I could see the Supremes sending the case back down for the lower court to determine the definition of an official duty.
Who would you prefer to decide which acts are part of a Presidents official duty?
This is the Republican Party
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Who would you prefer to decide which acts are part of a Presidents official duty?
I would prefer Congress to do it, but actually be made up of competent individuals and not football coaches, I don’t want the presidency to have its power expanded.
Why reduce the power of congress? They do next to nothing meaningful anyway.
The first time I was in government leadership I was not yet 30. I got dispatched by an elected official down into the bowels of the bureaucracy. I didn’t like the assignment, it wasn’t a very topical area of government and had nothing to do with what we were doing to get re-elected.
Six months later I had cut the budget over 30% but productivity was up significantly and several managers with opposing political views had left for the private sector. I was pretty proud of myself as I thought I had turned a corner. Or so I thought.
One day I got a message summoning me to the elected official’s office. This was unusual and I was scared to death. Still, I prepped what we would call a slide deck now, but it was really just some early Microsoft pie chart graphics showing the outstanding increase in numbers.
About five minutes in the presentation the official stopped me and said “Son, I like you. Why are you making this government more efficient at doing things we don’t like? I’m a limited government Republican. We are promoting you. This was good work. Now go limit your government at (different agency). And stop running off people who are just going to retire and sue me at some NGO. Keep them happy, working, and doing nothing.”
I learned a lot about the difference between politics and government that day.
Six months later I had cut the budget over 30% but productivity was up significantly and several managers with opposing political views had left for the private sector. I was pretty proud of myself as I thought I had turned a corner. Or so I thought.
One day I got a message summoning me to the elected official’s office. This was unusual and I was scared to death. Still, I prepped what we would call a slide deck now, but it was really just some early Microsoft pie chart graphics showing the outstanding increase in numbers.
About five minutes in the presentation the official stopped me and said “Son, I like you. Why are you making this government more efficient at doing things we don’t like? I’m a limited government Republican. We are promoting you. This was good work. Now go limit your government at (different agency). And stop running off people who are just going to retire and sue me at some NGO. Keep them happy, working, and doing nothing.”
I learned a lot about the difference between politics and government that day.
So essentially you are wanting a tax cut, not a reduction in the power of government.
You don't really know what you are for. You are just reciting things your parents said.
not as bad as taxpayers paying the bill for the dnc muller report, two impeachment, and a jan6 inquest
IIRC people in the FBI warned the Republicans about using him because of his credibility issues. They went ahead with it anyway. When it proves your point but they say there is credibility issues, you would think people would step back and look at it before saying things like, this guy is completely credible. There was even superlatives used in reference to his credibility by the politicians, after being warned.
Issues at the FBI have been ongoing for quite some time
Fix the FBI
Politicization has eroded public confidence in the bureau. We can wait no longer to begin addressing it.
www.city-journal.org
You're completely correct. If Donald Trump hadn't been elected in 2016, none of those things would have been needed. He really owes all of us an apology. Glad you started seeing the light.
I wasn't saying the FBI didn't have problems. Just saying in this instance, there is more blame than for just the FBI.Issues at the FBI have been ongoing for quite some time
Fix the FBI
Politicization has eroded public confidence in the bureau. We can wait no longer to begin addressing it.
You can argue all you want, till the cows come home, about party politics by the DMC over the 1st impeachment & the New York stuff.
But Jan 6, the classified case, and election interference in GA are not party politics.
Party politics was pulled by the Republicans about Clinton and Monica. Clinton might not have won reelection if he wasn't out of terms. Republicans pulled it anyway, to try and stain the President's record, and cause him grief. So that was a little tit for tat game on the Stormy thing. You seem to have forgotten about the time, money, and effort spent on that trial. That was courtesy of the Republicans spending your tax dollars on that trial. That's exactly what Biden's impeachment was as well. Both parties play at those kind of games.
Yes and no.
Every U.S. President since World War II, except Barack Obama, has had impeachment proceedings referred to the House Judiciary Committee and he arguably had similar allegations against him investigated by that body using different nomenclature with no action.
As a result, there is an entire apparatus, inside and outside of government, a structured bureaucracy, that deals with impeachment. With all the trappings of a bureaucracy — recurring appropriations, office buildings, standardized forms, etc. There are lawyers and other professionals, inside and outside of government, who go their entire careers doing nothing but impeachment proceedings.
So Washington is conditioned for these proceedings. It’s part of doing business. Nobody, on ether side, really thinks about what is spent unless it scores cheap political points.
It has some positives. It releases political tension in a formalized positive way that might actually be a bit constructive. And it’s used to curb the anti-democratic impulses of many men in the White House drunk on power and hubris. Nobody wants to be the guy that lands the Boss in a hearing. Or remembered alongside G Gordon Liddy. If a mid level junior staffer starts strutting too much and starts bending laws to their will, or just talking that way, it’s almost routine for the White House to get letters from House Judiciary asking questions and folks know exactly what is going on with those inquiries. And that’s checks and balances like they are supposed to work.
The problem with this entrenched system is Washington is the biggest small town in America. All of these people know each other. Their parents knew each other. Their grandfathers are in pictures together hanging on the wall in the lobby of the prep schools they attended. This is not hyperbole.
Nixon famously advocated openly for a constitutional amendment prohibiting anyone over 40 from running for the House. He felt 25 years was too short a time to meet the people and gain the credibility necessary to be effective.
It spilled into public with Kavanaugh and the accusations with him about high school. But sitting around at dinner parties gossiping about each other — that’s exactly what these people do. There are forty year blood feuds playing out silently in the Senate over things as petty as one Senator stealing the party date of another back in 8th grade.
This is all to say, and I can say much more to bolster my argument, that the Clinton thing was pay back for Nixon and a bunch of personal beefs from that era. Hillary Clinton was not the only prominent figure during that era that began their career as part of the Watergate investigations/defense. It very much was about smearing him and beating his defenders because about two or three dozen boomers felt they lost the Nixon thing and they had been seething with hatred ever since for the players and staffers on the other side. But goes back even further than that. In some cases to high school. It might shock you, or maybe not, to learn that.
All of the people who faced off in the Nixon thing, on both sides, got the band back together for one more ride. It was that simple. And the government already had the established infrastructure mentioned above to facilitate it. They just had to find an issue. And they could. Because Clinton has some pathology issues and he allowed himself to be put into a position where he felt justified in committing a felony in writing.
And they did it, in part, because the polling and fundraising was favorable. Never forget that. Whether it’s war in Kuwait or impeachment or student loan relief, things happen or don’t happen, in all three branches of government, only when the polling numbers make sense and usually they make sense for both sides, as it did with Clinton. Never in a million years would Al Gore, on his own, get the turnout he did in 2000 without the Clinton impeachment.
So the same apparatus is at work here. The polling on J6 is favorable for both sides. It’s boosting turnout projections. The framework, with a bunch of changes, worked well for the Dems to put on their show. They got their history impeaching him twice even if both side concede that the articles have glaring factual errors in them. Before Biden even took office, the Reps were vowing to impeach Biden and Myorkas, mostly to raise money and get the turnout machine humming for the mid terms. Which makes people millions.
So it’s not that the Reps did this “to try and stain the President’s record” as you say, or any legitimate public purpose for that matter, it’s really about little tiny people in the grand scheme of things, some in places of great authority and power, playing petty games and settling schoolyard scores, to enrich themselves. And they can do that, because it makes the campaign and money folks rich while depriving the other side of resources fighting it.
God Save The Republic.
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Most of the damaging evidence against the President and his son does not originate from that source. Nor is the source necessary to prove the allegations against the President.
Also, welcome to the world of federal criminal law. Hundreds of people go to prison for decades each year on the testimony of FBI cultivated sources of similar credibility.
Finally, welcome to the world of criminal law generally. With or without the FBI involved, your average criminal law trial does not include the country club board. No doctors and priests on the stand in those cases. The trial rules exist not to weed out the liars, because liars are inevitable, as this guy likely is, but to weed out the unreliable or unprovable things they say out of self interest, spite, delusions, etc.
And that’s why the FBI deals with them and why you need to be a great lawyer to work for the Justice Department. The job is getting the 15% of what they have to say into evidence that matters and minimizing the 85% of what they know or who they are that hurts your case. The value add is investigating and prosecuting someone who deserves it using the good evidence against them and keeping the bad evidence, like bias and credibility, out of the record and therefore out of the courtroom. They have mastered that craft. It’s why they didn’t think twice about dealing with this guy.
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Yeah, I realize all of that. Whether it's knowing it instinctively, or actually knowing it as facts, I'm aware of all of that.
You can't tell me they didn't want to stain Clinton/Hillary's family name though. Just because much of their motives were monetary/making the Democrats look bad/improving the republican wares in doing so/raising more money/ etc, etc, doesn't change that they were attempting to stain his rep for all of those reasons. Besides Ken Starr couldn't get them in Whitewater, so I'm pretty certain he wanted some satisfaction in seeing Hillary and Bill suffer.
You have to take my post in context as well. I was answering A TUfan, (otherwise known as BdeaBdeaBdeaThat'sallfolks') and his silly post. You read it, about how it's all theater, and they are doing it on the taxpayer's dime, as if it's all brand new. He acted like the impeachment industry is suddenly a thing, as of yesterday, all because of the Democrats.
Every party has been doing it for a long while. They take turns. It was the Democrats turn. They were doing the same, for some of the reasons you mention, but also because Trump is a jackass who thinks he can get away with anything and is trying to. I just mentioned Clinton's impeachment because it was as ridiculous as the first one of Trump was. ATuFan was Ignoring a fairly recent circus impeachment trial that was all for show, put on by the republicans. All the while bitching about the things the DNC did even more recently, as if it was only the Democrats that ever did this.
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Agree that there are elements in the upper class of America that view certain families as royalty and all others as unworthy even if they themselves aren’t royalty either. And they will do anything to besmirch ambitious names before they reach royalty status.
And that drove Nixon mad, may have driven Biden to crime that won’t be proven, and could be the reason Trump is so unpredictable. It made MCain and Kerry princes growing up even if they weren’t quite kings. US Senator Preston Bush certainly understood it. He told his sons and grandsons to earn a fortune before going into politics but just earning a fortune isn’t enough. You’ll lose it unless you have a personal stake in public service. Hearing this, weeks later George HWBush moved to Texas to make a fortune in the oil business as quickly as possible. And he did.
And that drove Nixon mad, may have driven Biden to crime that won’t be proven, and could be the reason Trump is so unpredictable. It made MCain and Kerry princes growing up even if they weren’t quite kings. US Senator Preston Bush certainly understood it. He told his sons and grandsons to earn a fortune before going into politics but just earning a fortune isn’t enough. You’ll lose it unless you have a personal stake in public service. Hearing this, weeks later George HWBush moved to Texas to make a fortune in the oil business as quickly as possible. And he did.
That's where Trump's broken ego lies, is in all of that morass. He has been trying to prove he is not new money for his entire life and he is still new money, and not Royalty. That's the swamp he is trying to throw out. Not corrupt career politicians encrusted in Washington that can be and are influenced, but old money that can be and is influenced. He's trying to replace it with new money and a tiny bit of old money that is loyal to him and can be influenced.
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Like most of friends, a presidential contest between Trump and Biden is not the contest I wanted. But it's the one we have. Who would thought that with the stock market up, strong economic growth, a record number of people with healthcare, a long promised infrastructure bill enacted, and interest rates headed down again that "it's the economy, stupid" dominates this race. 20 years ago when for decades I had been a dependable Republican, that someone with Trump's legal record and personal life would be the party's presidential candidate would have been laughable. But here we are.
Maybe we shouldn't be talking about whether "this is the Republican Party", so much as "This is the United States". Weren't there younger, stronger candidates? Have we really lost our faith in our political system to the point that electing someone who is promising to ignore and eviscerate our laws and institutions is a winning option? How did the Dems fail to bring develop an alternative to Biden?
At least we have had a 4 year to rest up after 4 years of the Trump reality show daily drama. Biden has shouldered on, and Trump's adoration of Vladimir Putin, attacks on NATO, and his long list of legal failures are interesting news but more as a side show with immediate impact on our lives. All that is about the change.
Maybe we shouldn't be talking about whether "this is the Republican Party", so much as "This is the United States". Weren't there younger, stronger candidates? Have we really lost our faith in our political system to the point that electing someone who is promising to ignore and eviscerate our laws and institutions is a winning option? How did the Dems fail to bring develop an alternative to Biden?
At least we have had a 4 year to rest up after 4 years of the Trump reality show daily drama. Biden has shouldered on, and Trump's adoration of Vladimir Putin, attacks on NATO, and his long list of legal failures are interesting news but more as a side show with immediate impact on our lives. All that is about the change.
The average American doesn’t give a damn about the stock market. They care that they are struggling to pay for food and shelter due to inflation. They care that they’ve have to max out their credit cards to pay their daily bills. Trying to blame corporations for their woes is just plain dum politically. They don’t care. They want to hear a plan for making their day to day lives better. If Biden starts talking about this he will win imo. If he continues to only talk about his opponent he loses. Trump’s unfavorables aren’t going down any further from Biden’s attacks.
Lots of time from now until November. Lots of things will change. I still view Biden as the fovorite but the election is getting tighter
Lots of time from now until November. Lots of things will change. I still view Biden as the fovorite but the election is getting tighter
This is exactly right.
I’ll only add that in the five swing states Trump likely needs, he is struggling in a key demographic for unknown reasons. That demographic is females who dislike both candidates. In 2016 and 2020, this group broke for Trump between 6 to
8 points, regardless of party, depending on the state. their numbers were not only the margin of victory in Wisconsin and Michigan, it was the margin of victory in the whole election ultimately. Indeed, Hillary only won three counties outside of Detroit but still lost the election in Michigan within the recount margin, due mostly to her stronger disfavorables compared to Trump.
Trump is polling 5 to 10 down with so called double refusers. If they vote, he may not win on that alone. Considerable time and money will be spent figuring out why they favor Biden this time around over Trump when that wasn’t true in 2020 and trying to claw back the damage. I suspect they are J6 single issue voters and that could be significant obstacle for Trump.
The oil industry was tanking in the 80's and several of Bush's companies were failing ones. He made a fortune in the "my daddy is the Vice President of the United States", and "my daddy is the President of the United States" business by getting appointed to a board position where he was paid ~100K annually to do nothing.
Not a lot different from Hunter Biden in all honesty.... If Hunter goes to Rehab, participates in the acquisition of a struggling sports franchise, and becomes the Governor of some random state maybe we'll elect him president in 8 years. I hear that he's a guy many people feel they could "have a beer with" LMAO
I think the Oakland A's are having some problems....
I mean..... you're not mentioning the obvious distaste among the broad female demographic with the Roe repeal. They may not like Biden, but it wasn't Biden's court that did that. I would warrant a guess that it has more to do with this than Jan 6th.
I know my wife has recently fallen into that camp. Her family is staunchly in the Republican Christian Evangelical demographic from Tulsa. When we first met I would classify her as being in that camp. In 2020 she voted, despite not being a normal civil participant just to cancel out my vote (not that it actually mattered in my state). Since then, she has begun to change her tune..... while being raised conservative, she has a feminist streak, and the Roe stuff as well as opposition to literary education (she's a big reader) have driven her to say she hates both parties. I'm not sure which way she would vote if the election were today.... I'm guessing she'll probably sit out.... but if we lived in a state that mattered she might have a tough decision to make..... and she's been willing to overlook A LOT on the Republican side throughout her life.
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For those voting against Trump, I doubt it is one issue. That one issue may have put it over the top, but there is too much to dislike with Trump to dictate it being one issue. It's less than, but I would assume you could say the same about those voting against Biden.
This is not pointed at anyone specifically, but he needs to spend equal time talking about the economy and Trump. The talking down Trump thing is to combat it being done about Biden 24/7 by Trump. You look weak and like a loser(whether you are or aren't) if you don't put it back out there about Trump. He needs to spend most of the rest of his time talking about the economy. He can spend a little time talking about Ukraine/Russia/China/Immigration/etc, but not much.
Nothing has been done for the first time by anybody.
No matter who tells you that, Republicans or Democrats.
He can try that, but can you name anyone that is better off now than four years ago? People who own their own home outright and will never move, maybe, but those people are vastly out numbered by those who can't afford a home and those who go to sleep at night knowing that a job change or transfer, a real possibility these days, could mean a dramatic reduction in the quality of housing and schooling they can purchase.
People who had their student loans forgiven I guess, but the midterms didn't show us where those people really moved the needle. Maybe not enough relief yet to really have an impact and that could change. But again, for every vote you bought with that, aren't there two or three people really angry they didn't borrow to go to college or didn't go to college who have a real hard time with a free lunch for someone getting a $500K or more bailout on an education that has little or no return for the community? One would think those folks are gonna clock out early and be sure to vote.
I'm not talking about what he has done on the economy, I'm talking about what he will do for the economy. Same thing that Lawpoke was talking bout in his response to Aston which opened with people not caring about the stock market. He already tried that talk, about what he has done, and that didn't get him very far.
Back when working your way through college was actually possible with a summer job and an after classes minimum wage gig?
One might ask.. why did college become so expensive?
Surely not because of the huge amount of easily acquireable cheap loans, grants, and other federal monies... a "boatload of cheap money" never drives the prices of anything up..
You are proving my point. You just said your wife might sit out. I’m not sure where you live but Biden needs every single vote he can get in the states that matter right now. Especially single issue Roe voters. His popularity amongst Blacks and Hispanics is the lowest on record in some districts.
What are you talking about? George HW Bush sold oil field equipment for $350 a month before forming Zapata Oil with two Midland lawyers just a year or two out of college. Zapata Off Shore made a fortune utilizing innovative oil technology. Zapata eventually merged with Penn Petroleum to form Pennzoil.
And he did all of that before age 40 and after being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for valor in combat. You really should be less reckless in the way you speak about war heroes.
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