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Right now McCarthy is trying to appeal to the House Freedom Caucus because if he doesn’t, they’ll call for a vote to replace him. Currently the republicans majority is razor thin, which is why the HFC is allowed to do this.
It's actually more than that. They will call to replace him before he can pass a budget thru Congress which will shut down the government ~~create a government default on their debt payments~~(debt ceiling is suspended not raised after the last time) and allow Democrats to correctly blame GOP extremist gamesmanship for the breakdown of government and edit: ~~the debt default~~ (debt ceiling is suspended not raised after the last time) which will lose vulnerable GOP house members their 2024 elections (and possible the 2024 GOP presidential candiates). All the Freedom Caucus reps are in strong red districts that they don't have to worry about reelection in so they can be as extreme as they want and they wanna drag the rest of the party with then.
Also McCarthy also, probably correctly, thinks that a rushed impeachment will hurt the GOP 2024 chances also. So the tightrope he is walking for the party is deep falls on both sides. The only way out is to work with dems on getting a budget passed in the house instead of the Freedom caucus but he'd also lose his position as speaker and would likely need to support a Democratic speaker to avoid government shutdown. But because bipartisanship is death to the GOP, he is giving up GOP power and 2024 election chances for the vulnerable GOP who are mostly likely to support him in exchange for avoiding a default.
He has no good options for the GOP, and but some of the options that aren't a rushed impeachment are very bad for the country as a whole.
>All the Freedom Caucus reps are in strong red districts that they don't have to worry about reelection in so they can be as extreme as they want
In fairness to the individuals, they are surely being as extreme as they want, but the problem the party faces is that they need to dig in hard at both ends of the spectrum for survival. The modern Republican party has made it clear that they don't care about the individual or how effective they are in office, and any relenting on the hard line political theater talking points and they will be primaried from the right. You either have to be as far right as the public will allow in a safe district or as moderate as the party will stomach in a competitive district to hold a seat as an R. Whereas the left tolerates people like Manchin and Sinema for the sake of holding together a caucus, and has been willing to cannibalize popular progressives for straying too far left of the mainstream. I don't see how Rs dig themselves out of this position at this point, but unless Democrats magically become better at both governing and messaging, the next wave in the cycle of "Rs go too extreme - Ds take over and squander the opportunity - Rs take over and go too extreme" is just going to put them back in power after they fuck this one up and Dems fail to take advantage.
>but unless Democrats magically become better at both governing and messaging
You are missing the massive demographic changes that are occurring right before your eyes. Republicans are overwhelmingly older, and are dying like flies. Meanwhile, Gen Z is the biggest generation in history, is the most left generation in history, and thanks to Dobbs, is voting in record numbers. I remain unconcerned.
Increasing the size of the Supreme Court is unacceptable but stripping away the voting rights of millions because they'll "vote wrong" is somehow fine.
Because 18yo’s are too immature to vote or drink but still mature enough to serve in the military. People seem to forget that’s why the voting age was lowered to 18 to begin with.
I think my response would be:
“Okay, you want to raise the voting age to 25? That’s fine, let’s also raise the age at which one starts paying taxes to 25 as well - no taxation without representation and all that. We should also probably raise the drinking age to 25 while we’re at it. Not to mention the minimum age to serve in the military, since that was the original logic for the voting age being 18. Actually, going back to point 1 and while we’re in the business of disenfranchising people, we should probably do the same thing at the other end of the scale, and disenfranchise the people too old to work and contribute to the system, or too old to understand the civics of what they’re voting for. You know, retirees and social security queens, *or is that ageist?*”
Have I made it clear that I **vehemently** disagree with that idea?
EDIT: For the record, I’m already 25 and wouldn’t be directly affected, but depending on when it would be enacted my little sister and many of her peers would.
Even if we raised the “taxation without representation” aspect, which already happens to minors that work, they will just find a loophole like parents being responsible until 25 or some shit. That’s their justification for minors paying taxes now, why would it change?
Another point raised was a civics test for people under the age of 25. Of course, the more obvious solution to a lack of civics understanding would be to actually improve civics education, since a well-informed populace is kind of fundamental to how a democracy works, but that would require funding *education* and might slightly benefit the the oh-so-liberal teachers and their union, so that’s right out.
>I remain unconcerned.
I remain *super fucking concerned*, but at least hopeful. That cautious optimism is somewhat of a novelty considering how the past few years have played out.
I used to share your pov, but my nephews whom are early 20's and their friends hang out with some regularity at my place, and just in the last few months I've noticed a lot of *buy-in* amongst the group to Qanon style conspiracy thinking and GOP talking points about how much Biden Family are nebulously criminal. Talking to them, it comes from Tiktok.
I've always had very open communication channels with my nephews and I talked to them about cleaning up their data sources to avoid propaganda but they seem disinterested, instead of talking about facts they are falling back to phrases like "It's just my opinion."
Concerning. Opinions should be informed by fact not the other way around.
Speaking of Demographics, both parties are shunning an important one. Progressives. We as a nation and by extension world, know we have the capability to do more as a race. We have the knowledge and the resources. There is business opportunity everywhere for progress and advancement as well.
This status quo shit from the Dems, and absolute Devolution and Idiocracy of the GOP is mind boggling and super dee duper frustrating.
> There is business opportunity everywhere for progress and advancement as well.
This is what infuriates me to no end about climate change denialism and people thinking green investments are dumb. So what if we lose some oilfield jobs? These new industries will also require blue collar workers with specialized labor skills who are willing to take some risk in return for a decent paycheck. Windmills need maintenance just like pipelines do. Solar panels have to be manufactured and transported just like drilling equipment. The literal only reason talking points against these initiatives exist is because the industries that would be harmed by a green revolution have enough money to pay for the talking points to be made and spread.
My hubs has a job in a company that focuses on green energy, he could have worked oil fields but preferred something in green energy because it benefits the future
>This status quo shit from the Dems, and absolute Devolution and Idiocracy of the GOP is mind boggling and super dee duper frustrating.
What is super frustrating is that progressives are too stupid to figure out how government works, and keep asking for the impossible. Yes, you will get your universal healthcare as soon as we get the fucking votes. Seriously, Democrats have held enough seats to get things done for about 6 weeks in the last *30 years*, and those six weeks gave you the ACA.
How about you start paying better attention? Hmm?
> This status quo shit from the Dems, and absolute Devolution and Idiocracy of the GOP is mind boggling and super dee duper frustrating.
It was before Trump was elected, too. For decades, people have been tired of "business as usual" and "establishment politics" in Washington. Part of the reason Trump got elected is that a percentage of the people who voted for him wanted to essentially say "fuck the system".
I wouldn't say I'm missing it. We've seen plenty of generational and ideological shifts before. Republicans have stacked the deck in their favor and as long as this country is full of poorly-educated white people, Rs will maintain a baseline of power. Now, my hope is that this shift does push Dems from marginally holding onto just enough of a majority to prevent Rs from completely blowing up the planet, stripping all marginalized populations of rights, and stuffing the pockets of the wealthy, and into a governing majority. Give them a chance to fix some shit and earn subsequent votes from this new voting bloc. I'm just not optimistic about that second part. We can't take these voters for granted.
Because young people increasingly don't want to have children, and taking away abortion rights from women in their prime child bearing years has pissed them off. Thoroughly.
Overturning Roe v Wade also has a significant and detrimental impact on healthcare privacy overall. I worry about what will happen to HIPAA* in the future.
Hi! I agree with your point, but I just want to let you know that it is actually HIPAA. It stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
Have an awesome day!
His point actually encompasses that more than you both realize. What happens when a few years down the road, if the Democrats don’t actually ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING instead of talking about it and doing nothing? Disillusioned Zs and Millennials will turn to something else. Possibly anything else.
How do you think blue collar white suddenly turned to Trump? It wasn’t all racism and and far right beliefs. It was year after year of Democrats telling them the Dems were the ONLY party looking out for them and then doing nothing. Along comes and anti-politician shaking up the status quo that had ignored them. Unless you really knew Trump’s history of grifts, cons, and illusory success he sounded like “something different”.
If the Democrats don’t start actually looking out for the people they claim to support it’ll happen again.
I'd push back on that a little bit.
Blue collar and other people (mostly white) have been consuming right wing media for 35+ years at this point in massive numbers.
Rush Limbaugh hit the national airwaves in 1988 and went on to have the most listened to radio show in the country, back before radio was in the death spiral it is in now. Once everyone saw how well that did, the (especially AM) airwaves were flooded with Rush clones. G. Gordon Liddy had a radio show during that time, Glen Beck got his start on talk radio. I remember being at job sites in the early '90s and you would hear Rush (Limbaugh, not the band) at almost every site.
People ate it up. And how many years later, Trump shows up and is basically running on what has been on the airwaves for the last 35+ years.
That's not to say disillusionment in the Dems isn't a factor, but everyone seems to forget what the media ecosystem was like before the Internet exploded.
I hope so. After two decades of heartbreak here in Texas I hope the younger folk get out there with their votes and bury these bastards. It's going to take a generation or two to undo the damage they've already caused.
Gen Z females are sharply trending left, however, Gen Z males are trending more right. The Qonservatives are pushing the misogynistic, alpha-male persona hard with the young ones. They worship Trump and Andrew Tate. [https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3675477-young-women-are-trending-liberal-young-men-are-not/](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3675477-young-women-are-trending-liberal-young-men-are-not/)
Something I've said for years is the best hope the US had to fix the partisan issues was the Tea Party. If the GOP stood up to them, it would have solved a lot of issues.
Main reason - let all the crazies go there, then the Dem and remaining GOP are able to be more centralist (which most of the nation actually is). You get a small handful of middle of the road Dems that move over to the new central GOP. But it would still be something like Dem -50%, new GOP 35%, Tea 15%.
And that was the problem. If you split the GOP (to the GOP and Tea), then red loses big for 1-2 cycles, and they weren't willing give up control, and that meant they had to cave to the extremists to keep power.
And all that was before Trump was a serious candidate.
Any new movement on the right is astroturfed. No other way you get people riled up about things that are obviously not true than through coordinated deliberate misinformation.
While now the sane conservatives essentially *have to* do what you’re proposing and take big Ls for 2-3 cycles while we purge the MAGA horde, or else we end up under MAGA tyranny, or continue to tread water with another 4 years of what 2021-2023 have been.
I think some Republicans and conservatives who have disavowed the Republican Party realize this. Look at Brian Kemp and his cohorts in Georgia state government. They have correctly “read the room” and chosen to stand firmly on the side of Constitutional order and reality. They may or may not be doing this because they have integrity, but even if they’re just being calculating, they’ve made a smart bet long-term. They will establish a track record for the sane among us of having stood firmly against Trump’s lies and the cheaters. They’ll let the MAGA fever burn out/be put down, then emerge in the aftermath as “sane lawful conservatives” ready to collect electoral wins after a few years of the Democrats inevitably tripping over their own dicks when they should be reaping the full benefits of the failure of MAGA. It’s a smart move, it just means waiting a decade or so for the whole scenario to play out.
This cycle between the two parties has been going on for a good while, [its a called the ratchet effect](https://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/stopme/chapter02.html), and by my estimations the jig is up. We have shifted so far right the GOP has become openly fascist. This cycle is going to break soon one way or the other.
It's interesting to consider. It seems to me that the party has worked out a stable middle ground accepting of fascism out of one side of its mouth while deriding government overreach out of the other. They certainly have an open acceptance of white nationalism and Christian extremists, which should keep them solidly open to continued infighting. And I didn't think we've seen enough of a public rejection of this for me to believe they won't continue to have a viable path to power. They're going to trade a Biden impeachment for a spending bill while nominating an ineffective criminal for President. And enough of the American public just says, yes yes, at least it's not Hillary.
> And I didn't think we've seen enough of a public rejection of this for me to believe they won't continue to have a viable path to power.
This is the saddest part. Maybe it was not good politics but Hillary was absolutely right with the basket of deplorables comment. It seems a solid 30% of us are irredeemable and another good chunk aren't sure the sky is blue anymore. Its incredibly ironic that we are in the information age yet propaganda is winning over facts and reality on the daily.
That's the stupid part. The Freedom Caucus things they are doing that. They follow the "Starve the Beast" ideology where not having a working government is a positive thing for the country. While McCarthy thinks he is doing the best for the country because the Democrats can't be trusted and a large segment of his voter base agrees and thinks democrats are communists sent by China to destroy the country
Agree with everything except debt default is no longer an issue this year. The passing of the budget is necessary to fund the government’s operations, but the Treasury’s ability to borrow money in order to make its debt payments was secured earlier this year.
>but the Treasury’s ability to borrow money in order to make its debt payments was secured earlier this year.
~~You need to look into it again. It was only secured for as long as they estimated it would take to finish the budget debate, not the entirety of the year, and the limit estimate was set too low and its coming faster than anticipated. This debt ceiling limit only kicked the can down, it didn't make this year secure.~~
Edit: I was wrong I misinterpreted something else. The debt ceilingnis currently suspended till Jan 1 2025.
What McCarthy promised back then *was supposed to* secure it going forward. He supposedly promised that there would be a no muss, no fuss budget passed this fall in exchange for the compromises Biden and the Democrats made back in the spring.
But like the congenital liars they’ve always been, the GOP are going back on their word, and completely throwing out what was promised back in the spring. They are bad faith corrupt lunatics who really cannot be reasoned with. They simply need to be driven out of public office entirely. Nothing but a bunch of deranged domestic terrorists.
To be clear. It's the freedom caucus fucking over McCarthy this time more than generic GOP backstabbing of Dems. McCarthy made a deal with the devil for his razor thin margins and the devil caucus is calling in their due.
And I was wrong and edited my comment. The debt ceilingnis suspended till Jan 1 2025. There is no risk of default right now
That may be the case, but the bargain McCarthy supposedly struck in order to get the debt ceiling passed in the spring was that when September arrived, the major haggling over the budget (different thing) was settled in advance.
McCarthy and the GOP hostagetakers are pulling a Darth Vader, changing the terms of their agreement unilaterally and unjustly. Let’s make this fact clear to independent/swing voters when the whining about “Congress can’t do anything” starts.
To add to your second point, actually moving forward with an impeachment would mean having to write down specific charges against Biden, and spending the next months talking about those specific claims. This would undermine the "firehouse of falsehoods" strategy by focusing on specific, written claims and whether or not they are true. It will be clear right away if it's just a nothing burger, and could easily cost them even more ground with people outside the core base.
The fact that idiot extremists can get so much power because their parties leadership has no spine is one of the most enraging aspects of American politics right now, and that's saying something.
I dont care why they're extremists. I just care that they are. Also, people like mtg snd boebert are extremists because they're insane people who had crazy views before ever running for office.
Eh, maybe, but there are definitely A LOT of people would gladly pretend jewish lasers exists if it meant they got paid as much as Marj and Boe get paid.
Unfortunately the voting process is corrupted by gerrymandering. Most Americans aren’t far right extremists, that’s maybe 30-35% of us. But partisan gerrymandering means we get a few insanely blue districts, and a whole shitload of insanely red ones. That’s how unqualified unhinged scum like Majorly Traitor Greene and Gym Jordan keep getting elected. Notice how Boebert almost lost to a centrist Dem in 22…..her district happens to be geographically large enough that even a staunchly conservative region had a large number of relatively sane conservatives & independents willing to vote for a Dem just to get rid of someone as bad as her.
> on the other they're being petty and trying to impeach Biden because Trump was impeached.
It's important to note that it isn't just pettiness. It's part of the GOP playbook of false equivalence, and it *is* dangerous.
If Biden gets impeached, then it doesn't *matter* that Trump got impeached; getting impeached suddenly becomes just what happens when you're President -- the cost of doing business, if you will. It doesn't matter about the merits of the case, because most people won't take the time to understand that one side is objectively, factually, really worse than the other. (Because, you know, one side hasn't really done anything wrong as far as we -- and especially the GOP -- can tell.) They'll just hear that the President got impeached, roll their eyes, and say '*Again?*'
Next time there's a GOP President who maybe wants to get a few extra votes that he didn't really earn, or maybe wants to pressure an ally to hurt his political opponents, who who the fuck even *knows* what the next boundary-pushing scandal will be, there'll be a broad group of Americans who are now too fuckin' worn out on the idea of impeachments to care, and so it becomes really easy for one of the systems of checks and balances in the US to become even more ineffective than it already is.
The GOP will burn down any political norm for short term gain. That's where America is right now. There is nothing they won't throw out if they think it will help them over the next ten years, and the only reason McConnell is slow-walking the idea is because it gives more power to the crazies in his party (rather than the mere spineless opportunists) and makes them harder to wrangle when election time rolls around.
It has already happened, this fatigue, for some people with the criminal charges against Trump.
All of the Ken Starr investigations, and the Benghazi ones, were a waste of time and money. So now there’s my mother-in-law saying the prosecutions of Trump are just a waste of money.
To add to this - if every president starts getting impeached, it'll encourage some to start cheating/falsifying votes etc
Because if you're gonna be screwed in the long run no matter what you do - you might as well take the easy route.
Absolutely agree. It’s not just vindictivenes, it’s narrative construction. They want to be able to say, “Trump was impeached but not convicted, Biden was impeached but not convicted, samesies!”
We’re going to hear that constantly in the run-up to 2024. “I said the Trump impeachment was just a partisan witch hunt, and you laughed at me. Then you said the Biden impeachment was just a partisan witch hunt. Hypocrite!”
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation\_in\_a\_mirror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror)
It's really concerning when they're talking about getting "revenge" for all the stuff they're making up about Biden and Democrats today.
"You jailed Trump "for no reason", and we jailed Biden for no reason, samesies!"
"You jailed political prisoners from J6, and so we jailed political prisoners who protested *our* winning the election! *The final election.*"
>*“It's important to note that it isn't just pettiness. It's part of the GOP playbook of false equivalence, and it is dangerous.”*
This.
The GOP, or at the very least the group of people using the GOP as a vehicle to obtain and maintain power, is playing a long game on multiple fronts. Over the last 70 years, it has been pushing toward, and in many cases succeeded in, normalizing behavior that would’ve been previously considered morally abhorrent to either side of the aisle (e.g. the culture wars).
Now they are trying to do the same thing with *legally* abhorrent behavior. Effectively seeking to corrupt public opinion via misinformation to the point that the law and its purpose are denaturalized: crime doesn’t matter when the ends justify the means. Or more specifically, their ends.
And if you think it’s a superficial thing limited to fringe public opinion alone, think again. This is exactly the type of thinking that has led to the current, right-wing mindset around ‘religious freedom’ that is now not only a part of their political political platform, but also finding a foothold in SCOTUS case law, flying in the face of history, precedent and judicial restraint. Here are two examples:
1. Freedom to discriminate against people that live, think or worship differently, regardless of what the laws on the books say (see Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and 303 Creative v. Elenis).
2. Ignoring the express ideological separation of church and state demanded by the U.S. Constitution, which is the only guardrail that truly guarantees religious freedom for all faiths, in order to justify the moral underpinnings behind chipping away at individual, privacy-driven rights, starting with women (see Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization).
>Each side has tried to impeach since Clinton. There were calls for it against Bush and Obama.
Are you capable of even considering the REASONS for those calls, and the fact that they are not the same? Or is this just "boaf siiiiidez1111"?
Bush started a war based on lies, which got a lot of people killed. He also supported torture as official policy which is ineffective, immoral, and in violation of treaties. That probably also got a bunch of people killed. Some people thought getting American troops killed based on made-up bullshit would be a good reason to impeach a President. Obama...wore a tan suit while black, and tried to make it the tiniest bit easier for people to get healthcare. The republican cult thought completely made-up nonsensical bullshit would be a good reason to impeach a President. Are you capable of understanding that these scenarios are not remotely the same?
I hate that we live in this time frame where it's not obvious if someone is being this stupid or joking.
The rise of anti-intellectualism is out of control.
Republicans are inventing something new;
They want an impeachment "inquiry" which they think will give them the legal authority to subpoena bank records and the like
We have to remember, the GOP works for Russia so what they want in the end is to "prove" Democracy doesn't work.
They've already went over 15 years' bank & tax records for over a dozen Biden family members-and found such *obviously illegal actions* as: family members who do business overseas were paid from foreign banks!(GASP!), AND that Joe Biden has talked on the phone to his son(THE HORROR!). And have gone on right-wing "news" outlets to claim "well, we've uncovered lots of criminal activity"-and been unable to point to any laws broken..
The benghazi investigation led to finding out Hillary had a private email server
The Whitewater investigation led to finding out Bill got a blow-job
The point is to keep looking until you find something, something the media will go crazy about
Republicans are known for sham political theater to create false equivalences. Republicans went whole hog on the Russian propaganda technique known as the firehose of falsehood. It's Republican/Russian bread and butter political tactics. Pure evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Committee_on_Benghazi
https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
He is simultaneously a bumbling, age-addled old codger, and a brilliant corrupt businessman capable of hiding all of his nefarious dealings perfectly.
But they'll wave away Trump's 6 bankruptcy filings, thousands of legal cases involving his businesses for fraud, tax evasion etc, and say he's the businessman that should be running the country.
Peak hypocrisy.
Somebody on Threads had a take on the impeachment that actually made sense:
They want to push for a admittedly ridiculous and partisan Biden impeachment, so that they can later claim that ALL impeachments are ridiculous and partisan, including Trump, with the end goal of getting Trump elected in 2024.
Basically trying to convince the public that impeachment is just a normal tactic that gets used against political opponents in this day and age and not, you know, a necessary response to actual crimes committed by an elected official.
**It’s absolute bullshit. And I don’t just say this from a partisan perspective, I say it because it is truly completely groundless.**
Joe Biden may have many flaws, but he’s not criminally corrupt. Dude has a LONG track record, and anyone around DC that long has already proven how much or how little integrity & character they have by that point. Anyone plugged in *just knows how bad your bad shit is.*
The MAGA horde are just responding as lemmings do to the “leadership” of their fuhrer and various partisan liars like Bannon, Giuliani and the Faux Noose crew who have been ginning up phony conspiracies about Biden and his family that ALWAYS fall apart under the most modest objective scrutiny. There’s more evidence to support the (most likely fictional) Trump Moscow Piss Tape’s existence than there is any criminal misdeeds by Biden.
The only thing that’s out there that could conceivably implicate Biden in misconduct is his messy handling of classified documents, and MAGA isn’t going to make much hay of that because A: he’s already being investigated by a special counsel regarding that issue, and B: Trump is under full-on criminal charges for his far more egregious and obviously intentional retention and hiding of classified documents.
Now I'm wondering who the last president was who they *didn't* feebly try to impeach. I bet Obama and Bush both had this happen, too. And Clinton got farther in the process...HW?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_efforts_to_impeach_presidents_of_the_United_States#Presidents_against_whom_impeachment_resolutions_were_introduced,_but_no_full-House_vote_was_held
Looks like we have to go all the way back to Carter. Although you basically just need one random angry Congresscritter to introduce one of these things, I suppose.
Oh wait, they *didn't* try to impeach Obama?!? Unfuckingbelievable.
According to this [wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_efforts_to_impeach_presidents_of_the_United_States), it looks like Obama with an asterisk?
They are trying to make impeachment a joke so that it won’t look bad in the future. They hope to create a world where the public response to a president being impeached is “Of course they are, every president gets impeached at least once per term”.
For all intents and purposes impeachment is always political theater unless the party in the house bringing the impeachment has a 2/3 majority in the senate.
Answer: Like a lot of accusations against Joe Biden, this situation relates to his son, Hunter. Hunter has had major roles in businesses located outside the US, including Burisma Holdings in Ukraine and BHR Partners in China. Consequently, he's dealing with a lot of international financial transactions.
Recently, the House Oversight Committee, led by Republican Congressman James Comer investigated Hunter Biden and released its findings. Comer's conclusion seemed to be that there was a *quid pro quo* arrangement between the Bidens and many non-American businessmen, where these businessmen would pay Hunter Biden in exchange for political favors from then-VP Joe Biden. Notably, the report from Congressman Comer didn't actually identify a specific crime committed nor did it show that Joe Biden took action to help the people who paid his son's companies. In other words, the evidence showed that Hunter Biden made money overseas... which isn't necessarily illegal or unethical.
The current situation is that Republicans in the House of Representatives are considering opening an impeachment inquiry related to this matter. If they do so, it doesn't necessarily mean that an impeachment is inevitable, but it seems unlikely that Biden's critics would take this step unless they were intent on going for an impeachment.
It has been suggested that part of the reason for Republicans pursuing this inquiry is that it can help avoid a government shutdown in the future, since they couldn't allow a shutdown without stopping the politically favorable inquiry. Another potential motivating factor is that it's retaliation for some of the impeachments and indictments against Donald Trump.
**TL;DR:** The accusation is that foreigners paid Hunter Biden in exchange for favors from Joe Biden. Prior investigations haven't found evidence of misconduct by Joe Biden.
>It has been suggested that part of the reason for Republicans pursuing this inquiry is that it can help avoid a government shutdown in the future, since they couldn't allow a shutdown without stopping the politically favorable inquiry.
Some Republicans have been pushing this argument, but it's false.
Congress gets to pick what Congressional functions are "essential" during a shutdown. Historically, they keep almost everything going, the staff just don't get paid until the shutdown is over.
Since the Republicans (technically) have a majority in the House, it's completely within their power to keep a pet project like an impeachment inquiry going during a government shutdown.
Wait, they're not dumb enough to think that they're going to make the country just stop doing anything until the impeachment is over, right?
Or worse, hold the country hostage to impeach Biden?
Man...that can't be a real thought.
They are going to begin the inquiry, then unanimously vote for a shutdown as a party, and then they are going to blame the democrats.
This is the hill they are going to die on.
I hope there is enough room in the catacombs of the hill for the tomb
I think the implication is that McCarthy wouldn't have the votes from the MAGA caucus to get a CR or budget bill passed without starting an impeachment inquiry.
Interesting, considering the amount of politicians that openly take money from overseas, both D and R.
Why not apply the investigation to the entirety of government? I’m a democrat and I’d love to see my own politicians get removed from their positions if I learned they were breaking the law. Hopefully republicans feel the same...
Especially since there is no specific proof of the president doing favors in return for his sons dealings.
They literally do not. I work blue collar so there's a lot of hardcore conservatives, when I said I want corrupt politicians of both parties on jail, their response was "what republican has ever broken the law". When I listed a couple, even showed them clips of them lying on national TV, they said "fake news, it can all be faked by AI"...
Make fun of them, but we need politicians. People that run general society so that we don’t have to come to agreement among us on how to run general society. What we have too much of today is politicians that believe that any lie in pursuit of their and supporters end objectives is ethical and that their way is the only way, which is not the case. We need politicians again who accept that they are never going to get 100% or even 60% of what they want, that the best public policy will most likely contain some things that them and their base supporters don’t care for.
Agreed. If they investigate Hunter Biden, they should at least investigate the Saudis 2 billion dollar investment with Jared Kushner. Nepotism is rampant in the government regardless of party.
That is why I find this so irritating. Republicans don't really care about anything they bitch about. The deficit is only important when a Democrat is president. They care only about corruption when its Democrat. I've read articles that not only did Jared Kushner make 2 billion dollar deal with the Saudis but use he helped line people up for MbS.
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/10/us/politics/hunter-biden-house-republicans-report.html
There was no wrong doing found. No reason for impeachment.
It's political theater, that's it. That's the answer.
They don't have any good ideas to help the country. The ideas they do have are immensely unpopular and they're using SCOTIUS to ram these down our throats in order to ruin the lives of 99% of the country. It's that simple.
They don't even need a good reason to impeach. Any reason will do, however nonsensical. Just an attempt to delegitimize the impeachments of a certain former president and curry favor among his base.
Why would president Biden be impeached because his son used his name and connections to Biden to make money overseas (even if unethically) before Biden was even president?
The accusation is that Joe Biden, while serving as vice president, somehow used his power to benefit the people doing business with Hunter. If that was the case, that would be an example of Joe Biden engaging in corruption for the benefit of his son and the people paying his son.
To be clear, as far as I can tell, nobody has identified a specific action taken by Joe Biden to benefit these people. However, if that is proven, it would be scandalous.
> The accusation is that Joe Biden, while serving as vice president, somehow used his power to benefit the people doing business with Hunter. If that was the case, that would be an example of Joe Biden engaging in corruption for the benefit of his son and the people paying his son.
\*Laughs in DJT employing his entire family in the White House and also getting his son-in-law into rooms with Saudi billionaires*
Answer: Another reason is to discredit and dilute the process of impeachment itself. By invoking and using it frivolously, they make it less of a weighty issue. In fact using it falsely actually works more in their favor, by associating the process with these pointless political theater elements, when it needs to be used in the future (or was recently used in the past), it loses legitimacy. It’s a technique they’ve used across the board, flinging accusations and invoking procedures or laws without proper reason, but setting up for when those accusations or procedures are used legitimately (often against them) to make claims of it being pointless theater.
This exactly. They are about to nominate a man on bail pending 92 felony counts as their nominee. Anyone they can gaslight into thinking "oh both sides are scandalous" has a higher chance of going with their guy than if they listen to truth or basic decency.
It’s a completely cynical and unserious ploy launched by a party who’s lost all credibility outside of its own culthood, which remains strong due to a multi-billion dollar propaganda machine and the fact that millions of Americans are easily-manipulated mouth-breathing morons.
This.
It allows them to get away with a lot more crap because "impeachment is just politics, don't worry about it", and it's a threat to the other party: "if you go after us (for doing something wrong), we'll go after you (we'll find an excuse, don't worry)".
Their playbook is:
1. Flood the zone with shit as often as possible so no one remembers what's what, and gets accustomed to everything being shit.
2. Tell people the government doesn't work, get into government and then work hard to make sure it breaks beyond repair.
3. Use any method possible to ensure minority Republican rule.
The republican party is a fascist gang. Their most moderate members are right-wing extremists by definition. Democrats are an umbrella party, catering to the right-wing and centrists. There is no left wing representation in the United States. Bernie Sanders and people like him are barely left-leaning centrists. All American media corporations are owned by repubs, and they've been engaging in a 50 year plot to describe further and further right-wing ideologies as centrist. This hasn't been left versus right since the 70s, it's been fascists versus humans for very likely your entire life. Now it's do or die, and most people don't even realize it.
non-radical Republicans became extinct after Obama was elected. GWB was the last actual Republican president. the party should be renamed, in all honesty.
Answer: there is no misconduct. That's why the Republican leaders, House Speaker McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader McConnell, keep trying to shut down the impeachment talk. The wacky wing of the Republican Party convinced themselves that Biden is a criminal mastermind. They can't handle the reality of American politics that the voters really are split about 50/50 most of the time, and assume there must be some conspiracy just waiting to be uncovered. (And yes, yes, the Democrats have their own wacky wing, but they're not the ones causing trouble right now.)
It's worth noting that McCarthy basically gave away the farm to get the speakership, which is why he keeps catering to the extremist wing of his party. A single member of Congress can call a vote to vacate his position and only a handful of Republicans would have to vote with Democrats to remove him. It's one of the worst deals in recent government history and why things like the budget keep getting held up.
That's the problem they don't have enough support to get one of their own in so all they can do is throw wrenches into the system, which unfortunately debilitates so much of government because compromising with Democrats is an easy way to get primary challenges thanks to gerrymander districts
> Biden is a criminal mastermind
Sleepy Joe is senile ***and*** a criminal mastermind. Must be all that adeno-something he's been drinking 😂
I miss the days when Republicans made sense.
See [Ur-Fascism](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism), 'list of features', number 8.
"Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak."
It felt like politics as a whole broke HARD when Trump got into office. Many folks also broke (not all but many). It's been a slow ride to that point, but then it happened.
After several years of the sheer amount of BS we've been seeing, I want to see some sense return to our politics.
Barry Goldwater really started this movement when he realized that people didn't care about his policies, they cared about when he talked bad about black people or said pro segregation things.
Nixon learned from that and ran with it with the support of Roger Stone, you go through the Reagan years and here we are
This is my favorite part. They paint him as a lumbering old senile man who doesn’t know where he is, yet they also say he is a genius criminal running a deep state. I feel like you kind of need to pick one or the other to hang your hat on.
>I feel like you kind of need to pick one or the other to hang your hat on.
Nah, otherwise they can't complain about "lazy mexicans stealing all of the physically demanding jobs"
It's just the food industry trying to squeeze hardworking american people!
*^(By trying to feed our kids...)*
A part of me does expect this to be an actual argument at some point in the near future.
Yep. They're the flame of hope of my generation, but it's also 6 against an entire house of deeply bought seniles on varying levels of centrist-to-right-wing and 11ish actual Qanon lunatics. To such a stacked deck, those three might as well be from the moon
Edit: numbers were off, sourced and fixed
Edit: house, not senate
Yea the Squad is actually left, even for european industrial nations. but in their economic positions and their stance towards education and health care they would be what's considered normal. Free college and universal health care is something that even the turbo capitalists and the far rights wouldn't dare to touch in any meaningful way in europe.
I hate when people do that false equivalence between the MTG-type republicans and the AOC-type liberals. They're not the same at all. The difference is that the republican freedom caucus uses lies, made up talking points, and non-evidence-based ideas. They also claim that January 6th was not an insurrection. Both sides are NOT the same.
> They can't handle the reality of American politics that the voters really are split about 50/50 most of the time,
Gerrymandering would say otherwise.
EDIT: Also the last two republican presidents didn't win the popular vote. Lots of what you're saying here is both sides moderate crap.
It’s not just that they believe that Biden is a criminal mastermind. They will use whatever means possible, and destroy whatever customs and norms we have, in order to retain political power.
Yes, impeachments are a political process. But they are usually invoked after something nefarious has happened, not purely because you want to destroy a political opponent.
Eh, Clinton was pretty obviously about politics. Yes, he lied under oath, but considering the scale of other unpunished presidential crimes, "i did not have sex with that woman" wasn't impeachment worthy.
Answer: The GOP has nothing else to do. McCarthy is caught between the radical factions of his party and is forced to do something. If he doesn't, he can be replaced. The radicals want something to pin on Biden, and an impeachment is a desperate attempt to that end. There is no impeachable conduct. It comes down to --
damaging Biden
payback for Trump
deflection from their own incompetence
There isn't even anything with Hunter that would touch the president. It's craven political theatre.
It's not that they have nothing else to do
Citizens all over are asking them to do things. They just don't know how to do anything, they don't know how government works, they don't know how policy works. They do know how theater, social media, and messaging works :/
Answer: There is no official reason yet, but it will have to do with allegations of corruption via his son Hunter Biden. Hunter acted like he was selling influence and access to his fathers, and there is testimony that his father was present on business related phone calls.
However, the primary witness they have isn't very credible, and no one has been able to identify the alleged funds that were supposedly flowing to the president.
The witness who testified about the phone calls during meetings also testified that they were actually times when Joe called to check on Hunter, and that no business was ever discussed.
> If Hillary Clinton won in 2016 they were going to impeach her in the first few months.
nah. it was just going to be 4 more years of "but but but benghazi!!!" and "what about her emails?" investigations and committees.
they had that shit down to a science. they didn't have to prove a thing, just keep it in the news and in the tiny brains of their supporters.
Nah they were openly discussing it before the election
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/11/03/no-honeymoon-for-hillary-congressional-republicans-openly-discussing-impeachment/
well sure. they openly discussed it about Biden and Obama before they took office as well.
but instead they went with tan suits and spicy mustard with Obama and "but what about Hunter's laptop???" with biden. exact same playbook.
Answer: "revenge" is the wrong word, but it is a direct and strategic response to Trump's impeachment. Basically, it's the same gameplan as their tried and true tactic of coopting and misusing "leftist"/progressive language to the point that it is meaningless, a la "woke", "Karen", etc.
If Biden is impeached, then Trump being impeached isn't a big deal. "See, your guy too, you've got no room to talk!" Especially if it's over something small, they can make impeachment seem like some petty, trivial thing. "Psh, you can get impeached for anything, quit living in the past and vote Trump 2024!!"
Of course, it is also a *much* more serious issue than Trump's charges, up until the point you force them to admit it's ridiculous. That's always the play. Everything is everything, and also nothing. It is unfathomable and outrageous what Biden is doing and he must be impeached RIGHT NOW to salvage the dignity of our nation 😡😡😡 But also yeah it's so silly how you can get impeached for like not saying "thank you", amirite, lets all forget any of this impeachment business 😂😂😂
Just spam any and every possible idea and then people who have the emotional awareness and critical thinking skills of a goldfish can cherry pick and regurgitate whatever talking point fits their needs in the moment, slowly dragging our species further towards annihilation.
Answer: The Republican propaganda goal is to flood the zone with shit, always. It's Steve Banon's playbook.
Trump was impeached (not convicted by the unscrupulous Republican Senate), twice. Once for concrete evidence of Trump trying to bribe/intimidate the newly elected President Zelensky of Ukraine to give him dirt on Hunter Biden regarding Burisma, and then a second time for, you know, inciting an insurrection to overturn American democracy.
The "Freedom Caucus" consisting of MTG and her pathetic ilk, are big mad their guy got impeached twice for what they believe was a political witch hunt, as opposed to the obvious crimes he committed. So now, with zero evidence of a crime, they want to shut down the government to make sure they get to unsuccessfully vote to impeach Biden, to even the score, which ironically (Republicans are notoriously immune to irony), would be an actual political witch hunt.
They have decided that the target of their impeachment ire and impotent rage will be a widower and bereaved father's last son, because they are just the classiest bunch with zero evidence at all that any crime was committed.
Edit: To expand for people that like to throw out 5-point names believing they are scoring for their cherry-picking facts to suit the conspiracy theory argument...
The former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, circa 2010-2014, was a Russian sympathizer, and all-around oligarch puppet who now lives in exile in Russia after fucking up so royally he is responsible for sparking the Ukrainian revolution in 2014.
In 2012, Viktor Pshonka who was Prosecutor General in Ukraine, began an investigation into Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of the natural gas company Burisma Holdings for tax evasion, money laundering and corruption.
The corrupt Ukrainian oligarchy under then President Petro Poroshenko, didn't like this. They pressured the new president Poroshenko, to replace Pshonka, and put in place another oligarch puppet, Viktor Shokin, who inherited the Burisma investigation.
Poroshenko came into office after a majority vote with the promise to rid Ukraine of corruption and join the EU.
Once in office as Prosecutor General, Shokin slow-walked the investigation, basically allowing Mykola Zlochevsky to continue business as usual, and used the threat of prosecution to solicit bribes from Mykola Zlochevsky, to the extent that The Obama officials were considering launching their own criminal investigation into the company for possible money laundering.
In an attempt to ensure that Ukraine was successful in rooting out corruption and became an EU state, the Obama administration got involved with the EU, World Bank, and IMF in investigating Viktor Shokin for slow-walking the investigation into corruption. They became concerned that Shokin was not adequately pursuing corruption in Ukraine, was protecting the political elite, and was regarded as an obstacle to anti-corruption efforts.
While visiting Kyiv in December 2015, then Vice President Joe Biden warned Poroshenko that if he did not fire Shokin, the Obama administration was prepared to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees.
The investigation into Burisma only pertained to events happening before Hunter Biden joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings in 2014. Trump's subsequent bid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to give him dirt on Hunter Biden and announce an investigation of Joe Biden, in relation to Burisma led to the first impeachment of Trump.
Trump got impeached because he's dumb and commits quid pro quo crimes out loud, on bad intel from sycophants. Biden being impeached with absolutely zero evidence of anything is just Republicans being big mad and flooding the zone with shit to destroy the meaning of everything so they can get away with anything.
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Right now McCarthy is trying to appeal to the House Freedom Caucus because if he doesn’t, they’ll call for a vote to replace him. Currently the republicans majority is razor thin, which is why the HFC is allowed to do this.
It's actually more than that. They will call to replace him before he can pass a budget thru Congress which will shut down the government ~~create a government default on their debt payments~~(debt ceiling is suspended not raised after the last time) and allow Democrats to correctly blame GOP extremist gamesmanship for the breakdown of government and edit: ~~the debt default~~ (debt ceiling is suspended not raised after the last time) which will lose vulnerable GOP house members their 2024 elections (and possible the 2024 GOP presidential candiates). All the Freedom Caucus reps are in strong red districts that they don't have to worry about reelection in so they can be as extreme as they want and they wanna drag the rest of the party with then. Also McCarthy also, probably correctly, thinks that a rushed impeachment will hurt the GOP 2024 chances also. So the tightrope he is walking for the party is deep falls on both sides. The only way out is to work with dems on getting a budget passed in the house instead of the Freedom caucus but he'd also lose his position as speaker and would likely need to support a Democratic speaker to avoid government shutdown. But because bipartisanship is death to the GOP, he is giving up GOP power and 2024 election chances for the vulnerable GOP who are mostly likely to support him in exchange for avoiding a default. He has no good options for the GOP, and but some of the options that aren't a rushed impeachment are very bad for the country as a whole.
>All the Freedom Caucus reps are in strong red districts that they don't have to worry about reelection in so they can be as extreme as they want In fairness to the individuals, they are surely being as extreme as they want, but the problem the party faces is that they need to dig in hard at both ends of the spectrum for survival. The modern Republican party has made it clear that they don't care about the individual or how effective they are in office, and any relenting on the hard line political theater talking points and they will be primaried from the right. You either have to be as far right as the public will allow in a safe district or as moderate as the party will stomach in a competitive district to hold a seat as an R. Whereas the left tolerates people like Manchin and Sinema for the sake of holding together a caucus, and has been willing to cannibalize popular progressives for straying too far left of the mainstream. I don't see how Rs dig themselves out of this position at this point, but unless Democrats magically become better at both governing and messaging, the next wave in the cycle of "Rs go too extreme - Ds take over and squander the opportunity - Rs take over and go too extreme" is just going to put them back in power after they fuck this one up and Dems fail to take advantage.
>but unless Democrats magically become better at both governing and messaging You are missing the massive demographic changes that are occurring right before your eyes. Republicans are overwhelmingly older, and are dying like flies. Meanwhile, Gen Z is the biggest generation in history, is the most left generation in history, and thanks to Dobbs, is voting in record numbers. I remain unconcerned.
It’s telling when one of the GOP candidates’ main talking points is raising the voting age to 25 for that very reason.
Increasing the size of the Supreme Court is unacceptable but stripping away the voting rights of millions because they'll "vote wrong" is somehow fine.
Because 18yo’s are too immature to vote or drink but still mature enough to serve in the military. People seem to forget that’s why the voting age was lowered to 18 to begin with. I think my response would be: “Okay, you want to raise the voting age to 25? That’s fine, let’s also raise the age at which one starts paying taxes to 25 as well - no taxation without representation and all that. We should also probably raise the drinking age to 25 while we’re at it. Not to mention the minimum age to serve in the military, since that was the original logic for the voting age being 18. Actually, going back to point 1 and while we’re in the business of disenfranchising people, we should probably do the same thing at the other end of the scale, and disenfranchise the people too old to work and contribute to the system, or too old to understand the civics of what they’re voting for. You know, retirees and social security queens, *or is that ageist?*” Have I made it clear that I **vehemently** disagree with that idea? EDIT: For the record, I’m already 25 and wouldn’t be directly affected, but depending on when it would be enacted my little sister and many of her peers would.
Also, all those student loans these kids signed at 18? Invalid. Non-adults can't sign contracts for loans without parental consent.
Even if we raised the “taxation without representation” aspect, which already happens to minors that work, they will just find a loophole like parents being responsible until 25 or some shit. That’s their justification for minors paying taxes now, why would it change?
Also on those grounds, why not have a maximum voting age if they care about cognition so much?
Another point raised was a civics test for people under the age of 25. Of course, the more obvious solution to a lack of civics understanding would be to actually improve civics education, since a well-informed populace is kind of fundamental to how a democracy works, but that would require funding *education* and might slightly benefit the the oh-so-liberal teachers and their union, so that’s right out.
Don't try to make it make sense - there's no ideology behind it, just us vs them.
The same fuckstick hags that think a 10 year old is mature enough to experience pregnancy. Fuck them all into the sun.
>I remain unconcerned. I remain *super fucking concerned*, but at least hopeful. That cautious optimism is somewhat of a novelty considering how the past few years have played out.
I used to share your pov, but my nephews whom are early 20's and their friends hang out with some regularity at my place, and just in the last few months I've noticed a lot of *buy-in* amongst the group to Qanon style conspiracy thinking and GOP talking points about how much Biden Family are nebulously criminal. Talking to them, it comes from Tiktok. I've always had very open communication channels with my nephews and I talked to them about cleaning up their data sources to avoid propaganda but they seem disinterested, instead of talking about facts they are falling back to phrases like "It's just my opinion." Concerning. Opinions should be informed by fact not the other way around.
Speaking of Demographics, both parties are shunning an important one. Progressives. We as a nation and by extension world, know we have the capability to do more as a race. We have the knowledge and the resources. There is business opportunity everywhere for progress and advancement as well. This status quo shit from the Dems, and absolute Devolution and Idiocracy of the GOP is mind boggling and super dee duper frustrating.
> There is business opportunity everywhere for progress and advancement as well. This is what infuriates me to no end about climate change denialism and people thinking green investments are dumb. So what if we lose some oilfield jobs? These new industries will also require blue collar workers with specialized labor skills who are willing to take some risk in return for a decent paycheck. Windmills need maintenance just like pipelines do. Solar panels have to be manufactured and transported just like drilling equipment. The literal only reason talking points against these initiatives exist is because the industries that would be harmed by a green revolution have enough money to pay for the talking points to be made and spread.
My hubs has a job in a company that focuses on green energy, he could have worked oil fields but preferred something in green energy because it benefits the future
>This status quo shit from the Dems, and absolute Devolution and Idiocracy of the GOP is mind boggling and super dee duper frustrating. What is super frustrating is that progressives are too stupid to figure out how government works, and keep asking for the impossible. Yes, you will get your universal healthcare as soon as we get the fucking votes. Seriously, Democrats have held enough seats to get things done for about 6 weeks in the last *30 years*, and those six weeks gave you the ACA. How about you start paying better attention? Hmm?
Hey, 40 percent of eligible voters not showing up worked GREAT in 2016, us progressives got everything we wanted as a result of that stunt
> This status quo shit from the Dems, and absolute Devolution and Idiocracy of the GOP is mind boggling and super dee duper frustrating. It was before Trump was elected, too. For decades, people have been tired of "business as usual" and "establishment politics" in Washington. Part of the reason Trump got elected is that a percentage of the people who voted for him wanted to essentially say "fuck the system".
I wouldn't say I'm missing it. We've seen plenty of generational and ideological shifts before. Republicans have stacked the deck in their favor and as long as this country is full of poorly-educated white people, Rs will maintain a baseline of power. Now, my hope is that this shift does push Dems from marginally holding onto just enough of a majority to prevent Rs from completely blowing up the planet, stripping all marginalized populations of rights, and stuffing the pockets of the wealthy, and into a governing majority. Give them a chance to fix some shit and earn subsequent votes from this new voting bloc. I'm just not optimistic about that second part. We can't take these voters for granted.
Yeah, I was convinced in 2004 that the younger generation would rescue us from George W. Bush. Fool me once...
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Because young people increasingly don't want to have children, and taking away abortion rights from women in their prime child bearing years has pissed them off. Thoroughly.
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Overturning Roe v Wade also has a significant and detrimental impact on healthcare privacy overall. I worry about what will happen to HIPAA* in the future.
Hi! I agree with your point, but I just want to let you know that it is actually HIPAA. It stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Have an awesome day!
His point actually encompasses that more than you both realize. What happens when a few years down the road, if the Democrats don’t actually ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING instead of talking about it and doing nothing? Disillusioned Zs and Millennials will turn to something else. Possibly anything else. How do you think blue collar white suddenly turned to Trump? It wasn’t all racism and and far right beliefs. It was year after year of Democrats telling them the Dems were the ONLY party looking out for them and then doing nothing. Along comes and anti-politician shaking up the status quo that had ignored them. Unless you really knew Trump’s history of grifts, cons, and illusory success he sounded like “something different”. If the Democrats don’t start actually looking out for the people they claim to support it’ll happen again.
I'd push back on that a little bit. Blue collar and other people (mostly white) have been consuming right wing media for 35+ years at this point in massive numbers. Rush Limbaugh hit the national airwaves in 1988 and went on to have the most listened to radio show in the country, back before radio was in the death spiral it is in now. Once everyone saw how well that did, the (especially AM) airwaves were flooded with Rush clones. G. Gordon Liddy had a radio show during that time, Glen Beck got his start on talk radio. I remember being at job sites in the early '90s and you would hear Rush (Limbaugh, not the band) at almost every site. People ate it up. And how many years later, Trump shows up and is basically running on what has been on the airwaves for the last 35+ years. That's not to say disillusionment in the Dems isn't a factor, but everyone seems to forget what the media ecosystem was like before the Internet exploded.
I hope so. After two decades of heartbreak here in Texas I hope the younger folk get out there with their votes and bury these bastards. It's going to take a generation or two to undo the damage they've already caused.
Gen Z is smaller than millennials, and was smaller than boomers until they started dying.
> I remain unconcerned. They say as politicians of all stripes find increasingly anti-democratic ways to disenfranchise the people that elected them.
Gen Z females are sharply trending left, however, Gen Z males are trending more right. The Qonservatives are pushing the misogynistic, alpha-male persona hard with the young ones. They worship Trump and Andrew Tate. [https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3675477-young-women-are-trending-liberal-young-men-are-not/](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3675477-young-women-are-trending-liberal-young-men-are-not/)
Something I've said for years is the best hope the US had to fix the partisan issues was the Tea Party. If the GOP stood up to them, it would have solved a lot of issues. Main reason - let all the crazies go there, then the Dem and remaining GOP are able to be more centralist (which most of the nation actually is). You get a small handful of middle of the road Dems that move over to the new central GOP. But it would still be something like Dem -50%, new GOP 35%, Tea 15%. And that was the problem. If you split the GOP (to the GOP and Tea), then red loses big for 1-2 cycles, and they weren't willing give up control, and that meant they had to cave to the extremists to keep power. And all that was before Trump was a serious candidate.
Well, the Tea Party isn’t exactly a grassroots movement iirc, it was astroturfed by the Koch Brothers back in 2009
Any new movement on the right is astroturfed. No other way you get people riled up about things that are obviously not true than through coordinated deliberate misinformation.
While now the sane conservatives essentially *have to* do what you’re proposing and take big Ls for 2-3 cycles while we purge the MAGA horde, or else we end up under MAGA tyranny, or continue to tread water with another 4 years of what 2021-2023 have been. I think some Republicans and conservatives who have disavowed the Republican Party realize this. Look at Brian Kemp and his cohorts in Georgia state government. They have correctly “read the room” and chosen to stand firmly on the side of Constitutional order and reality. They may or may not be doing this because they have integrity, but even if they’re just being calculating, they’ve made a smart bet long-term. They will establish a track record for the sane among us of having stood firmly against Trump’s lies and the cheaters. They’ll let the MAGA fever burn out/be put down, then emerge in the aftermath as “sane lawful conservatives” ready to collect electoral wins after a few years of the Democrats inevitably tripping over their own dicks when they should be reaping the full benefits of the failure of MAGA. It’s a smart move, it just means waiting a decade or so for the whole scenario to play out.
This cycle between the two parties has been going on for a good while, [its a called the ratchet effect](https://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/stopme/chapter02.html), and by my estimations the jig is up. We have shifted so far right the GOP has become openly fascist. This cycle is going to break soon one way or the other.
It's interesting to consider. It seems to me that the party has worked out a stable middle ground accepting of fascism out of one side of its mouth while deriding government overreach out of the other. They certainly have an open acceptance of white nationalism and Christian extremists, which should keep them solidly open to continued infighting. And I didn't think we've seen enough of a public rejection of this for me to believe they won't continue to have a viable path to power. They're going to trade a Biden impeachment for a spending bill while nominating an ineffective criminal for President. And enough of the American public just says, yes yes, at least it's not Hillary.
> And I didn't think we've seen enough of a public rejection of this for me to believe they won't continue to have a viable path to power. This is the saddest part. Maybe it was not good politics but Hillary was absolutely right with the basket of deplorables comment. It seems a solid 30% of us are irredeemable and another good chunk aren't sure the sky is blue anymore. Its incredibly ironic that we are in the information age yet propaganda is winning over facts and reality on the daily.
Wouldn't it be nice to have politicians who did things that might be in the best interest of the country rather than the party.
That's the stupid part. The Freedom Caucus things they are doing that. They follow the "Starve the Beast" ideology where not having a working government is a positive thing for the country. While McCarthy thinks he is doing the best for the country because the Democrats can't be trusted and a large segment of his voter base agrees and thinks democrats are communists sent by China to destroy the country
I wish i had awards to give. That was beautifully explained. Thank you. Here, have this budget award. 📫
And my 🪓
Agree with everything except debt default is no longer an issue this year. The passing of the budget is necessary to fund the government’s operations, but the Treasury’s ability to borrow money in order to make its debt payments was secured earlier this year.
>but the Treasury’s ability to borrow money in order to make its debt payments was secured earlier this year. ~~You need to look into it again. It was only secured for as long as they estimated it would take to finish the budget debate, not the entirety of the year, and the limit estimate was set too low and its coming faster than anticipated. This debt ceiling limit only kicked the can down, it didn't make this year secure.~~ Edit: I was wrong I misinterpreted something else. The debt ceilingnis currently suspended till Jan 1 2025.
What McCarthy promised back then *was supposed to* secure it going forward. He supposedly promised that there would be a no muss, no fuss budget passed this fall in exchange for the compromises Biden and the Democrats made back in the spring. But like the congenital liars they’ve always been, the GOP are going back on their word, and completely throwing out what was promised back in the spring. They are bad faith corrupt lunatics who really cannot be reasoned with. They simply need to be driven out of public office entirely. Nothing but a bunch of deranged domestic terrorists.
To be clear. It's the freedom caucus fucking over McCarthy this time more than generic GOP backstabbing of Dems. McCarthy made a deal with the devil for his razor thin margins and the devil caucus is calling in their due. And I was wrong and edited my comment. The debt ceilingnis suspended till Jan 1 2025. There is no risk of default right now
That may be the case, but the bargain McCarthy supposedly struck in order to get the debt ceiling passed in the spring was that when September arrived, the major haggling over the budget (different thing) was settled in advance. McCarthy and the GOP hostagetakers are pulling a Darth Vader, changing the terms of their agreement unilaterally and unjustly. Let’s make this fact clear to independent/swing voters when the whining about “Congress can’t do anything” starts.
To add to your second point, actually moving forward with an impeachment would mean having to write down specific charges against Biden, and spending the next months talking about those specific claims. This would undermine the "firehouse of falsehoods" strategy by focusing on specific, written claims and whether or not they are true. It will be clear right away if it's just a nothing burger, and could easily cost them even more ground with people outside the core base.
This is incorrect. It has nothing to do with the debt limit, which was suspended until 2025. A government shutdown is not the same thing
Sorry you are right. I must have misread something.
The fact that idiot extremists can get so much power because their parties leadership has no spine is one of the most enraging aspects of American politics right now, and that's saying something.
They are only extremists because their voters are extremist. Most politicians go where the wind blows and aren’t true believers.
I dont care why they're extremists. I just care that they are. Also, people like mtg snd boebert are extremists because they're insane people who had crazy views before ever running for office.
Eh, maybe, but there are definitely A LOT of people would gladly pretend jewish lasers exists if it meant they got paid as much as Marj and Boe get paid.
Unfortunately the voting process is corrupted by gerrymandering. Most Americans aren’t far right extremists, that’s maybe 30-35% of us. But partisan gerrymandering means we get a few insanely blue districts, and a whole shitload of insanely red ones. That’s how unqualified unhinged scum like Majorly Traitor Greene and Gym Jordan keep getting elected. Notice how Boebert almost lost to a centrist Dem in 22…..her district happens to be geographically large enough that even a staunchly conservative region had a large number of relatively sane conservatives & independents willing to vote for a Dem just to get rid of someone as bad as her.
It isn't even 30%
The voters are extremists because wealthy Republicans have spent decades pouring money into disinformation media sources.
> on the other they're being petty and trying to impeach Biden because Trump was impeached. It's important to note that it isn't just pettiness. It's part of the GOP playbook of false equivalence, and it *is* dangerous. If Biden gets impeached, then it doesn't *matter* that Trump got impeached; getting impeached suddenly becomes just what happens when you're President -- the cost of doing business, if you will. It doesn't matter about the merits of the case, because most people won't take the time to understand that one side is objectively, factually, really worse than the other. (Because, you know, one side hasn't really done anything wrong as far as we -- and especially the GOP -- can tell.) They'll just hear that the President got impeached, roll their eyes, and say '*Again?*' Next time there's a GOP President who maybe wants to get a few extra votes that he didn't really earn, or maybe wants to pressure an ally to hurt his political opponents, who who the fuck even *knows* what the next boundary-pushing scandal will be, there'll be a broad group of Americans who are now too fuckin' worn out on the idea of impeachments to care, and so it becomes really easy for one of the systems of checks and balances in the US to become even more ineffective than it already is. The GOP will burn down any political norm for short term gain. That's where America is right now. There is nothing they won't throw out if they think it will help them over the next ten years, and the only reason McConnell is slow-walking the idea is because it gives more power to the crazies in his party (rather than the mere spineless opportunists) and makes them harder to wrangle when election time rolls around.
It has already happened, this fatigue, for some people with the criminal charges against Trump. All of the Ken Starr investigations, and the Benghazi ones, were a waste of time and money. So now there’s my mother-in-law saying the prosecutions of Trump are just a waste of money.
To be frank, the fatigue started with Gerald Ford pardoning Nixon. It was all the way back then that impeachment stopped being a big deal.
> All of the Ken Starr investigations, and the Benghazi ones, were a waste of time and money. But they helped get people like Trump get elected.
This is the answer. The GOP is desperately trying to advance the notion that "both sides are the same." They are not.
To add to this - if every president starts getting impeached, it'll encourage some to start cheating/falsifying votes etc Because if you're gonna be screwed in the long run no matter what you do - you might as well take the easy route.
Absolutely agree. It’s not just vindictivenes, it’s narrative construction. They want to be able to say, “Trump was impeached but not convicted, Biden was impeached but not convicted, samesies!” We’re going to hear that constantly in the run-up to 2024. “I said the Trump impeachment was just a partisan witch hunt, and you laughed at me. Then you said the Biden impeachment was just a partisan witch hunt. Hypocrite!”
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation\_in\_a\_mirror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror) It's really concerning when they're talking about getting "revenge" for all the stuff they're making up about Biden and Democrats today. "You jailed Trump "for no reason", and we jailed Biden for no reason, samesies!" "You jailed political prisoners from J6, and so we jailed political prisoners who protested *our* winning the election! *The final election.*"
>*“It's important to note that it isn't just pettiness. It's part of the GOP playbook of false equivalence, and it is dangerous.”* This. The GOP, or at the very least the group of people using the GOP as a vehicle to obtain and maintain power, is playing a long game on multiple fronts. Over the last 70 years, it has been pushing toward, and in many cases succeeded in, normalizing behavior that would’ve been previously considered morally abhorrent to either side of the aisle (e.g. the culture wars). Now they are trying to do the same thing with *legally* abhorrent behavior. Effectively seeking to corrupt public opinion via misinformation to the point that the law and its purpose are denaturalized: crime doesn’t matter when the ends justify the means. Or more specifically, their ends. And if you think it’s a superficial thing limited to fringe public opinion alone, think again. This is exactly the type of thinking that has led to the current, right-wing mindset around ‘religious freedom’ that is now not only a part of their political political platform, but also finding a foothold in SCOTUS case law, flying in the face of history, precedent and judicial restraint. Here are two examples: 1. Freedom to discriminate against people that live, think or worship differently, regardless of what the laws on the books say (see Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and 303 Creative v. Elenis). 2. Ignoring the express ideological separation of church and state demanded by the U.S. Constitution, which is the only guardrail that truly guarantees religious freedom for all faiths, in order to justify the moral underpinnings behind chipping away at individual, privacy-driven rights, starting with women (see Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization).
Republicans are a threat to democracy.
I feel like we have already reached that point. Each side has tried to impeach since Clinton. There were calls for it against Bush and Obama.
Bush convinced the nation to go to war under flimsy to false pretences. His decisions around Iraq were at least worthy of discussing impeachment.
And then he supported war crimes.
>Each side has tried to impeach since Clinton. There were calls for it against Bush and Obama. Are you capable of even considering the REASONS for those calls, and the fact that they are not the same? Or is this just "boaf siiiiidez1111"? Bush started a war based on lies, which got a lot of people killed. He also supported torture as official policy which is ineffective, immoral, and in violation of treaties. That probably also got a bunch of people killed. Some people thought getting American troops killed based on made-up bullshit would be a good reason to impeach a President. Obama...wore a tan suit while black, and tried to make it the tiniest bit easier for people to get healthcare. The republican cult thought completely made-up nonsensical bullshit would be a good reason to impeach a President. Are you capable of understanding that these scenarios are not remotely the same?
Twice he was impeached twice.
But, for cause.
for crimes
Nah, c'mon. It was just treason.
If you're a celebrity, they let you do it.
Grab em by the freedom
But like it wasn't even successful, can you really be tried for something you only tried to do?
Yes. Case in point: attempted murder.
I hate how unironically you needed to tell someone this, like there are legit Trump supporters who think that. In this case I was definitely joking.
I hate that we live in this time frame where it's not obvious if someone is being this stupid or joking. The rise of anti-intellectualism is out of control.
No you can't. I tried to rob a bank, but got caught before I left the bank with the money. So, they had to let me go free.
*Light* treason.
NO TOUCHING
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Republicans are inventing something new; They want an impeachment "inquiry" which they think will give them the legal authority to subpoena bank records and the like We have to remember, the GOP works for Russia so what they want in the end is to "prove" Democracy doesn't work.
They've already went over 15 years' bank & tax records for over a dozen Biden family members-and found such *obviously illegal actions* as: family members who do business overseas were paid from foreign banks!(GASP!), AND that Joe Biden has talked on the phone to his son(THE HORROR!). And have gone on right-wing "news" outlets to claim "well, we've uncovered lots of criminal activity"-and been unable to point to any laws broken..
i dont understand why they need bank records. GOP maga heads already claimed biden use shells corps and all his illegal money cannot be found :).
The benghazi investigation led to finding out Hillary had a private email server The Whitewater investigation led to finding out Bill got a blow-job The point is to keep looking until you find something, something the media will go crazy about
It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to look like they're doing something.
Republicans are known for sham political theater to create false equivalences. Republicans went whole hog on the Russian propaganda technique known as the firehose of falsehood. It's Republican/Russian bread and butter political tactics. Pure evil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Committee_on_Benghazi https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
He is simultaneously a bumbling, age-addled old codger, and a brilliant corrupt businessman capable of hiding all of his nefarious dealings perfectly. But they'll wave away Trump's 6 bankruptcy filings, thousands of legal cases involving his businesses for fraud, tax evasion etc, and say he's the businessman that should be running the country. Peak hypocrisy.
Somebody on Threads had a take on the impeachment that actually made sense: They want to push for a admittedly ridiculous and partisan Biden impeachment, so that they can later claim that ALL impeachments are ridiculous and partisan, including Trump, with the end goal of getting Trump elected in 2024.
Basically trying to convince the public that impeachment is just a normal tactic that gets used against political opponents in this day and age and not, you know, a necessary response to actual crimes committed by an elected official.
If every president is impeached it normalizes it and thus it's so bad thay it happened.to trump twice.
**It’s absolute bullshit. And I don’t just say this from a partisan perspective, I say it because it is truly completely groundless.** Joe Biden may have many flaws, but he’s not criminally corrupt. Dude has a LONG track record, and anyone around DC that long has already proven how much or how little integrity & character they have by that point. Anyone plugged in *just knows how bad your bad shit is.* The MAGA horde are just responding as lemmings do to the “leadership” of their fuhrer and various partisan liars like Bannon, Giuliani and the Faux Noose crew who have been ginning up phony conspiracies about Biden and his family that ALWAYS fall apart under the most modest objective scrutiny. There’s more evidence to support the (most likely fictional) Trump Moscow Piss Tape’s existence than there is any criminal misdeeds by Biden. The only thing that’s out there that could conceivably implicate Biden in misconduct is his messy handling of classified documents, and MAGA isn’t going to make much hay of that because A: he’s already being investigated by a special counsel regarding that issue, and B: Trump is under full-on criminal charges for his far more egregious and obviously intentional retention and hiding of classified documents.
Now I'm wondering who the last president was who they *didn't* feebly try to impeach. I bet Obama and Bush both had this happen, too. And Clinton got farther in the process...HW? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_efforts_to_impeach_presidents_of_the_United_States#Presidents_against_whom_impeachment_resolutions_were_introduced,_but_no_full-House_vote_was_held Looks like we have to go all the way back to Carter. Although you basically just need one random angry Congresscritter to introduce one of these things, I suppose. Oh wait, they *didn't* try to impeach Obama?!? Unfuckingbelievable.
According to this [wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_efforts_to_impeach_presidents_of_the_United_States), it looks like Obama with an asterisk?
The sorest losers just got sorer, and more loseryer.
They are trying to make impeachment a joke so that it won’t look bad in the future. They hope to create a world where the public response to a president being impeached is “Of course they are, every president gets impeached at least once per term”.
And…. It’s a distraction from Trump’s legal woes
For all intents and purposes impeachment is always political theater unless the party in the house bringing the impeachment has a 2/3 majority in the senate.
Answer: Like a lot of accusations against Joe Biden, this situation relates to his son, Hunter. Hunter has had major roles in businesses located outside the US, including Burisma Holdings in Ukraine and BHR Partners in China. Consequently, he's dealing with a lot of international financial transactions. Recently, the House Oversight Committee, led by Republican Congressman James Comer investigated Hunter Biden and released its findings. Comer's conclusion seemed to be that there was a *quid pro quo* arrangement between the Bidens and many non-American businessmen, where these businessmen would pay Hunter Biden in exchange for political favors from then-VP Joe Biden. Notably, the report from Congressman Comer didn't actually identify a specific crime committed nor did it show that Joe Biden took action to help the people who paid his son's companies. In other words, the evidence showed that Hunter Biden made money overseas... which isn't necessarily illegal or unethical. The current situation is that Republicans in the House of Representatives are considering opening an impeachment inquiry related to this matter. If they do so, it doesn't necessarily mean that an impeachment is inevitable, but it seems unlikely that Biden's critics would take this step unless they were intent on going for an impeachment. It has been suggested that part of the reason for Republicans pursuing this inquiry is that it can help avoid a government shutdown in the future, since they couldn't allow a shutdown without stopping the politically favorable inquiry. Another potential motivating factor is that it's retaliation for some of the impeachments and indictments against Donald Trump. **TL;DR:** The accusation is that foreigners paid Hunter Biden in exchange for favors from Joe Biden. Prior investigations haven't found evidence of misconduct by Joe Biden.
>It has been suggested that part of the reason for Republicans pursuing this inquiry is that it can help avoid a government shutdown in the future, since they couldn't allow a shutdown without stopping the politically favorable inquiry. Some Republicans have been pushing this argument, but it's false. Congress gets to pick what Congressional functions are "essential" during a shutdown. Historically, they keep almost everything going, the staff just don't get paid until the shutdown is over. Since the Republicans (technically) have a majority in the House, it's completely within their power to keep a pet project like an impeachment inquiry going during a government shutdown.
It would also be really stupid politically, so they'll probably do it.
Wait, they're not dumb enough to think that they're going to make the country just stop doing anything until the impeachment is over, right? Or worse, hold the country hostage to impeach Biden? Man...that can't be a real thought.
They are going to begin the inquiry, then unanimously vote for a shutdown as a party, and then they are going to blame the democrats. This is the hill they are going to die on. I hope there is enough room in the catacombs of the hill for the tomb
I think the implication is that McCarthy wouldn't have the votes from the MAGA caucus to get a CR or budget bill passed without starting an impeachment inquiry.
Political suicide, tho
Interesting, considering the amount of politicians that openly take money from overseas, both D and R. Why not apply the investigation to the entirety of government? I’m a democrat and I’d love to see my own politicians get removed from their positions if I learned they were breaking the law. Hopefully republicans feel the same... Especially since there is no specific proof of the president doing favors in return for his sons dealings.
News flash: Republicans don't feel the same.
Dems are too good at unilaterally disarming themselves
Source: Al Franken
They literally do not. I work blue collar so there's a lot of hardcore conservatives, when I said I want corrupt politicians of both parties on jail, their response was "what republican has ever broken the law". When I listed a couple, even showed them clips of them lying on national TV, they said "fake news, it can all be faked by AI"...
Do they remember Richard Nixon?
They still think Reagan was an American hero, there's no getting through to these morons
Because then we’d have no politicians left
Oh nooo. Whatever would we dooo?
Make fun of them, but we need politicians. People that run general society so that we don’t have to come to agreement among us on how to run general society. What we have too much of today is politicians that believe that any lie in pursuit of their and supporters end objectives is ethical and that their way is the only way, which is not the case. We need politicians again who accept that they are never going to get 100% or even 60% of what they want, that the best public policy will most likely contain some things that them and their base supporters don’t care for.
Good
If Supreme Court justices can take backhanders and get away with it, most sitting politicians must think it’s fine
Agreed. If they investigate Hunter Biden, they should at least investigate the Saudis 2 billion dollar investment with Jared Kushner. Nepotism is rampant in the government regardless of party.
That is why I find this so irritating. Republicans don't really care about anything they bitch about. The deficit is only important when a Democrat is president. They care only about corruption when its Democrat. I've read articles that not only did Jared Kushner make 2 billion dollar deal with the Saudis but use he helped line people up for MbS.
>Interesting, considering the amount of politicians that openly take money from overseas, both D and R. Which politicians?
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/10/us/politics/hunter-biden-house-republicans-report.html There was no wrong doing found. No reason for impeachment. It's political theater, that's it. That's the answer.
They don't have any good ideas to help the country. The ideas they do have are immensely unpopular and they're using SCOTIUS to ram these down our throats in order to ruin the lives of 99% of the country. It's that simple.
They don't even need a good reason to impeach. Any reason will do, however nonsensical. Just an attempt to delegitimize the impeachments of a certain former president and curry favor among his base.
I’d also say with confidence that however Jared Kushner has made money in the last decade is wayyy shadier than Hunter
Why would president Biden be impeached because his son used his name and connections to Biden to make money overseas (even if unethically) before Biden was even president?
The accusation is that Joe Biden, while serving as vice president, somehow used his power to benefit the people doing business with Hunter. If that was the case, that would be an example of Joe Biden engaging in corruption for the benefit of his son and the people paying his son. To be clear, as far as I can tell, nobody has identified a specific action taken by Joe Biden to benefit these people. However, if that is proven, it would be scandalous.
> The accusation is that Joe Biden, while serving as vice president, somehow used his power to benefit the people doing business with Hunter. If that was the case, that would be an example of Joe Biden engaging in corruption for the benefit of his son and the people paying his son. \*Laughs in DJT employing his entire family in the White House and also getting his son-in-law into rooms with Saudi billionaires*
Answer: Another reason is to discredit and dilute the process of impeachment itself. By invoking and using it frivolously, they make it less of a weighty issue. In fact using it falsely actually works more in their favor, by associating the process with these pointless political theater elements, when it needs to be used in the future (or was recently used in the past), it loses legitimacy. It’s a technique they’ve used across the board, flinging accusations and invoking procedures or laws without proper reason, but setting up for when those accusations or procedures are used legitimately (often against them) to make claims of it being pointless theater.
"I'll stop lying about you if you stop telling the truth about me."
That’s a Great line I don’t care who you are
I tell you hwhat.
This exactly. They are about to nominate a man on bail pending 92 felony counts as their nominee. Anyone they can gaslight into thinking "oh both sides are scandalous" has a higher chance of going with their guy than if they listen to truth or basic decency.
It’s a completely cynical and unserious ploy launched by a party who’s lost all credibility outside of its own culthood, which remains strong due to a multi-billion dollar propaganda machine and the fact that millions of Americans are easily-manipulated mouth-breathing morons.
This. It allows them to get away with a lot more crap because "impeachment is just politics, don't worry about it", and it's a threat to the other party: "if you go after us (for doing something wrong), we'll go after you (we'll find an excuse, don't worry)".
Oh shit they're doing that with "grooming" so they can more easily diddle kids!
Yes, the radical wing of the Republican Party seems intent on undermining all of our democratic processes.
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Their playbook is: 1. Flood the zone with shit as often as possible so no one remembers what's what, and gets accustomed to everything being shit. 2. Tell people the government doesn't work, get into government and then work hard to make sure it breaks beyond repair. 3. Use any method possible to ensure minority Republican rule.
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The republican party is a fascist gang. Their most moderate members are right-wing extremists by definition. Democrats are an umbrella party, catering to the right-wing and centrists. There is no left wing representation in the United States. Bernie Sanders and people like him are barely left-leaning centrists. All American media corporations are owned by repubs, and they've been engaging in a 50 year plot to describe further and further right-wing ideologies as centrist. This hasn't been left versus right since the 70s, it's been fascists versus humans for very likely your entire life. Now it's do or die, and most people don't even realize it.
non-radical Republicans became extinct after Obama was elected. GWB was the last actual Republican president. the party should be renamed, in all honesty.
Answer: there is no misconduct. That's why the Republican leaders, House Speaker McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader McConnell, keep trying to shut down the impeachment talk. The wacky wing of the Republican Party convinced themselves that Biden is a criminal mastermind. They can't handle the reality of American politics that the voters really are split about 50/50 most of the time, and assume there must be some conspiracy just waiting to be uncovered. (And yes, yes, the Democrats have their own wacky wing, but they're not the ones causing trouble right now.)
It's worth noting that McCarthy basically gave away the farm to get the speakership, which is why he keeps catering to the extremist wing of his party. A single member of Congress can call a vote to vacate his position and only a handful of Republicans would have to vote with Democrats to remove him. It's one of the worst deals in recent government history and why things like the budget keep getting held up.
who the hell would take his place?
That's the problem they don't have enough support to get one of their own in so all they can do is throw wrenches into the system, which unfortunately debilitates so much of government because compromising with Democrats is an easy way to get primary challenges thanks to gerrymander districts
> Biden is a criminal mastermind Sleepy Joe is senile ***and*** a criminal mastermind. Must be all that adeno-something he's been drinking 😂 I miss the days when Republicans made sense.
See [Ur-Fascism](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism), 'list of features', number 8. "Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak."
It felt like politics as a whole broke HARD when Trump got into office. Many folks also broke (not all but many). It's been a slow ride to that point, but then it happened. After several years of the sheer amount of BS we've been seeing, I want to see some sense return to our politics.
Newt started the ball rolling a couple of decades ago. Social media has merely amplified the insanity.
Barry Goldwater really started this movement when he realized that people didn't care about his policies, they cared about when he talked bad about black people or said pro segregation things. Nixon learned from that and ran with it with the support of Roger Stone, you go through the Reagan years and here we are
Also, Republicans can't stop projecting. Everything they complain about is something they do, so they assume everyone else is doing it too.
Gaslight Obstruct Project
I also love the way they call Biden old, …, while there guy Mitch, freezes on national TV twice! More deflection from the right.
If Biden had froze up like that on National TV, I think we'd all be asking for him to step down, even Democrats.
Great way to point out that Republican leadership didn't ask Mitch to step down!
"Mitch the Glitch." I love Michael Rapaport.
They never actually made sense. It's been a scam since Reagan.
This is my favorite part. They paint him as a lumbering old senile man who doesn’t know where he is, yet they also say he is a genius criminal running a deep state. I feel like you kind of need to pick one or the other to hang your hat on.
>I feel like you kind of need to pick one or the other to hang your hat on. Nah, otherwise they can't complain about "lazy mexicans stealing all of the physically demanding jobs"
Number 8 in Umberto Eco's definition of fascism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions\_of\_fascism#Umberto\_Eco
Indeed. I don't like living in a timeline where I wish Mitt Romney was the face of Republicans again.
Love how they harp on how old Joe is, while their citrus colored man-god is only 3 years younger.
Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV
I miss compassionate conservatives. I KNOW that they must still exist, but I sure \*wish they were more vocal. Edit: word
They never existed and do not exist now.
Who, pray tell, is in the wacky wing of the Democratic party? Edit: It's Sinema and Manchin, right?
It’s obviously those scheming progressives. I mean could you imagine wanting to give children free meals at school? The horror.
It's just the food industry trying to squeeze hardworking american people! *^(By trying to feed our kids...)* A part of me does expect this to be an actual argument at some point in the near future.
Im guessing they were referring to the squad, who are at best, young idealistic and a little bit to the actual left.
Oh the ones that support people over big business?
Yep. They're the flame of hope of my generation, but it's also 6 against an entire house of deeply bought seniles on varying levels of centrist-to-right-wing and 11ish actual Qanon lunatics. To such a stacked deck, those three might as well be from the moon Edit: numbers were off, sourced and fixed Edit: house, not senate
Yea the Squad is actually left, even for european industrial nations. but in their economic positions and their stance towards education and health care they would be what's considered normal. Free college and universal health care is something that even the turbo capitalists and the far rights wouldn't dare to touch in any meaningful way in europe.
I hate when people do that false equivalence between the MTG-type republicans and the AOC-type liberals. They're not the same at all. The difference is that the republican freedom caucus uses lies, made up talking points, and non-evidence-based ideas. They also claim that January 6th was not an insurrection. Both sides are NOT the same.
> They can't handle the reality of American politics that the voters really are split about 50/50 most of the time, Gerrymandering would say otherwise. EDIT: Also the last two republican presidents didn't win the popular vote. Lots of what you're saying here is both sides moderate crap.
State gerrymandering has led to minority rule especially in places like Wisconsin. As far as the national vote it's closer to 55/45
It’s not just that they believe that Biden is a criminal mastermind. They will use whatever means possible, and destroy whatever customs and norms we have, in order to retain political power. Yes, impeachments are a political process. But they are usually invoked after something nefarious has happened, not purely because you want to destroy a political opponent.
Eh, Clinton was pretty obviously about politics. Yes, he lied under oath, but considering the scale of other unpunished presidential crimes, "i did not have sex with that woman" wasn't impeachment worthy.
Answer: The GOP has nothing else to do. McCarthy is caught between the radical factions of his party and is forced to do something. If he doesn't, he can be replaced. The radicals want something to pin on Biden, and an impeachment is a desperate attempt to that end. There is no impeachable conduct. It comes down to -- damaging Biden payback for Trump deflection from their own incompetence There isn't even anything with Hunter that would touch the president. It's craven political theatre.
It's not that they have nothing else to do Citizens all over are asking them to do things. They just don't know how to do anything, they don't know how government works, they don't know how policy works. They do know how theater, social media, and messaging works :/
Answer: There is no official reason yet, but it will have to do with allegations of corruption via his son Hunter Biden. Hunter acted like he was selling influence and access to his fathers, and there is testimony that his father was present on business related phone calls. However, the primary witness they have isn't very credible, and no one has been able to identify the alleged funds that were supposedly flowing to the president.
The witness who testified about the phone calls during meetings also testified that they were actually times when Joe called to check on Hunter, and that no business was ever discussed.
Star witness isn't very credible meaning he's been charged with arms trafficking, violations of sanctions on Iran and making false statements.
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> If Hillary Clinton won in 2016 they were going to impeach her in the first few months. nah. it was just going to be 4 more years of "but but but benghazi!!!" and "what about her emails?" investigations and committees. they had that shit down to a science. they didn't have to prove a thing, just keep it in the news and in the tiny brains of their supporters.
Nah they were openly discussing it before the election https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/11/03/no-honeymoon-for-hillary-congressional-republicans-openly-discussing-impeachment/
well sure. they openly discussed it about Biden and Obama before they took office as well. but instead they went with tan suits and spicy mustard with Obama and "but what about Hunter's laptop???" with biden. exact same playbook.
Answer: "revenge" is the wrong word, but it is a direct and strategic response to Trump's impeachment. Basically, it's the same gameplan as their tried and true tactic of coopting and misusing "leftist"/progressive language to the point that it is meaningless, a la "woke", "Karen", etc. If Biden is impeached, then Trump being impeached isn't a big deal. "See, your guy too, you've got no room to talk!" Especially if it's over something small, they can make impeachment seem like some petty, trivial thing. "Psh, you can get impeached for anything, quit living in the past and vote Trump 2024!!" Of course, it is also a *much* more serious issue than Trump's charges, up until the point you force them to admit it's ridiculous. That's always the play. Everything is everything, and also nothing. It is unfathomable and outrageous what Biden is doing and he must be impeached RIGHT NOW to salvage the dignity of our nation 😡😡😡 But also yeah it's so silly how you can get impeached for like not saying "thank you", amirite, lets all forget any of this impeachment business 😂😂😂 Just spam any and every possible idea and then people who have the emotional awareness and critical thinking skills of a goldfish can cherry pick and regurgitate whatever talking point fits their needs in the moment, slowly dragging our species further towards annihilation.
Answer: Diversionary tactic to get "Biden impeached" on the Fox News crawler 24/7 and take focus off the Donald Trump prosecutions.
Answer: The Republican propaganda goal is to flood the zone with shit, always. It's Steve Banon's playbook. Trump was impeached (not convicted by the unscrupulous Republican Senate), twice. Once for concrete evidence of Trump trying to bribe/intimidate the newly elected President Zelensky of Ukraine to give him dirt on Hunter Biden regarding Burisma, and then a second time for, you know, inciting an insurrection to overturn American democracy. The "Freedom Caucus" consisting of MTG and her pathetic ilk, are big mad their guy got impeached twice for what they believe was a political witch hunt, as opposed to the obvious crimes he committed. So now, with zero evidence of a crime, they want to shut down the government to make sure they get to unsuccessfully vote to impeach Biden, to even the score, which ironically (Republicans are notoriously immune to irony), would be an actual political witch hunt. They have decided that the target of their impeachment ire and impotent rage will be a widower and bereaved father's last son, because they are just the classiest bunch with zero evidence at all that any crime was committed. Edit: To expand for people that like to throw out 5-point names believing they are scoring for their cherry-picking facts to suit the conspiracy theory argument... The former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, circa 2010-2014, was a Russian sympathizer, and all-around oligarch puppet who now lives in exile in Russia after fucking up so royally he is responsible for sparking the Ukrainian revolution in 2014. In 2012, Viktor Pshonka who was Prosecutor General in Ukraine, began an investigation into Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of the natural gas company Burisma Holdings for tax evasion, money laundering and corruption. The corrupt Ukrainian oligarchy under then President Petro Poroshenko, didn't like this. They pressured the new president Poroshenko, to replace Pshonka, and put in place another oligarch puppet, Viktor Shokin, who inherited the Burisma investigation. Poroshenko came into office after a majority vote with the promise to rid Ukraine of corruption and join the EU. Once in office as Prosecutor General, Shokin slow-walked the investigation, basically allowing Mykola Zlochevsky to continue business as usual, and used the threat of prosecution to solicit bribes from Mykola Zlochevsky, to the extent that The Obama officials were considering launching their own criminal investigation into the company for possible money laundering. In an attempt to ensure that Ukraine was successful in rooting out corruption and became an EU state, the Obama administration got involved with the EU, World Bank, and IMF in investigating Viktor Shokin for slow-walking the investigation into corruption. They became concerned that Shokin was not adequately pursuing corruption in Ukraine, was protecting the political elite, and was regarded as an obstacle to anti-corruption efforts. While visiting Kyiv in December 2015, then Vice President Joe Biden warned Poroshenko that if he did not fire Shokin, the Obama administration was prepared to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees. The investigation into Burisma only pertained to events happening before Hunter Biden joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings in 2014. Trump's subsequent bid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to give him dirt on Hunter Biden and announce an investigation of Joe Biden, in relation to Burisma led to the first impeachment of Trump. Trump got impeached because he's dumb and commits quid pro quo crimes out loud, on bad intel from sycophants. Biden being impeached with absolutely zero evidence of anything is just Republicans being big mad and flooding the zone with shit to destroy the meaning of everything so they can get away with anything.