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"The US House of Representatives has passed a resolution to formally proceed with the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.
The measure details how the inquiry will move into a more public phase. It was not a vote on whether the president should be removed from office.
This was the first test of support in the Democratic-controlled House for the impeachment process.
The White House condemned the vote, which passed along party lines.
Only two Democrats - representing districts that Mr Trump won handily in 2016 - voted against the resolution, along with all Republicans, for a total count of 232 in favour and 196 against."
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Trump Impeachment: House Votes to Formalise Inquiry
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Everything you know is wrong!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @05:05PM (8 children)
Do you think Biden's son earned his position in Ukraine on merit? Wiki has a decent bio [wikipedia.org] on him. He's a grade A silver spooned loser. He started off his career at MBNA America, a bank which was also a major contributor to Biden. He stumbled around to Daddy's various gigs until Daddy won the vice presidency. That's when things get really good. One great one was his military commissioning. Even though Jr had absolutely no military training or experience, had a drug record, and was too old to join the military - he got a special exemption from Daddy and become a direct commissioned officer in the navy. He even got a special commissioning ceremony in the White House, administered by.. yeah, Daddy. A month later he was kicked out of the Navy after testing positive for cocaine. You really just can't make this stuff up, it sounds too absurd to be real.
Anyhow on day 1 of Daddy becoming VP he sets up a new 'consulting' firm, and stumbles onward finding himself 'somehow' on the board of Burisma Holdings shipping a salary of about $50k/month. Perhaps they were were seeking cocaine expertise. And go figure, the prosecutor that Joe Biden gloated about firing had previously been investigating Burisma Holdings for corruption. Seriously, please try to set aside your biases for just one minute. This is what real corruption looks like. It's in your face. Trying to frame the request to investigate this corruption, as corruption, is something straight out of Saul Alinsky: "Accuse your opponent of what only you are doing, as you are doing it, to create confusion, cloud the issue, and inoculate voters against any evidence of your guilt."
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Beyond this, in the log of the call there is no suggestion that the funds would be withheld if Ukraine did not investigate. By contrast, Biden did exactly what the DNC is trying to claim Trump did. This [cfr.org] is a transcript of Biden's talk with the CFR. These words are literally how Biden himself describes the situation:
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That is what "quid quo pro" looks like, that is what corruption looks like, and what we see today is what projection -on a radical scale- looks like.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @05:26PM
Stick to Twitter, Donald.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @06:14PM (1 child)
I wish I hadn't been so sardonic above. I think many people do not realize these things. After all the media is not exactly being forthcoming with these sort of facts. If my juvenile tone pushed somebody away, please do reconsider. And definitely check out Biden's interview especially as contrasted against the recent Ukraine phone call.
It's tiresome reading everyday at sites such as the New York Times that 2+2=5. But you only realize that 2+2=5 if you actually have a decent understanding of the facts of a situation. And most people do not, since they rely exclusively on the media to inform them. And the media today has relatively little interest in providing an impartial overview of the facts. And so it makes it easy to become somewhat more radicalized in the opposite direction, which is obviously reflected in my tone in that post. But in rereading it, it's easy to see me as loony as the guys claiming the border detentions are just a step away from Auschwitz. I promise I'm not! ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @07:31PM
“Sardonic” is not a word that springs to mind from that wall of text.
“Bloviating,” however...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @08:05PM
Your lack of self-awareness is astounding, to say the least.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday November 02 2019, @04:42AM
According to an interview I heard a while back (can't think of the guy's name and too lazy to go find it again) the real root here was that Putin had made life uncomfortable for Ukrainian mobsters, who concocted a scheme to discredit (and hopefully depose) Putin so business could go on as before. All the hoorah that devolved onto Trump was, from their POV, mere collateral damage; and Biden was just a convenient access point for leverage against Russia.
I don't know how true that is, but the guy had names and dates and made a convincing argument, and it all dovetails neatly into Diana West's information (The Red Thread).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday November 02 2019, @07:13AM
Good post, except the job was actually more like $80k/month. https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hunter-biden-served-as-ceremonial-figure-on-burisma-board-for-80000-per-month/ [nationalreview.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @05:16PM (1 child)
Except that you're wrong about the following things...
... Nepotism is when the party with higher power arranges or allows favors in exchange for a position. Like when Trump becomes President, and suddenly all his kids are working in the West Wing for him. Have you shown that Vice President Biden arranged the Burisma position for him? No. And the naval commission, well, all commissions are by direction of the President, so that's a non-starter.
... Corruption is when the party inside the corporation (Hunter) arranges or asks for favors in exchange. Like when Trump, in response to being told Ukraine wants to buy arms (and, implied in background, is waiting for money), asks for "a favor," instead of saying, "Yes, you get the money and the missiles just because we want you to win. Now could you do something for us in addition?" Did Hunter ask Daddy to intervene in Ukraine? No.
... The prosecutor, Shokin, was not investigating Burisma at all according to people who worked in his office. Burisma had been investigated by the prior prosector, and Shokin sat on that handed over investigation and did nothing with it, just like he did enough other investigations that the remainder of the world recognized Shokin was either incompetent or corrupt. That Shokin had problems was known to IMF, EU, and the State department.
The entire world knew that the US would play hardball, and approved.
As opposed to Rudy's continuing to persist in believing in theories that have already been defunct. And maneuvering in secret that nobody in the world knew about or approved of.
.... By the way, do you notice that what Biden did was a threat, yes, but one that was not carried out? It would be interesting to see what would have happened if Ukraine had called the bluff, but they didn't, and no aid was actually withheld. BIG difference.
You see, by Biden getting Shokin kicked out he did Burisma no favors. Shokin's successor actually did work the investigation, and found evidence that before Biden joined their board there were tax irregularities that were then settled by fine in 2017.
So, what you actually see with Biden is someone playing by the rules. (Yes, the very edge of the rules. And what Hunter did was not smart, but not illegal. And Daddy had nothing to do with that, unlike Trump.)
What quid pro quo looks like, by contrast:
1) Establish aid as approved by Congress - direct funds that will be given to them.
2) Actually withhold those funds, in contravention of Congress' orders. To a degree that responsibilities were shifted around when OMB wouldn't accept what the President wanted in withholding the funds because they weren't sure it was legal. Quid.
3) Ukraine needs weaponry which they'll by from the US, and needs the money to do it with. Quid.
4) Place Ukraine into a position where they desperately wanted reassurance from the United States about their partnership.
5) Make that reassurance (and future aid) conditional on their playing ball on Burisma/Cloudstrike/Biden, BY NAME. Quo.
6) (I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.... [we want aid, says Ukraine]... I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it." [whitehouse.gov]) - Pro.
7) President may actually believe he never established a this-for-that relationship because idiots on his staff tell him so. Yet Ukraine was indeed manipulated. And this is not about corruption, this is about political investigation in a way which benefits Donald J. Trump personally without providing any added benefit to the nation itself. "I'm not shooting at you, I'm not shooting at you..." as you pull the trigger. See?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 09 2019, @02:22PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/opinion/letters/quid-pro-quo.html [nytimes.com]
Extortion is the more accurate term.