Impeach Barack Obama

[rubato]

Dear Rubato!



How good to see your pixels again.

How pointless your response.

yrs,
rubato

[darkblack]

Still as initially insouciant as ever,eh?

Not to fret, I'll have you screaming incoherently at your computer screen in due course.

[Crackpot]

Did I mention it's good to have you back?

[rubato]

I'm still waiting for you to defend the claim that Barack is "risk averse". His life story is a series of very high-risk bets which have gone very right for him.

Perhaps you are confusing someone who leads by consensus-building which he has a history of going back to the Law Review with someone who avoids risk? Not the same thing.

yrs,
rubato

[Andrew D]

The only thing done by the Administration that I see worthy of investigation at the moment, would be the Justice Department decision to drop the prosecution of the New Black Panther Party members for voter intimidation....

Oh, yeah. A horrible decision.

I mean, here you have a case in which the police and the district attorney's office investigated and found no evidence of voter intimidation. Nor did the Republican lawyer who investigated the matter on behalf of the McCain campaign. As Sue U pithily put it:

Let's see, no one was denied access to the polling place (including the GOP operative featured on the video, even though he was not a poll watcher or voter in that district), there was no evidence of any actual voter intimidation, no one was arrested for anything, and police had to ask the Fox "News" crew to leave because they were becoming a problem. In short, some college kid sent to be a GOP poll watcher in the Richard Allen Homes project in North Philly got freaked by a guy in a Panthers beret and called the cops.

Oh, that dastardly Democratic Justice Department!

How could any responsible prosecutor have declined to prosecute a case based on nothing but the total absence of evidence of a crime?

Pussies.

[Andrew D]

The Republicans would have to go a long way to outdo what was done to Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearings. A USSC nomination torpedoed (unsuccessfully, as it turns out) over uncorroborated ALLEGATIONS of TASTELESS CONVERSATION!!!!!

Yes, the Republicans did a brilliant job of diverting the nation's attention from the merits of Thomas's nomination.

[Lord Jim]

Yes, the Republicans did a brilliant job of diverting the nation's attention from the merits of Thomas's nomination.

No, actually it was a smear job orchestrated by zealous, unscrupulous liberals working for Ted Kennedy and Howard Metzenbaum, who were desperate to find anything they could to derail the nomination of an African American conservative to the High Court....

[rubato]

Thomas' track record is as the weakest member of the court. Ideological differences aside, he has contributed the absolute least intellectually and we would have been better off if the Republicans had voted him down on merit rather than up purely on party loyalty.


yrs,
rubato

[darkblack]

I'm still waiting for you to defend the claim ...

Ah, but that would imply that a robust offense has been mounted upon said claim, dear Rubato...Not exactly the case when such vague assertions are proffered.

I realize that many Americans much like yourself still labor under the unfortunate misconception that a socialist bogeyman lurks just beneath the decaying infrastructure of your country, awaiting his chance to snatch the white children and put them in a gunnysack for future ritualistic consumption - but the rest of the world that has actually put socialist ideals into concrete action over decades doesn't labor under such childish misapprehensions, and can therefore analyze the bipolar kabuki of the American political zeitgeist (pretending as it does that there is a substantial difference operationally between the institutionalized parties where the rubber meets the road) with a somewhat higher degree of clarity.

Instead, I ask you to show me what bold and ostensibly 'liberal' stroke the Obama administration with its now-retired congressional majority and staunchly supportive Senate has put forth without heavy compromises to entrenched financial and business interests, given the pronounced fetish for bipartisanship and maintaining the status quo that it has shown to date.
Show me where the Obama administration has used the power of its progressive base - the base that, along with a deep buyer's remorse regarding the previous administration among the rest of the population not completely blinkered, vaulted it into power - other than paying smirking lip service to it, disparaging that base publicly as a reaction to earned criticism or assisting the right-wing media machine in their jihad against all things left of Rush Limbaugh.
Show me where a terminal break with Bush-era policies regarding proportionate taxation of higher incomes to offset public debt, state surveillance of the populace, decriminalization of 'soft' drugs, and expansion of illegal conflicts has occurred.
Show me where the Obama administration has made any meaningful attempt to hold the Bush administration accountable for its flagrant abuse of American and international laws during their terms in office.

I'm sure you're capable of such minor displays. Take your time.

;>)

[Andrew D]

No, actually it was a smear job orchestrated by zealous, unscrupulous liberals working for Ted Kennedy and Howard Metzenbaum, who were desperate to find anything they could to derail the nomination of an African American conservative to the High Court....

You wish.

Who leaked Hill's confidential submission to the Judiciary Committee has never been established. (And because the leak was not criminal, it was never investigated as a crime.)

So the question becomes the question that all competent investigators ask in such circumstances: Who benefits?

And the answer is clear: The Republicans.

Had it not been for the circus caused by the leak of Hill's confidential submission, Thomas's confirmation hearings would have focused on whether he was actually qualified to be an Associate Justice. As we all know, he was not.

[Lord Jim]

Had it not been for the circus caused by the leak of Hill's confidential submission, Thomas's confirmation hearings would have focused on whether he was actually qualified to be an Associate Justice. As we all know, he was not.

I'm sorry, but your memory is faulty....

The Judiciary Committee hearings on the Thomas nomination had just about concluded when the whole Hill smear job erupted.

[Andrew D]

Day after day, we had been confronted with the spectacle of Thomas's making one preposterous assertion after another.

Roe v. Wade was decided when Thomas was in law school. But he told us, with a straight face that must have required titanium implants, that he could not recall ever -- not in law school and not in the many years between law school and his confirmation hearings -- commenting on whether Roe was correctly decided.

Oh, please.

The most controversial case since Brown v. Board of Education was decided while Thomas was in law school, but he never expressed an opinion about its merits? Or, if he did, he couldn't remember what those comments might have been?

Horseshit.

And it was day after day after day of the same kind of horseshit -- Thomas claiming not to have said anything about the most important issues of the day or madly backpedalling from what he had said.

His nomination was going down the crapper. And the Republicans knew it.

And then Presto!

Anita Hill's confidential submission got leaked. And all of a sudden, the public was paying no attention to Thomas's views on things that matter (some of which are correct -- even a broken clock). So he skated through. On a vote of 52 - 48. (By way of contrast, Scalia was confirmed by a vote of 98 - 0.)

So who got the benefit? The Republicans.

And who suffered the consequences? Americans.

[Lord Jim]

His nomination was going down the crapper. And the Republicans knew it.

Wow, more news from that parallel universe....

It's fascinating to hear what's been taking place in other time lines...

Let me share with you what happened in this one:

The Thomas nomination was sailing to an easy passage, (because a number of liberal Democrats were extremely reluctant to anger their African American voter base by voting against a black man) and then the Hill farce was cooked up to give them cover...

Had it not been for that smear attempt, the vote on the Thomas nomination would never have been as close as it was....

It was an act of desperation; a "Hail Mary Pass" on the part of the Senate's leading liberals....

But it fell short of the end zone....

[rubato]

And still -no- evidence that he has been anything other than a place holder.

Great defense there sparky. A real zero.

yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

Darkblack, check your PM's.

[Andrew D]

His nomination was going down the crapper. And the Republicans knew it.

Wow, more unseemly reality

The Thomas nomination was going down in flames until my party, the party of lies and crimes, leaked Hill's confidential submission and diverted the nation's attention from the incontrovertible fact that Clarence Thomas is as well suited to the Supreme Court as Andrew D is suited to the papacy.

(Fixed that for you.)

[darkblack]

Gentlemen, gentlemen...this is a pubic hair on a Coke can, er, tempest in a teapot.



Thomas is, and no doubt will remain a Supreme court justice long past the shelf life of the Obama administration, regardless of the Presidential status.
On that we can assuredly agree, whether one feels that he deserves an apology for his professional tribulations...or a rolling donut for a quick flying poke.

One of the issues of interest within my current observances are the qualities of Obama's opponents - those who would foment and inculcate such a scheme, should one come into being.
For example, if the nation had wider knowledge of the rampant philandering (often of an extramarital bent - gasp!) among those who were aligned against Clinton during his moral crisis, would the denouement have been similar?

I think not...outside of the bible belt and its myriad loops, of course. The larger populace may well have seen the flagrant hypocrisies of Gingrich and Hyde (among others) in a different comparative light to their target - and some money, trees, and ink may have been spared.

Now we are in an age of exponentially greater communication speed and mass access to data - dare those who would win such a prized scalp risk a load shift among the skeletons in their beauty chambers?

;>)

[Lord Jim]

if the nation had wider knowledge of the rampant philandering (often of an extramarital bent - gasp!) among those who were aligned against Clinton during his moral crisis, would the denouement have been similar?

I don't know DB....

How many of them committed perjury, suborned perjury, or obstructed justice?

[Andrew D]

How many of them were asked under oath to testify about their private sexual relationships?

Even the Republican-controlled House of Representatives could not bring itself to approve all four of the Articles of Impeachment presented to them by the crackpots running the Judiciary Committee. Half of those articles were left on the House floor.

Even though they controlled the Senate, the Republicans could not muster so much as a simple majority to convict Clinton on either of the charges that were actually leveled against him. The Republicans controlled the Senate, and they still couldn't get even 51 "guilty" votes, let alone anything like the 67 votes needed to convict Clinton.

(Unlike, say, Republican Richard Nixon, the only President ever actually removed from office by the impeachment process. In a Democratic-controlled House, a majority of Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voted to refer articles of impeachment to the full House. Nixon resigned rather than face the inevitable votes in the House to impeach him and in the Senate to convict him.

(That's right; let's not forget: The only President ever driven out of office by the impeachment process -- he had the sense to run away, tail between his legs, before the process was concluded, but he was driven out of office by the process nonetheless -- was a Republican.)

And everyone knew in advance that that would be the result. Republican Senators were saying publicly, before the trial had even begun, that Clinton was not going to be convicted.

Why? In larger part because not even one third of Americans wanted him convicted. And on the eve of the Senate vote, Clinton's approval rating was higher than Reagan's ever was.

And why was that? Because most people knew that it was all horseshit. Most people recognized that Clinton's falsehoods concerned only things that were no one else's business in the first place.

Clinton was impeached for being an effective Democratic President. Simple as that.

[darkblack]

if the nation had wider knowledge of the rampant philandering (often of an extramarital bent - gasp!) among those who were aligned against Clinton during his moral crisis, would the denouement have been similar?

I don't know DB....

How many of them committed perjury, suborned perjury, or obstructed justice?

How many of them admitted similar liaisons or resigned after their hanky-panky was brought to light?

Prior to the events, there was Bob Packwood, and during them there was Bob Livingston (replaced by that well-powdered fellow David Vitter, another aficionado of outside companionship)...Henry Hyde...Bob Barr...Newt, of course - he likes adultery...Helen Chenowith...Dan Burton...Steve LaTourette...and much later, John Ensign and Larry Craig.

All admitted philanderers involved in tangential ways with l'affaire Clinton, all with 'R's after their names. Coincidence? Perhaps - but in any case, private lives made public for tabloid fodder can become object lessons in hypocrisy.
As to the accusations against Clinton (whatever their basis in subjective perception) the charge of perjury went to defeat with 45 votes for conviction and 55 against while the obstruction of justice charge went to defeat with 50 votes for conviction and 50 against...So I suppose this returns us to the definition of 'commit', unless there's a preference for moving forward - somewhat antithetical for conservatives unless there's unpleasantness gaining in the rear view mirror, no?

;>)