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Schiff warns of Russian attack on US mainland, as Day 2 of Trump's Senate impeachment trial conclude

nota bene said:
Exactly.
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I don't think my job is to convince people or posters one way or the other when it comes to their views on impeachment and removal. My first priority is to determine how this political process is going to effect November's elections. How and how much, if it actually has an effect since impeachment and the trial is occurring 9 months prior to the election.

So I keep track of the numbers. How America as a whole feels about impeachment, try to determine whether that support one way or the other is soft or hard. Soft support is basically people answering yes or no without any real conviction, but they answer because an answer is expected. Then I try to add this into my mix going state by state.

What this means is if Collins, Maine votes not guilty, she probably loses in November since most folks in Maine want Trump gone. Jones, Alabama on the other hand if he doesn't vote not guilty, he loses his seat. I don't see impeachment having any large effect on the presidential election. At least not as of this date. But several senate seats could be determined by their vote of guilty or not guilty. Time will tell. Also in the House, out of the 40 seats the Democrats picked up in 2018, 31 were in districts Trump won. Their Aye vote on the Articles of impeachment will certainly be a huge campaign issue. Enough to defeat the freshman Democratic incumbents, some yes, some no. We have to wait to find out how much of an effect and where this impeachment trial will have or won't have.

I've started work on my 1 Feb forecast, but impeachment isn't taken into consideration as the trial isn't over.
 
Perotista said:
I don't think my job is to convince people or posters one way or the other when it comes to their views on impeachment and removal. My first priority is to determine how this political process is going to effect November's elections. How and how much, if it actually has an effect since impeachment and the trial is occurring 9 months prior to the election.

So I keep track of the numbers. How America as a whole feels about impeachment, try to determine whether that support one way or the other is soft or hard. Soft support is basically people answering yes or no without any real conviction, but they answer because an answer is expected. Then I try to add this into my mix going state by state.

What this means is if Collins, Maine votes not guilty, she probably loses in November since most folks in Maine want Trump gone. Jones, Alabama on the other hand if he doesn't vote not guilty, he loses his seat. I don't see impeachment having any large effect on the presidential election. At least not as of this date. But several senate seats could be determined by their vote of guilty or not guilty. Time will tell. Also in the House, out of the 40 seats the Democrats picked up in 2018, 31 were in districts Trump won. Their Aye vote on the Articles of impeachment will certainly be a huge campaign issue. Enough to defeat the freshman Democratic incumbents, some yes, some no. We have to wait to find out how much of an effect and where this impeachment trial will have or won't have.

I've started work on my 1 Feb forecast, but impeachment isn't taken into consideration as the trial isn't over.
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I can hope only that all votes are cast on conscience rather than expediency, sigh.
 
nota bene said:
I can hope only that all votes are cast on conscience rather than expediency, sigh.
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And if that be so then Trump and the GOP are toast.
 
TomFitz said:
You guys just makes this stuff up don’t you?????Contrary to your made up claim, Ukraine is conducting public investigations into corruption.
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Of course.That was what Zelensky promised and was begun during the Trump Administration but ignored, (and taken advantage of) during the Obama /Biden Administration. And you learned about this because it was publicly announced, right?
It isn’t as if any of you Trumpsters care about corruption in Ukraine. Most of you can’t find it on a map.
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More leftist projection. Seems you never get tired of this schoolyard tactic.
 
MTAtech said:
Whether the president committed high crimes is not a matter for polls to decide. He either did or he didn't. The evidence shows that he did.
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And yet despite all this 'evidence' the Democrats are still calling for more witnesses. Doesn't figure. does it?
As Adam Schiff said, “Do we really have any doubt about the facts here? Does anybody really question whether the president is capable of what he’s charged with? No one is really making the argument Donald Trump would never do such a thing, because of course we know that he would, and of course we know that he did.”
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Then it seems a slam dunk for the Democrats.
 
nota bene said:
I can hope only that all votes are cast on conscience rather than expediency, sigh.
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Each individual has their own reasons voting the way they do. I suppose some of the reasoning may seem asinine to us, but regardless, their reasons are very important to them.

Not being a party animal, one of the most asinine reasons for voting in my opinion is voting strictly because of political party regardless of who that candidate is. This means, the odds are you're voting for the best candidate half the time and for the worst candidate the other half. I prefer going by a candidate by candidate basis regardless of party. Hopefully I end up voting for the best candidate most of the time. I'm sure there have been many times the candidate I chose was the worst. But the R and the D means little to me.

Then again I'm more of a numbers guy than a partisan one along without being that ideological. I'll vote for someone who's political views are completely opposite of mine if I had determined he was the best person for the job. Party animals tend to hate folks like me, yet if the numbers are correct, it's folks who don't have allegiance to either major party that in the end decide elections, winners and losers. Party animals can't or won't admit that.
 
Fred C Dobbs II said:
And yet despite all this 'evidence' the Democrats are still calling for more witnesses. Doesn't figure. does it? Then it seems a slam dunk for the Democrats.
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Actually, the Republican lawyers were arguing today that there weren’t testimony— but that was because Trump is keeping them from testifying. That’s a case to have those witnesses.
 
Perotista said:
That's your take and that's fine. But if your star witness in a trial said the defendant didn't do it, would the jury convict? Now we both know impeachment is purely a political process. Not a legal one. So which ever party is doing the impeachment does need to convince the majority of Americans of all ideological persuasions of guilt. At least the majority of those who don't identify with either party, the one doing the impeachment vs. the one defending or the defense. We know in Trump's case Democrats are convinced of his guilt, Republicans are totally convinced of Trump's innocents. So where does the pressure come in? It will come from independents, those less to non-partisans, those who for the most part aren't in either pro or anti Trump camps. Without outside pressure, there will be no changing of political minds of the senators. Not in a one party impeachment affair ala Bill Clinton's.

So polls reflecting the public's stance on impeachment is very important. Where does America as a whole stand. Not where just Democratic America or Republican America, where does this nation as a whole stand on this issue? Impeachment is politics. Which side in this political battle which impeachment is just like an election or legislation being passed or not, where does the country stand? Without America as a whole on the side of impeachment and removal, it won't work. It is a losing cause. In Bill Clinton's impeachment, Republicans believed in their hearts of hearts that Bill deserved to be removed. Most Americans didn't.

With Nixon, most Americans decided he needed to go. A good majority of Democrats and Independents knew Nixon had to go along with a third of Republicans. Enough outside pressure was there for enough Republican senators to over ride their party loyalty to Nixon. That isn't the case today. Not in a political battle.

The bottom line isn't what you believe today, what the Republicans believed back in late 1998/early 1999. It's what America as a whole believes and I'll say wants. There wasn't enough public pressure to remove Bill Clinton and there isn't enough to remove Trump. There was enough to remove Nixon and force him to resign. Impeachment is normal politics by another means much like war is diplomacy by other means. Democrats are trying to over turn a legitimate election, which is what impeachment is. If enough Americans believe it's time to null and void that election, impeachment and removal will happen. If not, it fails.
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That analogy is blatantly false. Zelensky isn't a 'star witness', he's a victim. The 'star witnesses' here would be those with firsthand knowledge of the events. Such as Mulvaney, Bolton, and Giuliani. What happens if they take the stand and being under oath then compelled to tell the truth? That's a scenario this administration and the GOP is trying so hard to avoid because they have a pretty good idea what will happen.

The public was never convinced that Clinton deserved to be impeached much less removed from office. Not that they approved of his personal conduct. They just didn't believe it constituted a high crime misdemeanor that posed a threat to anyone's freedom, our democracy, or our national security. In Trump's case we have nearly the exact opposite. And if you believe impeachment is is" purely a political process". Then perhaps you should inform Mr Dershowitz, who is of the opinion, now anyway, that impeachment is purely a criminal justice proceeding. Not that he is correct about that either but his opinion is probably closer to being right than yours or Mr McConnell's.

Supreme Court Justice Byron White, in a concurring opinion in Nixon v. United States (1993), a case involving the impeachment of federal Judge Walter Nixon, found in the impeachment-trial clause of Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution a limitation on the method by which the Senate can conduct an impeachment proceeding. The text of the clause states, “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Justice White interpreted the word try to mean that the impeachment proceeding must be in the nature of a judicial trial, and concluded that “a procedure that could not be deemed a trial by reasonable judges” would be unconstitutional.
 
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Perotista said:
Each individual has their own reasons voting the way they do. I suppose some of the reasoning may seem asinine to us, but regardless, their reasons are very important to them.

Not being a party animal, one of the most asinine reasons for voting in my opinion is voting strictly because of political party regardless of who that candidate is. This means, the odds are you're voting for the best candidate half the time and for the worst candidate the other half. I prefer going by a candidate by candidate basis regardless of party. Hopefully I end up voting for the best candidate most of the time. I'm sure there have been many times the candidate I chose was the worst. But the R and the D means little to me.

Then again I'm more of a numbers guy than a partisan one along without being that ideological. I'll vote for someone who's political views are completely opposite of mine if I had determined he was the best person for the job. Party animals tend to hate folks like me, yet if the numbers are correct, it's folks who don't have allegiance to either major party that in the end decide elections, winners and losers. Party animals can't or won't admit that.
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[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Tahoma,Calibri,Geneva,sans-serif]I have always voted for the individual. I do have a litmus test of my own that includes character, which is very easy to discern on the local and state level. You have to stop the rascals before they get out of town or out of state, and this inevitably means crossing party lines.[/FONT]
 
Atomic Kid said:
That analogy is blatantly false. Zelensky isn't a 'star witness', he's a victim. The 'star witnesses' here would be those with firsthand knowledge of the events. Such as Mulvaney, Bolton, and Giuliani. What happens if they take the stand and being under oath then compelled to tell the truth? That's a scenario this administration and the GOP is trying so hard to avoid because they have a pretty good idea what will happen.

The public was never convinced that Clinton deserved to be impeached much less removed from office. Not that they approved of his personal conduct. They just didn't believe it constituted a high crime misdemeanor that posed a threat to anyone's freedom, our democracy, or our national security. In Trump's case we have nearly the exact opposite. And if you believe impeachment is is" purely a political process". Then perhaps you should inform Mr Dershowitz, who is of the opinion, now anyway, that impeachment is purely a criminal justice proceeding. Not that he is correct about that either but his opinion is probably closer to being right than yours or Mr McConnell's.

Supreme Court Justice Byron White, in a concurring opinion in Nixon v. United States (1993), a case involving the impeachment of federal Judge Walter Nixon, found in the impeachment-trial clause of Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution a limitation on the method by which the Senate can conduct an impeachment proceeding. The text of the clause states, “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Justice White interpreted the word try to mean that the impeachment proceeding must be in the nature of a judicial trial, and concluded that “a procedure that could not be deemed a trial by reasonable judges” would be unconstitutional.
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Okay, if the victim got on the stand and stated he didn't do it. What then? This whole affair has been a one political party affair. Democrats want Trump gone, Republicans want him to stay. Almost everyone of the jurors, in this case senators have had their minds made up, set in stone way before the trial began. No one and no senators care about the evidence whether pro or anti impeachment and removal. The House went through the motions for show, almost all representatives base their vote on the articles based on the R and or the D behind their name. The senate will do the same.

The House violated the three previous impeachment precedence in the way the Democrats handled it. Now don't get excited if the senate does the same thing the House Democrats did. Tit for tat or what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Far as I'm concerned this whole show, circus or whatever you want to call it is a play for political advantage come November. I don't give an owl's hoot if Trump goes or stays, but I expect both sides to play by the same rules. In this case, the house went by strictly democratic rules, the senate is going strictly by Republicans rules with neither side paying one iota of attention to the rules of the past.

I just want this whole very partisan shenanigan over with. Being a party animal means anything your party does is perfectly okay and right, but if the other party does the same thing, it is horribly wrong, evil even. when the R and or the D becomes much more important than the Big A, America. This country is in deep trouble.
 
nota bene said:
[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Tahoma,Calibri,Geneva,sans-serif]I have always voted for the individual. I do have a litmus test of my own that includes character, which is very easy to discern on the local and state level. You have to stop the rascals before they get out of town or out of state, and this inevitably means crossing party lines.[/FONT]
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Exactly, well said.
 
MTAtech said:
Actually, the Republican lawyers were arguing today that there weren’t testimony— but that was because Trump is keeping them from testifying. That’s a case to have those witnesses.
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The Demos had two choices. They could have gone to the Courts or they could have waited until November and pleaded their case to the electorate. They chose neither and are now whining about their decision. The electorate is also seeing this, and Trump will remain a winner.
 
Perotista said:
Okay, if the victim got on the stand and stated he didn't do it. What then? This whole affair has been a one political party affair. Democrats want Trump gone, Republicans want him to stay. Almost everyone of the jurors, in this case senators have had their minds made up, set in stone way before the trial began. No one and no senators care about the evidence whether pro or anti impeachment and removal. The House went through the motions for show, almost all representatives base their vote on the articles based on the R and or the D behind their name. The senate will do the same.

The House violated the three previous impeachment precedence in the way the Democrats handled it. Now don't get excited if the senate does the same thing the House Democrats did. Tit for tat or what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Far as I'm concerned this whole show, circus or whatever you want to call it is a play for political advantage come November. I don't give an owl's hoot if Trump goes or stays, but I expect both sides to play by the same rules. In this case, the house went by strictly democratic rules, the senate is going strictly by Republicans rules with neither side paying one iota of attention to the rules of the past.

I just want this whole very partisan shenanigan over with. Being a party animal means anything your party does is perfectly okay and right, but if the other party does the same thing, it is horribly wrong, evil even. when the R and or the D becomes much more important than the Big A, America. This country is in deep trouble.
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The 'victim' is not going to take the stand. He doesn't want to. And because he can't. The disparity of power in this relationship is huge. Getting the aid his country so desperately needs isn't a matter of politics for Zelensky . It's an existential matter. When asked about it the first thing he always says is that he doesn't want to be involved in America's domestic politics and elections. He tried to do everything he could to avoid it. Even sucking up to Trump. He's in no position to say anything against Trump the bully. because he knows American politics well enough to know that he can't count on anyone protecting him from the bully if he does. Especially if the bully is reelected. Zelensky is not stupid.

The argument that the process the House undertook to impeach Trump was unprecedented is pure malarkey. Mr Trump got all the considerations and rights given to previously impeached Presidents. The President and much of the GOP willfully decided to either not participate, or take advantage of them. What IS unprecedented is the level of total non- cooperation and obstruction the House faced in conducting their investigation of the President. The House followed the process as outlined in the constitution. If the Senate refuses to hear witnesses or accept documents into evidence it will be in noncompliance with the constitution.

There is always going to be a significant political and partisan element to impeachment. It wasn't too long ago that the Repubs were hoping that the Dems would push for impeachment. Practically daring them to do so. Believing that it would play to their political advantage come the election. And for a time Speaker Pelosi had the same concern. But as more information was gathered and the magnitude of these recent events became clearer she came to the conclusion that there was no longer any choice but to proceed. If this not impeachable conduct, then what is? As for myself I was of the opinion from the beginning that they needed to impeach President Trump. Regardless of the risk of political consequences. Simply because it's the RIGHT thing to do. Someone had to stand up and say for the record that this isn't right. For no other reason then for the sake of posterity. If this type of conduct were allowed to stand silently unopposed. Would the message that send then? That anything goes when you're the ones who are holding power?
 
Schiff just gave an absolute reason why ALL gun control laws MUST be repealed and people should be able to buy ANY weapons of any kind.

It is very likely that we will NOT be going to war against Russia over there, so we better become as well armed as possible and shift all of our society to building bunkers, tank traps, sniper points and safe placed for the children and elderly in preparation for the door to door urban and rural fighting for the certain Russian invaders.

Buy guns! The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!
 
Mach said:
He didn't say it. Why did you post Fox nonsense and then imply it?

I watched a bit of Schiff's arguments...seemed reasonable, professional, and done quite well. Furthest thing from a clown.
I suppose that's why you/Fox/right-wing have to try and attack him.

Carry on your good works in this life.
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The walls of their bubble are getting thicker by the day.
 
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Mach said:
He didn't say it. Why did you post Fox nonsense and then imply it?

I watched a bit of Schiff's arguments...seemed reasonable, professional, and done quite well. Furthest thing from a clown.
I suppose that's why you/Fox/right-wing have to try and attack him.

Carry on your good works in this life.
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Had you spent some time watching Fox News rather than Fake News you would have understood what's been going on for over three years. Now, when the Republicans get their chance to confront all these charges. the Fake
News media seem surprised that 'the Republicans are winning'.

However for those who have spent more time watching non-fake news this comes as no surprise. Jeffrey Toobin on impeachment trial: President Trump is winning here - CNN Video
 
Got a local distillery makes arguably the best vodka. Used to be an engineer for the largest ethanol distillery in the US. Uses some special Russian designed devices that removes the volatile alcohols. Supposedly less of a hangover. Makes a really nice 140 proof vanilla. I usually buy their Dutch Harbor Breeze. Lloyd the owner is hilarious. An engineer, not really a ‘people’ person.

yeolgrogdistillery.com
 
MauiMan said:
Here is what he actually said:

"As one witness put it during our impeachment inquiry, the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don't have to fight Russia here," Schiff said.

The United States projects power over the globe. It’s why the United States has 44 aircraft carriers, and Russia and China each have 1. We don’t fight wars "here". We fight them "over there".
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We don't have 44 aircraft carriers. Schiff is an imbecile.
 
American said:
We don't have 44 aircraft carriers. Schiff is an imbecile.
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He's only off by a factor of 4.

We have 11.

Pretty bad when prosecutors lie to their jury. Isn't that similar to perjury?
 
Lord of Planar said:
He's only off by a factor of 4.

We have 11.

Pretty bad when prosecutors lie to their jury. Isn't that similar to perjury?
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If we had 44 aircraft carriers, China was voluntarily surrender. :lol:
 
TomFitz said:
Useful idiots aren’t going to admit being conned, even as they go back for more.

Just ask any AM right wing talk radio host.
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I disagree...that they're useful.
 
MTAtech said:
So, the guy who was fired for being corrupt claims he wasn't really corrupt?
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No, he claims he was fired for failing to drop the Burisma investigation.
 
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