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#77 Sep 09 2020 at 12:46 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
I tend to avoid being cynical about politician doing things "for political reasons".
I tend to believe an erection is caused by naughty ghosts.
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#78 Sep 09 2020 at 6:52 PM Rating: Decent
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Gbaji wrote:
Yes. I'm not sure what hook you're trying to bait here. I'm on record on this forum (well, if the search function worked and posts from 20ish years ago were still around) that Congress should not have impeached Clinton for that, and should have censured him instead. I've said that many times. Heck. Might have repeated it a couple times in this very thread.

You're barking up the wrong tree here. The fact that the GOP did it wrong back then doesn't somehow make me think that the Dems didn't get it wrong this time. Both can be wrong. Get it?


Just pointing out the fact that the entire process is political. Conservatives are/were pretending that this process has some well defined threshold. While, I believe that elections should be the decision maker on who is the president, I also believe that a president not acting in good faith should be removed, illegal actions or not.

Gbaji wrote:
Nancy Pelosi doesn't face challenges from the Right, but from the Left. She kinda has to do this sort of thing to keep her seat.
No she doesn't. How many times have she publicly ridiculed the far left super star AOC? In general, you have a point, but people were screaming for her to impeach waaaaaay before she decided to act. I was never a Pelosi fan (no real reason), but I became one when she stood up to her party.

Gbaji wrote:
I don't think it's accurate at all to conclude that since the result would negatively impact opinion polling for Dems in general vs Trump, that this means that the only reason to do so must have been because it was "the right thing to do even if it hurts us politically". It could still have very much have been pure politics.


I'm not saying that they impeached out of doing the right thing (while I believe some supported it for that reason).I'm saying, if there actions were purely political, they wouldn't have impeached at all. There was absolutely nothing in it for them. That doesn't mean there weren't any political factors, like simply staining the president with being impeached. However, politics is all about maintaining power. From that angle, there was no benefit and it was well known from the start.
#79 Sep 10 2020 at 4:01 AM Rating: Good
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It's also not a good look when the senate refuses to even open a debate on a huge portion of bills sent from the house.

Is that good politics or bad politics?
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#80 Sep 11 2020 at 5:18 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
They look at the evidence of a case and make a determination as to whether a jury is likely to convict.
And then you take the case to the jury (Senate) and they refuse to hear any witnesses.


At the risk of repeating an analogy I already made. An infinite number of witnesses to a charge of jaywalking will never result in the defendant being sentenced to death.

I've already made this argument several times now, but you seem to keep ignoring it. There is only one punishment in an impeachment trial: Removal from office. Therefore, they must both prove that the charges are true *and* that they are sufficiently serious violations of oath of office to require removal. The majority of senators did not believe the charges, even if proven 100% true, were sufficiently serious to justify removal. Thus, just as with my jaywalking analogy, there is zero reason for witnesses. No number of witnesses will make the charges more serious.

The injustice was wasting time and money bringing the impeachment in the first place.
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#81 Sep 11 2020 at 5:38 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
Just pointing out the fact that the entire process is political. Conservatives are/were pretending that this process has some well defined threshold. While, I believe that elections should be the decision maker on who is the president, I also believe that a president not acting in good faith should be removed, illegal actions or not.


Well, I'd use more specific language than "not acting in good faith", since that's incredibly subjective, but yeah, I more or less agree. That was my point, in fact. That this was an attempt to politically influence the 2020 election. But where I conclude that the Dems miscalculated that attempt, you for some reason conclude that since it backfired on them, it must have really been an honest attempt based on principle rather than politics because they should have known going in that it wasn't going work, and would actually hurt them politically.

I think you are grossly overestimating the ability of a party of politicians to actually avoid falling for the cheap political trick trap.

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Gbaji wrote:
Nancy Pelosi doesn't face challenges from the Right, but from the Left. She kinda has to do this sort of thing to keep her seat.
No she doesn't. How many times have she publicly ridiculed the far left super star AOC? In general, you have a point, but people were screaming for her to impeach waaaaaay before she decided to act. I was never a Pelosi fan (no real reason), but I became one when she stood up to her party.


I was talking about in her own district, not nationally (although national politics matter since she's speaker of the house). Have you seen her challenger?

And you're correct. The far left was screaming for impeachment from day one. But Pelosi is savvy enough to know that they needed to wait until they had something that might actually fly in terms of public opinion. She was going to give in to that screaming at some point. It was just a matter of when. The Mueller report didn't give her enough to do it, but when the phone call thing came up, that was her opportunity. That's why literally every liberal pundit, journalist, and politician jumped on it the way they did.

The problem is that they basically built up their own fabricated echo chamber which didn't stand up to impartial scrutiny. The basically fell for their own propaganda.

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Gbaji wrote:
I don't think it's accurate at all to conclude that since the result would negatively impact opinion polling for Dems in general vs Trump, that this means that the only reason to do so must have been because it was "the right thing to do even if it hurts us politically". It could still have very much have been pure politics.


I'm not saying that they impeached out of doing the right thing (while I believe some supported it for that reason).I'm saying, if there actions were purely political, they wouldn't have impeached at all. There was absolutely nothing in it for them. That doesn't mean there weren't any political factors, like simply staining the president with being impeached. However, politics is all about maintaining power. From that angle, there was no benefit and it was well known from the start.


I'll return back to my earlier comment that politicians are not perfect. It seems more likely to explain this as a mistake which backfired on them, then some carefully calculated move, that they knew would harm them politically, but went ahead with anyway out of some sort of moral imperative.

I'd argue that the reason it backfired on them *was* because it was so obviously politically driven. And given that public opinion is what matters here, that's what most people view it as. We can speculate some higher motive, but in the final analysis it really doesn't matter.

And again, when we see Pelosi directly crowing about how her actions in the house put an asterisk next to Trump's name in the history books, it's hard to not view it was a directly political act. Someone who honestly thought that what he did required removal from office would never have said that. She'd have been focused on the act of removal which she believed should occur, and not just the footnote that the impeachment in the house would put on his record.
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#82 Sep 11 2020 at 7:50 PM Rating: Decent
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Gbaji wrote:
At the risk of repeating an analogy I already made. An infinite number of witnesses to a charge of jaywalking will never result in the defendant being sentenced to death
That's a horrible analogy when comparing what happened.

Gbaji wrote:
Therefore, they must both prove that the charges are true *and* that they are sufficiently serious violations of oath of office to require removal
Which was done. Denial doesn't negate what happened. If President Trump weren't popular with the base, you think the outcome would have been the same?

Gbaji wrote:
The majority of senators did not believe the charges, even if proven 100% true, were sufficiently serious to justify removal.
Correction, they did, their base didn't. Out of fear of losing their seat, they sided with the base.
#83 Sep 11 2020 at 8:06 PM Rating: Decent
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Gbaji wrote:
That this was an attempt to politically influence the 2020 election.
Let's assume that President Trump were removed from office, then what? We have President Pence. President Pence is much more respected and would almost definitely win in 2020. The Democrats best chance in winning 2020 would be to keep the current president in office. So, again, this was not some political plan for 2020.

Gbaji wrote:
Have you seen her challenger?
Never heard of the person and I watch the news daily.

Gbaji wrote:
But Pelosi is savvy enough to know that they needed to wait until they had something that might actually fly in terms of public opinion.
You mean, only impeach when there is something worth impeaching? Yes, that's what she said.

Gbaji wrote:
She was going to give in to that screaming at some point. It was just a matter of when
Only if you believe that President Trump was eventually going to do something worth impeaching. Else, she could have easily gotten away with it from the start. She was immediately being challenged from the left when Democrats took over 2018. She could have easily rode the "Impeach Trump" train.

Gbaji wrote:
The Mueller report didn't give her enough to do it, but when the phone call thing came up, that was her opportunity. That's why literally every liberal pundit, journalist, and politician jumped on it the way they did.

The problem is that they basically built up their own fabricated echo chamber which didn't stand up to impartial scrutiny. The basically fell for their own propaganda.
The phone call was literally the "smoking gun" that the Republicans claimed would be the pushing point in the Mueller report. They simply moved the goal post.

Gbaji wrote:
And again, when we see Pelosi directly crowing about how her actions in the house put an asterisk next to Trump's name in the history books
Again, politics is about power. Nobody cares about an asterisk next to Trumps name if they aren't in power.

#84 Sep 14 2020 at 1:27 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
That's a horrible analogy when comparing what happened.


Why? Don't just declare something. Support it. I've explained this analogy and how it's relevant twice now. Just saying "that's a horrible analogy" isn't a legitimate rebuttal.

Again. This is a trial in which there is only one punishment. If the charge being alleged isn't sufficiently severe to warrant that punishment, then no amount of witnesses will change the result. Witnesses only allow one to determine whether the defendant is guilty of the charge. They don't add additional charges in the middle of the trial. You've been watching too many ridiculous crime dramas if you think otherwise.

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Gbaji wrote:
Therefore, they must both prove that the charges are true *and* that they are sufficiently serious violations of oath of office to require removal
Which was done. Denial doesn't negate what happened. If President Trump weren't popular with the base, you think the outcome would have been the same?


The fact that you think this is about popularity and not whether the actual actions of the president objectively justified removal from office speaks volumes about why your view on this is totally skewed. This is not an election. It's not a parliamentary "confidence vote". We don't have that kind of system. Presidents aren't up for re-election any time folks in the congress just think they want someone else to be president. Go live in the UK if you want this system. That's now how ours works.

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Gbaji wrote:
The majority of senators did not believe the charges, even if proven 100% true, were sufficiently serious to justify removal.
Correction, they did, their base didn't. Out of fear of losing their seat, they sided with the base.


This is pure speculation on your part. I suspect, driven by the bizarre concept of the purpose of impeachment that you expressed in your previous statement. Your cart is well ahead of your horse.

Edited, Sep 14th 2020 11:28am by gbaji
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#85 Sep 14 2020 at 2:09 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
[Let's assume that President Trump were removed from office, then what? We have President Pence. President Pence is much more respected and would almost definitely win in 2020. The Democrats best chance in winning 2020 would be to keep the current president in office. So, again, this was not some political plan for 2020.


Huh? No. It was not about actually removing Trump from office. Holy hell! I've explained this over and over. It was about having an impeachment not remove Trump. It was about setting up the exact BS you are spewing right now. That Trump really did do something terrible, but his party protected him from punishment. It was about creating the perception of corruption and political manipulation so they could argue for folks to vote against him in the election.

This is why they didn't put any effort into getting subpoenas for witnesses in the House. They wanted to be able to claim that the GOP was blocking testimony and made the trial "unfair". They knew going in that there was 0% chance of removing Trump from office. So they used the entire thing as theater to try to manipulate people. Which apparently worked perfectly on you.

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Gbaji wrote:
But Pelosi is savvy enough to know that they needed to wait until they had something that might actually fly in terms of public opinion.
You mean, only impeach when there is something worth impeaching? Yes, that's what she said.


No. You impeach when you have something that you can spin to the gullible that it's actually sufficient for impeachment. They failed with the Russian Collusion conspiracy theory, and they failed with the obstruction of justice when he fired Comey theory. So when the "phone call asking the Ukrainian president to look into corruption by Biden while there happened to also be aid money to Ukraine being held up" came along they jumped on it as their last and best chance to do this before they got too far into the election season.

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Only if you believe that President Trump was eventually going to do something worth impeaching.


Every president does something that is as impeachable as what Trump did.

Obama used the intelligence agencies at his command to spy on and jail reporters who were critical of him. He made appointments without going through the congressional approval bits (and they got rolled back by the Supreme Court eventually). He routinely refused to apply laws he didn't agree with, or when it was politically convenient to do so (specifically involving illegal immigration). Heck. He wrote a law *DACA", has the word "act" in the acronym, and yet was never actually passed into law by the legislation. That's a direct violation of separation of powers, one of the most fundamental principles of our constitution and form of government.

When obamacare passed, but was incomplete (cause of how they passed it, having lost sufficient numbers in the Senate), he just kinda made up the rest (again, not supposed to work that way). We can speculate about how much he knew about or ordered things like the IRS blocking non-profit status for conservative organizations, as well as how much he knew about Fast and Furious (the gun walking scheme). Awfully convenient that both helped his party and his political ideology though.

And the biggest whopper? He entered the US into a treaty with Iran without bothering to get it ratified by the Senate, as required quite clearly by the Constitution. That is actual Treason, with a capital "T". Get it?

He actually, routinely "colluded" with foreign powers, in ways that benefited them to the detriment of his own country. Yet, no one impeached him. Why? Because the offenses were all on the edge of what a President can do, and were more about process and not provable intent. And there's the whole political backlash of it looking like they just wanted to eliminate the first black president.

My point? Presidents do things far far worse than what Trump did. All the time. Clinton regularly scheduled air strikes in Iraq and other points in the ME just to deflect a bad news cycle. That's actually killing people just to affect what people saw in the news that week. Seriously.

Trump made a phone call and asked a foreign leader to look into possible corruption by a political opponent. No one died. No foreign country got closer to building nuclear weapons. No terrorists were empowered. Seriously. In the grand scheme of things presidents can do that might be a bit squirrelly, it's about as tame as possible.

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The phone call was literally the "smoking gun" that the Republicans claimed would be the pushing point in the Mueller report. They simply moved the goal post.


If the call had included him saying "give me prof of Biden's corruption or you don't get the aid money", that would be a smoking gun. Um.... That's now remotely what happened.

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Again, politics is about power. Nobody cares about an asterisk next to Trumps name if they aren't in power.


If the person doing it thinks that asterisk will increase their chance of gaining power in the next election, then it does. Get it? Again, it was never about actually removing Trump. It was always about failing in a way that they could spin to make it look like Trump "got away with it due to horrible corrupt Republicans protecting him, so we need to get them all out of office".

That is what it was about. Nothing else. Until you understand the actual political motivations behind the impeachment, you'll continue to naively spew BS like you're spewing here. It was BS from the start to finish. The correct response is to reject the whole thing. Or maybe, blame the Dems for wasting time with it in the first place.

Edited, Sep 14th 2020 12:11pm by gbaji

Edited, Sep 14th 2020 12:12pm by gbaji
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#86 Sep 14 2020 at 2:47 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Stop treating me like a human being, I am a monster through and through..JK, I am a sophmore in high school's attempt at an AI that can debate with a simple link to a dictionary with no definitions, which, I guess is just a vocab list?

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#87 Sep 14 2020 at 5:19 PM Rating: Decent
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Gbaji wrote:
Why? Don't just declare something. Support it. I've explained this analogy and how it's relevant twice now. Just saying "that's a horrible analogy" isn't a legitimate rebuttal.

Again. This is a trial in which there is only one punishment. If the charge being alleged isn't sufficiently severe to warrant that punishment, then no amount of witnesses will change the result. Witnesses only allow one to determine whether the defendant is guilty of the charge. They don't add additional charges in the middle of the trial. You've been watching too many ridiculous crime dramas if you think otherwise.


Just because a bunch people choose not to indict a President out of fear of losing their political standing in their party, doesn't make the action of the President equivalent to "jaywalking".

Gbaji wrote:
The fact that you think this is about popularity and not whether the actual actions of the president objectively justified removal from office speaks volumes about why your view on this is totally skewed. This is not an election. It's not a parliamentary "confidence vote". We don't have that kind of system. Presidents aren't up for re-election any time folks in the congress just think they want someone else to be president. Go live in the UK if you want this system. That's now how ours works.
So you didn't answer the question. If the President weren't popular with the base, you think the outcome would be the same? This is all political.

Better yet, if this were a Democrat President, you think both parties wold vote the same way? You think Democrats would impeach a President Biden and the GOP would argue that the evidence isn't severe enough to warrant an indictment?

Gbaji wrote:
This is pure speculation on your part. I suspect, driven by the bizarre concept of the purpose of impeachment that you expressed in your previous statement. Your cart is well ahead of your horse.
That's literally how politics work. Read above
#88 Sep 14 2020 at 5:36 PM Rating: Decent
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Gbaji wrote:
Huh? No. It was not about actually removing Trump from office. Holy hell! I've explained this over and over. It was about having an impeachment not remove Trump. It was about setting up the exact BS you are spewing right now. That Trump really did do something terrible, but his party protected him from punishment. It was about creating the perception of corruption and political manipulation so they could argue for folks to vote against him in the election.

This is why they didn't put any effort into getting subpoenas for witnesses in the House. They wanted to be able to claim that the GOP was blocking testimony and made the trial "unfair". They knew going in that there was 0% chance of removing Trump from office. So they used the entire thing as theater to try to manipulate people. Which apparently worked perfectly on you.

Smiley: rolleyes I'm pointing out that it was a lose-lose situation. Failing to indict, would only yield a popularity bump for the President, just like with Clinton. If they were successful with the indictment, then it would actually be *worse* than losing. So, there was no benefit in doing an impeachment so close to an election.

Gbaji wrote:
No. You impeach when you have something that you can spin to the gullible that it's actually sufficient for impeachment. They failed with the Russian Collusion conspiracy theory, and they failed with the obstruction of justice when he fired Comey theory. So when the "phone call asking the Ukrainian president to look into corruption by Biden while there happened to also be aid money to Ukraine being held up" came along they jumped on it as their last and best chance to do this before they got too far into the election season.
Pelosi is on the record with her position. She attacked her own party. You're making stuff up.

Gbaji wrote:
Every president does something that is as impeachable as what Trump did.
How can Obama partake in treason and be on the edge of what presidents can do? Are you saying it is constitutional for Presidents to conduct treason?

Gbaji wrote:
If the call had included him saying "give me prof of Biden's corruption or you don't get the aid money", that would be a smoking gun. Um.... That's now remotely what happened.
Like I said, moving the goal post. If the call had included, "I Donald J Trump, Social 123-45-6789, would like to partake in an illegal activity with you, Mr. Smith, social 123-45-6789, in order to assist me in winning an election. I, Donald J Trump, am fully aware that this activity is illegal, but will do so anyway", then it would be a smoking gun.

Gbaji wrote:
If the person doing it thinks that asterisk will increase their chance of gaining power in the next election, then it does. Get it?
All evidence suggests that it wouldn't. Get it?
#89 Sep 14 2020 at 7:05 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
Just because a bunch people choose not to indict a President out of fear of losing their political standing in their party, doesn't make the action of the President equivalent to "jaywalking".


You're totally mixing up terms here. What the heck is up with our education system? An indictment is when you choose to go forward with charges. That's equivalent to what happened in the House, not the Senate. You are correct that the house members likely were motivated by fear of losing their political standing, but that's not the issue we were talking about.

In the Senate, they are voting to remove from office, or convict. Additionally, you're mixing up analogy with equivalence. I'm not saying that Trump alleged crimes are equivalent to jaywalking, but that the relationship between jaywalking and the penalty of death is analogous to the relationship between Trumps alleged crimes and the penalty of removal from office. In both cases, I'm arguing (and the GOP Senators made this same argument) that the crime is not severe enough to justify the punishment.

And at the risk of pointing this out for the fourth or fifth time. In a normal trial, you apply the sentence that fits the crime committed. So you'd never sentence someone to death for jaywalking. You'd convict them and sentence them to a small fine or something, right? But that only works for normal criminal trials. In an impeachment there is only one sentence: removal from office. So if the crime is not severe enough to justify that penalty, then no matter how much effort is spent proving the defendant guilty, it will not change the result. There's no point in convicting and then determining the sentence as two separate steps. You're simultaneously determining whether you think the person did what they are accused of *and* whether you think that action requires removal from office. Hence why there was no need for witnesses.

The House brought a stupidly weak impeachment to the Senate. Everyone knew it. The Senate sent a huge message of 'don't play these games again' to the House. Maybe they'll listen next time?

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So you didn't answer the question. If the President weren't popular with the base, you think the outcome would be the same? This is all political.


Because I'm rejecting your premise that the Senate Republicans voted based on how popular Trump was. You do get that it's possible to do something that benefits you or your party politically while also being the right thing to do, right? This was one of those cases. The case against Trump was so flimsy, so weak, that it did not warrant more than the barest minimum treatment required by law. Which is exactly what it got.

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Better yet, if this were a Democrat President, you think both parties wold vote the same way? You think Democrats would impeach a President Biden and the GOP would argue that the evidence isn't severe enough to warrant an indictment?


You have either have very muddled thinking or writing. Not sure which. Asking if they would vote "the same way", suggests that Dems would support the Democrat president, and GOP would oppose (ie: want to remove). Comparing how votes went among party lines in this one, but speculating that they should swap places with the dems voting to remove a dem president and the gop voting to not do so is just silly (and doesn't tell us anything about the votes in Trump's impeachment).

Having said that. When the Clinton impeachment happened, 5 democrats in the house did vote to impeach him. Ironically, the same number (5) of republicans voted against impeachment. That's just in charge 1. 28, 12, and 81 republicans voted against impeachment of Clinton on charges 2-4. 5 democrats voted for impeachment on chargest 1, 2, and 3, and just one voted for charge 4. So yeah, when it's a Democrat, things seem to be less perfectly partison.

Even in the Senate, while the Dems voted against removal at 100% (all 45 dems voted against it for both charges that passed the house, 10 republicans voted against removal on charge 1, and 5 voted against on charge 2.

So the suggestion, if we can arrive at one, is that when a Democrat is up for impeachment, the GOP is much more willing to not impeach and not confict than the Dems are when the situation is reversed. Both parties seemed more partisan this time around when it came to both the decisions. We can speculate endlessly about why, but that's what the data supports.

Quote:
Gbaji wrote:
This is pure speculation on your part. I suspect, driven by the bizarre concept of the purpose of impeachment that you expressed in your previous statement. Your cart is well ahead of your horse.
That's literally how politics work. Read above


Again though, that's your assumption. I don't accept that as truth. As I said above, it's possible to act in the best interests of your party *and* do the right thing. In this case, anyone not firmly planted in the "Trump is evil and must be removed by any means necessary" saw the impeachment charges as a complete joke from day one, and saw any effort to lengthen the proceedings as a waste of time. It was obvious what was going on, and the obvious counter was exactly what the GOP senate did.

That this helped their party's and their leader does not mean that they acted out of purely partisan reasons. Again, sometimes those things align. Heck, in an ideal world, where our political parties are acting in the best interest of the people, this should happen most of the time, right? If you do something that is the right thing, people should recognize it as that, and think highly of you and your party for doing that right thing.

It is interesting that increasingly, the Democrats have aligned themselves in such a way that what is good for their party is often *not* good for the people, and is *not* the "right thing to do". I'll point out what I've been saying for a decade or two now (and which is very relevant to what's going on today), that the Dems need people to feel angry, scared, hurt, oppressed, etc, so that they will reach out and vote for the Dems who promise to be "on their side". Of course, this means that they have to make sure that a good percentage of the people are either in those categories or feel sorry for those who are in order to win elections.

Which puts all the actions by Dems going on right now in perfect perspective. They're actually doing the kinds of things I predicted they would have to do in order to maintain power. Scary thing is that they almost have enough control over all forms of media to pull it off. Almost. I think that a lot of people are seeing through what's going on and are rejecting it. Wont be sure until election day though. So all of this stuff you're talking about, how X or Y may have impacted the election, I guess we'll just find out, right? I'll still say that while the GOP actions may happen to align politically, the Dem actions have been directly and entirely about politics and nothing else. No one would have gone forward with that impeachment if they didn't think that it would benefit them politically. You can't say the same about the folks who opposed it.
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#90 Sep 14 2020 at 7:37 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
Smiley: rolleyes I'm pointing out that it was a lose-lose situation. Failing to indict, would only yield a popularity bump for the President, just like with Clinton. If they were successful with the indictment, then it would actually be *worse* than losing. So, there was no benefit in doing an impeachment so close to an election.


It's unclear what you're actually trying to say since you keep using "indict" when I think you mean "convict", but I'm not sure since in this case we're talking about the actions in the House, and not the Senate. WTF do you actually mean here?

They did successfully indict (well, the term is "impeach") the president. The house did that. That's what it's called. An impeachment. It's equivalent to an indictment in a normal legal process in that you are determining that sufficient evidence to bring forth a set of charges exists to take those charges to court for trial. In trial (the senate part of this), is a bit different because they are both determining if the defendant is guilty of the charge *and* whether the charge warrants removal from office. I've explained this like 5 or 6 times yet you still seem to be confused.

You are correct that they were in a loose/loose situation. Their base was screaming at them to impeach Trump, on whatever came along. This was their excuse to do so and they took it. Again though, this is the irony. It's the dems that are guilty of doing what you keep accusing the GOP of doing in the senate. They were the ones bowing to pressure from their base. They should have ignored them and not even started the impeachment hearings, much less call a vote. But they did. And they did for purely political reasons. And that backfired on them, IMO.

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Pelosi is on the record with her position. She attacked her own party. You're making stuff up.


Huh? Which time? What are you calling an "attack". She resisted impeaching Trump for as long as possible because she's a skilled politician and knew it would backfire. But she (and her party) have the tiger by the tail here, and can't just ignore the angry mob they're created. Not forever. What I wrote exactly described what happened. The Mueller report wasn't enough, and Pelosi resisted the folks yelling for her to move forward. She would have faced potential loss of her seat from a primary challenger if she'd not gone forward with impeachment after the phone call.

I'll point out again that her biggest threat is some extreme left wing folks in her district. Her not impeaching Trump would have been used to pummel her in nutjob San Francisco. How she personally felt about it isn't the point. She did it anyway. And to follow the same argument I've been making all along. She did it knowing it wasn't "the right thing to do", but had no choice due to political pressures.

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How can Obama partake in treason and be on the edge of what presidents can do? Are you saying it is constitutional for Presidents to conduct treason?


Of course it's not constitutional. Not sure why you're asking this. Um. But that's what impeachment is about "Treason, Bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors". Bypassing the senate approval process to enter into an agreement with an enemy nation which removes existing sanctions (aiding and abetting an enemy, which is a requirement for treason). He illegally lifted sanctions in Iran designed to prevent them from building nuclear weapons. Regardless of how we feel about which strategy for Iran would best result in preventing them from making nukes, that's not the point. He did not get the consent of the senate when signing that treaty. Since the treaty did directly and in the short term benefit Iran (removal of sanctions), that fits squarely into the heading of treason.

We have checks and balances in our system for a reason. Even if Obama honestly believed that what he was doing was the best thing is not the point. He was supposed to follow the correct process for doing so. He didn't. So yeah, the GOP absolutely could have impeached him for that alone. But they didn't. Why? Because it would have likely backfired on them. And my statement about it being on the edge of what a president can do is because the same action if taken to the senate and ratified becomes legal foreign policy. Additionally, presidents often skirt the edges of executive authority when it comes to foreign policy. They are rarely called on it though. Obama also engaged in an air war in Libya, and just grossly violated the war powers act in the process. No one impeached him for that either. But this context is why the whole screaming over a phone call looks so absurd.

So you see the bar which is set for impeachment. Obama did something that could easily be classified as treason, and certainly was in direct literal violation of the constitution, on multiple occasions, yet they didn't impeach him because the political implications of doing so was worse. What they did instead was run on that fact, got people really motivated to undo all the illegal stuff he did, and won the election in 2016. And that's why Trump was so easily able to undo what Obama had done. So much of what he did he did by bypassing congress (the treaty with Iran was only one of a long list).

It's also why the Left was so upset when Trump won. Had Clinton won, the four years of her presidency could have been used to cement the Obama executive orders and actions into law. They'd have the time, and it would be very hard for the GOP to ever undo them. But they lost. Which is why they are really so mad. It's not about Trump himself. It's that him winning (any Republican winning) trashed their plans.

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Gbaji wrote:
If the call had included him saying "give me prof of Biden's corruption or you don't get the aid money", that would be a smoking gun. Um.... That's now remotely what happened.
Like I said, moving the goal post. If the call had included, "I Donald J Trump, Social 123-45-6789, would like to partake in an illegal activity with you, Mr. Smith, social 123-45-6789, in order to assist me in winning an election. I, Donald J Trump, am fully aware that this activity is illegal, but will do so anyway", then it would be a smoking gun.


I'm not sure what your point here is. So if Trump had said something more direct and proving that he committed a crime it would *not* be a smoking gun, but we'd have to have him on record not just committing the crime but telling us that he knows it's illegal for it to be?

Doesn't that just further support my position that what he said in the call was so tenuous in terms of proof of any guilt? So um... Great! We're in agreement. The call wasn't sufficient evidence that Trump committed a crime. Yay! We can all go home now.

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Gbaji wrote:
If the person doing it thinks that asterisk will increase their chance of gaining power in the next election, then it does. Get it?
All evidence suggests that it wouldn't. Get it?


Do I need to include the definition of "backfire" for you?

Edited, Sep 14th 2020 5:47pm by gbaji
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#91 Sep 15 2020 at 4:51 AM Rating: Good
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Gbaji, I say this as a friend. No-one has read your posts for a very long time.
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#92 Sep 15 2020 at 7:38 AM Rating: Good
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Kavekkk wrote:
Gbaji, I say this as a friend. No-one has read your posts for a very long time.

But people respond to him. I think most here just feel some satisfaction contradicting his nonsense in this safe place - even knowing all the good arguments will just bounce off him. Maybe there is a ray of hope still shining down on the forum that one day, without warning, the universe will tilt and something will stick and a new gbaji will emerge. He'd need a new name at that point.
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#93 Sep 15 2020 at 9:23 PM Rating: Good
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Elinda wrote:
Kavekkk wrote:
Gbaji, I say this as a friend. No-one has read your posts for a very long time.

But people respond to him. I think most here just feel some satisfaction contradicting his nonsense in this safe place - even knowing all the good arguments will just bounce off him. Maybe there is a ray of hope still shining down on the forum that one day, without warning, the universe will tilt and something will stick and a new gbaji will emerge. He'd need a new name at that point.


It's like playing Minecraft. Invest a bunch of time into the build, the redstone, make it all pretty and spawn proof. Perfectly constructed, but it doesn't work for some odd reason.
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#94 Sep 18 2020 at 4:31 PM Rating: Decent
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Gbaji wrote:
I'm not saying that Trump alleged crimes are equivalent to jaywalking, but that the relationship between jaywalking and the penalty of death is analogous to the relationship between Trumps alleged crimes and the penalty of removal from office.


I said indict as opposed to convict, but this is what I disagree with. I understand your analogy. It's just wrong.

Gbaji wrote:
The House brought a stupidly weak impeachment to the Senate.
It wasn't weak. As I said,the evidence was the "smoking gun" in Russia-gate. Republicans simply moved the goal post.

Gbaji wrote:
Because I'm rejecting your premise that the Senate Republicans voted based on how popular Trump was. You do get that it's possible to do something that benefits you or your party politically while also being the right thing to do, right? This was one of those cases. The case against Trump was so flimsy, so weak, that it did not warrant more than the barest minimum treatment required by law. Which is exactly what it got.
You're still not answering the question. If you think this is an instance doing something that is right that also benefits the party, then you can answer this question.

Gbaji wrote:
You have either have very muddled thinking or writing


Replace President Trump with President Biden. Do you think each party would make the same arguments?

Gbaji wrote:
Again though, that's your assumption.
You refusing to answer my questions above says otherwise. It says that you believe the same thing.
#95 Sep 18 2020 at 4:45 PM Rating: Decent
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Gbaji wrote:
It's unclear what you're actually trying to say since you keep using "indict" when I think you mean "convict", but I'm not sure since in this case we're talking about the actions in the House, and not the Senate. WTF do you actually mean here?

They did successfully indict (well, the term is "impeach") the president. The house did that. That's what it's called. An impeachment. It's equivalent to an indictment in a normal legal process in that you are determining that sufficient evidence to bring forth a set of charges exists to take those charges to court for trial. In trial (the senate part of this), is a bit different because they are both determining if the defendant is guilty of the charge *and* whether the charge warrants removal from office. I've explained this like 5 or 6 times yet you still seem to be confused.

You are correct that they were in a loose/loose situation. Their base was screaming at them to impeach Trump, on whatever came along. This was their excuse to do so and they took it. Again though, this is the irony. It's the dems that are guilty of doing what you keep accusing the GOP of doing in the senate. They were the ones bowing to pressure from their base. They should have ignored them and not even started the impeachment hearings, much less call a vote. But they did. And they did for purely political reasons. And that backfired on them, IMO.


Convict... sheesh..

No, it's not a lose-lose situation in general as you're trying to paint it. It was a lose-lose situation by engaging in the impeachment. The winning solution would be not to impeach, but to continue investigations.

Gbaji wrote:
Huh? Which time? What are you calling an "attack". She resisted impeaching Trump for as long as possible because she's a skilled politician and knew it would backfire.
Again, you're making stuff up. She was in no threat of losing her seat. She was already in preparation of becoming Speaker before the 2018 midterms. How could she have conducted an impeachment trial without being the Speaker of the House?

She is on the record ridiculing AOC in public, making fun of the new green deal, etc.

Gbaji wrote:
Of course it's not constitutional. Not sure why you're asking this. Um. But that's what impeachment is about "Treason, Bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors".
You just said that nobody impeached Obama for the long list of stuff that you provided because "the offenses were all on the edge of what a President can do, and were more about process and not provable intent". So, it's either on the edge or not.

#96 Sep 18 2020 at 8:48 PM Rating: Good
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#97 Sep 21 2020 at 5:49 AM Rating: Decent
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Gbaji wrote:
I'm not sure what your point here is. So if Trump had said something more direct and proving that he committed a crime it would *not* be a smoking gun, but we'd have to have him on record not just committing the crime but telling us that he knows it's illegal for it to be?

Doesn't that just further support my position that what he said in the call was so tenuous in terms of proof of any guilt? So um... Great! We're in agreement. The call wasn't sufficient evidence that Trump committed a crime. Yay! We can all go home now.


I somehow missed this. It points out the goal post moving. People don't talk like that, so to make that type of talk the "requirement" is absurd.

If a male boss said this to a female employee:

"Wow, you look stunning in that dress. It really fits your body. Being a new person here, it can be overwhelming to start from the bottom. However, some people, especially beautiful women like yourself, managed to just jump right to the top. Let me know if you're interested in moving to the fast track. Since you're single, I assume you have a lot of free time to make this happen".

The implication is that if she sleeps with him or dates him, he will promote her. However, nowhere in that statement did he explicitly say that. Your claim is that unless he explicitly offers sex or a date for a promotion, then it's not the same.

Your equivalent argument is that he was simply complementing her while providing her mentorship. Maybe his compliments were wrong, but to punish him for that would be like giving the death penalty for jaywalking.
#98 Sep 22 2020 at 8:58 AM Rating: Good
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stupidmonkey wrote:
Elinda wrote:
Kavekkk wrote:
Gbaji, I say this as a friend. No-one has read your posts for a very long time.

But people respond to him. I think most here just feel some satisfaction contradicting his nonsense in this safe place - even knowing all the good arguments will just bounce off him. Maybe there is a ray of hope still shining down on the forum that one day, without warning, the universe will tilt and something will stick and a new gbaji will emerge. He'd need a new name at that point.


It's like playing Minecraft. Invest a bunch of time into the build, the redstone, make it all pretty and spawn proof. Perfectly constructed, but it doesn't work for some odd reason.

I feel it's akin to hitting the practice dummy with my imaginary sword - in order to finish a quest and progress. But there's a glitch - quest won't update, but we faulty humans keep hitting the dummy.

...and that, my friends is my metaphor for this forum. Smiley: wink
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#99 Sep 22 2020 at 5:34 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
I'm not saying that Trump alleged crimes are equivalent to jaywalking, but that the relationship between jaywalking and the penalty of death is analogous to the relationship between Trumps alleged crimes and the penalty of removal from office.


I said indict as opposed to convict, but this is what I disagree with. I understand your analogy. It's just wrong.


Why? Do you understand what an analogy is? Heck, even if you don't, can you grasp that in an impeachment, there is only one penalty, thus the "jury" (the Senators) must not only determine guilt on each charge, but whether that charge warrants the penalty of removal from office. In this case, the Senate determined that none of the three charges brought by the House, even if proven true, met that requirement. Thus, there's no need to do more.

It's just not that complicated.

Quote:
Gbaji wrote:
The House brought a stupidly weak impeachment to the Senate.
It wasn't weak. As I said,the evidence was the "smoking gun" in Russia-gate. Republicans simply moved the goal post.


It's posts like this that make me think you are incredibly confused about all of this. The Trump impeachment had nothing to do with Russia. Period. You keep bringing up Russia, the Mueller investigation, etc. Those weren't part of the impeachment. Yes, the Left wanted Trump removed, and that was their first attempt (which failed), but we're talking about the actual charges the house voted on and used to impeach the president. Those three charges were only related to the phone conversation with Ukraine and the withholding of funds to Ukraine. That's it.

That's why it was weak. The actual charges brought to the Senate were pitiful. That's why the Senate rejected it the way they did. Why do you keep talking about Russia?

Quote:
You're still not answering the question. If you think this is an instance doing something that is right that also benefits the party, then you can answer this question.


Next time, maybe include the question you asked, so I don't have to go find it again. I've already rejected your notion that it was about popularity. My point about benefiting the party *and* being the right thing to do is my answer. The GOP controlled Senate would have done the same thing even if Trump wasn't terribly popular with GOP voters. I already made this point, that we do not have a Prime Minister who can be removed via vote of no confidence. We have a President, who can only be removed for committing treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. Any while the Dems may hold a "by any means necessary" approach, the GOP tends to actually be sticklers for using the correct legal procedures correctly.

While I suppose we could hypothesis about an extremely unpopular president having his own party effectively turn on him and use impeachment as an excuse to get rid of him or something, that's a pretty bizarre and unlikely scenario. Just not sure why you'd bother going there, especially considering in this case it's not relevant. I mean, why not hypothesize about a president who's secretly a lizard person in disguise or something?

Quote:
Gbaji wrote:
You have either have very muddled thinking or writing


Replace President Trump with President Biden. Do you think each party would make the same arguments?


Why? I just wrote the details of voting in the Clinton impeachment, showing that folks in both parties crossed the lines at various points and on various charges. Why theorize when we have a semi-recent example to actually look at?

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Gbaji wrote:
Again though, that's your assumption.
You refusing to answer my questions above says otherwise. It says that you believe the same thing.


Um. Do you know what a complex question fallacy is? It's when you ask a question which includes an assumption that the other person must accept as true in order to answer said question. When your assumptions are these crazy hypothesis that aren't very relevant or realistic, I'm going to say what I've said several times now. I reject those assumptions, but now I'm going to speak to what is actually relevant. In this case, we're talking about an impeachment trial in the Senate, and specifically whether they should have called witnesses to testify.

My answer to that question is that they should not have because the majority in the senate had determined that the charges, even if true, were not sufficient to justify removal from office. No amount of additional evidence can add additional charges, so if you've already determined that the charges don't warrant removal from office, there is zero reason to hear additional evidence, and thus no reason to call witnesses.

The proper place to have done that, to get witness statements, and gather evidence for stronger charges which might result in Trump being removed from office, was when they did the investigation in the House. But they not only rushed that, but actively worked to *not* collect additional testimony and evidence. I spoke in another thread about this, how one of Schiff's aids accidentally sent a request for subpoena to a judge to get a White House person to have to testify, and the judge fast tracked it, only for Schiff to remove the request.

We can speculate the hows and whys and whatfors until the cows come home. The facts, however, is that the House failed to spend sufficient investigative time to generate more than 3 very weak charges aginst Trump, but decided to vote to impeach anyway. The Senate, recognized the charges as weak, determined they weren't sufficient for removal from office, and therefore voted not to remove from office.
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#100 Sep 22 2020 at 5:57 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
[Convict... sheesh..

No, it's not a lose-lose situation in general as you're trying to paint it. It was a lose-lose situation by engaging in the impeachment. The winning solution would be not to impeach, but to continue investigations.


Yes. Which is what I literally said a freaking month ago. If they were serious about trying to remove Trump from office, they should have done more actual investigation in the House. They didn't. I've already presented several thoughts on why I think they did what they did, but at the end of the day, they didn't make anything close to an honest effort to remove him.

Quote:
Again, you're making stuff up. She was in no threat of losing her seat. She was already in preparation of becoming Speaker before the 2018 midterms. How could she have conducted an impeachment trial without being the Speaker of the House?


Huh? Here's that muddled thinking again. The impeachment was in 2019. The phone called occurred in 2019. Why are you talking about 2018?

I'm not sure what your argument is here. The only thing I can guess is that you're saying that since she was re-elected in 2018, that she was therefore in no risk of being removed in 2020 if she didn't go forward with impeachment? Well, maybe. Except that the Mueller Report, which is what she would have tried to use to impeach him previously, also came out in 2019 (June I think). Um... So her base screaming at her to move forward with impeachment of Trump, would not have been an issue in 2018 (technically, 2017, since she'd need to do this prior to primary season), the way it was in 2019.

Believe it or not, she does face serious criticism in her district, mostly for not being liberal enough. So yeah, we can speculate that her decision to rush through an impeachment was driven by her own personal political needs.

Quote:
She is on the record ridiculing AOC in public, making fun of the new green deal, etc.


I was talking about impeachment and how the decision to do so may have been driven by possible opposition from the left for her seat in her district. Whether she has on occasion criticized other party members in other districts on other issues isn't super relevant.

Quote:
You just said that nobody impeached Obama for the long list of stuff that you provided because "the offenses were all on the edge of what a President can do, and were more about process and not provable intent". So, it's either on the edge or not.


Was there a question there? I just said that it's on the edge of what a president can legally do, you quoted me as saying that, then you said "so it's either on the edge or not". Um... Do you think it's not? I said it is. So do you agree, or disagree? Smiley: confused
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#101 Sep 22 2020 at 7:32 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:

If a male boss said this to a female employee:

"Wow, you look stunning in that dress. It really fits your body. Being a new person here, it can be overwhelming to start from the bottom. However, some people, especially beautiful women like yourself, managed to just jump right to the top. Let me know if you're interested in moving to the fast track. Since you're single, I assume you have a lot of free time to make this happen".

The implication is that if she sleeps with him or dates him, he will promote her. However, nowhere in that statement did he explicitly say that. Your claim is that unless he explicitly offers sex or a date for a promotion, then it's not the same.


What do you mean "not the same"? If he explicitly requests sex or a date in exchange for a promotion, then he is subject to termination. The above listed text which could imply the same would likely result in an HR complaint and a warning, but not termination unless there have been previous such complains with no change in behavior.

Which, if you're following along, is that if something is said that implies or could be interpreted as a request for some quid-pro-quo from Ukraine to Trump, but that isn't directly stated, should result in a warning, and not termination. The analogy is not a great one though, since in this case, Trump never actually offers the quid, so to speak. The Ukrainian president wasn't aware of the hold on the aid money at the time Trump asked him to look into the firing of the prosecutor who had been investigating the company Hunter Biden was getting paid by, so there's no reason to think he believed that Trump was asking him the favor in return for the aid. So why assume he was being coerced somehow? It's just not there.

So it would be more equivalent to a new boss complimenting a new employee (perhaps not using the direct language you used), and then talking about what kind of work is expected of them, and perhaps asking them if they're willing to work overtime from time to time, but with no mention of any special reward other than those usually associated with hard work and extra hours (ie: not promising some kind of special quick rise to the top). When you remove that, then the idea that he's promising a reward for sex disappears. Again, in the absence of some more direct words or actions.


Quote:
Your equivalent argument is that he was simply complementing her while providing her mentorship. Maybe his compliments were wrong, but to punish him for that would be like giving the death penalty for jaywalking.


Sure. I don't want to get drug into an argument over sexual harassment in the workplace, since it's your example, not mine. I can say that as someone who's worked in the corporate world for nearly 25 years, I have *never* heard of anyone using that kind of language to another employee. It's the kind of over the top stuff that exists only in the past, Hollywood depictions of corporate workplaces, and I suppose Hollywood itself (and maybe politicians). So your example itself is a bit too over the top anyway. Remember that it's your example and your wording. I am not remotely going to defend it.

But setting the specifics aside, yes, if something is said that could be interpreted as inappropriate, it will rarely if ever result in immediate termination. You'll get a warning of some sort. Because we do tend to follow the same principle as we do in our legal system, and assume innocence rather than guilt. And yes, HR departments are very very good at providing instruction that makes clear what language is acceptable and what is not, and how to avoid even the appearance of something inappropriate or offensive, but people are imperfect and make mistakes from time to tine. We don't destroy someone's career over something which might have been intended badly, or more likely was an honest mistake or poor wording.

If there is a pattern of this then action should be taken. There was no equivalent pattern with regards to Trump's actions though. So yeah, leaping directly to impeachment was absolutely ridiculous.
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