What is Trump's high crime or misdemeanor?

No he did NOT. He never mentioned the aid at all and as it turns out President Zelensky didn’t even know there was any aid being held back. I believe that it was Mr Zelensky who placed the call, but I can’t verify that at the moment.

This didn’t copy and paste very well. You can follow the link to the actual PDF.

The phone call is only a part of it.

What about this testimony :

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2% … ne_scandal

Look into WHO told him that. It was an issue of amb Sondland presuming (because that is how all politicians think) and relaying that thought to someone who relayed it to someone who relayed it to someone and back to Sonland. Mr Trump told amb Sondland directly that he only wanted Mr Zelensky to do as he promised in his campaign and that he wanted “no qui quo pro” concerning anything. Amb Sondland finally admitted that in the hearing.

Additionally Giuliani suggested to amb Sondland that the sooner Mr Trump knew that Zelensky was going to be honest, the sooner the aid would be released. And he then suggested a public announcement so that there would be no question.

The aid was being held up for two other reasons, having nothing to do with any qui pro quo. The aid was already scheduled to be released anyway, by US law. Mr Trump was delaying it to maximize the US’s stand in negotiating with Europe (such delays are common and proven). It had nothing to do with the investigations. And the aid was delivered without any reciprocation other than testimony from US Senators and Giuliani that Mr Zelensky was an honest man doing as he promised.

Nothing Mr Trump said or did was illegal nor even unethical.

Let the trial go ahead and let witnesses testify in the Senate.

We will see what happens.

Pelosi is holding up the trial because she knows that their case is vacuous. She is hoping that Shiff will come up with additional charges to claim.

McConnell is ready to go in the Senate. Schumer is trying to force McConnell to run the trial the way the House wants it run (very corruptly as they did with the impeachment). McConnell says he intends to run the trial exactly as it was with Mr Clinton. Pelosi then shifts the blame for her delay on McConnell for not going along with Schumer and her.

It is the devil pursuing an innocent man. Woe be to those who fought the devil’s battle.

Again I have to accept that to be as much of a concession as I could ever expect on a board like this one.

So if anyone is still reading this, how should we rate phyllo - “dd”, “wd”, or “js”?

Personally, I can’t place him/her into the js category. Phyllo followed the ball from point to point, whether agreeing or not. Stupid people don’t usually do that. They either stand on the home plate waiting for the next ball to be thrown more amiably or they take off randomly running out into the field perchance stepping on a plate then claiming “home run”. There are a few on this board who seem to fit that category, but not phyllo as depicted in this thread (I haven’t looked back to study him … yet).

So that leaves wd and dd. Wd is harder to identify with certainty because it involves motive. But typically the wd will never give in to any proof. He will just deny and attempt to shift the goal post and confuse the readers, keeping the adversary off balance. And that is when they are willing to debate at all. Phyllo did not admit error openly, but he did indicate by his demeanor that he had conceded to prior argumentation before jumping to another issue.

So even though it isn’t impossible, I would think it unlikely that phyllo belongs in the wd category.

For me, it seems at this point, I have to, at least for a while, accept that phyllo is (or has been) a “dd”, deeply deceived).

But what say other readers?

I don’t think that your “Trump is top cop” argument is valid. High crimes and misdemeanors clearly covers the case of someone with power over agencies using them to target his political opponents. (There was an example of it in the wiki quote that I posted.)

I don’t think targeting political opponents is a legitimate part of international diplomacy.

But I don’t say that you are deceived, deceiving or stupid if you disagree with me.

I also don’t think that this latest post of yours is appropriate for a philosophy discussion forum.

It’s an unpleasant end to the discussion.

I don’t really feel like talking to you again.

Make up whatever narrative you want to explain my feelings.

I take issue with trumps CLAIMED paranoia about this “witch hunt” against him.

I also take issue with Demonizing NON QUID PRO QUO investigations from other countries.

When you’re dealing with the highest office in the land, you should be the most vetted person on earth. Why they complain about this is beyond me.

Spying on trumps campaign before he was elected?

Good for them!!

The question then becomes one of resources.

There is a great imbalance of resources for a sitting president to an up coming opponent.

I don’t think politically that’s the case for Biden … Biden has equal social capital to trump.

We’re not really dealing with power imbalance in this case, so I think both sides should shut up about this.

Here’s the deal. At this level of politics, EVERYONE is vetted the fuck out of. I would expect nothing less.

How much of this becomes public in every cycle ? Not much!

The idea that both trump and Biden complain about their vetting is absurd to me. These are grown men.

Honestly!

Supervisor authority is not executive authority. The board of directors can fire the president or CEO of a corporation. That doesn’t mean that they run the corporation. The CEO makes the decisions but if his decisions lead in a bad direction, the board can get rid of him.

The same is true for the US President. Congress (the “board of directors”) does not run the nation. But if the President’s decisions get too far out of line, they can “fire” the President.

Similarly the population doesn’t run Congress or the nation, yet they can fire everyone official throughout the nation. The people have the ultimate authority in the US. That is what makes it different. But the population is not in charge of hardly anything. They pay others to do that within limits. They just have to keep their eye on the limits. And that is where the media comes in to try to manipulate the population into voting toward giving up their right to fire anyone or even have a say in what games are being played upon them.

He targeted a criminal organization who happened to be a political opponent.

So do you think that as long as someone is running for office, they should never be investigated?

They certainly haven’t minded investigating Mr Trump. Now the shoe is on the other foot.

I suspect the arguments for or against the impeachment of Trump [or for or against Trumpworld itself] are embedded in the arguments raised here:

nytimes.com/2019/12/29/opin … e=Homepage

In other words, the moral majority is still out there in the Heartland. In regards to things like race and religion and gender and sex and “social issues”, a large swath of the country wants to reconfigure America into what they imagine life was like here back in the fifties.

It’s folks like me – moral relativists – they most fear.

Instead, they want the is/ought world to become just another component of the objectivist either/or world that they yearn for. The one they carry around inside their head.

For some of course that is very, very scary. And not just liberals.

“Liberals are people with bad ideas”
“Conservatives are bad people with ideas.”

If you are a global socialist then Mr Trump is the devil betraying your ideals.

If you are a constitutionalist then the American socialist party (the “Democrats”) are betraying the Constitution and the citizens.

The question here isn’t about whether Mr Trump or the global socialists are good people. The only question here is whether Mr Trump has actually been doing his job.

The more simple truth is that the global socialists have extorted the House Democrats into going along with whatever gets rid of Mr Trump regardless of what he has done. “Kangaroo Court”.

Thing is iambiguous, trump and Barr don’t actually believe this shit.

The Republican Party is the party of the super-rich.

Obviously, they can’t really get votes for that; so! They’ve become a “control group party”.

America is an evangelical Christian nation, so all they have to do is pander to evangelical Christians (even though they don’t believe any of it - nor should anyone else (because it’s bullshit))

All the republicans care about is the statistics, not the morals.

Me personally? I’ll have every Christian who’s ever been on earth stand before me in judgement.

Christians like to say “don’t judge” when it’s convenient … I tell them all, “judge me with all your might, one man, with your collective might of billions and see what happens”

I thought America is controlled by the Jews.

Is that not applicable in this case?

Interesting. The Jewish population are “the people of the book” as Muslims call them.

Religion to me has no redeeming quality.

Christians not killing the Jews is like a son not killing the mother and father who lovingly raised them.

I posit the same thing to the Jews… let your 30 million over world history judge me with all of your might and see what happens!

You do have to admit that the Jews for their population are over represented in world history. I mean, what are 30 million Latvians ??? Nothing.

At my level of attainment, and I don’t consider it supreme … the Jews are just a mote of dust not to be bothered with.

People get really angry about this stuff. I don’t.

The much greater number of billionaires are in the American socialist party, the Democrats.

Bloomberg, at $55 billion is the leading rich man in the party’s presidential candidate race. He, after skipping the debates where he would have to answer embarrassing questions, simply bought his first 5 points in the poles using a few tens of millions dollars putting him ahead of most of the other candidates.

I’m guessing that he will be the one running against Mr Trump.

He owns a news outlet and has already directed them to never investigate any democrat, only Mr Trump. The CEO of CNN, Jeff Zucker, made the same directive last year.

The USA has a very serious media problem. Actual journalists are apparently hard to find and immediately targeted by the socialists.

Oh my! You really want me to get into Bloomberg/guiliani??

I don’t think this board could handle the seizures! Seriously though!

Reread the edited post.

The reason MOST people are in the Democratic Party is because of pro choice.

Bill gates, Bloomberg, the almost 3,000,000 more people who voted for Hilary.

The republicans are a focus group party pandering to the evangelicals … Donald trump is probably pro choice … but he would have never won statistically if he was. Like a man who owns casinos, he betted on the house, and (duh) won.

America is too fucked up to elect a president anymore.

Maybe that will change maybe it won’t.

Either way, I have a lot more respect for a candidate (or party, and I hate Democrat’s too), that isn’t a soulless focus group.

nytimes.com/2019/12/29/us/p … y-aid.html

Fake news?

Do you agree that “fake news” = biased opinion reported as unbiased journalistic fact?