The Right Side of the News

Can you show that those "explanations" use an originalist approach, or you are not an originalist and you accept a non-originalist argument ... which means you are not an originalist. Can you show an originalist basis for this belief of yours? Again, can you show an originalist basis for this belief of yours?It seems pretty clear to me that there are reasonable limits as I said: You don't give me any reason to think otherwise. This is laughable, and totally incongruous to a purported originalist mindset. You might just as well say that Jefferson, Madison, et al would probably change their minds about weapon possession, which curiously is what gun control advocates have been saying.In other words you take what you believe and then cherry pick arguments from others to suit your belief/s. And you're going to use guns to combat this?It boggles the mind that you would think making the world cleaner and better needs to be combated by groups of rag-tag gun individuals with AK-47's and the like running around shooting at rising sea level.Curiously I think the biggest threat to "the U.S. today is in more danger of government searches and seizures than it ever has been in history" because of ICE and Humpty Dumbty Trumpty's treatment of immigrants ... but I don't see you being in any way disturbed by that problem.Do you think people should arm themselves with AK-47 and bazookas etc and provide armed resistance to ICE?Just asking. That was caused by US CIA meddling and sanctions?Have Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc, collapsed? No? Then the problem is not democracies with socialist programs (like welfare, healthcare for all, free education, police, national defense, etc) within a capitalist system where taxes are used to benefit the people, more specifically the working people, as opposed to companies and rich people.What scares you about healthy, educated, happy people (these nordic nations have the highest happiness in the world) living an economically secure life?

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US-Led Economic War, Not Socialism, Is Tearing Venezuela Apart

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Americans have been trained by decades of Cold War propaganda to look for any confirmation that socialism means poverty. A quick, simplistic portrait of the problems currently facing Venezuela, coupled with the fact that President Nicolas Maduro describes himself as a Marxist, can certainly give them such a confirmation. However, the actual, undisputed history of socialist construction around the world, including recent decades in Venezuela, tells a completely different story.

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Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in 1999. His election was viewed as a referendum on the extreme free market policies enacted in Venezuela during the 1990s. In December, when I walked through the neighborhoods of central Caracas, Venezuelans spoke of these times with horror.

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Venezuelans told of how the privatizations mandated by the International Monetary Fund made life in Venezuela almost unlivable during the 1990s. Garbage wouldn’t be collected. Electricity would go off for weeks. Haido Ortega, a member of a local governing body in Venezuela, said: Under previous governments we had to burn tires and go on strike just to get electricity, have the streets fixed, or get any investment.

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Chavez took office on a platform advocating a path between capitalism and socialism. He restructured the government-owned oil company so that the profits would go into the Venezuelan state, not the pockets of Wall Street corporations. With the proceeds of Venezuela’s oil exports, Chavez funded a huge apparatus of social programs.

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The artificially low oil prices have left the Venezuelan state cash-starved, prompting a crisis in the funding of the social programs that were key to strengthening the United Socialist Party.

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It is odd that the mainstream press blames socialism for the food problems in Venezuela, when the food distributors remain in the hands of private corporations. As Venezuelan political analyst Jesus Silva told me recently: Most food in Venezuela is imported by private companies, they ask for dollars subsidized by the government oil sales to do that; they rarely produce anything or invest their own money.

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According to Silva, the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the U.S., in addition to the oil crisis, have made it more difficult for the Venezuelan government to pay the private food importing companies in U.S. dollars. In response, the food companies are running general sabotage.

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It is not socialism per se but a cascade of reasons, some of them imposed from the outside.But even so, what is being advocate in the US is not socialism but FDR "new deal" type programs while leaving capitalism as the main economic model, using social programs to benefit people to temper the bad effects of excessive capitalism (like poverty, income insecurity, etc). But you're not worried at all about a collapse into Fascism and the destruction of our democratic republic from within by Moscow McConnell and Humpty Dumbty Trumpty ... sad.Enjoy

All the testimony is evidence. Sondham is no Democrat. The stories are consistent and damning for Trump.And neither you nor anyone has any meaningful response. Was there a quid pro quo?...The answer is yes. Run away! Run away!

I'm supposed to take somebody's opinion for evidence? Huh? Especially someone who clearly said Trump said he wanted no quid pro quo? Eh?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Nobody cares what you take as evidence. It's what the investigators take as evidence that counts.

Describing what you saw and heard is not just opinion. Trump did it. The stories are clear and consistent.Sondland faithfully recounted Trump's obvious self-serving lie, which he said after he got caught. But you believe that everyone who protests innocence is telling the truth, right? If you were in charge nobody who claims innocence would ever go to prison, amirite?

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As Pompeo faces scrutiny over his role in Ukraine, documents further tie him to Giuliani
The State Department records show Rudy Giuliani reaching out to Pompeo in March, around when Giuliani began promoting investigations into the Bidens and Burisma.

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A tranche of State Department documents obtained by the advocacy group American Oversight suggest Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani discussed US-Ukraine policy as early as March 2019, further tying Pompeo to the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

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The documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request lay out Giuliani’s efforts to establish direct contact with Pompeo. They also seem to support the public testimony of US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, who told lawmakers Wednesday everyone was in the loop when it came to Trump’s campaign to pressure Ukraine into investigating the Biden family.

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The nearly 100 pages of new documents could point to the beginning of that involvement for Pompeo, who has worked to distance himself from the pressure campaign.

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They show Giuliani’s personal assistant, Jo Ann Zafonte, reaching out to Trump’s then personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, and asking for Pompeo’s contact information on March 27.

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Giuliani has said he gave Pompeo a dossier with complaints about former US Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in between those two calls, on March 28. Yovanovitch was dismissed from her post shortly after; Trump has said he fired her because she was not an angel, because she wouldn’t hang his picture in the US embassy in Ukraine, and because he was told she didn’t like him. Yovanovitch has testified she believes she was fired because her anti-corruption work interfered with the business plans of Giuliani and his associates.

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So he was "in the loop" about Biden/Burisma etcthen we have

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Lev Parnas Helped Rep. Devin Nunes’ Investigations

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The indicted Giuliani associate helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for the Republican congressman in 2018.

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Nunes is the top Republican on the House committee handling the impeachment hearingshearings where Parnas’ name has repeatedly come up.

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Congressional records show Nunes traveled to Europe from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3, 2018. Three of his aidesHarvey, Scott Glabe, and George Pappastraveled with him, per the records. U.S. government funds paid for the group’s four-day trip, which cost just over $63,000.

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The travel came as Nunes, in his role on the House Intelligence Committee, was working to investigate the origins of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election-meddling.

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Parnas’ assistance to Nunes’ team has not been previously reported. A spokesperson for Nunes did not respond to requests for comment

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So he meets with known corrupt Ukrainians to look into evidence to backup Humpty Dumbty Trumpy's conspiracy theory based on Russian propaganda, and then claims in the hearing that the issue was rooting out Ukrainian corruption ...Enjoy

Only if they're Republicans. If they're Democrats, they're going down.

I stand corrected.

Good, proud of you. Trump appears before teenage audience and declares, 'I can do whatever I want'Trump Said It, ‘I Can Do Whatever I Want’ In Bonkers Interview. Above The Law, Much?Trump Claims Article 2 Gives Him ‘The Right To Do Whatever I Want As President’Try again. Which is why he withdrew suddenly from Syria after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan letting the Turks invade and letting Russian troops into area held by US soldiers, taking over their barracks.Which is why he tried to Bribe newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky by withholding aid to do some dirt digging on Biden/Burisma/DNC Server fantasy conspiracy idiot theory, again weakening the US foreign policy, putting Ukrainian soldiers in weaker position and strengthening Russia's position.Which is why he discussed top secret information at Mara Lago over dinner in public ... with Russians. Can you tell me what treason you think Democrats would do? Conspire with a foreign government to hack the election like he has done? So Trump is wrong to ask Ukraine to do it? Five comments:First I think Hillary and the DNC were wrong in their campaign to block Bernie, and that if they had not done that the emails would not have been a problem for them.Second the "Steele Dossier" was started by Never-TrumpersThird the company that was involved with the "Steele Dossier" (Fusion GPS) is an American company, not a foreign country.Fourth the investigations into Hillary re Bengazi were longer than this hearing on Trumps abuse of power.Fifth you didn't answer the question again It's a simple question: is it okay for Trump to ask a foreign country for personal political aid in spite of it being against Federal Laws. Bribery is trivial, using the position of president to extort something of personal benefit is trivial ... got it. Creating disasters as he goes because he doesn't understand the value of diplomacy and treaties. And proving in the process that business management is not a good working model for government management. Carrying on a trend from Obama ... from wikiMeanwhile more workers are working two or three jobs to make ends meet, and available jobs are minimum wage or worse.Plus you have more workers who are outside the unemployment calculations. Considered unemployable. More homeless people. More poverty.Plus you have the highest farm bankruptcies and suicides ... Amid Trump Tariffs, Farm Bankruptcies And Suicides Rise That's the shoes you put on when you claim to be an originalist ... if they fit wear them.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .Edited by RAZD, : Fusion GPS for cloudstrike

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.

Crowdstrike isn't associated with the Steele Dossier, that was Fusion GPS. The people who've bought into the russian misinformation campaign allege that Crowdstrike is behind the "disappearance" of the DNC server.

What Sonderland said was that Trump said to him "no quid pro quo" that he "wanted no quid pro quo" ... and "talk to Rudy" ... but that in fact there was an actual quid pro quo because of the information he had from Rudy acting for the president.See the distinction?Trump lies, we know that. It is well documented. So the question is: who do you trust more ... (lying) Trump on the lawn, or Sonderland testifying under oath?Enjoy

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

It's interesting to see how many of the people Trump selected done came and went and are now speaking out against him.If anyone remembers HR McMaster it is worth reading his book "Dereliction of Duty" once again since it is relevant to this Administration.

Lindsey Graham, Legal ScholarThe cops have stormed a bank in time to snare
The robbers. Caught red-handed, they’re still there.
Their trial would hinge, per Lindsey Graham’s quotes,
On who called 911 and how he votes.