The Right Side of the News

Your word against mine bucko.

It's on record in many places that I'm right. Bloomberg - Are you a robot?:

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4. What criminal charges came out of this?
None. Burisma issued a statement in 2017 saying that “all legal proceedings and pending criminal allegations” against it and Zlochevsky were closed and that it paid an extra 180 million hryvnias ($7 million) in taxes. There’s also no known evidence that any of the investigations ever involved Hunter Biden. Ukraine’s former prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, told Bloomberg News in May that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.

5. What does Trump say?
Without substantiation, Trump has said and tweeted that the Biden family “was paid off, pure and simple” and accused the family of corruption, extortion and “pillaging” foreign countries. He’s called them “stone-cold crooked” and publicly urged Ukraine and China to open criminal investigations of them. (Trump’s contention that Hunter Biden flew to Beijing aboard the vice president’s aircraft and left a billionaire -- the episode he wants China to investigate -- isn’t supported by the available facts, either. Still, Hunter Biden said he’s resigning from the board of a Chinese-backed private equity company and would forgo all foreign work if his father is elected president.)

6. Where does Joe Biden fit in?
Biden, as the Obama administration’s point person on Ukraine, pressed successfully for the ouster of Viktor Shokin as Ukraine’s prosecutor general in 2016. At the heart of the allegation by Trump and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is that Biden did so to derail an investigation into Burisma. “Joe Biden promised Ukraine $1 billion if they fired the prosecutor investigating his son’s company,” the Trump re-election campaign says in a television commercial running in states holding early presidential primary elections.
7. What evidence suggests that was Biden’s motive?
Pretty much none. The problem with Shokin -- in the eyes of U.S. leaders, their Western allies, the International Monetary Fund and many Ukrainians -- wasn’t that he was being too aggressive about corruption, but that he was being far too lax. In May, Bloomberg News reported that prosecutors in Ukraine had shelved the investigation into Zlochevsky by 2015, meaning Hunter Biden didn’t stand to benefit from the prosecutor’s ouster. Vitaliy Kasko, who pursued the case against Burisma’s owner as deputy prosecutor and is now first deputy prosecutor in the new government, told Bloomberg News that there had been no U.S. pressure to close that case. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also told Bloomberg News that Biden never asked him to close any cases.

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Politico challenges Politico's reporting on Ukraine's 2016 pro-Hillary efforts (a strongly right-wing source)

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The newsgroup reports that there is “no evidence” to support the idea that Ukraine worked hand-in-hand with the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign to torpedo then-GOP nominee Donald Trump.

“According to Giuliani," Politico notes, “Ukrainian officials conspired with the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to help boost the Democratic nominee’s campaign and damage Trump’s candidacy. No evidence has emerged to support that idea."

This comes as a bit of a surprise considering reporters Ken Vogel and David Stern reported for Politico in 2017 that “Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office.”

...

Vogel, who reports now for the New York Times, and Stern wrote a lengthy, in-depth, and seemingly well-sourced article for Politico detailing efforts by Ukrainian officials to feed damaging information about Trump and his associates to top Democratic operatives during the 2016 election. But now the same newsgroup reports that there is "no evidence" to support the notion that Ukrainian officials “conspired” with Democratic officers to destroy the Republican nominee.

Huh?

"The 2017 article detailed several instances in which Ukrainian government officials sought to raise questions about Donald Trump and his campaign," a spokesman for Politico said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. "These included alleged instances of cooperation by officials in the Ukrainian embassy to the United States with the efforts of Alexandra Chalupa, a consultant to the Democratic National Committee, to research then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. Chalpua said her research was undertaken on her own, though she briefed DNC officials."

He added, "The story also outlined ways in which a Ukrainian parliamentarian in the ruling party touted ledgers that purported to show $12.7 million in payments earmarked for Manafort from a pro-Russian party in Ukraine. And the story cited social media posts and an op-ed by Ukrainian government officials that were highly critical of Trump and his candidacy. The article did not state that the Ukrainian government conspired with the Clinton campaign or the DNC."

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Edited by Admin, : Add a missing double quote, fix the markup.

Golly Gosh, isn't that a surprise. They'll even trash their own if it doesn't give the currently accepted political position. Golly golly gosharoony.

Yes it is the Democrats trying to destroy the Repubic and just about succeeding already....

So do you believe that the Democrats and "the Left" should be destroyed first?

Do you believe the Republicans should do anything and everything to gain and maintain power, even use methods that are contrary to ordinary small-d democratic norms?

Added by edit:

Having just reread this post, I feel I should add a clarification:

I'm not trying to put words into your mouth. I'm curious about how dangerous you think the Left is and what extraordinary measures you think the Republicans are justified taking.

Edited by Chiroptera, : No reason given.

I think the **** is extremely dangerous but I don't trust the Republicans either. A lot of them don't have much of a clue about what's really going on. I'm not calling for any drastic measures, I just write what I write hoping against hope it might wake some people up. I do wish that the moderates among the Democrats might wake up to what's going on in their prrty and use normal legal means to put the brakes on. Otherwise I would hope the ***** would come out above the Fake News somehow but that's a tall order when it's clear that the **** has a deathgrip on the media, or it's the ******* media that have the death grip on the *****, not clear sometimes. But no I'm not calling for drastic measures. Actually if the **** does pull off the coup they've been working at since Trump took office, but really before that back a few decades, the consequences for the country will be so horrendous even people **** you might wake up, or there might be a civil war. Or maybe not. Maybe we'll just go down with Venezuela and never rise again.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Admin, : Fix spelling.

Have you eve3r considered addressing the issues rather than posting meaningless drivel?

Of course not. If you ever came in contact with reality you could be seriously injured.

The Democrats are using normal legal means to oppose Trump.

JonF writes: The Biden investigation was closed a year before Joe Biden and many other governments called for the prosecutor's ouster because he wasn't doing any investigating.

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

They got their aid without any quid pro quo of any sort. And Obama didn't give them any.

The US has been providing substantial aid to Ukraine since the Russian seizure of Crimea. What changed under Trump was the decision to give them guns - the Obama administration thought it would be too provocative to Russia and would escalate the conflict further to provide Ukraine with weaponry. That didn't mean they gave nothing - Trump dismissed the aid provided under Obama as 'blankets', but it included (for examples) radar systems used to detect incoming enemy fire.

Trump did not decide to give more aid, he simply decided that that money Congress had already voted to provide under Obama could also be used to buy missiles.

Missiles which are stored unused hundreds of miles from the front lines, as required by the agreement,.

So it isn't a trial, so what. Depriving Trump of the opportunity to confront his accuser is just ...barbarian. ...

Complain to the GOP -- they set up the rules for House Hearings.

Judge Napolitano: As frustrating as it is, Schiff is following the rules

... Why hould Trump testify at all? ...

Because he could swear under oath about what he did.

Because he could prove his innocence ... if he is innocent ...

Hillary testified under oath for the Bengazi hearing conducted on the same rules by the GOP.

... And the more the "witnesses" talk the more obvious that ...

... he is guilty becomes.

He had means, motive and opportunity.

It is entirely within his standard bullying behavior.

... But protesting this "whistleblower" is just to project Schiff and those who put him up to it, and keep the truth about his anti-Trump connections from coming out.

And yet everything the whistleblower said has been corroborated by the non-partisan staff that had to deal with the issue.

Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano says evidence for impeachment is "overwhelming"

If you've been following the hearings, and I've only heard bits and pieces of it myelf, but you mmight have heard one of the Republicans state something about how the whistleblower's identity is well known and that he knows Schiff knows his identity too and has been lying when he says he doesn't. That's some evidence. His identity is known to everybody, I know it too.

Curiously I followed the whole thing live, not bits and pieces filtered by some biased source or another. The people saying this were Jordan and Nunes. These claims have not been verified.

Again, though, it does not matter who the whistleblower is because the issues raised have been verified -- what he said is/was true.

They got their aid without any quid pro quo of any sort. And Obama didn't give them any.

The aid package in question was delayed by Trump

Stalled Ukraine military aid concerned members of Congress for months

The president of Ukraine scheduled an interview/appearance on CNN

The whistleblower complaint was made public

The House announces an investigation

Two days later the aid was delivered

Then the CNN interview/appearance was cancelled

Trump got caught and delivered the aid so it would not be evidence of quid pro quo ...

... but it remains a fact that that is what he tried to do. and that remains a felony.

We also now see that he has done similar extortion on South Korea ...

Trump's Extortion Doctrine | The American Conservative

It's like he thinks this is how diplomacy is done

... just to ... keep the truth ... from coming out.

You can't handle the truth.

Enjoy

A lot of them [the Republicans] don't have much of a clue about what's really going on.

Boy, ain't that the truth!

I'm not calling for any drastic measures....

Fair enough.

I'm still kind of curious, though, what you think about - just to pick one example that has been discussed on this board - North Carolina Republicans' attempt to extreme gerrymand their election districts.

Do you think it's perfectly acceptable behavior for any majority party?

Do you think it violates basic democratic norms but is necessary to combat evil Leftists?

Do you think that it's inexcusably poor behavior for anyone to do regardless of reason?

Or do you have another take altogether?

Actually if the Left does pull off the coup they've been working at since Trump took office....

What coup? Surely not the impeachment? Even if the Senate were to remove Trump from office, Pence would be President, not some Leftist.

Missiles which are stored unused hundreds of miles from the front lines, as required by the agreement,.

But which are capable of utterly destroying the Russian tanks from those locations. I have this from a marine who was deployed at the front.

Thus they are a deterrent from Russia using those tanks to attack the Ukranian army.

They can't escalate the conflict, but they can deter it.

Enjoy

But which are capable of utterly destroying the Russian tanks from those locations

not possible, Javelins are man portable anti-tank weapons they have a max range of 3 miles.

Javelins have a range of 2500 meters, not hundreds of miles.

They could be deployed fairly quickly, and they are an anti-tank deterrent.

Somewhere I read that the Russians haven't used tanks in Ukraine since 2015 but I can't find it or confirm it.