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Midnight Mitch.
- Thread starter hal9000
- Start date
I thought he was screaming at the sky.
He sure has posted a lot today, considering nobody cares what he thinks.
6000 posts with a reaction score of 100 means nobody is listening
I care. i care deeply. i thought about his unhappiness with me a moment ago and it made me sad. So sad. So sad and lonely, so lonely and sad.
I've got a lot of emphathizing to catch up with.
I've got a lot of emphathizing to catch up with.
I haven't seen you present a shred of evidence to refute the charge that you're an idiot. What? It's not time because it isn't your turn yet? Tough sh!t. You're guilty.
.
Thanks you guys for showing me the power of motivated reasoning!
I really understand it now.
As quick summary it affects how you look at evidece (framing effect and confirmation bias) and how you judge the character of those who have an influence on the outcome (Trump and the congress).
It's fun to watch when you reconcile the concept with the real thing.
I really understand it now.
As quick summary it affects how you look at evidece (framing effect and confirmation bias) and how you judge the character of those who have an influence on the outcome (Trump and the congress).
It's fun to watch when you reconcile the concept with the real thing.
It's also fun to watch people throw the concept of "right and wrong" right out the window.
What does everyone think of the fact that documents are still surfacing due to FOIA requests from third parties and that the admin has been doing everything in its power to block the release of such documents?
Seems like the press is doing its job. Can't sit on these docs forever.
thehill.com
Seems like the press is doing its job. Can't sit on these docs forever.
Trump admin releases trove of documents on Ukrainian military aid
The White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) late Tuesday released a cache of nearly 200 documents related to officials’ efforts to withhold military aid to Ukraine.
That fact that Susan Collins is telling Mitch not to be so obvious in creating a knagreoo fetus court is a tell.
Well then it’s a good thing so many Republican voters don’t already have one foot in the grave. The GOP should be able to keep this up indefinitely.
January 21, 2020
| Heather Cox Richardson | 2 hr | 88 | [Hit send on this about 3:00 this morning, but had forgotten to give it a title so it didn’t go out. Sorry about that.] Today, the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump began. The remarkable thing aboutit was the astonishment on the part of so many smart lawyers and pundits that the president’s lawyers were just… lying. Both Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow insisted that the Democrats had had a secret process from which Republicans were excluded: you will remember that this was a lie, fabricated for the television cameras. Observers were outraged. But for Trump and his enablers, this trial is not about the truth; it never has been. It is about dominance and power. Forcing someone to accept what they know to be untrue reinforces the dominance of the person telling the lies. Perpetrators will start with small, seemingly unimportant lies and cruelties that the victim is unlikely to challenge. But once the lie or cruelty has been accepted, the victim is less likely to challenge another one because it would mean having to confront the original. It snowballs. This is a well-known pattern that J. K. Rowling immortalized in the Harry Potter books with the relationship between Voldemort and his Death Eaters. And that pattern has always been Trump’s MO. Now, Trump is demanding we accept that his phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky was A PERFECT PHONE CALL despite reams of evidence to the contrary. For those of us unconvinced by Trump’s assertions, this reiteration of lies in the face of evidence does something else. It “flood the zone with sh!t” Trump’s advisor Steve Bannon put it. By keeping us constantly trying to defend what is real from what is not, they destroy our ability to make sense of our world. Many people turn to a strongman who promises to create order. Others will get so exhausted they simply give up. This is what Vladimir Putin did in post-Soviet Russia, and it is everywhere now in the US. What was going on today was a window into the fight between democracy and authoritarianism. The Democrats have made a stellar stand on fact and reality. The Republicans are flooding the zone. The trial started with the president’s lawyers unprepared. After Chief Justice John Roberts entered the Senate chamber, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone got an hour to make an opening statement. He spoke for only three minutes, apparently expecting that the day would start with arguments about trial rules. He simply said that Trump “has done absolutely nothing wrong.” Then he yielded the floor. Then it was Adam Schiff’s turn. Schiff is the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee and the leading House manager of impeachment. He launched into a 50-minute recounting of Trump trying to rig the 2020 election by pressuring Ukraine to smear Joe Biden and withholding vital military aid to do so. He reminded the Senators that they were required under oath to be fair and impartial jurors, and noted that if indeed Trump could not be removed under any circumstances, he was not a president but a king. He pointed out that every single impeachment trial in the Senate (remember that this would include federal judges as well as presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton) had testimony from witnesses and required the production of documentation. It was a speech for the ages. When he finished, Justice Roberts reminded Cipollone that he still had 57 minutes. Cipollone asked Jay Sekulow to respond. But Sekulow was not prepared. While he was loud and angry, he wandered and had no real argument. He also lied in easily disproven ways. He did not engage with Schiff’s argument but instead fell back on the same points GOP leaders in the House kept hitting: that Democrats hated Trump and that the FBI had investigated Trump after the 2016 election. Cipollone then followed, even louder, attacking Schiff. He, too, lied about the Democrats excluding Republicans from hearings. But Schiff still had time. He methodically rebutted the GOP arguments. And that has been the pattern of the day. The Republican lawyers are simply reiterating Fox News Channel talking points; the Democrats, led by Schiff, are doing a masterful job of pointing out again and again that the GOP lawyers are lying. More important, the Democratic managers are carefully and methodically laying out the existing evidence concerning the Ukraine Scandal in clear, actually really interesting (surprisingly) ways. There is a reason Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted this to happen in the dead of night. The GOP opposed every amendment the Democrats proposed to permit testimony or documents, including letting Justice Roberts, who is theoretically impartial, decide whether or not witnesses were relevant. The GOP leaders do not want testimony, despite the fact that a new poll out today says that Americans, including 71% of Republicans, overwhelmingly want to hear witnesses at the Senate trial. Just before 2:00 am, the Senate adopted McConnell’s resolution establishing the rules by a party-line vote, and the Senate adjourned at 1:50. It will reconvene at 1:00 tomorrow. A note on Trump’s lawyers. Pat Cipollone is White House Counsel, an official position, paid for by the US taxpayers. The White House Counsel is supposed to defend the legal interests of the office of the presidency. The White House Counsel is not the president’s personal lawyer. That would be Jay Sekulow, and the gang of others lawyers surrounding Trump. Those lawyers are not paid with tax dollars. While we cannot know where their checks come from, it is worth noting that campaign money can be used for legal expenses. Trump is the only president in history to file for reelection on Inauguration Day, and I have always thought that was at least in part about paying for legal bills. In October 2019, we learned that Trump’s campaign was paying 13 law firms, and that the campaign had spent $12 million on legal fees since 2017. As of February 2019, $100,000 of that went to the law firm representing Jared Kushner. —— |
Tim Morrison and Kurt Volker were witnesses called by Republicans in House impeachment inquiry. So there goes that narrative.
stop putting your hopes in Collins. have you forgot already her performance in the Kavanaugh confirmation