The Trump Impeachment Thread

[TexRex]

Any intelligent Republican should absolutely hate Trump. He's a closet Communist who wants to be a pseudo dictator while running the economy instead of allowing the free market to be free. Going against the free market is like the least Republican thing I can think of.

I suspect Republican ideologies are experiencing a considerable shift from classical views. It isn't Trump's fault by any means--it started long before he came around and likely enabled him to scheme his way in--but it surely isn't slowing under him either.

 

[jjaisli]

The most flagrant one is his illegal use of tariffs...

I just wanted to comment briefly. This is a bit of a grey area. Section 301 of the trade act of 1974 transferred limited power to the executive branch regarding issues of international trade. Tariffs, tariff rates, anti-dumping duty cases, contra-veiling duty cases, etc., are normally decided by acts of congress. However, the President has the power to act on trade issues under the guise of "national security", under section 301.

While I wouldn't call all the section 301 tariffs on Chinese products, European products (particularly but not limited to steel) and threatened tariffs on South American steel, a true national security issue, and anybody would be hard pressed to make a legitimate case for it outside of wartime, which is how the law was originally intended, I consider it more another instance of abuse of power, rather than a blatant illegal act.

Perhaps a more direct violation is the Trump administration's efforts to effectively kill the World Trade Organization, or at least strip it's power to resolve disputes.

 

[Groundfish]

f I didn't know better, I would say you were referring to Breitbart, Foxnews or 8chan. If you're going to talk about propaganda and manipulation, it's a great place to start

Never done Breitbart that’s the Milo yapanupadayaya guys deal I think. Yes, I agree, when I do look at some news generally I skim CNN FOX and BBC. I am unaware of any what I would call true journalism anymore. There used to be this guy Walter Kronkite who would go on TV, read the news without trying to make anyone look worse than any other, then he would shut up, and the viewers could make up their own minds. I am not making this up!
Generally FOX and CNN offer some facts when it is in their interest. BBC is pretty cool, I like some of their kinda zany or off topic stuff.
In the USA it all depends who is paying the talking heads on the screen.

Any intelligent Republican should absolutely hate Trump. He's a closet Communist

Never heard that one before.

Well, he has violated the Constitution numerous times. The most flagrant one is his illegal use of tariffs

I am not a lawyer, but given that Congress is filled with them pretty sure some of them would have pointed that out before if he violated the Constitution.

 

[Danoff]

I am not a lawyer, but given that Congress is filled with them pretty sure some of them would have pointed that out before if he violated the Constitution.

 

[Groundfish]

Edit re tariffs

 

[TexRex]

There used to be this guy Walter Cronkite who would go on TV, read the news without trying to make anyone look worse than any other, then he would shut up, and the viewers could make up their own minds.

 

[jjaisli]

I am not a lawyer, but given that Congress is filled with them pretty sure some of them would have pointed that out before if he violated the Constitution.

I can't be sure <sarcasm> but I'm guessing MANY members of congress have pointed out abuses of the constitution by the Trump administration. But if you consider the sources to be fake news, than what's the point.

]

I suppose if you consider the first picture to be the "truth" and below, CNN's distortion of facts, this is funny. But realistically, are either of them likely true?

 

[Joey D]

Never heard that one before.

Think about it, he wants to control the economy and the means of production. That's one of the staples of Communism (not idealistic communism, but rather the kind China and the USSR practiced).

I am not a lawyer, but given that Congress is filled with them pretty sure some of them would have pointed that out before if he violated the Constitution.

As @jjaisli points out, the Trade Act of 1974 limits the power of the president to enact tariffs when there's a threat to national security. Can you explain to me how French cheese and wine are a threat to national security? The only sort of thing that would kind of be considered an issue of national security is steel and oil, but even then, that seems like a hard justification.

And yes, it's been pointed out that he's in violation of the Constitution. But you get people with their heads in the clouds that scream "fake news" when it's pointed out. It's not fake news though. All one has to do is read the law and see what's actually happening to figure out it's illegal.

 

[Scaff]

Think about it, he wants to control the economy and the means of production. That's one of the staples of Communism (not idealistic communism, but rather the kind China and the USSR practiced).

I would argue that rather than a desire for a form of Communist Totalitarianism, Trump is more in the Theoratic or Tribal Totalitarianism camp.

He's shown no signs of wanting to bring entire industries into state ownership (which rules out Communist Totalitarianism) and his desire to control the economy rules out classic Right-Wing Totalitarianism. However, he does seem very partial to see power monopolised by specific groups of people that he feels are 'like types' (his family, conservative Christians and the top 1% in terms of wealth as examples) which would fall into either Theoratic or Tribal Totalitarianism.

 

[Groundfish]

I suppose if you consider the first picture to be the "truth" and below, CNN's distortion of facts, this is funny. But realistically, are either of them likely true?

It’s not just CNN. That’s the meme I found. I don’t care who you are those memes are funny. I saw a rumor about President Trump, that he went on Thanksgiving to see the troops...I’m not sure if that was true, but the rumor goes he decoyed the media into thinking he was golfing? Dunno truth on that I wasn’t paying any attention.

hink about it, he wants to control the economy and the means of production

Hmmm, kinda like a gigantic bailout and too big to fail right? I mean, it doesn’t bother me when people run down politicians, but is President Trumps nationalism Communist? To me that’s an lol.
We wouldn’t be in this position if the govt, corporations, and foreign interests hadn’t pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes with NAFTA. Say what you will about being on one side or another, but there was definitely a giant sucking sound of jobs departing the USA. So, who benefitted from that? Corporations who didn’t care about anything but making money. Not only did they move away to exploit cheap labor and take advantage to complete absence of environmental regulation, the govt then took away American jobs and also American sovereignty in a sense because for example in WW2 the only real reason we were able to save the world from the NAZIS was our ability to produce weapons of war to defeat that evil with.
Further, it’s my opinion that say factory based employment is a very positive thing in a free society because of the technical and scientific knowledge requirements and skill sets needed to build say a car for example. Automation greatly increases the need for technically skilled people who can engineer develop and maintain the equipment, and skilled management to manage it.
With production based employment, even an initially unskilled person cleaning the bathrooms if they have talent can rise up and prosper when they show ability to learn. That’s all without initially having formal education. Those folks who maybe have less intellectual capability can do the less technical, but necessary tasks.
How does a person rise up in a minimum wage service sector job? They are not making a living wage, and there’s really little talent in it beyond maybe one day making assistant manager of the Starbucks or McDonald’s.
Like in the movie Coming to America the guy that was working fries
So, in the case of the current state of the USA, in terms of its citizens best interest as far as having opportunities to prosper economically, a little bit of work from the govt needs to be done to return companies to locate these facilities within the USA.
That’s far from Communism imo. Communism is govt bailing out automakers instead of allowing them to fail. Had they allowed them to fail, initially there would be some hard times for folks, but, what an incredible opportunity for investors! All this equipment and production capability sitting there available cheap? Imo the market let’s just call it that would have had a rebirth, of many smaller healthier companies, but you had who you had in office and they did what they did.
Really, imo what you have said is inverted.
It’s propoganda that has resulted in the viewpoints of these things being diametrically opposed imo practically by design. Whether it is or not by design, with the large number of conflicting interests that make up the people media govt and corporations the net effect is division of the populace which sucks. The people are so divided and psychopathically opposed to each other that it makes it easy for Congress to basically investigate each other and the President all while accomplishing nothing productive, And this way no one is focused on important matters like term limits and special interest money. I mean seriously, how long have some of those members been in there? Then when they get ousted, if that happens they simply work for special interests and make money hand over fist, it’s ridiculous.
But, the propoganda gets a lot of people so worked up about BS that they no longer see the forest through the trees. They are more interested in trashing people than doing anything.
I mean to me, it seems like they are more interested in the court of public opinion than right wrong Constitution, no Constitution etc.
Meanwhile the corps that produce in Asia and all that manufacture junk and destroy the environment freely, where if they were here there would be some basic level of regulation, which is not a Communist concept.
The last thing the propoganda machine wants is an educated populace, but what they love is a pseudo intellectual activist culture that bully’s and attacks all opposition, because it keeps people divided and makes them easier to govern.
Tbh it seems to me that there are many historical parallels to where the USA is now and a lot of empires that have historically failed.
I mean after President Trump took office the biggest problem for me with him was his means of communication.
I mean I can’t get behind any platform out there personally. Look at who the Libertarians put up as a candidate! Lol.
The Left has gone pretty much insane, pandering to the poor, allowing unchecked illegal immigration to add to their base, the Right wants to go pre 1973 with women’s rights and teach religion in school.
I mean at some point you stand back and laugh at all of them, but all this has been going on so long and the brainwashing is so complete that you have to do that.
It all goes back to the question how do you catch a herd of wild pigs that I put up initially. Luckily it will take quite a while to see the complete demise of the USA and I will be long gone!
I’d like to add though that it’s very evident that things are messed up when you don’t see the govt breaking up monopolies.
They are busting up Unions though which is also shat.

t's not fake news though. All one has to do is read the law and see what's actually happening to figure out it's illegal

Well, if you are capable of that, reading and interpreting the millions of laws on the books more power to ya . There’s so many ridiculous laws, and very very intentionally confusing language that can be interpreted many different ways, and that’s all by design. Saying just read the law and you’ll see isn’t reasonable imo.

 

[Liquid]

Last week:

The Republican-leaning folks are usually so matter-of-fact. Marriage is between a man and a woman. They're illegal immigrants, get in line and wait your turn. You can pry my guns from my cold dead hands. But suddenly it's "what exactly does bribery really mean anyway, and why is it against the rules? If Trump is found not-guilty by the process, who am I to decide what's what?".

This week:

Well, if you are capable of that, reading and interpreting the millions of laws on the books more power to ya . There’s so many ridiculous laws, and very very intentionally confusing language that can be interpreted many different ways, and that’s all by design.

Bullseye.

 

[Joey D]

Hmmm, kinda like a gigantic bailout and too big to fail right? I mean, it doesn’t bother me when people run down politicians, but is President Trumps nationalism Communist? To me that’s an lol.

That was also a Republican president that did that, so maybe it's just Communism is a part of the Republican platform?

But yes, the bailout is something that shouldn't have happened. It wasn't the government's responsibility to prop up a company that made inferior products and couldn't compete on the world stage. Just like how it is now, if the steel industry in the US can't compete with the steel industry from China, that's not the government's problem. The industry either needs to evolve, adapt, or die. It's called a free market and it works wonders when the government doesn't much it up.

It all comes down to Communism in my eyes because it's the government controlling the industry when they have no business doing so. Although @Scaff does bring up a good point that it could be more Totalitarism than Communism, but in either case, it's not what the US should stand for. We're a country that's supposed to be free, not one where the government is supposed to dictate our lives.

How does a person rise up in a minimum wage service sector job? They are not making a living wage, and there’s really little talent in it beyond maybe one day making assistant manager of the Starbucks or McDonald’s.
Like in the movie Coming to America the guy that was working fries
So, in the case of the current state of the USA, in terms of its citizens best interest as far as having opportunities to prosper economically, a little bit of work from the govt needs to be done to return companies to locate these facilities within the USA.

How does a person rise up? They get training and education that allows them to move up. Is it harder for some than others? Absolutely and it's not fair, but that's not the government's problem either.

That’s far from Communism imo. Communism is govt bailing out automakers instead of allowing them to fail. Had they allowed them to fail, initially there would be some hard times for folks, but, what an incredible opportunity for investors! All this equipment and production capability sitting there available cheap? Imo the market let’s just call it that would have had a rebirth, of many smaller healthier companies, but you had who you had in office and they did what they did.
Really, imo what you have said is inverted.

Bailing out the automakers and making it so companies that operate outside the US can't do so because of tariffs have the same end result. It's the government manipulating the market.

But, the propoganda gets a lot of people so worked up about BS that they no longer see the forest through the trees. They are more interested in trashing people than doing anything.

I'm not interested in trashing people, I'm interested in having the country run according to its founding principals. Trump doesn't do that and therefore it's worth pointing out.

I’d like to add though that it’s very evident that things are messed up when you don’t see the govt breaking up monopolies.
They are busting up Unions though which is also shat.

The government shouldn't break up monopolies and it certainly shouldn't get involved with unions. Although Trump has threatened just that because he wanted to step in with the UAW strike.

Well, if you are capable of that, reading and interpreting the millions of laws on the books more power to ya . There’s so many ridiculous laws, and very very intentionally confusing language that can be interpreted many different ways, and that’s all by design. Saying just read the law and you’ll see isn’t reasonable imo.

Ok...

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's [sic] inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

— United States Constitution Article I, § 10, Clause 2

Tariffs are the responsibility of Congress, not the president.

 

[Groundfish]

die. It's called a free market and it works wonders when the government doesn't much it up.

Corporations don’t care about anything except profits. The effect of that is entire communities being destroyed when their source of income moves overseas. The environment there gets destroyed. All for free market profits and the mega rich getting more rich.
Corporations have no interest in people per se inherently. Govt should.

They get training and education that allows them to move up

Training for what when the jobs are gone? Education about how to brew coffee or defrost and warm frozen processed meat slather it with ketchup and imitation cheese and place it on a bun?
When the corporations leave there’s simply nothing to train people to do except spend what they have left.

Bailing out the automakers and making it so companies that operate outside the US can't do so because of tariffs have the same end result. It's the government manipulating the market

It’s the govt protecting the ability of its citizens to prosper.

The government shouldn't break up monopolies and it certainly shouldn't get involved with unions. Although Trump has threatened just that because he wanted to step in with the UAW strike

Right, they should partner up with monopolies, forming a better power structure over the people and better being able to limit people’s freedom and opportunity.

No State shall

State? I’m not a lawyer, sorry.

 

[TexRex]

It’s not just CNN. That’s the meme I found. I don’t care who you are those memes are funny. I saw a rumor about President Trump, that he went on Thanksgiving to see the troops...I’m not sure if that was true, but the rumor goes he decoyed the media into thinking he was golfing? Dunno truth on that I wasn’t paying any attention.



Hmmm, kinda like a gigantic bailout and too big to fail right? I mean, it doesn’t bother me when people run down politicians, but is President Trumps nationalism Communist? To me that’s an lol.
We wouldn’t be in this position if the govt, corporations, and foreign interests hadn’t pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes with NAFTA. Say what you will about being on one side or another, but there was definitely a giant sucking sound of jobs departing the USA. So, who benefitted from that? Corporations who didn’t care about anything but making money. Not only did they move away to exploit cheap labor and take advantage to complete absence of environmental regulation, the govt then took away American jobs and also American sovereignty in a sense because for example in WW2 the only real reason we were able to save the world from the NAZIS was our ability to produce weapons of war to defeat that evil with.
Further, it’s my opinion that say factory based employment is a very positive thing in a free society because of the technical and scientific knowledge requirements and skill sets needed to build say a car for example. Automation greatly increases the need for technically skilled people who can engineer develop and maintain the equipment, and skilled management to manage it.
With production based employment, even an initially unskilled person cleaning the bathrooms if they have talent can rise up and prosper when they show ability to learn. That’s all without initially having formal education. Those folks who maybe have less intellectual capability can do the less technical, but necessary tasks.
How does a person rise up in a minimum wage service sector job? They are not making a living wage, and there’s really little talent in it beyond maybe one day making assistant manager of the Starbucks or McDonald’s.
Like in the movie Coming to America the guy that was working fries
So, in the case of the current state of the USA, in terms of its citizens best interest as far as having opportunities to prosper economically, a little bit of work from the govt needs to be done to return companies to locate these facilities within the USA.
That’s far from Communism imo. Communism is govt bailing out automakers instead of allowing them to fail. Had they allowed them to fail, initially there would be some hard times for folks, but, what an incredible opportunity for investors! All this equipment and production capability sitting there available cheap? Imo the market let’s just call it that would have had a rebirth, of many smaller healthier companies, but you had who you had in office and they did what they did.
Really, imo what you have said is inverted.
It’s propoganda that has resulted in the viewpoints of these things being diametrically opposed imo practically by design. Whether it is or not by design, with the large number of conflicting interests that make up the people media govt and corporations the net effect is division of the populace which sucks. The people are so divided and psychopathically opposed to each other that it makes it easy for Congress to basically investigate each other and the President all while accomplishing nothing productive, And this way no one is focused on important matters like term limits and special interest money. I mean seriously, how long have some of those members been in there? Then when they get ousted, if that happens they simply work for special interests and make money hand over fist, it’s ridiculous.
But, the propoganda gets a lot of people so worked up about BS that they no longer see the forest through the trees. They are more interested in trashing people than doing anything.
I mean to me, it seems like they are more interested in the court of public opinion than right wrong Constitution, no Constitution etc.
Meanwhile the corps that produce in Asia and all that manufacture junk and destroy the environment freely, where if they were here there would be some basic level of regulation, which is not a Communist concept.
The last thing the propoganda machine wants is an educated populace, but what they love is a pseudo intellectual activist culture that bully’s and attacks all opposition, because it keeps people divided and makes them easier to govern.
Tbh it seems to me that there are many historical parallels to where the USA is now and a lot of empires that have historically failed.
I mean after President Trump took office the biggest problem for me with him was his means of communication.
I mean I can’t get behind any platform out there personally. Look at who the Libertarians put up as a candidate! Lol.
The Left has gone pretty much insane, pandering to the poor, allowing unchecked illegal immigration to add to their base, the Right wants to go pre 1973 with women’s rights and teach religion in school.
I mean at some point you stand back and laugh at all of them, but all this has been going on so long and the brainwashing is so complete that you have to do that.
It all goes back to the question how do you catch a herd of wild pigs that I put up initially. Luckily it will take quite a while to see the complete demise of the USA and I will be long gone!
I’d like to add though that it’s very evident that things are messed up when you don’t see the govt breaking up monopolies.
They are busting up Unions though which is also shat.




Well, if you are capable of that, reading and interpreting the millions of laws on the books more power to ya . There’s so many ridiculous laws, and very very intentionally confusing language that can be interpreted many different ways, and that’s all by design. Saying just read the law and you’ll see isn’t reasonable imo.

...

What?

 

[jjaisli]

We wouldn’t be in this position if the govt, corporations, and foreign interests hadn’t pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes with NAFTA. Say what you will about being on one side or another, but there was definitely a giant sucking sound of jobs departing the USA. So, who benefitted from that? Corporations who didn’t care about anything but making money. Not only did they move away to exploit cheap labor and take advantage to complete absence of environmental regulation, the govt then took away...

There is so much here, but I regret I don't have the time to respond to it all. In a sense, I don't disagree, because in many ways, thinking nationally, the US probably would be better off, had it retained it's strong, post war, manufacturing base. And yes, NAFTA aided it's decline. But it was only a catalyst of an evolution that was bound to happen regardless.

I'm an international logistics and trade specialist by profession. I run my own company. We provide a number of services but trade consulting is a big part of it. It doesn't mean I'm always right but I have some idea of what I'm talking about on the subject. The section 301 tariffs and trade war with China is really more about forcing the Chinese to recognize intellectual property rights and allowing more open access to foreign companies operating in China than it is about 'equal trade' and counter tariffs. And it's something a lot of people don't understand.

Manufacturing is not coming back to the US in large scale. It just isn't. At least not in how we traditionally think of it and ourselves as a large scale manufacturing powerhouse. There are a number of reasons for it, from the cost of doing business, environmental regulations, pay scale, etc. I could write a book on this alone. But the simple fact is, we're living in a global economy, whether we like it or not. And Donald Trump is trying to fight the trade war we lost back in the 1970s and just didn't realize it at the time. The war is already lost. At the end of the day, his self imposed, borderline illegal trade war is pushing us dangerously close to a recession. Counter tariffs are hurting our exports more every day. And whenever and wherever it ends, I can guarantee you, those jobs are not coming back. Not en masse. The most we can hope for is to the force the Chinese to accept more international oversight. But we had a better chance of doing that with a large international coalition that could apply unilateral pressure. Ironically, it was in fact one of the goals of the trans pacific partnership--the one the Trump administration squashed. In a sense, his inexperience and ignorance effectively destroyed his chances before he even started. The man is a bumbling idiot and he is doing more damage to this country economically than most people realize.

The Chinese themselves have already been moving a lot of production off shore for years. They've been setting up vertically integrated companies or in some cases shell companies to run factories in Vietnam or Malaysia or Indonesia or the Philippines. Production continues to 'benefit' from greater and greater automation but there is already a point in which the Chinese find it cheaper to outsource production. We need to fight tomorrow's trade war, not last century's. I know that's a bit brutal to accept. So is the fact that back in 2009, our economy may well have collapsed completely without government intervention and the loss of so many jobs. That doesn't mean I'm happy about the bailout. The feds aren't going to bail out my company with 27 employees if we hit hard times. But run a multi billion dollar company with tens of thousands of employees and there's a better than average chance. It's nothing that can't be cleared up from a basic macro economics class. If I got out of business, it will directly effect a few hundred people. If GM goes out of business, it affects all of us to some degree.

 

[Liquid]

State? I’m not a lawyer, sorry.

It is patently obvious what a State is; the (current) 50 constituent parts that make up the United States Federacy.

Keep burying, Ostrich.

 

[Groundfish]

@jjaisli
I agree with so much of that. We done been messin up too long.
The trajectory is not good.
I guess though that a fella like the president has not given up.
In some weird way I respect that. He’s inherited a gigantic mess that’s been going on a long time.
Imo he has the right idea tho. I mean the leader of a nation can’t just sit there and say well folks sorry, jobs aren’t coming back and our nation is in its sunset phase, so start drinkin’

 

[TexRex]

Heh.

 

[jjaisli]

@jjaisli
I agree with so much of that. We done been messin up too long.
The trajectory is not good.
I guess though that a fella like the president has not given up.
In some weird way I respect that. He’s inherited a gigantic mess that’s been going on a long time.
Imo he has the right idea tho. I mean the leader of a nation can’t just sit there and say well folks sorry, jobs aren’t coming back and our nation is in its sunset phase, so start drinkin’

We really don't agree. If the President REALLY wanted to tackle the issue, he should have stuck with the TPP and built on it. Improved it. Rallied our allies. Lead them. Lead the world and tackled trade issues from a united coalition. It's not just the US. Nearly every western economy is now reliant on trade with China. There are no easy roads to tread. But there is much a united front could have accomplished. Instead, he attacks the World Trade Organization and neutered it's ability to fight and settle trade disputes. He makes side deals with Chinese officials to approve trademark disputes for his daughter's company--a complete conflict of interest. He attends rallies and tells people that their jobs are coming back. But all of this would have required the skills of a real leader. And it would have required making tough decisions. But that's Don the Con. He's not a leader. He's been nothing but a carnival barker since the 80s and remains so today.

 

[Groundfish]

We really don't agree. If the President REALLY wanted to tackle the issue, he should have stuck with the TPP and built on it. Improved it. Rallied our allies. Lead them. Lead the world and tackled trade issues from a united coalition. It's not just the US. Nearly every western economy is now reliant on trade with China. There are no easy roads to tread. But there is much a united front could have accomplished. Instead, he attacks the World Trade Organization and neutered it's ability to fight and settle trade disputes. He makes side deals with Chinese officials to approve trademark disputes for his daughter's company--a complete conflict of interest. He attends rallies and tells people that their jobs are coming back. But all of this would have required the skills of a real leader. And it would have required making tough decisions. But that's Don the Con. He's not a leader. He's been nothing but a carnival barker since the 80s and remains so today.

Coulda shoulda woulda
I’m not saying you are wrong about him from a personality standpoint.
However you did take the defeatist position that the jobs aren’t coming back.
My standpoint is we are not dead yet.
I agree that ideally ideal things would have happened.
Ideally we would have real journalism exposing the truth about all that mess in Washington and elsewhere in govt.
Ideally we would have an educated and more self reliant society, however we don’t.
We have the most voting power concentrated in the large population centers where folks are the least self reliant. We have people that want to eliminate the electoral college.
We can’t blame Trump for all this.
We can’t expect any of the muppets and puppets in Congress to do anything but continue to sell out the country to line their pockets.
Anyone can say what they want about our President, and while I cannot say I am a huge fan at least he’s still trying.
:::shrug:::
That’s more than I can say for most politicians.

 

[TexRex]

Coulda shoulda woulda
I’m not saying you are wrong about him from a personality standpoint.
However you did take the defeatist position that the jobs aren’t coming back.
My standpoint is we are not dead yet.
I agree that ideally ideal things would have happened.
Ideally we would have real journalism exposing the truth about all that mess in Washington and elsewhere in govt.
Ideally we would have an educated and more self reliant society, however we don’t.
We have the most voting power concentrated in the large population centers where folks are the least self reliant. We have people that want to eliminate the electoral college.
We can’t blame Trump for all this.
We can’t expect any of the muppets and puppets in Congress to do anything but continue to sell out the country to line their pockets.
Anyone can say what they want about our President, and while I cannot say I am a huge fan at least he’s still trying.
:::shrug:::
That’s more than I can say for most politicians.

Head, sand. None of this has the least bit to do with impeachment proceedings of any sort, much less those at hand, and instead it serves only as a distraction.

What we can blame Trump for are his actual abuses that are plainly known and are even admitted to, not only by those who seek to defend him, but that which he did himself. These abuses are of sufficient concern that the framers of the Constitution highlighted them specifically as grounds for removal, and even took special measures to establish a means to prevent them.

 

[Joey D]

Corporations don’t care about anything except profits. The effect of that is entire communities being destroyed when their source of income moves overseas. The environment there gets destroyed. All for free market profits and the mega rich getting more rich.
Corporations have no interest in people per se inherently. Govt should.

I'm not so sure. In this day and age, corporations need to keep people in mind or else they get a ton of bad PR, which no exec wants to see. Also, to some degree corporations do care about people because if all your customers are dead or broke, it's bad for your business.

Training for what when the jobs are gone? Education about how to brew coffee or defrost and warm frozen processed meat slather it with ketchup and imitation cheese and place it on a bun?
When the corporations leave there’s simply nothing to train people to do except spend what they have left.

There are jobs out there, you just need to figure it where you should invest your time and money in to get them. I work in healthcare, looking at the job postings this morning I see there are over 120 positions of varying skill level available. We get probably 10-15 more added each week too. It's like this for most health systems too, especially if you want to go into a clinical field. Someone flipping burgers or slinging coffee could become a medical assistant or phlebotomist without to many hiccups and it only takes less than a year to do so.

There are plenty of other jobs out there too. College isn't even needed for some of them and you can pick up the skills at a trade school or with something like computers, you can even teach yourself. It takes effort, don't get me wrong, and like I said some people will have an easier time than others in succeeding, but if you want to get out of a mindless minimum wage job you'll need to work at it.

It’s the govt protecting the ability of its citizens to prosper.

Sure there's some protectionism in there, but it's still manipulating the market. With the auto industry, the Big 3 made such terrible products for so long that people got fed up with them. They instead went and bought a Toyota instead of a Pontiac because the Pontiac was hot garbage. While having the automaker fail would have been difficult, especially in the state of Michigan, they probably needed to fail so they could restructure and not make shoddy cars.

Right, they should partner up with monopolies, forming a better power structure over the people and better being able to limit people’s freedom and opportunity.

Or the government could mind its own business and let employees form unions if they see fit and take on the corporation themselves. You can't really have a successful company without employees.

State? I’m not a lawyer, sorry.

The important bit in there is "without the consent of Congress". This states that Congress has the sole power to enact tariffs.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Manufacturing is not coming back to the US in large scale. It just isn't. At least not in how we traditionally think of it and ourselves as a large scale manufacturing powerhouse. There are a number of reasons for it, from the cost of doing business, environmental regulations, pay scale, etc. I could write a book on this alone. But the simple fact is, we're living in a global economy, whether we like it or not. And Donald Trump is trying to fight the trade war we lost back in the 1970s and just didn't realize it at the time. The war is already lost. At the end of the day, his self imposed, borderline illegal trade war is pushing us dangerously close to a recession. Counter tariffs are hurting our exports more every day. And whenever and wherever it ends, I can guarantee you, those jobs are not coming back. Not en masse. The most we can hope for is to the force the Chinese to accept more international oversight. But we had a better chance of doing that with a large international coalition that could apply unilateral pressure. Ironically, it was in fact one of the goals of the trans pacific partnership--the one the Trump administration squashed. In a sense, his inexperience and ignorance effectively destroyed his chances before he even started. The man is a bumbling idiot and he is doing more damage to this country economically than most people realize.

I really think this is the part that Trump supporters don't understand. The United States is powerful. But it's at the apex of its power when it is leading a coalition of other like-minded nations in good faith to accomplish goals. Without that support, our tools are limited. Our sanctions are limited when our own allies are trying to subvert them. Our wars are much more difficult if nobody wants to help. This is, to me, the single most destructive thing Trump has done and continues to do...he is isolating us towards unproductive...possibly dangerous ends.

To wade in: I don't think Trumpism is really communism and I don't think, fundamentally, it's even nationalism. It's Trumpism. The man does not recognize the legitimacy of any institutions. To him, the only institution is Trump. The closest analogue is probably not something we have seen for a while - a genuine and all-powerful Emperor, in the ancient sense - Commodus. Not even the Supreme Leader of Iran has such megalomaniacal aspirations. While he's not been able to fulfill his ultimate ambition due to our robust systems of control, he certainly appears to be trying.

Understandably due to this, it seems like the Libertarians seem to have the deepest antipathy towards Trump. What's worse than an impenetrable, lumbering leviathan of federal bureaucracy? A ****ing King, that's what.

Coulda shoulda woulda
I’m not saying you are wrong about him from a personality standpoint.
However you did take the defeatist position that the jobs aren’t coming back.
My standpoint is we are not dead yet.
I agree that ideally ideal things would have happened.
Ideally we would have real journalism exposing the truth about all that mess in Washington and elsewhere in govt.
Ideally we would have an educated and more self reliant society, however we don’t.
We have the most voting power concentrated in the large population centers where folks are the least self reliant. We have people that want to eliminate the electoral college.
We can’t blame Trump for all this.
We can’t expect any of the muppets and puppets in Congress to do anything but continue to sell out the country to line their pockets.
Anyone can say what they want about our President, and while I cannot say I am a huge fan at least he’s still trying.
:::shrug:::
That’s more than I can say for most politicians.

Defeatist position? What are you on about?

Just because the US has lost its manufacturing base doesn't mean the game is over. Our professional services are widely used throughout the world. World's tallest building? Located in Dubai, designed in Chicago. A huge amount of the buildings being built in China are designed by American architecture firms. We have the most advanced and prolific science & research apparatus ever assembled by mankind right here in the 'States. Look around. We have people like Elon Musk (you know, an immigrant who moved here and leveraged our tools to advance our country and also humanity) putting together the first real effort to colonize places outside of Earth. There are industries and economies out there waiting that haven't even been thought of yet - don't you want the US to be the first country to start mining asteroids? Don't you want the US to be the first country to perfect fusion power and quantum computing? Can you imagine the economic opportunities just those two would enable? I'm relating these from a nationalist position, but even outside of that, all of these things would be good for mankind generally. We've barely even left planet earth and you are worried that we don't make toy cars in the US anymore? C'mon man, we gotta move forward.

 

[Daz555]

I doubt it hurt his feelings. Oh and ironically the same baby Trump float that got stabbed and deflated met the same fate here.
And keep it classy, he has a name.

He does indeed. The Tango Wankgibbons real name in the the UK means "fart"....the expulsion from the human body of foul smelling gas.

Donald Fart it is.

 

[Keef]

Imo the idea that any of us know all that much is naive at best.

We don't need to "know" a lot. Trump's excursions are common sense. It's painfully obvious to anyone with common sense that he tried to rig his system.

EDIT: And these two articles of impeachment cater to the two most obvious parts. These two articles are virtually inarguable.

 

[Groundfish]

e've barely even left planet earth and you are worried that we don't make toy cars in the US anymore? C'mon man, we gotta move forward.

It IS common for these discussions to leave planet Earth for sure.

Cheers all

 

[Keef]

State? I’m not a lawyer, sorry.

What's the relevance of focusing on the word "State"? I believe the relevant words are as I quote below:

...without the Consent of the Congress...

...and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

That clearly illustrates that Congress has sole authority over the authorization and control of trade taxes.

 

[Dotini]

The House, in its wisdom, has drafted articles of impeachment on two charges - "abuse of power" and "obstruction of Congress".
https://apnews.com/bb81279725b6f810d5792502254f2f88

Since neither of these appear in the Constitution as impeachable crimes, I fail to see how the House can even vote on them, much less the Senate convict. Fortunately, there is no limit to the number of times a Congress can impeach a sitting President. They can do it over and over again until they get the job done right or run out of time. They should have tried "Bribery" or "Treason" since these are itemized in our highest law.

 

[Keef]

I fail to see how the House can even vote on them,

"High Crimes and Misdemeanors" are not necessarily criminal offenses, and aren't necessarily written in stone. Virtually all constitutional scholars are on the same page with that. The House decides what they believe are high Crimes and Misdemeanors, and in this case they've summarized very specific instances with the phrases "abuse of power" and "obstruction of Congress". I'm not really sure what your point is. The Articles define what those terms constitute pretty clearly.

 

[Danoff]

The House, in its wisdom, has drafted articles of impeachment on two charges - "abuse of power" and "obstruction of Congress".
https://apnews.com/bb81279725b6f810d5792502254f2f88

Since neither of these appear in the Constitution as impeachable crimes, I fail to see how the House can even vote on them, much less the Senate convict. Fortunately, there is no limit to the number of times a Congress can impeach a sitting President. They can do it over and over again until they get the job done right or run out of time. They should have tried "Bribery" or "Treason" since these are itemized in our highest law.

Obstruction (Nixon). Abuse of Power (Bribery).

We good?