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@TheRealNihilist
I thought him pandering to far lefties would be worse for him because either he might not be far enough or moderates would be turned off by him or both.
You do realize that his "far left" policies are very popular right? In fact they are so popular that centrist candidates have to pretend like they agree with them just avoid being completely ignored.
Bernie didn't even try to change himself instead allowed people like Warren and Harris to use his ideas and put their spin on it whereas Bernie stayed the same.
That is one of his biggest selling points. While other candidates will lie to you and tell you they believe X and then doing Y when elected. Bernie tells you what he thinks and then fights for it. Having a politician that can be trusted to do the things they say is critically important. For many people, having an authentic candidate is even more important than their specific policy ideas.
Ragging on them and using them for his means without noticing he needs a team to enter the white house given the electoral college etc
Unfortunately, I couldn't read your linked article without a subscription. The democratic party is corrupt. They started moving to the right around the Clinton presidency. Alot of them are almost indistinguishable from republicans at this point. Their Neo-Liberal agenda has failed. The only reason they are still able to win elections is the choice is bad (dems) or worse (republicans). Bernie is trying to return the dems to their roots of being a party of the people and not a party for huge corporations.
You're right that he needs a team. And he gets that team, ironically, in the same way Trump did. He has to make those sellouts so afraid of their own base that they will actually do what their constituents want instead of what their billionaire donors want. Many of them will refuse and need to be primaried by non-corrupt candidates. But the democratic party needs to be reformed and Bernie is the guy to get it done.
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@ILikePie5
He claimed there was quid pro quo, and according to the released document there wasn’t.
Have you actually read the whistleblower report or are you repeating talking points you heard on Fox news. Please find the part of the report where he said there was a quid pro quo?
Here is a link to an annotated version of it.
Oh so now Trump told someone to do it. This conspiracy theory and based on zero fact.
The white house has acknowledged that members of the administration spoke with the ukranians before the call. trump said on national television that Pence had several calls with them. The ukranian president didn't seem at all surprised he was being asked to interfere in an election. Texts between state department officials confirm they thought that this is what was happening. It is not proven definitively that there was a quid pro quo yet. But as I keep telling you, if there is than that is the 2nd crime. Asking was a crime all on it's own.
So you deny the fact that Trump was being watched and the fact that the warrants were funded by the DNC fo do that? There’s congressional testimony to the contrary.
No one denies that law enforcement does it's job to investigate crimes. The idea that this is somehow a conspiracy against trump is a conspiracy theory.
The government changed so a review was being done to ensure the money would be used wisely and not given to someone who shouldn’t have it.
Trump has no power to do that. The money was approved by congress. He couldn't legally stop the aid being given. Also, White house staff lied about why the money was being held up as well. If there was a legitimate reason to hold up the money, it wouldn't have been a secret. They hid it because it was part of a crime.
Have you even watched the video. He was boasting about how HE got this done.
Correct. He went to Ukraine and carried through on something that a large number of people agreed needed to be done (including republicans. He did get it done. But pretending that this was someone started by him is a lie.
You can say, oh he should be fired. That’s an opinion grounded in possible fact. But you can’t withhold aid and demand they stop investigation
1) no one said to stop an investigation. they got rid of him because he wasn't investigating
2) America uses it's aid money to influence other countries all the time. You can argue that the US shouldn't do this, but to pretend like every single president doesn't use it this way would be a lie.
Yes, he can be charged via Impeachment and convicted by the jury in the Senate followed by criminal prosecution after removal.
Impeachment is not a criminal proceeding. He is not being charged with a crime, he is having articles of impeachment brought against him. This means that no justice department official can charge trump with any crime for any reason. So even though there are grounds to charge trump with crimes prosecutors cannot do so until trump leaves office.
No they haven’t. There has not been an official Impeachment vote in the House.
That's like saying the jury hasn't reached a verdict so the trial hasn't started. The moment pelosi announced the official impeachment investigation, that was the start of the impeachment proceedings. They will investigate and write the articles of impeachment. Then phase 2 is the vote on the floor. Trump would at that point be impeached. Then there is a trial in the senate. If found guilty he would be removed from office.
Pelosi is a coward. She knows Democrats are done if they vote for impeachment because this won’t go well for them back home in the districts of moderate Dems.
I agree Pelosi is a coward. But her hands are tied now. She has crossed the Rubicon. Trump is guilty of at least 1 crime for certain. Which means that the impeachment inquiry will certainly find grounds to impeach. If she then doesn't bring that to a vote, she is finished. She will have to carry this through to the end. Trump will be impeached.
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@Greyparrot
"The book" lol. If any of these politicians wrote a book while out of power they wouldn't get nearly as much money. It's all a front to funnel funds to them.
I don't see how lots of people wanting to read a book is somehow a front. That is popular demand. It's the foundation of our economic system.
Clinton's price per speech went from 300,000k to 25k as soon as she was out of power.
Clinton is as corrupt as the rest of the politicians. That's why we need a candidate who doesn't take corporate money, like say Sanders.
30 seats up for flipping in districts Trump won. I'd love to see those 30 seats vote for impeachment.
Most of the people in those seats are already in favor of impeachment. And since the majority of americans now support impeachment that is a good thing.
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@Dr.Franklin
No, I responded in your other thread. The links you provided actually contradict what you claimed to be facts.
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@Greyparrot
This is also insanely naive of you. Politicians don't make all that money on their salary.
What money? Bernie sanders became a millionaire recently because of the profits from a book he wrote. Before that he was not wealthy. What money are you talking about?
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@ILikePie5
1) Its a compiled account of various people, one of them not being the whistleblower.
Even if that were true, so what? Everything in the whistleblower complaint has already been confirmed by the white house. Even if that information was 2nd hand, it all turned out to be true so what does it matter?
2) This is false, Zelensky didn’t even know aid was under administrative review
That is unclear still. We don't know what trump said in that call because we don't have a transcript yet. There were also other calls made to ukranian officials before trump's call. Even if trump didn't say it personally, it is entirely possible he had one of his lackies make clear to them in a separate call that they needed to do Trump a favor to get their money.
This is part of the Durham investigation into the origins of the Russia Investigation which has roots in the Ukraine with the DNC email server as well. Remember when Trump claimed he was wiretapped? Turns out y’all were wrong and he was. If this doesn’t strike you as an abuse of power by the Obama Administration to help the Clinton’s you’re selectively tuning out corruption in the government. There’s a plethora of evidence that shows the FISA warrants used to obtain the warrant were funded by the DNC.
This has nothing to do with the topic at all. It is also a conspiracy theory that has no basis in reality.
Zelensky has nothing to lose. He’d get the aid no matter what cause the matter lies in the hands of Congress not the President. Constitution 101
You would hope so. But then why did trump withhold the money? This also relies on the republicans actually siding with Ukraine over trump. If trump decided he didn't want to give them the money, he would find some loophole to withhold it. And even if he couldn't stop the money forever, he could make sure the republicans never passed anything else to help Ukraine. Crossing trump could cost him american support for the remainder of Trump's term, which would be a big thing to lose. He has motive to stay on trump's good side, and nothing to gain by crossing him.
Who is Biden to judge whether the prosecuter is corrupt or not.
No one. Biden didn't make the decision. It was a policy supported by the EU, the UN, the UK, oh and it had bipartisan support from both democrats and republicans in the US. Biden was just the one that actually went to Ukraine and carried it out. It wasn't Biden's idea and he didn't make the decision.
You think Trump has committed a crime. He hasn’t been convicted of a crime.
He literally cannot be charged or convicted while he is in office. There are likely charges pending for him when he leaves office though.
If Democrats believed they have Trump they would’ve impeached him by now, but Pelosi refuses to. Why?
1) they have. The impeachment has already started. that is what this topic is about.
2) The reason it took so long is that Pelosi was afraid that impeaching trump might have a political cost and she is a coward.
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@Greyparrot
Sure it does. When everyone is a criminal, noone is a criminal.Just like when everyone is a racist, noone is a racist.
Even if I bought into the premise that everyone is a criminal, this still wouldn't make sense. A guy who doesn't pay his parking tickets and an axe murderer are both criminals. they are in no way equal. If they were the only 2 candidates, then the lesser of 2 evils is still preferable.
That's so naive of you to think Bernie or Warren have not done criminal things.
1) such as?
2) even if they have, they have active fought to fight against corruption. Trump has wallowed in it his whole life. From working with the mob to hiring a bunch of criminals to work in his administration. He is super corrupt. Warren and Sanders both want to fight against corruption in politics. Deciding to accept and actively support corruption because you don't think anyone will ever fix it is a self defeating attitude. Nothing will ever get fixed if you don't do anything to fix it.
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@Dr.Franklin
Thats a problem? Gun culture is the least toxic culture here in America
It literally killing 10's of thousands of people. If that is what you consider least toxic, i'm really not sure what your metric is. How many people have to die before you consider something "toxic"?
Britain Violent Crime and a little more than the EU average (123). The homicide rate in the UK was 1.2 per 100,000 in 2016
So britain is slightly higher than average in the EU. But most of the EU also have gun control. They are still way, way, below the US rate. Your claim was "Fact: Since gun banning has escalated in the UK, The rate of crime " especially violent crime " has risen." but this source does not prove that. It says they have gone up lately. And, as I said, they have gone up since 2014. but they are still well down from when they banned guns, so your "fact" would still appear to be untrue.
IN THE DECADE IT WAS BANNED: learn to read.
Please try to remain civil. If I have misread or misunderstood, please clarify. What exactly have I misunderstood? Gun crimes are significantly lower today than they were 2002. Are you attempting to say that gun crimes doubled between 1997 and 2007 (ie the decade after guns were banned)? This does not appear to be true. I would like to understand what you are arguing has occurred.
the homicide rate in the UK was 1.2 per 100,000 in 2016 the highest rate in Western Europe outside of Belgium and France.
This seems to disprove your own point. You said that they had the highest violent crime rate in Europe. but your own quote says Belgium and France's are higher. Please note that also says specifically "western" europe. It isn't clear which countries are not being included in that. A previous statistic you provided said that they were only slightly above average so that would lead me to believe that there are other eastern european countries that would also be higher.
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@Dr.Franklin
Fact: Since gun banning has escalated in the UK, The rate of crime " especially violent crime " has risen.
I said this in your other topic as well, but what you are claiming to be facts don't appear to be true. Their crime rate has been falling for years. Please provide sourcing.
Fact: Ironically, Firearm use in crimes in the UK has doubled in the decade since handguns were banned.
This also appears to be untrue. Their gun crime has risen in the last few years, but it is significantly lower than it was in the early 2000s.
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@Greyparrot
You can blame plenty of politicians for that.
I agree that politics has been broken for awhile. But that does not excuse people choosing to support a man who actively uses his office to commit crimes. If you want change I would suggest supporting a candidate that actually wants to clean up corruption and not just target the corruption of specific rivals.
If you actually cared about that you would support warren or Sanders. But I doubt that you actually do. You would just like to deflect from the fact that you support a criminal.
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@Dr.Franklin
Fact: The United Kingdom has always had a lower homicide rate than the United States, Even when British citizens could legally buy machine guns (Briton's modern era of gun control did not ramp up until the 1960s). The difference is cultural, Not legal.
And part of the US culture is glorifying guns and gun ownership. perhaps you need to change that part of your culture. Common sense gun laws would be a very good start.
Fact: Since gun banning has escalated in the UK, The rate of crime " especially violent crime " has risen.
Where did you get this? I can't seem to find definitive numbers. But the stats I do see say the high point of their crime was in 1995, just before they banned guns, and have been in decline ever since. If you have other stats please provide them.
Fact: Ironically, Firearm use in crimes in the UK has doubled in the decade since handguns were banned
This doesn't appear to be true. Here is a link showing that gun crime, while up since 2014, is significantly down since the early 2000s.
Fact: Britain has the highest rate of violent crime in Europe,
Again, I'm pretty sure this isn't true. Please provide sourcing.
I'm just going to stop responding to these point by point because the stats I see don't agree with what you are saying. Could you please provide sourcing for your claims?
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@ILikePie5
You and I both read the transcript
You haven't read a transcript. You read a memo. If you look at page one it explicitly says that that was not a word for word transcript. You'll notice alot of "..." all over it. That is areas where they cut out text they didn't want people to see. So you have no idea if there was a quid pro quo in that call.
there’s no quid pro quo.
1) You don't know that since we don't have a transcript.
2) the reporting suggests that it was made clear to the ukranians before the call that investigating Biden was going to be a requirement for the call to happen. It is still entirely possible the quid pro quo will be proven.
3) and most importantly. you don't need a quid pro quo for it to be a crime. It's kind of like saying "I didn't murder them with a gun, i used a baseball bat. Therefore there was no crime". Trump asking for "a favor" was a crime all on it's own. The quid pro quo, if proven, would be another separate crime.
Zelensky has said on multiple occasions he was never pressured.
Trump is still president and Zelensky still needs US aid. He has nothing to gain by saying trump was pressuring him but he has alot to lose.
Meanwhile Joe Biden is on tape praising the fact that he got a prosecuter who was looking into his son’s company fired by refusing aid to the Ukraine.
No he's not. He's on tape saying he got a corrupt prosecutor fired when that corrupt prosecutor had ended the investigation of the company biden's son at. This actually prompted another investigation of the company. So Biden actually helped cause an investigation of that company, he did not stop one.
40% of the electorate will support Trump no matter what.
This is deeply disturbing. It is now established trump has committed 1 crime and very likely a 2nd. The fact that 40% of the US population might vote for a man who is known to commit crimes in office does not bode well for America's democracy.
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@Greyparrot
You mean the deep state.
I don't know what you are trying to say. Are you meaning Chris Wallace is the deep state?
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@Greyparrot
What's sad is that whistleblowing used to be the purview of journalists, but there are no journalists in the media anymore.
I agree at least partially. It is sad that the majority of media outlets are heavily biased. But I'm guessing you don't actually care about that since the clips you have provided are all from fox news, which is essentially just the propaganda wing of the republican party. At least places like CNN or MSNBC will occasionally call out people on the democratic side who are out of line. Any "news" outlet that will let hannity say the insane stuff he gets away with is not a real news outlet.
On the other hand, we are talking about documents that the white house put in a special computer for heavily classified material. If anyone leaked this info to a journalist they would spend the rest of their lives in prison. We desperately need laws protecting whistle blowers who can let people know if crimes are being committed and covered up.
But again, how we found out about trump's crimes is a side show to distract from the main issue. The fact that he is committing them should remain the highest priority.
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@Greyparrot
Nah fam. It's a clip saying Schiff screwed up and meant to send this other whistleblower goon in first.
1) there is no evidence schiff "sent" them to do anything, ever.
2) why would it matter? Everything the whistle blower alleged in his report has been proven true at this point. This is just another round of "look over there!" where politicians try to distract people. The problem is Trump committed a crime. Not who reported which aspects of the crime in which order.
No matter how many times you try to redirect this thread to look at someone else, I will keep reminding you that trump committed a crime. Potentially, he might have committed multiple crimes. Republicans love to tell people they are the party of law and order as long as it is poor people or democrats they can point at as having committed the crime. As soon as it is someone on their side, suddenly it's terrible that laws are actually enforced.
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@Greyparrot
Ok. that is a clip of a republican sycophant trying his hardest to downplay how bad this is. They did the same thing when the investigation of Nixon started. They will keep denying reality until it benefits them to acknowledge it. Most of them hate Trump's guts and would gladly twist the knife. But they are too afraid of Trump's cult base to tell you what the truth is.
What is that clip supposed to tell me? It is a fact that asking for a thing of value from a foreign government that would help you in an election is crime. We know that trump asked for dirt on joe biden. That is the end of the case. We know, 100% for certain, that trump committed that crime. There are some people pretending like it's not that serious. there are some people saying, "well what about (insert distraction)". But at the end of the day, trump committed at least 1 crime and the evidence so far suggests there is more.
But even if there somehow was no more, we already have enough information to know for certain trump committed a crime while in office.
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@Greyparrot
Hopefully, the public shares this sentiment.
Agreed. Hopefully they care that trump is a confessed criminal though.
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@Greyparrot
Worship this comedian.
I don't care what Schiff has to say about it. You are trying to spin. You want to make the issue about something/anyone other than what the issue is about. If you can deflect to looking at the whistle blower or at Schiff then you can avoid having to look at the actual issue.
Trump committed a crime. Possibly more than 1. The moment he asked for a thing of value from a foreign government that would help him with an election he committed a crime. No matter what other topic you try to redirect the conversation towards, none of it changes that underlying fact.
Trump committed at least 1 crime on the transcript memo. As more information continues to come out it is looking more likely that we will also find that he was extorting them as well, which would be a separate crime. We will have to wait until we get all the information to determine if he is guilty of multiple crimes, but since we already know he is guilty of 1, he is almost certain to be impeached.
It also doesn't help that he is continuing to call on foreign governments to try to dig up dirt on Biden as well.
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@Greyparrot
I forgot that the trial was already underway.
Lol this guy's video is hilarious. it is packed with lies and half truths. You do not need a quid pro quo for this to be a crime. He bases his whole defense on the idea (without evidence) that there was no quid pro quo. But that is a misdirect as that is not necessary for it to be a crime.
There is also increasing evidence that there was a quid pro quo. So there may be more than just the 1 crime committed.
He also says that it's totally normal for the president to try to get dirt on Biden (despite the president not being permitted to do this) but for Schiff, who is the ranking member of the intelligence committee, to speak to a Russian is somehow evidence he can't be trusted. Providing oversight of the executive branch is literally his job. But to this partisan moron that is somehow super suspicious.
I realize this guy is totally serious, but man is his stupidity hilarious.
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@Greyparrot
CIA "whistleblower" disagrees.
So a government official became aware that the president had committed a crime and followed the law to the letter. The whistle blower's concerns were deemed credible and congress was informed. There is nothing "deep state" about that. That is exactly what any loyal american citizen should do. If you learn that the president of the US is committing crimes and abusing his office, it is your duty to report it.
There is compelling evidence that corrupt comedian Adam Schiff helped write the whistleblower complaint.
Where is this evidence you say exists? i looked at the article you linked to. It says that a staffer shared part of the whistle blower's concerns with Schiff. It does not say that Schiff ever spoke to the Whistle blower and explicitly says he didn't know who the whistle blower was. There is nothing in that article that indicates he helped write it.
But even if you managed to prove he did, everything in the whistle blower complaint has been proven true. Trump really did commit crimes, he has all but confessed to them.
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@Greyparrot
The one thing Trump is more qualified than the FBI or CIA is following the will of the people. FBI deepstate has its own agenda.
Multiple things to unpack there.
1) The job of the FBI is not to follow the will of the people. The FBI is there is there to enforce the law. The people might decide they don't care if the law is upheld. But the FBI will uphold it anyway. If they were giving in to what the people wanted, they wouldn't be doing their jobs.
2) Trump is in no way qualified to do investigations. He has no experience in that. And considering the topic of his investigation is his political rivals, it is unethical for him to use the power of his office to do this. And considering he is soliciting foreign nationals to do this, it is also illegal.
3) There is no such thing as an FBI deepstate. That is a conspiracy theory pushed by the right wing. Basically, if any official ever says or does something that gets in the way of their right wing agenda, they must be the "deep state". It is a catch all phrase used to make government officials seem evil for doing their jobs.
And none of that in any way is related to the topic. When trump asked a foreign country to dig up dirt on his rival, he committed a crime. Even if everything you said was true, this would still be a crime that he has committed. And he would still get impeached for it.
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@RationalMadman
Here is an another interesting thing she lied about recently. She claimed that she got fired from her 1st teaching job for being pregnant. However in an interview in 2007 she said she left because she wasn't qualified to do the job and when she went to get the qualifications to do the job, she said "i don't think this is going to work out for me." This would seem to confirm that she is still willing to lie about her past in order to pander and seem more accessible.
Here is a link to a guy discussing it. As a warning in advance, I don't agree with everything he says. But the details of yet another lie she has told about her past is interesting. Only from about 0:45 to 2:30 is really necessary.
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@Greyparrot
You must have never watched House MD. Cuddy was more than capable of telling House to go away while she fixed a patient up.
People who run hospitals are administrators. They may still be qualified doctors, but if they are not a qualified surgeon they can't perform surgery.
Being the head of something, doesn't mean you have the power to do what your employees do. Trump is the head of the justice department, but that doesn't mean he can personally investigate things the way they can. If he wanted an investigation he could have legally ordered one. He didn't. He tried to to extort a foreign country to do it for him and committed at least 1 crime for sure, probably more.
Asking for the thing of value was a crime all on it's own. We already know he has done that. he has released a memo confirming it. it would have been a crime no matter which politician was asking. Increasingly it looks like he was holding back the aid money and dangling a visit to the white house to extort the Ukranian president into doing it. If that is also proven then he is also guilty to abuse of office.
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@Imabench
Lol and even after I point out your constant childish attacks and how sad they are, you keep up with the childish attacks. thank you for highlighting my point nicely. Even if it has completely gone over your head.
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@Imabench
There is just literally no talking to you it would appear. No matter what I say you will active try to spin it, straw man me, or just devolve to petty insults. Hopefully one day you are mature enough to actually engage in debates in an intellectually honest way.
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@Imabench
Amazing that you forget what your own thread is even about in the first place.
Are you actively trying to take things I say in a way that wasn't intended? I said, being out raised by 10 million dollars is a bad sign. I never, at any point, said this was a 1 to 1 relation to electoral success. would you at least try to pretend like you are willing debate on what I am actually saying?
And I pointed out that context matters
It was a list. I was not making any point about who was doing well and badly in that particular point. I was just listing what the numbers were. You chose to attack me over things I didn't say because of how you interpreted it. When I pointed out I actually meant, that you misinterpreted, you continued to attack me.
You tagged me in the post and invited me to debate this. If you dont like being ridiculed for failing to do or understand basic things necessitated to have a constructive conversation about something, then Im not going to waste my effort and give you more then what you are worth.
I have remained calm this entire time and you have personally attacked me in every response. do really think that it is me that is the problem?
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@Imabench
When you constantly just sink to personal attacks, you make it impossible for anyone to talk to you. Why would you bother being on a debating website if at the slightest questioning of your beliefs you descend into childish insults?
Fundraising haul =/= success in polls, just ask Jeb Bush what happened to him in the 2016 primary. He had maybe the biggest war chest out of nearly everybody else in the race yet he didnt last a day past the 4th contest and only got 3% in Iowa.
I never equated those 2 things. Yet another straw man successfully knocked down.
You lumped in Booker with the guy who had the largest increase overall (Yang) and the guy with the overall lead (Sanders) immediately after saying Biden's numbers are way down
It is an empirical fact that bookers numbers are up and Biden's are down. I was simply listing the numbers before getting into my points. The fact that you chose to infer that as me somehow saying booker was doing well is entirely on you. I didn't say that.
Its pretty pathetic that you cant even remember what you say in your own posts
I do remember what I said. I listed facts. You then chose to interpret what I said in a way I didn't mean. You then successfully knocked down a strawman. And now you are making childish insults about it.
you should calm down and get your emotions in order do that you remember what you say, boy
I have remained calm this entire time. It is you that being intellectually dishonest and engaging in petty name calling. I wonder why you bother having debates at all if you can't do it in a constructive way.
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And just an update. Released text messages have shown that american officials understood this to be a quid pro quo. That america would only give ukraine the things they wanted if they agreed to look into Joe Biden. It is looking worse for trump by the day.
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@bmdrocks21
I'll admit that unions are not something I am an expert in. But I will give my opinion.
Every state needs right to work laws. These laws essentially state that if a company has a union, not everyone has to join.
These laws are usually fine on paper. But the impression I have gotten is that they are usually an attempt by companies and governments to limit the power of a union. You are incentivizing people to undermine the union. You can get all the benefits of membership without paying anything. Thus significantly less people will join which. This greatly increases management's power over their employees. For example, if only half the employees are unionized, then a strike has much less impact on the company. They would be able to continue to operate, albeit in a reduced capacity. This would almost guarantee that companies could beat unions in a labor dispute.
So to me, it looks like these types of laws are designed to weaken and break up unions.
Unions should not be involved in politics.
I somewhat agree with this point. But I would say that we need to get all large dollar contributions out of politics. This isn't just a problem of unions. Companies make billions off the work of their employees. But those employees have no say in which politicians those profits go to supporting. Often, corporations will support politicians who want to undermine the rights of those workers. So I would say this is a much larger issue than just unions.
Unions should be company-wide, not industry wide.
I can see the logic in this one. Keeping unions limited to one company seems reasonable to me. But if a union is small it is much easier for a company to try to push around. If we were to have a rule like this I would argue we also need much stronger protections for unions at the same time to make sure that they have a solid bargaining position against management.
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@Imabench
You are just dead set to stay with the childish insults I guess. Well, nevertheless I will attempt to remain a grown up.
Check the analytics, Sanders has a habit of pumping unspent and leftover money from his previous campaigns both as president and Senator into whatever current campaign he is operating
This is describing Q2. This doesn't tell you anything about what their finances are for Q3, which is what this topic is about. Even if that trend continued and we discounted that money, he would still be beating Biden by millions.
Being in 4th place with $15.2 million is hardly "distant" in a race with 2 dozen candidates
It is if you want people to believe you are the front runner. He is 10 million behind his closest competitors. He is 4 million behind a guy who is polling at like 5%. Biden is running on the narrative that he is the front runner. That he is the guy to beat. Bringing in 10 million less while you spend most of your time at fundraisers (I think it was 44 big dollar fundraisers this quarter), is a very bad sign.
You list Booker as an example of a candidate whose fundraising numbers are way up ironically.
I listed the top candidates in earnings. I in no way said that booker was doing well. I said he earned more than last quarter. Booker has no chance. Please stop trying to straw man me by beating down things I didn't say.
$15+ million haul for a single quarter is a pretty healthy sign for a campaign, contrary to what you wish it signified.
Completely out of context you would be right. $15 million is a decent earning for a campaign. However, earning significantly less that last quarter while your rivals are earning significantly more is a bad thing. Is he going to run out of money and drop out? of course not. 15 million is still a reasonable amount. But his narrative has been that he is the front runner. That he was going to carry the field. As his poll numbers sink and Warren catches him and his fundraising is 10 million behinds sanders and warren, how much longer can he keep that narrative going?
it means that 98% of the $15+ million he raised this quarter came from regular voters from small donations
Regular voters don't normally donate $200 to a primary candidate. Recent statistics have shown that regular voters can't afford an unexpected car repair. If they are donating $200 in a single shot, then they are upper middle class at least. Notice he also didn't say how many of those supposedly regular voters had donated the maximum amount either. I wouldn't put it past a centrist politician of getting people to donate in regular smaller amounts so he can look like he has more grass roots support than he does.
We will need to wait for the filings to be submitted to get details, but I stand by the topic title. $15 million is a solid amount for a candidate in a primary. However, getting beaten by $10 million by your competitors is bad. Having a high percentage of people who can't continue to contribute is bad. We don't know what that number is for Biden this quarter, but last quarter it was pretty high. We shall see if the details of his fundraising continue to be as bad for him.
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@ResurgetExFavilla
It's lovely that you're enough of an idealist to think that a notoriously corrupt government investigating its own corruption and finding nothing is result that ought to be taken at face value.
If you believe that is true then Trump's crimes are all the more sad because it was impossible to find anything anyway.
So you think that Trump can delegate his authority to enforce the laws to his cabinet, but cannot use said power himself? Under whose authority did he delegate it, then? Either he is vested with the power and can use it, or he isn't vested with it and is incapable of delegating it to law enforcement.
Just because he is the head of an agency and can ask them to do things, that does not mean he has the power to personally do those things. If you are in charge of a hospital you can't just go and start operating on people. There is a law saying no politician may ask a foreigner for a thing of value that could help them in an election. Trump broke this law. Unlike trumps other crimes, this one is really, exceptionally clear.
If Congress were willing to impeach Trump under the Emoluments Clause for things like his involvement with the Saudis, they would have much better luck.
Strongly disagree. Trump has been corrupt from the moment he took office. Hell, parts of his campaign were based on corruption. So no, no amount of run of the mill corruption would ever convince his legions of mindless cultists to turn on him. If it were, that would have happened already. But betraying his oath of office and abusing his powers, that might do it.
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@Greyparrot
Let's see what falls out of the tree. Trump just started shaking the branches.
The things falling out of the branches the last 2 weeks have been more and more evidence that will lead to his impeachment. So I would say that is where we are heading. If manages to take Biden and Pence down with him, so much the better.
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@Greyparrot
So your priority is to go after someone who has never held public office and someone who doesn't currently hold public office and might never hold one again? Your priority seems to be to go after your enemies and not to target corruption.
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@Greyparrot
I'm not going to pretend that Biden is 100% clean. He has engaged in the same kind of general corruption that most long serving politicians have. If we got rid of all of them I would be fine with that.
But Trump is absolutely guilty of the same things. He brought his children with him on state trips, and they got business contracts shortly after the trip. That is exactly what trump accuses Biden of, but he did the same thing with Ivanka. The difference being that Ivanka is actually using a semi-official position to profit herself. At least hunter wasn't a government official trying to cash in.
If you want to go after all corruption, i am absolutely on board with that. But if you aren't willing to include Trump in that, then it isn't corruption you want to go after. You are just looking for an excuse to target your enemies, just like trump was.
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@Greyparrot
They might be. GOP isn't immune to corruption, neither is Biden.
Lol you think republican senators, democratic senators, the UN, the EU and UK all got together to protect Joe Biden's son? But you don't believe that trump is guilty of the things he has released transcripts admitting he did? Man, republicans really do disconnect from reality.
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@Greyparrot
Exactly. Information on its own is meaningless. It's what you DO with the information that matters to the law.
It isn't about the information. The act of asking for it was the crime. Whether he was going to get it or not is irrelevant.
it is more a matter of emotion to say all information has financial value than to generally presume that it doesn't.
That information would help him win a political contest. He is planning to spend 10's or 100's of millions of dollars to try to win that election. Why would you think information that would help him accomplish something is will to spend 100's of millions of dollars on is worthless? It seems quite reasonable to believe that is valuable.
yes, you are being irrational in thinking only you can possibly be right here.
It isn't my opinion. It is the opinion of a very large number of people. Hell, even legal analysts on fox news have said that this is a crime.
Republicans are working overtime trying to muddy the water. They are trying very hard to make it look like a very simple issue is really complicated so that people don't have to think about it very hard. The question is, Did trump ask a foreign government for dirt on a political rival. if the answer to that question is yes, then he committed a crime. And since he has admitted to that already, there is nothing that is likely to stop his impeachment.
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@Dr.Franklin
OF COURSE its a witcthunt ,its bidens scandal
Biden carried out an action that was supported by the US government as well as the EU, the UK, etc. The person Biden pushed out was actively avoiding investigating corruption. After he was removed a new investigation started on the company hunter was on the board of.
So biden did what everyone agreed needed to be done and actually caused an investigation of his own son. The idea that this is somehow a scandal for biden is just sad.
And just to add to this, here is a link to an article which shows that having the prosecutor removed had bipartisan support. Those are republicans asking to have the prosecutor removed as well. Are they also part of the cover up?
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@n8nrgmi
this information would help him win an election. Winning an election comes with significant financial rewards. Therefore anything that helps him towards that reward has financial value.the presumption should be that information has no financial value unless the market says so or we find a way to make it so.
you think the justice department irrationally is siding with trump?
The justice department isn't siding with trump. The people Trump appointed are siding with him. You haven't heard from anyone else at the justice department because trump appointees have ordered them not to talk.
you think if this were put in front of a jury, that the only valid or reasonable conclusion they could draw is your position?
If they judged it based on emotion, as you appear to be doing, then that would complicate things. If the evaluated it strictly on the facts of the case, then it is remarkably straight forward. Trump asked for a thing of value. end of case.
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@Greyparrot
Simply having the question on an application is not sufficient in a civil court.
Who is talking about a civil court? It is a crime to ask those questions. This is does not require a civil suit to be punishable. It varies depending on which law they have broken, but punishment for these can be carried out by bodies such as the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or by the criminal justice system.
We are not talking about civil cases that need to show harm.
Much like trump's crimes don't need to show harm. He committed a crime the moment he asked them to dig up dirt on biden. He doesn't need to have had a quid pro quo (although it is looking more like there was), he doesn't have to have received anything. Asking was, in and of itself, a crime.
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@Imabench
Would you like to repeat your line about how there are no facts showing Biden's odds of winning are declining? Between the polls now showing Warren in the lead consistently and Biden being out fund-raised by millions by 3 other candidates, it is not looking good for Biden.
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@Greyparrot
You literally just saw the laws that prove that isn't true. Asking someone certain questions in an interview is a crime. It doesn't matter if it affects whether or not you hire them. Asking the question is, in and of itself, illegal.Simply asking a person for information is never a crime.
The context of what you are asking for and your relationship to the person you are asking is what determines if it is a crime. But asking a question can certainly be a crime all on it's own.
When trump asked for a thing of value from a foreigner to help him in an election, he committed a crime.
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Update, Warren released her numbers. The list now looks like this:
Bernie Sanders - $25.3 million
Elizabeth Warren - $24.6 million
Pete Buttigieg - $19.1 million
Joe Biden - $15.2 million
Kamala Harris - $11.6 million
Andrew Yang - $10 million
Cory Booker - $6 million
Biden is now a distant 4th in fundraising even though he spends most of his energy fundraising. His 2 biggest competitors out fund-raised him by about $10 million each. This makes the news even worse for him.
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@Greyparrot
Are you aware of how fast and frequently you move goalposts? If you feel the need to move the goalposts this many times, that might be a sign that you are lying to yourself to try to justify the things you want to believe rather than accepting the things that are true.Did you read the laws? I have. It says you can't ask those questions as a requirement for hiring. Simply asking the questions out of context is never illegal. Nothing like this happened with Ukraine.
Your previous sentence was "asking for information is NEVER a crime in itself". I provided specific examples where asking for information is a crime in itself and you immediately changed the question.
you are now saying out of context, asking for information isn't a crime. And sure, with no context at all that might be true. But luckily, we have context. The context is that trump is a politician and he asked for a thing of value from a foreigner that would help him win an election. Thus he has committed a crime. Context is important.
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@n8nrgmi
the thing of value has to be of financial value, according to the law. getting information, on it's face doesn't have financial value
Patent lawyers, investment bankers, etc would all be shocked to find out that information has no financial value. If information has no financial value, then why did trump pay all that money to stormy daniels to get her to sign an NDA? Trump clearly believed that her information had financial value.
you are basically arguing that a candidate cannot ask for anything at all from a foreign national that helps his campaign.
Yes. That is what the law says. If you ask a foreigner for anything to help you win an election, you are committing a crime.
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@Greyparrot
Here is an article citing 8 things an employer cannot legally ask. There are several laws around this. Asking any of these questions would be against the law.
some of the laws which prohibit these questions are:
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
Civil Rights Act of 1964
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@Greyparrot
This is obviously not true. For example, there are laws around what information an employer can ask their employee for. If the employer asks for information they are not legally to permitted to ask for, that is a crime.What you do with information may or may not be a crime but simply asking for information is NEVER a crime in itself.
It is illegal to ask for a thing of value from a foreigner. The language was left open so that it could apply to as many things as possible. Dirt on a political opponent has value. Therefore it is illegal to ask for it from a foreigner.
You can't conveniently separate national interests to uncover wasteful corruption from Trump's personal political gain from uncovering corruption.
You just want to muddy the water. You want to pretend like asking a foreign government to find dirt on your political opponents is somehow normal or part of the president's job. It is not. Trump is the head of law enforcement agencies. If he wanted a specific case investigated he would send it to them. It is incredibly abnormal, as well as illegal, for him to ask a foreign government to investigate his political rivals.
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The fundraising numbers for the last quarter so far are:
Bernie Sanders - $25.3 million
Pete Buttigieg - $19.1 million
Joe Biden - $15.2 million
Kamala Harris - $11.6 million
Andrew Yang - $10 million
Cory Booker - $6 million
It is important to note that warren's numbers aren't out yet.
But those are not good numbers for Biden. He raised 30% less than last quarter. While Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker are all way up. (Yang 257%, Sanders 39%, Booker 33%). Harris has held steady and Buttigieg is down 23%.
It is also worth noting that Sanders has not done any large dollar fundraisers. His average donation size was $18. It takes a whole lot of donations to get to $25.3 million when you are doing it $18 dollars at a time.
Biden on the other hand has done dozens of large dollar fundraisers. if he is spending that much of his time trying to fundraise and he still can't beat Sanders or Buttigieg, that is not a good sign. He can't even hold his numbers steady from last quarter.
It is also critical to keep in mind that there are caps in place for how much you can donate. Over 99% of Sanders' donors have not hit that cap as they are all small dollar donors. So it is likely he can keep this up. Biden is relying on large cash donations, which means that many of his donors have likely hit their cap already and cannot donate again. I haven't seen a percentage for this quarter, but in his reporting for the previous quarter he reported that 38% of the $22 million Biden raised (in Q2) came from donors who gave the maximum amount possible to give in the primary. Which means that 38% of his donors from Q2 cannot donate any more money. That likely is part of the reason why his fundraising dropped by 30% in Q3.
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@Greyparrot
FBI doesn't do diplomacy.
No is claiming that they do. The FBI does investigations. Asking a foreign government to assist in an ongoing investigation would be fine. Asking a foreign government to investigate your political opponents is a crime.
Nobody is prohibited from informing the FBI. Not even the president.
No one has ever claimed that this was the case. I don't know what you are talking about. The issue is not about talking to the FBI. The issue is about trump asking a foreign country to dig up dirt on his political rivals. That happens to be a crime.
So the moment Trump decides to inform the FBI then it's no longer a "crime"
No. If trump had asked the justice department to do an investigation, then asked Ukraine to assist with that investigation, that would not be a crime. Trump did not do that. He asked a foreign government to dig up dirt on biden. That is a crime. It doesn't matter what he does now. He already committed the crime.
Information is also not interference, in any legal document.
I don't know where you are getting your legal documents. Information can easily be interference. For example, if I told a witness to a crime "if you testify we will leak proof of a crime you committed" that would be information, it would also be interference. Any attempt to get a witness not to testify is interference, no matter what form that takes.
Any attempt to get a thing of value from a foreigner that would help you in an election is a crime. The moment he asked them for that favor, he committed a crime.
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@Greyparrot
The executive executes and enforces law.
I just told you that. That means the Executive branch. They do that via law enforcement agencies, which trump is the head of. That doesn't mean that the president has the right to coerce foreign governments to dig up dirt on his rivals.
Like I keep telling you, if trump had asked the FBI to investigate and they had requested Ukraine to assist, this would not even be an issue. The problem is that Trump didn't do that. He asked a foreign government to dig up dirt on his political rivals. That is a crime.
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@ResurgetExFavilla
The government of Ukraine is also capable of internally investigating corruption
Of course they are. And in fact they have already investigated and determined there was no crime committed by the Bidens.
The law enforcement agencies are also part of the executive branch, they work for the President, who is the Head of State and delegates powers to them through his Cabinet.
Also correct. And if trump had asked them to investigate there would be no problem. Trump has the authority to ask law enforcement to investigate. He does not have the power to pressure a foreign government to investigate his rivals. The moment he did that, he committed a crime.
When the crime takes place in a foreign country, it's typical to cooperate with foreign law enforcement. Do you think that the president is capable of dispatching the FBI to Kiev and just starting an investigation there with no help from their government?
Again, if this were what happened we wouldn't be having this conversation. Asking the ukranians to co-operate with an investigation by the FBI would have been fine. But Trump never asked the FBI to investigate. There is nothing to suggest that he was ever going to ask the FBI to investigate. There was no investigation for Ukraine to co-operate with. He just wanted to send Giuliani on a fishing expedition. So when trump asked them to dig up dirt on Biden, it was a crime.
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