Why Republicans won't impeach Trump

Politics and Social Issues
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Interesting piece on why the republican controlled US Congress isn’t interested in protecting America from a president placed in office by a hostile foreign power.

The Journal’s editors do not mention that they too gamely toed the initial, obviously absurd Trump party line that the administration only fired Comey at Rod Rosenstein’s behest. While they obviously feel humiliated, the Journal’s editors aren’t complaining about Trump firing the FBI director for investigating him, or even that he Trump lied about it. The complaint is that he stopped lying about it and made the people who endorsed his lie look silly. While it may seem puzzling to liberals, this kind of behavior is consistent with the method of the conservative movement. The conservative movement takeover of the Republican Party began in the 1960s and took decades to complete. Conservatives still have not lost their sense of being an insurgent movement that might at any moment be betrayed by the party Establishment. Conservatives think of their role as quasi-independent, but they also imagine it as focusing exclusively on enforcing fealty to their doctrine by politicians who might otherwise be inclined to wander. The scenario they are built to fight against is the Republican president who colludes with Democrats, not one who colludes with foreign dictators. If the president is fighting against the opposition party, they assume he is acting correctly. Conservative organs like National Review originally viewed Richard Nixon with hostility, and — perverse as it may sound — came to his defense because of Watergate. Many conservatives opposed Trump during the primaries because they suspected, with good reason, that his conservatism was shallow or insincere. They worried that, once elected, Trump would abandon their priorities and pursue the most expedient course.
So for the conservatives who have hijacked the republican party, their ideology is more important that even the safety of the nation. It explains so much and why America is so screwed up now. For these conservatives more than half of Americans are the enemy who need to be defeated. Which is why they don't give a damn that a nation that is fully armed to take America out at a moments notice has totally compromised its command structure.
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And all Trump has to do to keep Congressional republicans happy is make cuts that will hurt almost all Americans. Like axing the ACA which will leave 22 million more Americans without health coverage and cut federal infrastructure spending leaving American highways, bridges, ports and other key components to collapse even more.

But Trump has not done that at all. The policies or talking points Trump has abandoned are the centrist ones: He would protect Medicaid from cuts, give everybody terrific coverage, hammer the big banks, spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure, and cut deals with both parties. This week, Trump formally abandoned the last possible area of ideological compromise in infrastructure, “clarifying" that his plan relies on private industry, states, or cities ponying up the money. Trump’s budget actually cuts federal investments in infrastructure. He has positioned himself to the right of even House Republicans on domestic spending, and continues to push for their grossly unpopular plan to cut a trillion dollars from Obamacare. “The Never Trump conservative argument that Trump is not a conservative — one that I, too, made repeatedly during the Republican primaries — is not only no longer relevant, it is no longer true," points out the popular conservative talk-show host Dennis Prager. Trump is faithfully supporting the conservative agenda, so most conservatives faithfully support him. Their concerns are pragmatic ones about his effectiveness on behalf of their common agenda, rather than moral objections to the legitimacy and propriety of his actions. Trump may have committed impeachable offenses, but the impeachment clock has not even begun to move.
What better way to attack an enemy than place your puppet in office to wreak havoc... still think the Russians are our friends. Or that the conservative dominated republican party is going to do a thing to protect Americans as long as Trump pursues their campaign of war of annihilation against the Democrats.
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If you’re wondering where such a sociopathic mentality comes from, Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan gives us a clue.
He’s a huge fan of Ayn Rand who’s writing he credits with much of his ideology.
What did Rand base her ideal man - one totally focused on his own interests to the exclusion of all others - on that so many conservatives seem to want to emulate.
She based her “superman” on psychopath and brutal child killer William Hickman.

So I was listening to the Thom Hartmann Show this morning in which he did a horrific segment on William Hickman, a cold blooded child murderer, whom Ayn Rand idolized. In her journal circa 1928, Ayn Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent murderer, William Edward Hickman. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," she wrote.
Hickman disappeared with Marian, and over the next few days Mr. and Mrs. Parker received a series of ransom notes. The notes were cruel and taunting and were sometimes signed "Death" or "Fate." The sum of $1,500 was demanded for the child's safe release. (Hickman needed this sum, he later claimed, because he wanted to go to Bible college!) The father raised the payment in gold certificates and delivered it to Hickman. As told by the article "Fate, Death and the Fox" in crimelibrary.com, "At the rendezvous, Mr. Parker handed over the money to a young man who was waiting for him in a parked car. When Mr. Parker paid the ransom, he could see his daughter, Marion, sitting in the passenger seat next to the suspect. As soon as the money was exchanged, the suspect drove off with the victim still in the car. At the end of the street, Marion's corpse was dumped onto the pavement. She was dead. Her legs had been chopped off and her eyes had been wired open to appear as if she was still alive. Her internal organs had been cut out and pieces of her body were later found strewn all over the Los Angeles area."
If the republican party seems like a party headed by a psychopath president and populated by many sociopaths... that's because it is. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/08/22/donald-trump-outscores-hitler-on-psychopathic-traits-test-claims/
Donald Trump outscores Adolf Hitler on a test used to determine psychopathic traits, while Hillary Clinton ranks between Napoleon and Nero, a researcher at Oxford University has found. Psychologist Dr Kevin Dutton ranked the psychopathic traits of the US presidential hopefuls and historical figures using a standard psychometric tool – the Psychopathic Personality Inventory – Revised (PPI-R).
The republicans aren't going after a US "president" in bed with a dictator with thousands nuclear weapons pointed at us while cutting every support they can for most Americans because they care so much about us. They're doing it because they don't give a damn about anything but themselves in the pattern of Rand's "real man" William Hickman who mutilated little girls to make a few bucks.
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The full quote from Rand on psychopathic killer Hickman.

Hickman said: "I am like the state: what is good for me is right." That is this boy's psychology. (The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I ever heard.)
Fully explains the complete arrogance of Ryan and the republican party as whole who don't see any obligation at all to serve and protect Americans. To them most Americans are simply there to get in the way of their greatness. Which also explains why they are so passionate about policies that will eventually remove so many Americans from existence like taking away their health care. Or refusing to impeach a president in bed with a hostile foreign power.
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When you look at the connection of the republican party now and Russia you really have to wonder if it represents American culture, traditions, the Constitution or interests at all.
The fairy godmother of the “everyman for himself” Tea Party republicans Ayn Rand, started out as a Russian named Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum.
The current US president is widely regarded to be Putin’s boy.
The Koch brother’s - who helped create the Tea Party - fortune started with daddy Fred working for Joseph Stalin.
This is what America is supposed to be based on;

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Right now the highly Russian influenced conservatives who hijacked the republican party are turning the US into a society where there will be zero upward mobility and little chance for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. More and more Americans are struggling to find jobs, homes, enough food - that doesn't kill them - health care and more while a tiny portion of the population is entering the kind of status that the "nobility" in Russia had when almost all Russians were virtual slaves. One thing I know for sure, a party that is based on such un-American poison is not going to bring the country back to its true nature.
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In case you’re wondering if Rand did in fact have sociopathic tendencies then watch this interview with Mike Wallace.

In the interview Rand claims that altruism is evil. Altruism is helping others with no expectation of reward.
So say you were walking by a lake and saw a young child drowning, by Rand “morality” you would simply walk on. The child means nothing to you, he or she would bring no direct value to your life and by helping them you could place your own life in jeopardy. Or perhaps you’re someone who feels that finding cures for things like childhood leukemia are a good idea, if you donated money by Rand’s definition you are committing an evil act because you are helping others with no expectation of reward.
Rand also clearly states that to her most other people do not deserve love. I take this to mean that if someone wasn’t directly feeding her obviously massive ego or benefiting her directly then they simply didn’t exist as far as she was concerned. These are not the words or world views of people who feel empathy, they are the mannerisms and mentality of a sociopath.
Which fully explains why people who have bought into this cruel and entirely selfish mentality and codified it into an ideology are now acting in ways so destructive to America. Whether it’s refusing to do anything about a US president that was elected with the aid of a hostile foreign power and behaves as if he is completely obligated to that power, or working hard to make sure that millions of Americans will never enjoy the fruits of centuries of science and development that now give us powerful means to cure disease and repair injury.
Under the sociopaths creed now followed by the republicans those things are to be restricted to only a few Americans who they deem are worthy.

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Doug, you really should watch this video if you haven’t already.
Get Me Roger Stone

Roger Stone is the brains behind the Trump phenomena, as the video describes in detail. He’s a long time Republican dirty trickster campaign strategist going back to the Nixon administration. The video explains why a guy who seems as dumb as Trump managed to outwit the leading political pros in both parties.
Think of a rock band. Trump is the flamboyant ego maniac lead singer of the band. Not too bright, but very exciting. Roger Stone is the savvy guy behind the scenes writing the songs. Very bright, but not that exciting.
It’s not so much that Stone is pulling Trump’s strings. Stone is more the creator of the highly cynical strategies that brought Trump to power.

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Doug, you really should watch this video if you haven't already. Get Me Roger Stone https://www.netflix.com/title/80114666 Roger Stone is the brains behind the Trump phenomena, as the video describes in detail. He's a long time Republican dirty trickster campaign strategist going back to the Nixon administration. The video explains why a guy who seems as dumb as Trump managed to outwit the leading political pros in both parties. Think of a rock band. Trump is the flamboyant ego maniac lead singer of the band. Not too bright, but very exciting. Roger Stone is the savvy guy behind the scenes writing the songs. Very bright, but not that exciting. It's not so much that Stone is pulling Trump's strings. Stone is more the creator of the highly cynical strategies that brought Trump to power.
Very interesting. I never knew who he was really other than hearing his name on TV. There's another one too, whose name I forget. I heard a sound recording on a morning show where he basically says to a bunch of Republican power brokers...he says Repubs will never win on ideas, but only when people do not vote. So we (the Repubs) need to begin a campaign of voter suppression to keep minorities out. I think his name was Lee Atwater, this was reagan era. Anyway, now we see that this is exactly what they're trying to do.
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Aug 30, 2023 #msnbc #rogerstone #trump

Donald Trump’s indictments bring new heat on the coup’s “team effort,” after new footage that first aired on “The Beat” showed Trump vet Roger Stone pushing the elector plot before all votes were in. MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent reports.

The less I say about Stone the better, except I hope his history is starting to catch up to traitorous the low life.

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I’ve been burned out on the “Trump is doomed” headlines for a long time. He never had a defense. He only has his power to manipulate the legal system. That’s the story. The rich have used the political system since forever. Trump just does it openly. Letting Nixon off was a huge mistake. The protesting should have started then. The legal work should have been done. Instead we kept giving Presidents more and more power. It happened in plain site. It wasn’t interesting news. The revolution was not televised.

"Notice how Republicans are threatening REVENGE? How they’re threatening to lock up Democrats in retaliation? How they’re promising to start another civil war in retribution for arresting Trump?

They’re NOT saying he’s is innocent.

Just like both of Trump’s impeachments, they KNOW he did it. They’re just mad we won’t let him get away with it."
Jim Wright

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The Revolution will not be televised

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Breathless headlines aside,

Same goes for allowing the clown squad to get away with ruthlessly attacking medical science (tobacco) and climate science ( Earth’s global heat and moisture distribution engine ) with disingenuously manipulated minutia, and fabricated storylines and millions of dollars worth of mega-phone. Honing their skills until they’ve become a pretty much unstoppable force, as the 2016 election showed us.

Although to me it seems our most damning failure, the one that presaged all the other bad, bad decisions to follow, was that in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, we, individually and as a society, learned about how we, humans, were impacting our life enabling biosphere.

It became physically and numerically obvious that if current human driven exponential trends continued, we were going to be facing catastrophe after catastrophe, until no one is left. Is wasn’t hyperbally. The speed and an exact road map, were certainly not available, because those required excruciatingly details facts and figures which depended on measuring capabilities.

But all that was secondary to the fundament physics and the mathematical direction of all trends. We knew the direction that inaction, (that is not slowing down), was going to take our society and our children’s futures

There is no 1% uncertainty to discuss! That is simple physical reality. Take a look at some of the graphs that bring home the historical magnitude of the trends being observed,

The global system is unimaginably complicated, so of course, no one could offer exact predictions of cascading sequences and timing - which was good enough for the rich kids to kick in their cash for one deceptive propaganda campaign after another. Denying and muddling the science with a mega-phone no university or citizen group could muster. And there was not intellectual or philosophical push back of any substance. We all went with the flow.

The subsequent half century has done nothing to change that, even if our human imagination continues finding countless ways to dance around the growing body of evidence that’s in front of our eyes. Believe it, or ignore it, makes zero difference to the situation we are living through and the consequences each of us will wind up paying.

Seems to me perhaps the only truly constructive thing left to do, now that we’ve wasted all that precious runway of the past half century, is to finally at least get our own personal mental affairs in order. And that can not be done on the backs of ancient philosophers, bright minds no doubt, still they didn’t have a clue about atoms, deep time, biology, evolution.

It’s tremendously limiting to one’s “world view” not to have any knowledge of being an evolved biological thinking machine, created by an amazing history of Earth bound processes, with bewildering examples of serendipity throughout, leading to our appearance on the world’s stage.

Shouldn’t that fundamental short coming of our philosophical heritage be brought to center stage and discussed?

I keep hearing & seeing uncritical references to, “I Think, Therefore I Am” which is then followed by all sorts of fanciful discussion that hit back on God or consciousness out in the Cosmic void, all the while steadfastly ignoring the significance of over four billion years of evolution unfolding one day at a time.

It matters because it leads one to a totally different fundamental observation:

“I Am, therefore I Think.”

There is no mystery about who I am,

I am the consciousness of this physical body that created this consciousness I’m experiencing.

My consciousness is the inside reflection of my body doing its thing.

My body is doing its thing, because of millions and millions of generations worth of development and research and training, being handed on down to the next generation, with me being the current generation of my particular line.

I am a filament in the pageant of evolution.

My body is the sum total of billions of years worth of evolution, one generation building upon the others.

I use “appreciation” a lot because it indicated something deeper than simply knowing a fact, it’s a deeper absorption of the information to were it fuses with and enhances the full scope of one’s inner world view.

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Do you have anything from the 50s? I’ve seen the occasional Popular Mechanics article and some 100 year old comments. I should collect some of those.

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Well Biden isn’t a dictator and is stuck playing the game . . .

IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT

Politifact - By Tom KertscherApril 13, 2023

  • President Joe Biden has signed laws such as the Inflation Reduction Act that take major steps to reduce carbon emissions. But in March, he made two moves that pave the way for more oil drilling.
  • Environmentalists were angered but, to at least some extent, Biden was legally obligated to make the moves.
  • The Inflation Reduction Act’s provisions for reducing greenhouse gases are expected to far outweigh the emissions from the additional drilling.

Yeah, we boxed ourselves into a corner that gets ever smaller.

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Meanwhile back at the theater,

Could Trump be found ‘willfully blind’?

Sep 2, 2023 #Trump #Velshi #MSNBC

Donald Trump has long signaled that a key part of his defense against the many charges he now faces for trying to overturn the 2020 election is that he was not lying, and that he actually believed he won the election. Despite all the evidence — provided by his own lawyers and advisors —Trump refuses to acknowledge the facts in front of him. Burt Neuborne, the founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice and professor emeritus at NYU Law School, says Trump “just never allows anything to impinge on his consciousness, if it gets in the way of what he wants to do.” Trump could potentially be prosecuted for what’s known as “willful blindness,” says Neuborne — the legal equivalent of proving guilty knowledge.

Good answer to something I’ve been wondered about:

There’s a Good Chance Trump Will Be Found ‘Willfully Blind’

By Burt Neuborne

Mr. Neuborne is a professor emeritus at New York University Law School, where he was the founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice.
Aug. 28, 2023

More than a decade ago, a divided Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Alvarez that an elected member of a district water board in California could not be prosecuted criminally for lying to an audience about winning the Medal of Honor. The court ruled that efforts to criminalize mere lying, without linking the lie to an attempt to gain a material advantage, posed an unacceptable threat to robust exercise of First Amendment rights.

Given that decision, Jack Smith, the special prosecutor investigating former President Donald Trump, was right in concluding that Mr. Trump has a First Amendment right to lie to the general public.

So, where’s the legal beef in the indictment arising from the eventsthat culminated in the storming of the Capitol brought by Mr. Smith against Mr. Trump? It’s in the fact that Mr. Smith isn’t merely charging the former president with lying; he is contending that Mr. Trump lied to gain an unlawful benefit — a second term in office after voters showed him the exit. That kind of speech-related behavior falls comfortably within what the justices call “categorical exceptions” to the First Amendment like true threats, incitements, obscenity, depictions of child sexual abuse, fighting words, libel, fraud and speech incident to criminal conduct. … (fascinating read)

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Playing the game of pretend to be taking action on climate change

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The game of getting votes from people in the oil industry and those who protest it

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And playing snakes eyes by promising different during election campaign

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Do you know a politician anywhere that kept all of their campaign promises?