Irish oddsmaker gives 33% chance Trump will be impeached

[SilverFang01]

The system was not designed to cope with both a rogue president and a rogue legislature, in this case the senate.

[Black Aeronaut]

Actually, there is an aspect of the system that's meant to deal with this sort of thing. The bad thing is that it's almost the worst case scenario and could involve a significant loss of human life.

[Labster]

We do know that the United States can become a dictatorship.  It's been mathematically proven by Kurt Gödel.

[Rajvik]

Geth, I want to thank you, i had almost given up hope that anyone here could see some reason, its why i've been so quiet.

Our system works exactly as it is supposed to, funny how when the liberals lose, they say the system is broken. Britain and Canada both have had problems with their multi-party system accomplishing Jack and Shit, funny how when one party finally has enough members elected to get anything done, HOLY SHIT, they do!

Labster, i got into that second section article and had to close it, it states in the first sentence that no one knows what his evidence is. Hell, it's said in the first section that there is NO PROOF that any of that is real, your putting up internet rumor as fact

BA, Rob, the Supreme Court just yanked the ENTIRE SECOND ARTICLE OF IMPEACHMENT OUT FROM UNDER THE DEMOCRATS HANDS because as per what Trump has said, the THIRD BRANCH is the arbiter when the other two disagree,
CENSURE IS NOT IMPEACHMENT- Censure, a vote of no confidence, these are the measures that a legislature can use against an executive they vehemently disagree with, when he takes unilateral action WITHIN HIS POWER. But, as has been pointed out repeatedly with multiple points of evidence which all of you refuse to believe, the Democrats have been trying to impeach this president since before he was even sworn into office.

As for Senator McConnell, I imagine that his vote will represent the evidence that has been presented, I also imagine that it will be as impartial and non-partisan as the acts that brought it to the Senate floor

Edit: Personally i hope its a nice long trial, so that everyone like Joe and Hunter Biden, Adam Schiff, John Brennan, The "Whistleblower" and several others get to testify under oath and answer those pesky questions about who is really guilty

[Labster]

Labster, i got into that second section article and had to close it, it states in the first sentence that no one knows what his evidence is. Hell, it's said in the first section that there is NO PROOF that any of that is real, your putting up internet rumor as fact

Then you stopped reading waaay to early, and jumped to conclusions.  Which isn't all that unusual for you.  A primary source document is attached at the end.

[Rajvik]

Labster, i got into that second section article and had to close it, it states in the first sentence that no one knows what his evidence is. Hell, it's said in the first section that there is NO PROOF that any of that is real, your putting up internet rumor as fact

Then you stopped reading waaay to early, and jumped to conclusions.  Which isn't all that unusual for you.  A primary source document is attached at the end.

Labster, i am very leery of documents that mysteriously "reappear" and support an authors hypothesis. i find it interesting that this one suddenly did so.

[Dartz]

Failure of the multiparty system is bollocks. We're trucking along fine - so is most of Europe that doesn't use a First Past the Post system. We've got two major parties and a smattering of smaller ones such that there's rarely a single-party majority in government. There're always other interests represented, either in coalition or as a quid-pro-quo. Currently, we're running a minority government - and have been for the majority of the brexit debacle.

We did it just fine. It's called not being a fucking moron and running the country

As much as I dislike it for 'other' aspects of its policy, the current government and all parties in the Dail have been able to recognise that the actions of our nearest neighbour represent a crisis to the state and that bickering and instability during the negotiations would be the worst thing at the moment. They've held their noses and worked on it until the crisis has ended. It's not uncoincidental that the confidence and supply is finally starting to break up and the cracks show now that the crisis has effectively passed.

If the system repeatedly locks up and stops checking itself - and starts actively fighting itself - to the detriment of the people - then the system has clearly failed. The last 4 years of Brexit was a failure cause by the Common's inability to function in a cooperative manner. Worse - if you have a system where 60+% of the people can vote against a candidate - and that candidate still win with a 'majority', then you're going to end up with a case where otherwise deeply unpopular individuals will 'win' because people who hate them can't agree on anything else beyond the fact that they hate this one person.

FPTP is deeply fucking broken for this reason. It's an almost childsih way of running an election. It makes sense to children - but when you explain why it doesn't, even children understand it. I was ten years old when a schoolteacher explained to me how shit the British system is, and how much better ours is. And it's true.

There is far less screaming about election shenanigans here because it is so fucking hard to gerrymander or suppress the system. More than that - there's far less screaming about tight referendums either, along with a willingness to re-ask questions as society's opinion on them changes with the times. We have voter identification - but it's almost impossible to not have one of the required forms of ID. You may only vote in one polling station, and your name is checked off a list when you get your franked ballot paper.

We've had referendums tighter than the Brexit result without the resulting clusterfuck of squeling. The only time we ever had an issue was with the recent one where a shitton of money from a certain political wing of a certain federal republic was poured into one side of a campaign -including flying ringers in illegaly to campaign., Their local cronies complained about the sort of voter issues that happen in the states and they were told where to fucking go.

----

Anyway, you say 'Documents that suddenly appearr' . I hear 'Documents that challenge my ideas'. We're in a post-truth era maybe, but that line of reasoning is dangerously close to doublethink.

[Rajvik]

Dartz, that last is simply questioning the providence of the document, if there is an appended document from the Institute conveying such providence i would change my mind, but wait, the institute published the letter, and all it said, right at the very end was that Godel said he could prove it, and then Einstein and Morgenstern shut him up, it goes into NO FURTHER DETAIL. therefore the authors belief is still conjecture

[Labster]

It sounds a lot like Raj has never discovered historical documents in libraries before.  I have, and it's a wonderful feeling, getting a little glimpse into the history of the past.  It's entirely plausible that a piece of paper was just sitting in a box for sixty years, waiting for someone to read it, because that's been my experience. 

Provenance is mainly can you prove that the document was from the time.  Found in the expected institute, check.  Document agrees with anecdotal evidence, check.  No one has a real incentive to create this history, check.  Remember, the author wrote his own fictional version of the story before this version was found.  Like, you can continue to question all you want, but science works on preponderance of evidence.  At the very least, it's likely a proof did exist.  It may not be a correct proof, but given who Gödel was, you expect a certain degree of accuracy, though laws are not mathematical functions.

Anyway, the fragility of the American system of government is relatively well known.  As stated in xkcd #2003, "(For more, see the surprisingly gripping Second Report of the Continuity of Government Commission, June 2009.)"  I agree.  Start at page 17 -- page 19 in the pdf.  Incidents like these, or a well planned Reichstag Fire, would make the U.S. a de facto dictatorship.

FPTP is deeply fucking broken for this reason. It's an almost childsih way of running an election. It makes sense to children - but when you explain why it doesn't, even children understand it. I was ten years old when a schoolteacher explained to me how shit the British system is, and how much better ours is. And it's true.

I'm sure that was a really hard sell, telling an Irish schoolchildren that the British government is shit.

But what we did find out recently is that FPTP countries are very vulnerable to misinformation campaigns.  This is a national security threat to the U.S. and U.K. now, because it's possible to manipulate people in such a way that they don't want their electeds to seek common ground, or even to work on common goals.

At this point, if Mitt Romney can't fulfill the prophecy, I'm starting to think it might be time to call a constitutional convention under Article V.  The main problem is that we can't know what will come out of it -- anything from a single sentence amendment, to a United States of Canada/Jesusland split.  I mean, this sounds bad, but the political situation in the U.S. is terrible.

[hazard]

Lab, Dartz, I'm Dutch.

We still believe that the British election model is shit.

And while we have the option to vote in any polling station in our municipality, we can ask to have a polling card that we can use anywhere in the nation, the government is required to provide it (if with some limits due to practicality). All you have to do to vote here is have a valid ID and your polling card, or a polling card that specifically authorizes you to vote on the behalf of the person whose polling card you are holding.

[robkelk]

The Impeach-o-Meter is no more; Trump has been impeached. Now they're tracking the odds of a conviction.

Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent at The Nation, put those odds at "less than one percent."

Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor at Slate, raised that to 2% after Mark Galli's editorial ran in Christianity Today.

[Dartz]

And yet my local bookies still won't pay out.

Bastards

[Dartz]

Grab your popcorn.

It's on


While the allegedly impartial Government Accountability Office has weighed in with the opinion that Trump did break the law by witholding subsidies.

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the decision states.

[robkelk]

If the Senate was looking for reasons to find Trump guilty, that would be one of them... but, as things stand right now, that doesn't matter. Maybe of there are enough other revelations of Trump knowing what was going on that the GOP brass decide to cut him loose, that might become a contributing factor.

Oh, and the way one can tell that a bureaucracy really is impartial is that none of their political masters like them - and that's the reputation that the Government Accountability Office has in the District, if I remember correctly.

[Labster]

After a day of straight party line votes, the Republicans have unanimously decided not to issue a single subpoena for evidence. They firmly held to the position that there is a time and a place to subpoena new evidence, and that is as late in the trial as possible.

Now, the trial has begun. The House gets 3 days to present their case, in which several of the Senators have decided to skip out. One Senator did a Fox News interview while the trial was in session. Gotta keep up hope for the faithful.

Preview of next week: the defense of the President makes its presentation, a repeat of the "I like beer" defense, and the case will be dismissed.

[hazard]

Looking at the polling and the fact that neither Trump nor the Republicans are going to be in power forever... Well, this is likely to backfire on them.

[Bob Schroeck]

Trump has already made noises about trying to ignore the 22nd Amendment, and given how the Republicans have for the last thirty or forty years treated the Constitution as an obstacle to get around, I wouldn't put it past him to try to become President-for-Life -- and people like Mitch McConnell will willingly give it to him.

[hazard]

That could work, but only so long as they don't get sued on the grounds of breach of the 22nd Amendment. Although that would only work the moment he starts working in his 3rd term. Not on his third term, in his third term.

At that point the Supreme Court either slaps down the Republicans, or the Constitution of the United States is an invalid document.

[Bob Schroeck]

I honestly think the latter is what at least some Republicans are working toward. After all, it was written by a bunch of liberals (who else would rebel against a government based around a monied and entrenched upper class?) and it's clearly biased against Republicans (it forces them to share power and abide by election results, and requires government employees to swear to uphold it instead of the whims of the President, just to start...). It's very obviously the Deep State they've been railing against.

[hazard]

I honestly think the latter is what at least some Republicans are working toward.  After all, it was written by a bunch of liberals (who else would rebel against a government based around a monied and entrenched upper class?) and it's clearly biased against Republicans (it forces them to share power and abide by election results, and requires government employees to swear to uphold it instead of the whims of the President, just to start...).  It's very obviously the Deep State they've been railing against.

The other monied upper class that has no power among the monied and entrenched upper class who make the rules. The USA's voting system has historically favoured specific groups of people and breaking it from that and expanding enfranchisement to an automatic suffrage system is not a process that is by any measure complete.

Rebelling offered the monied upper class of the colonies the option to write the laws themselves. It was a risky gambit by any measure and there's a large number of other factors involved, but it's fairly accurate to say that it wasn't done solely for the benefit of the common man of the Americas who was being abused.

[Black Aeronaut]

I honestly think the latter is what at least some Republicans are working toward.  After all, it was written by a bunch of liberals (who else would rebel against a government based around a monied and entrenched upper class?) and it's clearly biased against Republicans (it forces them to share power and abide by election results, and requires government employees to swear to uphold it instead of the whims of the President, just to start...).  It's very obviously the Deep State they've been railing against.

The other monied upper class that has no power among the monied and entrenched upper class who make the rules. The USA's voting system has historically favoured specific groups of people and breaking it from that and expanding enfranchisement to an automatic suffrage system is not a process that is by any measure complete.

Rebelling offered the monied upper class of the colonies the option to write the laws themselves. It was a risky gambit by any measure and there's a large number of other factors involved, but it's fairly accurate to say that it wasn't done solely for the benefit of the common man of the Americas who was being abused.

I would argue that if this were the case then we wouldn't have the Bill of Rights.  That said, it was a bit of Column A and a bit of Column B, hence the compromises that were made from the outset.

[Dartz]

All this arguing make me glad that our politics are generally as tepid as a cup of tea that's been left sit for an hour.

[Rajvik]

Actually Labster, the time to get evidence was back when the house was having their inquiry, you know, before the impeachment vote, they voted to impeach with what they had, so bring what you've got, you don't get a do over

[Matrix Dragon]

You mean when Trump and his cronies were refusing to testify or provide evidence? An act he's now claiming on Twitter was actually the Democrats refusing to let him prove his innocence?

[Rajvik]

Matrix, the Schiff panel was a partisan hack job that should have been laughed out, except, Orange man bad. That was where Trump's legal team and himself should have been allowed to counter and question, but they were denied that. The judiciary committee "allowing" their entry was a joke to try and lend some semblance of authority to the Schiff show and rightfully he didn't play along.

second, as per the congressional subpoenas, Executive Privilege is something to be protected by every person to sit in that office, don't believe me, ask Adam Schiff circa 2012, when he was defending Barack Obama's denial of subpoenas over Fast and Furious, you know, that little debacle of Eric Holder's that got him held in both civil and criminal contempt of congress.

The house made it's rules, and now the senate has made it's that again, echo the Clinton impeachment trial, meaning what was good for the Democrats is good for the Republicans. They do not get to try again because they got impatient and didn't bother to even try to get the courts to back up their subpoenas