Impeachment Inquiry Starts Public Hearings

[KaraBulut]

At the end of the Ambassador's testimony, she received a round of applause from the hearing room.

If you want to skip Nunes' lunatic ramblings, skip to 1:20:

 

[gsdx]

A Harvard law professor assessed Trump's defenders, and he re-enforces something which has been mentioned in this forum a number of times:

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe on Thursday dumped on Donald Trump’s political allies and defenders as he dissected the latest developments in the impeachment inquiry into the president.

“I think it’s about time that people pay more attention to the Constitution and to the purposes of our democracy than to the trivial business of getting reelected,” Tribe told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/laurence-tribe-donald-trump-defenders-090359249.html

 

[luckynumbah7]

I wonder if there is still time to enter. If I won, it would be the best chance I'd ever have to make impeachment irrelevant.

Situation's like a darkly satirical version of 'The Dead Zone'.

 

[NotHardUp1]

It just stands to reason you'd have your best chance. It is obvious he doesn't watch what he eats. It only takes a second. I doubt Amanita phalloides can even be tasted, and it takes a while to do you in.

And heaven knows no metal detector or explosives sniffing technology is looking for it.

https://slate.com/technology/2014/0...s-spreading-but-poisoning-can-be-treated.html

When someone eats Amanita phalloides, she typically won’t experience symptoms for at least six and sometimes as many as 24 hours. Eventually she’ll suffer from abdominal cramps, vomiting, and severely dehydrating diarrhea. This delay means her symptoms might not be associated with mushrooms, and she may be diagnosed with a more benign illness like stomach flu. To make matters worse, if the patient is somewhat hydrated, her symptoms may lessen and she will enter the so-called honeymoon phase.

Meanwhile, the poison stealthily destroys her liver. It binds to and disables an enzyme responsible for making new proteins. Without this enzyme, cells can’t function, and liver failure results. Without proper, prompt treatment, the victim can experience rapid organ failure, coma, and death.

What a great fantasy meal. You dine with the world's most disgusting man, and a day or two later, he craps himself to death while his doctors flit about treating a flu virus he doesn't have. It's a bit like Meeting of the Minds meets Columbo.

 

[NotHardUp1]

What is almost amusing in this fiasco is the great imbalance between Capitol Hill and the White House.

There are all these crack lawyers who made their move to politics and got elected to the House or Senate. The GOP lot are doing their damnedest to deploy their best legal defense in a case where guilt is already known and distraction is the only possible strategy. "SQUIRREL!"

So, we have very unhappy Congressmen with their hands tied in a game where they've been forced to play. Before and during the "trial" or hearing in this case, you have the stupidest man in the government shooting himself in the face, not the foot, giving them regrets for all their lawyer pains.

Trump's lame "I have the right to free speech" is so totally oblivious to his role as president and his position as subject of a Congressional investigation, it buggers belief. He also is such a bad debater that he possibly doesn't see the glaring difference between defending himself and attacking the ambassador, making that his only strategy (as usual), but is a certainty the smart lawyers over on the Hill saw and knew what a big loser that "plan" was, hence their quick praise of the ambassador.

Honest to God, I don't know why his own party has not done him in (politically). It used to take the Praetorian Guard to get rid of particularly onerous Caesars, but Trump has given his guard numerous opportunities to keel haul him. He toadied to Putin. He attacked honored gold star veterans. He slandered the McCain family after the death of his rival. He abandoned our allies to Turkey's slaughter. Each and every one of those events by former presidents could have signaled the death knell from their erstwhile allies.

Our present GOP is truly an ugly specter of its former self. While claiming to be concerned with babies, with family values, with small government, they are selling out the most basic human decency. It's a shit show for sure.

And I do believe Trump will precipitate a civil war, whether he is convicted of impeachment or merely defeated at the polls.

 

[rareboy]

 

[rareboy]

 

[Sausy]

It's bad enough to sell out whatever principles one may have left, but to sell out for Donald Fucking Trump? If this is what the Republican Party has come down to, best for the party to implode and be forever gone. From The Party of Lincoln, of Theodore Rooevelt… to that of Donald Trump?

 

[TX-Beau]

It's bad enough to sell out whatever principles one may have left, but to sell out for Donald Fucking Trump? If this is what the Republican Party has come down to, best for the party to implode and be forever gone. From The Party of Lincoln, of Theodore Rooevelt… to that of Donald Trump?

Have you taken a good look at modern 'Pubs? Start with Teddy Cruz our Lord and Savior. He who leaves a slime trail wherever he goes. Trump is a venal greedy lying fuck, he's the one who never sold his supposed values out.

 

[frankfrank]

Honest to God, I don't know why his own party has not done him in (politically).

I don't get it either.

Not that Pence is any good, but I thought they would JUMP at the chance to get rid of him to get Pence in. Pence is one of the most powerful voices of Dominionism, which is a value that the GOP LOVES. In other words, cram Christian theocracy down everybody's throat, no matter whether anybody wants it, and install the Christian counterpart of Sharia Law.

And Pence could get it done, much to their delight.

 

[KaraBulut]

...I thought they would JUMP at the chance to get rid of him to get Pence in...

...in for a year.

They're worried that Pence can't get elected on his own in 2020. As governor of Indiana, Pence was not popular. He campaigns like he's giving a boring Sunday sermon.

The idea was that Trump was supposed to spend the Presidency hanging out with his supporters and donors while Pence and Preibus enacted the donors' agenda. This was the offer that Kasich said was also made to him.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Astoundingly, today the Republicans doubled down on the attacks and went after Vindman. He was criticized for wearing his uniform and the president foolishly echoed that. The man who hid from service and criticized the gold star family has now gone on record attacking the Purple Heart on his own staff.

Of course, the Lt. Colonel did exactly the right thing. He's being deposed before a contentious Congressional committee. The Congressman that called him "Mr." was indeed out of line and should have observed formal protocols. The witness was going to be treated with hostility and he knew it, so it was well within his right to wear the dress uniform he had earned, that had given him the experience to warrant his posting to the White House staff.

How long will the veterans and military personnel of this country put up with the slights the president has given those who have risked their lives?

You really have to go a ways to be worse than Andrew Jackson, but we're definitely there.

 

[Sausy]

And even Andrew Jackson, miserable SOB he was, was a prominent general and served his country, often with great distinction.... Trump had a bone spur excuse that even Jackson, Trump's idol, would have called him out on if he were around today.

 

[gsdx]

Astoundingly, today the Republicans doubled down on the attacks and went after Vindman. He was criticized for wearing his uniform and the president foolishly echoed that.

He has always been his won worst enemy, but he always finds someone else to take the blame.

 

[Sausy]

I'll come back later with some takeaways from today but I literally was going to throw the remote control at the screen seeing Jim Jordan yet again(second place is John Ratcliffe on my shit list... the very same idiot hack Trump wanted to replace Dan Coats a Director of National Security)… I'm just sick and tired of seeing so many Republicans doing nothing but holding Trump's jockstrap and mouth lies, innuendo, and irrelevancy without end. A few managed decent questioning like Rep. Will Hurd, but for the most part they are just bombthrowing and launching shit just hoping to land something that sticks. But they can't, because they have nothing to stand on as all the details become clear. Even Kurt Volcker and to a lesser degree Tim Morrison couldn't pull it out for them.

 

[KaraBulut]

I'll come back later with some takeaways from today but I literally was going to throw the remote control at the screen seeing Jim Jordan yet again(second place is John Ratcliffe on my shit list... the very same idiot hack Trump wanted to replace Dan Coats a Director of National Security)… I'm just sick and tired of seeing so many Republicans doing nothing but holding Trump's jockstrap and mouth lies, innuendo, and irrelevancy without end.

They're there to get you to change the channel in disgust. It's a strategy that they have chosen in hopes that an American public afflicted by ADHD will tune out and not listen to the testimony by public servants with stories to tell.

It's also like watching someone set themselves on fire. Perhaps they're hoping that their constituents will have forgotten about their behavior by the time they go into the voting booth in 2020?

 

[rareboy]

With the latest revelation that Sondland kept Pompeo informed during the pressure campaign to get Zelensky to publicly commit to investigating Biden.....there may be more fireworks in store for today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/...lLpJBnxJGQoPdsCjH0QAq44KciUGm5nxs8dLDKAUifcxo

 

[Sausy]

Looks like from previews read on Morning Joe on MSNBC that Gordon Sondland is going to lay it all out on Mike Pompeo, Rudy Giuliani and Trump... Sondland is totally not going to allow himself to be made the fall guy by Trump and the Republicans.

 

[Sausy]

Right away, Devin Nunes continues to treat impeachment like it's a big circus, a big Democratic power play....people like Nunes sicken me. And yes, KB... I know he and Jim Jordan and John Ratcliffe and their ilk want me and other Americans watching to turn the channel and not get invested, not care... but it's not going to work with me, for certain. America cannot allow its politics to devolve into cynicism, demagoguery, and endless contention putting us against the other. This has got to stop... and if House and Senate Republicans want to continue to embrace Trump, and all the destructiveness he stands for... they deserve to be swept away by history to irrelevance, because if we are to thrive, no less survive as a nation, we've got to have something to build on keeping the fabric of American society together. And each day they corrode and wear away at it.

 

[rareboy]

...and....Sondland has just become Trump's worst nightmare with the admission that this was all done at the express direction of Trump....and that there was a quid pro quo.

This, in and of itself, should be the testimony that makes impeachment by the House a certainly and conviction by the Senate much more likely.

At this point, for the GOP in the Senate to dismiss this naked abuse of power will be a stain that they will surely suffer for in 2020.

https://www.npr.org/2019/11/20/7809...xvNlywYf_IS8SKV7zlbD7ewQv6hMPnB2bsitNgQTRzL78