ChiGoose

LOL. Pathetic.

Ok, I guess you're just content to be mislead and live in a fantasy world because it feels good. Keep ignoring reality because facts are mean. Cozy up with those sweet, sweet feelings because they make you feel so good.

Putting aside the fact that the idea that Joe Biden went against US policy to corruptly help his son and then went public bragging about it is absolutely idiotic.... Ukraine, as a former Soviet state has had a long history of corruption. Many countries wanted them to clean up their act if they wanted aid in the wake of Russia's 2014 invasion. Now, in the real world and not the fantasy you seem to live in, corruption isn't an on/off switch. You don't just take an action and solve corruption. It's a long process of unwinding the way things were done in the past. The idea that corruption wasn't solved after one guy was fired doesn't mean that firing that guy wasn't part of cleaning up corruption. As to when the policy existed, shouldn't be too hard to look up: In 2016, the IMF conditioned aid on Ukraine fighting corruption. EU officials were trying to get Shokin fired before Biden was involved By late fall of 2015, the EU and the United States joined the chorus of those seeking Mr. Shokin’s removal as the start of an overall reform of the Procurator General’s Office [2016] The United States and other Western nations had for months called for the ousting of Mr. Shokin, who was widely criticized for turning a blind eye to corrupt practices and for defending the interests of a venal and entrenched elite. He was one of several political figures in Kiev whom reformers and Western diplomats saw as a worrying indicator of a return to past corrupt practices, two years after a revolution that was supposed to put a stop to self-dealing by those in power. [2016] On the other hand, some reforms have been slow. According to Secretary Nuland, much difficult work remains to clean up endemic corruption throughout government and society, at every level; to stabilize the economy; break the hold of corrupt state enterprises and oligarchs; and reform the justice system. She also noted that currently only 5% of the Ukrainian population completely trusted the judiciary. Secretary Nuland stated, “like Ukraine’s police force, the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) has to be reinvented as an institution that serves the citizens of Ukraine, rather than ripping them off.” For the secretary, that means the PGO “must investigate and successfully prosecute corruption and asset recovery cases – including locking up dirty personnel in the PGO itself.” And, the newly created Inspector General’s Office within Ukraine’s prosecution service must be able to work independently and effectively, without political or judicial interference.4 Nuland’s comments were given renewed importance when on February 14, 2016, the reform-minded deputy prosecutor resigned, complaining that his efforts to address government corruption had been consistently stymied by his own prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, as well as other government officials. This led to the February 16 resignation of Shokin after President Poroshenko complained that Shokin was taking too long to clean up corruption even within the PGO itself. [2016] The European Union has welcomed the dismissal of Ukraine's scandal-ridden prosecutor general and called for a crackdown on corruption, even as the country's political crisis deepened over efforts to form a new ruling coalition and appoint a new prime minister. As to the efforts to fight corruption in Ukraine: [2016] Ukraine is waging two wars: one against Russian-backed separatists in the East and one against its own internal corruption. [2018] Mayor Klitschko on Transforming Kyiv and Fighting Corruption in Ukraine [2022] To an outsider, it may seem an unlikely time for Ukraine to double down on the battle against corruption, as missiles rain down on cities and citizens fight for their lives.  Nonetheless, anti-graft agencies have revived a years-old investigation into an official scheme they say led to electricity customers overpaying by more than $1 billion, plus a case that stalled in 2020 into the alleged theft of over $350 million in assets and funds from a state-controlled oil company. [2022] Ukraine takes two steps forward, one step back in anti-corruption fight [2023] Ukraine's anti-graft police zero in on major wartime corruption [2023] Ukraine's fight against corruption isn't new. It's still trying [2023] As well as fighting Russia, Ukrainians are battling corruption at home

McCarthy is about 41 years too old for Gaetz… In all seriousness, the MAGA wing lives in a fantasy world, which makes governance impossible because you have to live in the real world to govern. McCarthy wants the support of the MAGA wing but also wants to try to govern. That is an anathema to people like Gaetz.

It's not a pesky fact. It's just reality. Many people commit crimes who are never prosecuted. There's a difference between "this guy is obviously doing crimes" and "I can prove in a court of law that this person is doing crimes." And both of those are certainly different than "This guy is just not doing his job". This is all pretty straightforward. And the actual explanation makes a lot more sense than "Joe Biden is publicly bragging about something he did to corruptly benefit his son."

Maybe if he wasn't such a famously terrible client, he'd be able to get lawyers who knew what they were doing... Trump isn't getting a jury in his $250 million civil fraud trial because his lawyers failed to ask for one "Former President Donald Trump won't receive a jury trial in his $250 million civil fraud case in New York because his lawyers never asked for one. Trump's trial in his civil fraud case began on Monday morning in a downtown Manhattan courtroom, where the embattled former president made a surprise appearance. The case was filed in September 2022, when New York Attorney General Letitia James announced her office had filed the sweeping lawsuit against Trump, his children Eric and Donald Jr., and two other executives at the Trump Organization. The case — in which New York Justice Arthur Engoron has already found that Trump committed years of fraud and handed down a "corporate death penalty" for the Trump Organization — is now in the process of a bench trial for the remaining parts of the New York attorney general's lawsuit. During a bench trial, the judge listens to all the evidence presented and decides the ultimate verdict and potential punishment instead of using a jury. That leaves the fate of Trump's company in the hands of a judge who has already repeatedly ruled against him and his lawyers, and who he has attacked as a political operative. The attorney general's office has sought to disgorge his company of allegedly ill-gotten profits from bank loans, issue a $250 million penalty against the defendants, and strip them of their ability to do business in New York. While Trump has raged on social media in recent weeks about the decision to forego a jury trial, he only has one group to blame: his legal team. On July 31, the New York attorney general's office filed paperwork telling the judge that it had completed all of its pre-trial work and was prepared for a trial. On that form, the lawyers checked a box requesting a "Trial without jury." Trump's lawyers never filed anything to court arguing otherwise, court records show. They had the opportunity to ask for a jury trial — but didn't. Under the particular statute where James brought her lawsuit, it wasn't necessarily guaranteed that Trump would have gotten a jury to decide the case. But his lawyers didn't even ask Engoron to consider it. Alina Habba, one of the attorneys representing Trump in the case, said Trump wanted a jury in the case. "I know my client did want a jury, and we did want that," she said. She did not explain why they did not ask for one. After appearing at the courthouse on Monday, Trump lambasted Engoron and his law clerk while standing directly outside of his courtroom where he accused the judge of "getting away with murder" and of being a "democrat operative." The New York civil fraud trial against Trump could last until December 22, though it could end sooner. In remarks at the beginning of the trial, Engoron noted that neither side had asked for a jury, and referenced his frequent quips and pop culture references throughout the court proceedings. "I promise to do my best," he said. "Despite my lame attempts at humor, as I mentioned in an early phase of the case, I take my job very seriously."

Is anyone claiming that Biden *didn’t* push for firing Shokin? It seems pretty obvious that he did

I was actually responding to your claim about Biden’s statements. You can tell because in my post, it quotes you and not Doc.

I’m sorry, are you saying that Biden bragged about getting Shokin fired as part of a corrupt deal to help his son? Seems like the kinda thing you’d want to keep quiet instead of bragging publicly about it… Almost seems like it’s more likely that when US policy was to get rid of Shokin, our allies wanted Shokin gone, and Hunter’s business partner was told that Shokin was under Burisma’s control, that Biden putting pressure on Ukraine to fire Shokin was him enacting US policy and was actually not good for Burisma. But I suppose that makes too much sense and involves those pesky facts that everyone here seems to hate.

Lol. Responding to a poster’s claim is now moving the goalposts.

You guys really will believe just about anything, huh?

…do you believe that being bad at your job is a criminal offense?

It’s important to remember that there is no group of people in the world that elected Republicans have more contempt for than their own voters. They think the people who vote for them are rubes, so they have no problem with obvious lies because they don’t expect their supporters to recognize that they are being lied to.

Oh, that one is easy. MAGA derives their facts from their conclusions instead of the opposite. Whatever happens, they can back their way into a pro-MAGA explanation by concocting the necessary “facts”

The thing I find so interesting about most of the right wing posters on this board is their absolute refusal to engage in the actual arguments being posted, and instead telling liberals what liberals believe even when it contradicts what the liberal poster said. They have so encased themselves in a bubble that they cannot fathom any nuance or the very idea that someone who doesn’t agree with them does not fit their preconceived idea of a liberal.

Come on man, you're smarter than this. If you owned a business and one of your employees was indicted for embezzling from you, would you do nothing? Would you say "well, I'll keep allowing them access to the company accounts until they are found guilty"? Or would you restrict their access or suspend them or even fire them?

When have I told other people what to do about climate change? And why do you think it’s a requirement to have a panacea solution to climate change if you believe that climate change is real? You seem like you’re rejecting facts about a problem simply because you don’t like the solutions to that problem that other people have proposed. Which was kinda my point.

Thank you for this. It’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. I want to believe that there is nobody stupid enough to believe it, but I’ve also read a lot of posts on this board.

Very nice strawman argument you have there. Strawmen and whataboutism seem to be the default rebuttal from the right these days. The tragic thing about climate change is that instead of proposing different solutions to combat an incredibly obvious problem, conservatives would rather bury their heads in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening. As always, it’s feelings over facts. BTW: until a very recent job change, I commuted exclusively via mass transit. And even now that I do drive to work, the overall commute is less than 10 minutes.

Wow, the guy espousing Republican beliefs, supported be Republicans, and funded by Republicans is fair to be considered a Republican. Such a controversial opinion for the feelings crowd!

Why would the Dems let a Republican run in their primary?

…are you high?

A helpful way this was explained to me years and years ago: We know that Barry Bonds did steroids, right? But when he hit a home run, can you say for certain that the only reason he hit that home run was because of steroids? Probably not. However, when you look at the trends and data over time, it’s clear that he was doping. Similarly, it’s currently hard to tell if a specific weather event was due to climate change*. But when you look at the data and trends, it’s clear that it’s happening. *this is changing due to attribution science which actually allows us to understand the impact of climate change on individual weather events.

Ok, so maybe say what you actually mean then instead of dancing around something.

A sitting president can't be charged by DoJ and it's highly unlikely that a state AG would charge one. So if Trump couldn't be charged during his term, how have you been waiting on charges for him for 7 years? Frankly, catching 91 charges over 4 indictments in multiple jurisdictions in just two years is a pretty prolific crime wave...