Goom already put it straight:


corruption != illegality

In the case here, the Biden's were clearly acting corrupt without breaking laws.



Just for the record: I never bought into or alluded to the crowstrike conspiracy theory.





Oh come on. I clearly wouldnt support impeaching Biden over Ukraine either (if he was still holding a government office).

Is my position really that hard to understand, or am I THAT shitty at getting my point across?

I consider both the behavior of Biden and Trump to be corrupt and bad and worthy of condemnation. But since 'impeachment plus conviction/removal from office' is a huge hurdle, I dont think that either man's misconduct in this case clears the standard for impeachment. (Which would be purely hypothetical with regard to Biden anyway since he no longer holds an elected office.) To clear this huge hurdle, we would need rocksolid proof for very substantial misconduct.

Like... if we rate misconduct on a scale from 1 to 10, I would consider Biden's dealings with Ukraine a 5/10, Trump's a 6/10, and the hurdle for impeachment would lie at an 8/10.



I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your other points, but this one is unfair. No matter how much we hate it, and no matter how horrible the Saudis are, they are still just too damn important for the world economy to stop working with them. Obama wouldnt have stopped working with them over Kashoggi either.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 31 2019 09:25am

You're using republican talking points, although i give you credit enough to say you're not a parrot.

impeachment doesn't have to be brought up on a single charge. impeachment can be brought up through the lens of preponderance of abuses. and impeachment doesn't have to be even necessarily on illegal behavior alone. the legislature can remove a sitting president just for conduct while in office, it's never happened, but it's not against the rules. and they tried with clinton, he got caught getting a hummer in the oval office (100% legal) and they tried a perjury trap.

people are trying to compare Biden to Trump with Ukraine isolated in a vacuum. when in reality it's more like Biden Ukraine vs Trump Ukraine + Trump obstruction + Trump's use of EOs + Trump's twitter, etc etc etc.

this impeachment is about the straw that broke the camels back. in fairness they've been tossing straw at him for years hoping something would stick. but Trump isn't on trial for Ukraine, that's simple the reason they're choosing for "why now?".

they've wanted Trump impeached forever, and it still wont pass through Senate. but each scandal made impeachment more and more likely, and the democrats couldnt be more clear in their messaging. "look at the trail of abuses in this president's wake. most corrupt president ever. yet another scandal out of the white house....." etc.

From here i can say it's definitely importants subjects. National security and integrity are real.

Unlike this BlOwJoB story 2 decades ago. Honestly.

This post was edited by Saucisson6000 on Oct 31 2019 09:56am

keep moving that goalpost in order to justify your blatant disregard for obviously crooked behaviour. partisanship is a powerful thing, but at some point it just makes you look dumb. asking foreign governments to help you with your election is illegal ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/52/30121 ) - and trump not only did it during his call to ukraine (as detailed in the official white house 'transcript', which already leaves out some damning passages), but on national television as well - and you all saw it.

just for the record, i clearly stated that i do NOT expect him to get removed from office for this. not because he should not be, not because he hasn't committed plenty of impeachable offences, no, simply because the republicans in congress are partisan shills like you - as long as someone has the magic (R) behind their name and does what the donors want, they could literally rape babies on live tv and you people would find a way not to believe your lying eyes.
that's why not a single republican wants to talk about the substance of the impeachment inquiry, and rather lies about the process being illegal / unconstitutional, or tries to smear the witnesses, who are merely confirming what trump and his lapdogs already admitted on tv...

It's a false equivalence. It was US FOREIGN POLICY for Joe Biden to play hardball with Ukraine in order to root out corruption. That's why it was done in the open. He had the support of Congress and the Executive branch officials were all on the same page.

As for Hunter Biden, that's literally buying name recognition. Go to ANY board in the United States and you'll see people who are equally UNQUALIFIED. To be pissed at Hunter and no one else is partisan hackery. There's no QUESTION that Hunter was unqualified. It sucks that that's the way the world works but there's nothing extraordinary about it. Another aspect to the story. If this was John Kerry's kid, would Trump have gone through the same amount of effort? The answer is undoubtedly no.

Now, let's look at the Ukraine situation. The Trump administration was running two parallel foreign policies which is why there was so much fucking confusion between administration officials. One of those tracks was run by Trump's "personal attorney." How can you pretend that they are the same? They really shouldn't be mentioned in the same paragraph, let alone sentence.

Oct 31, 2019 09:57:30 AM - The Impeachment Hoax is hurting our Stock Market. The Do Nothing Democrats don’t care!

=> Awesome i didn't know US was a communist country.

The Hunter Biden thing literally happens at every level of the economy. "This is my son, he's gonna manage the store now", or "This is the largest shareholder's son, so he's gonna be on the board of directors now" happens constantly even in private companies in "communist" places like China.

In one sense, he did break laws- Ukrainian laws. Its just not in the jurisdiction of the US.
The issue being that Joe Biden was overseeing a US backed foreign policy of installing a puppet government in Ukraine through Euromaidan to kick out all the Russian oligarchs, and replace them with... themselves. The Russian owner of Burisma Holdings fled to Moscow and they put a former Polish PM, a CIA director and Hunter Biden on the board to all profit out the nose through it. It was plainly corruption, but it was foreign corruption, in a jurisdiction where the US was micromanaging the prosecutors office





But its more than just nepotism or buying name recognition, it was more or less plundering a conquered nation. It was the official US foreign policy that we wanted to 'root out the corruption' from Ukraine, but only insofar as we were replacing the corrupt russian figures with corrupt western figures. Likewise, Russian aligned figures insisted they were rooting out corruption, but only focused on the western-aligned guys. Our prosecutor replaced their prosecutor, investigations into our guys were replaced by investigations into their guys. The Russian aligned Crimea held a democratic secession vote we called illegitimate, we replaced the government in a coup they consider illegitimate, back and forth, blah blah balh.

The point being, this wasn't like Joe Biden was just passing the torch of an empire to his son or profiting off his name like Don Jr would tweet about. It wasn't money that belonged to Joe in the first place. It was the proceeds from the Ukrainian economy, previously siphoned off to Russian oligarchs, was captured in a hostile takeover and doled out to the victors- a board of western figures and the daughter of the former oligarch as a figurehead. Hunter Biden was placed there as an invading mongol lord might put his son in charge of a conquered territory.

These sorts of geopolitical tussles are above the petty lens of "legal or illegal". The law in the US doesn't apply, the law in the Ukraine is nothing but puppet theater. You could look at it through an ethical lens- by our own stated moral imperative of 'freeing the Ukrainian people from corruption', Joe Biden was blatantly unethically engaging in the same corruption he was vowing to root out. There's no pretense that Hunter Biden's no-show job collecting millions from Burisma was legitimate. But who should be accountable? How? When the US was engaged in a very reasoned and purposeful geopolitical struggle with Russia over Ukraine, was our side supposed to be saints while Russians had no such moral qualms?

I am fine with that just like I'm fine with installing puppets in Iraq. If there is an agreement between Congress and the Executive to further American interests, that's fine. I may not necessarily agree with every foreign policy goal, but having consensus in government is absolutely necessary. To me, the issue at hand is that Trump had fucking RUDY GIULIANI running a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine that caused significant concern among other administration officials. All because Trump is an insecure twat. You just can't do that. Imagine what would happen if we had someone who actually knew what they were doing?

The more muddy issues here are-
Where does the line between personal gain / political gain and furthering American interests get drawn?
Who is conducting the real shadow foreign policy, the unelected bureaucrats opposing the agenda of the elected president, or the unofficial representatives advancing the president's agenda?

Remember, we're only discussing this because people in the intelligence community have been so adamantly opposed to the president on personal, political and legal levels that they'd been trying to undermine and overthrow him in pretty much every way short of assassination. Investigations, leaking, wiretapping, ambushing flynn, whistleblowing, shadow diplomacy, fueling impeachment, you name it. How can we say that in Biden's case its acceptable because whether it was ethical or not, he was empowered to conduct foreign policy on behalf of the Obama administration- but in Trump's case its not okay? I've listened to dozens of hypocritical pundits who will say a bunch of bullshit like how the US shadow intervention in Ukraine is the consensus of the US and her allies and the UN and totally legitimate and all that, and its treason for Trump to oppose it. It boils down to TDS'ers saying Trump is an illegitimate president. He was elected, all these people serve at his pleasure in the executive branch, they're supposed to carry out his policies whether they agree with them or not. If its heresy for Trump to even express skepticism towards our position on Ukraine, then what was the point of holding an election?