Impeachment hearings

[_EAllusion]

Of course. The irony I’m witnessing right now is someone like ajax thinks poor Democrats have too much time on their hands to vote because they’re on the dole, and you’re claiming, in effect, that those same people work too hard to vote, or they're too stupid, or some impossible metric that can’t be argued because Whites have masterminded some autistic standard that only they can figure out.

Give me a break.

How about Democrats front good candidates and policies, wage good campaigns, and then we chip away at the middle voters instead of acting like put upon victims who can’t seem to find the polling stations?

- Doc

People have figured it out Doc. They figured it out right away. It may be hard for you, but it's not hard to understand what's going on.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

You've got me in a tricky position, EA. I feel like you're talking out of both sides of your mouth right now. Are Democratic voters too stupid to figure out how to vote, or are they generally more educated and have a stronger work ethic and are more likely to vote as opposed to the dullards on the Right?

Perhaps if you can quantify how Democratic voters in your home state are disadvantaged by the new voting metrics I can wrap my mind around it?

Things you don't have to argue:

- Gerrymandering. We're in complete agreement there.
- The relative intelligence and activism of Democratic and Republican voters. I think this is just impossible to quantify with regard to one's ability to cast a vote.

Thing I'd like to see you actually propose:

- A solution that guarantees the person who is voting is who he says he is, lives in the given district, and is a citizen.

Thing I'd like your thoughts on because I think it's related:

- A solution to gerrymandering that wouldn't create armed revolution.

o Doc

[_EAllusion]

Oh look, it's both-sideism on crack:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/us/p ... -ios-share

[_EAllusion]

You've got me in a tricky position, EAllusion. I feel like you're talking out of both sides of your mouth right now. Are Democratic voters too stupid to figure out how to vote, or are they generally more educated and have a stronger work ethic and are more likely to vote as opposed to the dullards on the Right?

This is a false choice that doesn't bear any resemblance to anything I've said.

Perhaps if you can quantify how Democratic voters in your home state are disadvantaged by the new voting metrics I can wrap my mind around it?

I reject the idea that you need a specific quantification to understand how this works, but here you go:

https://elections.wisc.edu/voter-id-study/

The topline estimate is that voter ID reduced turnout in 2016 compared against prior elections by somewhere between .9-1.8% with Democrats being the majority of those who failed to turn out for this reason.

Do you believe polling taxes were bad? Do you believe they disproportionately affected black voters? If so, I would now like a quantification published in the 1960's of their impact on voter turnout. If not, I would like an explanation for why not.

- A solution that guarantees the person who is voting is who he says he is, lives in the given district, and is a citizen.

Voter ID does next to nothing to prevent in-person voter fraud, which is a borderline non-existent problem. Voter ID as a means to prevent fraud was a sham justification to pass laws to lower Democratic turnout.

"Guarantee" is already too high of a bar. If you are looking for, "almost certainly guarantee" the previous system was working fine. In-person voter fraud was extremely rare and of no threat to election integrity. Because individual votes are basically meaningless and the penalties for in-person fraud are high, the deterrent held firm.

Automatic voter registration would get you want you want over time.

- A solution to gerrymandering that wouldn't create armed revolution.

o Doc

A vaguely worded constitutional amendment that forbids states from drawing political boundaries for the purpose enhancing or preserving the political power of the party in control of the state government with the usual clause of giving Congress the legal authority to enforce this followed by a federal law that requires states to adopt some form of non-partisan boards to draw district lines.

In the meantime, anywhere where Democrats control a state government, they should gerrymander the hell out of it. Instead, the emerging pattern is Republican controlled states being extremely gerrymandered and Democratic controlled ones respecting a desire for neutral criteria. It's effectively surrender.

[_EAllusion]

Lindsey Graham:

I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I'm not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here... I will do everything I can to make it die quickly

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/14/politics ... index.html

Just so god damn brazen about it. You don't do this unless you believe Democrats are impotent.

[_honorentheos]

Lindsey Graham:

I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I'm not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here... I will do everything I can to make it die quickly

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/14/politics ... index.html

Just so god damn brazen about it. You don't do this unless you believe Democrats are impotent.

From the same article:

Anderson also asked Graham if it was appropriate for Trump to ask foreign governments for such help as when the President asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company.

"Now, Joe Biden is a dear friend. I've traveled all over the world with Joe Biden. He's running for president on the Democratic side. I think he'll do very well. The bottom line is his son was receiving $50,000 a month from a gas company run by the most corrupt guy in the Ukraine and about two months after they raided the gas company's president's home, they fired the prosecutor," Graham told Anderson. "Yeah, I think it's OK to talk about this kind of stuff."

There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.

Graham said he does not wish to hear from the Bidens or any other witnesses. "I want to hear the House make their case based on the record they established in the House and I want to vote," he said.

The sentence, "There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens." is a fairly common media statement when the issue is brought up. in my opinion, it's one of the more ridiculous examples of the media falling down on the job as that sentence doesn't counterbalance the weight of what proceeded it by any measure. But then again, I think the Democrats need to do the lifting there rather than sidestep it. I am fully confident the facts could be easily interjected into the public discussion in a way that cuts the legs out from under the claims regarding Hunter Biden. I also tend to think most people on both sides are operating on partisan autopilot on the issue by either accepting or rejecting it with having done much by way of looking into it which is why you don't see that many people opposed to Trump's action making the argument it should be publicly debated and discussed. They don't have confidence in that course of action because they don't know the evidence themselves.

[_honorentheos]

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.

We can agree that it's bad optics and that the Republican use of it as an argument relies on those optics. I don't know that it's about it being vague. It's accurate but superficial so it looks like wrong doing. But I do sincerely believe the remedy and even responsibility lies with Democrats to first be informed, and second make the facts the narrative rather than allow the optics to serve as the defining narrative.

What actually happened, if anyone takes any amount of time to look into it, is so obviously not what the optics suggest that it's impossible to imagine someone can be both informed and entertain the idea it's comparable. I wonder if people are concerned to really look into it because the optics are what they are. Let me assure anyone who is so concerned, the facts are clear. The results of knowing them wipe away any ability to claim what happened with Biden is comparable to what Trump is being accused of by the House through the impeachment proceedings.

Put simply, the PG that was removed was preventing investigation of corruption. Biden was a messenger for not only the Obama administration but our NATO allies that this corrupt PG who was protecting the president of Burisma Holdings instead of investigating him needed to go if Ukraine wanted to receive aid and support from the West. Anyone who challenges that is going to find the facts undermine their beliefs. Whatever else one wants to believe about Hunter Biden and Burisma Holdings, there are zero grounds on which to build an argument that Joe Biden abused the office of the VP to aid Hunter Biden, and the incident being used as evidence of this is obvious counter evidence once looked at to any degree of detail.

[_honorentheos]

____ 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.

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.

You don't change major events as would be necessary for this hypothetical to be true without changing everything that follows. The point was simply this: Were we living in a world where Biden abused the office of the VP then impeachment as we are engaging it would not follow. But because it looks like a duck, Democrats should take it seriously to the extent they need to engage it and change the narrative based on the facts rather than let the optics define the discussion. I find it difficult to engage with anyone who tries to make this world overlap with the hypothetical one so narrowly quite frankly. It leaves me to wonder if, in your view, that alternative universe isn't quite so alternative as to be so far away from our own. While it would explain much, it would be disappointing. Oh well.

[_EAllusion]

Lindsey Graham:

I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I'm not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here... I will do everything I can to make it die quickly

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/14/politics ... index.html

Just so god damn brazen about it. You don't do this unless you believe Democrats are impotent.

From the same article:

Anderson also asked Graham if it was appropriate for Trump to ask foreign governments for such help as when the President asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company.

"Now, Joe Biden is a dear friend. I've traveled all over the world with Joe Biden. He's running for president on the Democratic side. I think he'll do very well. The bottom line is his son was receiving $50,000 a month from a gas company run by the most corrupt guy in the Ukraine and about two months after they raided the gas company's president's home, they fired the prosecutor," Graham told Anderson. "Yeah, I think it's OK to talk about this kind of stuff."

There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.

Graham said he does not wish to hear from the Bidens or any other witnesses. "I want to hear the House make their case based on the record they established in the House and I want to vote," he said.

The sentence, "There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens." is a fairly common media statement when the issue is brought up. in my opinion, it's one of the more ridiculous examples of the media falling down on the job as that sentence doesn't counterbalance the weight of what proceeded it by any measure. But then again, I think the Democrats need to do the lifting there rather than sidestep it. I am fully confident the facts could be easily interjected into the public discussion in a way that cuts the legs out from under the claims regarding Hunter Biden. I also tend to think most people on both sides are operating on partisan autopilot on the issue by either accepting or rejecting it with having done much by way of looking into it which is why you don't see that many people opposed to Trump's action making the argument it should be publicly debated and discussed. They don't have confidence in that course of action because they don't know the evidence themselves.

Sam Wang, the neuroscientist and political commentator, loves to link studies showing that if you give a people a story that leads with misleading claim, on average they become more likely to believe that claim even if you specifically debunk it later in the same story. That's true even if the entire point of your story is to debunk the claim. And that's when people actually read the story. Many people just read headlines or a few opening lines and skim the rest, so misleading claims are all that get to them.

All these stories that take the form of, "Republican says [insert untrue thing]" with a dry description of why that isn't true in paragraph 19 are just helping to spread propaganda. They are a form of a journalistic malpractice. This could in theory be counterbalanced if it led to the media covering the Republican party or specific figures as inveterate liars to be reflexively distrusted, but they really don't because that violates their sense of fairness. So they hand over a platform that advantages those willing to lie through their teeth, and those prepared to do so take advantage of it.

The upshot is those same studies tend to show a way to combat this. If you instead write the story that starts with what the truth actually is, then only later explain how some people are making misleading claims about it, people walk away from those stories with a much better grasp of what is correct. Which narrative gets the first impression to worm into people's brains seems to matter a lot.

The downside is our media is woefully unprepared to do this, and if there ever was a serious change in their editorial practices, it's probably too late.

[_EAllusion]

You don't change major events as would be necessary for this hypothetical to be true without changing everything that follows. The point was simply this: Were we living in a world where Biden abused the office of the VP then impeachment as we are engaging it would not follow. But because it looks like a duck, Democrats should take it seriously to the extent they need to engage it and change the narrative based on the facts rather than let the optics define the discussion. I find it difficult to engage with anyone who tries to make this world overlap with the hypothetical one so narrowly quite frankly. It leaves me to wonder if, in your view, that alternative universe isn't quite so alternative as to be so far away from our own. While it would explain much, it would be disappointing. Oh well.

I'm not sure if you are engaging in what the counterpoint is here. Yes, in a universe in which Biden is actually guilty, maybe other facts change too. But if you just keep the current fact pattern, but suppose that Biden is actually guilty, then what Trump did is still a gross abuse of power deserving of impeachment. Biden's guilt or innocence is irrelevant to that.