NewsmaxTV is quite good at getting Republican pols to say imprudent things. Maybe they think no one is watching? http://t.co/zXghXwUy36
— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) November 10, 2014
From the article:
A Republican congressman says impeachment would be on the table if President Obama acts unilaterally on immigration by taking executive action to slow deportations.
“Well impeachment is indicting in the House and that’s a possibility,” said Texas Rep. Joe Barton on NewsMaxTV’s America’s Forum. “But you still have to convict in the Senate and that takes a two-thirds vote. But impeachment would be a consideration, yes sir.”…
Joe Barton is a fourteen-term member of Congress. During the Gulf oil spill, he “alienated even the members of his own caucus by apologizing to BP CEO Tony Hayward for what he initially called a White House $20 billion “shakedown”. And that’s not even the dumbest thing he’s ever done in a public forum — he’s also the soopergeenyus who quizzed Energy Secretary Chu about where oil came from, and then pronounced himself the winner of that exchange. He thinks wind is a finite resource it would be unwise to risk “using up” (insert your own ‘every time he opens his mouth’ joke here). He’s made his fortune selling his voters’ natural resources to whichever robber baron made him the best offer, and those voters have rewarded him by re-electing him over & over & over. Going on NoiseMax to announce that he’d like to impeach that Black Dem in the White House, if only the votes were there, is as “imprudent” as me telling the Balloon-Juice commentariat that Joe Barton has an incurable case of Backpfeifengesicht.
Chris
A lot of them must figure impeachment is a pretty sweet deal. They get to tell their base “see, we did everything we could to remove the Kenyan Muslim Usurper,” but without the votes to convict, it won’t actually lead to anything they’d have to own. It would just be a long session in shouting “fuck Obama.”
PurpleGirl
Barton is such a clown. His intentional ignorance of science is emblematic of the scorn with which science has been treated by Americans for decades.
Amir Khalid
The Republican party simply wants to impeach Obama and remove him from office, doesn’t it? It doesn’t give a flying crap about cause. There’s the occasional nod in that direction, as we see here, but the truth is that if it’s at all procedurally feasible, it’ll do the deed in a heartbeat.
Morzer
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/mondays-mini-report-111014
So, maybe Black Death II American Panicageddon was… whisper it lightly.. unnecessary?
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: The only thing that they can do, like with Bill Clinton, is Impeach. That only takes a majority vote in the House to accomplish. Convicting him of whatever mysterious “high crimes and misdemeanors” he supposedly committed to warrant an Impeachment is the tricky part. You need a 2/3 majority in the Senate (67 votes) to do that, and they couldn’t even get a majority to agree that Clinton should be removed from office for whatever the fuck it was they were so offended at. Contrast with the near certainty that Nixon would have been removed from office in ’74, (once the “smoking gun” tape was released, even his dogged defenders on the House Judiciary Committee abandoned him) and you see why it’s ridiculous to try it, and specifically why Barton is such a waste of skin.
Note that the certitude that they won’t be able to convict will deter them, mind you. The wingtards couldn’t stop saying “Clinton was Impeached!” in ’99, as if being accused of a crime is the same as being convicted of one. Of course, Ed Meese, the shitty grade Z movie star’s Attorney General, actually stated as much, until his worthless ass was under indictment. THEN it became “innocent until proven guilty.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Morzer: Oh, it was MOST necessary to insure that the narrative of the midterm elections proceeded as planned.
Tommy
Yeah give it a try GOP. As others have noted they’ll never get the votes in the Senate. And all they’ll do is just fire up our base and more moderates will just be pissed off they are wasting their time impeaching a President that might have pretty low approval ratings, but is about as squeaky clean as you can get. They’ve been looking for a scandal under every rock and can’t find one. That is why they are making them up.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: I am not sure what upsets me the most about Republicans but their seeming hate for anything science related might be at the top of the list because it affects so much stuff. And I honestly don’t know how you deal with them. If we can’t agree on just the most basic facts how are we supposed to get anything done?
Villago Delenda Est
@Villago Delenda Est: er. NOT that the certitude…
The spell checker can’t correct serious stupid, as we see in this example.
Doh!
Tommy
@Villago Delenda Est: I’d pay a lot of money for a computer program that would “check my stupid.” But alas not been invented yet :).
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: One other thing. I don’t have any children but a wonderful niece. People are often stunned she is in kindergarten but has a tablet and laptop and can use them far better then her grandparents. My brother will politely explain he wants to give her the tools through technology and science to have a future that is whatever she wants it to be.
I let her grandparents get her all the dolls and Disney stuff. Almost everything I get her is science related in someway. And she LOVES those gifts. In fact I got her littleBits for her X-mas gift. I can’t wait to play with them with her. She seems to pick up on things so quickly I bet she will quickly be showing me what we can make.
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
Are you really so sure they don’t want Obama’s scalp? They didn’t get Clinton’s. I think they’ll want to make up for that failure.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: I’m sure it is not far away. I just programmed my phone to turn off the lights in my den and bedroom when I dock it and turn on the light in my den when I undock it.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: I just ordered a “smart lightblub” that I can control with any Bluetooth device. Not played with it yet, an impulse buy on Woot. I need to find a good light to actually use it in, because in my home office/den I have track halogen lights on a dimmer. Not very pleasing to the eyes, actually kind of an eye sore, but effective in what they are supposed to do.
Tommy
Stupid question “BillinGlendaleCA” since in our conversations you seem to know more then myself about computers. Have you tried Outlook in Office 365? My work email is at my domain but a POP account and not Exchange Server. I really dislike I get email across all my devices and when I delete it on one it isn’t deleted across all of them. From my research Office 365 will solve this problem and sync everything. Do you know if this is correct?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: Not sure, I’m still on Office 2007. I think it should be deleted on the server and your other devices aren’t refreshing their view.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: I’m using WeMo switches, a program called WeMoManager and Tasker.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: No they are refreshing their views. Just the darn way my hosting company does things. A total pain.
BTW: I am now on Office 2013 and I so wish I didn’t upgrade with my new computer. The new interface is flat out terrible. Such a massive change I find it almost unusable. I am pretty good on a computer and even after using it for several months I’ll go to do something I’ve done a hundred, a thousand times in an older version, and find myself looking at my monitor confused.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Wow. I didn’t realize the price point had come down that far. I’d just looked at the company Google bought a few months ago and the prices were just too much, but that was wiring the entire house on a single system. I just scanned the WeMo site but it looks like a modular system where you can only wire what you want. Which is perfect for me because I am single, no kids, but a five bedroom house. I spend 95% of my time in a couple rooms (home office, bedroom, kitchen). There are rooms I don’t go into for days at a time and no need for advance technology. You should call WeMo and ask for a commission because I might spend a ton of money there in the next couple days.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: I would suggest getting them in a package deal(ie 2 of them, a camera + a wemo), it’s alot cheaper. I just got the HDNetCam(with motion sensor) and a wemo insight(tracks power usage) for 129 @ Costco. The wemo app kinda sucks, I’m really liking WemoManager.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: A package deal would be my game plan. Figure out what I want and then look to a third party.
Matt McIrvin
Impeaching Clinton was arguably successful; by modifying Al Gore’s behavior, it contributed to them getting the Presidency in 2000.
Will they be able to pull the same trick with Hillary Clinton in 2016? Maybe, if she has stone-dumb campaign advisers. Let’s see, has Hillary Clinton ever had stone-dumb campaign advisers?………………..
gnomedad
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes, but no one disputed that Bubba’s behavior with Lewinski was execrable; it was just ridiculous to impeach him for it. Whatever they bring up against Obama will be pure bullshit.
AxelFoley
@Amir Khalid: What are they gonna get? As stated, Obama is squeeky clean, as he had to be to become President. No black man would have gotten this far–and stayed this far–without a spotless record.
This is what pisses me off the most about President Obama’s approval ratings. All that this man has accomplished despite the trechery from the GOP, his ratings should be in the 60s at least. Yeah, I know it’s the U.S. media and the constant bullshit they spew about him, but then Dems added to it by not having his back. And that bit them in the ass.
Cervantes
@Matt McIrvin:
Not sure how much of a factor the impeachment was in Gore’s behavior. Leaving his personality aside for now, he was aware of post-impeachment polls showing that Clinton’s job-approval ratings had only gone up. Moreover polls showed that most people (maybe 70%?) felt that, by impeaching, the Republicans had harmed the country. Ignoring these aspects of public opinion — not utilizing them — was a big mistake.
Another big mistake was that, ridiculously, Gore allowed Bush to portray himself as honest.
rikyrah
@AxelFoley:
tell the truth.
tell the truth
Tenar Darell
@Amir Khalid: I keep on thinking there must be a way to use this. Vote the straight Dem ticket, stop the Crazy Republican Congress from impeaching Democratic Presidents for no good reason! We’ll create a real jobs program, raise the minimum wage and tax the corporations too!
Tenar Darell
@Tommy: Here’s a fun e-book with lots of projects you could maybe do with her. Plus, it’s on sale! (FYI – I checked only deeply discounted e-book on Amazon).
SenyorDave
I don’t think there is much chance the House will take up impeachment seriously. They impeached Clinton over a blowjob, but they still had him on lying under oath, which he did. And his actions were, by any standard, disgraceful. I remember having this conversation with my brother a few years ago. At that point between the two of us we had worked for about ten different companies in our lifetime, mostly large to very large companies. We both agreed that in any of those companies if the CEO had acted as Clinton did with an intern, he/she would have been fired.
If they impeach Obama I think even the shitbags in the media will frame it as the GOP impeaching a president they don’t like for policy reasons. And the Republican leadership is not so stupid as to play this losing hand.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: I’m sure they want Obama’s scalp.
It’s just that it’s not possible for them to get it via the Impeachment process.
They’ll have to resort to a coup d’etat to do it, and I don’t think the military will go along with that.
Villago Delenda Est
@SenyorDave:
I never underestimate how stupid the Teahadis are, and Boner lives in abject fear of them.
cokane
Barton also once said that hydraulic fracturing and gas extraction creates no pollution or environmental problems beyond the exhaust of the transportation vehicles. Truly one of the dumbest or lying-est members of Congress. Any other self-respecting democracy would have thrown him out of office long ago.
Calouste
@cokane:
You have funny ideas about the political system in the U.S.
truthdogg
Impeachment over immigration executive orders could be the gift that finally turns immigrant voters into a soild Dem block.
I say go for it, Barton.