I've noticed that the forum's libertarians (Santara, cambo, etc.) have been unusually silent regarding the Trump-Ukraine scandal. I imagine they have a lot of mixed feelings since they aren't bound to a particular party and their worldview breaks the traditional left/right paradigm.

I'm unusually silent altogether, lately. I'm burned out on politics in the Trump era. Certainly haven't paid any real attention to this particular brouhaha. My Trump friends are convinced the left is trying to stage a coup, facilitated by a complicit media. My liberlol friends can't stop screeching TDS chants and looking for Nazis to punch. Intellectual positions on policy have gone by the wayside, we're in an era of personality cults. You can't debate with that.

Much to my sadness.

Nothingburger just like a bunch of the others so far.

The treats aren't even noteworthy, US national security was never threatened.

Again he said libertarian or and anarchist.

You can assume the neo liberals and neo cons are doing blood deals and corruption scandals to the teeth and it's the tip of the iceberg with what gets talked about in the media.

I haven't followed it much, either. I'm tired of the current political landscape, as well. From what I have heard, I'm of the "let's wait and see what comes of it" mindset. In some ways, it appears that Trump went all "it would certainly be a shame if you happened to fall and break your leg", La Cosa Nostra style. But I haven't seen anything that would explicitly confirm a threat to withhold aid in exchange for investigating a political rival. It's implied, but not necessarily to a "beyond a reasonable doubt" point.

And if this whole thing backfires on the Democrats, and ends up taking down Biden as a result, then so be it. Corruption should be weeded out wherever it's found.

Nobody wants to hear about intellectual positions on healthcare, national debt, foreign policy, infrastructure, immigration, etc
We want slogans on t-shirts, masked goons terrorizing people in the streets and news cycles about tweets.

the entire thing is a Rorschach test. there's implication by trump of a quid pro quo, but nothing cemented. same goes for Biden.

now the further, and most important questions:

1. is it worse to shakedown Ukraine with an implied quid-pro-quo (biden), or shakedown Ukraine with an implied quid-pro-quo to oust an implied quid-pro-quo (Trump)

2. does being president, vs Vice president, change the above?

3. does the underlying geopolitical situation in Ukraine and it's change over time make one worse/better than the other?

in my opinion, what Biden did was worse. but what Trump did was far more careless, and from a higher position of power. AND at a time when the geopolitical landscape and Russian aggression are lessened (compared to when Russia first rolled in and it looked like all of Ukraine might be under moscow control in a matter of weeks). So really when Biden pulled his move, it was CLEARLY more implied quid-pro-quo, it was at a pivotal point in Ukrainian need, and was for nepotism rather than political hackery.

overall tho, the "this here is the reason to impeach" narrative is horse pulp. it becomes hard to say what is a line to cross when the democrats have drawn 387 lines in the sand while backing up.

What I havn't seen mentioned anywhere here is that: the fired Ukrainian prosecutor, was stalling corruption cases just like the one about the company where Hunter worked. Several G7 countries already wanted him removed for not taking action and the IMF had already threatened to use financial sanctions.

Question 4:

a: Did the political climate within the G7 and already proposed sanctions from the IMF, justify a US vice-president to use similar sanctions with a shorter deadline to get a deal done?

b: Compared to a president to use not sanctions, but the leverage of a US trade to start a foreign criminal investigation on a political rival?

Imo the first part is controversially commendable, Trump would have been insanely proud of himself ^^.. The second part is..

5:

Destroying democracy from within, and thank god for a 8 year limit ?
^

This post was edited by Knoppie on Sep 30 2019 12:39pm