Kansas Crimson

Feral wrote: ↑Sat Dec 14, 2019 8:34 pm

HouseDivided wrote: ↑Sat Dec 14, 2019 7:29 pm

DCHawk1 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 14, 2019 7:07 pm No he wasn't.

LOL! I was going to bring him up, but knew I’d get shouted down for being racist.

And yet, it comes as no surprise to anyone that the only person who brought up race, is you.

I think there's a word for that.

Redundant? I think you got that covered already.

In terms of Johnson's comments about Guam, I don't think he was joking either but only Hank Johnson knows if he was joking or not - and he has claimed he was joking. I know, that and a couple of bucks gets you a McDonalds double cheeseburger.
No doubt sometimes Hank Johnson is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs (I laugh thinking he's the love child of Jesse Jackson and Harold Washington) but even a broken clock is right 2 times a day.
As far as Gaetz, sure he's a snide entitled asshole but believe it or not, I really don't have a such problem with what he said about Hunter Biden. Yes, perhaps it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black and it was a low blow and wasn't a kind thing to say but these days all is fair in love and war - and politics.
Bottom line - Our political system (as well as many if not most other country's) is mean and ugly.
It's a shame how we allow politics to divide us to the extent that we completely lose civility towards one another - just because we don't agree - and are often brainwashed to the point of being completely blind and close minded to anything and everything that doesn't adhere to our beliefs.
End of sermon.
Carry on.

The weird -- but entirely predictable -- thing is that I didn't defend Gaetz at all. And nor would I. Personally, I think Hunter Biden deserves a great deal more compassion than he's has been given or will be given. He's done some pretty awful things, but then, his personal struggles have a rather tragic origin.

In a July profile of Hunter, The New Yorker described Hunters (very) early days:

That December [1972], while Biden was in Washington interviewing staff for his new office, Neilia took the children to Wilmington, to go Christmas-tree shopping. At an intersection, the family car collided with a truck. Neilia and Naomi were killed almost instantly. Beau sustained numerous broken bones, and Hunter suffered a severe head injury. Hunter has frequently said that his first memory is of waking up in a hospital bed next to Beau, who turned to him and said, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” On January 5, 1973, Biden was sworn in as a senator in his sons’ hospital room....

Hunter—who spoke frankly to me about his struggles with addiction—started drinking socially as a teen-ager. When he was a student at Georgetown, in the early nineties, he took up smoking Marlboro Red cigarettes, and occasionally used cocaine. Once, hoping to buy cocaine, he was sold a piece of crack, but he wasn’t sure how to take the drug. “I didn’t have a stem,” Hunter said. “I didn’t have a pipe.” Improvising, he stuffed the crack into a cigarette and smoked it. “It didn’t have much of an effect,” he said.

In 2001, Hunter, Kathleen, and their children moved back to Wilmington to be closer to the rest of the Biden family, and Hunter commuted to Washington on Amtrak, as his father did. Sometimes he missed the last train and stayed in a rental room at the Army and Navy Club. “When I found myself making the decision to have another drink or get on a train, I knew I had a problem,” he said.

Finally, near the end of the piece, we get this:

In the summer of 2013, Hunter, Beau, and their families took a vacation together on Lake Michigan. During the trip, Beau became disoriented and was rushed to the hospital. He’d had a health scare in May, 2010, when—six months after he returned from Iraq—he suffered a stroke. He had appeared to recover quickly, and continued to work as Delaware’s attorney general, but he struggled to remember certain words, and sometimes talked about hearing music playing when there was none.

Soon after Beau’s admittance to the hospital, doctors identified a mass in his brain. It was glioblastoma multiforme, a type of brain tumor. Patients who receive similar diagnoses tend to live no longer than two years. As Beau received radiation treatment, his motor and speech skills started to decline. In the spring of 2015, he underwent an experimental procedure in which an engineered virus was injected directly into the tumor, but it was unsuccessful. In late May, doctors removed Beau’s tracheostomy tube, telling the family that he would likely die within a few hours. Beau kept breathing on his own for almost a day and a half before he died, surrounded by his family.

Not sure if you felt my post was directed at you - DC. That was not my intention.
As someone who "self medicated" himself for many years, I am usually extremely compassionate (sometimes to a fault) in terms of those with substance abuse issues. No doubt Hunter has seen and been through a lot of terrible things. I realize others will say - too bad, so have I and I was not a cocaine addict. Different people cope in different ways.

Usually when someone says no offense but..... That means they are going to say something offensive.
Gaetz pretty much did that (see his words below). I don't forgive Gaetz nor do I excuse him for his words but as I said, the impeachment hearing/s have been "war" and it's been ugly.

“I don't want to make light of anybody's substance abuse issues,” "It's a little hard to believe that Burisma hired Hunter Biden to resolve their international disputes when he could not resolve his own dispute with Hertz rental car leaving cocaine and a crack pipe in the car.”
“We have the ability to show that Burisma is corrupt,” Gaetz exclaimed. “We have the ability to show that Hunter Biden is corrupt. That totally exculpates the president.”

A question to those who remember better than I:

What was the political climate like around the Nixon impeachment?

I think the house judiciary committee approved articles, but before it went to the floor, homeboy resigned? I think cuz his friendly senators came to him and said, dude your goose is cooked?

What was different about that case? What about this one is making republican senators say, no worries bro we’ll just shrug this off in kangaroo court?

that was back when we actually had statesmen, and it would seem, generally, a higher level of integrity among those in congress

by their own admission, many republican congressman are gonna vote the way their base wants them to, history or the constitution be damned

Watergate started TWO YEARS BEFORE Nixon resigned. There were trials, Supreme Court decisions, constant slow drip of investigations/developments, and the release of a freaking White House/Oval Office taping system -- which showed, inarguably, that Nixon ordered the cover-up, and that the administration was paying hush money and blackmail money at Nixon's insistence: "Well ... they have to be paid. That's all there is to that. They have to be paid."

And THEN, Republicans went to the White House and told him to get lost.

people don’t have the attention span for such things these days

Oh.

Perhaps the base is more radicalized?

Perhaps more than ever, voters vilify one side and condone the other.

One big difference between the Nixon era and now:

The rise of conservative media.

This time the evidence is in plain sight. Multiple people can and have corroborated malfeasance. People who can corroborate the corroboration have been prevented from corroborating. Willful blindness raw political calculation the operating principle. Integrity and National Interest...not so much

nearly everyone had their minds made up prior to anything formal ever happening

No way.

Way?

II blame Adam.

If only Adam Schiff wasn't so "stupid...incompetent and hacktastical", he might have seen the veritable ocean of moral rectitude and principled personal integrity all around him embodied in his republican colleagues, reached out in a spirit of comity, and justice would be done. But, no.

Damn you Adam Schiff, why you so blind?

Hey, like I said: Stick with Schiff. It's going so well.

goodjobgoodimpeachment

zsn wrote: ↑Sun Dec 15, 2019 12:04 pm This time the evidence is in plain sight. Multiple people can and have corroborated malfeasance. People who can corroborate the corroboration have been prevented from corroborating. Willful blindness raw political calculation the operating principle. Integrity and National Interest...not so much

When your “evidence” begins with “I was told,” I was under the impression,” or “I believed,” you get the cluster hump you currently have.

That would be fun.

Schumer gets his witnesses, but only if McConnell gets his -- including, presumably, Clapper, Brennan, VPOTUS Biden, Whistle T. Blower, Christopher Steele, Bruce and Nellie Ohr....

Is McConnell suuure he wants to have those guys talking?