I understand what you are getting to.

But I'm able to ascertain levels of competence, for example assessing Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Obama. No problem with giving them credit for their good points, or pointing out obvious bad ones. Sure there's a lot of stuff in the middle ground.

But is any deranged leftist going to argue Bengazi wasn't plain and simple, a total fuckup?

When actions pretty much shout "Incompetent am I!" there's no reason not just to take it at face value.

By the way, why not apply your own lecturing mode condescending superiority to yourself? Lol...

It's not exactly "me." I don't think about Flynn.

How about the Washington Post?

https://nypost.com/2020/01/31/the-flynn-prosecution-now-stands-exposed-as-massive-fbi-and-doj-abuse-of-power/

Naw. The way the game was played by the liberal team so far reeks of incompetence. That's not what the Trump/McConnell team is.

Look, I think we can agree that a positive result of the Senate squashing this road kill of an impeachment is no public inquiry into Biden - at least for the time being. Because as noted, Biden down, Bernie up. So now the old fat white power brokers in the back room can push their guy, Biden, and backup billionaire. Because they are rich guys, rich on industries Bernie wants to dig into. They won't allow that.

Personally I'm for taking whatever is criminal totally out of the political sphere and letting Bill Barr go at it/them. I don't know if that includes Hunter Biden, my guess is no.

Well, that's not EXACTLY accurate.

The shutdown of the never-ending-parade this-time-around "Impeachment" does save Biden face, no dragging Hunter in etc. Leaves Biden in the running,doesn't it?

Don't know what your point it. ...
[/quote]Dems brought an extremely weak case, and the weak case played out as a weak case would.

Wrong, not crazy.

2016 started out with a strong Anti-Trump-Cult.
There were many anti-Hillary factions and votes that went to Trump.
That has changed first to grudging acceptance to some outright enthusiasm.

I never thought Trump was that likable.

2020 seems to have about the same Anti-Trump-Cult as 2016. I don't agree with the Anti-Trump-Hate because, well for one thing, no new wars. For another, some progress in crime reform and jobs in the lower income sectors.

I've always found that confusing.

https://kchistory.org/faq/why-there-kansas-city-both-kansas-and-missouri

Well, the Democrats have pursued all such theories, and here they are.

Next.

My opinion? They're all remembering the Kavanaugh fiasco, where there was time after time, "one more witness," "One more reason to keep it going." So if they shut it down quicker, it's the Dems past behavior as the cause. You got what you deserved.

Belief? Hasn't that been well understood for a long time? It's all right out in the open, their switching votes for Hillary and the other antics, and also how much resistance, including in the Republican, there was against Trump.

These are all strong legal arguments. You and I have had a couple discussions before about, IIRC, what constitutes, facts, evidence, "beyond a reasonable doubt" and now hearsay. You might put these definitions in a category named "Irrefutable rebuttals."

This is different than asking "did Trump do XYZ." I kind of get it, how those persecuting and harassing Trump wouldn't care about these realities of a legal case, IF their goal is just to parade anti-Trump memes before a public they think is gullible.

But this is exactly what those who criticize the whole thing as a total scam think.

So in my case, I'm forced to the conclusion the whole thing was a scam and a sham trial, because the weakness of the arguments presented is so laughable.

By the way, your statement above "it's all hearsay ---> implies" is curious. Nobody needs hearsay to imply that direct evidence would be relevant; the existence of hearsay is not a proof that direct evidence is relevant. There are standards for evidence.

The only one of the 1,2 and 3 that's even worth discussing is 3. What is the standard for impeachment? The other two are jokes. Here appears to be your case.

"We think the call in which he asks politely for help was strong-armed pressuring, and some people say they heard other people say other people said that was what it was, and we need to broaden the constitutional requirement of 'high crimes and misdemeanors' to include Trump's behavior as implied by letters that don't say it and as implied by hearsay not evidence."

That's pretty crazy and that's what you got.

My misunderstanding, sorry.


Your three arguments can easily coexist, they are not exclusive of one another. There is absolutely nothing wrong in presenting an argument in the following form:

By direct reading of the call, the call did not contain "B".

Hearsay evidence of "B" may exist, but is not admissible in a court of law.

In the alternative, if the call was determined to contain "B", "B" is not impeachable.

If people were convicted of a crime for which a direct reading of the document does not show a crime, or by way of hearsay, or or for activities that were not crimes, we would be in a Stalinist or Mao or Nazi type of environment, just picking a few examples historically in which reality was similar.

What is quite interesting here is that you(and Viper and Twitch) are obviously sincere about your assessment of Schiff, as am I.

And I'm not just repeating talking points, no need for that. I can evaluate his performance as a practicing lawyer and orator just fine.

Such dissonant points of view must be explainable based on cognitive dissonance and preconditioning. However, as for "who is right" I'll certainly place my bets on those people who simply said that the whole thing was a sham and 2/3 wasn't going to come.

But if you think as you think about Schiff and his powerful oratory and keen acumen, then yes those with similar preconditioning and similar cognitive dissonance if wavering could be positively moved into the True Believer category. Translated to the alternative party viewpoint, fewer losses in mainstream Dem voting group than otherwise.

I feel that's incomplete and imperfect, so consider it only a first crude cut at trying to reconcile this matter.

I did not see competence in his words or actions, or any strategy ... at all. It was all over in the "definitely weird" category. No clue why or what that means.

But I've seen a lot of comments as the guy's obvious incompetence.

Agreed. Poland was a victim of Germany.

The state of Poland, it is argued, benefitted from the wrongful deaths.

But does Israel have standing to demand payment TO ISRAEL? Is Israel somehow a close cousin, or a favored friend of these unknown dead, by virtue of it being a champion of the same religion?

No. No way.

I'm okay with this. Could give them say 100k per year for dutifully wearing their MAGA hats against the 250M settlement.

But they'd have to buy the real MAGA hats, not some cheap imitation knock-offs.

Actually the Advanced 4d-chess Trumpian "divide and conquer," I had never seen anything like that before.

Oddly at the same time, the Democrats are going crazy. Part of the answer is he drove them to it, but if that is so then the American people, having elected him, can take full credit for driving them crazy.


There's always another shiny penny in the road, isn't there? Another one to eagerly lunge for, and then finding its only a penny, get distracted by yet another shiny thing in the dirt.

My guess Bolton, wasn't a 'cover up', but was just another well laid trap that your team was stumbling right into. Do you really think plans were not in place to handle the possibility that the majority vote approving witnesses might have happened?

One of the "bases", yeah, we all heard that agiprop from the beginning. We all knew they didn't care about what he was impeached for, they just wanted him impeached.

But no rational person looking at all these would have thought the 2/3 was going to be achieved. None. So it's only rational to look for other reasons, such as what I have suggested, free publicity and getting their faces on the TV. Schiff likely things he's an important guy, someone who could go places ... now.You're asking the wrong guy, because I never considered Obama black. He was half black.

A great saying is "History doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes."

There were so many objectionable things to the Obama years, I don't know where to start there. How about his weaponizing the IRS? Gun running to Mexican gangs?  "Kinetic action" in Syria?

But now you have one false narrative after another for 3 1/2 years, all designed to get Trump out of office.

Those are NOT EXACTLY SIMILAR HISTORIES.

Okay, so where I live everywhere I go my shoes are crunching up acorns dropped by all the big trees. Now I think those are like, seeds, right? The trees drop them and they turn into more trees?

Now why should I plant trees?

Not only that. Why shouldn't I cut down trees?

Now I promise to only cut down trees where there is already green leafy stuff of one type or another growing. Can anybody explain why I should not cut down trees?

To answer this requires calculating all the effects in that regions bio of that species of tree versus the alternatives which would naturally arise to take its place. And in fact, every tree you plant will remove something else that is alive and growing there.

That's all true but there is another factor. In typical work of the Congress and Senate, the members don't get much public exposure. Sure, some more than others. Rand Paul consistently gets a bit of media time, month in month out. But big media shows like the impeachment "trial" is big exposure like a politician only dreams about.

In that situation, that's a rational, although disgusting, reason why Schiff might have wanted to draw it out longer. FREE PUBLICITY FOR ME!!! ME!!!

Regarding...

Also, they put a lot of republican senators in swing states in an undesirable situation by making them actually pick a side on something they have always defaulted to political non-answers when asked about.
The major effect of this 3 1/2 year long non-stop "Orange man bad" that I see has been to seriously piss off a lot of moderate and conservative and independent voters and they are going to make their voices known. I would be happy to say, "That was brilliant, that move!" but it seems here time after time these Democrat strategists (or whatever) are making decisions seemingly very amateurish and often wrong.

The whole trial was on whether or not Trump did something bad, and how bad it was.
....
[/quote]Well, that's what I asserted earlier. More and more of the manic "Trump bad orange man" meme.

So as a (somewhat humorous lol) illustration of this, I sometimes post serious science showing we may be headed for global cooling.

This drives Warmers nuts, of course. It's laughable to me, but it engages the True Believers, so of course it would never be allowed in the reddit.

But strictly from the scientific point of view, of course there could be a strong solar cooling trend, a component of human warming, a couple volcanoes with a cooling effect, blah blah blah ad nauseam. Of course the resulting climate is the summation of the various causes, inflow and outflows.

Right there is the proof that climate alarmists don't care about the truth of the matter, and that they are pushing lies largely for political purposes.

As frank1 has pointed out several times, the most important thing is water vapor, and the outbound radiative flux (both IR and visible light ranges).