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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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The report is extremely damning, detailing how the Trump family welcomed Russian electoral interference with open arms. It is also at pains to not rule out obstruction, but, well, presidents and national face and all that.
No Trump-approved meme can distract from this.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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^ That last one (Yemen) is a real disgrace, and deserves way more focus than it is currently getting. Sanctioned mass murder.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/19/mueller-report-bad-guys-play-dirty-trump-democrats-duty
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/19/elizabeth-warren-trump-impeachment-mueller-report
'Elizabeth Warren on Friday became the most senior Democrat, and the first 2020 presidential candidate, to call for the start of impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump following the release of the special counsel’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 US election and the Trump campaign.
“To ignore a president’s repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own disloyal behavior would inflict great and lasting damage on this country, and it would suggest that both the current and future presidents would be free to abuse their power in similar ways,” the Democratic senator from Massachusetts said in a statement Friday, one day after the release of a redacted version of a 448-page summary of Robert Mueller’s nearly two-year investigation.
“The severity of this misconduct demands that elected officials in both parties set aside political considerations and do their constitutional duty. That means the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States,” Warren said.' |
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Jezza 
2023 PREMIERS!
Joined: 06 Sep 2010
Location: Ponsford End
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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Republican Senator Romney said the conduct by Trump and his campaign outlined in the report left him "sickened" and "appalled" -- marking one of the first prominent Republicans to make such critical comments of the president in the aftermath of the blockbuster investigation.
Romney offered his reaction on Twitter after reading the full 448-page report, writing that the level of lies and dishonesty outlined in the report left him with the realisation of "how far we have strayed from the aspirations and principles out the founders."
"I am sickened and the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the President," wrote Romney, a one-time presidential nominee who has repeatedly clashed with Trump over the years.
"I am also appalled that, among other things," fellow citizens working in a campaign for the president welcomed help from Russia -- including information that had been illegally obtained."
https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-america/elizabeth-warren-calls-for-trump-s-impeachment-romney-sickened-20190420-p51ft9.html |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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This update contains some interesting opinion poll data:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2019/apr/22/trump-news-today-latest-live-mueller-2020-updates-democrats-impeachment
The best bit of it is this:
"USA Today’s Brad Heath pulled out an interesting tidbit from the details of that poll: nearly half of Republicans agree with the statement, “Nobody on President Trump’s campaign committed any crimes”, despite the fact that many people on Trump’s campaign have pleaded guilty to committing crimes. These include: former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former personal attorney Michael Cohen, and campaign advisers Rick Gates, Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulous."  |
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Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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None of those crimes had anything to do with Trump's campaign. Dig deep enough into anyone and you're likely to find something dodgy. Having 3 years and millions of dollars to drag every skeleton out of every closet and the best they do is find dodgy dealings from fringe elements of a campaign team. Even with this leverage and these guys flipping for plea deals they got nothing on Trump and Russians which was the whole point of the investigation.
Keep quoting Never Trumpers and Democrats though and desperately searching left wing news sources for a gotcha moment, you don't look crazy at all.
5.5 more years. |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| So you don't think they're criminals, either, then - even though they've pleaded guilty and been sent to prison. I'm glad we've clarified that. They must all be just misunderstood and pleading their guilt for attention. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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This Chomsky quote is so good I’m posting it in full:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/04/20/chomsky_by_focusing_on_russia_democrats_handed_trump_a_huge_gift_and_possibly_the_2020_election.html
| Quote: | Since the 1970s, during this neoliberal period, both of the political parties have shifted to the right. The Democrats, by the 1970s, had pretty much abandoned the working class. I mean, the last gasp of more or less progressive Democratic Party legislative proposals was the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act in 1978, which Carter watered down so that it had no teeth, just became voluntary. But the Democrats had pretty much abandoned the working class. They became pretty much what used to be called moderate Republicans. Meanwhile, the Republicans shifted so far to the right that they went completely off the spectrum. Two of the leading political analysts of the American Enterprise Institute, Thomas Mann, Norman Ornstein, about five or 10 years ago, described the Republican Party as what they called a “radical insurgency” that has abandoned parliamentary politics.
Well, why did that happen? It happened because the Republicans face a difficult problem. They have a primary constituency, a real constituency: extreme wealth and corporate power. That’s who they have to serve. That’s their constituency. You can’t get votes that way, so you have to do something else to get votes. What do you do to get votes? This was begun by Richard Nixon with the Southern strategy: try to pick up racists in the South. The mid-1970s, Paul Weyrich, one of the Republican strategists, hit on a brilliant idea. Northern Catholics voted Democratic, tended to vote Democratic, a lot of them working-class. The Republicans could pick up that vote by pretending—crucially, “pretending”—to be opposed to abortion. By the same pretense, they could pick up the evangelical vote. Those are big votes—evangelicals, northern Catholics. Notice the word “pretense.” It’s crucial. You go back to the 1960s, every leading Republican figure was strongly, what we call now, pro-choice. The Republican Party position was—that’s Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, all the leadership—their position was: Abortion is not the government’s business; it’s private business—government has nothing to say about it. They turned almost on a dime in order to try to pick up a voting base on what are called cultural issues. Same with gun rights. Gun rights become a matter of holy writ because you can pick up part of the population that way. In fact, what they’ve done is put together a coalition of voters based on issues that are basically, you know, tolerable to the establishment, but they don’t like it. OK? And they’ve got to hold that, those two constituencies, together. The real constituency of wealth and corporate power, they’re taken care of by the actual legislation.
So, if you look at the legislation under Trump, it’s just lavish gifts to the wealth and the corporate sector—the tax bill, the deregulation, you know, every case in point. That’s kind of the job of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, those guys. They serve the real constituency. Meanwhile, Trump has to maintain the voting constituency, with one outrageous position after another that appeals to some sector of the voting base. And he’s doing it very skillfully. As just as a political manipulation, it’s skillful. Work for the rich and the powerful, shaft everybody else, but get their votes—that’s not an easy trick. And he’s carrying it off.
And, I should say, the Democrats are helping him. They are. Take the focus on Russiagate. What’s that all about? I mean, it was pretty obvious at the beginning that you’re not going to find anything very serious about Russian interference in elections. I mean, for one thing, it’s undetectable. I mean, in the 2016 election, the Senate and the House went the same way as the executive, but nobody claims there was Russian interference there. In fact, you know, Russian interference in the election, if it existed, was very slight, much less, say, than interference by, say, Israel. Israel, the prime minister, Netanyahu, goes to Congress and talks to a joint session of Congress, without even informing the White House, to attack Obama’s policies. I mean, that’s dramatic interference with elections. Whatever the Russians tried, it’s not going to be anything like that. And, in fact, there’s no interference in elections that begins to compare with campaign funding. Remember that campaign funding alone gives you a very high prediction of electoral outcome. It’s, again, Tom Ferguson’s major work which has shown this very persuasively. That’s massive interference in elections. Anything the Russians might have done is going to be, you know, peanuts in comparison. As far as Trump collusion with the Russians, that was never going to amount to anything more than minor corruption, maybe building a Trump hotel in Red Square or something like that, but nothing of any significance.
The Democrats invested everything in this issue. Well, turned out there was nothing much there. They gave Trump a huge gift. In fact, they may have handed him the next election. That’s just a—that’s a matter of being so unwilling to deal with fundamental issues, that they’re looking for something on the side that will somehow give political success. The real issues are different things. They’re things like climate change, like global warming, like the Nuclear Posture Review, deregulation. These are real issues. But the Democrats aren’t going after those. They’re looking for something else—the Democratic establishment. I’m not talking about the young cohort that’s coming in, which is quite different. Just all of that has to be shifted significantly, if there’s going to be a legitimate political opposition to the right-wing drift that’s taking place. And it can happen, can definitely happen, but it’s going to take work. |
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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roar
Joined: 01 Sep 2004
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Once again, Chomsky nails it.
Trump was right all along about the Russian issue: it's a big nothing burger. Yet the incompetent Democrats can't let it go. Way it looks now, there is nothing that will stop Trump winning again, next year.
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kill for collingwood! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^The strategy may or may not be wrong, but let's be clear about the given facts here.
No one now disputes that Russia implemented a serious and coordinated effort to influence the US election. If, say, Indonesia did this to Australia, people would be carrying on like demented bush turkeys. Plainly, if anyone but the standard-less Trump welcomed such aggressive foreign electoral interference with open arms, they'd be marched out of public life in disgrace. The history of American Cold War hysteria is being used by the far left to dismiss Russian interference, and to a deceptive extent.
Facts aside, we can debate the political strategy. Fundamentally, Trump's core vote is driven by fear and anger at (real and imagined) white decline. Everything else, including old Cold War rivalries, has become secondary to this.
Chomsky, like many on the far left, thinks that the only common ground on which to meet Trump voters is social programs, because those panicked by white decline also benefit from these. However, by the time we deduct foot-shooting Trump voters from the numbers, what's left? Just what percentage of people who voted for Trump would vote to improve their own healthcare at the ballot box even as Trump offers them public beatdowns of Mexicans and Muslims, and promises to make it 1950 again?
That small number must then be weighed against the number of centrist swing voters appalled by the corruption, lies and divisive policies of Trump. Here, we have to ask: what percentage of these voters are left once the centrists who are hitching a free ride on Trump's tax cuts and deregulation are deducted?
It's a fine line, and Trump's mastery of news cycles means both of these strategies are likely to fail. But putting that aside for a moment, to argue that you know – you just know – that the former strategy is right is guesswork dressed up as insight.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| pietillidie wrote: | | If, say, Indonesia did this to Australia, people would be carrying on like demented bush turkeys. |
So, pretty much like American liberals are now, then.
I think people do very much question how "serious" the Russian interference was. I don’t deny that the intent was there, but from what I can see the actual execution was mostly pretty inept and/or insubstantial.
As for tactics, polling has shown repeatedly that Russia sits a long way down the list of voters’ concerns, despite the establishment media’s best attempts to beat it up. I’m not saying you’re wrong about racism being a hard electoral strategy to beat, but I’m curious as to why you’d suggest social programs are a comparably ineffective alternative to invoking foreign boogiemen. Let’s not forget that Trump didn’t just win the 2016 election; Clinton lost it, big time, and a big part of that failure was allowing her campaign to appear elitist and out of touch.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^Again, you're minimising targeted election interference in a nation popularly obsessed with these things. Read all the way through the below; we're not talking the Cuban Missile Crisis, but we are talking about a serious effort to interfere in the election:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections
| David wrote: | | As for tactics, polling has shown repeatedly that Russia sits a long way down the list of voters’ concerns, despite the establishment media’s best attempts to beat it up. I’m not saying you’re wrong about racism being a hard electoral strategy to beat, but I’m curious as to why you’d suggest social programs are a comparably ineffective alternative to invoking foreign boogiemen. |
I thought I'd explained why above and elsewhere. First, the Russia business is much more about corruption, trust and stability than the foreign bogeyman (does the far left keep missing this because it doesn't value stable governance and understand the centrists who do?). Second, we're dealing with a marginal numbers game in a binary political system. You can scream social programs all you like, but in the end will that get you more Trump votes than a strategy targeting centrists tired of scandal, corruption and chaos?
As I say, I don't know which strategy would be more effective, or why you can't run both at once; but the far left most certainly doesn't know, either. (To be sure, I would prefer to focus on building sensible platforms that outlive single elections, even if that means short-term electoral defeat).
One aside I have for you is this: after decades of questioning the validity of elections due to interference, propaganda, gerrymandering, corporate money, etc., why is the far left now scared to death of questioning election victories? Its response to Brexit and Trump, which has been surprisingly uniform, suggests it is much more beholden to naked populism than to fairness and governance. Did Brexit and Trump achieve what the far left wants to achieve in a manner similar to the way it imagines achieving it?
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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