Meanwhile, as constitutional scholars testify that Trump should be impeached, fire alarms sound at the White House. pic.twitter.com/3sfCQfMnca
— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) December 4, 2019
More impeachment open thread.
by TaMara| 211 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Stupidity
Meanwhile, as constitutional scholars testify that Trump should be impeached, fire alarms sound at the White House. pic.twitter.com/3sfCQfMnca
— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) December 4, 2019
More impeachment open thread.
Comments are closed.
donnah
White House on fire? After Trump’s occupancy, it’s impossible to clean. Let it burn down and sift the ashes.
The Dangerman
An impeachment of a President is an undoing of a National Election?
(1) I sure hope so!
(2) Bill Clinton, Motherfuckers!!
patrick II
The shredder got overworked, so they have resorted to fires in trashcans.
yellowdog
Isn’t the Republican Stupidity tag a tautology. Unless you are distinguishing Republican stupidity from Republican misogny or Republican racism or maybe Republican malfeasance.
NotMax
Any sightings of redcoats?
Zinsky
Jonathon Turley thinks we should all just get along and let by-gones be by-gones, now that Trump is president. This sort of pukey wishy-washy bogus moderation is what has gotten Democrats in the majority-minority alternate universe we are in now. Democrats need to get f*cking pissed and start jumping up and down about what a criminal Trump is. Banal moderation gets us nowhere!
Soprano2
Oh, and Turley supported the impeachment of Clinton but thinks they shouldn’t be able to impeach Trump? Fuck that! I hope all the Democrats on the committee challenge him about that, over and over again. How can he think there was enough reason to impeach Clinton but not enough to impeach Trump?
Jay Noble
Last night my home town, Sidney NE, made Tucker Carlson. Amazingly it was pretty accurate and pretty hard on their capitalism fisrt front. Frustratingly we are left wondering “where was Fox 4 years ago?”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD5udeH3sDU&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0qHf0ozqCEaVgVRBvan0Riyh04_xBzcJkb199ftgj3ppdnaIOj9w7ho6M
Joe Falco
@NotMax: Worse. It’s Redhats.
cain
I was saying this in the previous thread. Just get them to start comparing it with the Clinton impeachment then have Bill come out and say he’s been exonerated with a lot of pomp, news press, and just put out all the quotes from these folks.
It will drive them bat shit. The base will go into a apoplectic fit.
cain
@Jay Noble:
On the merits, it is a dick move by the hedge fund. It’s why you need to be careful not to sell your businesses to hedge funds or anything they will use it to make short term gains and dump it. They don’t give a shit about anything other than that.
Yarrow
Andrea Mitchell has this, “OMG! Republicans are just LYING ABOUT EVERYTHING. What the hell?!” tone in her voice, although she can’t say that. It’s kind of funny.
Martin
@Jay Noble: Tucker was only calling it out because Bass Pro is rugged individualist/2nd amendment Disneyland for Republicans and the chain is now hurting. They wouldn’t have given a shit if it was Lululemon getting fucked over and 2000 jobs lost from a small town in Massachusetts.
They were handed a perfect ‘coastal elites are destroying the heartland’ story and they ran with it.
Kent
I’m teaching school this morning so I can’t watch.
I’m curious about Turley. He has always expressed a lot of skepticism about the notion of executive privilege, especially when it came to Obama Administration actions. Are any of the Dems on the committee going down that path? Getting him on record related to all of Trump’s infinitely expansive assertions of executive privilege to withhold witnesses and documents in this inquiry and all the others?
catclub
@Jay Noble: Well Carlson seems to think that sending the message that “making rural white folks unhappy is bad”, is good for his program, but does not get around to saying we need to regulate hedge funds. Plus you are right on where was FOX 4 years ago. VERY old news.
Omnes Omnibus
@Soprano2: Yeah, Turley can eat a bag of unsalted dicks. We have receipts from 1998.
cain
Hungry Joe
EVERY impeachment of an elected official leads to the possible “undoing” of an election. Impeachment/conviction is a process for removing … elected officials. Need I say, “Duh”?
cain
@H.E. Wolf
Apparently Tom Nichols thought the same thing about Collins being 4th rate auctioneer
Martin
@cain: Hedge funds aren’t really the worst offender there. Private equity funds like Romneys are the ones that have perfected the art of looting marginally profitable companies. Hedge funds don’t usually buy businesses – they generally just trade aggressively, maybe get a preferred investment. Private equities entire function is to buy companies and change management. That’s all they do.
cain
@Martin:
You are right, I think I was conflating the two. Private equities are the folks I’m thinking of.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Soprano2:
Apparently, Trump’s impeachment is “more like the Radical Republicans with Andrew Johnson” or something
Cheryl Rofer
Recessed until after a House vote.
patrick II
turley is asserting bribery is not a crime.
catclub
@Kent:
Sounds like he might have weighed in on the impeachment of Eric Holder — for withholding documents from a House oversight Committee.
MisterForkbeard
So… fire alarms at the white house are due to burning documents, right?
The Moar You Know
@Kent: Oddly enough, not with the current president.
I’ve been following that sack of crap a LONG time. He was a party-line Dem for the entire reign of Bush II, and then, I dunno, something happened in late 2008 and suddenly he was a hardline Republican. Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. Something musta spooked the guy pretty bad. I’ll always wonder what it was.
Martin
@cain: The biggest problem with hedge funds are the folks who run them and then don’t pay taxes. So, it’s okay to hate on them too, just for different reasons.
H.E.Wolf
@cain:
Yes; and I should add that I’m a little bit ashamed of myself for disparaging the sound of his voice. It’s what Rep Collins says that is worthy of criticism.
Jay C
@Omnes Omnibus:
SRSLY: I guess the Repubs thought Prof. Turley would be a respectable-enough authority to back up their “nothing-to-see-here-move-along” “defense” of Trump’s criminality: but I do have to wonder why they thought bringing in a law specialist whose testimony was going to completely contradict virtually every word he’s published regarding impeachment for 20 years was going to *help* their case?
Though I’m guessing getting Turley on the record is more just to generate out-of-context sound bites than anything else….
patrick II
Turley is now speaking to the lack of impeachments even in more trying times because of reluctance to be partisan. I guess the civil war wasn’t a partisan act.
p.a.
It’s only undoing the election if Dense goes down too. Fingers crossed. ??
FlipYrWhig
@The Moar You Know: It’s the same thing that got Greenwald and Taibbi. Temperamental self-righteousness and contrarianism aggravated by the feeling that people who critiqued Bush weren’t critiquing Obama enough, further aggravated by an utter inability to back down from any challenge. And it’s no wonder that sort of dude starts defending Team Trump.
Adam L Silverman
@The Dangerman: It isn’t. If it was, then it would result in Secretary Clinton being installed to serve out the remaining term. That isn’t what would happen.
NotMax
Turley (or anyone) can complain about the structure and conditions in place for the impeachment inquiries, but such complaints do not render the process illegitimate and, more important, are irrelevant and unsupported as a legal argument.
In Nixon v. United States, in 1993, the Supreme Court – unanimously – held that the structure and conditions put in place by the Senate for conducting a trial following impeachment are inviolate and outside the realm of judicial review, being a political process assigned to the legislative branch by the Constitution.
It isn’t much of a leap (in fact, barely any at all) to extrapolate that to apply to the structure and conditions put in place by the House.
Soprano2
@Martin: I live in the city where Bass Pro was founded; kind of like Trump, most of what they touch eventually turns to shit in one way or another. The CEO of Bass Pro is a big Trump fan, unsurprisingly, since he’s a huge asshole. My husband worked there in the early 1980’s, you should hear the stories he tells. I don’t know anyone who worked for them who likes the place. I had one former worker tell me they make you want to steal from them, because they treat all their employees like they’re thieves. They found out a guy down the street was rehabbing the broken fishing poles they threw out, and locked their dumpsters in response! They’re huge assholes.
rikyrah
@patrick II:
Bribery is LITERALLY in The Constitution as an impeachable offense.
LITERALLY.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: I used to think more highly of Taibbi than Greenwald, if only because he’s a better writer, but you nailed the both of them in that summary. It’s particularly galling that Taibbi is missing the giant plutocratic corruption angle with Trump. Hello? Your fucking raison d’être, dude?
NotMax
Gotta admit never thought I’d witness a Congressional hearing in which both “French mistress” and “necromancy” were uttered.
Roger Moore
@donnah:
Just Trump’s pants.
The Dangerman
@Adam L Silverman:
Fair enough; I’ll settle for President Pelosi. There are a lot of fire hydrants to DC to clean up the sidewalks from all the exploding heads. I’m guessing there would also be Flocks of Seagulls (from the Chesapeake, not the band) to help clean up the mess.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: God damn it. I am at work and can’t watch.
PJ
deleted due to duplication
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: Damn. Now I’m sorry I’m not watching!
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
A major conflagration, then.
JWR
Well, none of the Big 3 (ABC, CBS, NBC) are providing continuous coverage, and so I’m left with listening to Judy Woodruff moan about the way the Dems are doing this and how partisan it will look to the public and, I dunno, the Dems finally bringing a knife to a friggin knife fight! Whatever will we tell the children? Yes, this is partisan, and to quote Mick Mulvaney, get over it!
The Dangerman
@Roger Moore:
We were thinking along the same lines except I was thinking Donald has regressed mentally to the point that he’s trying to light his own farts and an accident happened.
PJ
@Betty Cracker: Taibbi’s latest piece is “Dems in Disarray.” He’s written several of those this year, but nothing that I recall on Trump or GOP corruption (I don’t actually read them, I just see the headlines on the Rolling Stone site). He spent a lot of time in Russia in the 1990’s, and, according to his sidekick at the time, participated in some not-so-good antics. I do wonder if Putin might have something on him.
Adam L Silverman
@FlipYrWhig: What got GG and Taibbi is being compromised. GG is up to his eyeballs in the Snowden op. Taibbi is a self confessed sexual assaulter of underage women from when he lived in and reported from Moscow for The Exile. In both cases their past behavior and actions has left them vulnerable to exploitation.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: He was in Russia as a young man sexually harassing and assaulting young Russian women, Putin probably has a doorstop dossier on him. Besides he is mathematically illiterate and his writings on finance and economics were good invective but lacked substance. His math was shoddy.
zhena gogolia
@JWR:
You don’t have CSpan?
I’m at work so I’m relying on Aaron Rupar’s sound bites. They’re pretty good (on twitter).
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia:
No edit function for me. I’ll add that his soundbites have not picked up the “French mistress” or “necromancy” quotations.
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Which is a pretty weak defense, anyway. He was actually a terrible president who was refusing to defend his citizens against violent terrorist attacks, and he deserved to be impeached and run out of office. The whole thing about how terrible the Radical Republicans were for impeaching him is just one more part of the Lost Cause mythology.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
I was thinking more like a bag of salt and too much vinegar dicks. His facial expressions would make for maximum mockery.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s also possible they’re just jerks who lean towards authoritarianism. i.e., doing the dirty work for free.
patrick II
Chuck Rosenberg just called one of the Democratic witnesses a nerd. I am not sure how far up the nerd scale you have to be before Chuck thinks you’re a nerd, but it’s up there.
Roger Moore
@patrick II:
Is he asserting bribery isn’t a crime, or is he asserting that Trump’s actions don’t meet an originalist definition of bribery and thus aren’t the same thing as the bribery that’s explicitly mentioned in the Constitution as grounds for impeachment?
zhena gogolia
Jonathan Turley in happier times:
Gin & Tonic
@PJ:
I don’t.
mrmoshpotato
@JWR: CSpan3 live stream is on the You Tubes.
Betty Cracker
@PJ: Yeah, I don’t waste my clicks on him anymore either, the sexist douchecanoe. It’s been interesting to see how various prominent dudes who’ve been implicated in sexual harassment/assault scandals weather the storm. Taibbi seems to have gotten off pretty easy by claiming his own accounts of his behavior were fiction. I don’t believe that for a second.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
The name of the network is C-SPAN.
/pedant
Matt McIrvin
@Jay Noble: Wow, you’re from Sidney? My dad’s from Bridgeport.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: My response to your comment is ?. :)
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: Taibbi is just gross. There’s no way Putin doesn’t have a file on him.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It is like that. The Radical Republicans were right and Johnson should have been convicted.
Matt McIrvin
@FlipYrWhig: Greenwald has never been a Democrat or a leftist. He’s a guy with mostly right-wing tendencies who became famous for critiquing Bush’s Iraq adventures after they’d already gone sour. That got him “leftist” credentials but there were no ideological sympathies behind them.
Martin
@NotMax: Ooh. How did necromancy make it in there. I missed that.
Martin
@patrick II: Agreed. That’s way up there. Chuck Rosenberg is the guy who found teaching actuarial science to be too excitable, and switched to law.
And I mean that in the best possible way. I love that guy.
chris
@JWR: No worries. MSNBC here. If you prefer CNN it’s on the Top News tab.
JWR
Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder, but the broadcast networks might go back live. We’ll see. In any case, PBS will be my go to option.
Martin
@Roger Moore: I think he’s asserting that only Republicans are fit to judge whether a Republican took a bribe. Because partisanship.
chopper
@Roger Moore:
because back then soliciting a bribe involved a big sack with a dollar sign on it. game set and match, libs.
patrick II
@Roger Moore:
The discussion was about quid pro quo. Collins stated that the Democrats found “quid pro quo” didn’t poll well, so they stopped using that. He then asked Turley whether there could be an impeachment without a crime (implying that no “quid pro quo”, no crime). Turley agreed. Turley didn’t explicitly say bribery isn’t a crime because he knows it’s not true, just that the lack of a quid pro quo meant there was no crime. Implicit, without saying it because he is a lawyer, is what the democrats decided on, bribery, is not a crime.
chris
Huh, Comment Box and Edit are capricious today.
@JWR that link goes to an MSNBC livestream.
ETA: Damn, no it doesn’t try this.
https://livenewschat.eu/politics/
Kay
I’m kind of glad he’s back. You forget some parts of his last celebrity appearance testifying on behalf of the GOP. It was worse than you remember.
JWR
@zhena gogolia:
@mrmoshpotato:
@chris:
Thank you all! But right now, PBS is having a semingly fair-minded conversation about the hearing so far, and as I’ve already said, I suspect the other broadcast stations might go back to their live coverage.
Omnes Omnibus
@patrick II: OTOH bribery is specifically mentioned in the Constitution as some impeachable shit.
Aleta
Matt Taibbi is also a dishonest journalist. Terrible in itself, and worse because he had the influence of his reputable journalist father who gave him his start. In the past, in order to boost his work, he also attacked Western women journalists working in Russia for the LA Times, etc. When they spoke out he smeared them.
patrick II
@Martin:
And I mean that in the best possible way. I love that guy.
Me too.
Tazj
@The Dangerman: As Adam S. has said, and as you already know, no. That hasn’t stopped the national media from acting like it’s a legitimate reason for people to oppose impeachment.
Just now Mara Liasson on NPR, when questioned about why there is such a difference between the percentage of people of believe Trump did something wrong and the percentage that believe he should be impeached replied with a poor answer. She said that people jealousy defend their right to vote and to be the decision makers as to who occupies the office, especially when it’s so close to an election. She also said that was no need to worry about any precedents set here because it’s all political and everyone will forget what was said.
Of course her opinions suck, but I haven’t heard much push back in the media over the idea that Trump’s impeachment and removal would mean the election results were overturned. They all seem to let that Republican talking point slide and never bring up Pence.
Kay
Very earnest, he was, and just anguished over the possible precedent.
I mean, seriously. How many fucking times do these people have to show they are hacks to be considered hacks? 100? 1000? It’s a lifetime appointment and very lucrative. It is impossible to discredit them once they’re in the club.
JWR
Experiencing the same behavior here. Hmm. I blame Gremlins!
Librarian
Turley actually said, “I get it, we’re all mad”? What a condescending jackass.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I thought undoing the results of an election (or some part of it) was the point. If not, what in impeachment in the constitution for?
Jay Noble
@Soprano2: Most of the folks here in Sidney still working at BassPro/Cabela’s would rather not be but . . . When the first wave of @700 corporate “transfer or take a buyout” offers hit, everyone asked for the buyout. BassPro denied @ 150 as essential and needed in Sidney. Most of those folks just got the either or a couple weeks back. Pretty much all that will be left at the corpoarte campus meant to accomadate over 2,000 will be less than 150 people in IT and Web services. Why them? BassPro can’t do the work much less match the quality. Some friends who do the web work say that the Cabela’s web site outsells the BassPro site.
The thing that bothered me the most about the buyout (not merger) is the all the financial numbers thrown out about BassPro were whatever Johnny Morris said they were. Cabela’s #’s were out there for all to see. If any one did any digging Cabela’s was eating BassPro’s lunch.
Full Disclosure: I grew up in Sidney and worked for Cabela’s in 3 different eras for a total of @17 years. The last 15 years was spent doing catalogs and I was in the transition over to BassPro/Cabela’s catalogs.
cmorenc
Three Presidents were born in North Carolina. Two of them were complete dicks
– Andrew Johnson
– Andrew Jackson
…and James Polk.
Elizabelle
@Dorothy A. Winsor: There you go. Using logic.
Thank y’all for your summary. Did not have to put up with a moment of Turley and his self-aggrandizing bloviating, nor a single Republican howler monkey.
So far, has there been any House Republican on the Judiciary Committee that has not been an asshole? Do they have them their very own Will Hurd (who was decent and stayed on track in the Intelligence Committee hearings; the only GOP member to do that).
Proceedings about to start again.
JWR
@Kay: I’m writing CBS a Sternly Worded Letter “congratulating” them for having hired Turley as a Constitutional scholar.
Mary G
Prof. Karlan continues the streak of incredibly impressive women who’ve been witnesses in these proceedings.
Elizabelle
@JWR: One letter different — and it’s adjacent in the alphabet — and you would have truth in labeling with Turley.
Oh goodie. Sensenbrenner up. Is he retiring after this term? Kinda think so …
I just hit “mute.” I am not subjecting myself to any Republicans schooling us on history and the Constitution. The little darlings.
Hoodie
@Martin: That’s actually an overbroad generalization. There are thousands of private equity organizations, they do a lot of different things. A lot of the douchebag stuff is done by firms that do LBOs where they load companies up on debt and then soak them for management fees. Romney’s company (Bain) does PE, LBO’s and management consulting.
Tucker is full of crap on many levels. This really isn’t all that different that GM closing the plant at Lordstown. Cabela’s management that took the company public in the first place, presumably because management would make a ton of money doing so. You could blame them for being greedy and giving away the ability to prevent takeovers by people like Singer/Bass Pro Shops. Would it have been better if Bass Pro Shops had directly taken over Cabela’s, without Singer being involved? In capitalist terms, retail management is pretty fungible, and there’s nothing special about Sidney NE in purely financial terms. In fact, talented management might not want to live there, even with all those wonderful small town (white) values.
I have no love for Singer or Bass Pro Shops, but it’s capitalism. These guys want capitalism as long as they get to be the capitalists.
H.E.Wolf
@Elizabelle: Sensenbrenner up. Is he retiring after this term? Kinda think so
Yes. He announced it on Sept. 4, 2019. (I’m keeping a list!)
He’s 76, and represents a very red district.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
Good Lord, clear your damn throat Sensenbrenner…ugh
Bluegirlfromwyo
@The Moar You Know: My guess is Turley was overcome with fear and loathing of a black President in late 2008. Just a hunch.
Martin
@cmorenc: California produced Nixon and Reagan and we’re now denied redemption by electing Harris. Am I supposed to back Yang or Williamson now? I’m not okay with that.
Elizabelle
@H.E.Wolf: I peeked in on him. He was whingeing about how long the hearings have taken.
Gosh. I don’t remember Clinton’s ordeal, for enjoying a blow job and then lying about it, speeding through the House those many years ago.
leeleeFL
@Soprano2: Turley has annoyed me for decades. He is a a relentless both-sider, and in addition, likes the status quo, unless he doesn’t. Honestly, wish he would put a sock in it.
Elizabelle
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ: He does not look well.
I hope the Grim Reaper has him on the list for a sooner than later removal. Guy’s a jackass now and always has been.
Kay
@JWR:
Sure! Why not a “constitutional scholar”? He’s up there contradicting everything he wrote as late as 2014 but, really, all that means is he’ll get more paid tv appearances to expound on his ever-shifting theories of impeachment. Also, not that it matters, but he has gotten a substantial number of the simple facts wrong, both the facts of past impeachments and the specifics of this case. There are people sitting in their pajamas watching this hearing who know more about the facts of this case than the esteemed expert. Instead of writing a 50 page op ed defending Trump maybe he should have read something. He could have read his own work, for example.
Cacti
In other news, Wilmer has landed the coveted Mark Ruffalo endorsement, with Ruffalo declaring him “One of us”.
I have to agree with Mr. Ruffalo. Wilmer is a millionaire celebrity like he and his friends are.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think the idea is that Turley is trying to turn this basic idea against the Democrats by saying that they only started talking about bribery because that’s a charge spelled out as being impeachable. The issue is that bribery is a subset of quid pro quo. As people have pointed out, diplomacy often involves some kind of quid pro quo, as does all of commerce, so simply proving that there was some kind of exchange is not enough to justify impeachment. It’s necessary to show the exchange was corrupt, i.e. that it was bribery.
Elizabelle
Sheila Jackson Lee up now. She’s letting the witness testify.
Did Sensenbrenner let any of the witnesses answer a question?
Forland (?): “So while the President can name his son Barron, he cannot make him a baron.” Laughter.
JWR
Ha ha! I fixed it, but I do like the catch of your drift. ;)
Leto
I like how the current dumbshit Republican talking is saying that Congress should be getting back to the business of governing and addressing issues like the opioid crisis, blah blah blah… Didn’t they have control of all three branches for 2 years? *checks notes* Why weren’t they addressing literally anything but tax cuts and ACA repeal? Fuck’em.
Tazj
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That’s a great point. I’ve heard a lot of sympathy in the press for this idea that impeachment is somehow unfair to voters. I’m sure they would say they don’t necessarily agree with that but that’s how many voters feel but I don’t hear any pushback against that notion.
Kay
Turley is too hackish for the Fox News legal team. They can’t even stomach this nonsense.
Martin
@Hoodie: I don’t see a problem with how the whole thing transpired. I agree, that’s capitalism. It’s yet another chapter in ‘don’t make your towns entire economy dependent on a company that you don’t control’. Because guess what might happen…
Yarrow
Gohmert. Is he the dumbest person in Congress now or does he have a challenger?
brantl
I don’t understand that anyone can stand Jonathan Turley. He is such a smarmy, simpering little weasel, who can bend the facts any way he wants, and his shear hypocrisy is never noticed. And when are the minimal brains in Louey Gohmert’s head going to leak out?
Martin
@Tazj: “But we wanted this criminal in charge” is a hell of a hill to die on.
Kay
His career in environmental law must not have been as lucrative as “professional fake-expert on tv”
Plus, environmental law is kind of ….HARD.
Yarrow
@Kay: Yes, why would that happen? Anything we should be looking at in Turley’s background, maybe?
catclub
He is correct because the GOP House in 1998 took all of Starr’s report and did no investigative hearings themselves. So the Congressional hearings are longer this time.
Cacti
I wonder if Turdley ever gets called out by his GW Law students for being such a groveling Trump apologist.
catclub
== excellent lawyer. I bet opposing counsel notices.
mrmoshpotato
@Librarian: Yes, Democrats are “mad” at having a massively corrupt Executive branch.
That Turkey. What a slapdick.
JWR
Amen! The man has proven himself unable to follow his own (former) logic. Probably juggling how his time here might impinge on his next CBS / FOX appearance.
And an OT: Switching back and forth between Visual and Text mode in the comment box seems to generate or expose a stray .
Immanentize
@Cacti: Who says he actually has classes with,Y know, students?
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
When we had a Black president, Turley actually said he should be impeached for issuing executive orders.
Now that a White Supremacist is president he’s moved the goal posts.
trollhattan
@Martin:
We’re going to draft Jerry Brown, one old white dude© guaranteed to outlive and outhink us all.
Immanentize
Turley ,? is the Guilderoy Lockhart, of the legal world.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
That’s nice advice, but it’s very hard to implement in practice. Yes, you can avoid inviting new companies into town if you think they’ll be too dominant, but it’s hard to avoid this kind of problem happening organically when a local company is super successful. And most places aren’t going to run the successful local company out of town to avoid becoming too dependent on it because that’s just creating the problem of what happens when they leave rather than waiting for it to happen.
mrmoshpotato
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: I swear I left my eyes right here! They must’ve rolled off of the table. *grumbles
trollhattan
@Immanentize:
Turkey in cage match with Israel for Worst Ally Ever award.
JWR
@Yarrow! Are the nice blue lines around the blockquotes there for you, too? (Call me a traditionalist, but I think I like it better this way.)
germy
“Electoral college landslide.”
Baud
@Kay:
That can get you disbarred.
Soprano2
@Jay Noble: My husband hated printing the Bass Pro catalog. He said it didn’t have any page numbers on purpose, and there were always a bunch of corrections on it. He tells a story where he made the woman in charge of the catalog think he was actually going to shoot her if she made one more change! I’m so sorry anyone has to work for them, they’re shitty, and I was sad when they bought out Cabela’s, because I’m sure Cabela was a better company. Since Bass Pro is a private company, of course Johnny Jr. could lie about their financials. Him lying wouldn’t surprise me one little bit.
TomatoQueen
OT: It’s holiday fixture congestion time. Half time at Old Trafford, MOO 1 Spurs 1, Dele Alli Marcus Rashford early and Dele Alli flummoxing everyone in front of goal just before the break. Mourinho looks happy.
patrick II
@Martin:
Both. You just have to decide which one is VP-
germy
Blue life
https://abc7.com/lapd-officer-on-leave-after-allegedly-fondling-corpse/5732304/
Cacti
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch:
I don’t doubt that Turley’s hackery was aggravated by Black President’s very black blackness.
But he was also perfectly fine with the weak sauce that was the Clinton impeachment.
So basically, the “esteemed Constitutional scholar’s” position on what constitutes an impeachable offense has always been:
IOKIYAR
Leto
@germy: They’re all in. It’s just amazing that they’ve picked this guy to be all, ride or die. They didn’t do that with Bush 1 or 2, they like Reagan, but man they’re 110% all in on Trumpov. This is where we stand, we’ve drawn the line, we’ll go no further.
Really, this guy? Indeed, party of principle.
Chyron HR
@germy:
Blue love wins.
Yarrow
@JWR: Yes! Just got back to the thread and saw it. I like it so much better this way too. Much easier to read.
Martin
@trollhattan: We tried that. It didn’t go great. Though, the standard for ‘presidential’ has moved quite a bit in that time somewhat more in Browns favor, personality-wise. (Brown is the first candidate I can recall swearing during a debate, and did it unapologetically).
germy
Turley says he voted for Clinton and Obama!
germy
Baud
@germy:
Did he vote for Hillary?
trollhattan
@Leto:
He hardy har-hurr makes those libs suffer every day and that smells like victory. Anybody who thinks the pee tape would change anything is nuts.
trollhattan
@germy:
Quoting a chicken.
Roger Moore
@germy:
The incident is extremely disturbing, but the story isn’t 100% awful. This was discovered because LAPD is reviewing cops’ body cam footage even when there is no complaint about their performance, and they’re willing to punish misconduct they detect in the process. I’ll take the optimistic view that this shows a sign of real reform by the department; the old LAPD almost certainly would have swept this under the rug.
germy
@Baud: I thought that’s what he meant. He didn’t vote for trump, he voted for clinton.
Baud
@germy:
Ok, I assumed Clinton meant Bill.
JWR
@Yarrow: Good deal! Here’s hoping WaterGirl (“ahem!”) leaves it this way.
germy
Turley always looks so pained when his op-eds are read back to him.
Kay
@Baud:
Why aren’t our lawyers famous and on tv, Baud? Unfuckingbelievable we couldn’t even manage to produce a Judge Starr or Mr. Turley or Greenwald or America’s most famous lawman, one Rudolph Guiliani.
They have a whole tv roster of lawyers and we have none.
JustRuss
@Tazj:
Apparently those morons forgot that the majority of voters did not want Trump to be president.
Martin
@Roger Moore: Oh, it’s very hard. But that’s where we are. It’s hard to grow a city from 30,000 to 15 million in 30 years, but that’s what China did. Nobody promised the rules of the economic game wouldn’t change over time. I don’t think anyone wishes for a return to feudalism.
But these small towns either need to learn to stop sucking up to that successful employer and instead convince them to help the town to expand so it can survive such an occasion, or stop complaining when your company town turns to dust one day. Hedge funds are only one of a thousand different ways your local factory might go away. So we ban the hedge funds, now there’s only 999 ways for your town to get screwed.
Baud
@Kay:
I nominate Omnes.
Looks like the hack deficit extends to law. We have Neil Katyal, though.
chris
Damn, Martha Roby ain’t too bright.
germy
Roby keeps slipping up and saying “Democratic” rather than “Democrat”
Martin
@Roger Moore:
That elides by a pretty important condition. Yes, I enter into contracts on behalf of my employer. We give them money, they give us as service. That’s some kind of quid pro quo. But if *I* benefit from that, that’s illegal, and I get fired and I go to jail.
The whole point constantly reinforced in yesterdays report is that Trump wasn’t negotiating for benefits to the nation, but for benefits to himself. That’s what differentiates bribery from commerce.
chris
I think Martha is mad that she’s in the minority. Bless her heart.
Betty Cracker
Anyone know what this clown is meeping about?
West of the Rockies
@Kay:
Well, we have Avenatti, or have you forgotanatti?
Chyron HR
@Betty Cracker:
Somebody said the asshole can name his son Barron but it doesn’t make him royalty. Boo hoo.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: The Barron comment.
Saying Trump could name his son Barron, but could not make him one.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: I read that somebody said of Trump “he can name his son Barron but he can’t make him a baron.” That’s all I know – I’ve been busy today in meatspace.
West of the Rockies
@Betty Cracker:
Probably the bit when someone said Trump can name his son Baron but cannot make him a Baron.
Roger Moore
@JustRuss:
Sure, but white men- you know, the voters who matter- clearly preferred Trump.
Chyron HR
@Kay:
To the extend that the Democratic party “has lawyers” I assume they’re quiet and competent instead of court jesters.
Because “TV” is not here to present a Democratic viewpoint as you know perfectly well.
JWR
Go Mr. Cicilline! Uh-oh. Gaetz is up.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I agree with that!
Gin & Tonic
Stephanie Grisham is right, though. What is being done to this country *is* no laughing matter.
Elizabelle
WRT the humorless Stephanie Grisham: a side benefit of that moron never appearing on camera: she perhaps runs less risk of being run out of a restaurant or not served.
Could you pick her out of a lineup? FWIW, I had to think about who Stephanie Grisham could be.
Think of how TrumpLand thought she’d be a great press secretary; she was on Melania’s staff, and had a very checkered past (being fired over plagiarism, among other issues — and there were several). And then — another DUI while she was employed by the Trump Administration.
Only the best. And these weasels are pulling down six-figure salaries.
Yarrow
Matt Gaetz is trying to “gotcha” Pamela Karlan. He’s starting to yell at her. Whenever she tries to interject he tells her he’s short on time so there’s no time for her to talk. And then keeps yelling.
Kay
@JustRuss:
Maybe the voters should blame the President who committed the offense? Once again this overgrown toddler evades any accountability for his actions.
You know how politicians used to say “I let you down” to their voters when they committed offenses? What if we brought that idea back? That grown-ass men are actually in charge of what they decide to do or not do? It isn’t his voter’s fault, that’s true. It’s his fault.
oatler.
Gaetz needs a curbstomping.
WaterGirl
@JWR: I told you guys last week that I was asking to see what it looked like on the test site so I could make a decision on the quotes. Today I got to see that and approved the change.
Raoul
Heading to the DMV this afternoon, I listened to about 25 minutes of MPR patter between sessions of the hearing. Except for Ron Elving, it was pretty terrible. I feel like these people live in an alternate universe.
Apparently only occasionally during the eight years of Obama’s presidency did the Democrats face a united, oppositional GOP. I mean, was everyone in the NPR newsroom laying about in kava kava tea hazes? Damn yuppie ex-hippies.
btw: It is completely bonkers that it is substantially harder to get a ‘Real ID’ compliant drivers license than it is to get a passport.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I love when the Trump people lecture others on “class”. Because they’re very classy. Just everyone’s role models for proper behavior, the Trump hires.
JWR
@WaterGirl: TY ;)
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I am not at all sure how to respond to that. Neither thank you nor fuck you quite express the right emotion.
JWR
@oatler.: I would prefer we use the curb to simply put Matt Gaetz in Park. But he truly is a nasty piece of work.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay: Hey now. It takes real class to work for someone who’s cheated on all 3 of his wives, paid off a porn star with whom he also cheated on his wife, and also admitted on TV that he lusts after his own daughter when she’s sitting right there.
NotMax
@Yarrow
Someone with the means to alter it glommed onto the fact that a weeping pustule green background is not a good choice?
Miraculous.
Yarrow
@WaterGirl: I like it. Thanks for making the change. So much easier to read.
mrmoshpotato
@oatler.: Now now. Locked to a parking meter would do just fine.
Raoul
I was in the car and not paying perfect attention to the radio. Was it Ken Buck (R – endless planes of eastern CO) who asked Turley to weigh in on the possible impeachable acts of every president but Madison?
Sorry, that’s not accurate. Whichever GOP jacknoodle was asking carefully stepped over Dubya and Saint Ronny – both of whom most likely did, but had too much political power to be impeached over their various follies, misdemeanor or high-criming.
Yarrow
I really like Swalwell. I don’t know what he’s look at for his political future but I appreciate that he dropped out of the presidential race early. Smart move. He wasn’t going anywhere with his bid so don’t waste everyone’s time.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Raoul
@JustRuss: Our glorious press seems to have skipped right over the message that the mid-term vote sent.
Relatedly, the GOP has been making hay today (and Nice Polite Republican radio was sort of echoing) on the dastardly notion that House members were intent on impeachment before the ‘perfect’ phone call.
Well, duh. Trump has been doing all sorts of batshit corrupt stuff, well before the red-hot call readout (not a transcript, thank you /pedant) got released. It was a clear undercurrent — and at times explicit current — in the Nov 2018 election.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow: Your gracious thank you is much appreciated.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: One thing that these impeachment proceedings should make clear is that the Republicans have always been deeply concerned about not impugning politicians’ children. :/
chris
I don’t trust this guy but sometimes I like the way he thinks.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: Ooh, you changed the blockquotes. I like this version better. Thanks.
J R in WV
@Baud:
Hey, guys!? Isn’t Adam Schiff a lawyer? On TV, too!!!!
ETA: I like the new quote box a lot too!!
Plus, layering quotes to quote someone who is quoting someone else is good, needed and necessary!
japa21
Who the heck changed the block quotes? This just adds more white space.
//
jeffreyw
@WaterGirl:
Testing 1 2 3
jonas
Dishonest hackery — it’s all they know.
WaterGirl
@japa21: Argh! (my initial reaction to your comment)
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: Did we pass the test?
Leto
Haha Turdley is saying how the Congressional Dems could’ve just waited for the courts to decide on the subpeonas, that “it wouldn’t have been forever”. Lying motherfucker. GWU’s finest.
jeffreyw
Quote box ? Return to correct spot on refresh ? Returning to end of comment thread after making a comment in reply to see the comment I’ve just made ?
Leto
@jonas: I had NPR on for the five minute ride to the barber earlier and it was after the first round of testimony, and the lawyer they had on discussing Turley’s testimony basically rolled his eyes hard enough to make my radio dial jump a few times. He couldn’t outright call him a dishonest hack, but made the case pretty convincingly.
jeffreyw
@WaterGirl: The record is still spotty. Straight comments are working, normal refresh when I get to the end of a thread in order to see new comments is working well today. In this thread anyway. Not too many Tweets. Replying to a comment is still broken, count to 20 and refresh will usually get me to the comment I made in reply to someone.
japa21
@WaterGirl: TBH, I kind of liked the other way, but it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. I just didn’t want all the plaudits you were receiving to go to your head.
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: I should have been more clear. I was referring to you testing of block quotes. They haven’t worked on the commenting issues yet.
edit: or perhaps they are working on the other issues in the background (all of which I am certain are related to cache) and haven’t reported back yet.
mrmoshpotato
@jeffreyw: You don’t like beholding the genius or boneheadedness of your comment right after you made it? ?
jeffreyw
@WaterGirl: sure, but in replying to your question the other issues manifested?
jeffreyw
@mrmoshpotato: I absolutely do! And there’s the rub…
TomatoQueen
@TomatoQueen: Too good to last, and Mourinho loses, 2-1. Meanwhile, Merseyside Derby is merciless to poor Everton, suffering a 5-2 loss to league-leading Liverpool. The thing about watching Liverpool, aside from playing spot the former TOON players and trying not to cry, is that they’re fun and have a good time. Long may it continue.
WaterGirl
@japa21: I liked the other way for blockquotes, but I didn’t think it worked great with the pared-down tweets – it wasn’t very apparent that those were tweets, as opposed to block quotes.
This way, I it’s much more apparent that they are tweets, in part because there is a box around them and that’s how we are used to seeing tweets, but also because the links stand out more visibly as links in way that they didn’t with the colored background. They have a more finished look.
Plus, the commenter tweets have a box, but it’s not the same blue box with the shadowing that we have for quotes, and that’s a nice visual cue that the commenter tweets are different from block quotes
Plus, some people find it easier to read, so what’s not to like?
Jay Noble
@Hoodie: You are so incredibly off base. And to put in that snide
little “small town (white) values”. I can’t even.
Jay Noble
@Matt McIrvin: Small World!
Jay Noble
@Roger Moore: Cabela’s did see that Sidney needed other businesses and was working toward that when everything fell apart. A friend who worked on the financial side said the goal was to get Sidney’s population from 6,000 to over 10,000. The recession slowed that goal but they were still headed that direction.
Jay Noble
@Soprano2: Oh I know about changes and more changes and . . . I/We had a Cabelas buyer who said “Has it printed yet? Then change it!” That changed over the last 6 or 7 years as we got some higher up managers who actually had backbones. I was never so happy as the day I got to tell a couple buyers their product wasn’t going to be in the next catalog if we didn’t of the correct info and photos by 5 that afternoon and they knew we meant it.
Ohio Mom
Late to this thread, and haven’t read all of it yet, but wanted to add that I watched that Tucker Carlson clip on Sydney/Cabela’s and I think it’s a dog whistle of anti-semitism. Singer isn’t just a “costal elite,” he’s Jewish. A greedy New York Jew stealing from real Americans.
I’m never going to claim that we Jews are more put upon in this country than every other minority; even with the occasional synagogue shooting we remain relatively safe and privileged. But I’m wondering if Tucker would have run that story say, six years ago.
Ohio Mom
Continued: Obviously, Tucker couldn’t have run that story years ago, before it happened. I mean, would he have felt free to be so blatantly antisemitic before Trump set the tone of outright racism and bigotry?