Posts Made By: James Lacey

Originally Posted by Greg Shaffer

..it is simply too blatant to stay under the rug......

The funny thing is, of course, that the only people who seem to be criming, are Trump and the people that surround him.

Ken Starr on Fox News: "There is now proof that President Trump committed the crime of bribery. This has been one of those bombshell days."

It's over, guys. Trump is officially farked! There will be articles of impeachment, and I will not be surprised to find out the whole administration is dirty.

Sondland brought the goods and is reading emails aloud for the world to hear; no wonder the WH was so worried about his testimony.

Originally Posted by Darian Rachal

So you anticipate he will be removed from office?

Actually no. There is no doubt, though, that Trump's impeachment is assured. The fallout of all this for the Republican party will be awful too. It's 100% clear now that the Sondland did quid pro quo with Giuliani as directed by the President. No amount of shouting "No quid pro quo" from sharpie notes at the press corps is going to erase this crystal clear conclusion.

Originally Posted by James Brown

Hi James:

Did you recently retire?  You seem to be spending more time than usual here...which is curious given that you are treated poorly by the most active participants.  I plan to retire in a couple of years, I wonder if I'll spend more time on line, or less?

Anyhow, Trump has probably never taken any action in his life without expecting a quid pro quo.  Real estate developers, deal guys and politicians always expect a quid pro quo, all of them.  So, I don't think the average voter in his or her heart thinks that leveraging the office for a quid pro quo is anything but ordinary, for Trump and for politicians in general.   Even if the average voter thinks leveraging the office is slimy and reprehensible.  

I suspect that this is why the Ukrainian calls are now being cast as bribery.  I'm not sure that the Democrats can make that stick, though - without the president of the Ukraine stating that he felt pressured.  My guess is that Trump is impeached, but quickly acquitted by the Senate and that the R's don't suffer much blow-back at all.  I firmly believe that Trumps reelection chances and the R's overall 2020 chances hinge entirely on whom the D's nominate, and the then prevalent feelings about the economy.  

We'll see soon enough!  Jim

No, I am not retired yet. My job pays me very well, I can do the job in my sleep, and then there is always health-care to worry about otherwise. Like you, maybe in a few more years.

I think Trump was always able to act in unethical and immoral ways in his business dealings and personal life and get away with it. So, naturally, he thought he could do the same in public life. However, oversight of Congress is giving him a lesson otherwise.

I think the average voter will remember Trump as the slime-ball that he is and decide he doesn't deserve a second term, and it will have consequences down-ballot. As you say, we will see.

Originally Posted by Maurice Clark

Hi James,

I think I would agree with Jim... Trump's re-election hopes depend to a large extent on whom the democrats nominate as their candidate.  A centrist/moderate would likely wipe the floor with Trump.  Then again, there was a poll not so long back indicating that 62% of republican votes would not change their vote for Trump no matter what he did.

2020 could be an interesting year!

2020???  What happened????  Where did the past 20 years go?  

Maurice

PS:-  here is what the BBC made of today's hearings.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50493440

Hi Maurice,

Hope you are well.

Maybe we will get lucky, and the Republicans will finally discard Trump and nominate a sensible candidate like Kasich. I would vote for Kasich.

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

James,
Didn't you hear the Republican response to Sondland on the Quid Pro Quo? It's just a presumption on his part! He is just an ambassador so what the ---- would he know?! 

Our local news station does informal polls all the time on everything from pop culture to political subjects. This morning they asked, "Did the President engage in a quid pro quo and hold up military aid for Ukraine?" The final tally, 77% yes, 23% no. Keep in mind this is in Texas. The needle has moved.

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

We also now know as of this evening that Nunes, while pushing Trump's narrative at the impeachment hearings that he never had any interest pressuring the Ukrainians to get dirt on the Biden's, was actually a fellow perp who met with Rudy's associate for a meeting with the fired Ukrainian prosecutor who had no interest in fighting corruption and claimed, without any evidence, to have dirt on the Bidens.

Additionally, the DOJ report into the Russia probe will exonerate the FBI and the department and dispel the deep state conspiracy theories including clearing Comey and McCabe and others. The Republican deep state hoax has bit the dust...

Eric Swalwell even brought up Nunes' involvement in the crime during the impeachment hearings, while Fiona Hill was giving testimony. The story had first broken back then, but no one was paying attention. Swalwell made sure that it was part of the official record. I'm guessing Nunes will be lawyering up soon, and that his investigation is all but inevitable.
Also, reporting now is that the Ukranian Gas Company Naftogaz's CEO is willing to testify against Rudy and say that Rudy and his partners in crime were attempting to leverage their political influence to land lucrative contracts. Certainly explains why Rick Perry was part of the three-amigos. Of course, the hilarious thing is, Trump and cronies are once again off committing the very crimes they accuse everyone else of doing. I gotta say, the writers for this season of, "Trump! The dumbest President in History!" have outdone themselves.

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

what is the difference between the Dems digging dirt up on Trump to further her campaign, and the Repubs digging up dirt on the Hillary campaign to further the Trump campaign?

One apparently is criminal, and worthy of impeachment, but the other is simply called Opposition research.

Why is that?  

The real question is, why do the GOP and its useful stooges keep pushing conspiracy theories that are entirely debunked and perpetrated by Soviet Intelligence? The Ukrainians didn't meddle in the 2016 election; Russia did. The Steele Dossier was not the impetus for the FBI opening its "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation; the actions of Trump and his coterie precipitated the investigation's creation. The dossier was initially contracted by The Washington Free Beacon, an American conservative journalism website, as opposition into Trump because they were and are, as they say, never-Trumpers. It wasn't until after they stopped paying for the research that the DNC ever got involved, and no one was coordinating with the Russians to compile the dossier. Once exposed as the author, Steele went into hiding with his family out of fear of reprisal from Moscow. There is no equivalence between how Trump tried to extort a foreign leader to manufacture dirt on his political rival and the origins of the dossier. Buying into this leap of logic requires a suspension of knowledge of commonly known facts that no rational person could abide.

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

So far we've had 3 years of the Democrats NOT accepting the results of the United States Presidential Election when they said that Donald Trump would not accept the results of the election.

It seems as if they can't give it up since all they are interested in doing is bringing investigations forth all over the place.  

I guess this is what Democrats will be running on as their new platform:

  Elect Us And We Promise To Investigate Every Republican In The Nation

And what are the Republicans promising? Elect us and we will:

1. Solicit foreign attacks on our elections.
2. Use federal resources to pressure foreign governments to help them win reelection.
3. Refuse to comply with any congressional oversight.
4. Fire or smear anyone who does not swear a fealty oath.
5. Investigate the investigators and then refuse to accept their results when they find no wrong-doing.
6. Retaliate against American companies who don't support the President.
7. Use the power of office to enrich ourselves.
8. Use personal devices for official communications, even though we spent years attacking our opponents for doing the same.
9. Tolerate nepotism at the highest levels, even though we would have screamed in anger if others had done it.
10. Abandon steadfast allies without warning and cede territory to our enemies.
11. Employ white nationalists and participate in dog-whistle politics.
12. Embrace and disseminate Russian talking-points and disinformation.
13. Coddle and embrace and praise and admire dictators.
14. Ignore and provide cover for the murder of an American journalist simply because of the murderers being a significant customer of the President's business.
15. Operate charities that are forced to shut down because they are so unlawful.
16. Lie incessantly; attack the free press; violate the emoluments clause; obstruct justice and intimidate witnesses.
17. and on, and on, and on, and on...

Originally Posted by Russ Carroll

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-energy-official-says-giuliani-associates-tried-to-recruit-him-11574652499?mod=hp_lead_pos3

and why he was attacking our own Ambassador. Guiliani was working on a scheme to take over a state-owned Ukraine gas company that's 10% of Ukraines GDP and he needed to essentially corrupt the Ukrainian government to do something that was so against their own national interest (Kinda like what Putin routinely does to Trump). This must be the underlying issue the New York prosecutors office is working on.

I said to my wife weeks ago, "You watch, it's going to turn out that the 'three amigos' and Giuliani's Ukranian cronies were trying to use their political influence to garner lucrative energy contracts for themselves and their cronies." The thing about Trump and his crime buddies is they are all so predictable. It's only going to get worse for Trump and the GOP as more and more corruption is uncovered.

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

Except that John Brennan former head of the CIA Testified before Congress in May of 2017, that the Dossier was PRECISELY the reason that the FBI opened its investigation into Trump and Russia collusion:

In his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in May, 2017 Brennan admitted that information he received about the Trump Campaign and the Russians "served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion -- cooperation-- occurred"

1.  Pg. 123  The Russia Hoax, Greg Jarrett

2.  CNN Staff, "Testimony of CIA Director John Brennan before the House Intelligence Committee" CNN May 23, 2017 www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1705/23/cnr.23.html

If you expect us to take a political hatchet job, written in defense of Trump by a Fox News correspondent seriously, you have officially lost your mind.

You posted a broken CNN link, by the way, and Brennan said no such thing that I can find anywhere. I did find lots of places where he said exactly the opposite though:

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/372222-ex-cia-chief-steele-dossier-played-no-role-whatsoever-in

Former CIA Director John Brennan said Sunday that the so-called Steele dossier containing allegations about President Trump’s ties to Russia was not a factor in the intelligence community's assessment that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election.

"I was unaware of the provenance of it as well as what was in it. And it did not play any role whatsoever in the intelligence community’s assessment that was done, that was presented to then-President Obama and then-President-elect Trump," Brennan said on NBC's "Meet The Press."