone as craven as Donald J. Trump couldn't help but do good when bent to the purposes of this greater truth of partisan, Republican rightness.

So the outrage that McConnell expressed over Trump's pushing the Big Lie is genuine, in my opinion. Not because of the details of what Trump did. But because of the damage it does to the view of the GOP as the force for good and right, standing up against the forces of evil represented by liberalism.

The speech was McConnell casting Trump out like God casting Lucifer out of Heaven. The GOP cannot be what McConnell believes it to be and Trump remain in it having done what he has done.

Second, I think McConnell viewed the impeachment as potentially opening up a new Pandora's Box of Legislative behavior that would be genuinely damaging to our system of government. I say this with the historical perspective of McConnell being unscrupulous in using what tools he believes are his to use in fighting the great partisan fight. This included the nuclear option in stopping filibuster of Supreme Court nominees, pointing out the Democrats did it first when they removed the filibuster of other nominees. Time and time again, McConnell points out that in his mind, Democrats are the ones changing the rules, he just uses those tools now available because to do otherwise is foolish since Democrats will use them to try and win the war.

So, what is this Pandora's Box? From his speech:

“The House’s ‘sole power of impeachment’ and the Senate’s ‘sole power to try all impeachments’ would create an unlimited circular logic, empowering Congress to ban any private citizen from federal office.

“This is an incredible claim. But it is the argument the House Managers seemed to make. One Manager said the House and Senate have ‘absolute, unqualified… jurisdictional power’.

“That was very honest. Because there is no limiting principle in the constitutional text that would empower the Senate to convict former officers that would not also let them convict and disqualify any private citizen.

“An absurd end result to which no one subscribes."

Make no mistake. Had the Senate convicted Trump with a two-thirds majority and banned him from holding public office there would be a day in our future when a candidate for the Presidency would face impeachment and conviction as well. It seems bizarre, but I think that is exactly the way McConnell thinks. He saw this as a consequence of the proceedings and, rather than viewing it as weighing on the legitimacy of convicting and barring an ex-President from holding federal office for crimes committed while President, he saw in it potential for abuse because HE WOULD ABUSE IT.

It's one of the weird things about the man. I choose to be charitable toward him in this case and accept he is behaving like the addict preventing the bottle of alcohol from coming into his house as the only point in the process where he, personally, is capable of opposing it. I believe he also believes that, were Trump to have been convicted, the great war would obligate the GOP to use this interpretation of the power contained in the arguments made to oppose Democratic presidential candidates in an extension of the Do-Nothing manning of the wall.

Finally, he absolutely anticipates that Trump being cast out of GOP heaven is subject, and WILL BE SUBJECTED, to criminal charges and civil lawsuits that effectively will prevent Trump from ascending again to heaven.


“In one light, it certainly does seem counter-intuitive that an officeholder can elude Senate conviction by resignation or expiration of term.

“But this just underscores that impeachment was never meant to be the final forum for American justice.

“Impeachment, conviction, and removal are a specific intra-governmental safety valve. It is not the criminal justice system, where individual accountability is the paramount goal.

“Indeed, Justice Story specifically reminded that while former officials were not eligible for impeachment or conviction, they were ‘still liable to be tried and punished in the ordinary tribunals of justice’.

“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one."

This episode highlights just how differently people across the political spectrum see and understand the world. I'm struck by how one party will view the pragmatic need in front of them as what needs addressed while the other party has subsumed the matter into a greater, almost cosmic conflict of good vs evil. Both sides of our politics represent doing so in almost designed counterbalancing ways. The question then becomes if this is fatal? or just how things have always been and justice will find a way?

[huckelberry]

Trump has been acquitted unjustly once again, this time for inciting an armed insurrection against his own country and government, thus establishing the precedent from now on, that virtually nothing a President can do is impeachable, and that the impeachment clause in our constitution is effectively not much more than empty words as useless as teats on a bull.

Also established is that of the current Republican Senators, only 7 can credibly claim to have both courage and integrity.

Gunner, I certainly share your general sentiment here but I am going to voice difference that I see. I see no precedent set whatsoever. I do not see pressure on future impeachment to fallow what was done now. Of course a future senate could freely choose to do the same thing.(or not) The constitutional process is set up to be very difficult to reach an conviction of an important political person. Supporters are on the jury and a twothird majority is required.

[Jersey Girl]

Today I went for a bicycle ride, went up to Twin Peaks and then down to my new favorite bakery for a coffee and pastry. Pulled out my phone while I was waiting in line and read the news. I knew this was coming, but somehow it still really made my spirit sink. We were given a test, and we failed. As has been said, a majority voted to convict, just not a ⅔ rds majority. In the least representative body, with representation not based upon population, more than half thought he was guilty.

I still have some hope. Trump's legal problems are far from over. As more and more is revealed in Civil and Criminal trials, the depth of his venality will become apparent to more and more people. I hope Josh Hawley lives to a ripe old age, because he vote will look worse and worse as a more complete picture of Donald Trump emerges.

I honestly don't know where the Republican Party goes from here.

We failed exactly nothing. Back in summer (?) when I realized that I could possibly die from the virus, I removed my affiliation from the Republican Party, thinking that if I did die from Covid that changing my affiliation would serve as my vote.

I came into the Trump dialogue knowing little to nothing about politics for as I have stated many times, I've always seen politics as a game that I wanted no part in. Well...I took part. I did my damndest to learn from questioning you guys here and combing through news articles every and all sorts of reference material single freaking day for 4 years and then some. I did my due diligence as best as I could, knowing I did not have the foundation that most of you here have but I tried to make up for years of lost time.

This past year, to the best of my knowledge, everyone in my family who were registered Republicans removed themselves from the rolls. That includes JB over here who was totally ride or die for Trump. I never knew if those statistics would be counted until just a few weeks ago when I heard online news types referring to either 30K or 140K registered voters having left the party. So...we WERE counted and our actions DID mean something. We sent a clear signal that we would no longer support or be affiliated with the kind of fuckery the GOP was engaging in.

I did not stir up a crowd in D.C. I did not advocate or praise violence. I did not sit on my fat ass and DO NOTHING when the rioters breached the Capitol building, the seat of government of my democracy. I did not basically tell Kevin McCarthy to “F” off when he pleaded for me to do something. I did not ignore advisors like Ivanka or Kellyanne when they begged me to make a statement. I did not flip off the whole entire country with regards to the insurrection OR the pandemic. I did not let people die on my watch.

I did not fail to disclose pertinent information regarding a life or death pandemic to the people I was elected to SERVE. I did not fail to use the DPA to the best benefit of the citizens of my country. I did not promise that ALL students in America would receive FREE masks and fail to produce them. I did not fail to do in NINE MONTHS what Joe Biden has done in 3 scant WEEKS.

When presented with the facts regarding insurrection, I did not turn a blind eye and fail to convict. I did not sell my soul to DJT. I did not resort to a possible technicality which now opens the door to any politician including the President to pull all manner of crap in the eleventh hour before leaving office. I did not pass the buck to the criminal courts.

The GOP Senators did that. Not me, not you, or anyone else. THEY did it and they did it right in front of our eyes. Their failure will be recorded in history for the ages and history will not look back favorably on those sell out senators. Historians, students, and others will look into the record and their immediate response will be, "WTF?!?! Who were these dishonorable cowards who failed to defend the very constitution they pledged an oath to GOD and opened the door to future misdeeds by those in office?"

I don't own their guilt. I don't own their failures. And so far as I am concerned I hope they all politically fry themselves out of both their relevancy and their well paid jobs!

[Jersey Girl]

I have to pop off again. Not sorry. I was thinking this whole week how if Trump had done his frigging JOB with regard to the pandemic, he would have won reelection in a real actual landslide.

But no.

Instead he zig zagged the country holding super spreader event rallies to get his narcissistic supply and pump up his frail ego. That's how bf stupid he is! He could have held NO rallies and successfully addressed the pandemic and been reelected--no question about it for he would have been hailed as a hero!

And this is yet another instance in which he revealed himself as a narcissist. He lacked insight. He lacked strategy. He shot from the hip and did what was convenient for his ego instead of addressing the immediate needs of the citizens whom he pledged to serve. He squandered his time and squandered OUR LIVES. And in doing so, he let the economy go straight the hell due to his inattention to the matter at hand.

Biden, you know, sleepy Joe hit the ground running. He was prepared months in advance to do the job that Trump shrugged off. He's done more in 3 weeks with regard to addressing the pandemic than Trump did in a full YEAR and it's not like Trump didn't have the benefit of access to the best heads in the country! He had them and used them as political props to once again, feed his ego and elevate himself as all knowing and strong.

He's the weakest president this country has ever had. He left nothing but destruction behind him. People dead, people grieving, people sick, people out of work, whole families who are food insecure, front line workers with PTSD. In my book, that's tantamount to genocide.

Enough! “F” him. “F” him forever. And if he's got any punishment coming to him for whatever offense, then let it happen and just get him out of my virtual sight.