The Right Side of the News

And those discrepancies would be? And those contradictions would be?--Percy

I see you already got three replies and so have probably been corrected three times, but here's another anyway describing how Trump changed his tune as soon as he realized the jig was up.The story told by the witnesses before the Congressional committee is that Trump through his personal lawyer Giuliani conducted a program of pressure on the Ukraine to publicly announce two things: a) that Ukraine would initiate a search for the secret DNC server that had been spirited away to the Ukraine; and b) that Ukraine would also initiate investigations into Burisma and the Bidens. Trump's pressuring of the Ukraine all took place out of the public eye.Here are extracts from the July 25th phone call between Trump and Zelensky:

quote:

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"I would like you to do us a favor, though...I would like you to find out what happened with...Crowdstrike...The server, they say Ukraine has it...I would like you to get to the bottom of it...There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution...so if you can look into it..."

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But on September 9th the House Intelligence Committee was informed of the whistleblower complaint. Knowing this information would soon become public Trump immediately changed his tune, so when Trump spoke with Sondland later that day he conveyed a completely different message. Trump describes what he told Sondland on that September 9th day in this later tweet from November 20th: And two days after the lid blew off Trump freed up the Ukraine military aid, so Zelensky no longer needed to make the announcement.But the freeing of the military aid may not be why Zelensky cancelled the announcement. Another chain of logic argues that we don't really know why Zelensky didn't make the announcement, because Zelensky still desperately needed the Oval Office meeting because it would symbolize U.S. support for the Ukraine even more than the military aid.This possibility is called to our attention by the testimony of Fiona Hill and David Holmes. Zelensky was scheduled to make the announcement on CNN around the same time the whistleblower complaint became known, and even after the aid was freed up there was still a great deal of concern among rank and file in the State Department that Zelensky would still go ahead with the announcement, even though he was cautioned strenuously through diplomatic channels not to get caught up in U.S. domestic politics. Fortunately Zelensky never made the announcement, but we can't really be sure why.About the server Trump keeps going on about: No such server ever existed or could exist - the DNC servers, just like the RNC servers and the server for this forum, were in the cloud. Websites are not commonly associated with specific webservers (computers configured for serving web content) anymore. For the most part it's just data images on disks that can run on any server in the cloud. Bottom line: there was never any specific "DNC server," and so there can be no DNC server that was spirited off to the Ukraine.Even a decade ago before cloud serving took over, no one would ever ship out an entire server. They'd just remove the disk drive and ship that.But these aren't the kinds of things that 90% of the people are going to understand. Understanding that Ukraine is hiding a secret computer is easy to understand, but wrong. Understanding how cloud serving works is complicated and has a vague and nebulous feel to most people, but that the DNC servers were cloud servers is correct.But even more important than all these details is that Trump has no evidence for any of the diversionary fictions he's making up, except to say things like, "People are saying..." and so forth, which is just more fiction.--Percy

Sorry, Mark, I misinterpreted what you wrote. I thought the "based on what they hope will happen, but largely on what has already happened, based on the sales and reviews of Trump's books" portion was your rationale for why you didn't think Simon and Schuster made those statements. You originally attributed the quote to Amazon, and given your habit of arguing persistently in error I thought you were still arguing that it was Amazon and not Simon and Schuster. Sorry you feel misunderstood, but I don't think RAZD and I are alone in having difficulty following you. If RAZD and others are like me then they have a great deal of difficulty seeing the connections you obviously think you see between your "facts," the real world, and your conclusions.--Percy

Well, we sort of agree. Certainly give away programs should only be part of a social safety net, not long term answers, but government does need to be involved. I don't know what form government rural assistance would take, but rural America needs help. It's amazing that so many Representatives and Senators and governors in red states get elected by promising to do less and less for rural folk as their life's blood is sucked out into the cities. I have no idea why you think this. What "environmental requirements and restrictions" do you think rural America is suffering under. There was no "region of the Keystone XL pipeline." That pipeline would have run through many regions in a narrow, narrow and long, long strip of land. Looking this up, construction of a pipeline goes at the rate of about a mile a day. Pipeline construction crews are mobile units. By the time you built and staffed a rural hospital in one region, pipeline construction would long since have moved on. And how many people do you think pipeline construction takes, anyway? Building a pipeline isn't like discovering oil and gas in the local area.Yes, Obama vetoed the pipeline bill, but even if he had instead signed the bill it wouldn't have resulted in increased hospital construction in rural areas. A lack of local skilled healthcare is just one of burdens of living in modern rural America. Seems like something government should give some serious attention to. Nearly a century ago we had the Rural Electrification Bill that guaranteed electric service to all of rural America. Maybe now's the time for a Rural Healthification Bill.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

Wittgenstein said, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." The reason you have no answers is because there is no defense against the plain testimony we've just witnessed over the past two weeks. One Trump Tower meeting. Multiple Wikileaks contacts (Stone just convicted). Over 140 contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian agents or representatives. One corrupt Attorney General of the United States. Not sure what you mean by "go under." If you mean resign then no, no one thought that. If you mean many thought the Mueller report sufficient to begin impeachments proceedings, then yes, that is correct. Yes, Mueller enumerated eleven instances of obstruction of justice by the Trump administration. And acts it, too. You don't know who the whistleblower is, but pretty much everything in the whistleblower complaint was confirmed by the transcript provided by the White House, and by all the recent testimony before Congress. While we don't know the whistleblower's identity, it's strongly suspected that he's a member of the intelligence community detailed to or near the White House. Incoming presidential administrations of both parties always retain huge numbers of civil servants. It's not possible to rebuild the bureaucracy every four or eight years. By and large it is only the upper reaches of the administration who are replaced, such as cabinet members and major department heads. According to all the testimony we've heard, pretty much everything the whistleblower said is true. Trump has abused the of power of his office and obstructed justice. No one is holding Trump or the Trump campaign or the Trump administration responsible for anything they didn't do. They did do everything described in the Mueller report and in the recent testimony before Congress. It isn't a question of whether those acts occurred, but whether they rise to the level of impeachment. If that were actually true then the Republican controlled Department of Justice under Trump appointee William Barr would charge her. This is still as false as it was all the other times people explained to you the difference between gathering information from Russians and conspiring with Russians. No, no, let's not ignore all that. Let's you explain why you turn a deaf ear each time this is explained. Again, Trump and his campaign and his administration did do everything documented in the Mueller report and everything people testified about to Congress over the past two weeks. It's just a matter of whether it's impeachable. You repeating the same many-times debunked points is getting tiresome. Bribery and extortion charges are sticking to Trump because people witnessed him doing such things and then testified to Congress about it. Have you been in a cave? It isn't necessary to twist anything to see that pressuring foreign leaders into lending domestic political assistance is potentially criminal or impeachable or both. Well, yes, that's what Trump is doing. This is kind of vague, but if you're referring to your inability to muster any facts in support of your opinions, then I agree. All you have to do to get the truth is follow a decent news outlet, or watch the Congressional hearings on TV the past two weeks. The news media is anti-corruption, whether committed by the left or the right or anyone in between. I just believe? Please leave me out of this. Neither the left nor the media nor the Democrats had anything to do with the Trump/Zelensky phone call or what was testified to. Trump and his administration did it all by themselves. An aptitude for ignoring facts is not an effective method of persuasion.--Percy

Did you mean to say, "The Burisma investigation was closed..." under prosecutor Shokin's watch? There was also an investigation into the oligarch founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, that stalled under Shokin. These were just a couple factors that led the U.S. and the EU to pressure the Ukraine to remove Shokin. The precipitating event seems to have been Shokin's refusal to provide necessary documentation about a Ukrainian money laundering case in the UK. For lack of evidence the UK was eventually forced to free up the sequestered funds.--Percy

More Trump attack/insult tweets since 11/21. There were several tweets containing lies, but this subthread is only about attacks and insults, some of which also contain lies:
Current attacks/insults score: Trump: 48; Democrats: 1Faith and Marc: If you're not even going to make a pretense of trying to find the Democrat/news-media attacks and insults that you claim Trump is responding to (rather than initiating unprovoked) then I think you have to concede the point. Trump issues many, many gratuitous insults and attacks on an almost continuous basis user Twitter, his rallies, and speeches.--Percy

I'm not sure why you're asking the question. Whenever Trump says anything self-serving it is almost always without exception self-evidently false. Some things he says contain a kernel of truth or are based upon something true, but the parts that represent his own contributions are invariably false.What is surprising, even shocking, is the extremely few number of Republicans who cannot see the lies, or who if they can see them see it in their own best interests to deny them while somehow still being able to live with themselves and sleep at night.But the political costs of backing a liar and criminal appear to be small to non-existent. Can you name a Nixon supporter in Congress who paid a price in terms of the judgment of history?And while Ford lost to Democrat Carter in the next election after Nixon's resignation, Republicans won the presidency in the election after that and held the presidency for the next 12 years. Had Bush Sr. not raised taxes heading into a recession while facing a third party candidacy in Ross Perot it would have been 16 years and perhaps even more after that (though if the candidate had been Dan Quayle it would never have happened). People rarely seek out facts that contradict their beliefs. And if this forum has taught us anything it's that facts don't convince people. People are not so much rational as rationalizers.So if facts are not how people are convinced then how do you convince people, especially those who are indisputably wrong, like flat-earthers, geocentrists and moon-landing deniers? I don't know. This contains a hint of treating the media as a source of what opinion to hold. They aren't. They're a source of facts, of information. For example, it is a fact that the White House transcript has Zelensky requesting more Javelins and Trump responding, "I would like you to do us a favor, though." Trump wants favors in return for the Javelins. To any Republicans who claim that's not what Trump meant, just tell them that when the Libyans asked for help against Islamic militant groups that Obama responded, "I would like you to do us a favor, though," and see if suddenly the meaning of those words becomes very clear. First, the tweets contain too many simple spelling errors for that to be true, "Donald Ttump", "hamberders" and "lasting peach" for a few glaring examples. Second, how can you be unaware of the high degree of consternation within the Trump administration in their inability to stop him from tweeting?--Percy

Maybe you misunderstood, because that wasn't the challenge. There's no need for you "to go back to 2015 and 2016."You and Faith have repeatedly claimed that Trump's constant insults and attacks are responses to insults and attacks on him, so in Message 3273 I asked you to back that up by matching me one for one. You cite a *current* Democrat or mainstream news media attack or insult, and I'll cite a *current* Trump or Fox News attack or insult, and we'll see who runs out first. If you follow the chain of posts back you'll see that all the tweets and news reports I've cited were from the prior 24 hours or so.So far you and Faith are losing 48 to 1, and you only got the 1 because you made reference to an old Ilhan Omar tweet. You use the word "hated," and if we can equate that with approval ratings then you are wrong. Trump's approval rating is currently 41.7%, while the most recent figure I could find for the media is around 30% (PolitiFact | Is trust in the media lower than trust in Congress?). Yes, Newsweek did fire Jessica Kwong, which makes no sense. The story had to be filed Wednesday, and Kwong could only report on what the White House was making public at that time. The president's trip to Afghanistan was being kept secret for security reasons. Trump did tweet, and he did golf, just like the story said. The story said nothing about the highly confidential Afghanistan trip because no one knew about it. Even if Kwong somehow became aware of the trip she should have written nothing about it out of concern for the president's safety and security. Her firing is a mystery to me.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

In Opinion | America’s Red State Death Trip - The New York Times Paul Krugman writes about his analysis of longevity, wealth and health in Republican states. They're generally lower than in Democratic states. Why is this so?Krugman's column is brief and undetailed, but here are the few reasons he mentioned:

• Blue states expanded Medicaid.
• Blue states reduced the number of people without health insurance.
• Blue states had better education.
• Red states had higher suicide rates.

--Percy

According to subpoenaed phone records by House Democrats, the White House, Republican Devin Nunes (ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee), the budget office, Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas (indicted partner of Giuliani) and conservative journalist John Solomon coordinated a disinformation campaign of Trump-backed conspiracy theories about the Ukraine around April of this year.Source: Democrats obtained phone records showing how Trump allies coordinated 'false narratives' - CNNPoliticsPercy

Let's try this again. You and Faith have claimed that attacks and insults from Trump are not something he initiates but are only his response to attacks and insults from Democrats and the mainstream media. This is what Trump said today in London in answer to a question about House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff:

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"I’ve learned nothing from Adam Schiff. I think he’s a maniac. Adam Schiff is a deranged human being. I think he grew up with a complex for lots of reasons that are obvious. I think he is a very sick man. And he lies. Adam Schiff made up my conversation with the president of Ukraine.
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"This guy is sick. He made up the conversation. He lied. If he didn’t do that in the halls of Congress, he'd be thrown in a jail. But he did it in the halls of Congress, and he’s given immunity. This is a sick person. He is a liar."

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Trump mentions Schiff's parody of Trump's phone conversation with Zelensky, but that was way back in September. What current attack or insult is Trump responding to here? Or is it your contention that once Trump concludes he's been attacked or insulted that he has infinite license for issuing future attacks and insults?Current attacks/insults score: Trump: 49; Democrats: 1--Percy

The articles of impeachment included charges of obstruction of justice: Impeachment of Bill Clinton - Wikipedia This has been explained to Faith many times. It seems nothing will persuade her that the US was working with the EU to influence the Ukraine to remove Prosecutor General Shokin because of his investigatory inactions, and that Biden was the US point man in this effort.--Percy

Should acquittal be interpreted as nothing happened? There was evidence of things Clinton did to obstruct justice. Here's the list:

1. encouraging Lewinsky to file a false affidavit
2. encouraging Lewinsky to give false testimony if and when she was called to testify
3. concealing gifts he had given to Lewinsky that had been subpoenaed
4. attempting to secure a job for Lewinsky to influence her testimony
5. permitting his lawyer to make false statements characterizing Lewinsky's affidavit
6. attempting to tamper with the possible testimony of his secretary Betty Currie
7. making false and misleading statements to potential grand jury witnesses

--Percy

This is a link to the full text of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Update on Impeachment. Limbaugh is lying to you. Pelosi doesn't utter the word "Russia" even once. I refer you to Pelosi's text linked to above. Marc Levin is lying to you, too. You're not clear precisely what Levin claimed Pelosi said, but she didn't say anything incorrect about American history. I refer you to Pelosi's text linked to above. You only think that because you're listening to people who are lying to you. People like Limbaugh and Levin are counting on that quality in their listeners. Clearly there's someone present who would benefit from such a presentation. Again, they're lying to you. You can prove it to yourself. This is everything the Constitution has to say about impeachment:

• Article 1, Section 2 Clause 5:
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  The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
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• Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6 and 7:
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  The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present.

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  Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
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• Article II, Section 2:
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  [The President] ... shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.
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• Article II, Section 4:
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  The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The above is a very few number of words considering the length of the Constitution. Please explain to us what parts the Democrats are violating.--Percy