EAllusion wrote:Obama would not have been justified preemptively arresting Paul Manafort for crimes against the nation just because it turns out he was guilty. You don’t get to abuse your office if it turns out your target was guilty.
Your self-parodic desire to find middle ground has got you arguing that whether a cop planting drugs on someone is ok hinges on whether they are a drug dealer. No it doesn’t.
In this hypothetical, the drugs wouldn't be planted, the drug dealer had the drugs and was trying to sell them.
Your interpretation of this scenario provides a decent hint at why you are so wrong on this.
In this hypothetical, the cop is trying to plant drugs on a known drug dealer, but you don't care about that because the guy's a drug dealer; to you, the cop's illegal actions are somehow justified. The ends justify the means.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
honorentheos wrote:If Biden DID go to the president of Ukraine, withhold aid on the condition that they remove the PG and it was done to protect his son's client, it would be the scandal of the decade.
Pffft. Yeah, that would be the scandal. It's like you've had your head in the sand for 3 years.
But OK, honor. If you say so.
*shrug*
So, that is the same as this:
You said it wouldn't matter if what Biden did was essentially the same as what Trump did, withholding aid from the Ukraine to benefit his son or for personal benefit.
Alrighty then.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
honorentheos wrote:In this hypothetical, the drugs wouldn't be planted, the drug dealer had the drugs and was trying to sell them.
Your interpretation of this scenario provides a decent hint at why you are so wrong on this.
In this hypothetical, the cop is trying to plant drugs on a known drug dealer, but you don't care about that because the guy's a drug dealer; to you, the cop's illegal actions are somehow justified. The ends justify the means.
damned Jesus
In this stupid hypothetical that you opened up, Biden commits a criminal act that involved the Ukraine and the VP of the United States. For this to be true, we have to reframe every piece of evidence we have in that light. In this hypothetical Trump is acting on a legitimate suspicion of wrong doing at the highest levels when he is taking with Zelensky. It's not that we changed one detail but are able to keep everything else as it is. That change is a paradigm shifting change.
In this hypothetical, anyone who favors impeaching Trump on non-partisan grounds should instead be equally concerned about Biden and expect he would end up in prison when it's finally resolved. The hypothetical alternative reality demands consistent application of the rules of consequences following the assumptions being made. Assuming Biden was withholding aid to benefit his son, that reality diverges hard from our own. The facts have to follow the divergent narrative thereafter and in this narrative investigating Biden is not only reasonable, it should be expected and applauded as an act of justice. Where in that is the abuse of power on the part of Trump in this alternative reality? He would be doing his job. Just like Congress is doing their jobs in pursuing impeachment in the reality we live in.
Last edited by Guest on Fri Dec 13, 2019 8:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Exiled wrote:Pardon the interruption. However, I just wanted to interject how I think this whole thing has been a waste of time and a lost opportunity. Impeacement will ultimately benefit Trump because the case hasn't been sufficiently made to convince the maximum amount of people. Trump will now make a victory lap around the country and use victimhood to the maximum thanks to a botched process.
Looking at this strategically, a slow impeacement process throughout the election cycle would have sunk Trump's reelection chances if the case could be slowly made, with new revelations coming out periodically, showing how corrupt Trump is. It could have been widened beyond Ukraine. Trump would have screamed partisan witch hunt, but, a good counter is that criminal trials should proceed no matter the time of day or season. Perhaps Biden and Burisma would have been an issue, but Trump would have been taken down, if the democrats had the goods. Why the democrats didn't do this is baffling. Now, however, Trump gets an election issue for his religious maga maggots.
It's hard to imagine the public opinion polls moving regardless of what new information is uncovered. It's like trying to convince Mormon apologists. In order to get enough Republicans in the Senate to suddenly support removal, it would take a huge shift in public opinion polls in the red and purple states, and that won't happen. So plan B is to damage Trump politically for the 2020 election, but the longer the process plays out, the more Trump supporters will see him as a martyr, and that opinion could start spreading to swing state voters. I'm not saying the democrat strategy is necessarily good. I just don't think there is a good strategy in our current political climate.
I think the key point is that they don't have that great of a case and leaving most of it in the presumption stage as opposed to the factual development stage is the most they could hope for regarding Ukraine. However, I wonder why they didn't widen the inquiry to include other misdeeds? Investigations can widen and Trump seemed to have violated the emoluments clause. Also, he tried to overthrow the government in Venezuela, did so in Bolivia, he stole oil in Syria and is still doing so, he supports a genocidal war in Yemen, looked the other way while the Saudi Arabian dictator brutally murdered a journalist, etc. However, a lot of politicians on both sides are involved in the crimes contained in the above list.
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
In this stupid hypothetical that you opened up, Biden commits a criminal act that involved the Ukraine and the VP of the United States. For this to be true, we have to reframe every piece of evidence we have in that light.
In this hypothetical Trump is acting on a legitimate suspicion of wrong doing at the highest levels when he is taking with Zelensky. It's not that we changed one detail but are able to keep everything else as it is. That change is a paradigm shifting change.
In this hypothetical, anyone who favors impeaching Trump on non-partisan grounds should instead be equally concerned about Biden and expect he would end up in prison when it's finally resolved. The hypothetical alternative reality demands consistent application of the rules of consequences following the assumptions being made. Assuming Biden was withholding aid to benefit his son, that reality diverges hard from our own. The facts have to follow the divergent narrative thereafter and in this narrative investigating Biden is not only reasonable, it should be expected and applauded as an act of justice. Where in that is the abuse of power on the part of Trump in this alternative reality? He would be doing his job. Just like Congress is doing their jobs in pursuing impeachment in the reality we live in.
It is totally inappropriate for the President of the United States to secretly withhold Congressionally appropriated foreign aid and apply other diplomatic pressure to get a foreign nation to work with his personal attorney to give a directed announcement of an investigation into his political rival. It is further totally inappropriate to attempt to systematically to obstruct Congressional investigation into the same. This is true regardless of whether Biden is guilty.
In a universe where Biden is guilty, there are proper federal law enforcement procedures to handle this, but nothing like that occurred in this case. This is precisely because they are trying to manufacture a scandal for propaganda purposes, but even if they weren’t, a gross abuse of power is on display.
Criminal acts are not Ok if you are sincere in trying to get a bad guy.
A bribery conviction can be based on a mixed motive: a corrupt motive combined with a non-corrupt motive. That Trump sought a public announcement of an investigation by the President of Ukraine that he was opening an investigation of the Bidens (beginning with the President before Zelensky) rather than referring it to his AG is very strong evidence of a corrupt motive. The Bidens’ guilt or innocence is irrelevant in deciding whether what the President did was an abuse of power.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
The problem with this conversation is that what the Bidens' purported corruption is... is not well defined. It's a convoluted stew of speculation and garbage (that is vaguely spread over both Biden and his son Hunter), because it's not based on anything concrete.
So when I said, "even if it's a duck" what I meant is clearly different than what you think it means, honor. I was talking about vague corruption. The same kind of vague corruption Trump and his base refer to incessantly.
I don't think it looks great that Hunter got a cushy job because of his last name, but obviously bad optics are not an excuse to bribe a foreign nation. Looking at the big picture makes one realize that Hunter Biden is a BS red herring Trump wants to exploit to distract his base.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
Perfume on my Mind wrote:I don't think it looks great that Hunter got a cushy job because of his last name
Trump supporters scream corruption but are too dumb to see the irony.
"We have taken up arms in defense of our liberty, our property, our wives, and our children; we are determined to preserve them, or die." - Captain Moroni - 'Address to the Inhabitants of Canada' 1775
”Senator McConnell has promised to sabotage that trial and he must recuse himself. No court in the country would allow a member of the jury to also serve as the accused’s defense attorney. The moment Senator McConnell takes the oath of impartiality required by the Constitution, he will be in violation of that oath. He has effectively promised to let President Trump manage his own impeachment trial. The Senator must withdraw.”
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.