Litwitlou wrote:.
Four major automakers said on Thursday they have reached an agreement with California on fuel efficiency rules, bypassing a Trump administration effort to strip the state of the right to fight climate change by setting its own standards.

Isn't that a wonderful development? States' rights, and all that? The Federalist Society will probably file an amicus brief on California's behalf.
..........

Litwitlou wrote:.Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Michael Abboud called the agreement “a PR stunt that does nothing to ... provide certainty and relief for American consumers.”.

Well, surely a member of the current administration knows a thing or two about stunts and PR, but this is empty rhetoric. The last thing Dear Leader wants is a court hearing about climate change. You can order bureaucrats around, but courts deal in fact.

Litwitlou wrote:
In my opinion, Pelosi is a political genius. The situation might change after Mueller, testifies but right now impeachment can't hurt him. The Senate would never go for it. The members of Trump's cult of personality would rally round him. This is a bass ackwards Presidency. Every time Trump does something appalling his numbers go up.

Whether or not Pelosi is a political genius is beside the point. She's wrong. We could at least get an impeachment inquiry started. That would be no skin off their noses.

Pelosi knows Trump can lose the popular vote by a greater margin than he did in 2016 and still win in 2020. It's all about electoral votes in the swing states, and a sure-to-fail attempted impeachment would only spur the Trumpettes in those states to vote.

That's the moderate view but it's wrong--as usual. The electoral college is not going to be a factor because turn-out on the left will be high if the mid-terms are any indication. They could impeach Trump for failing to uphold the constitution which is the very basis of his presidential oath. We have numerous examples of that. He could be impeached for accusing Barack Obama of bugging Trump Tower which he claimed he had evidence for but then failed to produce any. He should not be allowed to get away with that--that was a serious accusation. Let the Senate try and shoot that down. If they dismiss it, they have explain why Trump made the accusation, claimed to have evidence, asked for more time to prepare his case but never went forward with it. The public would want to know WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE??? What is the Senate going to say? Trump doesn't remember where he put it? Sure they can just dismiss it but then it looks like exactly what it is: they are covering for him and letting him get away with serious, baseless accusations unfit for a president to be engaging in and in so doing they are showing how unfit they are to sit in the Senate defending this crap. That would spur far more democrats, liberals and leftists to vote than Trump supporters (who, by themselves, don't have enough enough numbers to carry Trump).

Trump has used his office to promote white supremacy. Most Americans do believe Trump is a racist. So let the Senate shoot that down--I expect it and I welcome it. They'll be shooting themselves down in the process. That won't exonerate Trump in the eyes of the public--quite the opposite. It also indicts the Senate.

They could impeach Trump for his treatment of families at the border. I'm sure no explanation is needed for that one. There are quite a number of things they could impeach for that would force the Senate into a bad position whether they vote with the House or against it. The progressives have it right, the neo-liberals (the moderates) do not.

DB Roy wrote:That's the moderate view but it's wrong--as usual. The electoral college is not going to be a factor because turn-out on the left will be high if the mid-terms are any indication. They could impeach Trump for failing to uphold the constitution which is the very basis of his presidential oath. We have numerous examples of that. He could be impeached for accusing Barack Obama of bugging Trump Tower which he claimed he had evidence for but then failed to produce any. He should not be allowed to get away with that--that was a serious accusation. Let the Senate try and shoot that down. If they dismiss it, they have explain why Trump made the accusation, claimed to have evidence, asked for more time to prepare his case but never went forward with it. The public would want to know WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE??? What is the Senate going to say? Trump doesn't remember where he put it? Sure they can just dismiss it but then it looks like exactly what it is: they are covering for him and letting him get away with serious, baseless accusations unfit for a president to be engaging in and in so doing they are showing how unfit they are to sit in the Senate defending this crap. That would spur far more democrats, liberals and leftists to vote than Trump supporters (who, by themselves, don't have enough enough numbers to carry Trump).

DB Roy wrote:Trump has used his office to promote white supremacy. Most Americans do believe Trump is a racist. So let the Senate shoot that down--I expect it and I welcome it. They'll be shooting themselves down in the process. That won't exonerate Trump in the eyes of the public--quite the opposite. It also indicts the Senate.

DB Roy wrote:They could impeach Trump for his treatment of families at the border. I'm sure no explanation is needed for that one. There are quite a number of things they could impeach for that would force the Senate into a bad position whether they vote with the House or against it. The progressives have it right, the neo-liberals (the moderates) do not.

This is the best argument for impeachment that I have read. Well done DB Roy. The way that you have presented impeachment here would put the scrutiny and responsibility on the Senate Republicans. Watching the GOP squirm in their pants every time the cameras are present would be precious.

Well, it has FINALLY happened! An official impeachment inquiry against Trump has started in House at the request of Speaker Pelosi. All this proves to my satisfaction that Trump is an idiot. A lot of people are saying that he got away with so much and now he's finally getting what he has coming. I disagree. He hasn't gotten away with any of that stuff. His presidency was on a downward spiral from the moment he failed to repeal the ACA as he had promised to do so many times in his campaign. When that failed, Trump was a goner. True, it took a long time but I knew back then that it was coming and I wasn't expecting it to happen quickly although I thought it would come faster. I had given him only 2 years in office.

What's funny is that Trump did all this to himself. Nobody really had to dig anything up on him. Give him enough time and he'll hand you the rope by which to hang him and that's precisely what has happened. Trump's weird universe has an ethics system that runs thusly:

1. There is right and wrong.
2. Whatever helps me is right. Whatever doesn't help me is wrong.

That's it. There is no regard for truth. Truth is meaningless to Trump. Truth is something stupid people engage in when they can as easily lie and get away with it. When a lie does as well or better than the truth, Trump will not hesitate to lie. Lies set things in his favor and are therefore right and good. So lies are truth. When truth hurts him, it is a lie. Giuliani summed it all up in his statement, "Truth is not truth."

I hear a lot of Trump-supporters at work making excuses for Trump and none of them hold water. One goes that what they have on Trump is just the same old shit that was in the Steele Dossier. That's ridiculous on the face of it. Trump's telephone conversation to the newly-elected president of the Ukraine, Zelensky, was definitely never in the Steele Dossier.

There is no evidence that Trump was threatening to withhold $400 million in military aid to the Ukraine unless they agreed to investigate and come up with dirt on Biden. First, Trump inexplicably stopped the aid package to the Ukraine. Most of his own people did not know why. So to say there was no attempt on the part of Trump to offer the aid to Zelensky makes one wonder why then did Trump stop the aid package in the first place. Apparently, he wanted to have something to dangle in front of Zelensky to ensure his cooperation. This ties into the idea that Trump was engaging in his own kind of quid pro quo. All of which is illegal. But, say the Trump-supporters, there is no explicit quid pro quo going on in that transcript. But here is the thing: It doesn't matter!!! The law says that a president cannot engage another nation to investigate and dig up dirt on a political opponent. It makes no difference if he was coercing Zelensky or dropping to his knees and asking pretty please with a cherry on top. The crime is requesting this "favor" Trump wanted from Zelensky not how or why he was requesting it.

The whistle-blower is really a leaker!!! Even if he is, so what? That doesn't exonerate Trump in any way. He was requesting an illegal favor from Zelensky--period--whether the evidence was uncovered by a whistle-blower or a leaker (whatever the difference is supposed to be).

Trump has a big feud with his intelligence services and figured he could just swing the deal himself because he's Mr. Dealmaker.

This whistle-blower only had 2nd and 3rd hand knowledge of what was going on. He can't be taken seriously. He sure can! It was his activities that alerted us to the phone call in the first place and it paid off big time. It's ridiculous to say that any info this guy gives us is suspect when it just turned Trump into a slam-dunk impeachment by revealing a crime so grievous that Nancy Pelosi, who has been resisting impeachment talk with great force, now has no choice but to go ahead with an inquiry. Trump MADE her reverse her stance.

The whistle-blower also stated that any data that revealed Trump engaged in malfeasance was moved to another server reserved only for material that is supposed to preserve national security not hide political liability! Huge abuse of power! He stated that are other incidents that were moved there. I guarantee you, those incidents have already been found and we'll be hearing about them little-by-little over the next few months. So while the current wisdom is that the Senate won't uphold the impeachment process (which the House will send them by a 50%+1 vote) by the required 2/3rds majority vote, I'm thinking that may not be true. If enough crime is uncovered, the Senate may, like Speaker Pelosi, be forced to give in and go through with the 2/3rds majority. Several ex-congressmen among the republicans are saying there are 30 republicans in the senate that WILL vote yes on the charges although they choose to remain anonymous for now. If that is so, the Senate WILL give us the 2/3rds.

Trump is running scared right now but who does he have to blame? Himself. HE released the transcript. This is why you can't back intellectually incurious clods. Trump thought the transcript would really make him look good! He didn't realize the favor he requested was a crime. He should have known but he doesn't care to look up that stuff. He is utterly indifferent to law-breaking. He's been doing it all his life and gotten away with it. You would think, as a president, he would make sure he knew where the limits of his power were but he never bothered to find out which means that, ultimately, he didn't care.

That's like going to sleep in your car while driving 80 mph down the freeway. You may wake up in time to prevent crashing a few times but sooner or later--there's gonna be a big wreck. And that's what we have with the Trump presidency--a big slow-motion wreck.

Trump may last the rest of his term but he won't survive the disaster of his presidency.

Whew. That was a big one. I hope you had plenty of paper on the spool after.

With luck our beloved Hillary will run again. She's on a "listening tour" at the moment. SHE knows what's what when it comes to dealing with foreigners. She paid a British agent 9 million to collect Russian dirt on Trump, and she got away with it. And when it looked like congress would be asking for her emails, she sicced her people on the hard drives with Bleachbit, hammers and hand drills.

Yep, we need that kind of competence in the White House again. I really, really hope she runs.

Hillary Clinton will never run again.

In recent days, it has come to our attention that there is, in fact, another whistle-blower about to come forward. Beyond this, we have not been told what this person is going to reveal. Trump wants to meet the first whistle-blower saying he has a right to meet his accuser. That's only at a civil trial, Donald. Whistle-blowers are guaranteed anonymity. The truth is, this whistle-blower is ancillary now. He or she isn't needed anymore. The whistle they blew bore fruit in form of evidence and the evidence is what the House cares about now. The whistle-blower is no longer particularly significant. At an impeachment trial, it would be unnecessary for this whistle-blower to testify. Trump's defense will have to attack the evidence not the whistle-blower.

The evidence is a slam-dunk because the White House turned it over at Trump's direction and in it is a violation of the law--two really: The solicitation of aid from a foreign nation to dig up dirt on a political opponent and the employment of quid pro quo by stopping an already approved deal in order to use it as bait to coerce the foreign nation to assist in the commission of a crime.

But Trump's problem is that he can't back down in a fight. If he's caught breaking the law, he keeps doing it rather than backing off. He has the emotional mentality of a child--"Don't like that? Good! I'll do it more!" So, before the cameras, Trump not only repeated his violation of the law by again exhorting the Ukraine to investigate Biden, he then exhorted China to do the same! Not only is he now committing a new crime before the eyes of the entire world, it takes some nerve to exhort to a rival nation upon whom you are levying tariffs to assist you in the commission of a crime that wouldn't benefit them in the slightest. It's fair to say the Chinese govt despises Trump and, no matter how one might feel about the Chinese govt, can one blame them?

One can only assume that Trump doesn't believe anything is going to happen to him. I would say that he is pushing his luck. Okay, maybe you broke the law without meaning to. Maybe you should have known but you didn't but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt about it. But if you keep doing it, how many times do you expect me to keep giving you the benefit of the doubt? After the second time, I can't. You now broke the law when you knew perfectly well that it was illegal because the first time you did it, it got an impeachment inquiry started but now I'm supposed excuse the second offense? Based on what? That you didn't know? Well, either you're incredibly stupid or I am for continuing to defend it. At that point, it is obvious that I am not interested in protecting the country, I am just covering for you. History will be a harsh of judge of that and maybe, just maybe, I'm not willing to risk my good name for your stupid lawlessness. So Trump is abusing his defenders. At this point, I am 50% convinced that the Senate will vote for a conviction. There are more than enough republicans there who think Trump is not worth it.

What I wonder about is what else are we going to find out because more is coming. But don't we already have enough? What are dragging our heels for? As a Mother Jones article stated:

In 2016, Vladimir Putin’s regime mounted information warfare against the United States, in part to help Trump become president. While this attack was underway, the Trump crew tried to collude covertly with Moscow, sought to set up a secret communications channel with Putin’s office, and repeatedly denied in public that this assault was happening, providing cover to the Russian operation. Trump and his lieutenants aligned themselves with and assisted a foreign adversary, as it was attacking the United States. The evidence is rock-solid: They committed a profound act of betrayal. That is the scandal.

The Americans were shockingly willing to put up with it. Despite his low performance ratings, it seemed the public wanted to believe Trump. And they didn't want to impeach him. That has changed. Now the majority of the public wants him impeached. The idea before was: "Yes, Trump's a dickhead but impeachment is a long, involved process. Look, we're close to November 2020, let's just wait and vote him out." But now they are realizing the grave mistake of that reasoning. The transcript of that phone call demonstrated that Trump has no qualms about persuading other countries to interfere with our elections. It means that Trump DID indeed collude with the Russians as charged and it means that it was Trump himself who did it not his campaign people. Mitch McConnell shows how resistant he is to enacting campaign reform laws to prevent further foreign interference. We are on the verge of giving away our democracy to the highest foreign bidder. If we wait until the election, it will be too late! We cannot allow him to do it again!

To me, it is obvious: Trump MUST be removed from office BEFORE the election. If he wins again, what excuse can we as a nation possibly offer?

The Chinese could see a lot of benefit in helping Trump with his scheme. They would render Trump less adamant about punishing China for its trade and intell property infringements, etc., if they provided "evidence" to back up Trump's accusations. But they won't be doing this out of awareness that now the world would see through it as an obvious ploy.

Has Trump finally used all of his get-out-of-jail-free cards and now must suffer the consequence either of impeachment (but not conviction) or resounding defeat in 2020? As he would say, we'll see. The guy has nine lives.

Joe Biden made a mistake even running for pres. His ambition is huge, but he's not the man. Charges against him are of course "trumped up," but his judgment is open to scrutiny, and it's not just a wild theory of the right that he might have used his office to help out his troubled son, Hunter. Hunter seems to have been a poor, lost, addicted soul most of his life.

DWill wrote:The Chinese could see a lot of benefit in helping Trump with his scheme. They would render Trump less adamant about punishing China for its trade and intell property infringements, etc., if they provided "evidence" to back up Trump's accusations. But they won't be doing this out of awareness that now the world would see through it as an obvious ploy.

I don't think China is interested. The tariffs hurt us not them. They now have another soybean supplier so they don't care about that. Trump screwed the farmers way worse than he hurt China. China will just sit back and wait for November of 2020.

Has Trump finally used all of his get-out-of-jail-free cards and now must suffer the consequence either of impeachment (but not conviction) or resounding defeat in 2020? As he would say, we'll see. The guy has nine lives.

I can't believe Americans have become so apathetic that they don't care that Trump colluded with foreign govts to win election, that he has set up this govt like a mob syndicate where every leader of every post swears utter loyalty and fealty to him including the Justice Dept which is supposed to operate independently. Barr doesn't even pretend that he's independent of Trump. As I said, if he cheats his way back in, who is to blame? We had him on the ropes and we let him go because we're tried of investigations??? Seriously??? "Sure, sell us down the river if you want just give me a break and let me watch 'America's Got Talent.'"

Joe Biden made a mistake even running for pres. His ambition is huge, but he's not the man. Charges against him are of course "trumped up," but his judgment is open to scrutiny, and it's not just a wild theory of the right that he might have used his office to help out his troubled son, Hunter. Hunter seems to have been a poor, lost, addicted soul most of his life.

There is ZERO evidence Biden did anything illegal. If he wants to help his son, so what? You'd do the same if it was your son. But Trump has some nerve pointing at anyone and saying, "Your kids have benefitted unfairly because of your office." I mean, that's unbelievable.

DB Roy wrote: I don't think China is interested. The tariffs hurt us not them. They now have another soybean supplier so they don't care about that. Trump screwed the farmers way worse than he hurt China. China will just sit back and wait for November of 2020.

China wouldn't reveal if tariffs are contributing to its slowing economy, but several analysts think they are. That makes sense because the tariffs are bigger than just soybeans. If Chinese products are too expensive for U.S. companies to think consumers will still buy them, China has to seek other markets, and the U.S. is its number one.

There is ZERO evidence Biden did anything illegal. If he wants to help his son, so what? You'd do the same if it was your son. But Trump has some nerve pointing at anyone and saying, "Your kids have benefitted unfairly because of your office." I mean, that's unbelievable.

I know there's no evidence that Biden did anything illegal regarding the firing of the Ukraine prosecutor. There is even no direct evidence of his pulling strings to help his son land lucrative posts. Hunter used his connection under his own initiative. But there are awkward appearances for Joe, as well as awkward family matters that have now come to the fore. That's what I meant about Biden making a mistake in running for pres. He was witnessing his son create a timebomb as Hunter accepted the post with the shady Burisma Co., having no qualifications to serve on its board. Joe didn't apparently intervene to convince Hunter not to do that. Folks in the Obama admin. were concerned about Joe's image getting tarnished. Well, Hunter is an adult, and I'm not blaming dad for not talking him out of it. A lot of pain stemmed from Biden's family life. But I wonder if Biden is sensitive to the corruption that Hunter's plum job represents: people with political connections trading on them to accept money from frequently shady sources. Sarah Chayes has a good article on that practice in the Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/598804/.

It's not relevant to the point, but I hope Biden isn't the nominee. He won't stand up well to the punishment of four months of intense scrutiny and campaigning. We need someone who will contrast to Trump's incoherence is speaking, and Biden surely isn't that person. I had a memory of him so easily handling Sarah Palin in 2008 and doing well against Paul Ryan in 2012, but he has really lost some speed since then.