All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Tendrin]

You know what amazes me most about this? I read that paragraph - which was full of crazy nonsense - and I barely blinked at the absurdity.

The whole Moloch thing is all related to Q nonsense anyway.

Moloch is the biblical name of a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice, through fire or war. The name of this deity is also sometimes spelled Molech, Milcom, or Malcam.

[SquirrelMan]

Speaking of sacrificing children, this is heartbreaking:

Trump Administration Separates Some Migrant Mothers From Their Newborns Before Returning Them to Detention

“I don’t know if they lose their babies for good,” one doctor said. “But I do know the process is torturous for them.”

[Tendrin]

Speaking of sacrificing children, this is heartbreaking:

Trump Administration Separates Some Migrant Mothers From Their Newborns Before Returning Them to Detention

Hey, remember when people just 'weren't sure' that Trump would be as terrible as we were saying he would be on this message board? I sure do!

[PaulBullion]

Still waiting for evidence beyond one failed drug test that Hunter Biden is a drug addict.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

In The End, Nixon Walked Away For The Good Of His Party. Would Trump?

Top Republicans worry that if his status becomes dire, he’ll take the party down with him. Others worry he wouldn’t stop with just the party. Republicans SHOULD worry, Trump is loyal only to himself, he'll destroy the GOP in a New York minute to save his own skin.

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Pence’s Team Is Trying To Distance Itself From The Ukraine Scandal

A senior aide to the vice president was reportedly on Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president. Looks like Red Grant is feeling the heat and wants out of the kitchen.

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Why Did It Take A Federal Hate Crimes Charge To Get Rid Of This Racist Police Chief?

Frank Nucera allegedly slammed a Black teen’s head on a door and regularly used racial slurs. His trial raises major questions about police oversight. Getting rid of bad cops is just as hard as pulling teeth with tweezers, and that shouldn't be the case.

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Trump Says He Wants Identity Of Whistleblower

Members of Congress have said the whistleblower, who raised concerns over a phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s president, should be protected. To quote a popular meme....



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The Finnish President Looking ‘Finished’ With Trump Is Twitter’s Newest Meme

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö has joined the long list of people who have witnessed a Trump meltdown firsthand. THIS, boys and girls, says it all!

[Mister Mets]

Still waiting for evidence beyond one failed drug test that Hunter Biden is a drug addict.

His ex-wife's divorce filing cited his drug use and inffidelity.

https://www.delawareonline.com/story...nter/98638454/

The lengthy New Yorker profile goes into detail about his relapse and a week-long crack binge.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...thers-campaign

In February, 2016, Hunter went back to the Esalen Institute, and then spent a week skiing by himself at Lake Tahoe. When he returned to Washington, he enrolled in yet another addiction-treatment program, run by the Kolmac Outpatient Recovery Center. On his way to Kolmac, he passed several homeless people, including a middle-aged woman who went by the name Bicycles, because of the bike she took with her everywhere. Later, whenever Hunter saw Bicycles near his apartment, he would give her a twenty-dollar bill to buy him a pack of Marlboro Reds and tell her to keep the change. One rainy night, Hunter said, he offered Bicycles his spare bedroom, and she stayed for several months.
In 2016, Hunter was consulting for five or six major clients. Once or twice a year, he attended Burisma board meetings and energy forums that took place in Europe. He said that, in June, 2016, while in Monte Carlo for a meeting, he went to a hotel night club and used cocaine that a stranger offered him in the bathroom. He told his counsellors at Kolmac about his relapse but refused to take a drug test, out of concern that the results could be used against him and published in the press. When Kolmac’s staff insisted that he take the test, he decided to leave the program.

In August, Hunter and Hallie went to the Hamptons with Hallie’s children. They texted constantly after getting back, and Hunter started to spend most nights in Delaware, at Hallie’s house, watching television until very late. “We were sharing a very specific grief,” Hunter recalled. “I started to think of Hallie as the only person in my life who understood my loss.”

That fall, Hunter made plans to go to the Grace Grove Lifestyle Center, in Sedona, Arizona. During a layover at Los Angeles International Airport, before his connecting flight to Phoenix, he went to a nearby hotel bar and realized that he had left his wallet on the plane. It had belonged to Beau and still contained his attorney-general identification badge, and also Hunter’s driver’s license, without which he couldn’t board his flight. Using a credit card he had in his pocket, Hunter checked into a hotel in Marina del Rey, where he waited for the airline to return the wallet.

Instead of going to Grace Grove, Hunter stayed in Los Angeles for about a week. He said that he “needed a way to forget,” and that, soon after his arrival in L.A., he asked a homeless man in Pershing Square where he could buy crack. Hunter said that the man took him to a nearby homeless encampment, where, in a narrow passageway between tents, someone put a gun to his head before realizing that he was a buyer. He returned to buy more crack a few times that week.

One night, outside a club on Hollywood Boulevard, Hunter and another man got into an argument, and a group of bouncers intervened. A friend of one of the bouncers, a Samoan man who went by the nickname Baby Down, felt sorry for Hunter and took him to Mel’s Drive-In to get some food, and to his hotel to pick up his belongings. Early on the morning of October 26th, Baby Down dropped Hunter off at the Hertz rental office at Los Angeles International Airport.

Hunter said that, at that point, he had not slept for several days. Driving east on Interstate 10, just beyond Palm Springs, he lost control of his car, which jumped the median and skidded to a stop on the shoulder of the westbound side. He called Hertz, which came to collect the damaged car and gave him a second rental. Later, on a sharp bend on a mountainous road, Hunter recalled, a large barn owl flew over the hood of the car and then seemed to follow him, dropping in front of the headlights. He said that he has no idea whether the owl was real or a hallucination. On the night of October 28th, Hunter dropped the car off at a Hertz office in Prescott, Arizona, and Grace Grove sent a van to pick him up.

Zachary Romfo, who worked at the Hertz office in Prescott, told me that he found a crack pipe in the car and, on one of the consoles, a line of white-powder residue. Beau Biden’s attorney-general badge was on the dashboard. Hertz called the Prescott police department, and officers there filed a “narcotics offense” report, listing the items seized from the car, including a plastic baggie containing a “white powdery substance,” a Secret Service business card, credit cards, and Hunter’s driver’s license. Later, according to a police report, Secret Service agents informed Prescott police that Hunter was “secure/well.” Subsequent test results indicated that the glass pipe contained cocaine residue, but investigators didn’t find any fingerprints on it. Public prosecutors in the county and the city declined to bring a case against Hunter, citing a lack of evidence that the pipe had been used by him. Jon Paladini, Prescott’s city attorney, told me that he was not aware of any requests by officials in Washington to drop the investigation into Hunter. “It’s a very Republican area,” he said. “I don’t think political favors, necessarily, would even work, had they been requested.”

When someone loses a job and a spouse and gets kicked out of an outpatient recovery program at different times at least partly due to drug use, before skipping out on heading to a wellness center to try crack cocaine for a week, it's reasonable for family and friends to refer to him as an addict. If he were a friend of yours, it would not be unreasonable to do an intervention.

[Mister Mets]

In other words, he won't be resigning, because he doesn't have the moral fiber to not lie about climate change, cigarettes causing cancer, sexual orientation being a choice, or locking children in cages. Waiting for THIS guy to develop a conscience:



Waiting on the moral obligations of Mike Pence is the ultimate ship that ain't comin' in.

I'm not really waiting on Pence's moral obligations, just making my position clear since there are multiple questions about whether he should be forced from office: Did he commit high crimes or misdemeanors? Is there sufficient evidence of this? What should happen if he did it but there isn't proof? These should all be unrelated to views on his policies.

I don't know whether he committed high crimes or misdemeanors, think it's really unlikely that there would be sufficient evidence to demonstrate Pence committed high crimes or misdemeanors, but I don't want to suggest that he should get away with it if he did it but left just enough plausible deniability.

The argument for Democrats is that perjury doesn't count as high crimes and misdemeanors, so it would be tough to establish that Pence did anything that qualifies.

I'll note that some on the left have taken the view that Bill Clinton staying in office was the wrong decision, although the argument is that he was charged with the wrong things, rather than that perjury and obstruction of justice qualify as high crimes and misdemeanors. Matthew Yglesias argued Clinton's mistake was being one of those men "abusing their social and economic power over younger and less powerful women."

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...insky-resigned

[KOSLOX]

Seems like you don't know what a "high crime or misdemeanor" is.

It can be any crime committed that can be directly linked to his office, so if he committed perjury in relation to his role as VP that's a high crime/misdemeanor.

[PaulBullion]

His ex-wife's divorce filing cited his drug use and inffidelity.

https://www.delawareonline.com/story...nter/98638454/

The lengthy New Yorker profile goes into detail about his relapse and a week-long crack binge.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...thers-campaign



When someone loses a job and a spouse and gets kicked out of an outpatient recovery program at different times at least partly due to drug use, before skipping out on heading to a wellness center to try crack cocaine for a week, it's reasonable for family and friends to refer to him as an addict. If he were a friend of yours, it would not be unreasonable to do an intervention.

Now that is more like it! Juicy!

[Tendrin]

Good thing I wasn't planning to vote for Hunter Biden in the primary.

[Tendrin]

● TX-17, TX-32: In a development that came completely out of the blue, multiple media organizations reported on Tuesday evening that former GOP Rep. Pete Sessions, who lost his bid for a 12th term last year in Texas’ 32nd Congressional District, would seek a comeback in the open 17th District. Sessions hasn’t said anything yet, but the following day, the McLennan County Republican Party publicized that they’d be hosting a “Pete Sessions Candidacy Announcement” for the 17th District on Thursday afternoon.

The news that Sessions will be running to replace retiring Rep. Bill Flores, a fellow Republican, came as a huge surprise for a number of reasons. To begin with, Flores’ 17th District, reliably red turf that includes College Station and Waco, is nowhere near the suburban North Dallas seat that Sessions represented for 22 years. There’s about 80 miles (and two or three congressional districts) separating the nearest point between the two constituencies, and the major population centers of the 17th District are located even further away.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...to-my-district

[PaulBullion]

Good thing I wasn't planning to vote for Hunter Biden in the primary.

He'd still be better than Trump or Tulsi Gabbard.

[Tami]

The Party of Collusion

Two years ago, in the early days of the Russia investigation, many Republican senators said collusion with a foreign government to influence an American election would be a betrayal of the United States. They didn’t believe Donald Trump had solicited campaign help from Russia. But they agreed that if he had, it was illegal and perhaps impeachable.

Today, some of those senators—notably, the committee chairmen responsible for protecting national security and the rule of law—have renounced that principle. They now assert, in the case of Ukraine, that collusion is OK.

Sen. James Risch of Idaho is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In June 2017, he interrogated then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions at a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “Collusion with the Russians—or any other government, for that matter, when it comes to our elections—certainly would be improper and illegal,” Risch stipulated. He asked Sessions, “Would that be a fair statement?” Sessions replied, “Absolutely.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina expressed a similar view. At a press conference earlier this year, Graham, who is now the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, explained, “The big thing for me, guys, has always been: Did Trump work with the Russians? And I told him to his face, almost two years ago: ‘If you did, that’s it between me and you. And anything that follows, you deserve.’ I will say that about any politician of any party.”

Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, espoused the same rule. The pivotal question, the Wisconsin senator insisted, was whether “members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.” The United States “should be investigating, ‘Was there collusion?’ ” said Johnson. In April, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked the senator whether he agreed with Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, that “it’s OK for Republican campaign members, for Republican candidates, to welcome support from a foreign adversary, from Russia. Do you feel the same way? Would you welcome support from Russia in your campaign?” Johnson replied decisively, “No.”

[Tendrin]

He'd still be better than Trump or Tulsi Gabbard.

Well, okay, you have me there.

[Mister Mets]

Now that is more like it! Juicy!

I did post the New Yorker link before, but I appreciate the acknowledgement of relevant evidence.

Good thing I wasn't planning to vote for Hunter Biden in the primary.

Hey, I'm a Republican and I'd still vote for Joe Biden over Trump.